90 Miles to Havana (14 page)

I inspect my new treasure. “Thank you, Dolores!”

“Don't mention it, Julian,” she says and leans in close.
“I heard they sent your brothers away.” Dolores rubs my head like my mother used to. “It just isn't fair. They should try and keep brothers together.”

“It's Caballo,” I mumble, as I sharpen a new yellow pencil.

Dolores wipes her hands on her apron and floats to the serving window. “That Caballo is a piece of work. Come over here, I want to show you something.” She leads me to the little window where the dirty plates come in. “From here you can see things clear, like looking into one of them ant farms.”

“What do you mean?”

Dolores leans in close again. “I've been reading the papers, and it seems to me that Caballo is just like the old dictator that flew away
and
the one who took over. Nobody voted them in and you can't vote them out. That's a dictator for you. But here in America we don't put up with no dictators. We elect them in and if we don't like them we elect 'em out and then we send them out to pasture. No ifs, ands, or buts!” She points at Caballo. “Look at him. He's a dictator all right.”

Out in the dining hall, Caballo is sitting at the end of a long table right in front of the fan, shoveling large spoonfuls of grits into his mouth.

“Isn't that something? You've got the same thing here that you left back home! You can't get away from ‘em.”

“Can you do something about Caballo? Can you help us?” I ask.

“What am I going to do?” Dolores shrugs. “I'm just
the cook around here. I can't raise too much dust, I need the job!”

As Caballo is scraping up the last of his grits, a younger boy walks over and puts his dessert on Caballo's tray. The boy stands in front of the table waiting for Caballo to look up and put him on the right side of his friends and enemies mental list.

“You kids have to teach him a lesson, put him in his place,” Dolores grumbles and heads back to the stove.

I pick up the screwdriver. “Put him in his place?” I think I might have a plan and it calls for a screwdriver.

“But you got to do it democratic, like we do it here,” she says and lifts the hot pot off the stove.

Dolores walks up behind me, places her warm hand on my shoulder. “Butter's melted—eat your grits before they get cold.”

I poke the yellow lake of butter into the grits and then taste it. I won't tell Dolores that it tastes like buttered cardboard. “What's democratic?” I ask.

“Democratic is when people get together, talk things over, and then decide what's best for all of them, and not for some big shot somewhere. It works because everybody's vote counts the same.”

As Dolores bangs around the kitchen I push my grits around the plate and think about The Dolores Democratic Way. It sounds a lot more complicated than my plan.

Dolores thumps a large sack of powdered mashed potatoes up onto the table. When she stops to catch her
breath she sees that I haven't touched my grits. She raises her sweaty eyebrow and gives me a look that I don't need to translate. I take a deep breath and shovel the grits into my bulging mouth as quick as I can swallow.

Just as I finish the last spoonful Dolores bangs a large pot up on the stove. I slip the screwdriver into my pocket, place the glue on top of the cigar box, and then jump off the stool.

If I don't carry out my plan now, I might lose my nerve.

“Thank you, Dolores!” I yell, and head for the door.

Dolores strikes a match and—
poof, whoosh
—the hissing gas lights up in a golden ring. “Hey, don't forget to return my glue and screwdriver when you finish!” she calls as she adjusts the yellow flame to blue on the tip.

Next morning after everyone has gone into the cafeteria for breakfast, I sneak over to Caballo's bottom bunk. The mattress of the top bunk rests on a net of springs and wires, attached to the metal frame by wire hoops. I wedge the screwdriver into a metal hoop, then pry it open just a little. I've got it all figured out. Every day I'll open a few hoops until big Ernesto on the top bunk comes crashing down on top of Caballo. That'll teach him a lesson.

I've opened only four hoops when the squeal of the door startles me. I frantically search for a place to hide the screwdriver. As I tuck it under the green blanket I see Angelita walking toward me.

“Where have you been?” I ask. “I was looking all over for you yesterday.”

Angelita sits down at the end of the bunk, but she doesn't look at me. “They sent Pepe to a foster home.”

“No!”

Angelita shrugs. “It's a nice family. I went to the house with Pepe yesterday. It's not too far away from here. I can go see him on the weekends. We got lucky.”

“How come you didn't go with him?”

“They only had room for one kid. I'm going to miss him.”

“I'm sorry, Angelita. I'm going to miss Pepe, too.”

“He'll be fine. At least he's with a family and not in an orphanage or a group home.” Angelita looks up at the underside of Caballo's bunk, then nods her head. “I get it. I know what you're doing,” she says and points up at the loose metal loops. “I want to help.”

“Angelita, are you sure? I thought you felt sorry for him.”

“I did, but then I thought about what you said and decided you're right. We can't just let him get away with everything.”

“Great,” I say, happy to have a partner.

“Now, let's get to the cafeteria before Caballo misses us and comes looking for us. We'll meet after breakfast on top of the shed room.”

After lunch, I climb up to the roof and wait for Angelita. When she finally pops her head over the edge she's got a little blue notebook with her. She sits down, takes out a short pencil, and opens the notebook. “Ok, shoot. Give me your ideas.”

“I think we should start simple,” I say as I pace along the edge of the roof. “Thumbtacks on his chair, tying his shoelaces together . . . then we can put sugar under his pillow to give the ants something to snack on.” Angelita is smiling as she hands me the notebook.

We keep switching back and forth, and the pranks get wilder and more elaborate until the notebook is half full. Then we stop to decide which ones we could actually do without getting caught.

Later on that day we were huddled at the end of picnic table going over our list when Marta walked by and asked what we were doing. When Angelita looked at me I could tell that she was dying tell her.

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

At first Marta listened very seriously, then a little smile started to creep across her mouth. By the time we finished reading her our list she was laughing so hard that a big vein popped out on her forehead and wiggled like a little blue snake into her curly black hair. I don't think I had ever seen her laugh.

“Marta, would you like to help?” I asked. “But you have to swear that you won't tell anyone else.”

Marta did promise not to tell but the next day Marta brought Ramón, a friend from Havana.

“Don't worry,” Marta said very seriously. “We can trust Ramón.”

Ramón is twig-thin and the fastest kid in the whole camp. Everyone calls him La Balla, the bullet. Yesterday he squeezed himself into Ernesto's locker and waited for him. When Ernesto opened the locker, Balla jumped out screaming. Ernesto fainted, and then got stuck under the bunk. A couple of the big kids chased Balla around the camp for hours. He would let them get fingertip close and then he'd streak off. Finally he got bored with the chase and just disappeared. He must have crawled into an air vent, or a clothes hamper, because no one saw him again until he showed up here today with Marta.

Even after we made him swear not to tell anyone what we were doing, he brought in two brothers who had just arrived, José and Gustavo. Their father was a chemist in Havana. They say that they can make anything we want to pop, fizz, stick, or smell bad from stuff everybody has under the kitchen sink. After José and Gustavo joined us, Marta announced, “That's it. No more new kids. It's already hard to meet without Caballo getting suspicious.”

We meet every morning after breakfast on top of the shed to talk and to decide on the trick for that day. There is no boss or dictator in our group. That means that we listen to everybody's ideas and then vote on the ones we like.
We're trying to do things democratic like Dolores says it's done in America.

José and Angelita even wrote something they call a
constitution
. Angelita reads it at the beginning of every meeting. It ends with “. . . and most important, our mission is to get rid of El Caballo, the dictator, or make his life as miserable as possible.” She says a lot of other things but that's the only part I listen to.

Every day we set a new trap and then wait for Caballo to fall for it. Every day more kids come to watch him pick ants out of his hair, or roll around on the floor moaning and scratching. With each new trick they linger a little longer and laugh a little louder. Every day they are less afraid that Caballo might see them. But I'm still too scared to look Caballo in the eye and tell him what I think of him.

Now that there is something to talk about and look forward to each day, the kids are much happier. Caballo, unfortunately, is not getting any smaller, but he is getting meaner.

This morning Marta suggests that we find another way to deal with Caballo. “We are making his life miserable, but he is making our lives miserable, too. Mark my words, the kids who are laughing now will be complaining soon. It might be fun, but it is not effective. We have to find a more intelligent and civilized way to deal with him.”

Gustavo insists that we've gotten too good to quit, while José points out that it would be almost impossible
to find anything else we could do that is as much fun. I agree with Gustavo and José but I think Marta's way is the smartest. The discussions keep going round and round until we see kids gathering by home plate for the morning game.

“Time for a compromise!” Marta announces. “We'll do one more trick while we are studying the problem.” Then she stands up with a sly smile on her face. “And I have the perfect plan for our last surprise.”

When Marta takes off her oversized glasses, her eyes look like little raisins. “My plan is based on two simple observations I have made about Caballo. Number one, he changes into his good pants right before dinner. Number two, he washes those pants once a week—always on Tuesday—the same day I work in the laundry.” We watched her carefully put on her glasses, blinking each eye, making sure the lenses were spotless. Then she described her plan step by step, making it perfectly clear like her glasses.

“For the last step”—she waves a small silver tool, forked like the tip of a snake's tongue, and smiles—“my seam splitter. And I will do the rest.”

It's dinnertime and I'm standing at the end of the table behind a pond of thick brown gravy, spoon in hand. I can see Gustavo sitting at the first table folding and unfolding a ten-dollar bill. La Balla, wearing a red handkerchief, cowboy style, is fidgeting next to him. I spot Caballo at the door and lift my spoon. La Balla pulls the handkerchief over his face and slips under the table.

Caballo cuts to the head of the line. He slides his tray along, stacking and piling on more food than any two people could eat. When he gets to me his eyes are glued to the greasy brown lake in front of me.

“Load on the gravy!” he growls without even looking up.

Gustavo winks at me as I flood Caballo's plate with the
greasy brown stuff. When Caballo slides his tray off the table, Gustavo steps up and “accidentally” drops the ten-dollar bill right in front of him. Caballo sees the bill. When he bends over to pick it up, a loud ripping noise cuts shreds through the room. The dining hall is quiet and everyone's eyes are on Caballo as he straightens up. He reaches for the split middle seam in the back of his pants. He must be feeling a breeze in the wrong place. Then La Balla, with his handkerchief covering his face, Old West bank robber style, flashes by and snatches Caballo's dessert right off his tray. Caballo lunges for him but stops when he hears the ripping noise again. Gustavo leisurely strolls to the big fan and then turns it on.

Caballo is standing still as a statue under the American and Cuban flags. The flags and the four loose pieces of fabric hanging off his belt are now snapping and waving in the electric breeze. We all stand up and start singing the Cuban national anthem.

Caballo, confused, half turns toward the flags but when he turns back, string beans, chocolate cake, and slippery mashed potatoes start raining down on him. This was not part of our plan but we join in throwing food and knocking over chairs. We sing the national anthem and the polka-dot bikini song at the same time. Caballo looks around at the wild crowd and then ducks out the back door.

Every bit of fear, anger, and sadness we've been carrying around, the frustration that drove us around the baseball field, the uncertainty we wove into an endless variety
of hats, has been cut loose with only one purpose: to turn this cafeteria into a slippery zoo.