When Pa and I got home, I was half expecting him to chew me out once Bob left. Instead he pulled me into a hug.
“I’m so glad you was safe last night,” he said.
“You ain’t mad at me for going off on my own?”
“I reckon I’ve forced you to do that a lot lately,” he said. “But that’s all changing now. Starting with our money problems. I got some money coming our way, should be in any day this week. And it’ll cover our mortgage, believe you me.”
I thought about saying something to him about how he got the money, and asking him who it was coming from. But if I wanted him to give me an honest answer, I might should give him one myself. Not going to happen. Anyway, it was probably too late. I just hoped that CIA fella didn’t catch wind of it.
I had a hard time sleeping that night, at first from the noise inside my head from all the worries I had going on. But around midnight or after, I was put off by a mess of noise coming from our backyard. I reckoned it was a raccoon or something trying to get at our trash, so I tried to ignore it. Even raccoons have to eat.
But then I heard the sound of something heavy hitting something soft and a swear word barking at the hard thing that done hit the soft thing, and I knew it wasn’t no raccoon. Or, if it was, it was a talking one and I was going to be rich. Unless it was shy, like that frog in them cartoons that only sang when nobody was looking. He’d only pull that crap on me once and he’d have been at the end of a fishing hook singing “Maple Leaf Rag” to a big-mouth bass. And don’t get me started on what I’d do to that rabbit.
I got up and went out to check on the noise. Pa was dragging stuff out of the shed and putting our old stuff back in it. He didn’t notice me, ’cause he was trying to drag the deep freezer all by himself.
“What you doing?” I said.
He jumped up in the air like a burglar that got spotted by a cop.
“Dadgummit,” he said. “You about killed me. Why ain’t you in bed?”
“Why ain’t you?”
He laughed at that.
“Well, I reckon that’s fair. I couldn’t sleep with this hanging over me, and since we’re going to help out again with the cleanup tomorrow, I wanted to get this done tonight.”
“You’re getting rid of all that stuff you bought?” That’d make hiding it from Short-Guy easier. Maybe we could put it all in Eddie’s closet. Kill two birds with one pile of radio junk.
“I reckon I’m done with it,” he said. “About time I put more work in and take some off you. So, go on back to bed and I’ll get this all cleaned up.” He went back to dragging the deep freezer as best he could. I got behind it and started pushing. It went a lot faster than it had been.
“I can’t sleep either,” I said. “Too much going on.”
We argued a bit more while I helped him get things moved back in, but he finally gave in and let me help him out. We got all the stuff back into the shed and he had me help him carry his radio equipment around to our trash can. He was going to fill it and then some, but he said he’d call the folks that picked up our trash to make a special trip.
He was carrying a box with all his notebooks that he said he needed to burn in the driveway, and I was going to watch him do it, but I saw a folded-up piece of paper fall out of the box. I almost told him about it, but I stopped myself before I did. When he got away from me, I picked up the paper and looked at it.
It was a map of part of the Gulf and the Caribbean. I knew that ’cause there was Florida’s sagging butt hanging over the big island that I recognized as Cuba. All around Cuba, there was arrows and little boats drawn. One of the arrows was pointed into a little inlet on the south side of the island and the letters B.O.P. was written above it. Up near where Havana was, there was a little explosion drawn. I wondered if that was where the airstrip had been.
There was numbers around them arrows too. The arrow pointed at the explosion had a 15 next to it. The arrow pointed at the little inlet had a 17. I tried hard not to ask myself why Pa had that map. Tried real hard.
I folded up the paper and hid it until I could get up to my room. I stuck it in my sock drawer and tried to go to sleep. I couldn’t let myself worry about what Pa was doing anymore. I had a busy day to look forward to.
While we was all working the next day, I had trouble focusing. I was too darn worried. Worried about Pa spilling the beans on Operation Pluto, whatever that was. Worried about the bank saying they might come take our house. Worried about the folks that was stuck underneath their own. Even as we was cleaning up the town and helping folks figure out what they was going to do with their lives without their house to go to, all I was thinking was whether Tommy’d ever get to come home to his.
Then we got word that they’d found an old couple dead under their roof. Then we all remembered why we was cleaning. After that there wasn’t no more worrying, only working. Me and Willie was glad we was working on the church, ’cause there wasn’t probably no dead folk to be found there.
Sunday night I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. That darn map kept haunting me all night.
Eventually the rooster crowed and I got up. I barely picked at my toast and grapefruit before I took off to school, I just didn’t have it in me to eat.
Mrs. Buttke came to school that day using a cane. Apparently her leg had gotten stuck under a beam ’cause of the tornado, and it was making her go extra slow. At least she made it.
There was a lot of kids missing from school that day. I’d heard a few was off with relatives since their houses was gone. Others might have been hurt, there wasn’t no telling. I think we all was worried that they was dead, thanks to that old couple putting it in our heads.
Mrs. Buttke went up to the board and started writing.
This Day in History: April 17, 1961—The Bay of Pigs Invasion.
It took me a second while I was copying that down to realize that she’d written today’s date up there on the board. I raised my hand while she was starting the prayer. She made me keep it up in the air till she said “Amen.”
“Yes, Johnny?”
“What’s the Bay of Pigs invasion?”
“It’s in the paper today. I’ll bring in the newspaper after lunch and we can discuss it this afternoon.” She pulled out her teacher’s books for the day and winced, like it hurt for her to pick them up. “Before we start this morning, however, I’d like to talk about the storm we had on Saturday.”
Turns out, even with all the damage we’d done seen in town from the tornado, not a one of us kids had any idea just how bad it had really been. There was folks out in the hills that had their lives completely destroyed from it. There’d been a couple of other towns in the county that had damage done to them, too. Just about the only towns that got off without a scratch was Colony and Arab, which was where Martha and her ma had gone to stay while her pa fixed their house. A tree had busted right into Martha’s bedroom window. I hoped losing a ponytail wouldn’t seem as bad after that.
All that talk about the tornado kept putting off the talk I really wanted us to have, about the Bay of Pigs invasion. Seemed like everyone was so caught up in our own mess, nobody cared about the folks in Cuba. I’d learn to expect that as time wore on. Didn’t matter that we was closer to Cuba by a hundred miles than we was to New York, it might as well have been another planet. Or Colony. Folks always had something better to think about than the people that was in their own backyard.
Still, I cared. I really wanted to know what the Bay of Pigs invasion was.
I raised my hand and asked to be excused to the bathroom. Once I was out in the hall, I took off to the school office. I’d seen the newspaper in there the last few times I’d gotten in trouble, so I figured they’d have that day’s edition.
I got to the front office and asked to see the paper. They was shocked, but happy to oblige. I looked at the front page, and almost dropped it. The headline re
ad:
CUBA INVADED BY SEA, AIR. CASTRO BLAMES U.S. FOR “ANOTHER PEARL HARBOR.”
The article told about how a few thousand Cubans, whether they was escapees or disgruntled citizens it didn’t matter, got up in arms and tried to overthrow the government. They was coming in from someplace called the “Bay of Pigs,” and they was shooting everything they could set their eyes on. There was some bombs getting dropped, tanks getting rolled out, and planes fighting in the sky.
The article said there wasn’t no Americans involved at all, and that we was just as surprised as anybody else over it. Except I wasn’t surprised one bit. I just knew this Bay of Pigs thing was another name for Operation Pluto, and that Pa’d had his hand in part of it. Which meant there was at least one American involved. I read the whole article and then some to see if I was right.
After a while Mrs. Buttke came to get me. She about had a heart attack when she saw the paper in my hands.
“You couldn’t wait till after lunch?”
“How much have you heard about this thing in Cuba, ma’am?” I handed the paper back to the secretary.
“I read the paper and listened to the news on the radio. I’ll tell you all about it this afternoon.” She marched me out to the hallway and toward her classroom.
“Do you think we had something to do with it?”
She stopped.
“Well, the Russians say we did. But the ambassador to the UN has said we didn’t, so I reckon we should believe the ones that don’t make a practice of lying.”
I assumed she meant to trust the American folk, though she wasn’t very specific. I kept quiet after she said that, ’cause I didn’t want to spill the beans about what I knew of Operation Pluto and how Pa told some Spanish folk about it. You never knew who else Short-Guy might have given his number to, and Mrs. Buttke had sent me to the principal’s office enough times that I knew she couldn’t be trusted with that kind of a secret.
We went back to class and she went back to talking about diagramming sentences. I kept my survival guide out on my desk for when she’d get to talking about the event. I had to wait all the way until about an hour before school was done before she did.
“Today there began an invasion in Cuba to overthrow the government,” she started, and I hurried and opened the guide so I could write down my notes. “It was only two years ago that Fidel Castro and his followers overthrew the established government in Cuba. That government was friendly to the US government, but Castro’s government has not been. Why are the people trying to overthrow Castro’s regime?”
“Well, you told us on Friday that folks tend to get mad when they’re being ruled by tyrants,” I said, looking at my notes. “Maybe it’s ’cause Castro’s a rat-fink leader. Sic Semper Tyrannis, like you said.” I thought for a second. “But why would any Americans want to help out the invasion?”
She shot me a look. “I thought I told you before, our government has said they were not involved.”
“Right,” I said, but I wasn’t done. “But what about any other Americans? Why would they?”
She looked down at her notes, and I could tell she was thinking about my question.
“Well, when Castro overthrew Cuba, it affected a lot of US businesses. A lot of money was lost, as well as a lot of property owned by American citizens. Allowing something like that to happen affects your credibility internationally. So, perhaps, if we were to get involved, that would be why.”
After school I went over to Mr. Thomassen’s, even though I didn’t figure he’d have any sweeping for me to do. Sure enough, he was using his barbershop to be a place for folks to get food and drinks while they was working on cleaning up the town. I was about to duck out the door, but he grabbed me and offered to pay me to help him hand out lemonade. It was going to be the second easiest money I ever made. The easiest was when I sold little Billy a fake Duke Snider card I’d made from a Wheaties box.
With all the people coming and going, I got to hear a whole lot of conversations. They was all about the tornado, of course, and about the cleanup and such. There was only one fella talking about the Bay of Pigs. Mr. Thomassen.
“I hope they take it straight down Castro’s throat,” he said to one of the fellas that was sitting down. “Stick it to him the way he stuck it to so many others.”
The fella nodded along, I don’t think he was even half listening, but I had to know more.
“Why are you so tied up in it, Mr. Thomassen?” I said.
“I believe in justice,” he said. “And what the revolution did to so many business owners nearly broke their backs, some of them. It wasn’t right, and somebody should pay. Castro should pay.”
“Still, I ain’t never seen you so bent out of shape before,” I said. “It’s almost like you was one of them business owners in Havana.”
He didn’t say nothing but hurried and started talking to somebody else. Which was how grown-ups admitted to something they didn’t want to admit to. It was as sure a sign as a tail between a dog’s legs.
I figured I’d get the truth when the place was empty.
“I lived in Cuba for a while,” I said. “Even went up to Havana once with my ma.”
“That’s nice,” he said while he was stirring the lemonade jug.
“Wonder if it was when you was living there,” I said.
“Maybe, when was it?” he said, then he caught himself. “I mean—”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I won’t tell nobody.”
He sighed.
“Yes, I lived in Havana. I owned a little club. Casablanca, we called it. After the movie. Lived there for fifteen years, the best fifteen years of my life.”
“A club? What’d you do, cut hair for folk?”
He laughed.
“No, it was a nightclub. With jazz music playing every night, and dancing, and parties. We even had a craps table and blackjack. It was wonderful. But then that devil Castro ruined it.”
“Wow, so you had a casino?”
“Did I say casino? No, I didn’t. The casinos were owned by the families, and they were too big for me. I liked keeping it small. There was less dirty work involved.”
“Dirty work?”
“Collecting, mainly,” he said, and his eyes had changed. They was darker, somehow. “When you let men gamble with you, they tend to lose more than they should. The bigger places knew how to get their money out of men’s kneecaps. I couldn’t ever do that. I was terrible at collecting.” He leaned against his counter where he had his hair-cutting stuff. He rubbed his razor, I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. “I’ve gotten better lately, though.”
I watched him for a second, letting my mind make all the connections.
“Bob Gorman,” I said.
He got all kinds of shocked.
“What did you say?”
“Bob owes you money, don’t he? That’s why you came to Cullman. Why he does whatever you tell him to, including making Eddie offer me fifty dollars. How much does he owe you?”
Mr. Thomassen raised his eyebrows at me. I think he was impressed.
“Forty-five grand. Not all in one night, of course. He was a frequent customer at my club, and a frequent loser. He and his air show came to Havana quite often. We let him keep coming back because he was a heavy drinker. It wasn’t until I was kicked out of the country that I wished I had gotten my money from him.”
I filled up some of them little Dixie cups he had with more lemonade and thought for a bit.
“Dang, there sure are a lot of folks from Cullman that went to Cuba, ain’t there?”
He chuckled.
“Havana was paradise,” he said. “Everyone went there. Honeymooners, lovers, celebrities. It was where you went when you needed to escape where you were from.”
“So, if Havana was Heaven, what does that make Cullman?”
/> He opened his mouth to answer but then a whole new group came in for drinks and snacks. I wondered if it was weird for him to give out free drinks considering he’d spent so much time charging for them back in the day, but I didn’t ever mention it to him. In fact, we didn’t talk about it again that afternoon.
When I got home that night, Pa was sitting at the table with an envelope in front of him, and he had a smug smile on his face. He patted the chair next to him, so I sat down.
“What’s going on?” I said. He slid the envelope over in front of me.
Vega Suministros Médicos the return address said. I opened the envelope, which he’d already opened, and pulled out a check. Soon as I saw the total on it, I dropped it like it was a hot potato.
The check was for thirty-five thousand dollars.
“Told you I’d take care of things, didn’t I?”
“Holy cow, Pa. What’d you do?” I picked the check back up to see if it was real. Sure looked real.
“Don’t matter how I got it. Just take it to the bank tomorrow.”
“No, actually it does matter how you got it,” I said. “It ain’t easy to get this kind of money doing honest things.”
He got real indignant at that.
“Listen here, I’ve about had it with you acting like you’re the pa and I’m the kid around here. I earned that money fair and square, no bones about it. Now, you do what I say and take that money to the bank. Or I’ll tan your hide and remind you of your place.”
We both stared at each other, and it was plain as day that he planned on winning the standoff, so I grabbed the check and headed up to my room without another word. I knew enough math to put two and two together, and I didn’t like the four it was making. Pa had told some Spanish folk about Operation Pluto, and now here we had a check from some Spanish folk. And Short-Guy had said he was looking for a radio operator that had come into some money. And now, here my pa was a radio operator that had come into some money.
The Troubles of Johnny Cannon Page 12
