90 Miles to Havana (13 page)

Then we hear Caballo's muffled voice. “Have a good day at the tomato fields?”

“It's Caballo,” Angelita whispers.

“What does he want?” I ask.

“I don't remember giving anybody permission to dig a tunnel or to leave the camp. The fine for breaking this rule is three dollars.”

“That's half of what we made,” I mumble to Pepe.

“Hand it over before I get mad,” Caballo insists.

“Why do we have to pay you?” I say.

“Is that the smart brother?” he says in a mocking tone, that even all the dirt between us can't soften. “You pay me because you broke my rules,” Caballo states as if he's tired of repeating it.

We're packed in tight, the walls are squeezing in on us,
and I can't breathe. “I got to get out!” I yell, and then push against the door with all my might. The trapdoor raises just enough to let some air in. I hear a sandy scuffling sound as I stick my hand out.

“Hey!” Caballo shouts as he scrambles off the hatch, and then his foot comes down hard on my fingers.

“Ow!” I cry and try to pull my hand back. “You're stepping on my hand!”

“It's not my fault. You threw me off balance.”

My hand hurts. I'm trapped, and I can't catch my breath.

“My head's going to explode!” I yell into the dirt. Something is scrambling, scratching around in my chest. It feels like an angry little animal that's been cooped up for a long time and now it has to get out.

“I already gave you my book. I'm not paying!” I scream into Pepe's ear. I've been angry before, but this feeling is different, and it's bubbling over. “I'm going to get you back, Caballo!”

“Shut up, Julian,” Angelita says as she digs into her pocket, pulls out her two dollars, and then gives it to Pepe. It's not right for them to pay for me, so I wiggle on my side and grab one of my bills with my free hand, then slide it out.

“Gordo was right,” I yell. “If you keep giving in, he'll keep on pushing us around!”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I'm going to tell my brothers! We'll get you back.”

Angelita punches me on the arm, “Shut up, Julian.”

“Tell your brothers?” I hear him laugh as his hand scoops up the bills from the dirt. “They can't help you now, smart boy,” he says as he walks away.

“Angelita, did you hear what he said?”

“I don't know, Julian, everything sounds muffled in here. But I do know that you can't fight with him—he makes the rules and he always wins.”

“I've got to find my brothers!”

I push the trapdoor off and crawl out of the hole. My hand is still throbbing as I run past the ball fields and the pool, and then I see the dusty station wagon parked in front of the director's door. Good, they're back. I hurry through the dormitory, then slam into the bathroom. I knew it!

My shirts, pants, and underwear are scattered all over the floor with a big red footprint stamped on each one, my suitcase is lying open on its side. The closet where we stored our suitcases is open and empty. Alquilino and Gordo are gone.

I should have done something—I should have made them listen to me.

I'm walking out of the bathroom, looking down at the tiles when I run into a plaid-shirt wall. I look up to see Caballo towering over me. He's too big, too close, and I can't remember a single one of the things I imagined telling him to his face. The best I can do is to squeak, “I gave you my book.”

“I gave you my book,” he mocks, in an even higher, squeakier voice than mine.

The new bubbling anger is rising again. Maybe I can kick him and run away. I try but my leg feels like it belongs to someone else. Again, the best I can do is to dig my toe into the ground, sending a clod of red dirt flying in his direction.

Caballo grabs my arm with his baseball mitt–sized hand, squeezes really hard, and then growls, “Don't you ever try that again.” Caballo's free hand is hanging in front of my face. I picture it crushing my head like it was a boiled egg.

“You're lucky nobody saw that,” he says out of the side of his mouth as he looks around. Then he squeezes my arm even harder and pushes me down to the ground. “I'm going to let you off easy this time,” he says. I can hear him laughing as he walks away.

When the fear finally drains out of my legs, I get up and make my way to the shed. I hide out on the roof, drawing on a piece of paper I've been carrying around in my back pocket since I lost my book to Caballo. I draw myself trembling and smaller than I actually am. I'm ashamed of myself for getting so scared, letting him push me around. If Alquilino and Gordo had seen me, I'm sure they would have laughed, too.

My brothers weren't the only ones to leave today. I guess that's why I don't have to sleep in the bathroom anymore. It's late but I'm awake in my new bunk drawing by the light of the moon. I'm afraid to stop drawing. Every time I put my pencil down, my thoughts get jumbled up. I get sad and angry at the same time.

The drawing that I did this afternoon is on the other side of the paper. I didn't want to look at it but it's whispering through, reminding me.

Bebo tried to teach me about being scared too. He said it's just like when you make a mistake, you can't dwell on it. The trick is to focus past the scary thing and to pay attention to the next thing. He also told me that some people
can smell fear just like dogs can. If they know you're afraid it makes it easier for them to push you around.

I knew all that stuff before Caballo scared me today, but it didn't help. I have to figure out how Bebo's trick works so I can keep my brain from freezing up.

On this side of the page I draw myself bigger than the ghost of scared me from the other side. Using firm clear lines I make rays shooting out of my eyes and Caballo's back as he runs away.

Maybe next time I get scared, I'll be the only one that knows it.

The dormitory is much noisier than the bathroom. I hear a boy calling for his mother in his sleep. I put my pencil down and listen to his muffled sobs echo off the metal walls. No matter how big I draw myself, I still feel really small in this big dark room. But I'm not going to cry; Caballo might hear me.

Outside, the clouds part and a beam of moonlight glows on the screen. I climb down from my bunk and stare out beyond the fence into the spooky night.

“Big,” I gasp as something black and as thick as an inner tube starts climbing up the other side of the screen right in front of me.

Then I hear a voice behind me. “There are even bigger ones in the swamp.” I turn around and there's Angelita.

“What're you doing here?” I ask, as she leans in close to inspect the snake.

“I couldn't sleep, either,” she says and then runs her
finger along its yellowy underside. “I hope you're not still mad at me for giving Caballo the money.”

“I was,” I say and look away.

“I never saw you that mad. He wants to make you mad, so he can squash you like a bug.”

“I know that, Angelita.”

“You should have given him the money when he asked for it.”

“That's not right. We worked for that money. He took my book and sent Alquilino and Gordo away!”

“Shh! You're going to wake everybody up. Let's go outside,” she says and I follow her past the snoring, mumbling sleepers.

Outside, the moon is hanging low over the swamp as if it's caught on the spikes of the chain-link fence. There are things moving in the bushes, probably big animals hunting the little ones in the dark.

“I come out here a lot to think,” Angelita says.

“What do you think about?”

“My old friends, my parents, eating mangoes in the trees—you know, things I shouldn't think about because they make me sad.” Angelita sighs and sits down. I sit down next to her.

“I have the same problem but now I have two more people I can't think about,” I say and pull out a clump of grass.

“Julian, it's terrible that they split you up, but you're not alone here; you still have me and Pepe.”

“I'm worried about Alquilino and Gordo. The other day at the baseball field they were talking about all the places they can send you, and Fideo kept saying that the very worst one was the one in Denver—the one they sent my brothers to. Fideo said they have older kids there that make Caballo look like an angel.”

“I wouldn't worry too much about them. You know how they are. Alquilino and Gordo always stick together. They'll take care of each other.”

“Angelita, we have to tell the director about Caballo.”

“We did already. He thinks he needs Caballo to keep everybody in line. This place is overcrowded and he doesn't have enough help. He's afraid of losing control again. He doesn't want to hear anything about how Caballo does the job, as long as he gets it done.”

“But, he took our money and my book and stepped on my hand! We should tell him, maybe he'll listen now,” I say, trying to keep my voice down.

“I don't think he's in the mood to listen to us now,” Angelita says, then pulls an envelope out of her pocket and drops it on my lap. “This look familiar to you?”

There's a big red
X
slashed across the address but I can still read it. I'm holding the fake letter from our uncle.

“Caballo gave it to me after you ran off. He said he had talked the director into waiting to send your brothers away but then this came back in Wednesday's mail. The director checked it out, and when he found out it was a fake, he hit the roof. Caballo said that he was so mad that
he bumped two other kids off just to put Alquilino and Gordo on the next flight out. It was weird.” Angelita stops and looks at her hands.

“What's weird?” I ask.

“I got the feeling that Caballo was actually trying to let me know that he tried. It was weird, because I think he was apologizing.”

“He likes you. You're the only person in this whole camp that could actually feel sorry for him.”

“I don't know, I just think he's the saddest, loneliest person in the world.”

“Angelita, he might be lonely and sad but he's still a mean person. He enjoys scaring people. He even picks on little kids.”

“But there's a reason why,” Angelita says.

“It doesn't matter! He still does it. If the director won't help us, we have to fight back or he'll get worse. I think Gordo was right.”

“Caballo's too big to fight,” Angelita says and looks off into the dark. “The way I look at it we have two choices. We can either make believe that we don't mind being pushed around, or we can think our way around the problem—learn how to handle him,” she says and then strides up to my window. “Come here, let me show you something.”

The snake is now stretched out all the way. “Look at him, he likes the heat coming out of the window,” Angelita says as she reaches up with her right hand. “Caballo's just
like that snake, big and scary-looking, but if you know how to handle him right . . .”

“What are you going to do?” I ask, as she grabs the snake behind the head and then pulls him off the screen.

The snake wriggles itself into a muscular S shape. “Relax,” she hisses as the snake's tongue flickers close to her cheek. Angelita gently runs her left hand up and down its length until the snake hangs limp like a thick cord. Then she walks it toward the fence. Angelita smiles at the snake. “Harmless,” she hisses again and then tosses it into the tall grass.

“Angelita! I could never do that.”

“You could if you knew it was a milk snake. I looked him up in the book. They're not poisonous.” She laughs. “Caballo is like that snake, big and scary-looking, but if you know how to handle him, he's harmless.”

The moon is drifting over the wild place between the camp and the tomato fields. I can feel it tugging on a little thread of sadness that's been stuck in my throat for weeks.

Caballo is asleep and Angelita is walking a little ahead of me. They'll never see the tears.

When I walk into the kitchen the next morning, Dolores is stirring a steaming pot with a spoon the size of a shovel.

“
Hola, Dolores,”
I say and look inside the pot.
“¿Que es?”

“Grits, straight from the box,” Dolores says as she ladles out a bowl of the yellow stuff and then drops a big chunk of butter on top. She pushes it in front of me. “My son liked his grits with plenty of butter. Never touched it until it was all melted,” she says and hands me a spoon.

“You have a son?”

Dolores nods. “Yep.” Then she goes back to stirring the bubbling goo.

As I wait for the butter to melt I take out the
handkerchief with the broken plate and set it on the table. I've been carrying it around in my pocket since Caballo took my things out of my suitcase. I'm afraid he'll figure out that it's really important to me and just like my drawing book, he'll take it away from me.

“Looks like you're going to need some glue for that,” Dolores says and shuffles off to her locker. She comes back carrying a cigar box, a little metal glue can, and a screwdriver.

She hands me the can and the screwdriver. “This here's the glue for your plate. You're going to need the screwdriver to open the can.”

Then she slides the cigar box in front of me. “That there are my son's drawing things. He used to draw all the time, too—regular artist, he was. But then he changed—got interested in other things.” Dolores places the palm of her hand gently on the top, as if the thin wood still holds the warmth of her son.

“Where is he now?” I ask.

“When he got older I couldn't handle him; had to send him up north to live with his father.” Dolores opens the box and her fingers drift over the colored chalks, crayons, and pencils. “I haven't seen him in years,” she says and gently slides it back to me. “Take 'em. I seen you drawing in the dirt out by the garbage cans; you need them more 'n I do. I carried that box around with me for years. It's time to give it up!”