Free Tortuga by Rudolfo Anaya

words. I knew already he was one of Danny’s stoogies.
    â€œMeans Tortuga’s a vegetable too!” Tuerto, Danny’s other crony piped up, and he looked at me with his bulging fish eyes. The three of them laughed.
    â€œShut up!” Mike snapped. “We’ll get him out of there. He doesn’t belong there … Salomón knows that.”
    â€œI don’t believe what Salomón says,” Danny countered.
    â€œWell you better start believing you little bastard!” Ronco said harshly. “Salomón’s the only one who knows what’s going on here … might do your hand some good if you started listening to him.”
    â€œWhat does he say?” I asked.
    â€œHe tells stories,” Mike shrugged.
    â€œYeah, he’s really smart,” one of the smaller kids I couldn’t recognize said.
    â€œHe reads books … that’s all he does, all day long, in the night … I bet he’s read a million books!”
    â€œHe’s been here longer than anyone else.”
    â€œHe’s a good storyteller—”
    â€œAh, he’s a carrot!” Danny persisted. “He’s king of the vegetables, that’s all. And they’re all stuck in their machines just like a bunch of vegetables stuck in the ground! They can’t shit, they can’t eat, they can’t do anything by themselves!”
    â€œYaugh—yeah,” Mudo gurgled then wiped the saliva from his mouth.
    â€œIt’s not that bad,” Ronco tried to reassure me, “you just have to get used to it. But if the Nurse tries to take you to any other ward then scream bloody murder. Don’t let her.” He glanced nervously at Mike.
    â€œNah, she won’t do that,” Mike said, “we’ll fight her. We’re going to go to Steel as soon as he has time … he’s been in surgery all day.”
    â€œYeah, we can report her to the Committee,” one of the kids volunteered.
    â€œDamn right we can!”
    â€œThey put me in that ward once, to punish me, cause I’d broken into the crafts room and stolen glue for the kids who like to sniff it, an’ I couldn’t sleep. There must be a hundred iron lungs in there, cause the bad polio cases can’t breathe at night without the lungs, and at night they make a noise like a monster breathing in the dark … whoooosh, wouuuuu-shh, whooooosh … I’d rather they punish me with castor oil than to go in there!”
    â€œWho else goes in there?” I asked. Mike shook his head. “It’s not exactly a place to visit,” he said.
    I wanted to ask them more about Salomón but it was late in the afternoon and the supper call sounded in the hallway, calling everybody that could get there to the dining room. Those of us that were bed-ridden remained in our rooms, feeling the day end as the sad twilight filled the rooms. It was a time to think of home, of family and of warm times eating together … times which seemed so distant now that the memory was inseparable from a dream. I lay quietly, listening to the food trays coming down the hall, feeling the echoes in the near-empty ward, and looking at the mountain through the window. Then, beneath all the sounds, woven into them so you had to hold your breath to separate the cries, I heard the soft whimpering of babies. It was a sound no one talked about, and it seemed to come from where I guessed lay Salomón’s ward.

5
    The next morning the Nurse appeared with the day orderly, a grinning giant called Samson.
    â€œReady?” she asked. She seemed cheerful. Samson smiled down at me, his bald head shining with light. Together they rolled my bed out of the room and pushed it down the empty hall. The bed squeaked and reverberated as we went deeper into the hospital. I tried to keep track of the direction, but we made too many turns into the dimly lighted maze.
    Finally we arrived at a large wooden door. It was old