by Paul Monette
“I wanna go where he goes,” said Manolo, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, pal,” said the one on the left, swilling a gulp of coffee.
Of one hundred and twenty-five thousand Marielitos who made it to Florida, it was discovered that perhaps one in five had a criminal record. At Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where thousands were interned for several months, the whole ragtag bunch of them—perverts and murderers, liars and thieves—came to be known as “Los Bandidos.” As if they constituted some enormous gang about to be set loose on an innocent land, like a plague almost. The only thing the bureaucrats knew how to do was waste time, pushing their papers around and keeping the refugees contained while somebody in the State Department tried to think of a diplomatic way of sending the scum back home. Meanwhile, the ex-cons at Fort Chaffee began to band together, dealing and threatening and vying for power, the same way they had in the jails of Havana. In fact the place was very like a jail, except the facilities were better.
Every Saturday night they saw a movie, as if the brass at Fort Chaffee was trying to instruct them on how Americans conducted themselves on a weekend. There were other things to do besides brawling and stealing hubcaps. Thus they were herded together in the outdoor amphitheater. Popcorn and Cokes were passed out. Tonight they were watching The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Some dimwit lieutenant had decided it sounded vaguely south-of-the-border and thus might soothe the exiles. Unfortunately, the print was badly damaged, and anyway most of the Cubans had seen it before. So they yammered back at the screen and jostled and hooted among themselves. Bogart was all alone, talking to himself. In a minute the bandits would get him.
“Conscience,” Bogart said. “Conscience, what a thing. If you believe you’ve got a conscience, it’ll pester you to death. But if you don’t believe you’ve got one, what can it do to you?”
Manolo and Tony sat in the front row. Manolo chewed gum and wore dark glasses. His hair was slicked back like a punk. From the black market that flourished in the camp he had managed to acquire a pair of Levis and a tee shirt that said: “Fuck off and die.” Tony, beside him, sat hunkered down in his seat, riveted to the screen. He didn’t even hear the noise and catcalls erupting from the crowd around him. He still wore the same prison fatigues he’d arrived in, the arms of the shirt cut off at the shoulders, the pant legs frayed at the bottom. Most of the men at Fort Chaffee had accepted the bounty of one or another well-meaning church group, and now they were dressed in hand-me-down double-knits, golf pants and bowling shirts. The pure American Synthetic. Next to them, Tony looked like a revolutionary. Well-fed and muscular now, working out at the base gym every day, with his hair grown long and his scar to flash, he was a curious mix of dangerous forces. Half pop star, half guerrilla general.
Bogart died his lonely death, and the gold blew away like a dream across the shimmering Mexican desert. As the film flickered out, the crowd of convicts raced for the exits. Saturday night could begin in earnest now. Stashes of rum and PCP, weed and Vitamin Q, would be broken out of their hiding places in the barracks. The guards knew better than to enforce the letter of the law all the time, and besides, the guards had astral planes of their own to reach on Saturday nights.
Tony sat mesmerized in his seat, till the amphitheater was nearly empty. Manolo kept shaking his shoulder. Finally he stood and stretched, rolling his shoulder muscles like a panther, and the two men sauntered up the steps and out to the base proper. Manolo walked with his hands in his pockets, very laid-back, like a young buck out for a little action. Tony danced a bit like a fighter, shadowboxing the humid air. He seemed about to burst for nervous energy. Suddenly he went into a gangster slouch and punched Manolo’s arm.
“Thought you could screw Fred C. Dobbs, huh?”
The words curled out of the corner of Tony’s mouth. It was a near perfect imitation. “Well, you got it wrong, didn’t you? Ha ha ha!”
Manolo laughed back at him. “Me, I’d’a got away with the gold,” he said, cocky and young and uncomplicated.
“You see how he’s always lookin’ over his shoulder?” asked Tony, darting an exaggerated look behind him. “Just like Tony Montana, huh?”
“You’re a lot better lookin’, chico.”
“Don’t trust nobody, Bogart. Don’t trust women. Don’t trust his own gang.” Tony’s eyes narrowed to slits as he took in the noisy, crowded street before them. It was hard to tell if the impersonation was over or not. “Don’t got nobody,” Tony whispered. “Just himself.”
“Yeah, real paranoid,” retorted Manolo, starting to walk again. “That kind kills himself. Don’t matter who pulls the trigger.”
Tony caught up with him. He was all loose and relaxed now, like he’d just worked out. “Never happen to me, baby,” he said, nudging Manolo’s shoulder. “That’s one thing I’ll never be. Never be crazy.”
“Oh yeah? How do you know? Fuckin’ jungle out there, makes people crazy.”
“I know,” said Tony, “that’s all.” The mimic was gone from his voice now. He spoke as if all his treasure was here, in the real world. He was icy clear. The only reason Tony Montana looked over his shoulder was to make sure he was still far ahead of everyone else. And he always was.
The gray and tin-roofed barracks lined the street on either side. Lights out was officially eleven P.M., but no one was watching the clock tonight. The summer air, not so much as a breeze for days, hummed with mosquitoes and a salsa beat. Clusters of men crouched in the dry grass strips in front of the buildings, tossing dice. Somebody was singing and playing a banjo, a sharp hot love song full of revenge. Various drunks reeled up and down the street, talking to themselves. Every now and then a fight would break out between two of them. A knife would flash, a stab in the arm or a slice across the face, but nothing serious. It was too hot. They were too drunk to care.
As Manolo and Tony drifted through, nodding here and there but not stopping at any one group, a pock-faced punk named Chi-Chi sidled across their path. “Hey, Manny,” he said with a lazy smile. He was ripped to the tits.
“Hey, Chi-Chi. What’s goin’ down?”
“Usual shit, man. You want some peanuts?” He thrust a hand in his pocket and drew out a fistful of pills, yellows and reds and big fat whites.
Manolo shook his head. “No thanks, pal. I got so wasted the other night, I thought I died. I just come up for air.”
All this while, Tony stood patiently by, not even appearing to listen. He watched the banjo player across the way, as if he cared very much how the song turned out. Chi-Chi seemed to know better than to offer the pills in his direction.
“How ’bout a little snatch?” Chi-Chi asked Manolo. “Pussycat name Yolanda just roll in.”
“Oh yeah?” said Manolo. “What she look like?”
“She look like you, ’cept she got a snatch.”
“Sorry, Chi-Chi,” Manolo laughed. “I think I’ll pull it myself tonight.”
“If you get stoned enough,” said Chi-Chi, carefully plucking a yellow pill from the pharmacopoeia in his hand, “you don’t even notice who you’re doin’ it with.” He popped the pill into his mouth and hiccuped as he swallowed it.
Tony had had enough. As the two men continued to talk, he wandered away down the street. A hundred yards farther on was the center of what they called “the boulevard.” In the alleys beside the mess hall was the thriving heart of the black market, where the portable stalls on Saturday nights sold toiletries, clothing, cigarettes, booze. Here the traffic in transvestites was conducted by a gang of professional pimps, whose patter and swagger were broad as Miami. The “girls” were dressed to the teeth. As Tony ambled by, one of the marketeers called out hello, but he didn’t stop.
On the steps in front of the mess, a couple of young guys still in their teens were tossing a frisbee. Across the glass doors of the mess someone had spray-painted “Viva Carter!” In the gravel yard beside the steps was a row of telephone booths, each with its door removed. Here stood a patient line
of about a dozen refugees, each with a pocket full of dimes. They would stand at the phone for hours, these types, poring through the well-thumbed pages of a Miami telephone book, trying to make a connection with somebody on the outside. Now and then one of them would strike gold, hooking up with an uncle or a cousin. With a sponsor, chances were fifty-fifty that a man could be released from the army base. The hope of it kept the refugees in the phone line feeding in dimes and quarters day after day, as if they were playing a slot machine.
As Tony passed by, a handsome young man with a bushy head of hair screamed into one of the phones and slammed it down. He turned away in disgust, only to find Tony grinning at him sarcastically. “What’s so funny?” asked Angel Fernandez in broken English. “You know how many goddam Fernandezes they got in Miami?”
“Hey Angel,” Tony said gently, “maybe after twelve years you got the wrong number or somethin’. People like to move around, ya know.”
“Lousy country,” Angel said disgustedly, shaking his head as he moved off toward the alley to buy a pint of rum.
Tony knew Angel would be back in the booth tomorrow. More than any of the rest of them, Angel longed to reunite with those in his family who’d fled Cuba during the early days of the revolution. Angel was as innocent as his name. His two years in prison had somehow not hardened him like the others, and Tony felt very protective toward him. Even angry like he was now, Angel was a sweet-tempered kid. There wasn’t a lethal bone in his body. Angel Fernandez was a kind of good-luck charm to Tony. Made him feel life wasn’t quite so full of scum.
“Hey sugar,” called a dusky voice beside him. Tony turned and stared at a bone-thin transvestite in a slit skirt, with a bust like a shelf in a tight-fitting blouse. He was smoking a cigarette, standing against the wall because he was still a little wobbly in high heels. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “My name’s Lena,” he said. “You want a piece?”
“Thanks anyway, honey,” Tony threw back at her. “I’m savin’ it for my wedding night.”
She leaned forward into the light. Even under the makeup, you could see the shadow of a beard. “I bet you love to take it, baby, doncha?”
There was a moment’s dangerous silence, during which they simply stared at each other. Then all of a sudden they started to laugh, both of them. The sleek transvestite blew him a kiss and wobbled away to cruise the street. Tony winked as she passed him. He didn’t care what people did. He had no moral problem with anybody here, not the dopers or the pimps or the drunks or anyone else. People ought to do what they liked. Tony was sure as hell going to.
“You’re too hot-headed, that’s your problem,” Manolo said, rejoining him now by the phone line. “Creep had some information. Guys tell him stuff so he’ll give ’em pills.”
“So what’s he hear that I don’t hear?”
“Up in Washington they’re tellin’ Carter that nine out of ten of us is real bad news. They say they’re gonna ship us back.”
“Listen, I read the papers, asshole. You think I don’t know that? Immigration’s startin’ these hearings. ‘Exclusionary,’ they call ’em.” Tony looked bitterly at the boulevard, where the scum of the earth cavorted. They all seemed weirdly content to live by the freedoms of this new jail. It was a hell of a lot better than Cuba. “We gotta get outa this hole,” Tony said, “before they start havin’ ’em here.”
“Chi-Chi says a lotta shit went down in a place called Pennserania. Riots—fires. Things are gonna pop here, Chi-Chi says.”
“Pennsylvania,” said Tony precisely, who had heard the guards talking about the trouble at Indiantown Gap. “What’s Chi-Chi got, crystal balls? I coulda told you we’re gonna have a riot.”
Manolo’s voice rose an octave. “You think they’re gonna let us out after that? Shit, they’ll throw the fuckin’ key away.”
“Hey chico, this is America,” Tony said softly, as if he was trying to explain it to a child. “They got lawyers here. They got a ACLU, gives medals to guys like us. Castro don’t want us back. What are they gonna do with us, put us in a gas chamber? They’re stuck with us, okay?”
“Yeah, well what if we gotta sit here another six months?”
“You worry too much, Manolo. That’s your problem.” He shadowboxed about his friend, throwing punches and stopping just short of Manolo’s nose. “We’ll find somethin’,” he said. “There’s gotta be a ticket outa here. You just gotta be ready. Get in shape, ya know?”
With that he turned and sauntered down the street again. Manolo, never one to be left behind, caught up with Tony and fell into place beside him. He liked nothing better than to hear Tony counter all his fears. As they approached Barrack 9, where the two of them slept, they came up to a group of very hip types who were dressed as slick and punk as Manolo. Here the beat wasn’t salsa. It was all Blondie and Pat Benatar. These guys were ready for the real America. Tony, still exploding with nervous energy, began to swing when he heard the sound. He snapped his fingers and rolled his hips like Presley, till the punks applauded.
Everybody loves him, thought Manolo. He can go anywhere. And he don’t even care.
Tony did a back-pedal, light on his feet. He smiled at Manolo and then began to sing. The imitation was awful this time. “Love you love you baby,” Tony crooned. “Give it up give it up give it up.”
He danced till the punks had gathered around him. Where a moment before they had all seemed blurred and bored and slightly exhausted, now they clapped and laughed as if they’d really heard their own music for the first time. But as soon as he had them, Tony stopped. Waving vaguely, he sauntered up the steps of the barrack, almost like it was past his bedtime. Some things, it appeared, were only things of the minute. He had graver matters to ponder now. It was as if he didn’t even see what effect he’d had on the group around the radio.
Manolo, hurrying to catch up with him, realized a man like Tony had no limits. All he needed was a ticket out of here, and he’d take possession of the world as if it was his birthright. Manolo’s head grew crowded with loot and power and dazzling women. He seemed to understand that Tony was going to deal him in, no matter where it led, perhaps because Manolo knew what a right-hand man was for.
That was who got the tickets.
Later on that night, when most of the bandidos of Fort Chaffee were either passed out cold or huddled in the alleys beside the barracks, losing their shirts at craps, Tony appeared once more in the doorway to Barrack 9. He walked alone through the near-deserted streets of the army base, till he came again to the row of telephones beside the mess. The frantic calling was over for tonight. It was too late to be dialing New York and Miami, waking people up with a lot of wrong numbers.
Tony pulled a bunch of quarters from his pants pocket and laid them on the metal shelf under the phone. Then he drew from his shirt pocket what looked like a tattered card. On one side a telephone number was written in pencil. Tony dropped in a coin and dialed a Florida number. As he waited for the connection to go through, he flipped over the card—which turned out to be a snapshot, frayed at the edges and flaking. It was his sister Gina, long long ago, standing in front of the shack in the tarpaper alleys of Havana. She was grinning and pointing at her feet, showing off a pair of new shoes.
The phone began to ring far away, and for a moment Tony’s face was full of repose. For once he looked young, without the impulse to dart a nervous glance over his shoulder. The phone was answered on the fourth ring. A sleepy woman’s voice said: “Yes? . . . Hello? . . . Who is it?”
Tony did not reply. He stared at the snapshot as if he was hypnotized. The woman called out to somebody else: “It’s nobody, Mama. Go back to sleep.” Then she hung up.
Tony smiled. He replaced the receiver carefully. Then he slipped the snapshot back in his shirt, next to his heart, and stepped out of the phone booth. He strolled back through the empty streets to his barrack, hands in his pocket, kicking a stone. A rapt expression was on his face. He looked like he’d just finished talking to his g
irl. No, it was more than that. He looked like he’d just made love.
They couldn’t escape, that was for sure. Oh, they could get over the wall all right, but then they’d be driven underground. Before they knew it, they’d end up in some slum alley without a chance in hell. The point was to get a green card, but it seemed to have to do with who you knew, and Tony and Manolo didn’t know anybody. Not Out There. Because his English was so good, Tony wrote long letters to various social service organizations asking for work, but apparently Cubans were sent to the bottom of the pile, because he never heard anything back. Meanwhile, the situation at Fort Chaffee deteriorated by the day. The penned-up refugees were brawling among themselves, close to riot. All it needed was a match.
One hot afternoon, in the outdoor boxing ring behind the gym, Tony was putting away his fourth opponent in a row. His white satin trunks soaked with sweat, his face beet-red in the headgear, Tony shuffled and feinted, digging in and battering a young punk who was twenty pounds heavier than he was. Thirty or forty ex-cons stood around watching the fight, shouting encouragement to one or another of the opponents. A lot of money rode on the match. The odds were 5:2 against Tony, simply because he’d been fighting for two and a half hours. They didn’t see how he could keep it up.
The punk lumbered across the ring, looking to land one elephant paw in Tony’s face. Tony danced left, then right, then tore into the guy. He landed a rain of punches on the solar plexus, finishing with an upper cut to the jaw. The punk went down like a fallen tree. Out cold.
“Okay Tony, knock off,” said the referee as he checked the K.O. He was a corporal who was getting twenty percent of the take on Tony.
“C’mon,” said Tony roughly, “gimme another bum. I’m hungry.”
The corporal shook his head. Tony turned away, muttering curses, and threw off his headgear and tossed his gloves. As he ducked between the ropes, Angel came over to tell him they’d made four hundred dollars. Tony laughed and spit out a mouthful of blood. “Maybe I should stay in here for good,” he said, as Angel patted him dry with a towel. “I could become a millionaire.”
