I was thinking: Julia DeGlorio-a feminized Spanish version of July of Glory. It was in July 1953 that Fidel Castro and his followers made their failed attack on the Moncada Garrison in Santiago de Cuba, thus beginning the revolution. A very important month in Cuban history and a very, very strange name for the daughter of Cuban exiles.
Into the phone I said, "Nineteen fifty-nine? No kidding. It's really been that long?"
"Fidel, you mean? Yeah…" Said it like: "Who else?" Then he said, "So Julia's in her twenties. Pretty little young thing. The way I met her, I was sitting at a table at Louie's Backyard-I'm talking about Key West now-and I was talking to a bunch of people. Not the freaks like I was hanging out with but Key West straights. Sitting there thinking, 'How the hell did I end up with these people?' as I was telling them about myself. What my life was about, some of the places I'd…" Tomlinson's voice faded, became garbled. Then I heard him say, "You remember Jimmy Gardenas?"
"Jimmy? Sure-"
"Top Key West guide; an old buddy of yours. Now he runs Saltwater Anglers, the fly shop? Jimmy's there and he tells me, 'Tomlinson, you're too drunk to deal with human beings. You're going to wear yourself out trying. Go back to Duval Street. Better yet, go back to the boat. The strain's beginning to show.' "
"That sounds like Jimmy."
"Um-huh; pretty good advice. I mean I had seriously over-served myself. Rum and some really first-rate Jamaican Blue."
Drugs. Tomlinson was doing drugs again, not even attempting to pretend he wasn't. I could hear his doctor telling me, "Sometimes they regress; go back to the way they were when they were kids. Or teenagers. Sometimes they have to revisit what they were to re-establish who they are."
Into the phone, I said, "Really drunk, yeah. I'm with you," as Dewey, in bra and panties, caught my attention and mouthed the question, Tomlinson?
I nodded, covered the receiver, said: "He's in trouble."
Watched her expression change, becoming serious, and she began to dress, listening to me talk-playtime over.
Tomlinson said, "So there's this woman at the table and she leads me out. It's Julia. Says she was getting tired of that group, too, but she loved what I'd been saying."
I asked, "What was it you were saying?"
"How the hell am I supposed to remember, man? I was screwed-up; doing some serious vision-seeking. I remember telling them a bit of my life history… you know, most of the high points. Dual doctorate, divinity and sociology. My mail says The Reverend Sighurdhr Tomlinson for a reason, right? Asked if anyone at the table needed any spiritual guidance. That much I remember. Then the nuts 'n bolts stuff like being struck by lightning and raised from the dead. That the doctors wanted the respirator off, so God had to take things into His own hands. Waited for the third day and-ZAP!-turned on the juice. Nothing outrageous- not like I was knocking over chairs and offending people. I pretty much gave them the straight scoop: that I am an alien being who is in spiritual contact with distant galaxies, and that I was sent to earth on a mission I have yet to understand."
"You told the girl that?"
"Julia and the others at the table, yeah. What? You want me to lie?"
"No… no, I certainly wouldn't want you to lie. You mention anything about cutting cane in Cuba?"
"Goddamn, Doc, who cares? I'm talking about my boat."
"Or your support for the revolution? There's a reason I'm curious-"
Tomlinson said, "Christ, arguing with you is like arguing with the multiplication table."
"I'm trying to figure out how you ended up in Cuba, that's all."
Heard a groan of exasperation. "Good grass and cheap rum, that's how. Times I've been in Key West, almost everything I ever did, the story always starts the same…"
The way Tomlinson got to Cuba was that Julia DeGlorio had moved aboard his boat and talked him into sailing for Cay Sal, a cluster of uninhabited islands about eighty miles east-southeast of Hawks Channel marker, and only about thirty miles off the northern shore of Cuba. She wanted to go to Cay Sal, Tomlinson said, because she had heard that no one else went there.
"Julia was sure right about that," he added.
Controlled by the Bahamian government, Cay Sal is a cluster of sandbanks with a lone shack built for the customs official who kept a watch on the islands and who, upon their arrival, refused to allow Tomlinson and his girl to land. "I asked him if it was because I was an American," Tomlinson told me, "and he said, 'No, mon, it 'cause you a damn hippie!' The man didn't even know me and he's passing judgment. Jeesh! And it wasn't like I was holding any drugs. All used up by then, I'm sorry to say."
So they had spent a week gunkholing around the islands-lots of drinking, lots of nude sunbathing-before setting sail back to Key West. "That's when the trouble started," Tomlinson said. "We left Cay Sal Bank about dusk. By then I knew Julia well enough to trust her to stand watch. Understand, we'd spent a couple weeks bumming around the Keys, then a couple more weeks on the boat before we headed for Cay Sal. The woman knew her way around No Mas and I felt comfortable leaving her at the wheel.
"So that evening I got us into deep water and set the autovane for 305 degrees-Key West, right? Then I went below to get some sleep because I was going to stand the twelve-to-two and the dog watch. Julia was going to handle it until midnight. Next thing I know, I wake up and my boat's dolphining in what feels like heavy sea and we're luffing. A norther's blown up and I go topside to find we're in some serious shit. Waves are crashing over a reef directly astern and there's a gunboat off our bow with people shouting at us in Spanish. It's pitch dark, near midnight, and I have the hangover from hell, but I'm still alert enough to realize that we have suffered a terrible navigational error. We're in fucking Cuba, man.
"The gunboat takes us in tow-gad! What a nightmare that was!-and they haul us into Havana Harbor where these Cuban bulls search my boat, steal some of my best equipment, then try to shake me down for a five-thousand-dollar towing fee. I don't have it. Hell, I'd just barely had time to get into my hidey-hole and sneak the two grand into my shorts. They search my boat again, then move us downtown to a hotel where they're charging me two hundred bucks a night for a room against the worth of my boat. That's why we're thinking about moving up the street to the Havana Libre. A little cheaper hotel-if they'll let us."
"Did you offer them a bribe?"
"Sure. Told them I had a couple hundred bucks they could have if they'd turn me loose, forget the whole thing. This Comandante guy-the crew chief; whatever he was- he tells me, yeah, it's a deal. Only he can't let me go until tomorrow. Like manana. Everything's manana down here. So I slip him the dough and that's the last we've seen of the comandante.
I had to keep reminding myself that the authorities might be listening. "Geeze," I said, "like some kind of deal out of the movies. So they question you or anything? Or did they believe your story right off?"
"Took me in a room and slapped me in the face a couple times-"
I winced, hearing that. Tomlinson's brain had been banged around too much already.
"-asked me if I knew anything about Alpha Sixty-Six or maybe Brothers to the Rescue. Like I was some kind of Cuban-American spook come back to help overthrow Fidel. You know, one of those right-wing Miami groups? I told them, talk to Fidel. Maybe he'd remember meeting me and my comrades back in seventy-one. Came down here in a gesture of solidarity; shook the man's hand and had our pictures taken. Huey Newton, man! He was there. Now they're treating me like some kind of bourgeois stiff. I say, 'Ask Fidel,' and it really gets a big laugh. I'm telling you, Doc-the old days, they're gone forever!"