Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

After they all had left, guilt finally got me out of bed. I rummaged for clothes, found a green dress and the shawl-no shoes, no underwear-and went after them, but I couldn’t find them. And now I was a little lost.

Rain. Sand. Black clouds. A dog came bounding over. Black labrador, sandy paws, floppy ears. “Good boy,” I said, grabbing him by the collar. His tag said he was called Suerte-Lucky.

I patted him. “Are you lost too? Are you? Where did you come from? Do you want to be my friend?”

I didn’t see many dogs in Havana-you had to get a special permit to own a dog and often they caused resentment. Dogs ate meat, and for many people that was rubbing it in.

“Lucky, I like that. Lucky you met me.”

A boy walked over the dune. Black, a little older than me, wearing shorts, a yellow T-shirt, no shoes either.

“Your dress is soaked, I can see through to your papaya,” the boy said.

“You shouldn’t be looking,” I replied, my cheeks burning.

“I, I was only joking.”

“I don’t find that joke very funny.”

“That’s my dog,” he said.

“You can have him,” I said, pushing the dog away from me.

“Hey!” someone called up from the dirt road beyond the dune.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “But I know you.”

“Oh yeah? Who am I?”

“You’re staying with your cousins in the Hacienda Mercado.”

“That’s right.”

“Your uncle is a very bad man,” the boy said, taking his dog and keeping it close to him.

“Why?”

“He beat me for talking to Juanita.”

Uncle Arturo was an important official in the regional government. He had every expectation of his daughters marrying well and moving to Havana. It didn’t surprise me that he’d beaten this poor black kid from the village for talking with the lovely Juanita.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Patrice.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“Haitian, I mean French.”

Ricky ran down from the road. He was breathless. “We should go, there’s some kind of trouble. Uncle Arturo got a tipoff that the police are coming. He sent me to look for you.”

Patrice, Lucky, Ricky, and I ran back together.

It was almost dusk when we made it to the village. The rain had eased and there was a helicopter. My mouth went dry. In Cuba only the army flew helicopters. What kind of trouble meant the army? We walked closer until we saw police vans and cops blocking the roads in and out of the village.

“Get down,” I said and pulled Ricky to the ground. Lucky ran back to his house and Patrice followed him. “Hey!” I called after him, but some instinct told Patrice to get away from us.

To one side of the settlement were three big fields that had been zoned for a new coffee plantation, which for one reason or another had never materialized. The fields had been left to grow wild and palms and mangrove trees and tall grasses had sprung up. Excellent cover. We ducked off the road and into the undergrowth, crawling toward the hacienda. Scores of police and troops and plainclothes DGI and DGSE men. The helicopter, a huge Russian thing, was shining a spotlight down onto the village.

We got on our bellies now and slithered all the way around to Uncle Arturo’s yard.

A confusion of soldiers, cops, civilians. The street had been blocked off by army jeeps manned by troops toting enormous machine guns. The police had their guns drawn and there were still more soldiers in green fatigues with black armbands kneeling and pointing rifles at the hacienda. The villagers were congregating behind the jeeps-almost everyone in the little hamlet had come out to enjoy the spectacle. The helicopter came lower and its spotlight began scanning the house, the yard, and the fields beyond.

“We’re going to be seen here,” I whispered to Ricky.

“What do we do?”

“The palm tree,” I said. “In the break between the beams. Stay with me.”

We scrambled into the yard and climbed the palm tree at the back of the house. From up here we could see everything better. All told there were about fifty soldiers and as many police fiercely surrounding Uncle Arturo’s house as if it contained lost survivors from the Bay of Pigs.

A lead policeman in a civilian suit was trying to speak into a megaphone but he couldn’t get the thing to work.

The big helicopter was landing. It was probably running low on gas.

The noise was incredible. We watched it until it went behind the trees, thundering, shaking coconuts out of the branches. Other cops had set up a generator and when they turned it on arc lights flooded the scene.

I hadn’t stopped shivering since the beach and six meters up a palm tree was no place for a fainting fit.

“What do you think Uncle Arturo did?” Ricky asked.

“Maybe this is about the American cigarettes and those magazines.”

The policeman with the megaphone finally got it to work. He stood on a tree stump and started telling the other police officers to get the civilians away.

“Why is he doing that?” I wondered.

“In case there’s a shootout, of course.”

“How do you know he has a gun?” I asked.

“I’ve seen it. Juanita said-Hey look, it’s the sausages,” Ricky said, pointing to the line of ’izos three branches up. “That was a pretty good throw for a girl; pity girls can’t play baseball.”

“They can and they do.”

“In America,” Ricky said dismissively.

In the typically Cuban way, a man pushing a food cart appeared from nowhere. He was selling flan and beer but the police made him go away after confiscating all his merchandise for themselves.

Finally, when the policeman with the megaphone was satisfied that the crowd was sufficiently safe, he turned his attention back to the hacienda. He was a short guy with shiny black hair and boots.

“Arturo Mercado, come out with your hands up,” the cop said.

The crowd went silent and then much to our surprise Uncle Arturo answered: “What is this? I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Send out your family,” the policeman said.

“I have a right to know what this is about. Under the Cuban Penal Code all persons have a right to know what they are being charged with,” Arturo shouted.

“You are not being charged with anything, Mercado, not yet. We want to question you. Be a man, at least send out your family.”

“How do I know they’ll be safe?” Uncle Arturo said.

“Of course they will be safe. There are hundreds of witnesses.”

“Give me your word.”

The cop blanched for a moment but then recovered his poise. “My name is Captain Armando Beltre. I give you my word that if you release your family to my care, they will be unharmed.”

Five minutes later the cousins, Mom, Luisa, and Aunt Isabella came out. Everyone was carrying suitcases and bags as if they might be going away for some time. I was impressed. Uncle Arturo had clearly had some time to prepare. They walked past Captain Beltre and were grabbed by the leading edge of the police. The children were separated from the women, who were all bundled together into a police julia .

“Did you see that they took Mom to the police van?” Ricky asked.

“I did. Don’t worry. Mom didn’t do anything.”

At around midnight there was a shot from inside the house and everyone screamed. One of the policemen shot back and then another and another. The order came to cease fire. The policeman with the megaphone shouted into the house to see if Uncle Arturo was all right, but there was no answer. Not long after the shooting another older policeman turned up. He looked to be pretty high up and he seemed displeased with everything that had been going on. Immediately after talking to Captain Beltre, he ordered the street cleared. The cops and the army started moving everyone back into their houses or way down the village into the fields. The older policeman took the megaphone and said that if Uncle Arturo didn’t come out he would order the army to storm the place and Arturo would be responsible for the consequences.