Cuba Libre

NINE

Virgilheard the new one put in here during the night, heard him bumping into hammocks and heard words in Spanish among the chorus of snores-louder snores than you heard in the crew's quarters aboard the Maine, these men here being much older than fleet marines-but Virgil made no effort to have a look at the new one. What for? Virgil was new himself, put in here the night before and spent the next day discussing the possibility of America declaring war on Spain with his sixteen cellmates; most of them skinny old guys losing their teeth who'd been locked up here the past two years, some of them locked up other places before coming here, stuck in cells the whole time, not let outside even once. They were excited to have Virgil, a United States marine; he was like a messenger from heaven, as good as the Angel Gabriel come to tell them Uncle Sam was on their side now, so there was nothing to worry about. They made coffee for Virgil and served him some pretty tasty black beans and rice; and they let him hang his hammock down by the outside grating that looked out on the prison yard. The cell, with its oval ceiling, was about fifteen feet wide by forty feet deep, the grating at one end being the door to the corridor, the grating at the other end serving as a barred window. Hammocks hung from hooks in the wall and extended to posts that ran down the center of the room. The floor was flagstone and a few of the geezers preferred it to trying to climb into a goddamn hammock every night. They'd bed down on the floor with straw mats and blankets.

It was Lieutenant Molina who saw to Virgil's need for something to wear, having arrived drugged from the hospital in his drawers. Molina gave him one of his own cotton shirts and blue uniform trousers with yellow stripes down the sides. They fit snug-dons as a rule being smaller than Americans-and were shiny in the seat, but fine with Virgil. This was after the lieutenant told Virgil about his Washington duty and that he'd visited various points of interest along the Eastern seaboard. It turned out both Virgil and Lieutenant Molina had attended the dedication of Grant's Tomb. Imagine that. Virgil didn't mind not having shoes, the flagstone in here cool on his feet. He asked the lieutenant just what he was in jail for. Molina said he didn't know but would try to find out.

As soor as Virgil woke up he saw the new man by the grating that looked out at the yard. Virgil thought at first glance he was U.S. Army, the dark coat and tan-colored pants, except there was no insignia on the coat. Right then the new man turned around and walked away and Virgil noticed the light blue neckerchief and heard that ching… ching and looked down to see the man was wearing high-heeled boots and spurs with big wheels that made that chinging sound. It looked like the new man was pacing. When he came back this way Virgil said from the hammock:

"Mister, are you a cowpuncher by any chance?"

"Yes, I am," Tyler said, locating Virgil in the hammock. "Ben Tyler, from around Sweetmary, Arizona."

Now Virgil rolled out of the hammock and hit the floor in a pair of drawers, to Tyler a young guy with a full head of hair on top but none around the ears, a haircut that would last him a good while.

"I could tell," Virgil said. "You have that look of a cowpuncher."

"I had a panama hat might've thrown you off," Tyler said, "but a guard swiped it right off my head, grabbed it as he shoved me in here."

"Well, least you have your own clothes."

"I just bought 'em yesterday; they're brand-new." "What'd you do to be in here?"

"I thought it was for shooting a don, but now I don't think so. And you're " Tyler said. "I'm gonna say you're in the military from your haircut, but I can't tell which one from your drawers."

Virgil stuck out his hand. "Virgil Webster, one time from Okmulgee, Indian Territory. Most recently Private Webster, a seagoing marine off what used to be the USS Maine. God help the boys still aboard her."

"Jesus," Tyler said, shaking Virgil's hand, "you survived that terrible explosion."

"Barely," Virgil said.

Tyler squinted, studying him. "Well, what's a hero of the Maine doing in this flophouse?"

"I find out I'll let you know," Virgil said. "How about yourself? An honest-to-God cowpuncher, what I always thought I'd grow u. p to be when I was little."

"I know what you mean," Tyler said.

This was how they began talking that first day.

On the fifth day, February twenty-third, two guards brought Tyler along the corridor to the lieutenant's office, a large room with bare walls, a swept stone floor and a feeling of having been left abandoned until a desk and file cabinets were moved in. Molina looked up. He said in Spanish to the man sitting across the desk from him, "I'll leave you. Take as much time as you like."

The lieutenant got up and came this way, giving Tyler's shoulder a pat as he walked past him. He paused in the doorway and said something to the two guards. They turned and followed him out.

The man at the desk, one of those little Cuban guys with a big mustache, gestured for Tyler to come over, saying in English with the usual accent, "I like to ask you some questions."

There was something familiar about him. Tyler approached the desk and stood there, a few feet from it. "Please, sit down."

The only chair was the one Molina had left, behind the desk, a wooden swivel chair with a leather pad on the seat. "Here?"

"Yes, why not. It's all right." The man, in a rigid-looking straight chair, waited until Tyler was seated. "My name is Rudi Calvo. I'm an investigator with the municipal police for the city of Havana." Tyler remembered him now.

"You were at the Inglaterra the other night."

"Yes, I was present." He smiled then. "You notice me, uh?"

"I did, and you saw why I shot him. You were a witness, you and a barful of correspondents. It must've been in their newspapers."

"The ones I saw," Rudi said, "they say it was self-defense. So they want to know why you're here if it's not for the shooting. Also why do they arrest your partner. The Guardia Civil say you're held on suspicion of being spies while they look for the boat, the Vdmanos, you came here with the horses." "What do they want with the boat?"

"It's Lionel Tavalera. He believe you brought guns for the insurrectos. They waited at Matanzas, but the boat never came there."

"What if they don't find it?"

Rudi shrugged. "Yes? What if they don't?"

"I could be here the rest of my life?"

"Well, it isn't something new, is it? You were in prison one time before."

"How do you know that, from the newspapers?" "Someone told me."

"You talk to Charlie Burke?"

"Not yet."

Tyler stared at Rudi Calvo. When the police investigator looked away, Tyler said, "You know they're holding a U.S. marine here?" He watched Rudi Calvo's gaze return, eyes full of interest. "Private Virgil Webster, off the Maine. You don't know about him?"

Rudi shook his head.

"Blown into the water. Picked up and taken to a hospital. The night before last the Guards dragged him out of bed and brought him here. They think he saw something the night the ship blew up."

"Did he?"

"Not that he knows of."

Tyler watched the municipal police investigator taking time to think about this, staring at one of the bare stone walls.

"You're police, the Guardia are policewthey don't tell you what they're doing?"

Rudi took his time. "They have their own way of doing things."

"You knew I was in prison. Did you know I was here before, in Cuba? That my father ran a mill?"

"I heard that, yes."

"Do the Guardia know I was in prison back home?"

Rudi again took his time. "I don't think so."

"It was Fuentes told you about me," Tyler said. He waited, and Rudi waited, not saying a word. "You followed us when he took me to buy clothes. I'm guessing, but I'm pretty sure about it. We're on the street, Fuentes says, "Don't look now…" No, he said, "Don't look around when I tell you we're being followed." But I did, I looked around. You know why? Because Fuentes wasn't worried about it. He said, "It's okay, it's the police." See, but before that he wouldn't say much talking about the Guardia or what side he was on; he was careful. I asked him if he was for Spain or a free Cuba. He said, "If I told you I was for Cuba, would you believe me?" I said, "Yes, but I'd keep an eye on you." And he said that's the way to be, don't trust anybody."

"But you believe he wants Cuba to be free," Rudi said. "Is that right?"

Tyler said, "Do you care what I think? What difference does it make? You said you wanted to ask me some questions. Is that it? What I think about Fuentes?"

This man made you wait while he thought things over.

"I want to ask you about your boat, the Vdmanos."

"The Vamoose. If she isn't in Matanzas, I don't know where she is. Are there guns aboard? I haven't seen any. If I tell anyone what I believe about Victor Fuentes, should I say what I believe about you?"

Rudi said, "I don't know what you think." When Tyler didn't tell him he said, "Why would you talk about me?" And when Tyler didn't answer, Rudi said, "It's best not to say anything if you don't have to," and left.

Twice a day criminal convicts from another part of the Morro brought fresh water and carried away the slop buckets. Three times a day one of the guards handed in a broom and the men took turns sweeping the flagstone floor. The guards didn't bother them much: half the men in here sick with fever and diarrhea, and there were always two or three moaning in their hammocks all day with stomach pains. The doctor was supposed to come twice a week, but they rarely saw him, told by the guards the doctor himself was sick or he was drunk. When he did come and look at them, he would attribute their ills to worms, or vermin. So these men in here accused of committing treason would bang the filthy metal food pans against the grating, demanding aspirin and quinine and once in a while they were given some. When cases of cholera or yellow fever were diagnosed, the sick ones were removed from the cell, Tyler was told, and never seen again. There was a leper among them from Santa Clara who was beginning to acquire the facial look of a lion, but had not yet lost any of his fingers or toes.

After a few days their cellmates had asked all the questions they could think of and left the Americans in peace to sit by the grating, the one that looked out on the yard.

"That's cannister stacked out there," Virgil said, "what used to be called grapeshot. It looks like they're getting ready to load it onto Spanish warships. You know what one of their problems is? Their coal ain't worth shit. We got 'em beat a mile in the grade of coal our ships burn. The Maine carried eight hundred and twenty-five ton, enough to steam seven thousand miles at a speed of ten knots. Our 10-inch gunsm there was a pair mounted fore and aft. Each one could throw a five-hundred-pound shell a good nine miles, mister. We had 6-inch guns, 6-pounders, rapid-fire 1-pounders, four Gatlings and a stock of Whitehead torpedos. Man, if we had known what was coming…"

He said, "I've been in the brig aboard ship, but it was nothing like this, nothing to eat, everybody sick…"

Tyler said, "Yuma was worsen this. You know why? You lived with convicts there, not political prisoners."

On the tenth of March, Tyler's twentieth day in the Morro, Victor Fuentes came to visit. He sat in the swivel chair behind Lieutenant Molina's desk, waiting. Tyler was brought in and took the straight chair that was too small to offer comfort. He said to Fuentes, "Your friend the policeman was here." Fuentes hesitated, then nodded. "He told me." "Can anyone visit?"

"If you pay. It cost a bottle of dark rum for an hour or so. A bottle of bourbon whiskey you can stay as long as you want. The lieutenant drinks it and goes to sleep." Fuentes shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit coat, came out with a half-pint bottle of quinine in each hand and placed them on the desk. From a vest pocket he drew two double eagles, worth twenty dollars each, and reached across the desk to put them in Tyler's hand.

"For whatever you need."

"We appreciate it, all of us, but who is it from?" "What do you mean, who? Is from me." "Can you afford it?" "Don't insult me."

"Sorry." Tyler thought of Virgil and said, "I imagine the policeman told you about the marine."

Fuentes said, "The rumor that he's here? I heard that." "He is here. We're in the same cell."

Fuentes said, "Listen, we took the horses to Matanzas. All of them, yours too, on the train. I didn't want to leave your horse in Regla."

"And you don't want to talk about the marine," Tyler said.

"I have no reason to."

"Or the policeman, Rudi Calvo?"

"I know him, that's all. So, I took the horses to Matanzas. Boudreaux went, but now he's in Havana again. Also Amelia Brown, she's here. She wants to visit you." "She wants to come here?" "That's what she say." "What for?"

"If she comes you can ask her."

Tyler pushed the image of the girl out of his mind and said, "Have you seen Charlie?"

"A little while ago. He looks worse than you." "What's wrong with him?"

"He has the shits, what else? Listen, I have to get him some medicine and come back. What I want to tell you, they haven't found the ship yet, the Vamoose, and they won't find it. Don't ask me where it is, all right? Or ask me anything about it. I say this because they going to come and ask you where it is, and if you don't know you can't tell them. That's all I'm going to say to you," Fuentes said.

As he rose from the desk Tyler said, "When she say she's coming?"

"Who, Amelia?"

"Who else we talking about?"

He told Virgil, the two of them sitting by the outside grating, wild studs loved gentle mares; they'd get hold of some that'd wandered away from the home graze and run off with these nice girls, whether the mares wanted to go or not.

Virgil said, "Man, the studs, huh?"

Tyler told him the way to go after a big herd, put about a hundred and fifty gentle horses out there and drive the wild bunch into them. "See, then the gentle horses that were already with the wild ones, they'd stop, and some of the colts and yearlings'd get separated and stay with the gentle bunch.

So then the hands shake out their ropes…"

"That's how, huh?" Virgil ate it up.

Tyler told him you had to be a big cow outfit to do it like that, be able to put twenty riders out there for the drive. He told Virgil the way you worked it by yourself, or with Red and a couple of Mimbres along, you had to walk down the wild herd, slip up on them gradually, the wild ones likely never having seen a mounted man before, the bunch of them wondering what in the hell kind of horse is that?

Virgil said, "Man," shaking his head. He told Tyler he'd bought a horse for five dollars when he was fifteenmworked at the F.B. Severs Cash Store in Okmulgee, stocking shelves and sweeping floors to earn the money-and his stepfather, the son of a bitch, a Church of the Most Holy Word missionary who didn't know shit about anything except Scripture, took the horse away from him and sold it and kept the money.

Tyler told him if he ever worked for a big cow outfit he'd have ten of his own horses on a trail drive. Ride two or three a day and turn them back into the remuda for three days' rest. You had a special horse you rode at night. Green broncos were saved for winter.

"The first thing I learned about horses," Virgil said, "living where we did, was Indins like horse meat."

"Apaches," Tyler said, "prefer mule. Did you ever see Geronimo?"

"One time in '94 I was home on leave, I went over to Fort Sill to get a look at him, but he was off traveling with Pawnee Bill's Wild West Circus."

"I saw him and Nachez at Bowie in '86," Tyler said, "the day they shipped 'em off to Florida. The army gave 'em little hats to put on looked foolish, like flower pots, and they still scared the shit out of anybody was present. I think it was General Nelson Miles said the only man he ever knew with eyes as dark and piercing as Geronimo's was William Tecumseh Sherman. They had the kind of eyes could look right through you."

When Tavalera came to visit he sat in Lieutenant Molina's chair and swiveled back and forth while Tyler stood facing him across the desk.

"You don't look so good."

"It's the food," Tyler said.

"You don't like it? You can leave anytime-once you tell me where the ship is."

"I don't know."

"You tell me it was going to Matanzas."

"That's right."

"But it didn't come there."

"Maybe it's still on its way."

"It doesn't take thirty days, Havana to Matanzas."

"I can't help you, Lionel," Tyler said, pronouncing the name "Lynel" the way he did in the hotel bar. Tavalera stared at him and Tyler said, "I mean Leo-nel. I bet the ship went back home, partner. Can you check?"

"We did. Is not in Key West or Tampa or Galveston, Texas. Is still here somewhere. I believe from the beginning it has contraband aboard. Now I'm more sure than before. You refuse to tell me and your friend refuse when I talk to him. What am I going to do with you?… You think you helping these people to have freedom. I'll tell you something. If they do succeed, have their own government, you think it will be different for poor people than it is now? They talk about the ones in power as moved by greed, always wanting more. You think the Cubans, they get in power they won't be moved by greed? Anyone can learn how if they don't know. All right, what about the Negroes? Pretty soon half the people here are going to be black. You want some of them in power? These people were slaves only a few years ago. Listen, your own people in business here, they don't want Cubans or Negroes making laws, telling them what to do. Of course not. So what is it to you? Why don't you give up this game you play? Tell me where the boat is and you can go home. What do you say?"

"lledl) was Warm Springs Apache, he couldn't stand to be locked up like that, then taken out to work shackled, the way he was at Yuma the whole first year, to bust rocks. He couldn't eat the food either. The first day his leg irons are off after a year, we're working a section of road up on a high bank where you look down and there's the Colorado River, say a mile from the road to the other side. Red dropped his pick, not even checking the guards first, dropped his pick and ran. They chased him… Red was in the river, halfway to California, when they shot him."

"How was the chow at Yuma?"

"Terrible. Sometimes you couldn't tell what you were eating."

"That ain't all that's wrong with this shit; it's got bugs in it."

"Least they're cooked."

Virgil picked a maggot out of his meat. "This one ain't. Bread and water's the best, less the bread's moldy. Otherwise you can't mess up bread and water."

A few days later, Tyler's thirty-fourth day in the Morro, guards kept him in the cell while they brought everybody else out single file and marched them down the corridor, Virgil the last one out, looking back.

Tyler waited.

Now Tavalera appeared and entered the cell followed by two Guardia Civil privates armed with Mauser carbines. Tavalera said, "Come here," motioning Tyler down to the grating at the other end of the cell. When they got there and both were looking out at the empty yard in sunlight, Tavalera said, "Listo," in a loud voice.

Within a minute or so two Guardias came out of a doorway to the yard with Charlie Burke between them. They brought him all the way across the yard to the wall opposite the cell grating and faced him this way, head uncovered, hands fastened behind his back, a chew showing in his jaw.

Now six Guardia with carbines and an officer came out in a line to stand facing Charlie Burke.

"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.

"It appears much different here, a great deal to be gained, this island a source of wealth, a cow that's been giving us milk for four hundred years. Still, the inspiration to keep this island is not econonic but a matter of honor. You understand? You can be willing to give your life for honor, but not for the price of sugar. In Africa I tortured and mutilated my enemy for the sake of honor, to learn things from him or as punishment. I could do that here, but I respect you. So when I say to tell me where the boat is, you tell me. You don't tell me, we shoot your friend. Out there, look. The officer is telling him now the way it is, so you see him looking this way. Would you like to say something to your friend?"

Tyler, staring through the bars, didn't answer.

"All right then," Tavalera said. "Ready? I ask you once, where is the boat you call the Vamoose?"

"Believe me," Tyler said, staring at Charlie Burke, "if I knew I'd tell you."

"That's all you going to say?"

"I don't know where the goddamn boat is."

Tavalera, raising his voice, said, "'iMdtanle!"

Virgil said, "And they shot him?"

"They shot him. Just before-Charlie had a wad of scrap in his cheek. He'd brought some from home, plug and scrap, and I know he had chewed up the plug. He said "Wait' as they were about to shoot and he turned his head to spit off to the side. They shot him and then the officer went over to Charlie lying on the ground and shot him in the head."

"Jesus," Virgil said, "you watched your partner get killed. I imagine they had you covered good, in case you went crazy on them and tried something."

"The officer, Lionel, had his pistol in his hand. When I didn't raise a rumpus or even say a word he kept staring at me."

"Like the old man, when he turned his head to spit," Virgil said, "was accepting what was about to happen?"

Tyler nodded. "He vCasn't much for show. Then Lionel said maybe he was wrong and we weren't bringing guns after all."

"He said that?"

"He said if he was wrong, well, that was too bad. He said, but he'd never know for sure, would he?"

"What did you say to him?"

"I didn't say anything."

Virgil said, "Well, you're sure better behaved than I am."

The day Amelia Brown came to visit was Tyler's forty-fifth day in the Morro. She was already seated when he entered the office, Amelia smiling beneath a big sun hat, then frowning as Tyler took the lieutenant's swivel chair and she saw him up close.

"You don't look good. How are you?" she went right on, not giving Tyler a chance to answer, telling him Neely Tucker was here too, Neely wanting to talk to the marine who was blown off the Maine and then abducted from the hospital. "Neely told Lieutenant Molina, well, since everyone knows he's here and it's going to be in all the newspapers anyway Neely then produced a bottle of bourbon. He's with the marine now, in another office. Would you like a cigarette?" Tyler nodded.

She brought a pack out of her bag, but then dropped it in again, saying, "Oh. Did you hear? It's official, the Spanish blew up the Maine. It took the Naval Court of Inquiry over a month to figure out that the destruction of an American warship in a hostile if not enemy harbor did not happen by accident; it must have been a submerged mine or some such explosive device. They sent divers down in forty feet of nasty murky water to take a look and get the evidence. I think what they found, the hull was blown inward from the keel. 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."

There was a silence.

She said, "I would have come to visit before this, but Rollie made me go to Matanzas with him. He and his sugar buddies want to add a rail line from Santa Clara all the way to Santiago de Cuba, at the far eastern end of the island." She waited a moment and said, "No, you don't look well at all."

"They stood my partner in front of a firing squad," Tyler said, "out in the yard and killed him."

Amelia said, "Oh." And in a different voice than before, a quiet tone, she said, "And you saw it, didn't you? They made you watch."

"Tavalera," Tyler said, "the Guardia Civil officer who was at the hotel-"

"Yes, I know him."

"He thinks Charlie Burke and I were bringing in guns, but he can't prove it 'cause he can't locate the boat. He said I had to tell him where it is or he'd have them shoot Charlie." "But you don't know where it is." Tyler said, "No," shaking his head. "Or if the guns are still aboard."

There was a silence again, Amelia waiting for him.

"I said he thought we brought guns, not that we actually did."

"Two hundred revolvers," Amelia said, "two hundred Krag carbines, the machetes… What else?"

Tyler stared at her. He said, "Jesus," in a hushed voice. And Amelia said, "Our Savior. The guns were put ashore near Sagua la Grande and the ship returned to Mexico. Where's your hat? Do you still have it?"

He said, "One of the guards took it," staring at her, not able to take his eyes from her face so pure and clean, her eyes full of life.

She said, "That kind of panama is called a jipijapa. Did you know that?"

He shook his head.

She said, "We'll have to find you another one." She said, "And we'll have to think of a way to get you out of here. Pretty soon there's going to be a war. A real one."

There were different reactions from Tyler's cellmates when he told them what the Naval Court of Inquiry had found. Some cheered, seeing American soldiers busting in here to free them. But there were revolutionists here, old patriots, some near death, who'd been fighting most of their lives and believed they were close to driving the dons out of Cuba, winning their own independence. They saw America taking the place of Spain and little change in their lives.

Virgil said, "I can't cheer the loss of so many of my shipmates, but if this means war, then okay, good. Let's get her done." "You talked to Neely Tucker," Tyler said. "With the lieutenant sitting there drunk." "You tell him your story?"

"I did and he said, "This will ice the cake, a hero of the Maine moldering in an El Morro dungeon." What's moldering mean?"

"I guess what it sounds like. What else did he say?" "He said America's gonna break off diplomatic relations with Spain and in about a week the consulate here will shut down and all the Americans living and working in Cuba will have to go home. He said we'd have to get out, too, or we'd become prisoners of war and be stuck here till it's over." "How'd he know you were here?" "He never said."

"I told Rudi Calvo, the policeman," Tyler said. "It must've been Rudi told Fuentes, Fuentes told Amelia and she told Neely. She's living with this wavy-haired snake owes me forty-five hundred and forty-five dollars, but she's working, it looks like, for the revolution. Even though she's American. I haven't figured her out yet." Tyler paused.

Virgil said, "Yeah?"

"I think she's gonna make something happen."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, but it must be why she brought Neely to talk to you. It'll get in the newspapers you're here, a hero of the Maine, and then something will happen." ago, the same day President McKinley was inaugurated, Amelia Brown was introduced to a gentleman by the name of Roland Boudreaux in the saloon of the Morgan Line steamer's first evening out of New Orleans. The way it came about:

Amelia's dear friend Lorraine Regal had met a man named Andres Palenzuela at a reception given by her boss, a New Orleans sugar broker. Andres turned out to be the chief of police for the city of Havana. When he asked Lorraine to come for a visit she saw promise in his soft brown eyes, said yes, got hold of Amelia and told her to quick pack a few summer things and a bottle of Ayer's pills, she had to come along. Not as a chaperone, or even to give the impression of two young ladies on holiday. Uh-unh, it was so Amelia could meet the police chief's good friend, Roland Boudreaux.

Amelia told everyone March fourth was her birthday, her twentieth, and watched Lorraine roll her eyes as the gentlemen raised their glasses of champagne. Boudreaux said to call him Rollie, please. He told Amelia he'd always suspected he was inordinately lucky and meeting her like this confirmed it. He told her he owned a sugar estate, a railroad, polo grounds and a lot of horses and a summer home on the Gulf coast of Cuba. Amelia said she loved to ride, asked if revolutionaries or anarchists interfered with his way of life. Rollie said no, he had his own army. By the end of the first evening aboard, the couples had paired off and were settled in for the short voyage.

A few days later at the Inglaterra, Lorraine said to Amelia, "Well, I won't be going back to the counting room, thank God. A police chief down here does all right; I'll have my own house." She said going to Soul Business College and getting a job was finally paying off.

Amelia said she could look at her prospects much the same way. If she hadn't quit going to Newcomb after a couple of years and spent her time horseback riding and being available to people, she wouldn't have been available for this trip. "Rollie wants me to stay," Amelia said. "As what?"

"His sweetie pie, what else? His wife won't set foot in Cuba, scared to death of yellow fever. They don't have children."

"What do you think?"

"Well, it isn't like the others."

She had been quite fond of a gentleman by the name of Avery Wild who was in coffee and kept rooms on Julia Street, where they'd meet Mondays and Thursdays in the late afternoon. It went on for most of a year. An executive with Maison Blanche she'd met at a Carnival ball was fun; he'd take her along on his buying trips to New York. Another gentleman had taken her to Saratoga by train during the racing season, and she accompanied still another gent to Tampa on his yacht. Amelia might have been in love with Avery Wild. Or she might not. She most definitely fell in love with Dr. Walter Guidry. He taught at Tulane Medical, had the bluest eyes Amelia had ever seen, and set her arm when she broke it in a fall from her horse. He was handsome. He was kind. He was patient. He was the most dedicated man she had ever known. Walter Guidry spent a week each month at the Louisiana Leprosy Home near Carville, a good seventy miles upriver from New leans. Took the train there every month. She said, "Walter, is it awful?" He told her they had close to fifty patients now, up from the five men and two women delivered there two years ago on a coal barge, the home's first patients. Now they came on a special train with the windows covered and sealed; once there, the patients couldn't leave. "It must be horrible," Amelia said. No, what it was, Walter Guidry said, it was frustrating, trying to get the public to understand that leprosy was not evidence of God's wrath, inflicted as punishment for a sinful life. Walter told Amelia that nuns, the Daughters of Charity, were taking care of the lepers, but the sisters were few in number and more patients were arriving daily. It came to Amelia all at once as she looked into his blue eyes, she'd go with Walter and help the sisters. She touched Walter's face. I'll wash the lepers' wounds, their sores, I'll change their dressings, empty chamber pots." She kissed him tenderly. "You're a saint, Walter. You were sent to me, weren't you? That I might see a purpose in life and dedicate myself to its end." Amelia said to Lorraine, "Do you remember my doctor lover, Walter Guidry?"

"Ah," Lorraine said, "do I. You'll never find another one like Walter."

"Rollie's better-looking."

"Some might say that."

"I had to think of a way to hold him off," Amelia said, "while I make up my mind. So I told him I'm still a virgin." "Well, if he believes you're only twenty…"

"He treats me like I'm recovering from diphtheria or tuberculosis. He's considerate… but he's so sure of himself and that's one of the things I wonder about. Is he confident because he knows what he's doing, or because he's rich and everyone agrees with him? He talks a lot, in that quiet way he has. He doesn't laugh much. Did you notice? He's fairly clever with words, but doesn't have much of a sense of humor. Does he? I can't imagine why he has a bodyguard. Not if he has an army."

They switched from tea to sherry.

"I could do without Novis hanging around. He's so serious, he's creepy. I was out on deck-Novis came up to me and said, "Mr. Boudreaux wants to see you inside," and motioned with his thumb, like he's telling me to get in there. I said to tell Mr. Boudreaux if he wants to see me I'm out here. Novis didn't know what to do. Go in and tell his highness I wasn't coming? He wants me to go with him to visit his estate, Rollie does, I think to impress me. Look at how rich I am, girl. What're you saving you're so proud of when you can have me? Take the train to Matanzas to look at the estate, then go up to Varadero to see his summer place. Lots of horses to ride. I've decided I have to be myself with Rollie, not some poor little girl awed by his attention. What would I be giving up if I exiled myself to this island? Well, living with Mama and Daddy, for one thing. Mama taking laudanum and whatever else she can get her hands on. Daddy coming home with an other woman's scent on him, what does he care, all the money he's made selling cotton abroad, he can do anything he wants. What I'd be giving up is boredom. Now, what I'd gain… If Boudreaux's wealth doesn't impress me, what would be my reward, living on a sugar plantation with the poor and deprived? Not a happy bunch, I'll bet, out in those cane fields."

Amelia paused to sip her sherry in the lobby of the Inglaterra Hotel with Lorraine, Lorraine quiet, no doubt thinking about her police chief, no longer giving Amelia her full attention. Or she didn't know what Amelia was getting at and wasn't interested enough to care.

"We had a housemaid when I was a little girl," Amelia said, "who was from the south of Spain, Jerez de la Frontera, where they make sherry. I loved to say her name, Altagracia. Are you listening?"

"Of course I am."

"She used to tell me bedtime stories about anarchists. I was eight or nine years old. How the anarchists got the vineyard workers to stand together and demand justice and higher wages. In her stories the landowners are all bad, but the real villains are the Civil Guards. They arrest and torture the anarchists and accuse them of forming a secret society called the Black Hand. They said its purpose was to assassinate all the landowners in the district."

Amelia paused again to sip her sherry.

"He's showing me the house tomorrow," Lorraine said. "It's in Vedado, a suburb. Just like a placd on Rampart Street Where gentlemen kept their mistresses in days gone by." She said to Amelia, "Are we living in the past?"

"Or we're ahead of our time," Amelia said. "I'm not sure which."

On the train to Matanzas, seventy miles east of Havana, Amelia would see people working in cane fields they passed and she would think of Altagracia's anarchists and vineyard laborers. She asked Rollie Boudreaux if he'd ever heard of the Black Hand.

He said, "Of course. It's a secret society of assassins." "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."

"And who is Altagracia, please?"

"Our maid when I was a little girl."

She watched him laugh out loud for the first time and dab at his eyes with a hankie he kept in his sleeve.

He told Amelia as she looked out the window of the firstclass compartment at palm trees and wooded hills, huts with thatched roofs, cultivated fields, "That's corn. That's yucca. That, of course, is cane." She asked if this was his railroad. No, this line as the Ferro Carriles Unidos, owned by a Havana bank heavy with British and German capital. His sugar railroad ran north and south, from the central below a place called Benavides to the Matanzas docks and a few miles up the coast. He told her he was talking to American investors about building a major line from Santa Clara to Santiago de Cuba, at the eastern end of the island.

She asked him, "Why not Cuban investors?"

"There aren't any."

She asked why he believed Cubans were unable to govern themselves, a view he had expressed on the boat.

"Read Cuban Sketches," Boudreaux said. "I'll give you my copy. The book's observer characterizes Cubans as a people of 'smiles, easy talk and time-killing dilettante-ism." " Amelia said, "Yes? What's wrong with that?"

"You're kidding, of course." He said, "The book's observer comes to the conclusion that laziness is as natural to the Cuban as foppery is common."

She said, "Do you believe that?"

"Well, the book exaggerates, yes, to make a point, but no more than Cubans themselves, who exaggerate with an ease that's appalling. They deplore manual labor and reserve it for the Negroes, of which there are plenty on the island." He said, "Just past Benavides we come to a main road, where horses will be waiting." He said, "You weren't kidding me, you do like to ride."

"I love to."

"Because if you were kidding, what I'll do is send someone down from Benavides on a handcar and bring a carriage of some kind, a small barouche."

"Believe me," Amelia said, "I ride."

He told her this was considered quite a fast train, though you wouldn't know it, would you, with all the stops it made. Regla station to Matanzas would take about seven hours.

He told her Cubans loved ornamentation and bright colors, though young ladies applied an astonishing amount of rice powder to their faces.

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.

"Wait till you read Cuban Sketches."

Amelia dozed off.

She opened her eyes to find the train sliding past a facing of stone buildings, a water tower, soldiers tending a dozen or more saddled horses in a barn lot, and now the compartment window came to a station platform, the train barely moving, slowing to a stop in the shade, opposite the center of the platform crowded with soldiers in pale gray uniforms and military straws, some of them looking this way now, at the train, Amelia in the window. "Guardia Civil," Boudreaux said. He rose to open the window and sat down again in the seat facing Amelia.

"They've got a couple of prisoners. See? The two wearing filthy clothes. I don't understand why dirt doesn't bother these people. You'd think they'd wear something darker, in a heavy denim."

They were farm workers and looked to Amelia like all the Cuban laborers she had seen in the past few days. If they weren't black they were small men, like these two, with big mustaches, yes, in heavily soiled clothes and shapeless straw hats. These two were bareheaded, hands tied behind them, ropes around their necks, the ropes looped over beams that supported the. platform wooden awning. The two stood less than twenty feet from the compartment window, staring back at Amelia, while about them the Guardia seemed to be arguing among themselves.

Boudreaux turned his head and called out, "Victor!"

The compartment door opened and Fuentes and Novis were standing in the aisle looking in. "What's going on out there?" "You want me to, I find out."

"Yes, I want you to. Go on." Boudreaux said to Amelia, "Why does he think I called him?"

Novis, still in the doorway, said, "You don't mind my saying, it's 'cause they're stupid, all of 'em."

Now as Amelia watched, Fuentes appeared on the platform and approached one of the soldiers, an officer. "That's Lionel Tavalera," Boudreaux said. "He fought the Berbers in North Africa before coming here. You want someone to tell you something and he refuses, you hand him over to Tavalera." Amelia was looking at Boudreaux now. "They say he hates Americans, but he and I get along just dandy. What it comes down to, despite political differences, is mutual respect. They can be mean, those Guardia Civil-some say barbaric-but they get it done."

Amelia turned her head to watch Fuentes in his white suit talking to the Guardia officer towering over him. Earlier, when they were waiting to board the train, Boudreaux called Fuentes over and said to Amelia, "This is Victor, he's supposed to be my segundo, but all he does is argue with me. Victor, I'm putting Miss Brown in your care. You understand? Miss Brown wants something, you make sure she gets it." They looked at each other as Boudreaux spoke, Amelia sensing that Victor was sizing her up, curious, wanting to know who she was rather than waste his time fawning, trying to make an impression. Amelia smiled and Victor seemed surprised.

Now, as Fuentes spoke to him, the Guardia officer was looking this way. Boudreaux said in the open window, "Major," giving him kind of a salute and called to his man, "Victor, if you'll come over here, please."

Fuentes glanced over but continued talking to Tavalera, gesturing, telling him something in earnest.

Novis said, "I'll get the squirt."

But now Boudreaux raised his voice to Victor: "Goddamn it, get over here." And this time he came, concerned, though, glancing back at the two prisoners.

"The Guardia officer say they insurgents, but I don't think so."

Amelia watched Boudreaux as he asked Fuentes if he knew them.

"I know they work for you and live on the mill. They cut cane, both of them." He looked at Amelia and for a moment held her gaze. "I tell this Guardia, but he doesn't believe me." Boudreaux said, "You're sure?" "Yes, I'm sure."

Amelia waited for Rollie to call to the officer now and put in a word for the two men, clear up an apparent misunderstanding. But he didn't. He said, "They could still be mambis, couldn't they?"

Amelia's gaze moved to Victor, close to the open window. He said, "How can I see them in the field fighting the cane every day if they someplace else fighting these people?"

Boudreaux nodded, thinking about it. He said to Novis, "You ever see those two before?"

"I may ave, but how can you tell?" Novis said. "All these squirts look alike to me."

Boudreaux turned to Fuentes again. "What're they arguing about?"

"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."

Amelia watched Boudreaux look past Victor to Tavalera standing by the two prisoners, Amelia certain Rollie would now straighten out what appeared to be a misunderstanding. Yes, calling to Tavalera, "Major, if I could have a word with you…

The Guardia officer came over to the window, touching the brim of his hat and smiling as he noticed Amelia. He said to Boudreaux, "Yes, how can I be of service?"

"Victor says these two work for me."

"Oh, is that so? I'm sorry, because we pretty sure these are bad people who fight us."

"But you're not sure."

"No, I say we pretty sure. What's the same as pretty sure? Quite sure? Very sure? Let's say I'm as sure as I have to be."

Boudreaux said, "Well, if you're that sure…" and smiled slightly.

Tavalera started to turn, but stopped as Amelia said, "Wait a minute," amazed that Rollie was letting it go. "Victor's just as sure they're not insurgents. There must be a way to resolve this kind of situation. Isn't there?"

"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, barn barn, like that, in the right temple.

Tavalera did not look at the train window again. His men did when he said something to them in Spanish, but Tavalera walked away without looking back.

Fuentes watched him, then turned to the window as Boudreaux said, "Well." And said, "I guess that's that."

Fuentes looked at Amelia. In the moment she was looking back at him with no expression, nothing, her face drained of color, and yet each knew what the other was thinking.

Before they came to the road where the horses were waiting, Amelia used another compartment to change into boots and a riding skirt. It was the middle of the afternoon. Fuentes knocked on the door for her luggage, which would follow the horses in a wagon.

She said to him, "Tell me something about Mr. Boudreaux. What side is he on?"

Fuentes said, "Excuse me?"

"You know what I mean."

Fuentes looked at her directly and said, "The government or the insurrectos, the insurgents?" Amelia nodded. "Which?" "The wrong side," Fuentes said. "What kind of man is he?"

"Like the rest of them. He knows only his own kind."

The tea this time was served in the inner courtyard of Lorraine's home in Vedado, jade plants in pots, decorative blue tile on the walls, pillars that gave the courtyard the look of a cloister.

"For supper," Amelia said, "we might have soup, rice, eggs, plantain, a crab salad, roast peacock, guava, cheese and some kind of pudding."

"Peacock?" Lorraine said. "Peacock. Like the Romans." "What does it taste like, chicken?"

"Turkey. Then for breakfast we might have soup, rice, eggs, plantain, fried crabs, guava, cheese and coffee. Breakfast is really dinner, the midday meal. The cook's name is Cimbana, she's from the Congo and keeps cigar butts in her turban, among other things."

"It's different here, isn't it?"

"Very different."

"What about the house?"

"There's the sugarhouse," Amelia said, "full of machinery they shove the cane into to make sugar… " She paused. "If the mill doesn't have a centrifuge it can only make brown sugar. Did you know that? And there's the vivien da the residence, built in 1848. It has a red tile roof, verandas on three sides of both floors-kind of like old plantation homes but not as Greek Revival-looking. More austere, and without trees close around it. The living quarters are upstairsmdining room, sitting room, everything-offices and the servants' quarters downstairs, and a hall full of saddles, bridles and guns locked in cabinets. The kitchen's in back."

Amelia looked up at the courtyard's high ceiling and the second-floor balcony.

"I like your house better. It's warmer."

Lorraine said, "Can I ask you something?"

Amelia was still looking around. "Rollie's house has glass panes in the windows and doors, but they're always open; flies come in and out as they please. There're a few shrubs, tropical plants, a lot of banana trees, a few mango, vegetable plots and twenty thousand acres of sugarcane, three estates Rollie bought and combined into one. They call them estates, but what they are really are little towns with the main house in the center, the sugarhouse with its big ugly smokestacks, and streets of stone houses for the workers, a Negro quarter, a Creole quarter, a street that's all Chinese and a nicer area where the higher-ups, the people in charge, have their homes: the estate manager, another man who's a chemist and runs the sugarhouse-I think he's the one they call the sugar master-and a few others who work directly under him, engineers, machinists… Rollie has over a million and a half in just the land, and spent another hundred thousand to modernize the sugarhouse, put in all the newest machinery. If it's a good year, you know how much sugar he'll produce and ship?" "Amelia?"

"I've forgotten now how much, but it's an awful lot." She paused and said, "What?"

"Have you slept with him?"

"I have, yes," Amelia said, and had to smile at the way Lorraine was staring at her so intently. "So you're staying?" "For a while anyway." "Where're you going to live?"

"I guess wherever he wants me to."

Lorrainecontinued to stare.

"There's something you're not telling me." "What do you want, intimate details?" "You sound different."

"Well," Amelia said, "nothing happened until we got to the summerhouse. It's smaller than the one on the estate but more comfortable, with a veranda and a view of the Gulf rather than cane fields. The first night we were there, finally, after not saying a word to each other for hours, he took me into the bedroom. Mine; he has his own. And kissed me for the first time. I'm quite sure he thinks he seduced me. He was serious to the point of being grim, sort of ritualistic about it, first you do this and then you do that. It's funny, when we're alone-and this was true of other times, too, on the train or riding horses together-he doesn't seem as confident as he does when he's with people, an audience agreeing with him. It might be me," Amelia said, "or he's just not that comfortable with women. Anyway, Rollie finished, he got off and said, as he stepped into his underwear, "That wasn't entirely unpleasant, was it?"

"He said that?"

"He wasn't kidding, either."

"When I said there's something you're not telling me. Remember, before? I wasn't referring to what you did in bed. It was a feeling I had."

"About what?"

"That something happened you're not telling me about."

They came through rolling hills aboard the sugar train to Matanzas, Boudreaux telling Amelia there were more sugar estates here than in any province in Cuba. "How many, Victor? Four hundred and seventy-eight, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Not anymore," Fuentes said. "Maybe three hundred something. Many of them in the past year burn down, or the owner has enough-wake up in the morning and see black smoke in the sky, over his fields."

"I ask you a question," Boudreaux said, "I like a simple answer, whatever is the fact, not your opinion."

"You want to know exactly how many burn down?" "That's enough, Victor."

The train was creeping through the outskirts of the city, pale stone and steeples and red tile roofs, and now Boudreaux was pointing out to Amelia the villas of the wealthy, the old cathedral, the domed railway station, the ornate bridge that linked the city to the fortress of San Severino on the bay. "The second largest city in Cuba," Boudreaux said, "and some say the most beautiful."

"It's true," Fuentes said, "even though the word rnatanzas means slaughtering place."

"That's enough," Boudreaux said. He turned, shaking his head, to give Amelia a weary look.

"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-"

"Victor?"

"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 said that's enough," Boudreaux said. "Are you becoming restless, Victor, you want to move on?" He said to Amelia, "Victor, at one time, was a reader in a cigar factory. Which one was it, Victor?"

"La Corona."

"Victor ad to the employees while they rolled cigars. He'd read every word of the newspaper including the advertisements while they sat there rolling away. He even read a book once. Wasn't it Marti, Victor, the poet who's become you-all's hero?"

"They wouldn't let me read Marti."

"I can understand why. But Victor did read a book by Marti. A book. Beware, Amelia, of anyone who's read a book and, hence, believes he knows everything."

Amelia watched Fuentes, the way he stood stoop-shouldered, swaying on his feet, as he gazed out the window of this private parlor car, the man not appearing bothered by Boudreaux's remarks. Fuentes even seemed to smile as he shrugged and said to Amelia, "Maybe you like to read Marti sometime. He say a country with only a few rich men is not rich."

"You see," Boudreaux said to her, sounding weary of it, "what I have to put up with?"

He told Amelia they were coming to a village called Varadero and showed her on a map how his rail line went past Matanzas, circled the east side of the harbor and ran along the shore to a peninsula, a finger of land pointing into the Gulf, the Bay of Matanzas on one side, the Bay of Cfirdenas on the other. Varadero was situated at the neck of the peninsula, where Boudreaux's rail line ended and he kept a stable of horses and a squad of his private army he called Boudreaux's Guerrillas-a name, he told Amelia, he'd thought of himself, Boudreaux's Guerrillas-to patrol the finger of land and protect his summerhouse, about six miles from Varadero. Several homes along the beach, he said, had been destroyed by insurgents. And for no reason, perfectly good summer homes burned to the ground.

At Varadero the horses were brought to them as they stepped from the train into afternoon sunlight. Amelia found Victor staying close to her while Boudreaux rode off at the head of his guerrilla column with Novis Crowe-the bodyguard holding on to the saddle horn with both hands-and the officer in charge of the squad. "A young man by the name of Raft Vasquez," Fuentes told Amelia, "a wealthy peninsula re from Havana."

He said, "Peninsulares are the Spaniards living here. All the rest of us, no matter our color, are Cuban. We go to war with the Spanish government and thousands of peninsula res take up arms against us, calling themselves Volunteers. And I can tell you, the Volunteers are as barbaric as the Guardia, or even worse. Thirty years ago in Havana-January 22, 1869, I know, because I was theremthey surround a theatre, the Villanueva, and while the audience is watching the play, the Volunteers fire into them, killing dozens of men, women and children. Only weeks later, Easter Sunday, the assassins perform the same criminal act at the Cafe del Louvre, again killing unarm people. You want to hear about the Volunteers, I can tell you. There was a captain-general name Valmaseda who turned their foul passions loose on the countryside, allowing them to kill whoever they want, without fear of punishment. The Butcher Weyler, during this Ten Years War, was a student of the Butcher Valmaseda. Weyler went home last fall and the new captain-general, Blanco, the loyalists consider a joke. What else do you want to know? Listen, in a military trial thirty-eight students, young boys, were accused of defacing a Spaniard's grave; they wrote something on the stone. Eight were executed and the rest sent to prison for life. You know what the Volunteers say? "Suffer the little children to come unto me that I may strangle their precious young lives." What else? I keep in my head a list of indiscriminate mass murders, rapes, molestations of all kinds and obscene mutilations.

"These men," Fuentes said, indicating Boudreaux's column, his private army, "are known as guerrillas, but they come from the Volunteers. Just as Tavalera the Guardia is a peasant by birth, the son of a prison guard, Raft Vasquez the Volunteer is a gentleman, the son of wealth. And both are criminal assassins.

"Now then, on the side of liberty," Fuentes said, "the revolutionists are insurgents or insurrectos, or you heard them called mambis or mambises."

"Rollie," Amelia said, "calls them that sometimes." "Yes, because he believes he knows everything. He says it's an African word brought here from the Congo by slaves and is from the word mambz'll. I tell him, well, I was a slave at one time and use the word, but it didn't come from Africa." "Really? You were a slave?"

"Until I was sixteen and became a cimarron, what you call a runaway. Before that, part of me was Masungo, related by blood to the Bantu. Now I'm Cuban. I tell Mr. Boudreaux the word mambl came from Santo Domingo. Fifty years ago the people there fighting for their independence had a leader called Eutimio Mambi. So the Spanish soldiers called them the men of Mambi. Then when they came here the Spanish began to call Cuban revolutionists mambis and mambises. I tell Mr. Boudreaux some of this history; he doesn't listen. I ask him has he read the words of Jose Marti, patriot and martyr, first president of the Cuban Revolutionary Party? No, of course not. I leave the essays of Marti in English where Mr. Boudreaux can find them, learn something about human rights. He throws them in the fire. What is right to him is the way things are."

"I believe it," Amelia said.

"Mr. Boudreaux looks at me What do I know of anything?"

They kept to high ground along the finger of land, following a road cut through dense thickets, a road that looked down on mangrove and lagoons, a stretch of white sand, a chimney rising out of brick and stone rubble. Fuentes pointed.

"You think they burn it down for no reason? Your Mr. Boudreaux, his head up there in a cloud, he think so."

"When did he become my Mr. Boudreaux?" "Anytime you want him, he's yours." "Why would I, because he's rich?" "That's a good reason." "Give me a better one."

"You meet famous people with him."

"On a sugar estate?"

"Sure, or here. You know who came to this house where we going? General Weyler himself, the man who made the twenty-three thousand people he sent to Matanzas starve to death. The Butcher came here to visit on someone's yacht. He meets you, he want to come back. Sure, you meet generals and admirals and envoys from Spain, the most important people. Also you hear Mr. Boudreaux talk to his friends, all those rich men who want to invest money with him. You see what they're doing, what the Spanish are doing…"

She could hear the horses ahead of them and the clink of metal. She said, "You're asking me to spy for the mambis."

Fuentes turned his head to look at her. "You like that name?"

"Aren't you?"

"I see you not very busy, so I wonder, what is the point of you?" A good question.

"I haven't yet decided." And then right away she said, "You stay close to Rollie. You hear him talking to people, don't you?"

"I don't get as close as you."

"But you talk about the crimes of the Spanishnyou annoy him with it. Isn't he suspicious?"

"Perhaps in a way he is, yes, but it doesn't worry him. He believe he smarter than I am. He believe he smarter than everybody, and I think is important he continue to believe it." Fuentes looked off at the Gulf and said, "Do you see that ship, what's let of it? A wreck now, but it was once a coastal vessel from Nueva Gerona, on the Isle of Pines, a ship with two masts and two sails, big ones. They carry yucca and tobacco from the Isle of Pines to Havana and sometime to Matanzas and Crdenas, so they know the coast and places to hide. Oh, they smuggle goods, too. But on this day two years ago they came from Key Test, the ship full of rifles and cases of bullets and they get caught in the open by a gunboat that chase the ship and it run aground and break up on that sandbar. You can't see it, but is there. Two years ago to this day, March the seventeenth, 1895. There was seven of them aboard. And now come a company of Volunteers to wait for them on the sand. The men of the ship have no choice but to wade ashore and surrender. When they do this, half the Volunteers continue to aim their Mausers at them, while the others draw machetes and hack the unarmed men to death. Rafi Vasquez was the oflScer, the one who order it to happen. Your Mr. Boudreaux was also here, to watch."

"And you were here," Amelia said.

"Yes, I was here. And you see two men shot in the head. You see how easy it is for the Guardia to do it. I watched you. You don't close your eyes or turn your head to look away. You don't say oh, how can they do that. You accept what you see with your own eyes and you think about it. A crime is committed, the execution without giving it a thought of two innocent men. You don't say oh, no, is none of your business. You see they don't care, they can kill anybody they want, and you begin to wonder is there something you can do about it."

For several minutes they rode in silence, until Fuentes said, "How do you think about that?"

"Last year," Amelia said, "or was it the year before, it doesn't matter, I took work to help the sisters in a home for lepers."

As she spoke, Fuentes turned in his saddle, stirred. He said, "There is a leper home in Las Villas, San Lfizaro," and gestured, "That way, in Santa Clara, the next province east of here. I was there once to visit a woman I know and I see the devotion of the people working there, the most dedicated people in the world to do that. And you are one of those people?"

"I didn't do much," Amelia said. "I wrote letters for them, I played checkers, I gave them their medicine, two hundred drops of chaulmoogra oil a day. For fever we gave them Fowler's solution. Powdered mangrove bark was given for something, I don't remember what."

"For nausea," Fuentes said, "sure, mangrove. Look at it down there, in the swamp. So, you know how to prepare it as medicine."

"I lasted five days," Amelia said, "less than a week among the lepers and I ran out of dedication. What it means is, I can believe in something, I can want to throw myself into a cause and see myself tireless in my devotion-look at her, a saint-but it turns out I don't have enough of a sense of… I don't know." Fuentes sid, "Duty?"

"Yes, I suppose, duty or a sense of purpose. Five days and I gave up."

"No, I think the reason you left there," Fuentes said, "is because if you stay at the leper home then you don't come here. You understand? Then this would not become what you want to do most. But it must be what you want to do because you came here, didn't you?"

"Is it that simple?"

"What, to know what you want to do? Go by what you feel and don't think so much."

"It takes energy," Amelia said, "and a strong will." "Yes, of course." "And hatred."

"Hating can help, but it isn't necessary."

"You asked me, 'What is the point of you?'" Amelia said, and smiled a little hearing herself. "Tell me what's the point of you, Victor. Are you an anarchist, a communist of some kind, a collectivist?"

His face brightened as he said, "More of you comes out. You prepare yourself for this."

"At the knees of my maid," Amelia said. "Are you one of those, an anarchist?"

"It's enough at this time," Fuentes said, "to be Cuban."