CUBAN
QUEEN - - - - PART 1
Cuban Queen
by
Blackie Noir
Copyright© 2003
*
Esmeralda was a queen.
Of course, she hadn’t always been. Certainly not on the island. Not in the cane
fields. Not when, at the tender age of fourteen, she stood sweating, shoulder
to shoulder, with her brothers, swinging her machete, hacking at the ever
resistant stalks.
Tireless and
strong, the muscles of her arms already as hard and ropey as those of the men
she labored with, Esmeralda probably would have given up the best years of her
life battling the steel-like stalks of sugar-cane. One errant blow from a
co-workers machete changed her destiny and sent her on a perilous journey,
across 90 miles of treacherous ocean, to Miami
When Marco
Napoles saw what remained of his daughters’ hand, thanks to God her thumb
hadn’t been lost, he was devastated. She had been the perfect jewel of his
life, now; her pinkie and ring fingers lay in the mud and the blood, food for
insects. Well, she still had three functioning fingers on her right hand, and
an undamaged left hand. Marco meant for them to stay that way.
In those days,
before the coming of Castro, leaving the island had been easy, if you had the
money. Marco had no money, but he had a cousin, and this cousin had a boat.
Three months after the maiming of her hand, Esmeralda had waded in through battering
surf to land, sprawling, on American soil. After vomiting in the sand, she
rose, pulled her hair back, and setting her gaze on some tall buildings, began
walking inland.
#
Esmeralda’s lips
curled around her cigarro in a grin, no, she hadn’t been born to her throne.
Bringing the flaming match to the tip of her small cigar, she briefly eyed her
hand. True, the cane had taken her fingers, but in return it had given her
tenacity, an iron will, and an ambition that would prevent her from ever
returning to the fields.
The miles, there
had been thousands, between Florida Arizona
After blowing
out her match, Esmeralda was barely visible in the dim red glow of the
cantina’s lights, lights that matched the ones burning over the doors of the Spartan
cribs, lining a long, narrow, hall, where her girls made their money. Half of
what they made belonged to Esmeralda, tribute to the Queen.
How many years
had she sat at this very table, at the head of the hall, sipping from her mug
of rum, collecting from the tricks? At this table she had dispensed her
sometimes harsh, sometimes tempered, but always fair justice. Disputes? The
Queen handled them all, between trick and girl, girl and girl, it mattered not,
her word was law. Her decisions final.
Smoking,
slouched low in her chair, wide brim of her straw Panama
Striding, on
long, still powerful legs, she reaches the bar and places her mug on its top.
Her bartender, Nando, looks at her with his gentle doe-eyes, their beauty
marred by thick ridges of scar tissue in his heavy brows, and smiles. “Que, Bonita?”
Tapping her mug,
she says, “Please, no stupid
questions, not today.”
Still smiling,
Nando fills the mug with Myers,
“Forgive me, but since I became stupid I can ask no other kind.”
Esmeralda knows
the jest is at least half true. Once one of the finest welterweights to ever
lace on a glove, Nando Chacon had had the misfortune of fighting both Henry
Armstrong and Fritzie Zivic in the same year. Armstrong had broken Nando into pieces;
Zivic had stomped on those pieces.
Nando’s thought
process had remained intact; it had just slowed down a step. Now, Esmeralda
needs him focused. Waving her envelope in front of him, she says, “Nando! Take this, and listen to me. I need
you to pay very close attention to my words.”
“Si Bonita.”
“Put this
envelope in the safe. Do not open it for six hours, then, open it in your room.
Mr. Douglas has a copy, he can help you if need be. Do not open the cantina
today. I have sent the girls to Prescott
Nando frowns,
and says, “What is this? What are you
doing Bonita?”
“I thought we
said no stupid questions.”
“Yes. Yes we
did, but these are not stupid questions. Your behavior is strange. These are
serious questions, questions that call for answers.”
“Have you
forgotten our pact?”
“Our pact? A
pact made twenty years ago? Is such a pact still valid? I think not.”
“Am I still
valid Nando?”
“Now who asks
stupid questions?”
“Our pact
remains as valid as I do.”
Back at her
table, Esmeralda sips at her rum and, slipping her fingers into the cleft
between her breasts, fondles a small silver vile hanging from a silver chain.
Watching Nando, she remembers. Long ago years, the good years.
#
She had been
young, and working in the cribs of the house she now owned. Nando had been a
mere boy. A boy who could fight. He had fought his way up from the slums of Mexicali Los Angeles
Nando had swept
into Jerome like the hot dessert wind. When he blew back out of town, Esmeralda
occupied the passenger seat of his Duesenburg roadster, and the center of his
heart. He didn’t care that she was a negrita and a puta as well, he was ‘Kid
Cuchillo’ and she was his mujer, that was all.
Things went well
for them. Nando fought often, and always won. The money poured in, and they
went through it quickly, for the bright lights of the big cities had mesmerized
the unsophisticated young couple. Soon, Nando had run out of viable, big money,
opponents. But, by doing so he had earned a title shot. Armstrong loomed.
Esmeralda was as
shocked, as was Nando; by the way Armstrong was able to dominate the fight. The
fact that Nando was able to go the distance only made his degree of punishment
that much higher. Nando bled, Esmeralda wept.
Prior to the
Armstrong fight Esmeralda knew nothing of boxing, and she couldn’t comprehend
how another man could beat her mighty warrior so soundly. When Nando announced
that he had no plans to retire, she made it her business to find out all she
could about her man’s brutal occupation.
Armed with her
new knowledge, she protested vehemently when Nando’s East Coast promoter and
managers, realizing that the broken fighter probably had only one high paying
fight left in him, matched him with the brutal Fritzie Zivic.
She knew her man
had already been damaged by Armstrong, and Zivic was a fighter who took pleasure
in the destruction of his opponents. Although she argued strongly against the
fight, she was just the “kid’s nigger whore from Arizona
When, after the
Zivic fight, Nando was discharged from the hospital even he acknowledged that
his career was over. He promised Esmeralda as soon as he collected the money he
was due they would head back West. When Nando returned from his meeting with
his managers, he had less than 500 dollars and two train tickets. Esmeralda
went to confront his ex-handlers.
After enduring
vulgar insults, and crude jokes made at hers and Nando’s expense, Esmeralda was
told to see the ‘Sicilian’ if she had a problem. Esmeralda didn’t know the
extent of the Sciliano’s power, but she knew he controlled the men who had
mis-managed Nando’s career, and his money.
Instead of
sympathy from the gangster, Esmeralda was told that if she and Nando didn’t
leave the city, he would be killed outright, and she would be delivered to one
of the many cargo vessels that visited the harbor. Once at sea, Esmeralda would
be used in ways even her days as a boom-town whore hadn’t prepared her for, and
then, after the crew had tired of her, dumped overboard.
#
Still fingering
the silver vial, Esmeralda sneers as she remembers her first visit to the Siciliano.
Smoking, drinking more rum, she begins to smile when she thinks of her final
visit to the man. Yes, she had ignored his threat and returned a day later, but
she had made other visits beforehand. First, a visit to a bruja. The witch told
Esmeralda that, no, she couldn’t help her. Such things, dark things, were
beyond her powers. Esmeralda must seek out an obeah-man.
#
CUBAN QUEEN is presented in three parts. Part Two will be up on Friday Feb 1st.
