Leaving Glorytown by Eduardo F. Calcines

Author:Eduardo F. Calcines
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374343941
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

That spring, Tío William was released from prison and we thought it was a miracle that the government released him when they were supposed to. It had been a long and trying ordeal for him. He had been a massive man; now we could count his bones through his skin and he kept more to himself, smiling rarely and never laughing.

I had a hard time understanding this change in him. On one of his visits home Papa explained: “The Communists were very cruel to your uncle. He had spoken out to the guards when someone’s rights were being trampled, and spoke for all prisoners when they had a demand. This earned him the respect of the other prisoners—and the constant torment of the guards. They barely fed him and sometimes they kept him for weeks in a cell that was so tiny he could neither lie down nor stand up. There were rats and bugs. He could feel them crawling over him at night. Whenever he fell asleep, the guards would pour cold water over him to wake him up.”

“But why would they do that?” I asked.

“Torture,” Papa replied. “They were going to break his spirit.”

“What else did they do to him?”

“You are too young to hear such things, niño.”

Years later, I learned the worst of what had happened to Tío. One day, the guards took him and several other men out to a field and made them dig a large pit. This, they were told, would be their grave.

When the men had finished digging, the guards lined them up in front of the hole and told them they were about to die. Then they raised their weapons and fired blanks.

The guards thought it was a big joke. It wasn’t funny to the prisoners. One of them was so traumatized that he went mad and had to be committed to a mental institution.

Tío regained some of his strength and personality. But the trials he underwent in prison, coupled with the loss of his daughter, altered him forever. Instead of the great, happy bear of a man everyone knew and loved, he became a quiet, brooding presence in the background. But he wasn’t completely broken. We could still count on him for a smile or a little joke when the situation called for it, and the entrepreneurial spirit dies hard, even under such repressive regimes. Tío bought a new truck with the small amount of money we’d saved for him in his absence, before his business was closed. He began to operate a cartage service, hauling trash and goods for people—sometimes even for the government. He told my father that this was his way of showing them who was better. He had decided to stay in Cuba and was determined to keep working until they stood him up against a wall and shot him, or until he dropped dead, whichever came first.

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