That second day, Raulito decided to rest in the tall grasses along the road. He would make himself very small—as small as a skinny man with long limbs could make himself—and he would lie very still. A horse-drawn wagon rambled down the road and he parted the grasses. His gaze followed a yellow bonnet until it became a speck in the distance. Raulito wished that he could wear a yellow hat instead of rags; that he were free to ride in a wagon instead of hiding in the tall grasses.
That night, Raulito walked for hours until he reached a town. It was there that he found the newspaper on the street. He stared down at the drawing of the masked man, barefoot and wearing a straw hat like his, armed with a knife and pistol. He couldn’t read English but he could read the words Porto Rican. He folded it into a small square and tucked it into his bundle. He would show it to Vicente. He was careful to duck into the bushes or behind a building whenever he saw anyone, even at a distance. Carlito had warned him to avoid people, day or night.
He’d reached the outskirts of town on the morning of the third day. He filled his tin cup from a stream and hid behind some bushes. He used his knapsack as a pillow; when sleep came, Raulito dreamt that he was back in Puerto Rico.
Somebody kicked his leg. Two policemen, so tall they blocked out the sun, were pointing rifles at his head. One searched his bag and found the newspaper article and the map of dots and squiggles Carlito had drawn. He threw the papers on the ground. The policeman stepped on Raulito’s hand when he tried to pick them up.
They made him stand with his hands over his head. His legs shook. They asked him questions, and he stared at them, eyes wide.
“This one’s deaf and dumb.”
“Whaddaya think? Negro? Porto Rican?”
“Same thing.”
The stench of men in the cramped jail cell reminded Raulito of steerage on the ship. A galvanized metal pail filled with excrement overflowed in the corner. A bee tapped against the iron bars of the glassless window.
“Is that Vicente’s brother?” A man with a crack in his straw hat crushed Raulito in a big embrace. “It’s me, Gómez! Gómez from the boat!”
“¡Gómez!” Raulito cried a little on the big man’s shoulder.
There was no room on the floor, but Gómez pointed to someone who moved to make space.
“Gómez, have you seen Vicente?”
“I think he went with the group to Hilo, Hawaii. What they call the Big Island.”
It was true, then. Vicente was on the Big Island, and here he was on Oahu.
“This isn’t a place where a man can be weak.” Gómez noticed Raulito’s quivering lip.
“I’m not weak.” Raulito bit his lip.
Gómez introduced him as Vicente’s brother to the Puerto Rican cell mates.
“This is Raulito Villanueva, un negrito pero buena gente,” he said.
Several recalled Vicente as the man who had lost his son on the voyage. One man stared at him without blinking, and Raulito pretended that it didn’t bother him. He made believe that he was Vicente, strong like his brother. Gómez told him that the Puerto Ricans got along with all the Japanese, even the one who had beaten his wife to death: they didn’t hold it against him because that sometimes happened, even in Puerto Rico. Sometimes a woman deserved it and sometimes she didn’t, pero, bueno. (Gómez raised his palms in a gesture that meant it was inevitable.) And over there, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look at that white man. He had raped and killed a small boy.
“That one’s not human,” Gómez said.
Raulito shivered in the white man’s gray gaze, which reminded him of the ocean on that bitter day Javier tumbled down to his watery grave.
Gómez asked Raulito if he’d had it bad on the plantation. Raulito shrugged. What was bad, what was good, when there was no one to love or to love him?
The night was broken with the cries and moans of men. In his dream, Raulito was a small boy again and Vicente lifted him up onto his horse. Raulito laughed; the horse’s mane tickled his bare legs. His brother let him hold the reins. Don’t be afraid, Vicente said to five-year-old Raulito. I’m here.
The judge sat at a table. Next to a deputy was a prisoner whom Gómez had pointed out as Jones, one of the haoles. The judge banged his gavel, and a light-skinned Puerto Rican was shoved forward to the table.
The judge asked the prisoner a question in English and then turned to Jones.
“What is your name?” Jones said in Spanish.
The Puerto Ricans shouted the news to each other. El blanco speaks Spanish!
All this time with us and he speaks Spanish! He’s a maldito spy!
The judge pounded the gavel and the deputies shouted at the Puerto Ricans to shut up.
“I learned me some Spanish,” Jones said. “During the war.”
The judge banged the gavel again.
Jones repeated the question.
“Alberto Rodríguez.”
“What do you do?”
“Work,” Alberto Rodríguez said.
The Puerto Ricans laughed.
Bang! Bang! The judge sentenced Alberto Rodríguez to a month’s hard labor for vagrancy.
A deputy thrust Raulito forward. Jones translated.
“What’s your name?”
“Raulito Villanueva.”
“What do you do?”
“Work.”
More laughter.
“What plantation did you come from?” Jones stared at Raulito.
Raulito looked back at Gómez.
Gómez had warned Raulito that they would return him to the plantation. Even if he never found Vicente, Raulito didn’t want to go back there, where everyone would pity him.
“Come on now,” Jones said.
The judge shouted at Jones, “Hurry up, man.”
“Where your bango and discharge papers?”
“What papers?”
“Giving you permission to leave the plantation,” Jones said.
“I lost them,” Raulito said.
“Bango?”
“Lost.”
The judge sentenced him to one month’s hard labor for vagrancy.
“Sorry, boy, you going to jail for vagrancy.” Jones said “vagrancy” in English because he didn’t know the Spanish word.
“What’s vagrancy?”
“It means you lazy,” Jones said.
“I’m not lazy,” Raulito said. “I was working the cane the day before yesterday—or maybe the day before.”
“Hawaii needs workers. You gonna work, whether you get paid or not. Make your mind up to it, boy,” Jones said. “One way or another, you gonna work.”
Bob the jailer rapped his rifle butt against the bars of the cell. After eating a piece of bread and gagging on coffee the Puerto Ricans swore was mud mixed with water, the prisoners were herded to the construction site of the new railroad. Each clang of the hammer reminded Raulito that he was a slave. The jailers kept their guns pointed at the prisoners; when they shouted at them, Raulito knew that they were saying, You gonna work, boy, make up your mind to it.
Raulito lay next to Gómez, foot to head, head to foot, face turned away from the stink of Gómez’s feet. His eyes were closed; his thoughts were of a Puerto Rican in the other cell. Raulito looked at him when others weren’t looking; the other man looked at him, too. Raulito was happier than he’d ever been his whole life, even happier than when he was with his brother, and Raulito had never thought that possible. He didn’t even mind being in prison.
It just so happened that they sat next to each other during the fifteen-minute lunch break. Bueno, it didn’t just happen, maybe prison had made Raulito brave.
“Raulito Villanueva from Utuado.” He offered his hand.
“I’m Marco González from Peñuelas.” His eyes were the brown of tamarind.
The feel of the other man’s palm in his, the little extra pressure he gave Raulito’s hand, and suddenly what had once been murky was now clear. Marco. Beautiful Marco. Raulito wanted to know everything about Marco. D
id he have family? Did he wish he’d stayed in Puerto Rico despite the hunger and desperation?
Tell me, tell me everything, and I will tell you.
They ate bread slathered with meat grease.
“Why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” Raulito said.
“I don’t know either,” Marco said. “A bunch of us ran away together and they caught all of us, except José Santos. He might be back in Puerto Rico by now.”
“How many more days for you?” Terrible that he wished it, but Raulito hoped that Marco would be in prison as long as he.
“Five,” Marco said.
“Only five?” Good for Marco, but bad for him.
Marco’s name escaped his lips while he slept, and Gómez shook him awake.
“I didn’t know you were that kind,” he said in Raulito’s ear.
“Gómez—”
“Just don’t touch me.” Gómez turned his back.
The next day, Marco and Raulito ate lunch with the others so as not to draw attention. Everyone was talking about where they would go after they were freed.
“One day I plan to make my way to Honolulu,” Marco said.
“What will you do there? Take the boat to Puerto Rico?” Gómez and the others laughed. Not Raulito.
“I’ll stow away on a ship to San Francisco.”
“What’s there for the likes of you?” Gómez gulped down his coffee.
“Something better than this,” Marco said. “I’ll earn my living somehow, but not in the cane.”
Raulito thought that he would follow Marco to San Francisco if he asked him, but first he needed to find Vicente.
On Marco’s last day, they sat apart from the other prisoners. They spoke low, but they didn’t whisper. People always paid attention to whispers.
“Gómez is acting strange.” Marco nodded in the big man’s direction.
“Don’t worry about Gómez.”
“Does your brother know about you?”
“I didn’t know until I met you,” Raulito said.
They risked a glance at each other and then looked away, smiling.
“My brother loves me,” Raulito said, without looking at Marco.
“You’re lucky.” Marco looked down at the railroad tracks that they had been working on before their lunch break.
“When did you know? That you were—tú sabes.” Raulito looked at the railroad tracks, too.
“I can’t remember not knowing,” Marco said. “I just was.”
Raulito nodded.
“I was afraid, too,” Marco said. “I had an uncle who liked to sit me on his lap.”
Raulito wished he could take Marco’s hand and comfort him. “You told your parents?”
“I was scared of my father,” Marco said. “When I told Mamá, she slapped me for telling dirty lies.”
A flock of birds perched on the rails.
“He was uno de los mayores.” Marco picked up a rock and threw it at the birds; some of them flew away
A guard walked past them. They didn’t speak for a minute.
Marco threw another rock.
“Don’t do that,” Raulito said. “You might hit one.”
“I was in love with Salvador.” Marco dropped the rock.
No! Raulito wanted to shout.
“The first time I saw him, he was dancing with my sister.”
There’s never been anyone before you, Marco.
“Salvador loved you?”
“He loved me.” Marco lit a cigarette. “But he loved my sister, too.”
Raulito’s mouth was full of bread. Marco looked at him through the cigarette smoke. Raulito swallowed.
“Can you love both?” He wouldn’t want anyone except Marco.
“Salvador could.”
They exchanged another glance. Raulito wanted to look into Marco’s tamarind eyes all day, but he knew it wasn’t safe.
The guards shouted for the prisoners to get back to work.
Marco stubbed out his cigarette and tossed it on the ground.
Raulito pretended that he had a rock in his shoe; he picked up the cigarette stub, hiding it in the cup of his hand, feeling its warmth, his heart racing because it had touched Marco’s lips. He put it in his pocket.
The day Marco left, they shook hands through the iron bars. In that handshake, Raulito said everything he’d ever wanted to say.
“They’re sending me back to the plantation,” Marco said. “I’ll be there for a while.”
“You’ll be with Salvador?” Raulito looked for the truth in Marco’s eyes.
Marco’s gaze was steady. “Salvador stayed with my sister in Puerto Rico.”
Raulito wanted to smile and cry at the same time.
“I hope you see Vicente again,” Marco said. “Isn’t your brother named Vicente?”
What about you, Marco? Do you want to see me again?
“Vicente Vega,” Raulito said.
“You know where I’ll be,” Marco said. They exchanged a last glance. In it, Raulito imagined a whole life together.
Marco was gone, and Raulito wished the birds would drop dead from the trees. Raulito was grateful for the clang clang clang on iron so that he didn’t have to hear the stupid birds sing. Bang bang bang. Raulito didn’t want to think about his brother, who might be lost to him forever, or about living in a world without Marco. Bang bang bang. He couldn’t live another minute chained like a dog to a fence, and he looked around the tracks for something to pick the locks of the irons that shackled his ankles. One day he found a sliver of steel on the tracks. He turned his back to the guards as he slid it into the waist of his pants.
Gómez saw him. “Are you fucking crazy? They’ll shoot you in the back when they catch you.”
“I’ll run,” Raulito said. “I’ve always been fast.”
“You mean you’ve always been stupid,” Gómez said. “I won’t let you do it.”
“What’s it to you?” He didn’t care about Gómez. He cared about Vicente and Marco, and both were gone.
“For your brother,” Gómez said. “You want to see him again, don’t you?”
Raulito let the sliver of steel drop to the ground.
The men crowded the wagon. Japanese and Puerto Rican. Men just like him. Raulito had served his time and was being taken back to the plantation. If he didn’t go back, the white men would brand him a vagrant, and there was nothing worse a man could be in this Hawaii, especially a black man like him.
At the last minute, the judge decided that Gómez hadn’t served his full sentence. Raulito was sorry to say goodbye. Gómez had looked out for him the way his brother Vicente would have done, even after he’d learned what kind of man he was.
Raulito didn’t want to go back to the plantation. Everyone would point to him as an example of what happened to a man without a woman. Nina would take his money and then put him to work crushing coffee beans in the pilón.
“Oye, can you help me get away?” Raulito addressed the Puerto Ricans.
“Claro,” somebody said.
“If they catch you, it’s back to the chain gang,” somebody else said.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Raulito said.
“You know better than that,” somebody said.
“I’m going to roll off the wagon,” Raulito said. “Can you make sure the guards don’t see me?”
“What about them chinos?” Somebody pointed to the Japanese.
“They got the same problems we have.” Raulito looked at the Japanese. They stared back at him; one bowed his head.
“I’ll sock them if they try anything,” said the first Puerto Rican.
When Raulito saw a group of trees up ahead, he slid off the wagon and rolled onto the dirt road into the brush. He crouched behind some bushes. He ran through the woodland. He gulped free air and wished that he could fly like a bird, over the sugarcane of this terrible Oahu and toward the island of Hawaii, where he would find his brother. He ran until he couldn’t lift his legs a
nymore, then he dropped down onto the soft grass and stared up at the sky. When he was a child, he thought that the birds flew into the sun and worried that they would catch fire until his brother explained how the sun was very far away. The birds here sang the same songs they sang to him in Puerto Rico. Some people thought nature was quiet at night, but it was loud with a thousand sounds. Creatures sang or chanted or buzzed or howled. Trees creaked in the wind. Owls announced the moon.
Raulito dozed off, and when he woke the moon was high in the sky. He ran through the woods, in the direction of Honolulu, where he planned to smuggle himself onto a boat bound for Hilo. Raulito’s shoes cracked on a broken branch and the sound pierced the clamor of the night creatures, stunned silent for a moment. He suspected that he was breathing too loud. He ate wild berries and drank from a stream. When he tired again, he climbed a tree, where he hoped he would be safe from animals, two- and four-footed alike, but he fell asleep again and tumbled down onto the grass. Luckily, he didn’t split his head open like a coconut! He found more berry bushes. He picked them too quickly in his hunger, squashing them with his fingers. Once again he drank fresh water from streams. He cracked a coconut against a tree trunk, drank the water, and broke the coconut meat into pieces. He thought of his mother.
Raulito ate the last of the coconut meat on the second day, and his stomach grumbled for the hard bread and meat paste of jail, the last real food it could remember. But his stomach didn’t rule him. He’d often gone hungry in Puerto Rico, and if he didn’t eat until he reached Hilo, then he didn’t eat.
•
The dogs came for Raulito when he was doing his business. He yanked his pants up and ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, faster than when he’d jumped off the wagon. He slid on patches of leaves wet from the morning dew. A tree with strong branches called out, I will hide you in my branches. If only he could reach it! Faster, run faster! Reach it! Hurry! Marco. Marco. ¡Marco! Shouts! Shouts . . . barks . . . Vicente . . . Hurry! Hurry! So close! Hot breath on his neck . . . smell of wet dog . . . ¡Marco! ¡Vicente! Brother . . . Help! Sharp teeth snapped at his heels . . . pain . . . heavy paws on his back . . . falling, falling . . . a rifle poking his head.
The Taste of Sugar Page 31