by Marcial Gala
“Me neither, chief,” Pork Chop said. “I’d like to be good, not be messed up in anything, but what can you do, the money’s gone.”
“You said it.”
That morning, I got dressed in the best I had, I waited until La Mimbre opened, and I stood really close to the door; every time I saw a well-dressed, big-time guajiro, I would whisper to him real low, “Wanna buy a motorbike?”
MARIANO MESA GUILLOT, former principal of Rafael Espinosa High School
The smart one was the younger one, Samuel Prince. His brother was only able to retain things, he had a fairly good memory, he was like a filter. But he was just an average student. Prince was brilliant. I taught both of them, and they had very different personalities. Cricket, or, rather, David King, just wanted to fit in, to get along with his classmates and be accepted; he participated in class and was pretty good at sports despite seeming uncoordinated because his limbs were so long. Samuel Prince, on the contrary, was proud, calculating. He never raised his hand, but when you addressed him, Let’s see, Samuel, tell us…, he responded exhaustively. In physical education, he wasn’t one of the worst, either, he could hold his own, especially in track and field, in endurance tests, no one could beat him. But when the trainers wanted to recruit him for the sports-focused high school, he said no. Anyway, I was the principal of that school for thirty straight years, and the best and the worst of everything passed through there, but what those Stuart boys did doesn’t make any sense to me, it’s like a sign of modern times, of what’s to come, if I may. I can’t connect those two young boys I met, whose heads I sometimes patted with my hand, with that; well, it takes my breath away, honestly.
Every person who is born into the world has the right to education and in return has the duty to contribute to the education of others, Martí said, and I tried to educate those young men, to give them a sense of what morals and ethics are, but I failed, because they were rotten. To the core, they were rotten; something was hiding behind that Christianity their parents paraded about—something.
MARIBEL
So Gringo is in a maximum-security prison in Texas, waiting to be wiped out? Now he can spend twenty years on death row because those yanquis, before they give someone the chair, they need to think about it a hundred times over, it’s like they feel sorry for him. But Gringo was evil, evil, he was like a real Cro-Magnon. Do you know what it is to feed human flesh to half of Punta Gorda? I think of it and it turns my stomach, but at least he was considerate enough not to sell it here in the neighborhood; in that respect, he did exercise some control, because, you know, I said to him, “Hey, Gringo, old friend, come on, sell me a little piece and I’ll pay you at the end of the month, I don’t have anything to sink my teeth into, my molars are going to atrophy if I keep eating soy beef.”
“Maribel, that meat’s not good for you, you’ll be allergic,” he said to me the first time, and I kept pushing.
“Come on, old friend, get me a piece.”
“Will you suck me off?”
“Sure.”
But later he said it was a joke, so …
Gringo had a lot to do with what happened with the Stuarts. Since he was interested in Johannes, he became Christian. I saw him show up one day, dressed in clothes like I’d never seen him in before, a gray pair of dress pants and an ivory-colored woven shirt, waiting for the Stuarts to open the door so he could go to temple with them.
GRINGO
The old dumbass let me in; one afternoon, I went to the woodshop where he worked, waited for him to come out, and went up to him.
“Mr. Stuart, I had a vision. I saw Jesus Christ come down a ladder surrounded by angels and say to me, ‘Ricardo Mora Gutiérrez, be a good man, the day is near.’”
I had just bumped off my second two-legged ox and my pockets were stuffed with cash, so when the old man, after talking my ear off for two hours, told me that, regrettably, the Holy Sacrament of the Resurrected Christ had no temple in Cienfuegos, and that the contributions were few, I stuck my hand in my pocket, took out two twenty-dollar bills, and gave them to him right then and there.
“Thank you, may God bless you. Come by tonight, if you can, we’re congregating at María Elizabet’s house.”
“I’ll be there,” I said to him.
It’s not easy to take a guy out, and that second one wasn’t as compliant as the first. He wasn’t interested in motorcycles; he was a guajiro from Placetas, out in Villa Clara Province, who was looking for a plasma TV. When I told him about my cousin, the sailor who’d just returned from Panama, who had a sixty-four-inch Sony with a clock, USB port, built-in DVD, satellite system, and extended-range remote, he shook his head from side to side and said we should bring it to his friend’s house, where he was staying.
“You’ve got to be crazy. Do you know how heavy a TV that size is, or are you playing dumb? Are you in or what?”
“Don’t try that one on me, mulato; you were selling a motorcycle and now you also have a TV that’s a dream. What are you playing at?”
“Everything and nothing, I have connections. I can even sell you a house on the Prado, an apartment in Pueblo Griffo, or an Alaskan husky, if you want. Do you want to see some dykes getting it on? Do you?”
“How much would that run me?”
“They’re two girls from Havana who just got here. They’re on the lam; they don’t have a dime and are practically giving themselves away. For thirty dollars, you can see them get it on and fuck them both later.”
“Damn, for that price, I can fuck seven times in my hometown, that’s expensive.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is first-class tail, one of them was Tosco’s girlfriend. I bet you don’t know who Tosco is.”
“Of course I know. The musician.”
“Bingo, but you’re not man enough; go back to Placetas and keep fucking pigs.”
“No need to get rude.”
“Go to hell,” I said to him, and turned my back, and then it was the guy coming after me.
“Don’t get like that, mulato, let’s go see the TV, and on the way I’ll take a look at those chicks. They’re not black, are they? Because, well, no offense, but I don’t touch black girls.”
“No way, they’re both white; the only mulata is the other one.”
“The other one?”
“Yeah, the one who was a model in Varadero, a mulata with green eyes and hair all the way down her back. But that one isn’t into dykes.”
“How much does that go for?”
“More or less the same.”
“A black girl costs more than two white girls? No offense.”
“That’s the rate, what do you want me to do?”
“Talk to them, all my money is going to the TV.”
“I don’t know, you know how girls are. If I say something to them, they might think I want to pull a fast one, and then they blow me off and that’s not good for me.”
“Talk to them.”
“Okay, but I’m not promising anything. Let’s go,” I said.
And he followed me like a lamb to Pork Chop’s house. What he had in his pockets didn’t even amount to a thousand dollars, of which I gave two hundred to Pork Chop, and we got another four thousand Cuban pesos for the meat because the guy was kind of skinny, although luckily he was tall and had good legs. When I pulled the Makarov on him, I couldn’t keep him from screaming, but he let himself get tied up without a fuss and said to me, “I knew this was a con, that’s what I get for doing business with you blacks, but I swear that I am going to look for you to the ends of the earth, and you’re going to have to give me my money back.”
“Who are you going to look for, kid?” I didn’t say anything else because such naïveté filled me with pity.
I put a rag in his mouth, then sliced his throat. Pork Chop closed his eyes to keep from seeing the blood run out, so I said to him, as a joke, “If they ask you about the screams, tell them you were fucking.”
“No one will hear
anything,” Pork Chop said. “Besides, it was a man’s scream.”
“Homos don’t fuck?”
“Knock it off, Gringo.”
I had to sell the bicycle to get the full amount, but the next morning I was at La Mimbre, trying out one of those motor scooters they make in Villa Clara. It’s funny, I thought, whatever I take from Villa Clara, I pay right back into its economy.
ROGELIO ROCA CUEVA, architect
She didn’t like Gringo, she was a real classy black girl, and although Gringo was a good-looking mulato, well-dressed, who’d swapped his bicycle for one of those motor scooters that hardly go but look really good—despite that she found him ridiculous, she would look at him stone-faced and respond in monosyllables when he talked to her. I went to the Stuarts’ house a lot back then, since Arturo had been named treasurer of the Holy Sacrament congregation and I was gathering funds to build the temple. After they got the permits from the mayor’s office and the Department of Housing, they talked to me about designing the building, and they were punctili-ous, especially Stuart, who would show up to see me every once in a while at the provincial design office where I worked. Sometimes, he brought one of his children with him, usually the younger one, Prince, who back then was an easygoing kid; I think Gringo was the one who ruined him.
GRINGO
I never spoke to him about hunting down two-legged game or about con jobs, it’s not like I was crazy; I only told him that he had to change, that he couldn’t keep blindly believing that idiot father of his, that there was more to life than Christianity and Friday-afternoon fish dinners. I told him that because he was a brilliant kid, you could tell, despite his girliness, and because I knew what he had done to Barbarito, Lupe’s kid, who was really just a useless shit. But, you know, he wasn’t bad to begin with; I told him because I looked at him and thought, This little black kid could end up being president if he sets his mind to it.
GUTS
I wasn’t born bad, what happened was that I didn’t have a head for reading and I’d had several run-ins with the police, and when Pérez Roque and Carlos Lage came in, my uncle got left out of the Central Committee, so when I went to Ariza prison to see Nacho Fat-Lips, who had ended up there for taking a digital camera from an American lady, I told him, “Listen, Nacho, buddy, save a cot for me.”
“I’ll see what can be done, brother,” he said. “Man, it’s terrifying here. There are all these good-looking bugarrones, and I’ve got no reputation to protect me; I’ve got to keep one eye open when I sleep so no one gives it to me up the ass.”
“Shit, man.”
When I got to the neighborhood, I went to see Gringo. He was trying to pass as a Christian, but he didn’t fool me. I waited until he arrived on that bank-manager motor scooter of his, and I went up to him.
“Listen, Gringuito, you were pals with my deceased brother, so I’m going to ask you a favor.”
“Blessings. How much do you need?”
“Listen, Gringo, man, respect, but drop all that and talk to me straight, you don’t need to put on that act with me.”
“Okay then, talk to me.”
“Gringo, asere, I’m this close to going to the hole, and I need some guidance. What can I do so I get respect and no one tries to fuck me up the ass?”
“Easy, you gotta kill someone. And not just anyone: someone who’s been inside, and not just any ex-con, an old kingpin, a well-respected guy, that’s the only way to go into Ariza with a reputation already.”
“Damn, Gringo, you’re a genius, thanks.”
That’s how I started to get screwed up. I told myself, Guts, you’re going to miss the girls and afternoon soccer games, but everyone has to follow his fate, just like Achilles in The Iliad—the only book worth reading, truth be told.
ROGELIO
Around that time, a pastor from Oklahoma arrived. He was a tall black man, gray haired and round bellied; he went to the Stuarts’ house and had a meeting with Basulto, the Holy Sacrament pastor in Cienfuegos, with Arturo and with me. I showed him the plans, he nodded and made just a few suggestions; what we couldn’t agree on was the height of the roof, which he thought should be higher. Our people are charismatic, he said, then we all went to María Elizabet’s, which, since she had been a piano teacher, had a big, tiled yard and a ton of plastic chairs; besides, the brothers in Christ brought whatever chairs were still needed, and at nine at night, when the whole congregation was gathered, the guy from Oklahoma addressed us in pretty clear Spanish. He said it was the first time he’d come to Cienfuegos, but he knew Arturo Stuart from the three times he had been in Camagüey, and we should be happy that a gentleman of such virtue was among us, not to ignore, of course, other sober gentlemen like Ángel Basulto, who, despite his youth, fulfilled to perfection his work as pastor … We should also be thankful for the fine ladies who, led by Carmen Stuart, helped the men carry out good works and the construction of the temple.
“While I’m on the subject, your brothers over at the Holy Sacrament church in Oklahoma hereby donate this modest amount,” the American concluded, and he deposited in Basulto’s hands a round lump that the latter immediately passed on to Arturo Stuart, who was the treasurer.
“Ten thousand dollars is but a small sum to demonstrate our love for you,” the American said, and from the nearly one thousand mouths of those gathered at María Elizabet’s house came a categorical sigh of admiration.
GRINGO
I was there when that old black goat donated the ten thousand dollars, I saw how Arturo Stuart opened the envelope and showed us one hundred hundred-dollar bills. My mouth watered, but I stood up and applauded with the rest of them. Then everyone just had to testify; that is, to reveal Christ’s life-changing power, and the greatest testimony there, of course, was mine.
“Here we have Ricardo Mora Gutiérrez, also known as Gringo, a young man who was following the wicked path of sorcery, who abused alcohol, drugs, was violent, and who was involved in illegal activity, and now thanks to the power of the Word, he ceased to be Gringo in order to be only Ricardo, our brother in God.” All of that was said in one breath by that Basulto, the pastor, a useless shit who wasn’t worth even half my fist; and then he said, “But let’s allow him to be the one who speaks to us of his experience.”
So I had to stand up and walk to the center and tell, for the thousandth time, how I had dreamed of baby Jesus and angels coming down a staircase made all of marble and then, blah-blah-blah, thanks to Brother Arturo Stuart, who guided me, blah-blah-blah, in the bosom of the Lord, blah-blah-blah, I found peace. I even got to feeling happy after letting out that gibberish, since I felt like I was practically Stuart’s son-in-law, and I looked at Johannes and it seemed to me that something beautiful was in her eyes as she looked at me. Later, I told Pork Chop about it.
“Piggy, asere, that chick is starting to love me.”
“That’s great. Pretty soon, you’ll have her. But can I ask you a favor without you getting mad, eh, my friend?”
“Go ahead.”
“Asere, don’t call me Piggy anymore. My name is Salvador Betancourt, and if that seems too long to you, call me Pork Chop, vaya.”
We were at el Ruso’s bar with a Bucanero beer in front of each of us, Piggy dressed almost as nicely as I was, in brand-name jeans, a brand-name shirt, and a pair of Adidas on his hooves.
“Piggy you are and Piggy you’ll be,” I enunciated. “And if you don’t like it, deal with it.”
“You’re fucking impossible, asere.”
“Don’t you know it.”
“We’ve got to take out another one.”
“Oh, really, so who’s going to do it? You?”
“Brother, you know I’m not smooth enough for that, my thing is going to Punta Gorda for you and handing out steaks.”
“So you’re going to waste him.”
“I can’t, man, really, why should I lie to you? I don’t see myself sticking a knife in anyone; I’m too slow for that.”
“So you can’
t take a guy out, but you spend money like it’s water. Don’t tell me you’re broke?”
“I have a lot of expenses.”
“Yeah, screwing around with whores and getting drunk. Save something for a rainy day, this can’t go on forever.”
“If you say so, Gringo.”
“Well, what do you think? That I’m going to spend my days sending Christians to meet their maker? If I do it again, it’ll be ’cause this little motor scooter is rubbing my ass raw, I want a real motorcycle … But we’ll discuss that later, ’cause today, I’m happy. You know, Piggy, that chick is starting to notice me.”
“You think, Gringo?”
A few days ago, that fat minister from Oklahoma came to see me here, on death row. He brought me a Bible with a black cover that I placed with the others, cigarettes, and one of those lemon bars that are an American specialty. I would have preferred he bring me a novel, even if it was in English, but that’s not how these guys from the Holy Sacrament are. At least he entertained me for a while and brought back memories of my time in Cuba. He ended up asking me if I regretted anything. Everything, of course, I said to him, and he smiled in great satisfaction, I was telling him what he wanted to hear, that’s how they are. But when he was leaving, I said to him, “I’m still devoted to Palo.” Of course, he didn’t really understand, but he could tell it was nothing good.
The Devil looks after his own, and in the end, something will happen, and they won’t end up giving it to me, the lethal injection they put in your veins will spoil, and instead they’ll pump me full of heroin—I don’t know, but something will come up. If Pork Chop were here, I would tell him, Piggy, I got screwed over because of love, because of love I started snuffing out guajiros and then I developed a taste for it.