Free King of Cuba by Cristina Garcia

compañera of the Sierra Maestra, had passed away. Yes, this was his Holy Trinity of women: Ceci, Delia, and his accursed first wife, Miriam. Unless he counted his indomitable—even in death—mother, who sometimes visited him during thunderstorms to argue politics. The rain came down harder. Lightning illuminated the night sky. At last, he and his wife arrived at the airport and climbed into the private propeller plane that would take them back to Havana.

Angola
    What the hell are you looking at? That’s what I really want to say, but I need your money more. Lost both legs and my eyesight outside Luanda with only a month left of my tour. Then I came home—to find what? A hero’s welcome? A pension? My fiancée? Ha! One bad joke after another. I still have my dick, but what good is it? The Revolution used me, used thousands of us, then tossed us away. People say it’s the same everywhere, but I don’t believe them. In Cuba they want their veterans healthy and whole, devoted revolutionaries who’ll still sing the national anthem. Fuck that. This country ruined my life, and it keeps on ruining it. Oye, can you spare any change?
    —Abel Padilla, veteran

Miami
    TIRED OF DOING NOTHING ABOUT THE TYRANT ?
    Yes, Goyo was tired and impotent and infuriated. How many times had he glumly reviewed his life—the fruitless years, days, and hours that he’d wasted not fighting to reclaim his homeland? He clicked on the e-mail. There were no explanations, only a map with a cross tucked deep in the Everglades; a date and a time, which happened to be three hours from now. Most likely the message wasn’t meant for him, yet nothing had cut through Goyo’s layers of equivocation more cleanly. He packed his unused gym bag with a change of clothes, extra underwear, socks, and a stickof deodorant. Then he fetched his Chief’s Special .38 from the file cabinet and packed that, too.
    Twenty-five minutes later he was pulling out of his parking garage and heading to whatever awaited him in the swamp. He was no longer young, but his hands were still steady enough for him to be a good shot. They—whoever “they” were—couldn’t refuse to take him. His brother had died in the Bay of Pigs, his father had shot himself from grief, his first love had hanged herself over that tyrant. Goyo’s hatred was incontestable, lavish beyond measure.
    About a month after Papá died, he visited Goyo in the middle of the night. His father looked shrunken in his white linen suit, his cuffs frayed, his sallow face averted, mumbling under his Panama hat. “Where are you going, Papi?” Goyo cried out, but his father ignored him. Instead he checked and rechecked his pockets, growing increasingly despondent as he jangled loose keys and change. Goyo wondered if Papá was looking for his watch, the one with the thin gold chain. Of what use would it be to him in the afterlife? Then, without a word, he faded away.
    The traffic was light on the highway that divided the northern perimeter of the swamp. Mangroves stretched as far as the eye could see, twisted roots emerging from the brackish water like a form of insanity. A snake crossed the road, its slide of muscles sheathed in stippled yellows and greens. Goyo calmed himself with images of the tyrant lifelessly splayed on a zinc-coated autopsy table. What was his own life worth if he wasn’t willing to risk it for what he believed more fervently now than ever: that the despot must be killed and that he, Goyo Herrera, was the one to do it. Yes, he would become one with his fellow Cubans’ dreams, restore wholeness after so many fractured years, celebrate their liberation together in the great plaza of Havana.
    A sudden downpour forced Goyo to pull to the side of the road. He checked the e-mail’s map against his larger one of thearea. There were few roads and no specific address he could punch into his GPS. Goyo switched on the radio but got only evangelical stations extolling the virtues of the Holy Spirit.