Cuba by Stephen Coonts Page A

palm-leaf roof, this house had
    been the center of her adult life. Here she moved
    as a young bride with her husband, bore her children,
    raised them, cried and laughed with them, buried two
    of the ten, watched the others grow up and marry and move
    away. And here she watched her husband die
    of cancer.
    He had died… sixteen years ago, sixteen
    years in November.
    You never think about outliving your spouse when you are
    young. Never think about what comes afterward, after happiness,
    after love. Then, too soon, the never-thoughtab
    future arrives.
    She sat on the porch and looked at the clouds
    floating above the distant ocean, almost like ships,
    sailing someplace. …
    She had lived her whole life upon this island, every day
    of it, had never been farther from this house than
    Havana, and that on just two occasions: once when she
    was a teenage girl, on a marvelous expedition with
    her older sister, and once when her son Maximo was
    sworn in as the minister of finance.
    She had met Fidel Castro on that visit to the
    capital, felt the power of his personality, like a
    fire that warmed everyone within range. Oh, what a
    man he was, tall, virile, comfull of life.
    No wonder Maximo orbited Fidel’s star. His
    brother Jorge, her eldest, had been one of
    Castro’s most dedicated disciples, espousing
    Marxism and Cuban nationalism, refusing to listen
    to the slightest criticism of his hero.
    Jorge, dead of heart failure at the age of
    forty-two, another dreamer.
    All the Sedanos were dreamers, she thought,
    povertystricken dreamers trapped on this sun-washed
    island in a sun-washed sea, isolated from the rest of
    humankind,
    the
    rest of the species….
    She thought of Jorge when she saw Mercedes, his
    widow, climb from the car. The men in the car glanced
    at her seated on the porch, didn’t wave, merely
    drove on, leaving Mercedes standing in the road.
    “Hola, Mima.”
    Jorge, cheated of life with this woman, whom he
    loved more than anything, more than Castro, more than his
    parents, more than
    anything,
    for the Sedanos were also great lovers.
    “Hola,
    my pretty one. Come sit beside me.”
    As she stepped on the porch, Dona Maria said,
    “Thank you for coming.”
    “It is nothing. We both loved Jorge….”
    “Jorge…”
    Mercedes looked at Maria’s hands, took them in
    her own, as if they weren’t twisted and crippled.
    She kissed the older woman, then sat on a bench
    beside her and looked at the sea.
    “It is still there. It never changes.”
    “Not like we do.”
    The emotions twisted Mercedes’s insides, made
    her eyes tear. Here in this place she had had so
    much, then with no warning it was gone, as if a mighty
    tide had swept away all that she valued, leaving
    only sand and rock.
    Jorgeoh, what a man he was, a dreamer and
    lover and believer in social justice. A true
    believer, without a selfish bone in his body … and of
    course he had died young, before he realized how much
    reality differed from his dreams.
    He lived and died a crusader for justice and
    Cuba and all of that… and left her to grow old
    alone … lonely in the night, looking for someone who
    cared about something besides himself.
    She bit her lip and looked down at Dona
    Maria’s hands, twisted and misshapen. On
    impulse leaned across and kissed the older woman on
    the cheek.
    “God bless you, dear childea”…Dona Maria
    said.
    Ocho came walking along the road, trailed by four
    of the neighborhood children who were skipping and laughing
    and trying to make him smile. When he turned in at
    his mother’s gate, the children scampered away.
    Everyone on the porch turned and looked at him,
    called a greeting as he quickly covered the three or
    four paces of the path. Ocho was the Greek god,
    with the dark hair atop a perfect head1, a
    perfect face, a perfect body … tall, with
    broad shoulders and impossibly narrow hips, he
    moved like a cat. He dominated a room,
    radiating masculinity like a beacon, drawing the
    eyes of every