Telex From Cuba Read online

  It took us most of the night to tire the shark out. Just before dawn, it seemed like it was giving up. I tugged on the line and it didn’t tug back. I remember feeling suddenly lousy. Sometimes you want something purely for the sake of wanting it, and when you finally get it, you only feel regret. Del said it was safe to go down. “Into the water?” I said. “Are you crazy?” There was no way I was getting into the water with a shark. Hammerheads have skin like ground glass. Just grazing against them, they can turn flesh to hamburger. Del said it was dying, and that he’d go down and get a rope around its tail so we could hoist it out. I imagined the shark summoning just enough energy to lash at the bastards responsible for ending its happy life. Del stripped his shirt off and dove in. I felt the shark tug, just a final soft wriggle, and then it was still.

  By the time we pulled it out, the sun was coming up. Our hands were completely shredded from the line. Del whacked him with a mallet, and it was over. Later we got our picture in our company magazine, Unifruitco, with a little article about the Stites boys catching a shark off Preston dock. They wrote “kidney-headed shark,” but it’s the same thing as a hammerhead. Nipe Bay was crawling with sharks. A month before we caught ours, a Pan Am seaplane hit a log and busted apart as it came in for a landing. Those poor people. Some of them survived the impact, only to get ripped apart by hungry hammerheads. Afterward, a couple of Cuban fishermen caught one, and when they opened it up they found women’s jewelry in its gut.

  As Del and I were cleaning the shark, a company launch pulled up to the dock. We were both delirious, and suddenly we hear these people shouting and carrying on—Americans, with southern accents, but not like Daddy’s people. These people talked like real hillbillies. I looked up and a rowdy family with maybe seven kids came scrambling onto the dock. I think every one of them was barefoot, wearing overalls like Tom Sawyer or something. They were yelling and chasing one another around as their bags were being unloaded from the boat. They crowded around us to get a look at the hammerhead, which are pretty weird-looking if you’ve never seen one. Sandpaper skin, a head like a forked tail, with these dull, cretinous eyes jutting from each side. There was a pile of innards next to me, organs and weird gunk we’d scraped out of the body cavity. One of the boys pointed and asked what we did with that stuff. I said toss it. He picked up what looked like a piece of intestine and started swinging it around as if it was seaweed. Tee-Tee was there, I remember because I’d never seen anyone with eyes like hers—ice blue, like a wolf’s eyes. She was barefoot like the rest of them, and she stepped right into the dark pool of blood around the shark. She looked down at us, her stringy hair falling into her face, and said we could attract more of them if we tossed a chunk of its flesh back into the water.

  I was eight and Del must have been twelve, and we’d never met anyone like the Allains. United Fruit had hired Hatch Allain and his brother, Rudy, and the two of them brought everybody over, even Grandmother Pearly. Pearly, who weighed about eighty pounds soaking wet and kept a .32 Derringer in the pocket of her apron. Rudy was a fix-it guy, he ran the machine shop, and Hatch was the plantation boss. Hatch was a giant, with these huge hands, huge elbows. Daddy said the company hired him because he’d worked on Louisiana plantations and he knew how to handle black people. Daddy didn’t say it so politely, but you get the idea. Hatch had that name for a reason—I think it was short for Hatchet. The workers were scared to death of him. He’d killed a man in Louisiana, and that’s why the Allains came to Cuba. They couldn’t go back to the States, or Hatch would be sent to prison. It was supposed to be a secret, but everyone knew. It was part of what made Hatch, Hatch and the Allains, the Allains.

  By the time Hatch and his wife, Flordelis, left Cuba, they had nine kids. When I think of Flordelis Allain I think of her pregnant. It seemed like she was the entire time I knew her. In Rudy’s clan there were six kids and his wife, Marthize—everyone called her Mars. Hatch’s son Curtis Junior was my age and he and I were buddies from day one. That’s how it is with kids sometimes. When you’re a good match, you’re best friends in a day. But then again, you can become enemies in a day, which is what happened later with me and Curtis.

  Tee-Tee, Hatch’s oldest, was Del’s age. That girl must have been almost six feet tall, lanky, with these long, bruised, dirty legs. Pale skin, almost colorless, like a baby’s flesh. She was attractive in a sort of peculiar way. Del had a crush on her from that moment on the dock. As I was thinking what a weird girl she was, Del was falling in love. The first year the Allains were in the Preston school with us, Del gave Tee-Tee a heart-shaped box of candy on Valentine’s Day. He’d bought it with his own money at the almacén. We were all on the playground, and Del walked up to her and mumbled something like “here.” Del was shy. He was one of those people who once you found a subject he cared about, he livened up and had plenty to say, but otherwise he gave you almost nothing. Tee-Tee snatched the heart-shaped box out of his hands, sat down on the seawall, and tore it open. Poor Del. She didn’t even thank him. She ate all the candies, plucked them out of their pleated paper liners until the box was empty. Rooted around to make sure she hadn’t missed any, and wiped her hands on her skirt. Stared at him with this blank expression, licking chocolate off her fingers, rough and indifferent as an alley cat. I bought Valentine candy at the almacén, too, but I gave mine to Mother.

  The Allains didn’t mix with the other Americans in Preston. They were different socially, you could say. They were Cajuns, from a small town in southern Louisiana, and they did things in their own style. They didn’t go to the Pan-American Club or play golf or polo or tennis or croquet or any of it. The Christmas pageant, the moonlit barge dances on the bay, yacht outings—there was always some sort of organized company fun happening, but you didn’t see the Allains at these things. I suppose they probably weren’t invited. But they wouldn’t have wanted to go to those events. They’d rather cook at the house or go fishing or hunting, camp out on the beach. Daddy had them in two squat brick houses down by the sugar mill and the hump yard where all the railroad cars sat. There were laundry lines strung between the two places, connecting them into one ragged compound, with diapers and kids’ T-shirts and Hatch and Rudy’s work coveralls flapping in the breeze that came over the seawall. Shredded clothes that didn’t look much different clean from dirty. I don’t know where they all slept—there must have been four or five of them to a room, so close to the sugar mill they were practically underneath it. The mill whistle was deafening down there, and during crushing season it blew on the hour every hour, twenty-four hours a day. This was how a lot of the Cubans kept track of time—not everyone had money to buy a watch. I think Daddy housed Hatch and Rudy down there to make sure there was no trouble. If something happened, they were two steps from the mill.

  That first week after the Allains arrived in Preston, Curtis Junior and I rode our bikes out to the airstrip together. On our way back into town he asked if I wanted to eat with them. That was something different. They cooked outside and they ate outside. Grilled everything on a fifty-gallon drum that Rudy cut in half and welded onto a stand. We all sat together, both families and all of the kids, at two picnic tables pushed end to end. Adults, kids—everybody shouted. The babies cried, wearing nothing but diapers; the other kids in barely anything more, barefoot, standing up on the picnic benches so they could reach what they wanted off the table. At our house, dinner was a formal affair. Daddy insisted on it. Daddy wore a white duck suit, white tie. Mother was dressed nicely, her hair done up, a little rouge on her cheeks, perfume, though not much: Mother said you should only be able to detect a woman’s scent when you lean to embrace her. Children were to be seen and not heard, unless Daddy asked us a question directly. Del and I had to be downstairs at six o’clock on the button, washed up and dressed for dinner, and nobody ate until my father said grace. Our butler, Henry Das—he was half Jamaican and half Hindu—served the courses. Daddy was from an old Mississippi family, and Henry Das wore white starched jackets and b
lack bow ties. He stood at the door to the kitchen, still as a statue while we ate. Dinner was three or four courses, the table set with polished silver, good china, finger bowls. A Cuban lawyer came to dinner at our house once, and after we’d finished eating, he took out his pocket comb, dipped it in his finger bowl, and ran the comb through his hair. Mother was horrified, but she didn’t say anything, of course. Even when Mr. Bloussé arrived with the Haitian wife and the black daughters, Mother was polite. Treated them like she’d treat anyone. She had a little silver bell at her end of the table. When she rang it, Henry Das came to see what we needed, walking with his perfect posture. That man was pure grace. When dinner ended, if there was a game happening out on the avenue, stickball or kick the can, Del and I wouldn’t be excused until after coffee was served. We could hear kids shouting and running around, but we had to stay at the table until Daddy gave the word. After dinner we went out and played until dark. Mother read, or painted with watercolors, or wrote letters to people in the States. Daddy sat on the front veranda listening to the nightly stock quotes on the radio. After the stock quotes was Lowell Thomas, and when Lowell Thomas said “So long until tomorrow,” Daddy called out that it was time to come in and get ready for bed.

  I’m pretty sure the Allains were the only Americans in Preston who didn’t have servants. This was highly unusual. In Cuba, the Anglos all had servants. We always had eight or nine people working at our house. Having a staff was part of how you did things in the tropics—they knew how to run a household, haggle with the vendors, maintain everything in that heat, with all that rain. And labor was cheap. But the Allains had no staff. They didn’t live on La Avenida, as I said—they lived in two squat brick houses practically in the armpit of the mill. That’s the pecking order for you. Rudy and Hatch weren’t management, they were blue-collar overseers, and they seemed happy next to the mill and the hump yard. I don’t think they would have wanted to live on La Avenida, with butlers, cooks, houseboys, gardeners, handymen, chauffeurs, and laundresses, all of that.

  Flordelis and Mars set big bowls on the outdoor table. They cooked Cajun, which I had never eaten. Oysters, some kind of blackened fish, corn bread, cracklins, rice, black-eyed peas. Delicious, spicy, salt-of-the-earth food. I miss it still. They started serving themselves and so did I, too, just reached in like everyone else and piled what I wanted on my plate. Manners isn’t just being proper, it’s doing things as they’re done at the home of your hosts. I wasn’t taught that; it’s something you pick up as you go. Putting your arm across somebody’s face? That was politeness to them. Hatch and Rudy’s mother, Pearly, came out of the house after everyone had started eating. She was in curlers, bobby pins sticking out every which way. Her head looked like a queen’s mace. “You got a date later on?” Hatch asked her. “Maybe I do,” Pearly said. “That is when I get done whuppin’ your ass.” That is the only person I ever saw give lip to Hatch Allain. After she sat down, Pearly took the little handgun out of her apron pocket and set it gently on the table. I think it was a joke, because everybody laughed. Rudy said, “Watch out somebody don’t get shot tonight.” Mother had the little silver bell next to her place setting, to ring Henry Das. Pearly had the .32 Derringer.

  Curtis’s baby brother, Chinaman, threw food all during dinner and nobody cared. In fact, they seemed to delight in it. His name was Clovis, but they called him Chinaman because he was a chubby little guy and he had slanty eyes. All those kids had funny names, except for Curtis Junior, who was always just Curtis. Hatch was Curtis Senior but I never heard anyone call him that. I don’t know what Curtis Junior’s doing now—probably in Louisiana with ten kids of his own. I haven’t talked to him in forty years. Hatch and Rudy are dead, I’m sure. Pearly’s probably buried with that gun in her apron pocket.

  Chinaman was maybe two years old, but he knew what he was doing: holding court. It was stiff competition to get the spotlight at the Allain table. After dinner Rudy put his two hands around his right eye and squeezed. His eye popped completely out. I couldn’t believe it. He dropped it on the table like a jumbo jawbreaker—clunk! It was glass. He reached down and turned it so it was staring right at me. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said. Then he picked it up and bounced it in his hand. “Yep,” he said, “the price you pay for pissing off Marthize Allain. But I’m working on forgiving her.” He looked at me. “I’ll share something with you, son: it ain’t eye for an eye between a man and his wife. It’s something else. What do you think, Mars?” He was cupping the glass eye, turning it in his fingers. “What would you call it?”

  Everyone was quiet. I looked around, and the kids were staring at their plates, except for Tee-Tee, who had this awkward smirk, like here we go again, and in front of the clueless dinner guest. I figured Rudy was joking, although it didn’t seem like a very funny joke. Mars stared at him. Then she started clearing dinner and went into the house with a stack of dirty plates. After she left, everyone sat quietly. Finally, Hatch spoke. “If you don’t shut your trap, Rudy, she might just take out the other one.”

  Mars really had gouged his eye out. Years back, when they were all living in Louisiana, she and Rudy had a terrible argument. She broke an empty liquor bottle against the kitchen counter and jabbed the jagged end at him, not meaning to actually hurt him. He lunged toward her to grab it, and the broken end went into his eye. Busted his yolk. You have to wonder what that does to a marriage. She’d done this unforgivable thing to Rudy. And Rudy had experienced a horrific loss because of it—his eye, for Christ’s sake. And now they were stuck with each other.

  At our house, Annie made flan, flambé, elaborate triple-layer cakes. Every afternoon, the smell rose up from the kitchen and filled the house. Henry Das would bring dessert out on a rolling tea cart and serve it on Mother’s special cake plates with her silver server. After the table was cleared at the Allains that night, Mars put out a halved watermelon on an old board. We each hacked off our own piece, and everyone spit their seeds in the dust. The adults all smoked. Rudy said he was out of loose tobacco, and Mars offered him one of her pre-rolled cigarettes. He took it and bit the filter off and spit the filter on the ground. He said smoking a cigarette with a filter on it was like—he paused, trying to think of what it was like—“like suckin’ on a titty through a brassiere,” he said.

  After dinner they brought out the instruments. Curtis Junior and his cousin Mitty played fiddle and accordion, and Genevieve, Eglantine, and Tee-Tee took turns dancing on a piece of linoleum. Eglantine—or Giddle, as they called her—had tap shoes. The rest of the girls did a sort of fake tap dance in bare feet. I remember the metal taps on Giddle’s soles click-clacking on the playground blacktop—she wore them to school every day, like they were just normal shoes. Rudy’s littlest, Panda, she sang. Panda was maybe seven years old and she had this strange, beautiful voice, not in a conventional sense, but she had something special and they all knew it. Panda had long, dirty blond hair, always a big snarl right at the back of her head, a plum-colored birthmark around one eye. She once came to school in her nightgown. I have no idea why. Miss Sparks sent her home and told her to come back dressed properly. I guess kids wear what they want to, pajamas, tap dancing shoes, when there are a lot of them and not much supervision. Curtis and Mitty dressed like guajiros, pants cut off at the knee, a rope through the belt loops, no socks, canvas tennis shoes with holes in them. Even Tee-Tee, good-looking in her peculiar way, was just as dirty as the rest of them.

  Panda sang, and Curtis and Mitty played accompaniment. Hatch kept time, slapping an enormous hand on an enormous thigh, and sipping from a bottle of Methuselah rum. Now, that’s what you call rotgut. Thirty cents a liter at the almacén. The United Fruit executives drank Dewar’s White Label scotch whiskey. It was the company’s official drink. A gentleman named Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK’s father, ran the Dewar’s franchise in the States, and he was a friend of Daddy’s. It’s no secret that United Fruit people were involved in the Bay of Pigs. And the son of the CEO of the company that
distilled our official whiskey is who they all later blamed for deserting them, for the missed opportunity to get the sugar empire back. Dewar’s White Label is what the younger guys drank as well, the bachelors who hung around at the Pan-American Club, sat on the terrace watching the dockhands load three-hundred-pound sugar sacks. This was United Fruit management, and there were rituals, ways of doing pretty much everything. You wore a white duck suit with the bejesus starched out of it; you lived in a house full of servants; your children were raised by Jamaican nannies; you listened to the company stock quotes on the portable; you sent your kids to bed when Lowell Thomas said “So long until tomorrow,” and you sipped your Dewar’s White Label scotch whiskey. The Allain brothers wore oil-stained coveralls; their wives did all the cooking and cleaning and laundry; their children ran wild; and Hatch drank from that jug of rotgut like it was an elixir from heaven.

  That first night I had dinner there—supper, they called it—Daddy made me strip down in the garage, and Hilton Hardy hosed me off before I was allowed to come into the main house. Daddy didn’t object to my going down to the Allains. He just didn’t want me “traipsing it into the house.” “It” meaning lower class—not a thing you could catch. I think Daddy figured if I was going to be friends with Curtis, he wanted me to remain aware of the differences between us. Eventually I stopped having to strip down and hose off in the garage, and could just return home from the Allains like I’d been on a normal outing. Daddy would still pretend to grab lice out of my hair, or he’d tell Annie to check me for fleas, but he was only kidding.