Home Front Lines

by Brenda Sparks Prescott

  I dropped my chest to my knees and stared down. “Do you think those big ships can see the little boats to avoid them?” I felt as defenseless as a tiny mouse caught running across an open floor.

  “Nope.” Captain B. stood to put on his shirt and button it. I bent over and stared at my bare feet while he drew on his trousers. “A collision’s unlikely, though, the wakes would be much more dangerous. Those ships? Steaming full speed ahead. The wakes are easily taller than any building in your city.”

  I rocked back and forth, my feet pulsing against the ground with each stroke. He dangled my blouse in front of me, but I couldn’t stop rocking.

  “Honestly. They’re fine,” he said. I dared not ask for confirmation of the people he was talking about. “That storm probably blew them off course.” He shook my blouse in front of me, but I still didn’t look up. “Come on, darling he said in a softer voice.

  He hadn’t called me that before, even in the heat of passion. Its soft edges did nothing to blunt the sharp reports that reverberated from Karl the driver’s execution. I wondered if anything would ever quiet them.

  We had driven all the way out to the new camp, just to find that Kennedy’s speech the previous evening had changed the Russians’ plans: they wouldn’t start the new camp until the standoff was resolved. Under the circumstances, Captain B. could have easily detained me for as long as he wanted, doing whatever he wanted. Instead, he dropped his bulk onto the cot beside me and laid my blouse between us. He patted me on the shoulder.

  “Go home,” he said.

  I gathered my things, and we left the tent. He put me in a truck and pointed the driver back to Matanzas. There would be no mistaken turns on this ride.

  As we approached the city, I automatically directed the driver to our bungalow on the western edge of town, which I truly didn’t remember would be stripped of life until we pulled into the empty driveway. The dark, blank windows discouraged entry. I stayed in the truck and instructed the driver to take me to the café. The streets popped with activity in the late afternoon heat. Snatches of El Líder’s broadcast admonished us to prepare to defend the country to the death. Yes, of course I would fight. Gladly. Just as soon as I heard that Bonita and Chalo were safe.

  My café was also closed up tight, but there I unlocked the door. I carried in my large pots and deposited them on the stove. The Russian driver followed with the box of spices and condiments, then went out and returned with my vanity case. Although twilight had come early inside my small shop, I didn’t turn on any lights. I depended on the late afternoon sunlight filtering in from the open door.

  Ernesto stuck in his grizzled head. “Have you heard?”

  “Of course.” I raised a fist, wondering where I found the strength to do so. “To the death!” My neighbor returned the salute and disappeared down the walk.

  The Russian driver reappeared and asked if I needed anything else. I thanked him for getting me home safely and cracked a cold cola for him. For the first time since we had started out, I dared to examine his flat brown eyes and the hairy knuckles on the paw that held the cola. Suddenly, I was sick of them. All of them. These Russians brought nothing but their inferior shoes, hunger for satisfactions beyond a simple meal of chicken and rice, and the renewed fury of the North. Their so-called protection would rain ruin from above while a swamp of self-righteousness in the name of equality surged from below. It had been the right time to send the children, I reassured myself.

  Still, I wondered. This one, this driver, had the looks of an ox, but would he have had enough animal sense to avoid the captain’s lethal jungle clearing? Without that unfortunate encounter, I would’ve still had my children close to me.

  I demurred when the driver thanked me for the drink. He left as I loaded bags of hot spices into a large stew pot. They were flavors that Chita never stocked at home. Of course I was going to the Montero House. Where else would I go? I checked my hair and makeup, picked up my pot and parcels, and closed and locked the café door. As I made my way to our family home, friends, distant cousins, and even strangers stopped me to discuss the latest developments. Trucks filled with soldiers drove past, Russians in some, Cubans in others. Most headed toward the port. The Russians rumbled by in military silence. A solder, one that resembled the late Karl the driver, flicked away a cigarette butt that landed on a wheeled cart an old black woman dragged behind her. I scurried forward to swat off the burning stub. The old woman never turned around.

  The Cuban soldiers wore a kaleidoscope of clothing, usually finished with a bandana around the neck or head. They commanded rickety trucks or rode on the fenders, hoods, trunks, and sideboards of Chevys, Oldsmobiles, and other proletarian American cars. Several of these groups headed against the general flow of traffic to the port. These would patrol the plentiful coves west of the city where the enemy might sneak ashore undeterred by Russian might. Occasionally a patriot unleashed a cheer and a barrage of bullets to the sky. Although the Cuban men were clearly serious and proudly carried their new Kalashnikovs, they still attended to their women, young and old, who paused to wave and cheer. One soldier called, “Hey, mamacita! You! With the big pot and the juicy red lips. C’mere, mamacita, and cook for me!”

  I waved but kept moving toward the Montero House. All of the commotion failed to keep me tethered to my body striding toward home. Again and again, I flew across the choppy bay waters and beyond, searching, searching.

  The Montero House was as serene as ever as I approached it. I sought out the window of the second-story bedroom I had occupied by myself as my older sisters had moved on. The louvered window let through not a speck of light or movement from the inside. I walked along the front fence and steadied my burdens against the driveway’s big gate while I fished out my key. As I did, José pulled up in the Chevy. I opened the gate wide and stepped aside.

  “You’re back early,” he said. He pointed to the pot I embraced with both arms. “Did the good captain find another cook?”

  He drove past me before I could fire off an answer. I noticed Ramón sitting in his car at the curb, so I waved at him and left the gate open for him to drive through. I didn’t wait for him but followed José’s car up the driveway.

  Ramón

  Gathering Time 2

  RAMÓN HAD BEEN at the Montero House for a while. In fact, he had been the first to arrive. He waited for the others and sipped from a bottle of clear, homemade liquor he had confiscated from a worker at the tannery. He rubbed the stubble on his chin with satisfaction, as it was a sign that he had gotten up long before dawn to secure his neighborhood. He had worked hard that day as an important member of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. He had attended two meetings, one at the community center, the other at a grade school, where his voice rang out in confident tones as he handed out mandatory assignments. His compañeros listened to him with what he took to be a respectful silence. None dared to contradict his ideas. Everyone knew at least one person who had unfortunate dealings with the authorities after a run-in with Ramón. Now they were beginning to whisper about his brother’s death.

  Without robust debate, the meetings broke up more quickly than others held in the province. Soon he would be honored by the authorities for his efficiency and the general orderliness of his watch area. After the meetings, he arrived at the tannery with an uncustomary air of command. It dissipated as soon as he stepped out of the bright sun and into the rank darkness of the main room. He found fewer than half of his men at work. The others would claim defense assignments, as sure as bullets shot into the sky fall to earth.

  A peak of tangled hides rose from the lime bath. His brother’s replacement ignored it as he lay on the catwalk and read a newspaper. Soon after beginning this job, he had discovered his manager wouldn’t venture out onto this particular catwalk. Taking advantage of Ramón’s reluctance, the oaf camped out there, working when he felt like it and feigning deafness when Ramón yelled at him from the safety of the floor. Let him rot, Ramón thought. Alt
hough the loafer had been assigned to the factory as a reward for his hard work during the last sugarcane harvest, his position was not assured. Ramón could contrive a way to send him to the swamp around Playa Girón, where the Americans had made a mess of their earlier invasion. The thought cheered him. He slipped off to his office and closed the door. The bottle of clear liquid and a bag of mints waited for him there. He left the factory before quitting time, at an hour that he sometimes had left to pick up his girls at school. No such errand detained him that day, and so he drove directly over to the Montero House to wait.

  Just as he was closing the gate behind his car, Diego drove up with a tap on his horn. Ramón swung the gate wide to admit Diego’s truck. After parking in the side yard, the men settled in the courtyard with plantain chips and drinks while Lola kept her own company in the kitchen. She was not particularly welcomed outside.

  A man with a bullhorn rode by with a nonstop line of patter. His amplified voice crested the house and fell on the gathering in the courtyard. “Stay inside if not on duty. Don’t open the door to strangers. The enemy comes in many guises.”

  Ramón listened intently and nodded as the patter repeated. “That was my idea.”

  “It’s a stupid one.” Diego snapped the last fried plantain strip in two and shoved both pieces into his mouth.

  José leaned his elbows on the cast-iron table. “I don’t think so. Some of the worms that landed at the Playa Girón had been my friends.”

  “Not that part,” Diego said. “I mean the part about not letting in strangers.”

  He leaned back. The sapote tree rustled with the evening breeze as Lola came out to check on the snacks. The tree towering over the front of the house shook and dropped a mango on the roof. It thumped, rolled off, and splattered on the pavement of the courtyard. Lola went over to clean it up. Diego watched with crossed arms.

  “Look here,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, the devil is locked inside here with us.”

  Mango juice dripped from Lola’s hands. She dumped the pulpy mess into the snack bowl. “Look, mister big-shot mechanic . . .”

  “Woman, enough!” José’s voice rumbled. Lola rounded on him as if to land a verbal or physical blow, but she stopped herself. Plenty of time for arguing later. When she went back inside without a word, José’s chest expanded.

  Chita

  Gathering Time 3

  WE ARRIVED AT the Montero House at the end of the sun’s time in the sky. Our house didn’t reveal any interior activity, as the front windows were already shuttered. Yet I could already sense the energy of our family gathering. Normally the street would have been lousy with Montero children, but only the boys of Luisa and Big Beto, who lived at the end of the street and were not Monteros, could be seen yanking and twisting a branch of a neighbor’s bush. The wood gate was slightly ajar as I pulled into the foot of the driveway.

  “Open the gate,” I said to Rosita.

  “Can you believe it? At the beginning of this day we held Tomasito in our arms.” She wiped away a tear.

  “Please do me a favor. Save your tears and open the gate.”

  The boys abandoned the bush and ran over to the car. They shouted greetings at us and peered into the back seat. I grabbed at them through my open window, but they were too quick for me as they jumped back out of reach with shrieks of laughter. How like my boys they were! But I couldn’t dwell on that thought without sinking into a well, yet I couldn’t let them see anything was wrong.

  I stuck out my tongue at them. “Open the gate. Hurry now.”

  The oldest did as he was told, then he slugged his brother and they both ran off while I drove in. Light from the kitchen fell on the drive, and the screen door banged as Lola came out onto the stoop. She immediately shook her head, “No.” No word of the children. This was information too important to be left until after “hellos” and “how are yous” and “how was your trips.” My resolve faltered, and I slumped over the steering wheel. Yet the conversation was not finished. Lola volleyed a question back with a jut of chin. Rosita nodded a vigorous “Yes!” The message had gotten through to García.

  Despite the fatigue of the long drive, we barely stretched the cramps out of our legs before snatching up some of the trip’s bits and pieces and crowding past Lola into the kitchen. Her stock pot simmered on the stove, and I could hear animated chatter through the window opened to the courtyard. Lola always over-seasoned her stews. I knew this. She followed us but stopped at the stove to stir her brew.

  “So?” she said.

  “Who’s here?” I asked. Tomasito’s safety couldn’t be trusted to just anyone, even a family member. Especially a family member, as we had found out.

  “Just husbands,” Lola replied. “So did you find him?”

  “Yes!” Rosita went to the stove and hugged our sister.

  Lola shrieked and I hushed her with a glance toward the courtyard window. My throat constricted at the thought of Ramón’s treachery.

  “Remember, he’s supposed to be dead. To everyone,” I said in a strained whisper.

  My sisters ignored me. “Thank God. Thank you, San Judas. Is he all right? Where is he?” Lola gazed at the door, as if expecting our brother to spring through it. “Is he all right?”

  “That place Doblase is a rehabilitation farm. Mostly cane,” Rosita said. She drew Lola over to the kitchen table, sat her down, and clasped her hands.

  Lola tugged at the pause. “And?”

  “And these wonderful people helped Tomasito escape. You would like them, I know. Abuelo Paco and Abuela Marisol. She has the best remedies. She even rid her of one of her headaches.” She nodded at me. I rolled my eyes at this digression. Rosita could never tell a straight tale. “I asked her for a package of her headache medicine for myself, stronger than Chita’s. You know I suffer more than she does.”

  Right. I inspected Lola’s unnecessary additions to the spices with squinty eyes and a sniff. I left off fiddling around at the counter and dipped a spoon into the steaming pot on the stove. I sampled the hot broth. Just as I had suspected. “Too much cumin.”

  Lola turned to me and took the spoon away. “But is he all right?”

  “Mostly,” I said.

  “Of course he is.” Rosita spoke rapidly from her seat at the table.

  I had dumped my purse and some bags on the kitchen table and now was sorting through them. No use wasting time while Rosita wandered down her meandering paths to the truth.

  “The things this girl leaves out,” I said.

  “Like what?” Rosita asked.

  I waved my right hand and fluttered my fingers the way Tomasito would have without the bandages. Rosita shrugged.

  “What is she flapping about for?” Lola asked, swinging her gaze between me and our sister.

  “Imagine our Tomasito farming,” Rosita said.

  “Why should I do that?” A burst of male laughter rolled in through the courtyard window. How could they joke at a time like this? Men.

  Rosita had yet to unpack, unbag, or move anything in the kitchen. So like her. She drifted over to the stove and sniffed the steam rising from the pot. “He got hurt by some farm machinery. An injury to the hand. It is nothing.”

  I snapped my purse shut. “Nothing?”

  Again, Rosita had left the hard work to me. I thought this for the thousandth time since we had left together the previous morning. Would she ever shoulder her share of the family burden?

  “He lost two fingers,” I said.

  “Mother of God preserve us,” Lola said. “You call this nothing? What are we going to tell Mami? She’ll want to go to him.” She dropped the large spoon into the pot and turned as if she were going to go herself right away.

  “She can’t.” Rosita stopped Lola’s flight by grabbing her shoulders. “Abuela takes good care of him, thanks be to God. I promise you. And remember, he’s dead, according to the officials. It’s best he stays that way.”

  “As soon as he’s better, he’s going across
the water,” I added.

  “Isn’t that wonderful?” Rosita tried on a smile, but sadness clouded her eyes. I felt they mirrored my own. Still, she plowed on. “He can look after our little ones until they return.”

  There was so much longing for happy endings for all in that hopeful statement that I found myself not wanting to puncture her fragile hope. It buoyed me, but we had to get on with the evening. I opened a lower cupboard and peered inside.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” I said as I looked for the yucca flour. “What happened to the all-important Russians?”

  “Plans changed.” Lola didn’t elaborate. She shook some salt into the pot.

  I plucked the flour from the cupboard and stood up. “What do you mean, plans changed? I went through all of that with Diego for nothing?” That was the limit. I slammed the cupboard shut and slapped the flour on the counter.

  “I don’t see Ramón,” Rosita said, looking out into the courtyard.

  That traitor. It had all started with him. Now we were at a stalemate. So much to say and do, yet none of it would change the fate of our children.

  Music from the radio outside grew louder. The swing of Sinatra’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” bounced around the kitchen. The smell of cigars seeped in with it.

  “I love that song.” Lola tuned the kitchen radio to the same station.

  “There he is.” Rosita left the window.

  “So what happened?” Lola asked. “Why were we told nothing?”

  “They did tell us,” I said.

  “Not yet,” Rosita cautioned. “I want to talk with Ramón first.”

  “What does he have to do with it?” Lola turned up the flame under the stew pot.

  I settled in to tell the damning tale, but Rosita preempted me. “Chita, not another word until I talk to Ramón.”

  I imagined the scene—her tears, always, her tears, his blustering. Spare me. “Go then.” I could wait until she went out into the courtyard.