La Raza

The bell on the door twinkled, signifying another late-night weekend customer. The boy always felt a bit uneasy working this late alone at his father’s shop, but he remembered his father’s words, “I’m proud of the man you’re becoming. I couldn’t run the shop without you.” It was the closest thing to “I love you” he had ever received from him. As the customer came into his field of vision, behind the counter the boy took stock. The man was skinny, and he was sweating. He moved in a skittish manner like some sort of feral animal. Regardless of his father’s words, it was scary to work at the shop alone at eleven years old.

Aside from his strange demeanor, he looked like any average man on the street in Cuba during 1951. To foreign visitors, Havana was a playground, but for the citizens who remained for longer than a weekend-long experiment in hedonism, life was far from opulent. The clubs, the casinos, and the racetracks powered the economy, each of these establishments fueled by dirty money from the mafia. The constant state of chaos shrouded everyday local life in a film of uncertainty.

The customer seemed under the influence of something like perhaps he was stopping in on his way to the casinos. He grabbed a beverage out of the icebox and made his way to the counter. Meekly, the boy told him his total. The man began to scrounge around in his deep pockets for what felt like an eternity looking for his pesos. To ease the search, he began emptying the contents of his pockets onto the counter. Finally, he found what he was looking for, paid his tab, and hurried out of the store.

The bell waned back and forth as the boy began to close the register when he noticed the man had left some of his belongings behind. On the counter laid a box of matches and a small, leather, black notebook. Quickly the boy jolted around the counter with the belongings, his small frame hanging half inside the storefront and half out, calling out after the man. He was already gone.

Heading back inside and awaiting the end of his shift, he sat behind the counter, eyeing the notebook. “He might come back for it.” he thought, although the store closed in ten minutes. He settled on the plan of leaving the book at the store so that in case the man returned, it would be there when he was working his next shift over the weekend or perhaps when his father, or on some rare occasion, his older brother, was there during the week.

The clock ticked along. As he sat for those final ten minutes, curiosity overwhelmed him. He opened the book to discover only one page had been written on. It read:

ORIENTAL PARK RACETRACK. MARIANO, HAVANA, CUBA

RACE 3

SINGLE HORSE WIN

HORSE 4: ADIOS

10-02-1951, 48,000 PESOS WIN

He recognized the name of the Racetrack. A twinge of excitement traveled through his stomach as he headed home, excited to impress his older brother with what he had found.

. . .

“Retell the story one more time.” the brother asked as he paced across their tiny shared room. His frame was small for nineteen years old, just as the boy was small for eleven. Yet he seemed large to the boy who sat on an un-elevated mattress, his chin tilted upward to hold his brother in a wide-eyed gaze. He recounted the story, making sure not to miss any details. He was pleased with how engaged his brother seemed to be with him.

“We have to place a bet.” the brother declared.

The boy sunk. “I don’t think that’s a good idea...What if that man was some kind of bad person? Dad always says that bad people hang around the tourist districts. And what if it’s fake. I just thought it was cool, I just wanted to show y-”

The brother cut him off. “I know this stuff. I know that horse, it never wins. This is a tip. It’s rigged. Kid, when have I led you astray? ” the brother asked, flashing his toothy grin.

A twisting began in the boy's stomach as he rubbed his scalded shoulder from when his brother came home drunk, decided to make some tea, and ended up spilling boiling hot water onto him. His brother’s “apology” the following day being, “I don’t remember.” He remembered when he screamed at him, eyes bulging, spittle flying, for twenty-minutes after “embarrassing him” at the market. Or the explosion that occurred when he had pointed out how he had promised (and failed) to play baseball with him, calling him ungrateful for the time that they do spend together. Reading his sullen face, the brother continued.

“If this is something,” he said, raising the notebook, “Then we could live a better life- you, me, and dad. Imagine what we could do with all that money. And when we get the money, we can go far away, so far that no bad guys could even think of where we are.” the brother explained.

“How would you get money to even place any kind of bet?” the boy questioned. “You just told dad you had no pesos to help with food last week.” His brother’s words weren’t matching reality, a recurring theme for the long-winded excuses he often gave.

The brother squatted down so that he and the boy were at eye level. He explained, “I’ve been saving up to get us all out of here...I was going to surprise you. This means that out of here could be way sooner than I thought. Dad won't have to work so much, and we can all spend more time together” He continued, “I know that things have been hard, and I haven’t always been the best brother, but I promise you... this could change everything.”

The boy’s anxiety gently trickled away as he reminded himself of the times that his brother had been there for him. When his brother somehow managed to get him a pack of baseball cards he was dying to have, even though there was no way that they could afford them. The time he beat his bully so badly, the bully was absent from school for a week. The time he let him come with him down to the beach with all his friends, letting him drink a beer and laugh along with everyone else. “You are such a good big brother. My sister would never!” a pretty girl in attendance uttered through a smile.

“Okay,” the boy decided. “I’ll go tell dad!”

The boy began to rise from the mattress, heading for the living room couch where his father slept, exhausted.

“Wait.” the brother said abruptly. “If the tip is real and we win, imagine if we surprised dad with the money. It’ll be even better. Like how I was gonna surprise you. Then he won't have to worry. You don’t want him to worry, right?”

The boy nodded along. Of course, he didn’t want his father to worry. He was still quite worried himself. It would be selfish to make his father feel the same way. The brother concocted their plan. Tomorrow, they would both go to the race track. The boy would wait nearby, not go inside, just in case there was any danger.

“But I want to see the race!” the boy protested.

“It’s too risky. I would never forgive myself if anything ever happened to you.” the brother said, pulling him in for a hug.

The brother would take care of all the groundwork- going inside, placing the bet, safely collecting the money. They would meet up at a rendezvous point, from there they would hurry home, update their father, and leave everything behind, off to start their new life.

. . .

“Remember the plan kid. WAIT HERE. I love you.” the brother said. He kissed the boy’s forehead and left him at a tree somewhat near the race track.

The initial excitement began to subside as he watched his brother’s figure melt into the stream of people headed inside. With the excitement gone, only fear remained. Though the races would be over in a matter of seconds, it would take time for them to begin. He waited.

He made a game of ripping up grass and drawing in the dirt. He waited some more. He wondered what his new life would be like, where his new life would be. He pictured himself, his brother, and his father, living in a palace somewhere with an entire waitstaff and so much to eat. The sound of a gun signifying that the first race had begun snapped him out of his daydreams. There was another lull and then the second gun. Another lull, and then the third. This was it- this was their race.

He listened to the distant cheers of the onlookers and imagined what was transpiring. As time dragged along he began to worry. Maybe the tip wasn’t even real, he thought to himself. His brother was probably inside, devastated at the loss. Maybe it was real and something horrible had happened to his brother. Or maybe it was real and he was stealthily collecting his earnings, and he would be out any minute. He decided to believe in the happiest version of reality and continued to wait.

The minutes he waited turned into hours. The tightness in the boy's chest was overwhelming. He was certain something had gone wrong, and he didn’t know what to do. His brother's words flashed into his head, “WAIT HERE”. He wanted so badly to listen to his brother, to trust in their plan. A gnawing in his gut told him to do otherwise.

He ran inside the huge race track and headed directly for the ticketing counter. From afar, he scanned the board for any information that could help him, when it finally caught his eye. On the board, it showed that their horse had won. The tip was real. He pushed his way through a sea of adults until he ended up at the front of the counter.

“Has anyone come to claim their earnings for a bet on race 3? On Adios?” The boy said panicked.

“Young boy, who is responsible for you? This is adult business. Out of the way” The ticketer curtly replied.

“Please” the boy pleaded, through tears. “I am lost and I can’t find my family.” he halfway lied.

Trying to get the boy out of the way, the ticketer conceded, “Yes, some lucky son of a bitch named Ivan Valdez collected big earnings for Race 3 hours ago. Now out of the way!”

. . .

The boy stumbled home, his vision blurred by a steady flow of hot tears. The brother never planned to take the boy with him. Or his father. The new life the brother described was one in which he would live out alone.

What the boy couldn’t understand was why he placed the bet under Ivan Valdez, his father’s name. When he turned the corner nearing where his small, isolated bungalow of a home once stood, it became clear. What remained was a charred frame. The house had been burned completely to the ground. His father had been inside. Putting the pieces together of whose name the bet was under and the last known whereabouts of the little black book, someone had come for him.

The brother had a feeling that the tip had dangerous ties given the strong mafia presence in Havana. He knew from the very beginning there would be serious consequences for getting involved in any way. He knew he was never going to stay around long enough to face any. The brother was halfway across the country by now. The boy stood in front of the aftermath, paralyzed with a feeling he could not quite yet name. He was completely alone.