Cuba Straits

by Randy Wayne White

  “Premira and lanzador,” the boy answered, “and sometimes in the garden, too”—first base, pitcher, and occasionally the outfield, which had a sweeter name in Cuba.

  Tomlinson slipped his hand into a Wilson A2000 first baseman’s glove, popped it a few times. “Are you left-handed?”

  “Of course.” The boy’s indignation inquired Don’t you know anything about this game?

  After that, Tomlinson would have adopted the kid, would have given him anything—money, his bicycle, even his boat—but was required, philosophically, to spread the wealth. He tossed him the glove, saying, “From now on, you’re in charge of this, but you have to share with your teammates. Understand?”

  “For how long?”

  “How long can you keep it? When you’re too old to play, ask me then.”

  Christmas morning. It was in the kid’s eyes until he put the glove on. “Mother of God—it’s soaked. Why did you leave this in the rain? It needs oil. I will oil the glove and sleep with it until it forgets such shitty treatment.”

  Adopt him, hell, Tomlinson thought. I’ll steal the kid and take him home if he doesn’t have parents.

  When the equipment bag was empty, he pitched a couple of innings, then struck up a conversation with a fisherman, who asked about the condition of No Más.

  Tomlinson went through the list of repairs. “Can you help? I know it’s Friday, but I’m eager to get started.”

  “For a man who gives baseballs to children, of course. My grandfather taught me how to fix anything that floats, and a few things that shouldn’t.” He was Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s fishing captain.

  Cuba was like that, a time warp linked to the 1950s.

  “I’m honored,” Tomlinson said. “The difficulty is, I lost my dinghy. No way to get back and forth from shore.”

  “I have a skiff with a motor you can use.”

  “That’s very kind, but”—Tomlinson lowered his voice—“I don’t want to get you into trouble. I’m being watched. They would know the skiff belongs to you. Even at night if I wanted to go somewhere . . . well, let’s say, leave the harbor for some reason . . . they would hear the motor.”

  The fisherman confirmed his understanding with an exchange of looks, then a shrug. “You plan to search for your missing dinghy. I would do the same.”

  “Exactly,” Tomlinson said. “And the funny thing is? That happens to be true.”

  The fisherman didn’t believe him. “The less you say, the better. Come with me.”

  Twenty minutes later, a little before two, they were standing in mangroves near a bridge that separated Cojimar Bay from the river where fishermen kept their boats. “Would this work?”

  Hidden in the bushes was a dugout canoe and a paddle, hand-carved.

  “Perfect,” Tomlinson said. “Now . . . I don’t suppose you’d be willing to draw me a little chart? In case I get restless and, you know, decide to look for my dinghy.”

  Thursday afternoon, after landing at José Martí International, the Russian drove Vernum Quick to a party on a ship recently docked in Mariel. Vodka-crazed men in uniforms and chingas from the bowels of Havana. The chingas only made Vernum hungrier because his damaged face disgusted even them. So he drank too much and passed out in Kostikov’s old Mercedes that, the next morning, delivered him to the farming village of Plobacho.

  Home: fifty square kilometers of even smaller villages, bananas, thatched huts, tobacco, valleys between cliffs, cane fields, dull women, and roads dotted with oxen shit.

  I can’t survive here much longer, Vernum thought—not for the first time. For five years, rumors about a demon in the cane fields had been spreading.

  At two p.m., Kostikov texted via a satellite phone he had provided Vernum—but not in Spanish, of course. Translation required an old textbook from the Fidelista days.

  The pizda arrived Cojimar, told police defector dead. Briefcase drowned. Stay your home.

  Figuerito Casanova was the defector, so pizda had to mean “hippie”—or did it? Nor was it likely a briefcase could drown.

  Vernum pumped cold water over his head, then drove his 1972 Russian Lada past the wooden baseball stadium to the square, where chickens scratched under tamarind trees. In the park, three old men sat on the rim of a fountain that hadn’t worked in years, a marble bust of José Martí nearby.

  “Pizda?” Vernum inquired as he approached. “You speak Russian. What does it mean?”

  “‘Kiss my ass,’” one of the men replied, then tried to ignore him.

  “That’s the translation? ‘Kiss my ass’?”

  The men laughed, but one grumbled, “Leave us in peace, you evil turd. If a Russian called you a pussy, he’s smarter than most of those savages.”

  Pizda—it made sense, then, but a Santero couldn’t ignore an insult like that, even from an old pig who still wore his medals from the Angola war. “Do you know what this is, Oleg?” Vernum produced a leather pouch from under his white guayabera. “It’s what will be left of your balls if you don’t apologize to the saints, especially Changó . . . Oh, and an offering of twenty pesos for my trouble.”

  Oleg just grinned. “Pizda—I bet Vernum swallowed the Russian’s cigar to earn a name so sweet. Look at how his face was beaten when they made hot oil.”

  More laughter. The men returned to their gossip while sweat beaded on Vernum’s forehead. From the pouch, he mixed a gram of powdered bluestone with turpentine gum and coconut, indifferent to their discussion until he heard the name Marta Esteban, then something about Marta’s daughters. To which Oleg insisted, “They returned early this morning, but it can’t be true. No Americano would do a good deed, then disappear. Set cats on fire to burn our fields, the CIA, yes. Then leave in a fast boat—but not after rescuing children.”

  Vernum looked up, wanted to ask Rescued the daughters from what? but decided it was better to wait.

  Nothing more to be learned, though, when the men realized he was eavesdropping, so he carried his act through: dabbed a pigeon feather in the goo and placed it on the head of José Martí with the quill pointed at Oleg. “In the morning, your pinga will be soft like an oyster and your piss will burn. I warn you for the last time . . .”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Oleg roared. “Vernum must have watched through my toilet window. I thought he only peeped at schoolgirls.”

  Hilarious.

  “Vernum-ita, instead of defacing General Martí, why not stick that feather up your ass?”

  It went on like that, the three men trading jokes, each trying to top the other, while Vernum stalked away. One option was to go to his room and return with the last drop or two of poison he’d harvested from the Montblanc pen. Instead, he relied on Kostikov’s bad temper and sent a text: A gossip saw me in your car. Russian savage, he called you. I want to kill him.

  The response was in Spanish, thank god: He suspects?

  Vernum typed: Old man, big mouth.

  Response: Close mouth, do not kill.

  Vernum felt a glow in his abdomen. He approached Oleg from behind, snatched his cane, and broke it over his shoulder, then hammered him in the face when he was on the ground. Lots of blood, and teeth scattered among the tamarind leaves, as well as a war medal that had pulled free of its ribbon.

  Vernum retrieved the medal and lobbed it toward the old man’s legs. “If anyone asks, a savage Russian ordered me to punish you,” he said, and left in his ’72 Lada, with its dents and broken antenna, red paint peeling.

  • • •

  ON HIS WAY out of town, opposite the baseball stadium, was a mansion with boarded-up windows that was mossy with age and neglect. The last of the Casanovas lived there, a scary old shrew of a woman whose only grandchild was that mental midget Figuerito. She was a recluse, did nothing, yet lived alone in that huge place, which proved she had political connections. Vernum despised her for it. Sta
ring at the house, he stopped and configured his fingers into devil’s horns, touched the bandage over his eye, then continued on his way.

  Hopefully, it was true the fool was dead. One eyewitness down, one to go.

  He sometimes saw Marta Esteban in the village but didn’t know exactly where she lived. Somewhere in the country. Twice he had to detour and ask directions. I hear she has some small problem, Vernum, the Santero, explained each time.

  Unlike Oleg and a few other old fools, people in the countryside were believers. Women especially. This was how he learned that Marta had sent her daughters on a raft to America. It was a dangerous secret, an insult to the government. Such an act stigmatized family members who stayed behind, but it was safe to confess to a Santero dressed in white, even if his face was swollen with stitches.

  “No wonder Marta has been in hiding,” a neighbor said. “She lives alone, you know. Her husband ran off, so it was just her and those girls. Maribel and Sabina . . . Sabina, even as a baby, she had a snake for a tongue. Even so, Marta must be out of her mind with worry.”

  “Marta Esteban didn’t satisfy her husband?” Vernum asked. Peasant women enjoyed flirting with a Santero, but he didn’t overdo it. “Perhaps a love obeah, or a dab of salt oil, for this wife who can’t keep a man happy. What do you think?”

  Giggle—these scrawny peasants always covered their mouths rather than show their bad teeth. From the pouch, he gifted the neighbor with a cowrie shell, eyes painted on it. “Eleguá,” he promised, “will bring steel to your bed tonight.”

  More giggling, more talk, before he said, “I’m confused. In the village, I heard a rumor that the daughters returned this morning. Something about an Americano. Is this true?”

  “My husband met the same drunken fisherman. He claimed he saw a fancy boat before sunrise and only Americanos can afford such things. But how can it be? Three, four days ago, perhaps more, those girls left forever. I think it is good that Marta has reached out to the saints for help. There are so many liars and gossips who care nothing for the pain of others.”

  It was good for Vernum, too. Why would a mother send her daughters away unless she had reason to hide them? It was a large province with bad roads, and even a Santero couldn’t keep track of every peasant girl under the age of thirteen.

  And if the daughters had returned? He would deal with it.

  Marta’s house was on a hillside around a curve and beyond a wooden bridge that crossed a river. Almost fifteen kilometers by road from the village with a small school nearby, so no wonder he seldom saw the Esteban family in town. Marta, with her Indio eyes and body, had caught his attention almost two years before, but she’d been frosty, almost threatening, the way she referenced a husband in the military. No different a year later when Vernum followed the woman out of town but lost her on the moonless night. This was before he’d bought a car that was faster than a bicycle, so his hunger had sent him hunting near the school, where cane grew tall along the road. There was a playground there. Luck, or Changó, was with him, and three restless girls had appeared, out for a walk beneath the stars. One girl had escaped through the darkness. The others did not.

  Maribel and Sabina, the neighbor had said. It had to be one of them.

  Vernum, when he saw the Esteban shack from the road, thought, Got you.

  • • •

  HE HAD PLANNED to knock on the door and use his authority as a Santero to charm Marta when she answered.

  Not now.

  He took his time, scanned for nosey neighbors, then parked in a shady place that couldn’t be seen from the bridge. The river was dark and deep here, not wide, but walled with vegetation. Where the river turned seaward was a path, a few fishing boats tied up, but no one around on this hot morning, with dragonflies and mosquitoes. When he was opposite the shack, he climbed the embankment. Foliage provided cover until he was so close he could smell beans cooking, and see into a window with curtains that were actually feed sacks but neatly pressed.

  He moved to get a better view. Marta kept the yard swept, too. There was a chicken coop with fat white hens; mangoes and sour orange trees; and clothes hanging in sunlight: towels, sheets, a woman’s panties . . . and two flowered dresses that only young girls could wear.

  Vernum felt a slow pounding in his chest, and sat back, thinking, It’s true. Somehow, the daughters had been returned—as a good deed by an unknown American, according to Oleg, a CIA agent possibly, but Oleg was an old fool whose brain still lived in the time of the Fidelistas.

  How the girls had been returned didn’t matter. Nor did it matter which daughter had escaped the cane field. With Figuerito dead, killing the girls—Marta, too, if he was lucky—would feed his hunger for a month or more, and also eliminate the last living witness.

  Vernum circled the shack. Marta’s bicycle was under the rain cistern, but no sounds or signs of movement inside. Those beans smelled good, though, and peasants couldn’t afford to waste a meal. If they weren’t here, they would return soon to eat.

  He kept moving while his mind worked. Did the house have a telephone? No . . . there was no phone line, only electric, which, in this region, seldom worked.

  The windows beckoned. Even as a teen he’d liked to watch females who didn’t know they were being watched. But was a few minutes of pleasure worth the risk? No . . . it was wiser to come back tonight. After five minutes, though, he lost patience and moved to get a better angle, dodged his way through a jungle of banana leaves, then froze before exiting into the yard.

  A girl was there, stood with her back to him, busy feeding a chicken or some kind of animal in a cage. She was tall, shapeless, had ribbons in her hair, and wore coveralls and cheap tennis shoes, which was typical of girls nearing thirteen. And too focused on the cage to hear the bushes rustling, so Vernum crouched and watched, thinking, Thirteen . . . the age is about right.

  It wasn’t a chicken, it was a rabbit she was feeding, and humming a song, too, a gringo tune. Clipped to the bib of her coveralls was a tube of bug spray, or something similar, that also suggested contact with an American. So maybe Oleg wasn’t such a fool after all. When Vernum had the girl to himself, she would tell him fast enough, and that would be very soon.

  First, though, where were the mother and the other daughter? Better to wait rather than ruin what, so far, had been an afternoon gifted by Changó.

  Or was it?

  Vernum’s good sense battled the fever building inside his head and argued both sides.

  They’re in the house, fool. Grab the girl while you can.

  No . . . sweeter tonight when the three are alone. No witnesses left. You can take your time, man, and do it all.

  As the battle raged, the door of the shack opened and Marta appeared, calling, “Come eat or I will throw it away!”

  The girl replied, “Yes, Mama,” and ran like a deer across the yard and disappeared inside.

  “Dumbass.” Vernum retreated, muttering to himself. “Damn Russian is right—I’m a pizda, a weakling pussy, to miss such a chance.”

  He stumbled through the banana patch so mad he thought he was hearing things when a child’s voice ordered, “Stop your swearing or you’ll burn in hell. Who are you?”

  Vernum spun around. It was an identically dressed girl, but a different girl, this one short, not tall, with legs like saplings, and barefoot, which was typical of younger children. She was on a footpath, the two of them shielded from the house, here in the shadows alone. A stalk of raw sugar protruded from the girl’s pocket—a treat stolen from the nearby cane field, he guessed.

  “Changó.” Vernum smiled. “I will give you something nice for this, man.”

  The girl had a fierce little face with nostrils that flared. “Who are you? You don’t belong here.” She drew the cane stalk in a threatening manner and placed a hand on the tiny canister clipped to her coveralls.

  He knelt, laughing, s
o they were eye to eye. “Don’t be afraid, child. I bet you like chocolate. Do you like chocolate?” The girl backed a step when he extended his hand. “My car is near the river. Come with—”

  “You’re a trespasser,” the girl interrupted, “or a thief. If you’ve come to steal our stuff, I’ll . . .” She raised the stalk, then lowered it. “What happened to your face?”

  The stitches. He’d forgotten. “Some evil fool attacked me. I don’t like evil men, that’s why you’re safe with me. It’ll just take a minute to walk to my car.” Again he offered his hand while the girl stared, puzzled by the stitches in his mouth and eyebrows or as if making up her mind about the chocolate.

  No . . . she was making up her mind about him. “You have a snake’s face and mean eyes,” she said. “Go away or I’ll hit you with this.” Raising the cane stalk, she stepped back and, for some reason, unsnapped the little canister from her coveralls.

  Vernum’s expression changed. “You arrogant little puta. Someone should teach you manners.”

  “Stop your damn swearing,” the girl said. “Don’t come near me or I’ll—”

  Vernum lunged, slapped her to the ground. That’s when Sabina, looking up, used the canister of mace, aimed for the eyes, just as Marion Ford had taught her.

  Friday morning, after cleaning branches, leaves, and other river debris from his boat, Ford paid cash for a slip at Marina Hemingway, west of Havana, then sat in the shade reading until customs agents were done with their search.

  Dr. Archie Carr’s The Windward Road, a book about sea turtles, meshed with what agents found aboard, so he was soon able to make a bed on the casting platform. Cozy there beneath the bow shield. He paid 750 euros for a hundred gallons of fuel, ate roast chicken at El Aljibe in the embassy district, then again fell asleep to the rhythm of marimbas and waves.

  Government offices opened at nine. He took a cab to a complex near the University of Havana and applied for research permits as Marion D. North, Ph.D., the name on his fake passport. Receipts for the permits, stamped on official letterhead, would be enough to satisfy the coastal cops. Even so, he couldn’t rationalize another stop at the home of Marta Esteban—not while the sun was up. To associate with an American was dangerous in itself, which is why he’d done only a quick stop-and-drop that morning after navigating two miles of river, hadn’t spoken to the mother, and was gone before sunrise.