Cuba Libre

TWO

They brought the horses ashore at Regla, across the harbor from Havana: led them out of dim confinement into sunlight and down a ramp to the wharf, the horses poky, disoriented after five days at sea. Tyler and the Mexican stock handlers from the Vamoose brought the animals single file through rows of cargo stacked high and covered with tarps-hogsheads of sugar and molasses, stalks of bananas-the smell of coffee taking Ben Tyler back to the summer he spent here. It reminded him some of New Orleans, too, that same coffee aroma on the wharves along the river. Negro dock hands stood to look at the parade of horses, some of them smiling, reaching out. There were merchants and officials in town clothes and all kinds of hats-straw boaters among them-who "took their time moving out of the way. Tyler came to a Spanish soldier, an officer in a pale gray uniform that seemed familiar: red facings on the collar, a white shirt and loosely knotted black necktie beneath the jacket, his hat a pre shaped military straw set squarely on his head.

Tyler held the dun by a hackamore. He said, "Excuse me." Willing to say it once.

Now they were eye-to-eye, each with his own measure of curiosity, the man's hat shading a tired expression, tired or bored; or it was his mustache, the way it drooped over the corners of his mouth, that gave him that look. He turned and walked away, showing no interest in the horses, a man armed with a sword, his hand resting on the hilt.

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 dock hands too.

There was Charlie Burke up the road.

And Fuenes in his white suit, arm raised, waving his hat, near the customhouse on the road that approached the wharf. Fuentes was pointing now to feed lots just up the road. The stock handlers were nodding, they knew where to take the horses.

Tyler left them, went back to the cattle boat for his gear, this time looking around at all the different kinds of straw hats there were, boaters, big raggedy ones, lightweight panamas with black bands that looked pretty good. A couple of soldiers in seersucker uniforms, blue pinstriping, wore straw hats with red badges pinned to the turned-up brim. Some of the convicts at Yuma wore straw hats, but no stock men Tyler had ever seen, except in Mexico and down here. Later on he might look for a hat and a suit of clothes. Not a white one; he couldn't see himself in a white suit.

This time he came off the cattle boat with his saddle and most of what he owned in the world rolled up in a poncho. He stepped to the open harbor-side of the wharf and looked across at Havana in the late afternoon sun, a familiar view, an old colonial city in the same bright colors as the picture postcards his dad used to send and he'd saved for a time in a cigar box that bore the portrait of a Spanish general with full muttonchops that curved into his mustache, the man's chest loaded with medals. 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."

Tyler looked at the wreckage, what was left of some warship, gulls still perched out there, the scavengers circling… His gaze moved to a trail of smoke, a steam launch coming away from a warship anchored not far from the wreck. He could make out the Spanish flag and sailors on deck in white. The launch reached the end of the wharf and now officers in dress uniforms were up the ladder, three of them coming this way along the wharf. Looking him over now, the yanqui-he heard one of them say it and another one use the word vaquero. As they passed, Tyler turned to see the nearest one looking back and he nodded, saying, "How're you today?" not giving it much and not getting anything in return, not a word. He saw Charlie Burke now beyond them, coming this way, Charlie Burke in his town clothes giving them a nod and saying something as he passed, and they ignored him, kept looking straight ahead.

Tyler dropped the saddle, still watching the officers. He was pretty sure they were army: triplets dressed in the same short red tunics with gold buttons and braid, light blue trousers with yellow stripes and kepis a darker shade of blue. They marched along in polished black boots, holding their sabers almost under their arms to point in the direction they were going.

As Charlie Burke reached him Tyler said, "You can't miss those fellas, can you?"

Charlie Burke glanced back at them but didn't say anything.

"They come off that ship. I guess visiting, 'cause they look army to me, cavalry."

"The ship's the Alfonso XII," Charlie Burke said.

He kept staring at it while Tyler waited for him to say something about the horses, still a little wobbly but all were safe and sound; or to tell him he looked like a grub-line rider and ask how come he hadn't bought any town clothes. But it didn't seem to be on his mind.

No, as his gaze moved he said, "That steamship yonder's the City of Washington. And that pile of scrap out there-you know what it is?"

"I was told a warship," Tyler said.

Charlie Burke looked at him now. "You don't know, do you? You were at sea. That's the USS Maine."

"One of ours?"

"What's left of her. Three nights ago, nine-forty on the dot," Charlie Burke said, "she blew up."

Tyler said, "Jesus," staring at the twisted metal sticking out of the water. "What about the crew?"

"Over two hundred fifty dead so far, out of three hundred seventy officers and men."

"What caused it, a fire?"

"That's what every American by now wants to know.

What or who caused it, if you get my meaning."

"You were here when it happened?"

"We got in about six on the fifteenth, checked into the hotel. Nine-thirty that evening we went to suppermpeople here don't eat till it's time to go to bed. There was two explosions, actually, one and then a pause and then another one. The glass doors of the cafe blew in, the lights went out-I think every light in the city. Everybody in the place ran outside. It's pitch-dark in the street, but the sky's all lit up and you could hear explosions out there and see what looked like fireworks, Roman candles going off." Charlie Burke shook his head, more solemn than Tyler had ever seen him. "Yesterday I spoke to a deckhand off the City of Washington who saw the whole thing from close by. He said the first explosion pitched the bow of the Maine right up out of the water. With the second explosion the mid part of the ship burst into flames and blew apart. This deckhand was right there. He said you could hear men screaming, "Lord God, help me!" Sailors out in the water, some hurt pretty bad, some drowning. The City of Washington and the Alfonso XII sent lifeboats over, and the Diva, a British ship tied up here at Regla, it sent boats. The wounded they managed to find were taken to hospitals; men missing arms and legs, some burned so bad, the deckhand said, you couldn't zen if they was man or beast."

"Jesus," Tyler said.

Except for the crow's nest sticking straight up, the wreck age barely looked like a ship. Tyler's gaze rose to the buzzards circling in a sky beginning to lose its light.

"Waiting for bodies or parts of 'em to rise up," Charlie Burke said. "They buried nineteen at Colon Cemetery yesterday and dragged forty more bodies out of the water today. Some of 'em in the hospital, they say, aren't gonna make it. The captain of the Maine, man named Sigsbee, wants to send divers down to look for bodies, but the dons won't let 'em near it."

"How come?"

"Because they might find out the explosion came from under the ship and not from inside it. If the keel's buckled inward, then it was a mine or torpedo blew her up. If the bottom's shoved outward, then it could've been a fire that started in one of the coal bunkers and spread to a magazine, where the high explosives are stored, and she blew. That's what everybody in Havana's talking about, what way did it happen. Fella at the hotel, one of the newspaper correspondents, had a copy of the New York Journal, just come by boat from Key West. The headline said, "Destruction of the Warship Maine was the Work of an Enemy," not making any bones about it. Who's the enemy, but Spain? They're saying the Spanish arkanged to have the ship anchored over a harbor mine, then they exploded it from the shore using an electric current. Or they shot a torpedo at her."

They were quiet for a time, staring at the wreckage, Tyler thinking of the men down inside in the dark, underwater. "Is there talk about us going to war?"

Charlie Burke said, "You bet there is. The newspaper fellas at the hotel say it won't be long now. And the dons seem for it. They're passing out circulars in town that say "Long live Spain' and "Death to the Americans."

They were quiet again, looking at Havana and hearing ships' bells and the chug-chug of steam launches out on the water. Charlie Burke said, "You know how much tobacco they grow on this island?"

"No," Tyler said. "How much?"

"A whole lot. But they don't put one bit of it aside for chewing tobacco."

Tyler slung his saddle over his shoulder by the horn. Charlie Burke picked up the rolled poncho, saying they'd meet Fuentes by the customhouse.

Rut there he was across the road and up a piece at the stock pens, arm raised, waving at them. With him were the three officers in dress uniforms who'd come off the Spanish ship, and a few strides away, the officer in the familiar gray uniform Tyler had run into earlier, this time smoking a tailor-made cigarette.

Fuentes, Tyler noticed, had cut out the five horses he didn't want and put them in the same lot with the dun; and now Fuentes was coming out to the road to meet them, Charlie Burke saying, "Like he don't want us getting too close to the dons."

Maybe. Fuentes had an anxious look on his face. He said, "I think you can sell a horse today. Lieutenant Teo Barban wants to know how old is the dun."

Tyler did a half turn, swinging the saddle from his shoulder. "Teo-that's his name?" "For Teobaldo." "Which one is he?"

Fuentes glanced over. "The hussar, the one with his hand on the fence rail."

In the red tunic and blue kepi, one of those, with their swords; all three intent on the horses while the one in gray was looking this way. Tyler said, "I remember that gray uniform from a long time ago. Or one like it."

Without looking around Fuentes said, "Guardia Civil. His name is Lionel Tavalera, a major; he's very… he makes himself known."

That was it, the Guardia, Tyler remembering them as a kind of rural police, known to be hardheaded and mean. He said to Fuentes, "These fellas speak English?"

Fuentes shrugged. "I believe enough. Try them."

Tyler called out, "Hey, Teo?" And as the officers turned this way, Teo Barban looking surprised to hear his name, Tyler said, "I'd put the dun's age at ten years old, no more'n that, but she ain't for sale. Pick another one, she's yours."

He saw Teo wore a neat little mustache waxed to needle points. The young man seemed to be studying him now, like he was wondering who this cowboy thought he was.

Teo said, "Why is that, you don't want to sell her?"

"I'd miss her. She and I get along, never have any arguments."

"Oh, the two of you are lovers?"

Teo's fellow officers were already grinning as he turned his head and said something to them in Spanish. Now they were laughing.

Tyler looked at Fuentes. "What'd he just say?" "He said he thought vaqueros only fucked heifers." Now one of the others was making a kissing sound toward the mares. The three boys having fun and Tyler realized that's what they were, boys, all in their early twenties-except for the Guardia Civil officer, Lionel Tavalera, who had a good ten years on them, or more. These boys were young and frisky, no different than cavalry officers Tyler had seen at Whipple Barracks and Fort Thomas their first time out, on frontier station with the "Dandy Fifth" and had that same strut and pose, feeling themselves above poor civilians and common soldiers. Tyler said to Fuentes, "What do these boys do all dressed up like that?"

They heard him, all of them looking over.

Fuentes said, "They're hussars," sounding surprised. "Lieutenant Barban and his companions are of the Pavia Hussars, with the regiment here I believe six months."

Tyler said to Teo, "You're with a cavalry outfit, uh?"

"Hussars, caballeria," Teo said, "the same as you have in your country to kill in dios yes? We kill insurrectos."

"Well, I was way off," Tyler said. "I thought the circus was in town and you boys played in the band."

They heard him, the three hussars giving Tyler a dead-eyed look now. Lionel Tavalera, the Guardia Civil officer, seemed to appreciate it, he was grinning. And so was Fuentes, his back to the officers, Fuentes with kind of a surprised expression in his eyes, like he was seeing the real Ben Tyler for the first time. Charlie Burke turned his head to say, "What's wrong with you?" And then, to the officers: "Fellas, don't mind my partner, we're all friends here. Pick out a mount and we'll make you a deal."

Fuentes, turning to them, said, "Yes, please, while you have the opportunity." He said, "Lieutenant Barban," and began speaking to him in Spanish as he walked back to the stock pens, now and again nodding at the horses. Now Teo was speaking to Fuentes in Spanish, Tyler getting some of it. It sounded like Teo wanted to ride one of the horses.

Lionel Tavalera, standing apart, said to Tyler, "You don't think I play in a circus band, do you?"

He had kind of a sissified way of holding his cigarette, Tyler thought, up in front of him and between the tips of two fingers. Tyler said, "I know who you are, you're Guardia Civil, you're a policeman."

"You pronounce it pretty good," Tavalera said, "but the Guardia are not police during time of war. We're like those people, the caballerla, except we don't stay in Havana and go sightseeing, we hunt insurrectos. We the first to go to war, the front line always." He said, "You saw the ship that was destroyed?" nodding toward the harbor. "They say a fire began in the coal and spread to the munitions. It's too bad, uh, all those men dying. Tell me, you bring the horses from where, Texas?"

"Arizona," Tyler said.

"That's a long way. Your family live there?"

"I don't have a family, not anymore."

Tavalera looked at the stock pens and then at Tyler again. "May I ask how much you sell the horses for?"

Charlie Burke stepped in. "Hundred and fifty pesos, any horse you want."

Tavalera was nodding. "But with the duty tax, how do you make money? Or you don't pay so much of the duty. Listen, I ton't care, it's your business."

"We're delivering this string," Charlie Burke said, "to Mr. Roland Boudreaux in Matanzas, along with some beef cows. Giving him a special deal."

"I know Mr. Roland Boudreaux," Tavalera said, and looked at Tyler again. "I visit in Mexico when I was young. At that time I want to be a cowboy like you. But I return home and they accept me to attend the Colegio Real Militar. You know what that is? Like your West Point. I was honored to be assigned to the Guardia Civil when I was in Spanish Africa, then they send me here at the beginning of the second Cuban insurrection, February 1895, again assigned to the Guardia Civil." Tavalera was saying, "In these three years…" as Fuentes called to them:

"Lieutenant Barban ask how much for all five horses."

Charlie Burke answered him. "You know what we're asking."

Tyler watched the Guardia officer's expression turn hard, not caring for this interruption.

He waited another moment before saying, "In these three years I've come to love this country," telling it in a flat voice with an accent, cold, stating a fact. "After the war I intend to stay here to live in Matanzas, the most beautiful city in Cuba." He glanced at Charlie Burke. "Where he say you going to deliver these horses."

And now Fuentes was calling to them again.

"Lieutenant Barban will give you four hundred pesos for the five horses. Right now, cash money."

Tavalera said to Tyler, "They're not worth it, the horses are too small," as Charlie Burke called back to Fuentes:

"Tell him a hundred and a half each, seven fifty. Pesos, escudos or double eagles, we don't care."

"Teo's worried," Tavalera said, "they won't be able to procure horses."

Tyler turned to him. "Why's that?"

Tavalera said, "The war," sounding surprised that he had to explain this. "Not the War of Insurrection, but the one that's coming soon. You blame us for blowing up your battleship and your government will use it to declare war on Spain. Avenge the blowing up of the ship and help the poor Cuban people, so oppressed. But the true reason will be so you can have Cuba for yourself, a place for American business to make money."

Tyler said to him, "Did you blow up the Maine?" Tavalera shrugged and said, "Perhaps."

Sounding to Tyler as though he didn't care one way or the other.

Now Fuentes was calling to them, saying, "He's attracted to the bay with the star, but he says it's too small to be worth a hundred and fifty pesos."

"Tell him," Charlie Burke said, "we don't sell 'em by the pound. That's a saddle-broke cutting horse, can turn on a dime and leave you five centavos change. Ask him if he plays polo. That's what Boudreaux's buying his string for."

Tavalera said, "Rollie thinks he's going to be playing polo?" as Fuentes was saying:

"The lieutenant wants the saddle put on the bay with the star, so he can ride her, see what he thinks." Tyler said, "He wants it put on?" "He wants us to, yes."

Tyler looked across at Teo Barban. "You say you're with a cavalry outfit?"

The officer turned to face him. "Pavia Hussars. You heard your man."

"Well, if you know how to ride, you ought to know how to saddle a horse."

Teo said, "Yes?"

He didn't get it.

"What I mean," Tyler said, "if you're not helpless, you can saddle it yourself. I'm not your rnozo."

He understood that, staring at Tyler as if he couldn't believe anyone would speak to him this way. Now he was talking a mile a minute to the other hussar officers and to Tavalera, including him; Tyler seeing how a spoiled kid from Spain acted when the help talked back and he didn't get his way-no different than spoiled kids Tyler had seen at home. Now Fuentes was hurrying over, stooping to pick up the saddle.

Tyler placed a boot on it.

"Who's putting it on, you or him?"

"I can do it; it's nothing to saddle a horse."

"We don't work for him," Tyler said.

Fuentes shook his head. "You take it too far."

Teo was yelling, gesturing to Lionel Tavalera, who was listening to him, nodding, and seemed interested. But then he shrugged, shaking his head, and said to Tyler, "He wants me to give you my sword. Teo believes you insulted him."

Tyler said, "He wants me to sword fight with him?" Grinning, because it sounded funny, like he was talking about playing a kids' game.

"That's enough," Fuentes said. "All right? Please, let's go, we finished here."

"Go on with your business," Tavalera said. "I can speak to him, tell him to behave as a gentleman."

Fuentes said, "We have to go to the customhouse before they close."

Tavalera said, "Yes, go. I can take care of this, it's nothing."

All Charlie Burke said to Tyler was, "You're some horse trader. Pick up your chair and let's go."

Tyler swung the saddle to his shoulder and stood there looking at Lionel Tavalera and the hussar officers. He said to Fuentes, "They won't bother the horses, will they?"

"They don't want any horses today, they change their mind," Fuentes said. He hurried Tyler and Charlie Burke away from there, out of the field and along the road to the customhouse, telling them he would speak to the custom people and to leave the filling in of the declaration to him. "We finish and take the ferry to Havana. Mr. Boudreaux say he can see you tonight at the hotel. He look at the horses tomorrow, pay you, we put the horses aboard the ship again and go to Matanzas. Is not very far." He said to Tyler, "You been there, uh?"

"A long time ago."

"But you know people there?"

"I was a boy then."

"Perhaps someone will remember you. Sure, you never know. See over there? The sugar warehouses, biggest in the world. That building? The electric lighting plant. And there? The Plaza de Toros, the Regla bullring. The famous Gentleman Matador from Spain, Mazzantini, will perform there Sunday, again. Last Sunday twice they gave him both ears. It's too bad you won't be here. Maybe when you come back. Let me ask you something," Fuentes said. "Do you have a pistol?" Tyler looked at him. "In my poke."

"Keep it on you after we go to customs. Don't tell them you have one or you have to give it up."

Tyler said, "You're worried about Teo, that dandy? The Guardia, Tavalera, said he'd speak to him."

Fuentes said, "Yes, but what is he going to tell him?"

Lionel Tavalera watched the two Americans and the mulatto as they walked off toward the customhouse. He had seen the mulatto before in Matanzas and knew of him, an employee of Rollie Boudreaux, the polo player, but had not decided yet if he should trust him, or if it mattered whether he did or not.

Now he looked at the three hussar officers lounging against the rails of the stock pen, their kepis cocked over bored expressions, the way they were known to pose. Walking toward them, Tavalera said, "Teobaldo?"

The hussar straightened to stand half turned, looking along his shoulder at Tavalera, waiting as the Guardia officer stopped only a few feet from him.

"Let me ask you, did you think the cowboy was going to fight you with a sword?"

"If he was a man," Teo said.

"You think, out on the western plain of his country, a primitive place to live, he learned to fence? Use the 8pSe, the saber?"

Teo shrugged.

"Don't you realize," Tavalera said, "if you drew your sword the cowboy would have shot you?"

"He had a pistol? Where was it?"

"Somewhere, you can be sure. Where he lives they all carry pistols and use them to settle their differences." He paused and said, "You wanted to kill him?"

"I want to cut him," Teo said, drawing a finger across his cheek. "Give him a scar to remember this day." "But who is he? Do you know?" "A yanqui. You saw him."

"And I say again, who is he? Does he have friends here, a connection with wealthy Americans? He delivers the horses to one. It isn't possible to bring horses to Cuba and make a profit, but he brings horses. As a favor to the wealthy American? The other American, the old one, tells me they have cows, too, they ship to Matanzas. Yes, and what do they do then, turn around and go home? What else is on that boat, the Vamoose, that rusting corruption? Do you think you should know more about this cowboy before you scar his face?" Tavalera waited.

Teo said, "I don't care if he knows someone here or not, he insulted me."

"By not saddling the horse for you?"

"By his manner, the way he spoke to me."

"Where are you from, Madrid?"

"Of course. And you are from where, Africa?" His companions grinned. "Be careful," Tavalera said.

"Oh? You aren't from Africa? I heard you were born there."

Tavalera said, "Look, I know what they say about you. You have a reputation and it gives you confidence. So the next time you see the cowboy you offer him pistols, uh? Here, take your pick."

"If I feel like it."

"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? rain 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?"

His gaze held on Teo, now with the feeling he was wasting his time, Teo waiting for this to be over.

"You don't say to me," Tavalera said, "you'll do some thing if you feel like it. You only do what you feel like if I say it's all right. You understand?" He waited until Teo gave him a nod. There. "But listen," Tavalera said, "I can be a sympathetic person. Ask my permission first. That's all you have to do."