The Cuban Club

by Barry Gifford

  “I’m goin’ with them,” Ignaz said. “We’re gonna cut the throats of Lupo Bobino and everyone in his family, including the women and children. Last July, when I turned thirteen, Popa showed me the knife I’m gonna use. It once belonged to Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled the Turks back when they kicked ass all over Asia. The handle’s got precious jewels on it, rubies and emeralds, and the blade is made from the finest Spanish steel. Popa keeps it locked in a cabinet in his room. It’s priceless.”

  Roy lost contact with Ignaz, who did not finish high school with him. Just before Christmas when Roy was twenty-one and back in Chicago on a visit from San Francisco, where he was then living, he went into the storefront on Diversey and asked one of Ignaz’s older sisters, Arabella, who told fortunes and gave advice to women about how to please their husbands, where her brother was and what he was doing. Arabella, who was not married, had big brown eyes with dancing green flames in them, a hook nose, a mustache, and a thin, scraggly beard, as well as the largest hands Roy had ever seen on a woman. She told him that Ignaz was on a great journey, the destination of which she was forbidden to reveal. Arabella then offered Roy an herb called Night Tail she said would bring him good fortune with women, which he declined with thanks. Looking into Arabella’s eyes, Roy remembered, made him feel weak, as did the thought of what she could do to him with her huge hands.

  A year or so later, another former high school classmate of his, Enos Bidou, who worked for his father’s house painting business in Calumet City, called Roy and told him that he’d run into Ignaz in East Chicacgo, Indiana, where Ignaz was repairing roofs and paving driveways with his uncle, Repozo Rigó.

  “Remember him?” Enos Bidou asked. Roy did not, so Enos said, “He went to jail when we were still at St. Tim the Impostor. Got clipped for sellin’ fake Congo crocodile heads and phony Chinese panda paws.”

  “When we were thirteen or fourteen, Ignaz told me he would go one day to Romania or Moldova with his father and grandfather Grapellino to take back Grapellino’s lost kingdom.”

  “Well, I seen him a month ago in Indiana,” Enos said. “He’s got a beard now.”

  “So does his sister,” said Roy.

  REAL BANDITS

  Roy was fourteen when he read a story about the Brazilian bandit Lampião in a book entitled Famous Desperados. Baseball practice had been called off because of rain, and he did not want to go home and have to listen to his mother complain about the shortcomings of her current husband, so Roy went to the neighborhood library and found the book lying by itself on a table. He sat down and looked at the contents page; there were chapters about Jesse James, the Dalton Gang, Baby Face Nelson, even Robin Hood, among others, all of whom he already knew something about, but Lampião––whose real name was Virgolino Ferreira da Silva––Roy had never heard of.

  Lampião, it said in the book, means lantern, or lamp, in Portuguese. He lived and marauded with his gang in the 1920s and ’30s in Northeastern Brazil, in the back country, or backlands, called the sertão. After his father was killed by police, when Virgolino was nineteen years old, he vowed to become a bandit and was given the nickname Lampião because he was the light that led the way for his followers, who included both men and woman. His girlfriend’s name was Maria Bonita; she left her rancher husband to go with Lampião and ride with his band of outlaws, leaving her daughter, Expedita, to be raised by Lampião’s brother, João.

  The Brazilian word for bandits was cangaceiros, which came from the word canga or cangalho, meaning a yoke for oxen, because a cangaceiro carried his rifle over both of his shoulders like a yoke on an ox. Roy was enraptured by the place names of towns and backlands provinces that Lampião and his outfit traversed: Pernambuco, Paraíba, Alagoas, Chorrocho, Barro Vermelho, Campo Formoso, Santana do Ipanema, and many others. Lampião achieved a reputation similar to that of Robin Hood, sharing the spoils with the poor while robbing the rich. There was no real consistency about this, of course, as Lampião’s generosities were often arbitrary, but nonetheless the myth grew over the years that he and his band, which varied in number between ten and thirty, moved freely about the backlands. He was regularly written about in newspapers and magazines throughout Brazil and dubbed the King of the Cangaceiros. A Syrian named Benjamin Abrahão even made a film starring Lampião and Maria Bonita.

  Lampião and ten of his bandit gang, including Maria Bonita, came to an ignominious end, however, when they were gunned down by police in their hideout on the São Francisco River. The soldiers cut off hands and feet of the outlaws, to preserve as souvenirs, and each of the dead desperados was decapitated. Their heads were put on display first in Piranhas, and then in the local capital of Maceió. Finally, the heads of Lampião and Maria Bonita were sent to Salvador, the capital of Bahia, where they were exhibited in a museum. A photograph in the book of several of the heads, surrounded by their guns, hats and other belongings, fascinated Roy, especially since one of the faces closely resembled his own.

  It was just drizzling when Roy came out of the library and there was very little light left in the sky, which was deep purple. As he walked toward his house, he thought about Lampião and his bandit brother, Ezekiel, nicknamed Ponta Fina, “Sureshot”, escaping on horseback across the São Francisco, pursued by government soldiers, described by a witness as rawboned, dirty and desperately tired-looking. The bandits were constantly on the run, and in addition to their practice of thievery and murder, Lampião and some of his men occasionally castrated, branded or sliced off ears of those who opposed or offended them, believing that these particularly brutal acts of violence would intimidate others who would dare refuse to assist them or get in their way.

  The rain began again, harder than before, so Roy stopped underneath the awning in front of Nelson’s Meat Market on Ojibway Boulevard. The downpour reminded him of an episode described in the book of the time monsoon rains came suddenly one year near Raso da Catarina when Lampião and several of his cohorts were fleeing after raiding the property of a wealthy rancher. They were caught in open country and forced to take shelter under their standing horses and had to endure it when the horses urinated on him. Lampião was proud of the legend of himself as a rough, roguish, romantic character, glorified by journalists––some of whom he paid to propagate his myth––in the faraway big cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Roy wondered if the dwarfish, skinny, half–blind bandit king had consoled himself with these thoughts as his bedraggled steed pissed on him.

  A man and woman came and stood under the awning with Roy. The man was tall and thin and was wearing a brown suit with a red tie. The woman was wearing a green dress and her blonde hair was wet and matted from the rain. She fussed with it a little, then they both lit cigarettes. Roy noticed that the woman had a deep two–inch blue scar under her right eye she tried to conceal with make–up that had been mostly worn away by the rain.

  “I heard they tied him to a tree,” she said to the man, “then slit his throat and stole his wallet.”

  “No kiddin’,” said the man.

  “Yeah,” she said, “took his shoes, too. They were real bandits.”

  HAITIAN FIGHT SONG (TAKE TWO)

  Roy stood on the front steps of his school waiting for the car that was supposed to pick him up. An associate of his dad’s, he’d been told, would be there at three o’clock to drive him to his father and his father’s second wife Evie’s house. Roy’s mother, his father’s first wife, from whom he’d been divorced since Roy was five, three years before, was out of town with her current boyfriend, Danielito Castro, so Roy was staying at his dad’s until she came back to Chicago. His mother told Roy that Danielito Castro, whom Roy had briefly met once, wanted her to meet his family in Santo Domingo. She had been gone now for a week and had been uncertain about when she would return.

  “I’ll see how things go,” his mother had said. “I don’t think any of Danielito’s family speaks English, other than Danielito, of course, so it probably won’t be very long since I can’t spe
ak Spanish. You’ll be fine with your dad and Evie, she’s a nice girl. You won’t even miss me.”

  Roy asked her where Santo Domingo was and she told him, “The Dominican Republic, it’s on half of an island in the Caribbean Sea. The other half is a different country called Haiti. Danielito says the people there speak French. He told me the two countries are separated by a big forest and high mountains. He says the Haitians are very poor and are constantly trying to sneak into the DR, which is a richer country, so Dominican soldiers are permanently on guard along the border to keep them out.”

  “Probably a lot of the Haiti people hide in the forest until night when it’s harder for the soldiers to see them and then sneak across,” Roy said.

  “Maybe, Roy. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it when I’m there. Danielito says the Haitians are no good, that they don’t like to work.”

  It was pouring when school let out. He did not have an umbrella or even a hood on his coat to pull up over his head so he hoped the person who was picking him up would not be late. Roy stood on the steps in the rain watching the other kids head for home or wherever they were going until he was the only one left. He waited for half an hour before he decided to walk to his father’s house, which was more than two miles away. His own house, where he lived with his mother, was only a few blocks from the school, but nobody was there and he didn’t have the key. He thought about going to one of his friends’ houses but he knew that Evie was expecting him so he kept walking, hoping the rain would stop.

  The rain did not stop. Other than for a few short intervals it continued in a steady downpour. On Ojibway Avenue, the main shopping street that led directly to his father and Evie’s house, people hurried past him. Had he the fare, Roy would have taken a bus but he had not asked his dad for any money when he had dropped him off at school that morning. At the intersection of Ojibway and Western, in front of Wabansia’s sporting goods store, where Roy had bought his first baseball glove, a Billy Cox model, a maroon Buick clipped a woman as she was stepping off the curb. She fell down in the street and the car’s right rear tire ran over her black umbrella. The Buick turned the corner onto Western and kept going. The woman, who was wearing a red cloth coat, got up by herself. She bent down and picked up her umbrella, saw that it was broken and tossed it next to the curb. Roy was across the street from her when the accident happened. Nobody came to help her or ask her if she was all right and she walked across Ojibway and went into Hilda’s Modern Dress Shop. Her right leg wobbled and Roy figured she’d been injured or the heel of her right shoe had broken off.

  It took Roy a very long time to get to his dad and Evie’s house and by the time he knocked on the front door the rain had weakened to a steady drizzle. When Evie opened the door and saw him looking like a drowned rat, she was horrified.

  “Roy, what happened? Didn’t Ernie Lento pick you up?”

  “No, I walked. I didn’t see anyone in a car at my school.”

  “You should have called me,” said Evie. “I would have called a cab and come for you.”

  “I didn’t have any money, or I would have taken a bus.”

  Evie took Roy in, helped him take off his wet clothes and wrapped two big towels around him.

  “I’ll make you some soup,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.

  Roy sat on the couch in the livingroom, covering his head with one of the towels. He looked around and for the first time noticed that there were no pictures on any of the walls, no paintings or photographs.

  Evie came in and said, “The soup is heating up. I called your father and he said that Ernie Lento told him he was a few minutes late getting to the school but that you weren’t where you were supposed to be.”

  “He must have been more than a little late,” said Roy. “I waited on the front steps for around a half hour. Evie, how come you don’t have any pictures on the walls in this room?”

  “We have some framed photos on the dresser in our bedroom,” she said. “Family photos. You’ve seen them. My parents and grandparents. Your grandparents, too, taken in the old country.”

  Evie left the room. Roy thought about Haitians creeping through a thick forest and waiting until night fell before hiking over a mountain range to get to the Dominican Republic. They probably didn’t have umbrellas or any money on them, either. Danielito Castro had told Roy’s mother that the Haitians didn’t like to work but it had to be really hard work just to get from their side of the island to Santo Domingo or wherever they tried to get to in the Dominican Republic; and once they got there, if they survived beasts in the forest and bad weather in the mountains, the people spoke a different language.

  Evie came into the livingroom carrying a bowl of tomato soup and a plate with Saltine crackers, a spoon and a napkin on it.

  “Here’s your soup, Roy. Blow on it because it’s hot.”

  “Evie, what do you know about Haiti?”

  “Why?” she asked. “Is that where your mother is?”

  “No, she’s in the Dominican Republic, another country that shares an island with Haiti. Are the people in Haiti really poor?”

  “I think so, Roy. Most of them, anyway, certainly not all of them. There’s always a ruling class who have more of everything. The only thing I know about Haiti is that it’s the only country that was taken over by people who once were slaves. They had to fight for their freedom.”

  “My mother’s friend Danielito Castro says the Haitians are no good and don’t like to work.”

  “I’ll tell you who’s no good,” Evie said. “I’ll bet that crumb bum Ernie Lento stopped in a bar and was drinking with his racetrack buddies. That’s why he wasn’t at your school on time, if he even got there. Your dad will find out. Eat your soup.”

  THE CUBAN CLUB

  Roy met Tina at the Cuban Brotherhood Club and Dance Hall in Tampa, Florida, when he was fourteen. Roy was spending the summer with his uncle Buck working construction on weekdays, resting on Saturdays and fishing on Sundays. Tina was a local girl who went with her girlfriends to the dances at the Cuban Club on Saturday nights.

  Roy and his friend Ralph were fascinated by the big-eyed, dusky Cuban girls who had come to Florida with their families in the first wave of emigrés who fled the island following the revolution. These girls wore make-up, bright red lipstick, large gold hoop earrings and short skirts. They danced only with one another and did not speak to white boys. Mostly they sat together in folding chairs in a corner of the dance hall and never stopped chattering and gesturing dramatically. Roy spoke some Spanish but when he got close enough to overhear their conversations they spoke so rapidly and without fully pronouncing most of their words that he could not understand anything they were saying.

  Tina didn’t like the Cuban girls. She was tall and blonde, as was her friend, LaDonna. When Roy asked Tina to dance she asked him what he thought of the Cuban girls. Before he could answer, Tina said, “They’re cheap. They have big asses and dress like whores. LaDonna says her mother told her that their fathers have sex with them starting when they’re five.”

  Roy found this hard to believe. He worked laying sewer pipe and shooting streets with Cuban men and liked them. They were good workers, glad to have a job, and they laughed a lot. Most of the time Roy didn’t get their jokes—they spoke as rapidly as the girls at the dances—but they always offered to share their homemade lunches with Roy. He loved the Cuban food: lechon and pollo asado, platanos maduros, black beans and yellow rice.

  Tina had blue eyes with yellow spots in them, an almost pretty face and a terrific figure. She and LaDonna wore as much or more make-up as the Cuban girls.

  “Are you from around here?” Tina asked Roy. “You don’t talk like you are.”

  “I’m from Chicago,” he said. “I’m down here staying with my uncle for the summer.”

  “I’m almost seventeen,” said Tina. “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be sixteen in October,” Roy lied.

  Tina was a little taller than Roy. She had slen
der, muscular arms and held him tightly, pulling him around during a slow dance. Her new breasts were as hard as her arms. She pushed herself against Roy and he got excited.

  “I can tell you like me, Roy,” Tina said, and smiled. Her teeth were crooked and up close Roy could see the pimples beneath cracks in her make-up.

  Ralph was trying to get one of the Cuban girls to talk to him and LaDonna was dancing with a big, heavyset guy whose ears were perpendicular to his head. Tina told Roy that his name was Woody and that he was one of LaDonna’s exes. “She’s got a lot of ’em,” Tina said.

  After the slow dance Roy and Tina got cups of lemonade at the host table and stood off to the side.

  “Do you want to walk me home?” Tina asked him. “I live four blocks from here. I don’t much like the music they’re playing tonight and my parents make me come home early.”

  When they got to her house, a white, wooden bungalow set on concrete blocks with a wide front porch with a swing on it, Tina said, “Come in with me. My parents go to bed right after Perry Mason and then we can sneak out and go down to the river.”

  Tina introduced Roy to Ed and Irma, both of whom Tina addressed by their given names, not Mom and Dad, which Roy had never heard a kid do before. Ed and Irma sat in separate armchairs in the small livingroom watching Raymond Burr be a lawyer on their black and white Motorola. Roy and Tina sat slightly apart from each other on a lumpy couch. Ed and Irma did not say anything until the program was over. Ed stood up and turned off the television set after the theme music finished playing over the end credits.