He came to a cell door, a grating of steel bars, and stopped. While one of the guards unlocked the door and pulled it open, the lieutenant looked at Charlie Burke and said, "You go in here, please."
Light from the corridor showed the beginning of a row of canvas hammocks, sagging and rounded with the weight of men sleeping, in a cell that looked as wide as a road and with a vaulted ceiling, but too dark in there to tell how far it extended.
Tyler said to the lieutenant, "Wait. Can't we stay together?"
"I was told to separate you. I suppose so you won't be able to make up a story."
Tyler said, "You don't care, do you?"
"Listen," Molina said, "I could have been assigned to Africa. I can tell you the Morro is a hotel, the Inglaterra, compared to prison settlements over there. That Guardia officer who brought you, Lionel Tavalera? He wants to see you go to Ceuta, Melilla, one of those places where they send anarchists and assassins of the lowest class, men sentenced to hard labor or reclusion for life. Prisoners work in chains on a public road, beaten unmercifully by cabos, the prisoners they use as guards. Or they weld your fetters on permanently and drop you into a dungeon with a small hole in the ceiling, so that light comes to you only at midday. The food is a scrap of meat, usually infested with maggots, and some kind of pulse. The vermin eat you alive and you don't come out until they finish and you're dead." Lieutenant Molina looked at Charlie Burke then and said, "Please go in there. Here, not doing what you're told will be met with blows and imprecations."
Tyler put his hand on Charlie Burke's shoulder and Charlie Burke shook his head saying, "I'm sorry I got you into this, partner, but I don't imagine we'll be here too long." He didn't sound at all sure of it and added, "Do you?"
"Once it's in the newspapers and everybody knows about it," Tyler said, "Neely's pretty sure it'll get some action from the consulate. They'll demand a hearing right away."
The worry was in Charlie Burke's eyes, watery and shining in the lamplight.
He said, "Once they get hold of the Vamoose…"
"We don't have to go into that, Charlie."
He said, "Well…"
And that was all as one of the guards shoved him into the cell and slammed the grating closed. Molina said to him through the grille, "If you can, find a hammock not occupied."
Tyler asked, "Who's he in there with?"
"Revolutionaries," Molina said. "From their point of view, patriots."
Moving along the corridor again, their shadows accompanying them on the wall, he said, "You get food twice a day, eleven o'clock and I believe five, stew made from some kind of meat and rancho bread. It can make you sick, give you the shits, so don't eat it if you have money. Pay one of the guards to bring you food from the cantina. It's bad, but not as bad as the food they serve you. Let me see-you can buy coffee and fix your own, otherwise I don't think you get any." Tyler said, "You're not in charge here?" "I'm told what to do."
Tyler let it go. They had come to another cell and the guard with the key was pulling open the door in the steel grating.
Time to ask one more question.
"How soon will we get a hearing?"
Molina seemed to think about what he was going to say. Then: "If you're transferred to La Cabafia-you know the other prison? It's right here, so close it appears to be part of the Morro. Prisoners are usually transferred there before they go to a hearing. But then more executions take place in La Cabafia that here. They have a procession, the priest accompanying the condemned man, who usually acts quite brave while he must be frightened to death. He'll cry out, "Viva Cuba Libret." in the moment before the firing squad shoots him. The officer then uses his pistol to give the victim the tiro de gracia, a bullet in the brain. The executions take place in the foso over there, the moat; it's always dry. You see papaya trees growing there, the soil rich with the blood of martyrs to the cause."
It sounded to Tyler like something Neely Tucker had said in the hotel bar. Molina, though, expressed the idea in a melancholy tone of voice that he changed immediately, adding, "That is, if you think of those people as martyrs."
Tyler said, "And if we're kept here?"
"In the Morro? The best I can tell you," Molina said, "to give you hope…"
Tyler waited.
"Is to say, Who knows?"
NINE
Virgilheard the new one put in here during the night, heard him bumping into hammocks and heard words in Spanish among the chorus of snores-louder snores than you heard in the crew's quarters aboard the Maine, these men here being much older than fleet marines-but Virgil made no effort to have a look at the new one. What for? Virgil was new himself, put in here the night before and spent the next day discussing the possibility of America declaring war on Spain with his sixteen cellmates; most of them skinny old guys losing their teeth who'd been locked up here the past two years, some of them locked up other places before coming here, stuck in cells the whole time, not let outside even once. They were excited to have Virgil, a United States marine; he was like a messenger from heaven, as good as the Angel Gabriel come to tell them Uncle Sam was on their side now, so there was nothing to worry about. They made coffee for Virgil and served him some pretty tasty black beans and rice; and they let him hang his hammock down by the outside grating that looked out on the prison yard. The cell, with its oval ceiling, was about fifteen feet wide by forty feet deep, the grating at one end being the door to the corridor, the grating at the other end serving as a barred window. Hammocks hung from hooks in the wall and extended to posts that ran down the center of the room. The floor was flagstone and a few of the geezers preferred it to trying to climb into a goddamn hammock every night. They'd bed down on the floor with straw mats and blankets.
It was Lieutenant Molina who saw to Virgil's need for something to wear, having arrived drugged from the hospital in his drawers. Molina gave him one of his own cotton shirts and blue uniform trousers with yellow stripes down the sides. They fit snug-dons as a rule being smaller than Americans-and were shiny in the seat, but fine with Virgil. This was after the lieutenant told Virgil about his Washington duty and that he'd visited various points of interest along the Eastern seaboard. It turned out both Virgil and Lieutenant Molina had attended the dedication of Grant's Tomb. Imagine that. Virgil didn't mind not having shoes, the flagstone in here cool on his feet. He asked the lieutenant just what he was in jail for. Molina said he didn't know but would try to find out.
As soor as Virgil woke up he saw the new man by the grating that looked out at the yard. Virgil thought at first glance he was U.S. Army, the dark coat and tan-colored pants, except there was no insignia on the coat. Right then the new man turned around and walked away and Virgil noticed the light blue neckerchief and heard that ching… ching and looked down to see the man was wearing high-heeled boots and spurs with big wheels that made that chinging sound. It looked like the new man was pacing. When he came back this way Virgil said from the hammock:
"Mister, are you a cowpuncher by any chance?"
"Yes, I am," Tyler said, locating Virgil in the hammock. "Ben Tyler, from around Sweetmary, Arizona."
Now Virgil rolled out of the hammock and hit the floor in a pair of drawers, to Tyler a young guy with a full head of hair on top but none around the ears, a haircut that would last him a good while.
"I could tell," Virgil said. "You have that look of a cowpuncher."
"I had a panama hat might've thrown you off," Tyler said, "but a guard swiped it right off my head, grabbed it as he shoved me in here."
"Well, least you have your own clothes."