The Last Train to Key West

by Chanel Cleeton

  The main room is dark, save for the glow of a kerosene lamp in the corner.

  The front door shuts behind me.

  The scent of bourbon hits me first, turning my stomach, the air heavy with it as though if you lit a match everything would simply go up in flames.

  I swallow, cursing the loudness of my heavy footsteps as I head toward the bedroom.

  I stifle a scream.

  Tom’s positioned right in front of the doorway, his body half in the shadows, a bottle dangling from his fingertips, half empty.

  “Who walked you home?” he demands.

  I quake at the boom in his voice, the sound of it bouncing off the walls of the little cottage, seeping inside me as the tremor grows.

  “Wh-What are you talking about?”

  How could he know?

  “I heard voices.” He rises from the rickety chair, the bottle abandoned with a thunk on the floor, the amber-colored liquid spilling over the floorboards.

  It’ll be hell to clean later, but Tom doesn’t like a mess.

  He moves closer, crowding me, his frame blocking out the light thrown off by the kerosene lamp. “Don’t you lie to me.”

  Between the late hour, the full day of work, and the babe, my response doesn’t come as quickly as it should, my mind and body sluggish.

  “There were men outside Ruby’s when I left work. They were drunk. Hassling me.” I take a deep breath. Tom, like the rest of the town, distrusts the veterans. “Men working on the highway. One of Ruby’s regulars saw it happen and came to my aid. He offered to walk me home so they wouldn’t follow me.”

  Tom takes a step toward me, and I move without realizing it, my hip colliding with the sharp corner of the table in the kitchen.

  My heart pounds.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know,” I lie.

  “You said he was a local.”

  “He’s a regular,” I reply, dancing around the “local” term.

  “Who are his people?” Tom challenges. “Perhaps I need to have a word with him.”

  “I don’t know. He mostly keeps to himself.”

  “Now that’s not exactly true, is it? Seems like he wanted something with my wife.”

  “I’m nine months pregnant,” I whisper, the plea in my voice unmistakable.

  When we first married, I thought it was sweet that he worried about me so much, that he cared where I was. But the more out of control the world around us became, the tighter Tom held on to things at home, until he became more jailer than husband and I realized it wasn’t sweet at all.

  “It was nothing,” I babble. “He was doing me a kindness.”

  Tom raises his hand.

  “Please.”

  I scan the room, searching for something to use to defend myself, something—

  Tom drops his hand to his side.

  “He take an interest in you?”

  My head wobbles, my teeth chattering.

  He moves so quickly, his reflexes so fast, that I wonder if he’s been putting on this whole time, if he isn’t nearly as drunk as he’s pretending to be.

  His big hand spans the width of my neck, lifting my chin up so our gazes meet.

  “Don’t you lie to me.”

  “I’m not. I’m not lying. I promise. Just let me go.”

  “Who do you belong to?”

  Tears spring in my eyes, fear and shame surging inside me.

  “You.”

  “That’s right. You better not forget it. I hear stories about you carrying on with men at Ruby’s, and you’ll never see that baby again. Do you understand me?”

  The pressure of his hand against my face jerks my head up and down, until he releases me with an impatient noise.

  I take a step back, the reprieve from his hands a welcome relief, and Tom grabs me, clamping down on my wrist, his fingers digging into the old bruises.

  He likes to do this: let me go so that I have a taste of freedom, only to snap the leash again so I am back under his control.

  “It was wrong,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have let him walk me home. I’m sorry.”

  Tom’s nails dig into my skin, the scent of him sending a wave of nausea through me, my stomach rebelling at the odor of fish, salt, sweat, and bourbon.

  Please don’t hurt the baby.

  Tom’s grip tightens, and my knees buckle, my vision narrowing, a tunnel of blackness greeting me as the pain becomes more than I can bear.

  “You won’t see him again. He tries to talk to you again, you tell me and I’ll handle it.”

  I don’t bother arguing with Tom about the difficulty of my keeping such a promise, the likelihood that John will come into the restaurant again; at this point, I would say or do anything to stop the pain shooting through me.

  His grip on my wrist tightens.

  I fall to the floor, cradling my stomach with my free hand, and Tom releases me.

  The baby kicks.

  A tear trickles down my cheek.

  How did we go from a couple embracing on the docks, love beating in my breast, to this?

  “I’m leaving tomorrow for a fishing trip. I’ll be back in a few days.”

  His absence brings an immediate sense of relief, a gulp of air in my lungs, but still—

  “The storm—”

  I try to tread carefully, existing in half sentences and thoughts, whittling down my existence to the least likely to make him angry.

  “Storm’s nowhere near us,” he retorts. “I heard the latest report. It’ll be fine.”

  The sad thing is that as much as I want him gone, I’m also afraid. What if the baby comes early, what if—

  He must have read the fear in my eyes, because his expression darkens. “Who puts food on this table?”

  “You do,” I whisper.

  “Damn straight.”

  The floor is hard against my back, and I try to push myself up into a seated position, try to make my legs move, but the weight in my stomach upends my balance and pushes me back again.

  Tom makes a sound of disgust and gives me his hand, and despite the desire to turn away, I take it, letting him pull me off the ground. When I’m standing on my own, I pull out the change, still stained with John’s blood when those men stabbed him.

  I place the coins in Tom’s outstretched palm, fighting the wave of anger, the desire to take back the money and squirrel it away somewhere.

  He does a quick scan and slips the change into his pocket.

  “I’m going to bed,” he announces, and after nine years of marriage, I know I am to follow him.

  We fall into our evening routine in silence, our earlier fight fading into the background.

  I wince as I remove my clothes, slipping the worn cotton nightgown over my head, my wrist throbbing with the effort.

  There’s a moment when my head hits the pillow that I fear Tom will roll over and face me, pressing himself on me, his body looming over mine. At this point in my pregnancy, our marital intimacy has lessened considerably, but there’s still enough of a spark of fear inside me to have me lying as still as possible, regulating my breathing, hoping he believes I have fallen asleep.

  My husband doesn’t take “no” for an answer.

  Minutes pass, a creak of the bed, a rustling of the sheets, and I hear it—a soft snore, and another, and another.

  I stare up at the ceiling, the baby moving around in my belly, the pain in my wrist lessening not one bit. The night is quiet, the water a distant sound, the creatures that inhabit the mangroves surrounding our cottage scurrying around. I rise from the bed with a wince, padding to the front cottage window, my uninjured hand pressing against the small of my back to relieve some of the pressure from my midsection. I stare out at the sky, up at the moon, the stars, imagining a life as far away fro
m here as I could get.

  Paradise.

  Through the trees, I see a spark of flame—like the end of a cigarette.

  It’s too dark to make out the man holding it, but I know it’s him, and I wonder if John can see me in the moonlight, if he knows I’m standing here watching him.

  I remain at the window far longer than I should, far longer than is wise, before returning to my place beside Tom in bed, before I close my eyes, and I remember the sensation of holding that post, of swinging with all my might, and the satisfying crack of hearing the wood strike Henry’s skull as I watched him fall to the ground.

  When I dream, I am back in the woods outside Ruby’s Café, and this time Tom is on the ground, blood seeping from his skull, his eyes lifeless, as I stand over him, the post in my hand and vengeance coursing through my veins.

  Nine

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1935

  Mirta

  When I come downstairs for breakfast the next morning, Anthony is seated at the spacious dining room table, a cup of coffee in front of him, a newspaper folded beside his plate. Someone has cut an arrangement of flowers and put them in a vase at the center of the table, the china and linens the same creamy color.

  Anthony glances up from the paper with a smile.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” I reply.

  Where did he sleep last night after he left me alone in the bedroom?

  He rises as I walk toward the table, pulling out the chair across from his for me. Before I sit, Anthony leans forward, the scent of his aftershave filling my nostrils, and kisses my cheek.

  “You look beautiful,” he whispers, his lips grazing my ear.

  My cheeks heat. “Thank you.”

  I sit down in the chair, waiting while he slides it forward, the domesticity of the moment rattling me once more. He must be a dozen or so years older than me, but we have, what—forty more years of this? One day, there will likely be children seated at the table with us. I am truly no longer Mirta Perez, but someone else entirely.

  “How did you sleep?” Anthony asks as one of the staff emerges from the kitchen, setting our breakfasts of pancakes, eggs, and bacon in front of us.

  “Well,” I lie, not courageous enough to admit to the inordinate amount of time I spent thinking about our new relationship. “How about you?”

  His lips curve. “As well as could be expected, I suppose. Would you like the paper?” Anthony gestures toward the folded sheet next to his plate.

  In Cuba, my knowledge of current affairs and politics came from my father’s table discussions, from the fear and uncertainty that surrounded our days. It seems wise to learn more about the country I am to inhabit.

  I scan the headlines, my husband’s gaze on me. The paper talks of violence and death. A man named Frank Morgan has apparently started a crime wave in New York, and I can’t help but wonder how often my husband’s name graces the pages of these papers with similar stories about his involvement in such matters.

  I set down the paper.

  “I could get used to this, you know,” Anthony says. “Starting my day with you seated across from me at the table.”

  Gus, the caretaker, walks into the dining room, saving me from formulating a suitable response.

  “I apologize for interrupting your morning,” he says. “I thought you should know—the storm’s getting worse.”

  “Are you worried about it?” Anthony asks him.

  “Can’t say for sure right now. People are boarding windows. ’Course, it could miss us entirely. Right now it seems like it’ll hit closer to Cuba.”

  “We got out of Havana in time, then.” Anthony turns to me. “Do you want to call your family?”

  A lump fills my throat. “I’d like that.”

  Storms are hardly a novel occurrence in Cuba, and while my family will be prepared, I’ve lived through enough hurricanes to fear them.

  “Are we safe here?” Anthony asks Gus. “The Key West newspaper said it’s a few hundred miles away.”

  “We might see some winds, rain. Water will be choppy. You won’t want to take the boat out. Hopefully, the worst we’ll get is a day or so of bad weather. I’ll watch the barometer to see if the pressure falls and keep an ear out on the radio. Talk to some people. The fishermen spend their lives on the water. I’d trust their word over that of the Weather Bureau any day. Worst case if it does get bad, we can board up the windows.”

  In Cuba, the staff handled our storm preparations, but I remember my father’s worry over the damage the storm could do to the sugar crop, his livelihood frequently threatened by weather and politics.

  Gus excuses himself, and we are alone once more.

  “What are your plans for the rest of the day?” Anthony asks me.

  “I haven’t any.”

  “You could walk on the beach again. Better to get in as much good weather as we can.”

  He frames the idea as though we are to spend the day apart, and while his suggestion isn’t uncommon—my father certainly spent his days away from my mother, content to occupy his time with work or his social circle—the notion of being married to a stranger, of welcoming a stranger into my bed, is hardly appealing.

  “Perhaps we could spend some time together today,” I suggest. “Get to know each other better.”

  “I didn’t realize you wanted to know me better—yet.”

  “We’re married. We’re to spend our lives together. It seems only natural.”

  Even if everything about this situation is entirely unnatural.

  “Then what do you want to know?” Anthony asks.

  “How do you picture our lives together? How will we spend our days once we are in New York?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest. This concerns you?”

  “No, I suppose I have a hard time imagining what my days will be like. I always saw myself as a wife, but that was in Cuba. With my family and friends around me. I thought I’d marry one of the boys I grew up with, and we’d move into a house down the street from my parents.”

  “You didn’t want to leave.”

  “I agreed to marry you,” I say evenly, reluctant to untangle the giant gnarl of emotions inside me. It’s not as simple as whether or not I wanted to leave home. The future afforded to me given my family’s fall from grace was a narrow one, and I took the best opportunity I could, even if it’s hardly the future I envisioned for myself.

  “While I enjoyed the time I spent in Havana,” Anthony replies, “my business is in New York, and if I am absent for too long, my enemies tend to get restless, try to move in on what’s mine. I’ve already lingered longer than I should have.”

  A shiver slides down my spine at the word “enemies.”

  “Have you many?”

  “Enemies?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose. You don’t get rich without leaving some bodies along the way.”

  I realize I must have gone pale by the chuckle that escapes his lips.

  “I’ve unsettled you, my little proper society wife.” His gaze narrows speculatively. “I take it you did read some of the articles in the paper. The world I live in really isn’t all that different from politics. People want power because they think it makes them untouchable. They’ll do anything they can to make sure that power is never taken away from them.”

  “Does your power make you untouchable?”

  “No one is untouchable. It would be foolish to believe otherwise. That’s the thing about power—you never have enough. It always keeps you wanting more.”

  “I suppose if you put it like that, it’s not all that different from the social whirl,” I muse, trying to lighten the mood, remembering the unspoken hierarchy in Havana, the power we wielded with a flutter of our skirts and a snap of our fans. Better that than the memories of bodies
on the roadside, insects buzzing around them, the scent of death and decay that comes from power.

  “No, I suppose it isn’t,” Anthony replies. “I watched you out and about in Havana. I saw how heads turned when you walked by. Even after your family’s scandal, you were still a force to be reckoned with in the city. You’ll do fine in New York.”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “You will. And at the end of the day, if they don’t like you, it won’t matter. They will respect you.”

  “Because I’m your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must be nice to be so confident,” I remark, my tone dry.

  “It was a hard-fought skill, I assure you.” He leans in as though he’s telling me a secret. “I was rather scrawny when I was younger. I know a thing or two about being powerless, poor, remember it well enough to never want to be in that position again.”

  “And now they all fear you.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “But enough of them.”

  He doesn’t bother contradicting me.

  “Still,” I reply. “It sounds exhausting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All those enemies must come at a cost. Do you ever get tired of paying it? Don’t you worry one of your enemies will strike at you?”

  My father believed he was untouchable once, thought Machado’s friendship would keep his fortunes secure. He never saw the coming wave of power that ushered in Batista, never envisioned our futures would end as they have. If the last two years have taught me anything, it’s that your life can change in a moment even if you never saw it coming.

  “This is hardly a conversation for one’s honeymoon. Would you like to go for a short walk?” Anthony says, changing the subject. “I have some business to conduct, but I have a few minutes beforehand.”

  “I didn’t realize your business interests were significant here.”

  “It’s a useful shipping route.”

  What is he shipping?

  “Are we to have the sort of marriage where we confide in each other? Tell each other our secrets?” I ask.