Home Front Lines

by Brenda Sparks Prescott

  “Yeah. They’d still read it. Or tear it up if they couldn’t.”

  “But what if it didn’t go in the mail bag?” Despite the danger of the idea, or maybe because of it, the rush of winning a big pot warmed Lonnie’s face. “There’s some Japanese diplomat on board.”

  Tanaka popped a hands-off gesture with both palms out, and shook his head. “Even I wouldn’t go to the Japanese with this.”

  “No.” Lonnie went to bang the railing of the bed but stopped just shy of jarring his friend and floated his hand down into a loose grip. “Translators. We must have one of our own. Quick. We don’t have much time. I’ll go topside, scout out the civilians. You write out what happened.”

  Tanaka drew a big breath and looked down at the big man on the exam table. He sighed and slowly nodded.

  “Hep, ” Lonnie said.

  Hep inclined his head toward Lonnie, eyes closed.

  “Make sure Tanaka gets it right.”

  He replied with a wisp of a nod.

  “And hold onto that watch. I’m coming back for it.”

  Hep dropped his mouth open and grunted.

  Chita

  A Message from García 1

  AS OUR SERVANTS took the illusion of equality seriously and departed from our employ, we blessed Mami for equipping us with solid housekeeping skills. Lupe was the last to go. Despite her rising surliness, she had been an excellent maid. When she had to add the kitchen to her other duties, she wasn’t a top-drawer cook, but her meals were well received by the boys. With her gone, there was no longer a reason for Diego and me to take the first meal of the day in the dining room, so we ate in the kitchen. I had spent my girlhood playing on its tiled floor and sneaking pasteles that were left to cool on the mahogany counters. Lupe had abandoned us the day before the envelope from the country arrived.

  The morning of the hand-delivered letter, the boys were already gone to school as I said goodbye to Diego. The house quieted, and again I imagined the coming time when the clatter and chaos would not return at the end of the day. If I dwelled on that sorrow too long, I would lose my will to go through with tonight’s plans with my sisters. I cranked open the jalousies to catch the morning breeze. The wind bore salty, cleansing air off the bay. I opened the front door and looked toward the water. My neighbors’ houses jumbled down the street away from me, and the clang of ships loading in port rang in the distance. A cousin on my mother’s side marched by with her boy and two girls. Her children went to the local school, which started later than St. Sebastian, where Beto and Miguelito were already sitting in class. My cousin stopped at the gate to say hello, but she couldn’t linger long. I listened to her children’s subdued chatter as they paraded up the street.

  I couldn’t rest there all day and lament the impending absence of my family. Lupe usually swept the front walk and the sidewalk outside the gate each morning, but she was gone. My hands were sturdy and I, a Montero, was no stranger to hard work. I took the broom outside and swept.

  As I finished the sidewalk, Señor Martinez, the postman, turned the corner down the street. I hurried back to the gate and latched it behind me before heading for the house. I supposed his dour wife had spelled him at the post office and at that very moment was berating some poor citizen for failing to fill out a form correctly. They were both awful, her with her disapproving glares and him with his disgusting leers. On top of it all, he freely trafficked in information not his to give away.

  I continued inside to avoid any conversation with that toad. Just as I finished putting away the broom and thought the coast was clear, I heard a firm knock on the front door. I returned to the front of the house to answer. Señor Martinez waited, backlit by the early sunlight reflecting off the house across the street. He had left the gate ajar. He tipped his hat and held up an envelope, its blank side toward me. The flap had been torn and resealed with tape. “Sorry to bother you, Señora, but I bring you this official-looking letter.”

  “That’s most generous of you.” I snapped out my hand as if he had already wasted too much of my time.

  He inched the letter away, the slightest gesture, but it meant he wasn’t finished with his game. “Curious, the postmark is from an eastern province, and the return address is a Campo Doblase. About your brother, perhaps?”

  My God! My outstretched fingers curled in and flew to my mouth unbidden. The postman knew the power of his words, of the envelope in his hand. He already knew what it contained and wanted to extract what one was willing to give in exchange for it.

  My cousin’s boy, the angel who had hidden shyly behind his mother a few moments earlier, whooped and dashed down the street with a rooster feather stuck in his cap. Three of his friends chased him, book bags bumping off their shoulders. They were on their way to school, or else they would’ve been wearing cowboy hats with chin straps. The pop of their cap guns ricocheted off the surrounding homes. One shouted, “Sal, you’re dead. It’s my turn to be the Indian.”

  Little cousin Salvador was lucky. He was not truly dead, but what of Tomasito? I must know, and this toad would not stand in my way. I pointed. “Behind you, Señor. The cavalry has arrived.” He turned his head, and I snatched the letter from him. “Thank you.” The boys continued their noisy play down the street. “Your kindness will be rewarded by God.”

  He knew he would get nothing from me. He sneered, the left side of his face crimping into the most unpleasant sight. “Condolences for your loss.”

  What did he mean by that? I whipped the door shut, erasing his ugly face, and turned to the cool darkness of my living room. Its neatness and the silence beyond shouted. Soon I would not have to fuss arm caps back into place on the chairs and couch or fish marbles out of the large crystal bowl on the console.

  The loss would widen a fissure opened by Tomasito’s abrupt disappearance. We had not seen nor heard from our brother since that night he and Selena had gone down to Liberty Square for dinner. I wondered if La Señora had directed this envelope into my hands, despite Señor Martinez and his underhanded ways, or if She was still cross with us because my youngest sister had screamed at Her in the street. Who does such a thing? Shouting at the Mother of Jesus. Did Lola think her blasphemies demanding the return of Tomasito would do anything except annoy Her and reflect poorly on our parents? I’m sure she paid for her behavior with that wrong turn in the jungle. Soon we would all pay.

  Despite Lola’s antics, at last I held a clue to our brother’s fate. You would think I’d reopen the envelope immediately—knowing is better than not knowing, even if it is the worst kind of news. But first I had to give thanks. I knelt in front of our shrine to the Madonna of the Sacred Heart and lit a candle. I stocked her plate with tempting bright-red candies and pasteles that I never offered to the rest of the family. A small sacrifice for this answer to our prayers. The dingy envelope was addressed formally to me in typewritten letters: Señora Concepcion Montero de la Luz. I pressed it to my lips, not one care for the hands it had passed though, and whispered my thanks. La Señora put a light hand on my shoulder but said nothing. I could not bear to learn the news alone, so I hurried off to call Rosita and Lola to come right over.

  As soon as they arrived, we sat in the dining room, the taped envelope a pale square on the dark top of the table. I told them what Señor Martinez had said, which sent Rosita shrinking into herself. No one reached for the letter, but prolonging our wait wouldn’t rearrange the letters into hoped-for happy news. Finally I said, “Rosie, you open it. You’re the oldest.”

  Lola nodded and sat with her hands braced against the edge of the table. Rosie covered her mouth in that little girl way she has, but she made no move to put us out of our agony, or perhaps to plunge us into a deeper one.

  “No, you,” she said from behind her fingers. “It’s addressed to you.”

  The coward, as always. A surge of hot contempt for my useless older sister was enough to propel my hand to the envelope. I pulled out the enclosed paper and read the typed message aloud.


  Campo Doblase

  Santi Spíritus

  3 September 1962

  Dear Sra. Montero de la Luz:

  It has come to the attention of the administration of Campo Doblase that the effects of the late Tómas Montero, a guest worker at our facility, includes a pocket watch engraved with the name of the great Cuban hero, Calixto García. We regret this oversight in our official death notice.

  It is a misfortune that we have no reliable delivery service, nor are we sure that we are writing to the correct address. Therefore, we are retaining this family heirloom for safekeeping. If the family wishes to retrieve it, we have included directions to Campo Doblase below.

  Since we are a closed facility, it is imperative that you stop at the village at the foot of the mountain and ask for David Montes. He will serve as your escort.

  Viva La Revolucíon,

  Humberto Eggleston

  Director of Operations

  I put the message on the table for all to see. Its words sent us into a frenzy of excitement. Listen to me, we Monteros have our ways. How do you get a message to the family across provinces when you’re uncertain of the allegiances of the carriers or unsure who may intercept it? You use code words that you keep in the family, and you don’t even share them with your husbands. They are not Monteros, after all. This crazy letter contained the code “Calixto García,” the name of the famed patriot who worked tirelessly for independence from Spain. It meant, “You may think that I am dead, but I still live.” Tomás alive!

  “Is this a trick?” Lola wondered. “I mean, how did he get it to look so official?”

  “Look at the date,” Rosita said. “It’s been over a month. We must go immediately.”

  “We can’t go,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. Think about the bandit’s war.” Besides the run-of-the-mill lawlessness abundant in the eastern provinces, El Líder was rooting out former compatriots who had the nerve to disagree with his vision.

  “Who else will go?” Rosie asked. “Are you going to explain to José what Calixto García means?” Like I said, we have not shared our codes with our husbands—no telling when one of them might turn on the family. We loved them, but they were not Monteros.

  “It’s probably a trick. Maybe they want to capture us all,” Lola said. “Maybe we should call first.”

  I turned toward the family shrine and silently asked the Madonna if I could borrow one of her bright-red candies to shove at Lola so she would shut up her face. “Patience,” the Madonna whispered back. “She, too, is anxious.”

  I knew that, but somehow I couldn’t speak calmly. Too much was at stake. “Chica, don’t be an idiot. Obviously he means for us to find this David Montes, not go arousing suspicions through the main switchboard.”

  “Quit squabbling,” Rosita said. She leaned in to peer closely at the note and read it again under her breath. “Here.” She stabbed the note. “This is the line I don’t like: ‘We regret this oversight in our official death notice.’ What does that mean? We received no such notice.” We both stared at her as she kept her finger pinned on the mysterious phrase.

  “Since we didn’t get it, who did?” Lola asked. “And why didn’t they tell us?”

  “What if it didn’t get through?” I asked. I thought of bandits looking for payroll money.

  “But what if it did?” Lola countered. She clasped Rosita’s extended hand.

  Goose bumps raised on my arms as a cold wash of air blew through the room. I knew without looking that it was the wake of the Madonna’s departure. Something terrible was going on, and we were on our own. What to do? Who to trust? This was too much. My attention dashed around the room. Here to the lace cloth our grandmother carried from Catalonia. There, to the fluted columns that framed the archway between the living and dining rooms. And there, to the chessboard on the game table. I thought of the game as unfinished, although the black king lay in surrender on its side. “Mate in four,” our younger boy had said to his brother the previous night.

  Rosita prayed, her hands clasped, white-knuckled, against her chest. Blasts of a ship’s horn in port swept me away from my sisters and out over the water. I tried to see my sons already on a far shore, laughing with new friends, but it was too hazy, and my sisters’ voices called me back before the mist cleared.

  “Someone has to go to him,” Lola said.

  Rosita interrupted her rapid supplications to ask, “What about the children?”

  Tonight was the night. Everything was set. We had struggled to concoct just the right story to disguise the children’s escape from the island, but when Selena mentioned the labor shortage on her family’s farm, I knew their situation would provide the perfect cover. The children could miss school to join the harvest that feeds our nation. Even so, we thought it best if our husbands were physically distant during the actual departure. Ramón was to take Rosita to a patron’s house at the eastern end of Varadero Beach. They would have to stay the night because of the curfews. Diego had gone to meet the cousin of El Líder and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Only Lola’s José would be in town, since the army kept him busy at all hours on any given day, but she would know how to deal with him if she had to.

  Once Lola confirmed the children were launched, we could go find Tomás. Unimaginable loss echoed in the chambers of my heart, but this was no time for tears. “We do what we must with what we have,” I said. “We can leave tomorrow. After . . . after tonight.” I called for Lupe to bring us coffee before I remembered she no longer worked for us. I went to get it myself.

  When I returned with a tray of filled cups, Rosita said, “The men won’t let us go alone, and I’m not sure I want to.”

  “We must,” Lola said. “We are Monteros, they are not. Tomás is depending on us, and we can handle ourselves.”

  As usual, I agreed with both my sisters. Which would prevail? Were we right to be suspicious of our husbands? I wished I could ask La Señora, but her abode was vacant. The sounds of a group of ladies twittering reached us as they traipsed down the sidewalk. What concerns were their light voices hiding? Their laughter reminded me of jaunts to Mami’s cousins out in the real countryside just this side of the mountains and how my sides would hurt from laughing at all the outrageous tales we would tell to keep ourselves amused on the bumpy roads. That gave me an idea. “We can tell them we’re going to see Tito Juan. Surely they would let us go there.”

  Lola plopped her cup on the table. “Yes, of course. Chita, sometimes I think there’s hope for you.”

  Rosita pulled the letter closer. “This was mailed more than a month ago. Do you think he’s still there?”

  “That’s why we have to leave right away.” I can stick to my point when I have to.

  “But the first twenty-four hours are the most critical,” Lola said.

  “First twenty-four hours of what?” I asked. Lola can be so annoying with her half-baked, half-explained ideas.

  “Of a boat trip like this.”

  Damn La Señora’s eyes, she was right. If Carlos were to turn back for any reason, it would be before the first full day died. They could also land and get word back to us in that time, if all went perfectly. At least one of us would have to stay at home, but I also knew without asking that none of us would want to be away, even for Tomás, during that hopeful, frightening time.

  “So tomorrow we wait, and then we go east,” I said.

  “That would be best, I think.” Rosita sighed and clattered her spoon into her cup. “And it gives us more time to pack.”

  That’s Rosie, playing to her strengths—waiting and organizing things. I wondered if she had already spilled the beans about the children to that squirrelly Ramón but assumed he would be impotent to stop them if she had. There were only hours before they were to go.

  Lonnie Takes it to the Bridge 2

  MRS. YŪKO FUJI sat quietly in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the USS Princeton. She was off-duty for the moment, as her assignment, a Japanese diplomat and his tr
anslator, had retired to the admiral’s quarters. She should have been resting also, but the bustle of a large military operation and her unexpected access to it kept her alert and prying. When Major Caldwell had ushered her up the conning tower ladder and onto the bridge, the captain was preparing to go below. After a few minutes of chatting, he insisted that she take his place and stay there as long as she wanted. No one sat in the captain’s chair unless he was taking over command of the bridge, and certainly no civilian sat in that sole built-in leather seat, especially with the old man right there. She could tell how unusual this was by the set of the shoulders of the young man next to her who was busy with the sea charts. Yet Mrs. Fuji had that effect on men, even though she didn’t try.

  From the conning tower’s midship rise on the starboard side of the ship, Mrs. Fuji had most of a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree seascape view through the panel of windows. Swiveling toward the rear of the ship, she saw Marine helicopters lining the deck and the late afternoon sun low on the horizon. As she swung past the lineup of phone handsets and faced the dials and big red phone in front of her, she took in more choppers lining the deck. The thick glass filmed the sea and sky in the distance so the ocean formed a low lapis wall and hazed into a wide stripe of sky blue.

  Humans had always wondered and worried about the horizon where sea and sky meet. Mrs. Fuji had no desire for a well-marked division between them. In fact, she preferred to dwell in the mist offered by an unsettled sea. It was her home upon waking, when she could feel the presence of her long-vanished husband beside her before her fingers reached out and touched nothing but memories. Her American granddaughter also dwelled there without knowing, as she donned her Mickey Mouse ears for her solemn performance of the tea ceremony. Mrs. Fuji should’ve been back in the States by now, sipping tea with her granddaughter and her teddy bear, but the A-bomb test they had come to witness had been scrubbed shortly after its launch, and the American officials promised another one shortly.