Free King of Cuba by Cristina Garcia Page A

He lowered his window a few inches and breathed in the stench of the swamp. It reminded him of the San Isidro barrio back in the capital, home to brothels and knife fights and herds of illegal goats. A great egret stared at him from atop a clump of mangroves before taking off in slow motion, its magnificent wings like an archangel’s.
    Goyo felt his hands swelling, his feet aching. A mosquito bit him on the wrist before he could kill it. He rolled up his window and pushed the air conditioner to full blast. If he couldn’t stand the heat now, how could he survive the swamp? Coño, he’d forgotten his bug repellent and a hat against the sun. Pa’ carajo! José Martí hadn’t ridden into battle lathered in sunscreen. What were these incommodities compared to the task ahead? When the rain let up, Goyo decided to follow the main road to Cypress Hammock and let his instincts take over from there. He peered into his rearview mirror and spotted a blue Toyota with New Mexico plates. He dialed his daughter’s number and watched as the driver of the Toyota put a phone to her ear.
    “Por Dios, Alina, what the hell are you doing here?”
    “I could ask you the same thing.”
    “This is none of your business. Go home!”
    “You left your computer on with that creepy message and—”
    “I beg of you, hija, turn around and let me be!”
    “You’re going off the deep end.”
    “Enough!” Goyo hung up and pressed his foot to the accelerator. He would lose his busybody daughter if it was the last thing he did. There was nobody in front of him, and he pushed his Cadillac to sixty, seventy, eighty miles per hour. His car swerved on the slick road, but he held it steady. His cell phone rang and rang. Goyo had the impulse to shoot out Alina’s tires, but he didn’t wantto injure her. If his daughter showed up at the encampment of coverts, there was no way they’d accept him. Goddamnit, she was gaining on him.
    By the time Goyo reached the visitors’ center, he was worn out from the strain of the chase. Alina pulled in beside him, got out of her car, and motioned for him to open his door. He refused. Before them a normal-looking family sat around a picnic table merrily cutting up a watermelon. Goyo disregarded his daughter’s shouts and her kicks to his Cadillac, which finally caught the attention of a park ranger. Goyo drew circles near his ear in the universal gesture of “crazy.” The ranger—name tag Cabrera, a scar from ear to jaw—brandished handcuffs, and a scuffle broke out. Goyo backed away and sped westward. By the time the cops subdued Alina, he would be deep in the swamp with his compatriots.
    At a moldy outpost of a boathouse, Goyo commandeered a canoe under an alias and set off to find the band of Freedom Fighters. No longer would he evade his fate. It was close to noon, and the heat blazed around him like a web of flame. This must’ve been what his brother had endured at the Bay of Pigs. Poor Marcos, who’d broken out in summertime heat rashes, who’d sat in front of electric fans and bowls of ice to cool off, who’d rarely stepped outside their Vedado mansion with its frosted-glass doors and floor-to-ceiling shutters painted, at their mother’s behest, with the lives of the saints.
    The paddle split and splintered Goyo’s palms, grew slippery with sweat. His skull throbbed from the advancing sunburn. Yet he was spellbound by the vegetation, the murky waters, the trills and whirs he couldn’t identify except for the ospreys, which were identical to the ones in Cuba. Goyo had heard the Everglades called a river of grass, and he pictured its ancient flow beneath his canoe. It felt tideless, eternal. Its scum rotted in the sun; its reeking ferment enveloped him. He paddled toward wherever he found an openingin the mangroves. A bone wedged in some root appeared to be a femur, judging by its size and shape, and this unnerved him. He needed to rest for a few minutes, restore his energy. Goyo set down his