Free Scarface by Paul Monette Page B

give it up give it up.”
    He danced till the punks had gathered around him. Where a moment before they had all seemed blurred and bored and slightly exhausted, now they clapped and laughed as if they’d really heard their own music for the first time. But as soon as he had them, Tony stopped. Waving vaguely, he sauntered up the steps of the barrack, almost like it was past his bedtime. Some things, it appeared, were only things of the minute. He had graver matters to ponder now. It was as if he didn’t even see what effect he’d had on the group around the radio.
    Manolo, hurrying to catch up with him, realized a man like Tony had no limits. All he needed was a ticket out of here, and he’d take possession of the world as if it was his birthright. Manolo’s head grew crowded with loot and power and dazzling women. He seemed to understand that Tony was going to deal him in, no matter where it led, perhaps because Manolo knew what a right-hand man was for.
    That was who got the tickets.
    Later on that night, when most of the bandidos of Fort Chaffee were either passed out cold or huddled in the alleys beside the barracks, losing their shirts at craps, Tony appeared once more in the doorway to Barrack 9. He walked alone through the near-deserted streets of the army base, till he came again to the row of telephones beside the mess. The frantic calling was over for tonight. It was too late to be dialing New York and Miami, waking people up with a lot of wrong numbers.
    Tony pulled a bunch of quarters from his pants pocket and laid them on the metal shelf under the phone. Then he drew from his shirt pocket what looked like a tattered card. On one side a telephone number was written in pencil. Tony dropped in a coin and dialed a Florida number. As he waited for the connection to go through, he flipped over the card—which turned out to be a snapshot, frayed at the edges and flaking. It was his sister Gina, long long ago, standing in front of the shack in the tarpaper alleys of Havana. She was grinning and pointing at her feet, showing off a pair of new shoes.
    The phone began to ring far away, and for a moment Tony’s face was full of repose. For once he looked young, without the impulse to dart a nervous glance over his shoulder. The phone was answered on the fourth ring. A sleepy woman’s voice said: “Yes? . . . Hello? . . . Who is it?”
    Tony did not reply. He stared at the snapshot as if he was hypnotized. The woman called out to somebody else: “It’s nobody, Mama. Go back to sleep.” Then she hung up.
    Tony smiled. He replaced the receiver carefully. Then he slipped the snapshot back in his shirt, next to his heart, and stepped out of the phone booth. He strolled back through the empty streets to his barrack, hands in his pocket, kicking a stone. A rapt expression was on his face. He looked like he’d just finished talking to his girl. No, it was more than that. He looked like he’d just made love.
    They couldn’t escape, that was for sure. Oh, they could get over the wall all right, but then they’d be driven underground. Before they knew it, they’d end up in some slum alley without a chance in hell. The point was to get a green card, but it seemed to have to do with who you knew, and Tony and Manolo didn’t know anybody. Not Out There. Because his English was so good, Tony wrote long letters to various social service organizations asking for work, but apparently Cubans were sent to the bottom of the pile, because he never heard anything back. Meanwhile, the situation at Fort Chaffee deteriorated by the day. The penned-up refugees were brawling among themselves, close to riot. All it needed was a match.
    One hot afternoon, in the outdoor boxing ring behind the gym, Tony was putting away his fourth opponent in a row. His white satin trunks soaked with sweat, his face beet-red in the headgear, Tony shuffled and feinted, digging in and battering a young punk who was twenty pounds heavier than he was. Thirty