Cuba Libre (2008) (30 page)

Boudreaux put on a smile--so Novis did too then turned it off.

"Dewey went all the way to the Philippines, a distance you tell me of ten thousand miles, to protect our interests in the Far East and did a bang-up job, got it done in less than a day, a few hours' work. Think of it, Novis."

"Yes sir?"

"All you had to do was go fifty-four miles with a hammock under your protection and you failed, miserably. What I'd like you to tell me, Novis, is what you're going to do to make up for it."

Novis said, "You think I'm ignorant, don't you?" Boudreaux paused only a moment, maybe reading the remark, then shrugged in his tailored guayabara shirt. "Being ignorant, Novis, is nothing to be ashamed of. It merely indicates a lack of formal education. There are certain things I'm ignorant of myself."

Like he was saying, even if that might be hard to believe. Facing Boudreaux, Novis could see out the corner of his eye the Mauser pistol sitting on the railing. Take one step to brush it off the rail. Take another step to pick Boudreaux up and chuck him off this upstairs porch on his head. Do it, Novis thought.

What stopped him was the look that came into Boudreaux's eyes, like the man saw it coming, about to die or suffer terrible injuries and there was nothing he could do about it. Novis had just a glimpse of the man's helpless fear, but enough to see him in that moment as an ordinary person, Jesus Christ, no better'n anybody else. Shit, all he was, he was rich.

"You know why I come here," Novis said, and waited.

"Do you?"

"No, I don't."

"On account of you trusted me. If I don't show up here then you might think I took the money, which I didn't. Hell, there could've been dog shit in that hammock for all I knew. I did what I was told and that old man stuck a gun in my side. I told you I got shot at coming here from Benavides? People shooting at me from the hills and I don't even know who they are. I don't know one side from the other--they all look alike to me anyway, greasers do. I think you know, but you don't give a shit who's who or who wins. Is that true?" Boudreaux didn't say anything. "I asked you a question."

"Do I care who wins the war?" Boudreaux said. "Of course I care. I want us to win."

"Who do you mean by us, you and your buddies? That's what your lady friend calls 'em, your sugar buddies."

"She does?"

"Answer my question. Who's us?"

"America. We're Americans, aren't we, Novis?" The man getting some of his cocksure manner back.

"I think you say that on account of us whipping the dons' ass over in the Philippine Islands, and if it's that easy the war's good as done."

"You make a keen observation," Boudreaux said.

"Well, I get here, I see you got your gorillas all around the cane fields like they're expecting the mambises to come riding down on them with torches. Well, the mambises I'm told are on our side. So if you're fighting them, what side does that put you on?"

"Novis, it's not as simple as whose side you're on." "The hell it ain't."

Boudreaux moved for the first time, turned to the railing and looked out at his estate.

"Novis, you want to know how I see this situation?"

He waited, but didn't prompt when Novis didn't say anything.

"I want us to win," Boudreaux said, "us, our side, and I know it will happen. But if by some act of God we don't win, a simple fact remains, Novis, and that is, I can't lose." He turned to Novis and said, "I'll tell you what: Why don't we go back to Havana and sit it out?"

Chapter
Twenty-Two.

AMELIA WOULD OPEN HER EYES and see faces looking at her. Sometimes she'd know the faces and sometimes she wouldn't. Most of the time she knew when it was Ben and when it was Victor. She knew Dr. Henriquez; he was handsome and wore a beard. She didn't know the woman who would stand by the cot with an anguished expression and wore a sun hat, always wore the hat, a straw with the edge of the brim turned up in front. Just the edge. Often she saw a Negro face, a woman who was skin and bones named Lourdes. The woman would lean over in her sack dress and Amelia would see the woman's breasts, flat as leather pancakes, or like the flaps on saddlebags, and Amelia would think of the money and want to tell Ben to take it out of the hammock and put it in saddlebags, in case they had to leave in a hurry. She could never remember if she told him. Sometimes she would see a face that was deformed, the face lacking most of its nose. Once while Lourdes was feeding her, Amelia looked over and saw a man in the doorway with enormous legs, like the trunks of mahogany trees. Lourdes said he was her husband, he suffered from the disease elephantiasis. Amelia would burn with fever and lift her head to sip white, watery liquids or feel a spoon pour a bitter drug into her mouth. She would rest her head on the pillow again and see Lourdes's face looking at her, dry patches that were almost white on Lourdes's skin. Amelia had no sense of time. She saw a face she thought was Dr. Henriquez and it confused her, because the anguished woman had told her Dr. Henriquez was gone, taken from her, conscripted into the army of Spain. Now the bearded face came closer and it was Tyler: growing a beard and wearing the clothes of the country, an off-white shapeless suit that belonged to the doctor. Ben seemed different each time she saw him, the beard filling out on his gaunt face, but she knew his eyes; she loved his eyes. He told her he was going native, see if he could look like he belonged. She liked his beard, and when he kissed her forehead, her cheek and then her mouth she knew it was Ben, even if she didn't see his eyes. Ben always close whenever she woke up. She asked about the faces she saw with deformed features; were they real or did she dream them. He told her they were lepers and this was their home, San Lzaro, and she remembered Victor a year ago as they sat astride horses telling about a leper home in Las Villas where he knew a woman. Ben told her there were three small houses behind the main building in the grove of banana trees: the houses, stone with thatched roofs and dirt floors, were for married couples and this one wasn't being used. He told her he stayed with her here, slept in a hammock. Not the hammock full of money; that one was hidden in the thatch of the ceiling. It was Lourdes who cooked and attended her, gave Amelia her quinine and green coconut milk, bathed her each day and helped her manage the chamber pot and into bed again to lie helpless, drained of all her strength. She asked who the white woman was. Ben said her name was Mary Lou but everyone called her Miss Janes. She had come here to help Luis Henriquez, but now he was gone and she didn't know what would happen to her. She wanted to go home, but didn't see how that was possible with the blockade, no ships going to American ports. There were words Amelia heard but didn't always understand, or know if the words were spoken to her or if she heard them in her mind. She would tell Ben she wanted to die and he would put his mouth on hers, and the nm so close that she could see only his eyes, his beardmhe would whisper things to her, saying he loved her, saying she would be his girl forever. She would hear Ben and Victor talking, Victor telling how to find the drug shop, the one he had gone to for quinine. Ben saying nothing was going to happen to him, not now, after all they'd been through. Victor saying yes, but just in case, one day I don't come back. Victor saying the Guardias were in Las Villas everywhere you look. Saying he had not seen Tavalerathank you, God--but was sure he had seen Osma. Ben telling Victor he must be wrong; how could the man still be alive. Victor saying who knows, but when you see him, you know it.

A morning came and Amelia knew she was recovering, that she could get up from this cot and pretty soon would be herself again. She asked Tyler, "How long have I been lying here?"

He said, "Just over a month."

She said, "My God, that long?" And said, "I think in a day or so we'll be able to leave."

Tyler shook his head. "They're still looking for us."

She said, "You told me you love me." He said, "I give you my word, I do."

Osma wondered if the woman they were looking for could be among the women who bathed in the stream.

It served as a public bath for the poor, a time reserved for men and another for women. From the stone bridge on the Imperial Road, Osma would observe the women through binoculars, searching for pale skin and finding most of it as dark as his own. A few women stripped to the waist to bathe; the rest removed almost none of their clothes, allowing parts of their bodies to remain filthy. Some would do their laundry along the edge of the stream; some would sun themselves on the rocks, like lizards. If it was the men's turn Osma would take one look and leave to ride up and down the streets of Las Villas or sit with Tavalera, who said they had to be here still. But where? They had searched the hospital--Osma believing the woman to be ill---churches, a girls' school, hotels, inns, the homes of people suspected of being mambi sympathizers, and several estates close to the city.

The Guardias Civiles stood in pairs in the shade of porticoes and galries, inspecting all who passed. Osma saw this as no different-than what Guardias always did. They stood about to be looked at, but no one dared look at them except Osma. He would walk up to a pair and see them shuffle in their boots or cock a hip to one side as he came, getting ready for him. He'd ask them, "Have you seen any gringo cowboys today? One tried to put a hole in me"--Osma touching his side--"but his bullet only took off some fat, here, that I don't need."

Tavalera was seldom found at the Guardia Civil barracks, on the property of the governor's palace. Word had come from Havana ordering him to bring his corps back to the capital. He wired his reply saying a spy had informed him of a mambi plan to attack Las Villas and he insisted on being here when they came. It could be true. At any rate it was the story he used to remain here and search for the old man, the woman and the cowboy. He had moved into a house that suited him, keeping on the retired couple who lived there as his servants. In the evening he would sit in the garden and drink whiskey, sometimes with Osma, the major no longer wearing the bandage around his head. Some of the things he said while drinking:

"When we find them, they'll be right under our nose all the time. We'll wonder why we didn't think to look there as soon as we came."

"We should look for the dun horse. Perhaps he sold it to someone here."

"When we think we see him, look again, because he will have changed his appearance."

"Look for the spurs he wears. Or listen for them."

"He could be posing as someone else, not American, perhaps Inglds. But he won't speak the same as the Inglds."

Tavalera was no longer eager to talk about the war or to find his place in it. He said there had been a naval engagement in the Philippines and a small one off Cienfuegos. He said it required months of planning to assemble an army. Spies had reported ships waiting at Port of Tampa and the movement of troops there from other parts of America. He said there was still time before an army came.

"But how long can these three hide and not be seen by anyone? Seven weeks now."

One evening he spent with Tavalera, Osma drank too much whiskey listening to him. The next day he went to a drug shop for a bottle of Bromo-Seltzer or some stomach bitters. He stood waiting in the shop as the young clerk in a smock told a male customer about an old man who had come in twice to buy Lydia Pinkham medicine. Twice, the only times in the history of the drug shop a man had asked for Lydia Pinkham. The clerk said he wanted to ask the old man if it was for him. It would be funny, but the druggist would say he was disrespectful, even though the old man was mulatto. Several other times, the clerk said, the old man came in to buy quinine.

Osma said to the clerk, "Several times, uh?" thinking of the woman he had thought was ill by the way she rode her horse--weeks ago, but a picture of it still clear in his mind: her head lolling up and down with the horse's gait. "What was the quinine for, malaria?"

The clerk said, "No, yellow fever."

"I heard you don't have yellow fever here."

"Not many cases, no."

"Do you know him, this old mulatto?"

The clerk said he didn't, and Osma asked when he was in last. The clerk said oh, perhaps two weeks ago. He came in three times for the quinine and each time was two weeks from the time before. "One of the times," the clerk said, "he wanted another medicine also, but now I can't remember what it was."

Osma said, "So you think it's time for him to come in again?"

"It would seem so."

"All that quinine, the patient must be better by now. Wouldn't you think?"

"He should continue to take it," the clerk said, "to make sure. And if I think of the other medicine he bought, I'll tell you."

"That's all right," Osma said, and went to find Tavalera.

Chapter
Twenty-Three.

THE LEPER HOME SAT IN A JUNGLE of banana trees: an acre of trees ten feet high fronting on the Imperial Road by several acres deep, extending back to a creek where a rickety structure stood among cottonwoods, an old hay barn from another time. They stabled the horses here, water and graze close to the shelter. Every day Tyler would go back there to look at the horses, once in a while rubbed them down and gave them a hunk of sugarcane to chew on. They kept their tack in the shelter, ready to throw on saddles and ride out if the search for them ever came too close.

Tyler was with the horses when Fuentes appeared, the old man dressed for town, wearing a necktie with his coat and hat, saddlebags over his shoulder. "One last trip to the drug shop," Fuentes said, taking his revolver from his waist and slipping it into a saddlebag.