90 Miles to Havana (11 page)

Caballo slams his bat down on home plate and starts his victory lap. “Hey, rag arm, what do you think about that?” he gloats as he crosses second base.

When I run out to the mound Angelita is already there, slapping Gordo on the back. “You did the right thing, Gordo!”

I can't believe it. Gordo gave him a pitch that my grandmother could have hit. He swallowed his pride; he did what was best for all of us.

When I see Caballo gloating and strutting out to the mound I put my hand on Gordo's chest to turn him away and I can feel his heart pounding like a drum.

“Hey, rag arm,” Caballo says and steps in front of him. “Angelita could throw harder than you!” Then he turns to Angelita. “Why do you hang around with such losers?”

I stand in front of Gordo expecting him to jump at Caballo, but he just turns his back to him and walks away with Angelita.

Gordo is halfway to the dormitory when I call out, “Gordo, I know you could have struck him out, we all know!”
Caballo walks up behind me, grabs my arm, and squeezes real hard. I was hoping he wouldn't hear me.

My arm is throbbing but I keep my mouth shut. I don't want Gordo to hear. He might be able to surprise us all and give up a home run to Caballo, but I know exactly what he would do if Caballo laid a finger on Alquilino or me.

Caballo squeezes harder, “So, you still think he could have struck me out, midget?”

As I try to twist away my drawing book flies out of my hand and lands at his feet.

Caballo snatches it up and starts flipping through it.

“Give it back, please. That's my drawing book!” I say.

Caballo is not interested in the book, but he must have heard something in my voice. I gave it away—now he knows.

“These doodles are really important to you, aren't they?” He looks at me with a fake sympathetic face. “Right?”

“Yes, it's how I remember and it's the only thing I brought from home,” I say honestly, thinking that maybe he will understand.

“Then I accept,” he says.

“Accept what?”

“This prize—my trophy for hitting a home run!” he says and holds it up for his friends to see.

I step in front of him and plead, “Caballo, give me back my drawings, please.” He steps past me and bows humbly to the curious mob that's just starting to gather. They're
all looking up at him trying to figure out what's going on. He looks really happy. I get the feeling that he's really enjoying this and why not? Isn't everybody gathered around him to cheer for him, the victorious hero? But then someone yells, “Give him the book back.”

Caballo's face drops back to his usual scowl and he yells back, “It's mine now!”

He's weaving his way through the crowd, heading for the open dormitory door. If he gets inside he'll lock up my drawing book in his trunk and I'll never see it again! Angelita runs up beside him and grabs the book. When Caballo pulls it back Angelita falls. The crowd gasps and Caballo stops. He's wearing a new face, a face I've never seen on him before. He actually looks like he's sorry for something he did.

Caballo stoops to help her up. “Sorry, Angelita. I didn't mean to . . .”

But before he can finish, Marta, the tall girl that makes the hats, yells, “Only bullies hit girls!”

“Bully, bully, Caballo the bully!” the crowd chants.

Caballo straightens up real slow. He looks tired, as if he's carrying something that he'll never be able to put down. He turns to go, but before he can take his first step toward the door, I hear Angelita yell, “Alquilino, no!” But it's too late.

Alquilino rushes by and drives his head into Caballo's chest. He knocks him into the crowd and then Gordo flies
in right behind him. They tumble to the ground in a grunting jumble of elbows and knees.

El Fideo yells, “Pileup!”

In the wink of an eye there's a knot of bodies writhing on the ground. Kids are jumping in and the pile is getting bigger and louder by the second. The last ones to jump in are Marta's hat friends. They're sitting on top, wearing their half-finished hats.

Dolores rushes out and starts untangling arms and legs, pulling the girls off first. I run around the pile looking for my book, checking each kid before they run away.

When Dolores gets down to Alquilino, Gordo, and Caballo, she straightens up and barks, “This party's over, everybody up!” Then she pulls them apart and tosses them to the side as if they were red-faced rag dolls and light as a feather.

Caballo looks around at the kids who weren't smart enough to leave and growls, “You'll all pay for this,” then limps off to the director's office. As Alquilino pieces his broken glasses back together again, Gordo tugs on his torn T-shirt. I'm still looking around for my book.

“It's gone!” I say as I follow Alquilino and Gordo to the director's office.

Caballo is standing next to the director, hands folded, looking almost angelic. The director waves toward the two wooden chairs and Angelita and Pepe sit down. Caballo shoots an angry look at my brothers and me. He sees Angelita looking straight at him and he looks away.

Alquilino begins to explain what happened but the director puts his pen down and raises his hand.

“I've tried to be patient with you boys.”

“He hurt Angelita,” Alquilino says and squints at Caballo. “He can't go around hurting girls.”

It takes a lot to make Alquilino mad, but when he does he can be as bad as Gordo—even worse because he has a
memory like an elephant. It takes a long time for him to forget and then forgive.

“That's not the way I heard it,” the director says.

“Whatever he said is a lie,” Gordo yells.

“Romeo has no reason to lie to me,” the director says firmly.

Paco, his office helper, pokes his head in the door. “The call from Denver,” he announces as if they had been waiting for it.

Alquilino gets up abruptly. “Come on, let's get out of here. He's not going to listen to us anyway.”

“We should wait,” Angelita whispers, but Gordo and Alquilino are already heading for the door.

Then the director puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, “Boys, I'll have to do something about this. I can't have troublemakers here,” he says before they leave the room.

When Angelita gets up, Pepe and I follow, but she stops at the door and turns back to the director.

“I'll talk to them; they'll listen to me,” she says to the director but he is now busy writing something down on his yellow pad. Caballo steps forward and signals for her to be quiet, then gently turns her toward the door.

“Maybe I can help,” Caballo says softly.

Those were the words Angelita thought she heard him say, but she could never imagine those words coming out of his mouth. She was halfway across the yard when she realized that maybe he could be persuaded to help.

That night, as we eat our gloomy mashed potatoes and sad grilled-cheese sandwiches, Angelita strides into the dining hall and walks up to Caballo.

He waves at the empty space next to him as if inviting her to sit. She shakes her head, then leans in to say something to him. He answers and then shrugs his shoulders. As she turns to go, he gently touches her arm, smiling at her, and motions for her to sit down, but Angelita is not moving. Then Caballo's smile disappears, and she leans in closer so no one else will hear. I can't hear what he's saying but when he finishes, Angelita nods, then spins on her heels and walks away.

Alquilino and Gordo slide apart to make room for her but she walks around to the other side of the table and sits between Pepe and me.

“What did you say to him?” Alquilino asks.

“Don't you know what's about to happen to you?” she snaps at Alquilino and Gordo. “We've got to talk. We'll meet at the shed, I'll tell you then.”

As we get up to leave, Caballo is mindlessly shoveling yellow rice into his mouth, his eyes following Angelita out of the dining room.

Angelita is sitting in the middle of the shed and Pepe is standing at the far end picking at the leaves of an overhanging branch. Alquilino and Gordo sit on either side of Angelita. I'm standing next to Pepe when Angelita looks up and nods at him. Then Pepe reaches under his shirt and pulls my book out of the waistband of his pants.

He drops it on my lap and says, “I pulled it out of the pile.”

“Thanks, Pepe. That was a really brave thing to do!” I say as I leaf through my drawings. “I don't know what I would do if I lost this.”

“I know. That's why I did it,” Pepe says and sits down next to me.

“Julian, now you have to do something just as brave,” Angelita says.

“What do you want me to do, Angelita? I can be brave, too!”

“Caballo wants your drawing book.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Caballo said if you give it to him, he'll talk to the director and then maybe he won't send you guys away.”

“What does my book have to do with it?”

“It's called
saving face
. Everybody saw that he had the book and now he doesn't. He wants you to give it to him at dinner in front of everybody. So they'll all know that he won.”

“I knew it. I should have struck him out,” Gordo says.

“Gordo, you did the right thing, but this is about what happened afterward. You made Caballo look bad. I thought both of you understood. Caballo always has to win, he's afraid if he loses just once, somebody else might start thinking that they can challenge him, even bully him around. It's a sad way to be,” Angelita says and shakes her head. “If he wasn't so mean I'd feel sorry for him.”

“How could you feel sorry for him, Angelita?” Gordo asks.

“I'll tell you a secret. Caballo is a bully because someone bullied him. He's afraid because somebody, somewhere scared him. All bullies are the same.”

“But, Angelita!” I protest and look to my brothers, “It's not fair. Gordo gave him an easy pitch. He let him win.”

Alquilino takes his glasses off, fiddles with the tape he put on the bridge to hold them together. He carefully puts them on, but they still sit crooked on his nose.

“If you don't give him the book they'll probably send us away,” Alquilino says. “But you'll still have your book, and the other kids will see that someone stood up to him. On the other hand, that might make him even meaner.” Alquilino pushes his glasses back up on his nose. “But it's your book, your decision. Whatever you decide, we'll go along with it. Right, Gordo?”

“If it were me, I wouldn't give it to him,” Gordo says angrily. “I wouldn't let him win again. There's only one way to deal with a guy like him.”

“But if he sends you away, we all lose,” Angelita reminds him.

“We might lose, but he won't win again,” Gordo answers.

I tried to sleep, tossed and turned, then gave up. I pulled my drawing book out from under the mattress and leafed through the pages. By the time I got to the drawing of the three jagged triangles pointing at Havana, I knew what I had to do. It's going to hurt to give up my book, but it won't hurt half as much as getting separated from my brothers.

Even after I made up my mind, I still couldn't sleep, so I stayed up to watch the first rays of sunlight come through the narrow window high up on the wall. The bathroom was glowing its now-familiar sickly green when I got dressed and went to the dining hall to wait for Caballo.

When I see Caballo cut to the head of the breakfast line, I pull the book out from behind my belt. I take a deep breath and then try to walk slowly and confidently. When I tap Caballo's hairy arm, he looks down at me, and I glance back as if I'm not scared of him. But when Caballo grabs the book, I'm sure he sees my hand shaking.

Caballo turns the book over a couple of times, then looks at me, not in a mean way, but like I'm an ant or a strange bug. He puts his hand on the back of my neck, waves the book around waiting for everybody to look up. “I want everyone to know that Julian is giving me this special book; my trophy for hitting the longest ball in the history of this camp.” Caballo holds up my book for all to see that he won. A few of his followers clap but most of the kids just sit there with their plastic forks hanging in midair. Then Caballo squeezes my neck, I guess to remind me that he won and I lost.

When I walked out of the dining hall I could still feel Caballo's fingers on my neck; it's kind of a creepy feeling, but I'm sure it will go away, eventually.

So far it seems as if it was worth it. Since I gave him my book, Caballo hasn't bothered anybody. For now he doesn't seem to be interested in what we're doing and he hasn't noticed that everybody is whispering about what happened with me and the book. The girls weaving the hats have not stopped arguing about whether or not I should have given up my book. They all agree that Caballo has hit a new
high—or low, depending how you look at it—on the bully scale.

Every time they ask me how I feel about giving up my book, I answer the same way, “I don't want to talk about it. I just want to forget it!” Then I get the same nervous feeling in my stomach.

I know that if Caballo hears even a snippet of what they're saying about him, he'll have to do something to show us he's boss again. Bebo always said that you should listen to your stomach.

All week Caballo has been staying at the fringes of things, like he's just one of us. But today, Friday, after dinner, he came forward and tacked up the list for the Saturday-morning trip to Miami.

Pepe and I worm our way under and around the kids gathered in front of the list. When we get next to the wall we stand up at the same time and scan the list. “Alquilino and Gordo are on the list!” we say at exactly the same time. My stomach starts to hurt.

“Something is wrong here,” I mumble as we crawl back to where Alquilino, Gordo, and Angelita are standing.