Elmore Leonard: Cuba Libre

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.