Cuba Libre (2008) (31 page)

"Amelia looks to be out of the woods," Tyler said. "Why take the chance if she doesn't need anything?" "Yes, she's been helping the woman this morning, that Miss Janes, and appears well, but you can't be sure. Listen, I hear the troops in Las Villas are going to Oriente, where they expect your army to come. So now the risk is nothing to speak of. If we going to leave soon I should get more quinine."

"You're tired of sitting around, that's all."

"Maybe that's it, tired of doing nothing after doing so much, uh?" He slipped the bridle over his horse's muzzle.

"Did you think we would make it through all that?"

"I thought I came here to sell horses."

"And some guns," Fuentes said, "that put you in prison and what happens, a pretty girl gets you out. When Amelia told you of the money, did you think she wanted to steal it?"

"We don't see it as stealing."

"Whatever pleases you to call it. But were you surprised?"

"At first, but not once I got to know her. She wanted to, I believe Amelia could rob banks and make a good living."

"She's young," Fuentes said, "as you are. The two of you have fifty years to do what you want. I look in the future, is not so clear. Oh, I see a nice house, a garden. I see a woman who's not old but not young either, one who's just right for me. I sit down in my house and for the rest of my life the woman waits on me and I don't move."

"I can't see you sitting still."

"Well, once in a while I think of it and take the woman to bed. That's what I'm going to do with my life after this, nothing."

Fuentes saddled the horse as he spoke, Tyler watching him pull up on the cinch strap and loop it through the ring. He said, "Did you ever think I might run off with the money, being a bank robber at one time?"

Fuentes looked at him now. "You? Of course not, you are a man of honor. And you have Amelia. Could you think of leaving her? You be crazy."

"I've wondered if she'll leave me."

"You are crazy, I mean to think that. You going to get married and be together always forever." "I don't know about that." "She think so, she told me." "She did?"

"Why you so surprised?"

"I haven't asked her."

"What is that? Some things you know without asking. I would know it even if she don't tell me."

"That we'll get married?"

"Yes, of course." Fuentes glanced over. "It's nothing to be afraid of."

Tyler watched him throw on the saddlebags, more of a bulge to them than that Colt that he'd slipped into one side.

"What've you got in there, clothes?"

"A poncho for the rain."

"The sky's clear blue, all the way up."

"You don't know Cuba, not yet."

"The way you're talking," Tyler said, "you make it sound like this business is over with and there's nothing to worry about."

"We close to it. Listen, yesterday I saw a man on the road I know from old times. He tells me of an American ship, the Eagle, not a big one but I don't know what kind, I think has a 6-pound gun. The ship is blockading the harbor of Cienfuegos off Colorados Point. A Spanish torpedo boat, the Galicia, goes out to fight it and the Eagle blows the smoke pipe from the Galicia and destroys its boiler. Listen, whenever the panchos try to stand before the Americans they can't do it. It will happen that way when your army comes--my friend say on the south coast of Oriente, near Santiago de Cuba. They don't have time for us here no more, even the Guardias of Tavalera will be going."

"But you saw Osma."

"That was some time ago. Listen, I know him. If Osma don't have to fight, why should he?"

They walked back through the banana forest, Fuentes leading his horse, to the house where Amelia stayed.

"I could grow this fruit," Fuentes said. "That doctor say they ready to pick in eight months from the time you plant, and you can make as much as fifteen hundred dollars an acre."

"You said you were gonna just sit."

"Yes, I have my woman pick the bananas."

Amelia came out, a hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun: Amelia looking pale and scrawny in a faded blue dress too big for her. Fuentes told her she never looked more beautiful and she touched her crop of short hair and seemed to pose to show them her profile, a woman in an advertisement, her slender nose in the air. Amelia almost herself again.

Tyler watched them together, Fuentes giving Amelia a hug and kissing her cheek. Tyler watched the old man step into his saddle, and as he rode out past the main house toward the road, raise his hand to wave.

Amelia came over to take Tyler's arm and press herself against him. They watched Fuentes turn into the road.

"That's the first time he's ever waved," Tyler said. "It's like he's saying goodbye."

"Victor sometimes shows a sense of drama," Amelia said.

"He offers a fond farewell on the chance that, I guess after all we've been through together, we might not see him again." "Or he doesn't expect us to." "Why wouldn't he?"

Tyler stared at the road, empty now.

"He's an old patriot, and he left here armed. I think he has some kind of scheme in mind, maybe even thinking to shoot somebody."

"A last desperate act in the name of freedom," Amelia said, sounding sad. "I hope you're wrong."

The cafe where Tavalera and Osma waited was on a corner, on the opposite side of the street from the drug shop halfway down the block. They sat outside beneath the portico, behind the rows of Greek columns that extended along the curb. This was the third day of observing the drug shop, most of the time Osma standing watch, dedicated to the task, anxious to meet that cowboy again face-to-face. Tavalera would send Guardias to relieve him and stop by himself from time to time, Tavalera as anxious as Osma, wanting with all his heart the old man who came in to buy the Lydia Pinkham and quinine would turn out to be Victor Fuentes.

"Once," Osma said, "the old man bought a third medicine, but the clerk couldn't remember what it was. I could go ask, see if it returned to his memory." "Do you think it matters?" "I doubt it."

They watched the drug shop hoping to see the clerk come out to lower the awning over the front windows, the signal that would tell them the old man had returned and was inside. This morning they were distracted by the noise of people cheering, illegal guns going off all over the citymthough not on this street with Guardias waiting in doorways, horses tethered on the side street around the corner from the cafe Tavalera took a sip of his cold coffee. "This is my last day." "You said that yesterday."

"Now it's true. I can't stay here." "You like Santiago? That's where you'll go."

"Now my orders are return to Havana."

"So you can protect the captain-general. Btanco must be shitting his pants by now."

"Mariel is still believed to be an invasion point. Land there and take Havana."

They sat in silence for several minutes, staring.

"When you were on the train," Tavalera said, "you don't know if they had opened the hammock. But what about their faces? Did they express a particular kind of feeling to you? Their attitude, their state of mind?"

"You want to know," Osma said, "were they joyous or were they depressed, their faces hanging? This cowboy has a gun in my belly. You think I'm making a study of their faces?"

Tavalera said nothing and they were silent again, Osma staring at the drug shop. Now Tavalera closed his eyes.

He sat without moving, hands folded in his lap. He heard in his mind the words: Oh God... Listen, if You let this man be Victor Fuentes and he takes me to the hammock and inside is forty thousand dollars, American funds... if in Your divine generosity You make this happen, I will give to the Church that portion of the money I was going to give Osma, who is an atheist with the manners of a fucking goat and is unworthy.

Though he had not yet decided how much he'd give Osma, he realized the amount wouldn't seem enough to pledge to Holy Mother Church. No, he would have to give something else. Perhaps offer an act of mortification. He thought about it and when he continued to pray said:

Oh God, grant my petition and whenever I go to Mass, I promise to fall on my knees at the Consecration and remain there until after the Communion, which I will receive, after I go to Confession.

He saw himself at Mass, perhaps the only man on his knees in the entire Havana cathedral, his head bowed in supplication.

0sma turned to look at him.

"What are you doing, sleeping?"

Tyler decided against riding the dun. He saddled Amelia's sorrel and brought it through the grove of broad green leaves to the yard behind the main house.

Miss Janes in her sun hat was there, and Amelia, at a wooden table where the twelve lepers who lived here stood in line and Miss Janes, from Gretna, Louisiana, would speak to each one in turn, touching them, applying medication, passing them on to Amelia, who bandaged the ones with open sores. The lepers with missing toes hobbled off. The man with elephantiasis moved past on his enormous legs and Tyler saw Amelia looking at him. She said something to Miss Janes, rose from the table and came over.

"You've made up your mind."

"He's been gone too long."

"You said yourself he was up to something. Whatever it is, there's nothing we can do about it. Is there?"

"You can tell me whatever you want to say and I'll listen,"

Tyler said, "but I'm going. I'll ask at the drug shop if he was there. Victor told me how to find it. I'll look around, stick my head in a cafe--he's got friends here, you knowmand if I don't see him I'll come right back."

She said, "I don't want to lose you."

Looking up at him with her sad, moist eyes, this adorable girl. He said, "I want so bad to pick up and take you in the house."

"Why don't you?"

It made him smile because he believed she meant it. "When you get your strength. I don't want you going around with bruises all over you."

"You promise?"

"I'm yours, girl, from now on."

She said, "I've never wanted anybody so bad in my whole life. You promise you'll always love me?"

"Wherever we are."

She said, "That's something we'll have to talk about, huh?" Beginning to sound her normal self again. "You want to stay here?" ""Here?" "In Cuba." "And do what?"

"Run a cow outfit, a horse ranch. It's all I know how to do."

He watched the tip of her tongue play against her upper lip, back and forth, Amelia picturing things. He said, "Think about it while I'm gone. I won't be long."

He saw the woman in the sun hat watching them. She called out, "Amelia?"

Amelia glanced over her shoulder and then looked up at Tyler. "I almost forgotmwe need chaulmoogra oil. Should I write it down?"

There was a sameness about these city streets in Cuba, lined with one- and two-story buildings, stone and concrete, weathered facades wearing away, big windows with wood shutters open. Tyler found the street he wanted and came to the drug shop in the middle of the block. He heard people some distance away yelling, and gunfire that sounded more in celebration than serious. He wondered if today was some kind of national holiday.

Spotting a pair of Guardias in a doorway didn't seem cause for alarm; that's what they did, they stood around.

The drug shop was dim inside, rows of drawers on the wall behind the counter. The druggist, an elderly man in a white doctor's smock, asked to help him. Tyler gestured toward the street. "What's all the yelling and shooting about?"

The druggist's eyes came open behind his pinch-nose glasses on a black ribbon. "You don't hear? The Americans have come with their army. Two days ago in Oriente. You don't know about it?"

"Where did they land?"

"Two places, Siboney and Daiquiri, to march on Santiago de Cuba. Also I think Guantfinamo. You know where those places are?"

"I don't care," Tyler said, wanting to hug the man, "long as they're in Cuba. Have you heard they've had a battle?"

"I only know the American army is here, thousands of soldiers, thank God, finally."

"How did you hear?"

"It came to the train station, on the telegraph."

All kinds of questions were popping in Tyler's head, but now he was anxious to get back and let Amelia know. He told the druggist he needed a bottle of quinine, then brought a note out of his coat pocket and glanced at it. "And chaulmoogra oil, if you have any." He looked up to see a younger man in a white doctor's smock appear through a doorway from the back of the shop.

Right away this one, this clerk, staring hard at Tyler, said, "chaulmoogra--that was it, what the old man wanted I couldn't think of. Are you with the old man?"

"I might know him," Tyler said. "Have you seen him today?"

"You are with him, yes?"

"What old man you talking about?"

"You buy quinine and chaulmoogra as he did. Yes, you're with him, I know you are."

"Just tell me, was he here today?"

The druggist, looking confused, began speaking to his clerk in Spanish, Tyler not able to catch any of it except qud pasa, the druggist wanting to know what was going on. His clerk didn't even look at him. He said to Tyler, "Not today, yesterday. And you know where I saw him?" This young know-it-all looking down his nose at Tyler. "On the road talking to another old one like him, on the road by the banana trees. You one of the Americans they looking for, and you live at the leper house don't you?"