Cuba Libre

by Elmore Leonard

  "Yes sir?"

  "All you had to do was go fifty-four miles with a hammock under your protection and you failed, miserably. What I'd like you to tell me, Novis, is what you're going to do to make up for it."

  Novis said, "You think I'm ignorant, don't you?" Boudreaux paused only a moment, maybe reading the remark, then shrugged in his tailored guayabara shirt. "Being ignorant, Novis, is nothing to be ashamed of. It merely indicates a lack of formal education. There are certain things I'm ignorant of myself."

  Like he was saying, even if that might be hard to believe. Facing Boudreaux, Novis could see out the corner of his eye the Mauser pistol sitting on the railing. Take one step to brush it off the rail. Take another step to pick Boudreaux up and chuck him off this upstairs porch on his head. Do it, Novis thought.

  What stopped him was the look that came into Boudreaux's eyes, like the man saw it coming, about to die or suffer terrible injuries and there was nothing he could do about it. Novis had just a glimpse of the man's helpless fear, but enough to see him in that moment as an ordinary person, Jesus Christ, no better'n anybody else. Shit, all he was, he was rich.

  "You know why I come here," Novis said, and waited.

  "Do you?"

  "No, I don't."

  "On account of you trusted me. If I don't show up here then you might think I took the money, which I didn't. Hell, there could've been dog shit in that hammock for all I knew. I did what I was told and that old man stuck a gun in my side. I told you I got shot at coming here from Benavides? People shooting at me from the hills and I don't even know who they are. I don't know one side from the other--they all look alike to me anyway, greasers do. I think you know, but you don't give a shit who's who or who wins. Is that true?" Boudreaux didn't say anything. "I asked you a question."

  "Do I care who wins the war?" Boudreaux said. "Of course I care. I want us to win."

  "Who do you mean by us, you and your buddies? That's what your lady friend calls 'em, your sugar buddies."

  "She does?"

  "Answer my question. Who's us?"

  "America. We're Americans, aren't we, Novis?" The man getting some of his cocksure manner back.

  "I think you say that on account of us whipping the dons' ass over in the Philippine Islands, and if it's that easy the war's good as done."

  "You make a keen observation," Boudreaux said.

  "Well, I get here, I see you got your gorillas all around the cane fields like they're expecting the mambises to come riding down on them with torches. Well, the mambises I'm told are on our side. So if you're fighting them, what side does that put you on?"

  "Novis, it's not as simple as whose side you're on." "The hell it ain't."

  Boudreaux moved for the first time, turned to the railing and looked out at his estate.

  "Novis, you want to know how I see this situation?"

  He waited, but didn't prompt when Novis didn't say anything.

  "I want us to win," Boudreaux said, "us, our side, and I know it will happen. But if by some act of God we don't win, a simple fact remains, Novis, and that is, I can't lose." He turned to Novis and said, "I'll tell you what: Why don't we go back to Havana and sit it out?"

  Chapter Twenty-Two.

  AMELIA WOULD OPEN HER EYES and see faces looking at her. Sometimes she'd know the faces and sometimes she wouldn't. Most of the time she knew when it was Ben and when it was Victor. She knew Dr. Henriquez; he was handsome and wore a beard. She didn't know the woman who would stand by the cot with an anguished expression and wore a sun hat, always wore the hat, a straw with the edge of the brim turned up in front. Just the edge. Often she saw a Negro face, a woman who was skin and bones named Lourdes. The woman would lean over in her sack dress and Amelia would see the woman's breasts, flat as leather pancakes, or like the flaps on saddlebags, and Amelia would think of the money and want to tell Ben to take it out of the hammock and put it in saddlebags, in case they had to leave in a hurry. She could never remember if she told him. Sometimes she would see a face that was deformed, the face lacking most of its nose. Once while Lourdes was feeding her, Amelia looked over and saw a man in the doorway with enormous legs, like the trunks of mahogany trees. Lourdes said he was her husband, he suffered from the disease elephantiasis. Amelia would burn with fever and lift her head to sip white, watery liquids or feel a spoon pour a bitter drug into her mouth. She would rest her head on the pillow again and see Lourdes's face looking at her, dry patches that were almost white on Lourdes's skin. Amelia had no sense of time. She saw a face she thought was Dr. Henriquez and it confused her, because the anguished woman had told her Dr. Henriquez was gone, taken from her, conscripted into the army of Spain. Now the bearded face came closer and it was Tyler: growing a beard and wearing the clothes of the country, an off-white shapeless suit that belonged to the doctor. Ben seemed different each time she saw him, the beard filling out on his gaunt face, but she knew his eyes; she loved his eyes. He told her he was going native, see if he could look like he belonged. She liked his beard, and when he kissed her forehead, her cheek and then her mouth she knew it was Ben, even if she didn't see his eyes. Ben always close whenever she woke up. She asked about the faces she saw with deformed features; were they real or did she dream them. He told her they were lepers and this was their home, San Lzaro, and she remembered Victor a year ago as they sat astride horses telling about a leper home in Las Villas where he knew a woman. Ben told her there were three small houses behind the main building in the grove of banana trees: the houses, stone with thatched roofs and dirt floors, were for married couples and this one wasn't being used. He told her he stayed with her here, slept in a hammock. Not the hammock full of money; that one was hidden in the thatch of the ceiling. It was Lourdes who cooked and attended her, gave Amelia her quinine and green coconut milk, bathed her each day and helped her manage the chamber pot and into bed again to lie helpless, drained of all her strength. She asked who the white woman was. Ben said her name was Mary Lou but everyone called her Miss Janes. She had come here to help Luis Henriquez, but now he was gone and she didn't know what would happen to her. She wanted to go home, but didn't see how that was possible with the blockade, no ships going to American ports. There were words Amelia heard but didn't always understand, or know if the words were spoken to her or if she heard them in her mind. She would tell Ben she wanted to die and he would put his mouth on hers, and the nm so close that she could see only his eyes, his beardmhe would whisper things to her, saying he loved her, saying she would be his girl forever. She would hear Ben and Victor talking, Victor telling how to find the drug shop, the one he had gone to for quinine. Ben saying nothing was going to happen to him, not now, after all they'd been through. Victor saying yes, but just in case, one day I don't come back. Victor saying the Guardias were in Las Villas everywhere you look. Saying he had not seen Tavalerathank you, God--but was sure he had seen Osma. Ben telling Victor he must be wrong; how could the man still be alive. Victor saying who knows, but when you see him, you know it.

  A morning came and Amelia knew she was recovering, that she could get up from this cot and pretty soon would be herself again. She asked Tyler, "How long have I been lying here?"

  He said, "Just over a month."

  She said, "My God, that long?" And said, "I think in a day or so we'll be able to leave."

  Tyler shook his head. "They're still looking for us."

  She said, "You told me you love me." He said, "I give you my word, I do."

  Osma wondered if the woman they were looking for could be among the women who bathed in the stream.

  It served as a public bath for the poor, a time reserved for men and another for women. From the stone bridge on the Imperial Road, Osma would observe the women through binoculars, searching for pale skin and finding most of it as dark as his own. A few women stripped to the waist to bathe; the rest removed almost none of their clothes, allowing parts of their bodies to remain filthy. Some would do their laundry along the edge of the stream; so
me would sun themselves on the rocks, like lizards. If it was the men's turn Osma would take one look and leave to ride up and down the streets of Las Villas or sit with Tavalera, who said they had to be here still. But where? They had searched the hospital--Osma believing the woman to be ill---churches, a girls' school, hotels, inns, the homes of people suspected of being mambi sympathizers, and several estates close to the city.

  The Guardias Civiles stood in pairs in the shade of porticoes and galries, inspecting all who passed. Osma saw this as no different-than what Guardias always did. They stood about to be looked at, but no one dared look at them except Osma. He would walk up to a pair and see them shuffle in their boots or cock a hip to one side as he came, getting ready for him. He'd ask them, "Have you seen any gringo cowboys today? One tried to put a hole in me"--Osma touching his side--"but his bullet only took off some fat, here, that I don't need."

  Tavalera was seldom found at the Guardia Civil barracks, on the property of the governor's palace. Word had come from Havana ordering him to bring his corps back to the capital. He wired his reply saying a spy had informed him of a mambi plan to attack Las Villas and he insisted on being here when they came. It could be true. At any rate it was the story he used to remain here and search for the old man, the woman and the cowboy. He had moved into a house that suited him, keeping on the retired couple who lived there as his servants. In the evening he would sit in the garden and drink whiskey, sometimes with Osma, the major no longer wearing the bandage around his head. Some of the things he said while drinking:

  "When we find them, they'll be right under our nose all the time. We'll wonder why we didn't think to look there as soon as we came."

  "We should look for the dun horse. Perhaps he sold it to someone here."

  "When we think we see him, look again, because he will have changed his appearance."

  "Look for the spurs he wears. Or listen for them."

  "He could be posing as someone else, not American, perhaps Inglds. But he won't speak the same as the Inglds."

  Tavalera was no longer eager to talk about the war or to find his place in it. He said there had been a naval engagement in the Philippines and a small one off Cienfuegos. He said it required months of planning to assemble an army. Spies had reported ships waiting at Port of Tampa and the movement of troops there from other parts of America. He said there was still time before an army came.

  "But how long can these three hide and not be seen by anyone? Seven weeks now."

  One evening he spent with Tavalera, Osma drank too much whiskey listening to him. The next day he went to a drug shop for a bottle of Bromo-Seltzer or some stomach bitters. He stood waiting in the shop as the young clerk in a smock told a male customer about an old man who had come in twice to buy Lydia Pinkham medicine. Twice, the only times in the history of the drug shop a man had asked for Lydia Pinkham. The clerk said he wanted to ask the old man if it was for him. It would be funny, but the druggist would say he was disrespectful, even though the old man was mulatto. Several other times, the clerk said, the old man came in to buy quinine.

  Osma said to the clerk, "Several times, uh?" thinking of the woman he had thought was ill by the way she rode her horse--weeks ago, but a picture of it still clear in his mind: her head lolling up and down with the horse's gait. "What was the quinine for, malaria?"

  The clerk said, "No, yellow fever."

  "I heard you don't have yellow fever here."

  "Not many cases, no."

  "Do you know him, this old mulatto?"

  The clerk said he didn't, and Osma asked when he was in last. The clerk said oh, perhaps two weeks ago. He came in three times for the quinine and each time was two weeks from the time before. "One of the times," the clerk said, "he wanted another medicine also, but now I can't remember what it was."

  Osma said, "So you think it's time for him to come in again?"

  "It would seem so."

  "All that quinine, the patient must be better by now. Wouldn't you think?"

  "He should continue to take it," the clerk said, "to make sure. And if I think of the other medicine he bought, I'll tell you."

  "That's all right," Osma said, and went to find Tavalera.

  Chapter Twenty-Three.

  THE LEPER HOME SAT IN A JUNGLE of banana trees: an acre of trees ten feet high fronting on the Imperial Road by several acres deep, extending back to a creek where a rickety structure stood among cottonwoods, an old hay barn from another time. They stabled the horses here, water and graze close to the shelter. Every day Tyler would go back there to look at the horses, once in a while rubbed them down and gave them a hunk of sugarcane to chew on. They kept their tack in the shelter, ready to throw on saddles and ride out if the search for them ever came too close.

  Tyler was with the horses when Fuentes appeared, the old man dressed for town, wearing a necktie with his coat and hat, saddlebags over his shoulder. "One last trip to the drug shop," Fuentes said, taking his revolver from his waist and slipping it into a saddlebag.

  "Amelia looks to be out of the woods," Tyler said. "Why take the chance if she doesn't need anything?" "Yes, she's been helping the woman this morning, that Miss Janes, and appears well, but you can't be sure. Listen, I hear the troops in Las Villas are going to Oriente, where they expect your army to come. So now the risk is nothing to speak of. If we going to leave soon I should get more quinine."

  "You're tired of sitting around, that's all."

  "Maybe that's it, tired of doing nothing after doing so much, uh?" He slipped the bridle over his horse's muzzle.

  "Did you think we would make it through all that?"

  "I thought I came here to sell horses."

  "And some guns," Fuentes said, "that put you in prison and what happens, a pretty girl gets you out. When Amelia told you of the money, did you think she wanted to steal it?"

  "We don't see it as stealing."

  "Whatever pleases you to call it. But were you surprised?"

  "At first, but not once I got to know her. She wanted to, I believe Amelia could rob banks and make a good living."

  "She's young," Fuentes said, "as you are. The two of you have fifty years to do what you want. I look in the future, is not so clear. Oh, I see a nice house, a garden. I see a woman who's not old but not young either, one who's just right for me. I sit down in my house and for the rest of my life the woman waits on me and I don't move."

  "I can't see you sitting still."

  "Well, once in a while I think of it and take the woman to bed. That's what I'm going to do with my life after this, nothing."

  Fuentes saddled the horse as he spoke, Tyler watching him pull up on the cinch strap and loop it through the ring. He said, "Did you ever think I might run off with the money, being a bank robber at one time?"

  Fuentes looked at him now. "You? Of course not, you are a man of honor. And you have Amelia. Could you think of leaving her? You be crazy."

  "I've wondered if she'll leave me."

  "You are crazy, I mean to think that. You going to get married and be together always forever." "I don't know about that." "She think so, she told me." "She did?"

  "Why you so surprised?"

  "I haven't asked her."

  "What is that? Some things you know without asking. I would know it even if she don't tell me."

  "That we'll get married?"

  "Yes, of course." Fuentes glanced over. "It's nothing to be afraid of."

  Tyler watched him throw on the saddlebags, more of a bulge to them than that Colt that he'd slipped into one side.

  "What've you got in there, clothes?"

  "A poncho for the rain."

  "The sky's clear blue, all the way up."

  "You don't know Cuba, not yet."

  "The way you're talking," Tyler said, "you make it sound like this business is over with and there's nothing to worry about."

  "We close to it. Listen, yesterday I saw a man on the road I know from old times. He tells me of an American ship, the Eagle,
not a big one but I don't know what kind, I think has a 6-pound gun. The ship is blockading the harbor of Cienfuegos off Colorados Point. A Spanish torpedo boat, the Galicia, goes out to fight it and the Eagle blows the smoke pipe from the Galicia and destroys its boiler. Listen, whenever the panchos try to stand before the Americans they can't do it. It will happen that way when your army comes--my friend say on the south coast of Oriente, near Santiago de Cuba. They don't have time for us here no more, even the Guardias of Tavalera will be going."

  "But you saw Osma."

  "That was some time ago. Listen, I know him. If Osma don't have to fight, why should he?"

  They walked back through the banana forest, Fuentes leading his horse, to the house where Amelia stayed.

  "I could grow this fruit," Fuentes said. "That doctor say they ready to pick in eight months from the time you plant, and you can make as much as fifteen hundred dollars an acre."

  "You said you were gonna just sit."

  "Yes, I have my woman pick the bananas."

  Amelia came out, a hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun: Amelia looking pale and scrawny in a faded blue dress too big for her. Fuentes told her she never looked more beautiful and she touched her crop of short hair and seemed to pose to show them her profile, a woman in an advertisement, her slender nose in the air. Amelia almost herself again.

  Tyler watched them together, Fuentes giving Amelia a hug and kissing her cheek. Tyler watched the old man step into his saddle, and as he rode out past the main house toward the road, raise his hand to wave.

  Amelia came over to take Tyler's arm and press herself against him. They watched Fuentes turn into the road.

  "That's the first time he's ever waved," Tyler said. "It's like he's saying goodbye."

  "Victor sometimes shows a sense of drama," Amelia said.

  "He offers a fond farewell on the chance that, I guess after all we've been through together, we might not see him again." "Or he doesn't expect us to." "Why wouldn't he?"

  Tyler stared at the road, empty now.

  "He's an old patriot, and he left here armed. I think he has some kind of scheme in mind, maybe even thinking to shoot somebody."