Cuba Libre (2008) (17 page)

"Your friend Victor," Palenzuela said as they were about to get out of the coach. "Is this also his last day?"

It wasn't a question Rudi had to answer. It wasn't a question at all, it was the chief reminding him he knew what was going on. Or believed he did. Once they were out of the coach, Palenzuela greeted the young woman, Amelia Brown, and gestured for them all to come in the house. In the first courtyard, the outer one, he said to Rudi, "H1 have a servant bring you and your friend a refreshment."

"You know Victor Fuentes, but you've never met him," Rudi said.

Palenzuela shook his head. Not once did he look at Fuentes, but took the young woman by the arm into another part of the house, leaving Rudi and Fuentes alone.

Rudi shrugged and Fuentes said, "It's just as well. Sometime later if he has to be can say no, we never met. Did you tell him?"

"Yes, and he asked if this was also your last day."

"You're not concerned about him?"

"Why? What he knows actually is that he doesn't know anything."

A servant brought them cups of coffee and they sat down. Rudi Calvo raised his cup and Fuentes raised his. "Tomorrow," Rudi said. "Or is there a reason to wait?"

"Tomorrow is good," Fuentes said. He sipped his coffee and said, "Amelia Brown wants to go with us. She told me today, in the coach."

Rudi frowned, because it didn't make sense to him, a rich man's woman.

"She says she helped us. We wouldn't know things that we know without her."

Rudi said, "Yes?" and waited. It was true, but what did telling them things she heard have to do with going with them tomorrow?

"She wants to be known for something," Fuentes said, "she wants to fulfill herself, become involved in a celebrated cause, perhaps in the manner of Evangelina Cisneros."

Rudi frowned again. "What did Evangelina Cisneros do? Nothing. The newspapers did it."

"She lived, as they say, 'in Death's Shadow," confined to a dungeon in Recogidas. She became 'the daughter of the revolution' and touched people's hearts when she escaped from the prison. Don't forget that."

"Evangelina was there," Rudi said, "so they used her. But she was never a revolutionist. How many women are there who take up arms and fight?"

"There were the Amazons of the Ten Years War." "Yes, you're right, those women."

"Paulina Gonzales," Fuentes said, "in this war. Her passion was to carry the flag in battle and lead machete charges. I saw her with my own eyes kill Volunteers, this young woman twenty-one years old. I met her when I was with Gomez in Santa Clara."

"But Paulina Gonzales," Rudi said, "is the only woman I know of who's made a name for herself."

"There were amazon as during her time and I believe Amelia Brown will be another one," Fuentes said. "Listen, we go riding, she sits astride the horse wearing trousers beneath a skirt only to her knees. I said to her, "That's a good idea." You know what she said? "Yes, it's the way Paulina Gonzales dressed." How does she know that? The correspondent, her friend Neely Tucker, told her. She knows about the war and she knows how to shoot with the pistol or the rifle. I watched her, at the mill."

"Yes," Rudi said, "but what does she want?" "She wants to be famous." "Is that enough?"

"For us, I think yes. It costs us nothing and she knows fame isn't given to you unless you earn it, risk your life."

"And sometimes doesn't come until you're dead," Rudi said. "Does she know that?"

In the carriage on the way back to the hotel Amelia said, "You spoke to Rudi?"

"He say it's up to you."

"But he doesn't like the idea."

Fuentes shook his head. "No, he's not going to judge you.

He knows you have intelligence But did you tell your friend Lorraine?"

"You didn't even hint you could be risking your life?" "She wouldn't understand if I told her," Amelia said, "and there wasn't time to explain. All she's thinking about now is leaving."

"You could too."

"Yes, I have a choice." She looked at the sky losing its light, the sun fading behind them, shod hooves on paving stones the only sound. "I want you to tell me the truth," Amelia said, "when I ask you a question. Will you?"

"I promise. What is it?"

"Do you think Rollie loves me?"

"What a question. Of course he does."

"Do you think he loves me enough, that if I were held as a hostage " She saw Fuentes begin to smile. "He'd pay fifty thousand dollars to get me back?"

Watching Fuentes smiling, Amelia began to smile.

Easter Sunday evening Amelia and Rollie dined in their suite on the top floor of the three-story Grand Hotel Inglaterra. Rollie began: "Did you have an interesting day?"

"It was all right."

"You go to church?"

"I changed my mind."

"Oh? Where were you all afternoon?"

"Saying good-bye to Lorraine. Remember?"

"Is she sad she's leaving?"

"In some ways."

"She'll miss Andres, won't she?"

"She'll miss the servants."

"When you leave, will you miss me?"

"I suppose."

"What do you mean, you suppose?"

"I was kidding."

"Why did you say I've lived a sheltered life?"

"Have you ever been to prison?"

"Is that a criterion?"

"Have you?"

"Of course not."

"Have you ever not had enough to eat?"

"The portions here aren't exactly generous."

"You know what I mean."

"It's strictly American, the cooking here." "Northern American. Have you ever killed anyone?" "If I haven't, I've lived a sheltered life?" "Have you? Ever killed anyone?" "I've never had to." "What does that mean?" "People do what I want." "I'm going riding tomorrow." "Take Novis with you."

"He doesn't know how to ride."

"Teach him."

"Rollie, do you love me?" "Of course I do." "Victor's going with me."

"And Novis," Rollie said. "Tell Victor to find him a gentle horse."

Chapter
Twelve.

VIRGIL SAID WHAT IF THEY WERE hauled around town a few times in the wagon and brought right back to El Morro? And that's why they put the sacks over their heads.

Tyler believed this place smelled different and wasn't as close to the open sea, though it was damp and moldy and had more spiders and rats than the Morro because, Tyler believed, there weren't as many prisoners here. He had the feeling they might be the only ones. He asked Virgil if he'd heard voices last night, any screams. They had been placed in separate cells, but now were together with one water bucket and one waste bucket between them. It was as if the Guardia were saying to them: You can talk and scheme all you want, you aren't going anyplace. Look at it another way, together they'd be easier to mind.

Virgil said what was there to scheme about? They were in a cell with big goddamn iron rings on the stone walls they could be chained to and iron bars crisscrossing the door. Virgil was talkative this morning.

He said he hoped to God this was a different place and not the Morro. The day war was declared the whole goddamn Atlantic Squadron would be out there. You'd have the Indiana and the Massachusetts, first-class twin-screw battle wagons with four 13-inch guns each. You'd have the Iowa with her four 12-inchers, the Texas, the Montgomery and the New York, an armored cruiser that could go twenty-one knots. And you'd have the Terror, a double-turret twin-screw monitor, like a raft with four 10-inch rifles on her. Virgil told Tyler the Maine was a second-class battleship, but had twelve inches of armor around her hull and eight to twelve inches protecting her turrets and barbettes. If the Maine had been unarmored the explosion would've crushed her like an eggshell and probably everybody aboard would have been killed.

Anyway, Virgil said, if they were still in the Morro and there was a war, they'd be goners. The squadron could sit out in the stream, turn their batteries on this old place. Shit, a couple of salvos and it would be gone, a pile of rubble.

Something else he told Tyler: "I said I'd never been in jail before? It's 'cause I never got caught." The horse his stepfather the preacher took from him and sold? Virgil stole back. Then, he told Tyler, there were some men from Fort Gibson had insulted his mother, saying she was a whore and offering her twenty-five cents each to luck them. Virgil stole a pistol from the place where he worked, then right after he got his horse back, he held up these men who'd insulted his mother as they were playing poker in the back room of the feed store in Fort Gibson, a bandanna hiding his face. Robbed them and hit 'em over the head with his gun barrel, the dirty-mouth sons of bitches. The funds got him clear to Port Tampa, where he went to bed with a whore the first time in his life, sixteen years old, and lied about his age to join the United States Marines.

Tyler had mentioned the forty-five hundred dollars he had coming from Boudreaux. Virgil said he believed you could live a long time on forty-five hundred, Jesus, years and years. He said to Tyler it was too bad he didn't have it on him, he could bribe his way out of here. Tyler said if he'd had it he sure wouldn't have it now.

"This is a country of banditry," he told Virgil, "or for anyone bent on scala waggery He had learned from Fuentes that bandits here put up signs on the road that said MONEY OR MUTILATION. Take your pick. He said to Virgil there seemed to be mostly road agents in Cuba, highwaymen, Fuentes called them, something Tyler said he didn't understand, banks being so easy to rob.

Lionel Tavalera entered the cell unarmed. A guard came in behind him to place a canvas chair on the dirt floor for the major, and now he sat facing Tyler and Virgil, the two sitting on the ground with their legs stretched out, their backs against the old scarred stone blocks of the wall. They were together in the cell this morning so he could address them at the same time. He began by saying he was going to the captain-general's palace, where they were having a meeting about the war he believed would be declared any day now. They would discuss America's ability to raise an army. How long would that take, a few months? It was thirty-three years since Americans had the war among themselves. Then when the army was ready they would board the troop ships in Port Tampa and perhaps Key West and sail here to Cuba.

"But where will they land? Excuse me," Tavalera said, "where will this army try to come ashore?" He looked at Virgil. "Marine Virgil Webster, from a place called Indian Territory. Are you Indian?"

"That's correct," Virgil said. "And the first thing I do when I get out of here, Don, is track you down and lift your scalp, you son of a bitch."

"That's the spirit to have," Tavalera said. "If there many like you it could be a good war. But you don't answer the question. Where do you think your army will come ashore?"

"Downtown Havana with John Philip Sousa's band leading the parade," Virgil said, "once our guns flatten the Morro and all your puny harbor defenses."

Tavalera liked this marine; he wouldn't mind having about four hundred just like him to bring his 2d Corps up to strength. He had arrived with 750 men under his command, one of six Guardia Civil corps sent to Cuba, and in three years had lost more than half of them fighting in the province of Matanzas. He believed more insurgents were recruited from there than from any other province. Maybe because so many were shot in the Plaza de las Armas and showed how to die bravely.

He said, "Our fleet will be here, in the harbor."

Virgil saj,d, "You mean at the bottom of the harbor. Any ship still afloat we'll board."

Tyler said, "You come to tell us something?"

"No, nothing in particular," Tavalera said. "I thought we could talk for a few minutes, see what you think about the war that's coming." He said this because he believed he had much in common with these two.

But all they did was stare at him until the marine said, "I just told you, we're gonna give you a whipping. Now, when're you letting us out of here?"

Maybe they had nothing in common after all, or this was not a time to talk. Tavalera said to the marine, "When your country declares war you become a prisoner of war and will be sent to Africa." He said to Tyler, "And when that happens you will be taken outside and shot as a spy. If that's all you want to know, there it is."

Deciding their fate almost as he said it.

He got up and left the cell, now to see if the drunken Lieutenant Molina would like to talk.

Chapter
Thirteen.

NOVIS CROWE ASKED FUENTES IF he could count. If there was three of them going riding, how come he brought four horses from the stable? They were in front of the hotel, 9:00 A.M." ready to mount.

Fuentes believed he could tell Novis almost anything. He could say, "Mr. Boudreaux's orders," and Novis would have to accept it and shut up. What Fuentes told him, the horse was green and they were getting it used to the saddle and bridle. Novis said well, what was in that pack tied to the saddle? Fuentes said it was their lunch, they were going to have a picnic. He saw Amelia looked at him with no expression on her lovely face.