"Cuba Libre"

[fiefoe]

Leonard Elmore chose a pretty obscure (to me) historical backdrop for this tale, and the end result is not quite as jaunty as I would've wished from him.

• * We go to the bank to open a savings account and the bank refused him. I asked the manager, was it on account of Red being Warm Springs Apache? The manager become snotty and one thing led to another. . . .”
  “You robbed the bank to teach him manners.”
  “Red was about to shoot him.”
  “Speaking of shooting people,” Charlie Burke said, prompting his friend the convict.
• “I remember it being green and humid, nothing like this hardscrabble land. Cuba, you can always find shade when you want some. The only thing ugly are the sugar mills, black smoke pouring out the chimneys. . . .”
• “You aren’t selling horses.”
  “What am I doing?”
  “I wouldn’t be surprised you’re running guns,” Tyler said. He watched Charlie Burke turn his head to spit a stream. “You are, aren’t you? Jesus Christ, you’re filibustering, and that’s against the law.”
  Now Charlie Burke was shaking his head. “I’m not joining the fight or stirring up insurrection, that’s filibustering. I’m delivering merchandise, that’s all, as a business. This trip, a hundred and fifty shotguns. Two hundred Smith & Wesson .44s, both the regular model and the Russian. Like the one you have if I’m not mistaken, except these are copies made in Spain and shipped to Mexico. I’m also delivering a couple hundred Krag-Jorgensen carbines, five hundred rounds for each weapon, and we’re throwing in a pile of machetes picked up used.”
• “Come on—why me?”
  “This business makes me edgy and you have nerve.”
  “You think I’ve done it?”
  “No, but you’ve rode the high country and had a price on your head. I feel if I’m gonna break the law I ought to have a partner knows what it’s like,” Charlie Burke said, “somebody that’s et the cake.”
• Tyler felt himself waking up from what had been his life among cowhands and convicts, neighbor to reservation people once nomads, on occasion visiting bartenders and whores who passed for old friends. It seemed a thinly populated life to what he saw here, this mix of people and sounds and colors in a place he imagined Africa might be like: familiar smells, like the coffee, and customs that never changed. It was a country run by soldiers from another land and worked by people bought and sold only a dozen years ago, slavery not abolished here until ’86—a fact he’d forgot until reading Harper’s at the Charles Crooker reminded him, made him realize all those people working at his father’s sugarhouse and in the fields had been slaves. These dockhands too.
• In Galveston he had mentioned the cigar box to Mr. Fuentes and the little mulatto knew exactly who it was. “Yes, of course, Captain-General Valeriano Weyler, recalled to Spain only last year. Spanish, despite his name, more often called the Butcher, the one who put thousands of people—no, hundreds of thousands in concentration camps to die. A terrible man,” Fuentes said, “but not a bad smoke.”
• “If you feel like it,” Tavalera said, knowing this young man as he had known dozens before him. “You say about me for your companions to hear, He’s from Africa. The same as saying, What does he know of anything? I admit it, I was born there— why not?—in the penal colony at Velez de la Gomera, where my father was superintendent. And I returned to Africa with the Guardia, to Melilla during the war with the Iqar’ayen Rifs. Of course you know of that war. But let me ask you something. Can you imagine what it’s like to cut off a man’s hands?” He paused. “To put out his eyes with a bayonet?” Again he paused. “To bury a man alive in the sand?”
• * Joined when he was sixteen, inspired by stories his uncle Hartley Webster told. Uncle Hartley a marine who’d fought in Korea in the spring of ’71: steamed up the Han River aboard a gunboat and beat hell out of the Koreans for mistreating American merchant seamen, killed two hundred fifty of them and lost only two marines. Virgil joined up looking for action: guarded a quarantine camp at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, for people who’d come off ships immigrating here and were found to have cholera. He guarded Southern Pacific railroad yards during a strike and marched in the dedication ceremony of Grant’s Tomb. He got in trouble once in Venezuela, there protecting a consulate, part of a marine detachment off the USS Chicago. They all got drunk and the captain was court-martialed.
• * “We’re here to protect American citizens and their property.”
  “Protect them from what?”
  “Unenlightened people with anti-American aims. Or,” the career marine said, “you could say we’re here in case it looks like the Cubans are gonna take over their own country before we get a chance to do it ourselves. But don’t tell nobody. That’s between Captain Sigsbee, the Secretary of the Navy and Bill McKinley.”
• Christ, men, blown out of the fo’c’sle, and he felt the ship heave again as the bow came down to settle in the water, listing to port and swinging his hammock close to the rail. He heard screams now of men in pain and screams for help, the sound of the screams clear and then dying out, fading, a quiet settling, and he became aware of a faint whistling-hissing sound, air being forced out of the ship by the water rising inside her.
• “I believe that was the correspondent who wrote Facts and Fakes about Cuba, a very popular book in America. Did you read it?”... “It’s very good. It tells how much of the war news is made up in Tampa and Key West, the correspondents too lazy to come here.”
• “Why? Because we’ll be at war. The Americans have an excuse now, the ship blowing up.”
  “Did we do it?” Rudi said.
  “Who do you mean we? We can be we with the Spanish when it suits us, but not when they blow up an American battleship.”
• They walked past a pair of Guardia posing on a street corner and Tyler said to Fuentes, “My dad called them barbarians, thugs, I forgot what else. What do you call them?”
  “Usually,” Fuentes said, “I call them sir. The Guardia are known for their loyalty, devotion to duty and lack of feelings. Imagine an insensitive brute having absolute power over people he considers his inferiors. Since they see themselves as infallible, I have no reason to antagonize them.”
• “The landowners, even Americans,” Tyler said, “are for Spanish rule, happy with the way things are. If you’re sitting on top, why change it? And since you work for one of the biggest landowners in Cuba . . .”
• Stephen Crane: “Crane wrote ‘The Open Boat’ about a shipwreck; it’s based on an experience that actually happened on one of his trips here to Cuba. ‘The Open Boat’ offers some of the most vivid writing I’ve ever read. It isn’t flowery, if you know what I mean; it’s stark, you might say, without a single wasted word. I say that,
• Read ‘The Death of Rodriguez’ that ran last month, about the execution of a young rebel. The boy falls dead before the firing squad and Harding Davis wrote that at that moment the sun ‘shot up suddenly from behind them in all the splendor of the tropics, a fierce red disc of heat, and filled the air with warmth and light. . . . The whole world of Santa Clara seemed to stir and stretch itself and to wake to welcome the day just begun.’ “
• “Most likely, yes. If I’m not, I’ll see you get your money. Now you can take my word on that,” Boudreaux said, still with the nice tone, “or you can put your horses on the boat and take them home. I’ll leave it up to you, all right?” <> Tyler watched Charlie Burke accept this with a shrug, twenty years ramrod of a big cow outfit, a man who never took an ugly word off any of his hands, here he was backing down from this man in evening clothes, a wave in his hair.
• She had always been candid with Neely about her role as Boudreaux’s mistress, saying it was like a free lunch, she could have anything she wanted as long as it was Cuban.
• * Boudreaux said, “Mr. Tucker,” in that soft way he spoke, “if what you say is true and you were a soldier in the army of the United States, you think I would expect you to be willing to give your life for my personal interests?”
  Amelia’s comment: “You bet he would. Except Rollie wouldn’t care who wins, Spain or us. Either way he’ll still be sitting on top. Rollie’s fear is the Cubans will end up running their own country, the Creoles and all those black people who used to be slaves. He knows they wouldn’t put up with him.”
• He had interviewed a British military observer, a young subaltern named Churchill who had high praise for Cuban cigars but not much to say about the tactics of this war: “If the Cubans wish to convince the world that they have a real army, they must fight a real battle.”
• “Do we care?” Palenzuela said, looking at Rudi, who didn’t answer. “Where will they put them,” the chief said now, “the Morro or La Cabaña, one or the other, uh?” <> “The Morro for political prisoners,” Rudi said. “It’s full of people no one has heard from—some since the time of the Ten Years War or even before that. How old is the Morro, three, four hundred years old?”
• “What’s the matter?”
  Rudi shook his head. “Nothing.”
  “They become like wives,” Palenzuela said. “In time it’s hard to tell the difference. You don’t know what I mean, do you?”
  “I know one was enough for me,” Rudi said.
• “Five years ago in Spanish Africa,” Tavalera said to Tyler, “the Iqar’ayen declared war on us for desecrating their mosque. Some soldiers, they said, pissed on it. The Iqar’ayen are Rifs, a Berber tribe.” Tavalera began to smile. “Everyone in Spain loved that war. For that war twenty-nine generals came to Africa, hastened to Africa, for here was a pure war without economic rewards. The only thing we fought for that time was the honor of Spain. There was not even territory to be gained, only national pride and honor.
• * Now, according to every paper I’ve seen, enthusiasm for war is sweeping the country. Buffalo Bill said thirty thousand Indian fighters could run the dons out of Cuba in sixty days. Jesse James’s brother Frank wants to bring over a bunch of cowboys and settle the matter, and six thousand Sioux braves are more than ready to take Spanish scalps. The Sioux, of all people.”
• “Altagracia said the only people they assassinated were informers. In fact, she said there was no such organization as the Black Hand. The Civil Guard made up the story so they could persecute the anarchists.”
  “You mean prosecute.”
  “I mean persecute.”
• He told her both men and women in Cuba prided themselves on having small feet. <>He told her that while Cubans were basically honest, they tended to become homicidal when jealous.
• * “They need the two men to stand on something,” Fuentes said, “they can pull out from under their feet when they hang them. One of the soldiers say a baggage cart. No, too high. Somebody say lay a hogshead on its side. No, much too high. A trunk, the kind you put clothes in. No, too high standing up, too low on its side. Whatever they say is that way, either too high or too low. Now somebody say put them on horses. But the horses, running from under them, whose horses you want to use?” <> Novis said, “Hell, yank on the ropes and pull ’em up by hand.”
• “Yes, of course,” Tavalera said. “What we say is, why take a chance of making a mistake?” He turned from the window, motioned his men out of the way as he approached the two prisoners, removed the ropes from around their necks and placed the men one in front of the other, as though to march them off the platform. Now he drew his revolver and shot each one, bam bam, like that, in the right temple.
• “It’s true,” Fuentes said, “even though the word matanzas means slaughtering place.”...
  “For the slaughter of livestock,” Fuentes said, “cows to make biftec for here and for Havana. I don’t mean the slaughter of the Indians who lived here—“..
  “Or the twenty-three thousand last year, the reconcentrados who were made to starve to death, kept in filthy sheds along the Punta Gorda.”
• I was with them when the Spanish came and we had no dry powder to use. Narciso Lopez was taken to the Morro and made to perish by the garrote, strangle to death, God rest his soul. One hundred were sent to Spanish dungeons in Africa and some of us were kept here to wait to be tortured. I think of it that way, because to wait makes it worse. The Spanish hung us on a wall, the iron ring twelve feet from the floor, sometime upside down, and beat us with cane, our wrists bound so tight our hands swell to twice their size,” ... You know what I mean by stocks? They hold you by the neck and the wrists, like in the old pictures you see of your Puritans. But this one they put you in face-up to the sun and leave you there all day. They said it was worse than the garrote, looking at the sun like that, and always the person couldn’t stand it and became blind and insane.
• She said, “How do you keep from shaking?” <> “Hold a gun in your hand, the pistol I put in your saddlebag. Listen, you see people killed before. In the hotel, the one who tried to shoot the cowboy, and the two at Benavides, the two innocent men Tavalera shot. Remember those two if you don’t want to shake so much. Use what you have already seen to hold your anger where you can feel it and that way you don’t become so scared. You want to be in this war, come with us.”
• Virgil got up and then Tyler, still looking at Amelia Brown, this girl with no business being here saving his life. Now she came over, her eyes locked on his and it was strange, this being only the third time they’d seen each other, that taking her in his arms, holding her, seemed the natural thing to do. But that’s what he did, opened his arms and felt her press against him like they were long-lost sweethearts. It made him wonder who was saving who, but felt so good he didn’t make a fuss, ask her what was going on.
• “All the way here,” Fuentes said, “you see what General Weyler left before he went home. Nothing. Like your General Sherman when he marched across Georgia to the sea. Listen, battles are fought over the capture of food, the hope that to win will mean something to eat.”
• “I just spent two months with a bunch of old patriots. I heard all the stories and I can be inspired by them,” Tyler said, “or by Charlie Burke. Charlie, standing before that firing squad, turning his head to spit.”
  “To show his contempt,” Amelia said.
  “No, it was so he wouldn’t be lying there dead with tobacco juice dribbled down his chin. Charlie Burke had more sand than any man I know. Or outside of those old patriots.”
• “He’s changed. Not a lot, but I can tell.” <> Tyler drew on the cigarette, giving himself time, not understanding why she didn’t see it. He said, “You’re used to him looking at the ground when he speaks. Maybe not to you but to most people and that’s how you think of him, that nice old man. But see, now he doesn’t have to act nice if he doesn’t feel like it, same as you and me. He’s joined to fight the war again, picked up a gun and it makes him a different person.”
• “I don’t cook,” Amelia said to Fuentes. “Let’s understand that right now.” She turned and was in the house. <> Fuentes shrugged, acting innocent.
• She said, “I know he’ll keep it for himself. I’ve known it since Victor told us about him. It’s his way, the man was a bandit. The war ends, you think the Black Plague is gonna settle down and farm? What I have to do now, when the money’s delivered, get hold of it before Islero hides it away.”
  “Then what?”
  “I don’t know. Run, I guess. What would you do?”
  It reminded Tyler of Charlie Burke saying why he wanted him along: a partner who knew what it was like to ride the high country, have a price on his head.
• That’s what he did. Sat waiting for dark in an empty office down in the quarry, thinking about his night with Amelia Brown, hearing her say, “Do you love me, Ben?” And his own voice in the dark saying, “Yes, I do.” And then Amelia asking, “Can you say it?” Something he’d never done in the thirty-one years of his life. He had shot four men—no, five— had taken their lives, but had never said “I love you” to a girl. Or to anyone.
• Boudreaux put on a smile—so Novis did too— then turned it off. <> “Dewey went all the way to the Philippines, a distance you tell me of ten thousand miles, to protect our interests in the Far East and did a bang-up job, got it done in less than a day, a few hours’ work. Think of it, Novis.”
• One of the women who had waited brought a machete from the folds of her skirt. She told Lourdes that Amelia had taken the officer back to the house she was using. The second woman came out of the kitchen with a machete in one hand, a butcher knife in the other. Lourdes was fifty-two and loved her dead husband. She chose the machete.
• But that bushwhacking was a bunch of shit; he could sit here all day waiting. Hell, flush ’em, same as you drive strays from a brush thicket. Tyler rubbed the dun’s nose, saying, “Mind me now, honey, what I tell you.” And stepped into the saddle thinking, as the realization came to him: You call this animal a sweet name but’ve never called Amelia honey or dear or sweetheart. What’s wrong with you?
• * “I have nothing against Teddy Roosevelt personally, you understand. He was an inspiring leader once in the fight, truly a brave man. What I resent is his getting all the glory, much of it thanks to Harding Davis, whom you’d think was Teddy’s personal press agent. That Eastern Old School crowd hung together in ways you’d have thought the war was staged for their benefit and Teddy won it almost single-handedly.” Neely paused. “I take it you understand the significance of San Juan Hill.”
• “I saw it as ironic that regular-army Negro soldiers, members of the 9th and 10th Colored Cavalry, were made to unload the Rough Riders’ gear from the ship while Teddy and his volunteers, amateurs, really, marched off to meet the enemy. And when they walked into an ambush, at Las Guasimas, it was the colored boys along with the 71st Infantry who came along to prevent Teddy’s boys from being wiped out. How could something like this happen? Incompetent leadership.
• “We were poorly armed,” Neely said, “compared to the dons. Their Mausers fired smokeless rounds; the Springfields most of our boys had gave off plumes of white smoke when fired, revealing the rifleman’s position.”
• * “I asked Tavalera, where’s the money now? You understand, since Amelia obviously doesn’t have it. Lionel said he didn’t know. I asked him when it was he became aware of this conspiracy. On that score he’s vague or makes no sense. I think he found out about it early on and planned to grab the loot for himself. Why not? So I asked Amelia. I said tell the truth and all will be forgiven, a lesson learned with relatively little harm done.”.. Boudreaux shrugged. “If you like. I asked Amelia what happened to the money, and you know what she told me? Victor has it, my segundo. Victor? If it’s true and you appreciate irony, then you must see this as a glaring example, the humble servant rides off with forty thousand dollars of his master’s hard-earned cash.”
• “Clara Barton came to the field.”