A Place We Knew Well (17 page)

Was a whole season's worth of work for south Florida's muck farmers—fighting weather, weeds, and whitefly to bring in a late crop of strawberries, tomatoes, snap beans, whatever—rotting on their loading docks for lack of transport? The trains were unavailable. Had the government commandeered their big trucks, too?

By three-fifteen, Steve had managed to unbend Sally's wheel rim and put on a new tire. And Avery had diagnosed the drag racer's problem, pulled a product code out of the Hurst catalog, and called the guy with the bad news.

“You did a great job putting in the wrong shifter. Hurst makes a special C-shaped version for the '57s—
C
for ‘Chevy,' right?—so second and fourth gear don't get stuck under the bench seat. I can order the right one, but who's going to put it in? Me or you?”

“How 'bout the guy knows what he's doin'?” Jerry said.

Most days yes, Avery thought glumly, but not today.

After writing up the work ticket, he called Holler Chevy's parts desk and requested a runner first thing in the morning. Gas business remained brisk. Both he and Steve were out at the pumps when Father Thomas drove up with Emilio.

The priest had barely stopped the car when the teenager jumped out shouting, “The ships! The Soviet ships! They're turning around!”

“Just now on the news. Praise be to God!” the priest crowed.

The pair's excitement swept over Avery and Steve to the customers under the station canopy. “Wahoo!” The Johnson kid hung out of his family Dodge Dart's window and cheered. Plumber Bob Myers, pulling out onto the Trail, honked his horn in jubilation. Other cars at the intersection were doing the same.

Emilio's grin eclipsed his face as he shot out his hand to shake Avery's, then Steve's, then, caught up in the excitement, Avery and Steve shook hands, while the priest's head bobbed in smiling benediction.

“Thank God,” Avery murmured, flooded with relief.

“And the United States Navy,” Steve added with a wink.

There was a ballooning sense of celebration as the foursome drifted into the office. “The Soviets turned tail and ran!” “Can you believe it?” “A miracle!”

“RC Colas for everyone!” Avery declared. As Steve went to grab them, Avery saw the priest's merry eyes narrow with concern. He turned to see why.

“San Cristóbal,” Emilio whispered, holding
The
New York Times
in trembling hands.
“Mi madre, mi abuelos en San Cristóbal.”

“But I thought she was in Pinar—what's its name—Pines by the River?”

“Pinar del Rio is both a town and a province,” Thomas was explaining, the
Times
now in his hands. “Like New York, New York.”

“We lived in town,” Emilio said. “But after they put Papa in prison, Mama and I moved to my
abuelos'
…my grandparents' coffee farm in San Cristóbal.”

“Your father…?”

“In prison?”

“Who?” Steve demanded, thrusting a cola into Emilio's hand. “Who put your father in prison?”

“Fidel…,” Emilio said bleakly. “After Tereza was murdered.”

“What?” Avery exclaimed.

His father in prison? Tereza—wasn't that his sister's name?—
murdered
? How was that possible? And how, Avery wondered, had the kid carried around such terrible things and never mentioned them?

Then again, he recalled, most of Emilio's stories had been about his childhood
before
Fidel.
He'd mentioned his sister just the other day, hadn't he? When he asked Charlotte to the dance—hadn't he said he'd been her practice partner?

“Please tell us, son,” the priest said gently, “what happened.”

“Tereza…” Emilio's face was taut with pain. “There were only fourteen months between us, but she was the older one…and beautiful. Everyone said so. Her dream was to join the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. And she might have….” His gaze dropped to the bottle in his hand. He rubbed his thumb over the small crown at the base of its logo.

“Last May…she was one month from graduating high school, and Fidel ordered all seniors into the country…to teach the
quajiros,
the poor farmers, how to read and write. National literacy, he said, was our
top
priority. Tereza was excited; she
wanted
to go. But Mama, and especially Papa, feared for her safety. ‘You're naïve,' he argued, ‘a complete innocent with no real-life experience.' They talked back and forth for many days. ‘Twelve years in a Catholic school, all girls,' Papa said, ‘and you've never known anything but
cariño,
your family's loving-kindness. Never been anywhere without a chaperone.' But Tereza insisted, ‘All my friends are going! And besides, educating the poor is the
key
to Cuba's future.'

“Our parents were dead set against it. But when she asked me, I told her that if she wanted to go that badly, she
should
go. I told her, ‘Those poor farmers would be
lucky
to have you as a teacher….' ”

“It's all right, son.”

“Papa…Papa was a respected judge. He thought he had influence, so he filed an official protest on our behalf. But by then, Fidel had imposed Patria Potestad, the law that took away parents' right to decide things for their children and gave it to the state. So…when the official letter arrived telling her where to go, Tereza went.

“Because she had blue eyes, like me, the locals called her
la zafir,
the sapphire. On her third night away from home…someone came to her cabin and dragged her into the fields. She was…” His fingers tightened around the bottle neck in a two-handed fist. “Raped…beaten…and left to die in the dirt.

“The next day, two children playing in the canes found her body where it had been dumped in a ditch.”

“My God!” Thomas exclaimed.

Steve leaned in to give Emilio's shoulder a slow, comforting squeeze.

“I am so sorry,” Avery managed, sickened. It was a father's worst nightmare.

Emilio straightened. “I was at school. Not my old school—Fidel had closed the Catholic schools by then—I was at the state school when the
policia
came to tell my parents. They claimed later that Papa went berserk, that he threatened to kill Fidel. But it wasn't true. Mama said he told them
only
that Tereza's blood was on Fidel's hands. They branded him a counterrevolutionary and hauled him off to El Principe prison in Havana. Mama…she tried everything, called everyone we knew. But no one, not even his fellow judges, could help.

“It was three
months
before she was allowed to visit him. And the prison guards…They forced her to take off all her clothes, then searched her with their filthy hands for a concealed weapon. When she finally got in to see him, Papa was shrunken but alive, she said. He told her we should leave our house and go to her parents' plantation in San Cristóbal. She couldn't…she didn't have the heart to tell him we'd already been kicked out of our home so three other families could move in.

“It was my grandfather who insisted we talk to their priest about the Pedro Pans. He was a Jesuit from Spain. ‘I know all about the Communists,' he told us.

“Six weeks later, I had my passport, my visa, and a seat on PanAm Four Forty-Two to Miami. I know Mama is still in San Cristóbal. But Papa, God willing…”

“God!” Avery was surprised by the brusqueness of his own voice. The words came out without thinking, without stopping. “God had
nothing
to do with this!”

Emilio's eyes flashed from Avery to the priest, whose white brows were drawn down in thought.

After a long moment, Thomas sighed. “Mr. Avery is right. God doesn't control evildoing. He can only provide comfort to those who find themselves caught in its path.”

Avery's mind was a jumble of questions and concerns for Emilio's father in Castro's prison. And the boy's mother! He tried to picture her, kicked out of her home, returned to her parents' farm, grieving the murder of her only daughter and the imprisonment of her husband. Where on earth had she found the strength to put her only son on that plane?

His mind shifted to her present-day problems, what Sarah teasingly called his “Mr. Fix-It Mode.” How big was San Cristóbal? Were their streets clogged with
Russian
convoys? Would she figure that, if we attacked, the Russian missile sites would be the first thing hit? Could she pack up her parents and go? But where? The whole island was maybe three-quarters the size of Florida.
The caves!
Emilio said once that the mountains were riddled with pirate caves. Would she…

The insistent ring of the gas bell announced the Dodge pickup pulling into the pumps. Avery, closest to the door, made a move to go.

“Please,” Emilio said, setting his soda aside. “Let me.”
Work,
his look said,
would be a relief.

Avery watched him go.
And I thought I had problems.

“Should I stay?” Thomas asked.

“No need, Padre,” Steve said quietly.

“We'll look after him,” Avery added.

It was a promise, he decided, not only to the priest but also to Emilio's parents, both of them trapped in the crosshairs of a confrontation that had the whole world holding its breath.

D
ISTRACTED BY A RUSH
of customers, Avery got home after six. He had less than thirty minutes to shower, dress, eat, and get to the church for Wednesday-night Prayer Meeting, with choir practice and deacons' meeting after.

He'd been reluctant to leave Emilio alone (and just as reluctant to go home and face whatever awaited him there), but Steve had agreed to “drop by the station later with a couple of burgers” and hang out till closing.

In his neighborhood, the morning fog was long gone. But the sky remained milky, dulling Lake Silver to a gray slate.

Charlotte greeted him at the door with a grin, dressed oddly in pedal-pushers and high heels.

“Nice look,” he told her.

“Shoe practice.” She made a face. “Unfortunately, these things don't walk as good as they look!” she exclaimed, wobbling off.

Avery chuckled. Usually graceful in ballet flats, penny loafers, or majorette boots, his daughter in heels reminded him of a newborn foal trying to right itself on long legs and tender hooves.

“You'll get the hang of it,” he called to her, then remembered, with a guilty chill, Kitty's high-heeled glide down the drive.

“Where's Mom?” he asked.

Charlotte turned, index finger over shhh-ing lips. “Resting,” she said, then pressed the same finger to the place between her eyebrows where Sarah tended to get her headaches.

Avery gingerly opened the door to their bedroom, but Sarah wasn't there. He backtracked to the hall and slowly cracked the heavy door into the pitch-dark shelter. In the light from the hallway, he saw her outline on the nearest bed. One long forearm was laid protectively across her eyes. Her pale bent elbow was to the side, a single still wing. The shelter's normally musty smell was masked by a floral air freshener.

“Sarah,” he said softly.

“Y-yes,” she answered.

“Did I wake you? I'm sorry.”

“No.”

She said it without inflection, but he instantly feared the worst—Kitty's betrayal of his betrayal that morning. He moved through the darkness, along the edges of the slim wedge of light from the hall, to stand beside her. He heard her pained sigh.

“Bad, huh?”

“Terrible.”

His natural inclination—to retreat and leave her be—was overrun by his worry all afternoon, his need to know what, if anything, had happened with Kitty, and what was next. He felt his heartbeat in his chest—so loud he feared she might hear it.

“When did it hit you?”

“ 'Round noon, I guess.” Her voice was a weary whisper.

Did he dare hope…? “You have to cancel the Cherry Plaza?”

“Yes, of course.”

His anxiety all afternoon had been for nothing? He was off the hook? He bent his head, closed his eyes in relief. “Want me to call Doc Mike, ask him to come by?”

“Not tonight, thanks.” At times like this, he knew, she craved darkness and quiet. As he moved toward the door, she called, “Wes?”

“Yes, darlin'?”

“Tell Malcolm I'm sorry.”

“Sure thing. You rest now,” he said gently, and let himself out.

In the shower, he lifted his inner elbow to his nose, sniffed the now faint scent of roses one last time, then soaped himself clean.

A
T CHURCH, HE LET CHOIR
director Malcolm Sears know that Sarah wouldn't be making choir practice.

“She's not the only one,” Sears said, surveying the rather sparse crowd. “If it wasn't for the choir, I'd be home glued to my TV set like everyone else.”

“Me, too,” Avery told him.

Aware that the networks had promised coverage of the next wave of Soviet ships approaching the blockade, the pastor kept things short. Avery knew the Twenty-third Psalm by heart, but tonight its verses struck him differently than at any time before.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…”

How is it possible
not
to fear evil? With a monster like Castro jailing innocent people, and the world's superpowers poised on the brink of mutually assured destruction? When this very minute, less than ten miles away, flight crews were camped under fully loaded planes ready to start World War III at a moment's notice? When a brave young man's mother and grandparents could be among the first to die?

“…for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.”

Seen a whole lot of rods and staffs passing by the station this week—no comfort to me at all. Was he a bad Christian for thinking these things?