"Oh," she said afterwards, "I had forgotten what a young man can do. You look so tender with those warm eyes and that soulful smile, and yet you are so strong. What a man you are!"
He sat back, lit a cigar and loved the wonderful warm wash of afternoon light, the smell of sex and sweat and cigars, the nearness of the jungle with all its savagery, the farness of the Sierras, cool and remote and vast and beckoning, as if they knew secrets.
"Will I see you again?"
"Of course. But only for a while. Soon I must go back to Havana where a destiny awaits me."
"I assume you will marry a rich girl and join the country club and learn to play golf and drink with the Americans."
"That is where you are wrong. I will take the rich girl's money and give it to many poor girls, I will turn all the golf courses into agricultural collectives and I will frighten the Americans back to America."
"Don't let them hear you talk like that, my hero. They don't like it, and they have their ways."
"I have my ways, too," he promised.
And that is how he waited for his clarification. He played the beisbol with the youngsters in the morning and fished or hunted in the afternoon. Then he wandered to Cueto and had a coffee and read the Havana papers. The furor over the violence of El Colorado and the swiftness of the justice had worn down somewhat, he determined, and he wondered how soon he could head back, with his many new ideas. He was ready for action.
Then, being ready for action, he went and found that action at the Senora Fugolensia's, and a good time was had by all. If the neighbors knew, they never told, for that is not the Cuban way. And if Senor Fugolensia, the assistant district manager for Dumois-Nipe, ever found out, there was no drama, no gossip, no fury. Everything was pleasant and relaxed, because everyone understood how it was in these matters. So the young man had a wonderful time, really, growing fat and sleek and lazy, until Havana seemed just a bad dream. He knew he would go back but, well…maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not until next week or the next, and when it came to pass that he was discovered, the agent of his betrayal was not a spy or a snitch or a traitor or an American gofer, but simple chance. One day the next week, Captain Latavistada and Frankie Carbine happened to be driving through Cueto, as they had been driving through all the dusty towns around Mayari, including Guaro and Alto Cedro and Felton and Antillas, and it was Frankie who happened to be looking a certain direction. He saw the young man sitting in a cafe.
They followed him.
Who could have predicted it? And the young man was laughing and tickling his older lady and wondering also when all this would be finished, and he didn't even notice the captain getting the Mendoza 7mm light machine gun out of the trunk of his car, while Frankie checked the magazine in the Star machine pistol. The young man was too busy thinking of love and destiny.
Chapter 31
It took a while, going through several operators and various connections and then, finally, she was not there. So he waited up in his room, feeling unpleasant about all this. He knew it was both right and wrong at once and that's what he hated so much about it. He knew this was an opportunity, that it could lead them to a better life, a life undreamed of, seen only in magazines. Yet he did not trust these men at all, not even a little bit. They wanted something too much. He hated that sense of the pressure against him, their wills, expressing themselves in small ways. It wasn't like the service. In the service you had orders, in the highway patrol you had procedures, and everything was what it was and no other thing, not really. This was different. Maybe what one boy said was the right move and maybe what another said, and if you guess wrong it all blew up in your face. It was all part of a world he'd never quite trusted, expressed in a secret language of gesture and pause and hint that he never quite understood. He didn't see how he could be comfortable in such a place. But there was the issue of family, too: if he could make a certain kind of success for himself and for them, if he could give his son opportunities, didn't he oweit to the boy? His old man had never given him shit for opportunities, and he wouldn't be like that. He'd die before he was like that. If nothing else, he would give the boy some opportunities.
He tried again, though it was too soon. Back in Arkansas it would have been about 6:00 P.M.; she should be back home now, making supper for herself and the boy. But it was summer. The boy was out of school. He'd been in school when all this had begun, now he was out, as it was getting into late June. Who knew where they'd gone? Maybe they'd gone out for a little picnic or over to the Blue Eye drive-in, where the boy had the hot dogs and root beer that he loved so much. Maybe it was a church gathering or a―
But she answered.
The operator explained to her that it was long-distance from overseas and clicking and snapping filled the wire and then it was just the two of them.
"Oh, hi," he said, "it's me," as if it could be anyone else.
"Good lord, Earl, I jump six feet every time the phone rings. I was in the garden the last time and couldn't get here in time."
"I'm sorry. It's these operators. She hung up too fast."
"How are you? They called from the congressman's office and said you'd been hurt a little, but they didn't have any details. They said you were a hero and would get another medal. But they didn't say anything else. So I called Colonel Jenks and he didn't know either."
"Sorry, I should have called. Yes, I was hurt some, but it wasn't a thing. I'm fine. I'm out of the hosp―"
"The hospital!"
"It's all better. I have a limp, but it'll go away."
"Good lord, Earl, what happened?"
"Oh, it was a law-enforcement situation, there was a little shooting, and I got nicked. It's nothing."
"Earl, you never learn. Now you are risking your life for less than nothing, meaning that braying toad Harry Etheridge, whom I wouldn't trust any further than I could throw the Frigidaire."
"Boss Harry is nothing to take home, you are right on that score."
"Earl, you get back here. Your boy misses you terribly. He just looks out the window like a sad sack. I can't get him to play ball or anything. The last time you were gone for so long, he was so young he didn't really understand. Now he knows you're gone and I can see him hurting inside. He's getting quieter and quieter."
"Well, see, that's the thing. As you know, Congressman Harry's gone home. But see, I have an opportunity here."
"Oh, lord."
"It's with the government. There's some work they think I can do for them. They like me, they've made me what looks like a right fine offer."
"Earl, you are happy in Arkansas and so am I. You don't need anything from the government. Last time you worked for the government, you were shot seven times, all over the Pacific. I thought that was over, but now you're with the government and you've been shot again. And all so soon after the last time you were away-and it took a full year before you were fully yourself on that one, and God knows what you did, and not even Sam will tell me a word about it. You just say, as you always say, 'It was nothing.'"
"Junie, it's the boy I'm thinking about. If I got a big job in Washington we could live in a much nicer place, he could go to better schools and have a life we can't dream of."