The Cuban Club

by Barry Gifford

  the cuban club

  STORIES

  BARRY GIFFORD

  Seven Stories Press

  New York • Oakland • London

  Copyright © 2017 by Barry Gifford.

  A Seven Stories Press First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Seven Stories Press

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  sevenstories.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Gifford, Barry, 1946author.

  Title: The Cuban club / Barry Gifford.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Seven Stories Press, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017004923 | ISBN 9781609807894 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781609807900 (electronic)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Short Stories (single author). | FICTION / Literary. | LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General.

  Classification: LCC PS3557.I283 A6 2017 | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004923

  Printed in the USA

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Roy and the River Pirates” and “Lost Monkey” originally appeared in Vice magazine (New York). “The King of Vajra Dornei” appeared, in different form, in The Up-Down (New York, 2015). “A Long Day’s Night in the Naked City (Take Two)” originally appeared, in different form, in The 2nd Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction (Berkeley). “Mules in the Wilderness” appeared in The Collagist (Ann Arbor). “Dingoes” appeared in Contrapasso (Sydney). “The Colony of the Sun” appeared in the Santa Monica Review (Los Angeles). “The Religious Experience” and “The Cuban Club” appeared in Narrative (San Francisco). Several of these stories also appeared in Confabulario, the cultural supplement of El Universal (Mexico City).

  The following stories were published in The Chicagoist (Chicago). “Mona,” “Mud,” “King and Country,” “Dark and Black and Strange,” “Sick,” “The Italian Hat,” “I Also Deal in Fury,” “Creeps,” “Dingoes,” “Chicago, Illinois, 1953,” and “Role Model.”

  This book is for Phoebe and Asa

  “To die is nothing, it’s only going from one room to another.”

  —Major-General James Hope Grant,

  Incidents in the China War

  “You may be witched by his sunlight . . . but there is the blackness of darkness beyond.”

  —Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses”

  “Shortly before his death, [a man] discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.”

  —Jorge Luis Borges

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  After publication of my collection The Roy Stories I had no intention of writing more about Roy. However, since he and his family and friends persisted appearing in my thoughts and dreams it seemed disloyal of me to ignore them. They’re still talking and I’m still listening. I hope you’ll keep reading.

  —B.G.

  CONTENTS

  Roy and the River Pirates

  Dingoes

  The King of Vajra Dornei

  Real Bandits

  Haitian Fight Song (Take Two)

  The Cuban Club

  Appreciation

  The Awful Country

  Deep in the Heart

  Unopened Letters

  Chicago, Illinois, 1953

  The Colony of the Sun

  Creeps

  Achilles and the Beautiful Land

  Men in the Kitchen

  Anna Louise

  Mules in the Wilderness

  The Boy Whose Mother May Have Married a Leopard

  Stung

  El almuerzo por poco

  Vultures

  I Also Deal in Fury

  Hour of the Wolf

  Lost Monkey

  When Benny Lost his Meaning

  Sick

  The Sharks

  Smart Guys

  Apacheria

  Dark and Black and Strange

  The Vagaries of Incompleteness

  King and Country

  House of Bamboo

  The Unexpected

  The Way of All Flesh

  Some Products of the Imagination

  The Comedian

  Lament for A Daughter of Egypt

  The Old West

  Incurable

  Shrimpers

  Learning the Game

  The Fifth Angel

  A Long Day’s Night in the Naked City (Take Two)

  The Religious Experience

  The Familiar Face of Darkness

  Las Vegas, 1949

  In Dreams

  Lucky

  Danger in the Air

  Child’s Play

  The Message

  River Woods

  The History and Proof of Spots on the Sun

  War is Merely Another Kind of Writing and Language

  The End of the Story

  Innocent of the Blood

  The Italian Hat

  The Senegalese Twist

  Kidnapped

  The Dolphins

  Dragonland

  Role Model

  Mona

  Mud

  The Phantom Father

  Roy’s Letter

  ROY AND THE RIVER PIRATES

  Roy had no idea that this would be the last summer of his father’s life. Roy was eleven years old and his father was forty-seven. His dad had always appeared strong and healthy. He smoked cigarettes and cigars and drank Irish whiskey but did not exhibit any obvious respiratory problems, nor did he ever give the slightest indication, in Roy’s presence, of a lack of sobriety. The cancer that took Roy’s father’s life appeared in the fall and by the end of that winter he was dead.

  His father and his father’s second wife, Ellie, along with Roy’s younger brother, Matthew, and older female cousin, Sally, were staying in a house his father was considering purchasing on Key Biscayne, Florida. Matthew was six and Sally, the younger daughter of Roy’s father’s sister, Talia, was almost fifteen. All of them lived in Chicago, although Roy, who lived mostly with his mother, frequently resided wherever she decided to spend time, alternating among Chicago, New Orleans and Havana. This summer of 1957, Roy’s mother was with her current boyfriend, Johnny Salvavidas, in Santo Domingo, or travelling with him somewhere in the Caribbean. Roy did not expect to see her again until sometime in September.

  Roy had a crush on Sally; he thought she was very pretty, with honey-blonde hair cut short, hazel eyes, unblemished skin and a slim figure. The best thing about her, though, was how naturally kind she was, even-tempered with a good sense of humor, and not at all stuck up. Sally was a straight talker, too, and she could be silly in a good way; she kidded around easily with both Roy and Matthew. Roy’s father said that Sally did not get along very well with her parents, and she had asked him if he would take her to Key Biscayne for the summer if it was all right with her mother and father. Talia told Roy’s father that Sally was “different,” that she had her own way of thinking and doing things, which too often conflicted with Talia and her husband Dominic’s ideas of how Sally should behave. Roy’s dad didn’t know exactly what Talia meant but he and Ellie liked Sally so they agreed to take her with them to Florida.

  “What do you think Talia and Dominic don’t understand about Sally?” Roy’s father asked his wife.

  “She’s too airy fairy for them,” said Ellie. “Her parents are all about business. If it’s not about money, it’s not worth their time. Sally’s not like that.”

  Roy
liked looking at his cousin. Sally was the first girl he knew who made him feel a little goofy just by looking at her. Whenever Sally noticed Roy staring, she smiled at him and sometimes brushed the hair off of his forehead with her hand.

  The river pirates struck on the third night. Roy, Matthew and Sally had draped their bathing suits to dry over the back fence after they were finished swimming late that afternoon and left them there overnight. When they came out to get them the next morning, the bathing suits were gone. The intracoastal canal flowed right behind the house, making it easy for anyone on a boat to steal items of clothing hung over the back fence.

  “We have to find out who took our bathing suits,” Roy told Sally and Matthew. “It had to be river pirates.”

  “This is a canal,” said Sally, “not a river.”

  “You mean real pirates?” asked Matthew. “With swords and patches over one eye and a black flag with a skull and crossbones on it?”

  “Probably just kids in a rowboat who live around here,” said Sally.

  “We’ll find out,” Roy said. “Come on.”

  “Come on where?” Sally asked.

  “Talk to the neighbors. Somebody might have an idea about who the thieves are.”

  None of the residents on the block had any suggestions about who could be responsible for the thefts, so Roy, Sally and Matthew decided to camp out at night in the yard and surprise the pirates if and when they came by again. As before, they hung their new bathing suits over the back fence after they had ended swimming for the day, and as soon as it was dark outside prepared their bedding on the grass. Ellie and Roy and Matthew’s father both agreed that it was a good plan but asked what the kids intended to do if the thieves returned.

  “Shoot ’em!” said Matthew. “I’ve got my bow and arrow set.”

  “The arrows have rubber tips,” said Sally.

  “We can describe ’em and get the name of their boat and track them down,” Roy added.

  “We’ll give the information to the cops,” Matthew said.

  “No cops,” said his father. “Handle it yourselves.”

  Roy and Sally and Mathew camped out in the yard several nights in a row but the river pirates did not appear. Of the three, Matthew was the most obviously disappointed. Roy was disappointed, too, but he enjoyed sleeping on the ground next to Sally. Early in the morning after what they decided would be their last night camping out, Mathew shot a few of his arrows over the fence into the canal.

  “What did you do that for?” Roy asked him.

  “I was pretending the pirates were there. They were probably afraid to come back.”

  Matthew walked over to the fence and shouted, “Chickens!”

  For the remaining few weeks, Roy stole looks at Sally whenever he thought she wouldn’t notice. She was always nice to him but this was not enough for Roy; he made up his mind that before they returned to Chicago he would try to kiss her.

  Roy waited until the night before they had to leave, when Sally was alone in the yard standing by the back fence. He went out and stood next to her. His father and Ellie and Matthew were inside the house, packing.

  “What are you doing out here?” Roy asked her.

  “Oh, just looking at the water,” she said. “I like seeing the reflection of the moon in it.”

  “It’s too bad we never caught the pirates,” said Roy,

  Sally didn’t seem so tall to him now; Roy figured he must have grown two or three inches since they’d been in Florida. He leaned over and kissed Sally on the corner of the right side of her mouth.

  “What did you do that for?” she asked.

  Sally was calm and smiled at Roy, as if she were not surprised.

  “I like you a lot,” he said.

  “I like you a lot, too. I’m going to miss being down here with you and Matthew and your dad and Ellie.”

  “We’ll see each other in Chicago.”

  “Sure, but it’s not the same as Florida. The air is sweet and warm here, and the sky is always beautiful, especially at night.”

  “You’re beautiful, too,” said Roy.

  Sally looked directly into his eyes. She was not smiling.

  “Thank you, Roy,” she said.

  “I wish I were older,” Roy said, “so I could be your boyfriend.”

  Sally looked back at the water, then up at the moon.

  “There aren’t any river pirates,” she said. “Your father took the bathing suits and made me promise not to tell you and Matthew.”

  Roy didn’t say anything. A large white bird flapped past them.

  “You’re not angry at me, are you?”

  Roy walked back into the house.

  “Come on, son,” his father said, “give us a hand.”

  DINGOES

  Roy liked to ride his bike up to Indian Boundary Park to look at the dingoes. There was a little outdoor zoo with a variety of smaller animals at the northern edge of the park, among them llamas, monkeys, ostriches and a patchy-furred, old brown bear. But it was the wild dogs of Australia that interested Roy the most. The dingoes were feisty, beige- or dun-colored knee-high canines that constantly fought among themselves and bared their fangs at the zoogoers who stared at them for more than a few seconds. Roy wondered why dogs were in a zoo, even supposedly wild ones. He guessed that in Australia dingoes ran in packs across a vast desert in the western part of the continent. He’d read about Australia in his fourth grade geography book which only mentioned dingoes in passing; most of the information about fauna in Australia was about kangaroos.

  “Nasty little critters, aren’t they?” a man said to Roy. “Now they’re cooped up in this hoosegow.”

  Both Roy and the man were standing in front of the dingo enclosure on a cloudy day in August. Roy was nine years old and the man looked to Roy to be in his thirties or forties. Roy straddled his bicycle and watched and listened to the dingoes nip and yip at one another.

  “The cage is too small for them,” Roy said. “They need to be out running around in a desert.”

  The man was only slightly taller than Roy and thin with a grayish-brown mustache. He lit a cigarette then flicked the match through the bars at the dingoes.

  “Wild dogs,” the man said. “In China they’d be beaten to death. They’ve got police squads over there that do nothin’ but run down stray dogs and club ’em over the head, then throw the bodies in a pile and burn ’em.”

  “These dogs are from Australia,” said Roy. “They’re not domesticated.”

  The man gave a little laugh with a hiccup in the middle of it. Roy had never heard anyone with a strange laugh like that before.

  “Pretty fancy word you got there, kid. Domesticated. You learn that one in school?”

  “Dingoes aren’t meant to be pets,” Roy said.

  “Neither is that fat, scabby bear,” said the man. “He shouldn’t be in durance vile, either. These cages here are like cells in the Chateau d’If.”

  “What’s that?” Roy asked.

  “Prison island off the coast of Marseilles, in France. Like Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. Nobody escapes from there.”

  “These animals can’t escape from here, either. You seen the Chateau Deaf? Is it for deaf criminals?”

  “Nope. It’s d’If, not deaf. Name of the island is If. I read about it in The Count of Monte Cristo, a novel by Alexandre Dumas. Man named Edmond Dantes gets put away for life but after sixteen years digs a tunnel to the sea and swims away.”

  “I thought you said nobody escapes from there.”

  “Not in real life they don’t. The Count of Monte Cristo is a story takes place in the nineteenth century. Edmond Dantes is an innocent man and after he gets out he finds a treasure a dying inmate at the Chateau d’If told him about and changes his name to Monte Cristo before taking revenge on the three wrong customers who were responsible for having him take the fall for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  The man dropped his butt then lit up another cig and again flicked his match at the din
goes.

  “How come you’re not in school, kid?”

  “Summer vacation.”

  “I’m kind of on vacation, too.”

  Roy looked at the man again: his pale blue shirt had dark brown stains on it, as did his khaki trousers. When the man turned his head Roy saw that his left ear was missing; there was only a misshapen lump of skin where an ear should have been.

  Roy climbed onto his bicycle seat and started to ride away but the man took hold of the handlebars with both of his hands.

  “If you’re clever,” said the man, “you won’t ever let anybody take advantage of you.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “There are evil spirits haunt this earth who beguile good men and women and render them useless.”

  Not only was the man missing an ear but Roy noticed the mean-looking red and blue-black scar that ran almost the entire length of his hairline.

  “I’ve got to go, mister. Let go of my bike.”

  The man released the handlebars, removed his cigarette from the right corner of his mouth and flicked it into the dingo cage.

  As he was riding Roy remembered his grandfather telling him to listen carefully to what even crazy people said because the information might be useful later. When he got home Roy would ask him what in durance vile meant.

  THE KING OF VAJRA DORNEI

  One of Roy’s most interesting childhood friends was Ignaz Rigó, who, following high school, had vanished into the greater world. Ignaz Rigó was a Gypsy kid whose family owned a two-story building on Pulaski Road next to the tuberculosis sanitarium. Roy had been to Ignaz’s house a few times between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, and there never seemed to be fewer than twenty people, apparently all related, living there. The Rigó clan also occupied a storefront on Diversey, where the women, including Ignaz’s mother and sisters, gave “psychic readings” and sold herbal remedies for a variety of complaints.

  Ignaz, Senior, Roy’s friend’s father, called Popa, was always at the house on Pulaski whenever Roy went there. Regardless of the weather, Popa and an old man, Ignaz’s maternal grandfather, named Grapellino, sat out on a second floor balcony on lawn chairs overlooking the street, talking and smoking. Both men were always wearing gray or brown Fedora hats, long-sleeved white shirts with gold cuff links buttoned at the neck, black trousers and brown sandals. Roy asked Ignaz what Popa’s work was and Ignaz said that his father kept the family in order; and that Grapellino was a king in Vajra Dornei, which was in the old country. Roy asked Ignaz why, if his grandfather was a king in Vajra Dornei, he was living in Chicago. Ignaz told Roy that Lupo Bobino, a bad king from Moldova, had poisoned Grapellino’s first wife, Queen Nardis, and one of his daughters, and commanded a band of cutthroats that drove the Rigó clan out of Romania. Grapellino and Popa were planning to return soon to the old country to get their revenge and take back the kingdom stolen from them by Bobino’s brigands.