Cleopatra pointed to the companionway between the doghouse and the lower deck, where a cross exactly like the one she described now hung.
“That’s it?” I asked. “Is it real?”
“I never checked. I took the man’s word for it. He told me his name was Luis Villa. He said that he was from Chocolate but was now living most of the year in Baltimore, where he played professional baseball for the Orioles. He told me if I ever found myself on the Chesapeake Bay in the summer, he would be happy to take me to a game and out to eat boiled crabs. That was in November. The following May, I just happened to be hauling a load of pineapples to Baltimore, and I looked up Luis Villa, got my crab dinner, and went to a baseball game. I have been hooked ever since.”
Cleopatra checked her watch again and poured us each a small amount of brandy from a crystal bottle. “I should stop there.”
“We still have three minutes till the game,” I protested.
“You have work to do in the morning, you know?”
“Yes, Captain, and believe me, I plan to win the bet. But how does El Cohete fit into the story?”
“Luis and I had a torrid affair. He asked me to marry him and come ashore countless times, but I was afraid—of what, I don’t know. Luis finally married a girl from home. They moved to Florida to be close to her relatives and had a son. Luis was killed in a car crash a year later. His wife took his body back to Cuba to be buried in Chocolate, and she stayed. I never met anybody else who came close to Mantequilla, so I just stopped looking and sailed on.
“Through the Batista years, the revolution, hurricanes, Russian missiles, and the embargo, the rainbow dock still glowed in the sun, and the sons and grandsons of Luis Villa played baseball. I kept up with the family in Cuba as best I could. I used to make excuses to stop in Cuba on most of my voyages to see two generations of Villa men play ball. El Cohete is, in a way, the grandson I should have had.”
Cleopatra stopped talking and looked out the doghouse hatch at the moon coming up and then reached over and changed the channel.
“Well, sonny, it’s past your bedtime. Good night.”
“Good night?” I asked.
“Yes. I am going to listen to the game, and you are going to bed. I believe we have a wager that might be important to you, and I hate to admit it, but I would like to see you succeed.”
I followed the captain’s orders and walked back to the guest cabin. The bed had been turned down, and the hurricane lights gave out a warm, amber glow. I undressed and slipped under the covers, not knowing whether I would be able to sleep or not. But I laughed again at the thought of where I was and how I got there—thinking to myself that it beat the hell out of sleeping on the beach.
The six-foot, six-inch, 220-pound El Cohete was perched like a pelican on top of a makeshift sandy mound on the beach. Ribbons of sweat rolled from under his cap, but he didn’t appear nervous—just hot, as he stuffed a shiny white baseball into his well-worn leather glove.
He stepped off the pitcher’s mound and checked the runners in jungle fatigues on third and second. It didn’t seem to faze him that every position other than catcher was being played by barefoot Indian children dressed only in loincloths.
Ix-Nay was catching, dressed in fishing shorts with a .45 strapped to his side. The normally garrulous fishermen of the village watched the game from their boats and the beach in concentrated silence.
The near-naked infield was laughing and taunting the players in the opposing dugout, waiting for the next batter to take his turn. Out stepped Che Guevara in his familiar khakis and beret. Behind him in the umpire’s box stood a young man in a tattered naval officer’s uniform. “Play ball, and remember the Maine,” he barked.
Che Guevara moved out of the batter’s box. The silence of outer space enveloped the playing field as El Cohete served up a wicked curveball, which Che fouled off into the water.
The next pitch was a slider on the inside corner of the plate. Che never saw the pitch, but it hit the handle of his bat, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Che then strutted to the edge of the bay and walked to the end of the dock. A small hammerhead shark vaulted into the sky, and Che seized the shark by the tail, then walked back to the ball field and into the batter’s box. Che stared at the pitcher and spat. “Let’s have it, let’s have it,” he said, taunting El Cohete to throw the ball.
“You can’t hit a baseball with a shark!” El Cohete yelled at the guerrilla.
“You can’t lead a revolution or throw a split-fingered fastball past me!” Che shouted back.
The villagers reacted with a thunder of claps, whistles, and yells.
El Cohete responded with a fastball on the corner, and Che swung late again.
“Strike three!” shouted the umpire.
Che hurled the shark back into the sea, picked up a submachine gun from the nearby bench, and headed off for the mountains. “I have better things to do than play this silly, imperialistic, capitalistic, fucking game,” he spat as he disappeared into the jungle to the boos of the crowd.
Out on the pitcher’s mound, El Cohete had his eye on a longboat approaching the beach from the direction of three ships. The oarsmen and their leader landed and clambered out of the boat. They wore the iron helmets of fifteenth-century Spanish conquistadors, but gone were the bloomer pants and red stockings. Instead, the Spaniards were wearing pin-striped baseball uniforms. Stitched across their breasts were the words SANTA MARIA. Instead of swords, muskets, pikes, and lances, they all carried wooden bats.
They marched smartly up the dock in military fashion. When they got to the infield, their leader stepped forward. “I am Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Oceans and servant of Isabella and Ferdinand, the Queen and King of Spain, and we have come to play ball.”
“Baseball is not a Spanish game!” Ix-Nay shouted at Columbus from behind the plate. “You people kill bulls for sport! Baseball is a rebel game!” The crowd erupted in a huge cheer.
“We’ll see about that,” Columbus fired back at Ix-Nay.
A priest stepped forward and handed Columbus a wooden bat that was twice the size of the bats his crew held. Columbus dropped to one knee, bowed his head, leaned on the giant Louisville Slugger, made the sign of the cross, and whispered a prayer. Then he got up and walked to home plate.
“Play ball!” roared the ump.
“Excuse me, padre,” Columbus said as he passed the priest, “but the Admiral of the Oceans is at the plate. Let’s see what you got, serpenteria.”
“We will play you for our country!” El Cohete shouted from the mound.
Columbus pounded the ground several times with the big bat, then took a couple of practice swings, spat, and said, “You’re on.”
“Vayamos, El Cohete!” the prepubescent infield shouted in unison.
“El Co-he-te,” the fishermen and the rest of the crowd repeated from the shore.
Fish began to jump out of the sea, mouthing the chant.
On the mound, El Cohete was ready. He jerked his hat tight down on the crown of his clean-shaven head, inhaled a giant gulp of air, and began his windup. He coiled his whole body into a catapult capable of launching the ball at more than 107 miles an hour in the direction of the Admiral of the Oceans. He was going way inside, and he was going hard. As he kicked his leg to the sky and extended his long left arm behind him, he took one last look at Columbus, who stood ready at the plate. That was when El Cohete put the brakes on and released a changeup.
The ball seemed to move toward the plate in slow motion, and he could see the expression on the admiral’s face at the revelation that the pitch he was looking for wasn’t coming. Columbus started to make an adjustment, but he ended up sweeping the giant bat in a mighty swing that was completed before the ball ever got to the plate.
The crowd went crazy.
“I could have you burned at the stake by the Inquisitors!” Columbus yelled at El Cohete.
“What league do they play in?” El Cohete yelled back as he kicked a
t the mound and readied the next pitch.
“Strike two,” called the ump.
“That was way outside!” Columbus protested.
“It might have been,” said the ump.
A baseball player only knows one measurement of time. Regular clocks do not apply. Time to a baseball player is not calculated in days, minutes, or seconds. It is measured instead by innings, balls, and strikes. Columbus may have been thinking 1492, but to El Cohete it was the bottom of the ninth, runners on second and third, two outs, no balls, and two strikes.
Now everybody on the beach and the boats began to shout the familiar four-syllable chant that had rung out in ballparks all over the island for the last twelve years: “El Co-he-te, El Co-he-te!”
Villa started his windup. The ball tore a hole in the sky, and there was a tail behind it like a comet as it headed for the plate.
Columbus gripped the giant bat so tight that steam leaked out between his fingers.
“It’s tree,” a voice in my ear announced.
“Wait! The game’s not over. They’re playing for the independence of Cuba from Spain,” I muttered.
“Mista Mars, it be tree in da morning. You are on da Lucretia, and it be time to go see da guard and light da channel. You must have been havin’ a bad dream.”
I now recognized the voice of Solomon as my eyes adjusted to the interior of the guest cabin.
“No, Solomon, it was a good dream. But the game wasn’t over.”
“It never is,” Solomon said. “So let’s go to work.”
18
Leap, and the Net Will Appear
Once I had shaken myself awake, I was dressed and ready in no time. I put my lucky conch shell in my pocket and headed out. Solomon had the dinghy prepared, and the ride to the beach was a silent one.
The winds and the weather from yesterday had gone somewhere else. The night sky was crystal clear, and I could see the reflection of the stars on the water.
It felt as if we were mounting a predawn assault on an unsuspecting enemy, which in a way we were. Our mission was to storm ashore and surprise a sleeping army of one and brainwash him into doing something that he wasn’t supposed to do.
Even with a cup of strong, hot coffee in me, I was still thinking about my dream and the unknown outcome of the game. Cleopatra seemed content, softly singing what I now recognized as a Carlos Gardel tune. Solomon held the boat in the shallow water as we unloaded and made our way up the cliff.
I fully expected to see Columbus and El Cohete finishing the game as we reached the top of the cliff, but there were only the shadowy, deserted ruins of Tulum. I could see Solomon in the dinghy just offshore behind the phosphorescent foam of the breaking waves, and I signaled to him that we were okay—so far.
As we headed for the guard shack, Cleopatra broke the morning silence and provided a play-by-play of the game that the Industriales had won over their hated rivals from Santiago, 9-0. El Cohete had pitched a three-hit shutout. I told her about my dream.
“Oh, I have that dream all the time,” she casually told me.
“Then who wins the game?” I asked.
“I think that was revealed to me when I was ninety-three.”
“Great.”
A morning mist hung in the mangroves and palms, and the probing beams of our flashlights guided us through the ruins to the guardhouse, which was up by the gate at the main entrance.
Cleopatra followed along behind me. I was thinking about what it would take to pull this off. I was going to need money that I did not have.
Earlier that day, which now seemed like ancient history, in the process of rinsing off all that mud, I had plunged into the ocean, forgetting about the spending money I had brought in my pocket for my big trip to town. It wasn’t until I changed clothes in the guest cabin on board the Lucretia that I discovered the wet lump of twenty-dollar bills was missing. I searched my muddy clothes and my fishing bag frantically for the $500 I would have needed if I’d wound up in Cancún. I could only figure that while I was snoring away in my ganja-and-beer-induced siesta, a beach urchin had locked on me as the perfect target and had hit the jackpot. All I had on me was $50 that I always kept stashed in my wallet. That wasn’t nearly enough of an incentive to Hector to start his day before dawn. I had to think of something else.
It was obvious that Cleopatra had a little more in the bank than I did, but the bet had been for me to get the channel lit, and she was such a cagey old bird that I didn’t want to be snagged on some kind of technicality and blow my ride home on the Lucretia. So I decided to go it alone and not even mention to her what I was thinking.
The guard shack appeared in the lantern beam a hundred yards ahead. I had no idea what I would offer Hector. I could stop, explain the situation to Cleopatra, and ask for advice, or I could just keep moving toward the shack as if I knew what I was doing, hoping something would come to me. Cleopatra said nothing. It was obvious that this was my play. I said a quick prayer to the gods of instant remedies and moved closer to the shack.
Twenty yards from the entrance, my prayer was answered. It traveled from the blaster in Hector’s shack through the morning and was delivered to my welcoming ears by no one less than the king himself.
“Viva Las Vegas,” Elvis sang as he repeated the chorus. Las Vegas was the answer to my problem. Hector’s passion for everything Las Vegas—million-dollar slot machines, giant Belgian waffles, lap dances, and exploding water fountains—would be the carrot I would dangle in front of the rabbit. I would offer to make his dream come true. Viva Las Vegas. I would worry about how to pay for it later.
Hector looked more like a prisoner than a guard when he opened the door. The Elvis music had been turned off, and his gun was in his hand. It was obvious from his disheveled look that he had fallen asleep in his clothes with the music playing and had probably had a few nightcaps of the juice from the blue agave plant. He did not seem happy to see us.
I was about to make my apologies and introduce Cleopatra when Cleopatra engaged Hector in Spanish. She led with a barrage of compliments about Elvis.
“He’s a Hendrix nut too,” I whispered to Cleopatra.
“Who’s Hendrix?” she whispered back.
Whatever she said to Hector changed his frown to a smile. I had never seen this man laugh that much. I had made good progress for a gringo since that first day when he nearly shot me, but I never saw anything like Cleopatra in action.
He motioned for us to sit. As we followed him past the pinups, brochures, and giant poster of Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire, I pointed to the poster. “That’s Hendrix,” I whispered to Cleopatra.
“Why would you burn up a perfectly good guitar?” she asked.
“Remind me to tell you later. What did Hector say?”
“He says we are crazy, but he wants to know what is in it for him.”
“I know,” I said. “I will try to explain my plan to him. If it is not coming out right, I might need you to translate for me.”
“I don’t think that violates the original bet. I can do that,” Cleopatra concluded.
In my best Spanish, I slowly explained my plan to Hector. When I was finished, he sat on the bunk and stroked his rifle. He looked pensive, and then he broke out into a big grin. “Las Vegas, melones grandes allí. I can do, but take dollars too. Me think twos hundred for lap dances.”
What had happened to our civilization? At first I was ashamed. I thought for an instant of John Lloyd Stephens, a hero of mine and the man who had carved the Mayan ruins out from under the camouflage for the world to see. What would he think of me sitting at Tulum bargaining with a local for titty-bar favors? But then I think Mr. Stephens knew better than most that when you are on a mission, you must do what you have to do to succeed. I was almost there with Hector, but not quite. “How about fifty?” I tried to bargain as I reached for the lonely bill in my pocket.
“Not fifty. Two hundred,” Hector said sternly. I was about to make my second offer, but it wasn’
t necessary. Cleopatra pulled her hand out of the pocket of her foul-weather jacket, and the light from the lantern in the shack reflected off of a small gold nugget that she held out to Hector. He grabbed it, examined it, and asked, “Es oro?”
“Si es oro.”
He put it in his shirt pocket, said something to Cleopatra in Spanish, reached out, and shook both our hands. Then he stood up, opened the door, and motioned for us to follow.
“He says fifty now, two hundred in cash next week, and the gold nugget to cover expenses,” Cleopatra whispered to me. “Not a bad deal at all, Mr. Mars.”
Seconds later, we were standing in front of a shack behind the guardhouse. Hector came out with two giant torches on the ends of big poles and a gallon of kerosene. He went back into the shack and returned with his ghetto blaster hanging around his neck. As we followed him to the tower, I was feeling like a million bucks. I knew the channel was there, and now I had the means to find it in the dark.
“You had no idea how you were going to pull this off before you got to the shack, did you?”
“It worked out like I hoped it would.” I said it like a politician.
“That doesn’t answer my question. Solomon told me about your money being stolen on the beach.”
I smiled. As I walked along, I looked up at the fuzzy glow of the Milky Way in the cloudless sky, thinking Johnny Red Dust would be up there having a good laugh.
“I was just following a piece of advice an old medicine man gave me back in Montana.”
“Which is?”
I reached for the little wooden gecko around my neck, rubbed it, and said, “Leap, and the net will appear.”
19
And the Wind Cries Mary
Inspired by thoughts of his Las Vegas weekend, Hector had made it up the steep steps to the tower at a triathlon pace. I had told him exactly where to hang the torches, and from the dinghy, they illuminated the windows and looked like perfect squares of light. Now all we had to do was line them up.