‘I’ve always cleaned my teeth this way,’ Che retorted. ‘Ten scoops of water and rinse; ten scoops of water and rinse; ten scoops of water and rinse. It suits me fine. I don’t carry a glass with me into the jungle! Do you think I go there for a picnic, for a holiday?’
‘Suit your damned self then,’ Fidel shouted back at him, ‘but don’t come running to me if Bolivia goes tits up.’
Another time, Fidel saw Che in the middle of changing the boots he wore inside the house for those he wore outside. ‘Guevara, what are you doing? You have no boots on your feet. What would you do if enemy soldiers stormed into the camp and you didn’t have boots on your fucking feet? It would be hard for you to make a run for it, and if you did, your feet would be cut to pieces. Change one boot at a time and make sure you always have a boot on each foot. It’s common sense. You got any of that left, Guevara?’
Che ignored him.
As Bebo handed around bottles of beer before dinner on the first evening of Fidel’s return, Che prised off the cap on the bottle and poured the beer into a glass. The beer foamed and he had to wait for it to settle before he could pour the rest of the bottle’s contents.
‘Guevara, what are you doing?’ Fidel asked him. ‘You should hold the glass in your left hand and pour the beer over the area where your thumb shows through from the outside of the glass. Your thumb warms the glass, and if you pour beer over warmth it won’t foam. Look!’ Fidel then poured a bottle of beer into his own glass without it foaming. ‘Perfect!’ he said.
Che stood up and started shouting at Fidel. ‘I’m not taking any lessons from someone who puts fucking hair conditioner on his beard! Why do you think I renounced my Cuban citizenship? For the fun of it? No! I did it because the revolution in this country is dead. How could it be alive when its so-called President has fallen into such bourgeois habits?’
‘Oh, back to the beard argument again, are we, Guevara? You’re just sore because you never really qualified as a barbudos. How could you when you have such a wispy beard? I had a thicker beard than you have now when I was fourteen! The teachers made me shave it. They were jealous, of course, because I attracted the attentions of the senior girls and their own frustrated wives! They saw me as a threat. They were aware of my sexual power over women even then, and they were scared.’ He then turned to the soldiers in the room and explained that it hadn’t been his idea to use hair conditioner on his beard. The doctors had ordered him to use it: it was too dangerous for any man to have a beard as thick as his!
Fidel slept with Che and the soldiers in the bunkhouse for two nights. On the morning of the third day, he told Bob to gather his belongings and say goodbye to Che, Bebo, and Hilda. Bob embraced all three, but when he tried to thank them his voice broke, and Hilda started to cry.
‘Save your tears for Cubans, old lady.’ Fidel teased her. ‘This man is a gringo – an American gringo.’
Fidel held his hand out to Che and, as Che made to grasp it, he took it away and flicked Che’s nose.
‘Hah! Get you every time, Guevara!’ Che smiled, and the two men hugged.
On the journey back to Havana, Fidel asked Bob about Mississippi. ‘You spent time there. What do you think of the people – did you like them?’
‘Not the whites, no. They were mean people. Weaned on hatred, if you ask me; sucked poison from their mothers’ teats from the day they were born.’
‘Do you know how they reacted when President Kennedy was assassinated?’
‘No,’ Bob said.
‘They laughed and cheered,’ Fidel said sombrely. ‘I was sadder than they were when I heard the news. If he’d lived, I think matters between our countries would have been different, that somehow we would have learned to live together.’
He paused in his conversation, and then asked: ‘Will you be able to find a home when you return?’
‘I hope so,’ Bob said. ‘Sometimes the thought of going back scares me, but it’s where I belong.’
‘You’ll be an outsider in your own country – you know that, don’t you? In this world, Cuba is an outsider too, but at least we have our own country to be outsiders in. And we also have ourselves.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe we should send each other postcards, gringo. Hah!’
Five days later, Bob flew to Mexico City as an attaché to the Cuban embassy there. The following week he left Mexico as Percy Collins, a chewing gum salesman from Chicago.
Dead or Missing in Action
Colonel Fogerty read the report on his desk with his brow furrowed: Crenshaw, or what was thought to be left of Crenshaw, had been found dead, his charred and headless skeleton discovered lying alongside that of a mercenary whose head was also missing. The only piece of positive identification found was Bob’s army necklace. Fogerty’s frown deepened: it wasn’t just the missing head that puzzled him, but the fact that whoever killed him had gone to the trouble of cremating the body – as if they didn’t want it to be recognised. Bodies were found all the time in the eastern Congo, sometimes suffering from the processes of decomposition, but always intact. He wondered if something in the Kingdom of Denmark wasn’t quite right.
He looked through Crenshaw’s personnel file and noted the next of kin was named as Eugene Chaney III. The name rang a bell. He read deeper into the file and found the reason: Chaney was the person who’d been locked up with Crenshaw in Mississippi, and whose release Crenshaw had asked him to arrange. He pressed a button on the intercom that connected him to an adjacent office.
‘Get me the whereabouts of Eugene Chaney III,’ he barked. ‘He’s a recent graduate from Duke Medical School, so you might want to start there.’
Two weeks later, Fogerty drove to Maryland in full uniform and knocked on Gene Chaney’s door; it was eight o’clock in the evening. When the door opened, Fogerty saw a man wearing jeans and a T-shirt and no shoes.
‘Are you Dr Eugene Chaney III?’
Gene acknowledged that he was and, for one awful moment, wondered if he was being drafted. He nervously asked Fogerty to step inside and offered him a drink. Fogerty declined.
‘Robert Crenshaw has made you his next of kin. My question is: Have you seen him recently?’
‘Bob? Bob Crenshaw?’ Fogerty nodded. ‘What’s happened to him? He’s alright, isn’t he?’
‘If you’d just answer my question, Dr Chaney: Have you seen him recently?’
‘No… No, I haven’t. The last time I saw him was over two years ago. We were locked up together in Mississippi for the night. When I was released the following morning he was gone. He just disappeared.’
‘And you haven’t seen or heard from him since?’
‘No. I keep thinking he’s going to get in touch, but he never does. What’s happened? Has something happened to him?’
‘Something has happened to him, but at the moment we don’t know what that something is. I gather he’s a friend of yours so I don’t want to cause you any needless distress, but we think he might be either dead or missing in action.’
Gene thought that if his own bedside manner was somewhat lacking, Fogerty’s was completely missing.
‘I didn’t even know he was in the army. I mean, I knew that he’d been in the army, but I didn’t know he’d rejoined. Where is he missing? What country?’
‘Vietnam,’ Fogerty lied.
The Colonel watched Gene carefully throughout their short exchange, looking for any hint of a lie, any sign of deception.
‘I mentioned to you earlier, Dr Chaney, that Crenshaw made you his next of kin. It appears you’re the nearest thing he has to family. The investigation is still on-going but, once it concludes, do you want us to send his remains and personal possessions to you?’
‘Yes, I’d want that. I’ll make sure he gets a good burial,’ Gene said.
‘As you’re his heir, you’ll also receive a cheque for $10,000. It’s standard payment.’
Gene didn’t react. He sat in his chair unmoving, feeling as though someone had just given him a huge injection of novoca
ine. Fogerty stood up and went over to him. He took Gene’s hand, shook it and then let himself out of the house.
Gene saw the half-eaten apple he’d placed on the kitchen counter after he’d invited Fogerty into the house. He threw it into the bin. It would be the last apple he ever ate. Thereafter, even the smell of an apple reminded him of death and loss. First meat and now apples. Little did he suspect that donuts were waiting for him just around the corner, biding their time until they too could join his growing list.
The Dentist
Bob passed from Mexico into the United States without incident. The border policeman examined the passport given to him by the Cubans, asked him a few disinterested questions about the chewing gum industry, and then waved him through. ‘Home!’ Bob thought, though just where home actually was, he had no real idea.
These thoughts turned in his mind as he drank coffee in Laredo; it was tasteless and disappointing; but how else could it be after drinking Cuban coffee for six months? He could hear Fidel’s voice in his head: ‘Smell the coffee, gringo. Your country is fucking tasteless and disappointing!’
He smiled briefly and took a small folder of documents from his case. Most of them related to his supposed employment as a chewing gum salesman, but amongst them were the names and addresses of two people given to him by an American he’d met at the Cuban embassy, and also a handwritten letter of introduction. One of the two names, Bob noticed, had been asterisked. He walked with his case to the bus station and bought a one-way ticket to Charlotte, North Carolina. ‘Who the hell was Newton Ballard?’ he wondered.
Three days later, he found out.
Newton Ballard was a white man in his late fifties, a successful dentist and property owner, and to all outward appearances a man of the Establishment. Lurking beneath the surface, however, was a dissident, whose moral code and political consciousness had been forged in the southern coalfields of West Virginia.
Newton’s father – known affectionately to his friends as Pickaxe – had worked as a miner in Logan County, West Virginia. The company he worked for owned his house and everything else in town. Pickaxe leased tools and equipment from the company, bought food and other provisions at inflated prices from the company store, and paid rent to the company. All financial exchanges were made through the medium of scrip, and the company made sure that the scrip he received each week was always short of the scrip he already owed them. The family was forever in the company’s debt, forever its prisoner. It was the way the company liked things.
The work was hard. Pickaxe spent his days stooped, kneeling in water and breathing bad air. Wages were low – below average for the mining industry – and conditions bad. He lived in fear of roof falls and gas explosions, and had a greater chance of being killed than an American soldier fighting in WWI. What the miners needed, he believed, was a union to represent them.
The United Mine Workers of America tried to accommodate Pickaxe and those of similar mind and, in 1921, 13,000 miners marched on Logan County to unionise the mines by force. They were met at Blair Mountain by a well-armed force of two thousand men – a mixture of deputies, detectives, state police and soldiers – and from positions on the crest of the mountain, these men fired down on the miners, expecting them to turn and flee. When the miners not only held their ground but gained new ground, they called on the government for assistance. The government obliged them by dropping bombs on the miners.
Although no doubt surprised by this turn of events, the miners remained strangely undaunted: discipline was maintained and the attack continued for a further three days until federal troops arrived in the area. Only then – and to avoid greater loss of life – did the miners’ leaders call for a withdrawal. The battle had lasted a week, and a hundred miners lay dead. It had been the largest uprising in the United States since the Civil War. The owners had triumphed, and life for the miners of West Virginia returned to normality – feudal brutality.
Pickaxe Ballard had fought alongside the miners on Blair Mountain but had escaped injury and managed to avoid capture. He returned to the mine with his hopes extinguished and his helplessness confirmed. Three years later he was dead, killed in an explosion. His body was never recovered and the mine shaft where the methane gas had ignited was permanently sealed.
His wife, Bella, was evicted from the house – company property – and she and her three children moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. There she met and married Henry Perkins, the owner of a local convenience store. Henry fell in love with his new family, but reserved a special place in his heart for Newton. He encouraged his adoptive son to aim high and was pleased when Newton decided to become a dentist, and happy to pay for his education.
Despite his new life, Newton never forgot his old one – or that of his father. He remembered its hardships and the toll it had taken on the family – especially the toll it had taken on his father. Pickaxe had been thirty-seven when he was killed in the mine accident, but by that time had already looked like a man of sixty. In particular, Newton recalled his father’s conversations at the dinner table, the way he’d railed against the mine owners, their exploitation of the miners who made them rich, and their callous disregard for all lives other than their own.
Pickaxe had made it clear to them that he had little time for governments. Whether state or national, he argued, governments would always side with the owners, the people of their own class. Rather than acknowledge abuses in the system, they would happily look the other way – and were probably paid to do so. Their concern wasn’t for the welfare of the poor or the helpless: it was for stuffing their pockets with dollar bills and building their bank balances. No poor or working man could ever hope to get justice in a court of their law. The poor and the dispossessed had to look to themselves, and if necessary operate outside the law. (Unsurprisingly, Pickaxe’s views on government became even more decided after the government dropped a bomb on him.)
Undeterred by his newly acquired status as a qualified dentist, psychologically Newton still looked upon himself as a dispossessed coalminer, and consequently sided with the causes of the poor and the helpless. To this end, he joined the American Socialist Party and remained an active member until Norman Thomas, the party’s leader, decided that future electoral activity by the party was pointless. Newton’s social activism was now without a home and for a period fell dormant. It sprang back to life, however, on the emergence of the civil rights movement.
From identifying with the black faces of West Virginian coalminers, it was but a short step for Newton to identify with the black faces of people who were naturally black. He equated the abuses of their civil rights with those suffered by the miners, and saw no difference between the company owners’ treatment of their employees and the segregationists’ treatment of Negroes. As usual, the state and federal governments erred on the side of the powerful and upheld laws that were, to Newton’s way of thinking, not only immoral but unworthy of respect. Consequently, when situations arose that demanded he step outside the law, he willingly took that step, and when Bob Crenshaw stood on his doorstep asking for help, he didn’t hesitate in offering his help.
Newton lived alone and the two men talked into the early hours. He listened intently to Bob’s story, smoking one cigarette after another and sipping from a glass of bourbon he occasionally refilled. He examined the forged documents Bob had been given and gave a low whistle.
‘I know a man who’d be interested in seeing these,’ he said. ‘Very interested. They’re good – some of the best I’ve seen – but to be on the safe side I think we should find you a new identity. I’ll start working on that first thing in the morning after we get you fixed up with a place to stay.’
‘I ain’t got much money, Mr Ballard, so you need to make it cheap.’
‘Don’t worry about money, Bob – and I already told you, my name’s Newton. I own a boarding house near downtown and you’ll stay there as my guest. No one will bother you, and you’ll find Miss Lettie to be a fine cook.’ He looked a
t his watch.
‘I suggest we call it a night. I’ll give you a shout about seven. Sleep well, Bob, and – if I haven’t already said so – welcome home!’
The boarding house was an old wooden structure but in good repair. Newton knocked on the front door and walked in. ‘Lettie?’ he called out, ‘Lettie? We have a guest.’
A large black woman bustled into the room, a big smile of welcome on her face. Newton introduced Bob as Percy and apologised that he couldn’t stay longer: ‘Root canals,’ he explained. He turned to Bob and told him he’d return about seven.
‘Set a place for me, Miss Lettie. I’ll eat here tonight.’
The boarding house had six guestrooms on the second floor. Miss Lettie Williams showed Bob to the first one they came to and handed him a key. She pointed out the bathroom and toilet at the end of the corridor, and then led him back downstairs and showed him the lounge and dining areas. The lounge had a television which, she explained, he was welcome to watch anytime until 11:00 pm; at that time it had to be switched off. Breakfast, she informed him, was served at 7:30 am and dinner at 7:00 pm; a few minutes either way, however, was of no mind to her. She indicated her own rooms at the back of the first floor and told him to holler if he ever needed anything – but not after 11:00 pm.
Bob unpacked his case and put most of his clothes in the drawers of an old dresser; his suit, courtesy of the Cuban government, he placed on a hanger. He lay on the bed and started to relax; it seemed to him that things were starting to work out. After an hour or so, he stood up from the bed and splashed water on his face. He looked in the mirror and smiled. ‘Bob Crenshaw,’ he asked himself, ‘What’s gonna become o’ you? Who you gonna be?’
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