alainlatour.com

The fol­low­ing is a frag­ment of my book “The Book Reader” ((Toronto, Life Rattle Press, 2009, 78pp, ISSN: 1713–8981, ISBN 978−1−897161−65−4).

“The Book Reader” is com­posed of  sto­ries I wrote while at U of T’s Professional Writing pro­gram.  Most take place in Cuba, like the sam­ple below. Others take place in Spain and a few are set in Toronto.

I am con­sid­er­ing mak­ing an ebook ver­sion of “The Book Reader.”

The red dirt road led to the Cuban army farm through
planted fields that stretched far out into the hori­zon. I
had walked this road in the moon­light and in the day­light.
Once or twice I had even walked it while it rained a heavy rain
that made it almost impos­si­ble to look ahead. I knew that
road very well, and I also knew the two lit­tle houses that
stood on the side of the road. The first house was safe,
and the sec­ond one wasn’t, and as I strode toward the farm
shortly after dawn in the sum­mer of 1999 I glanced at the
sec­ond house, the unsafe one, hop­ing to catch another glimpse
of the old for­eigner in a wheelchair.

“I think I saw a yuma today at Alicia’s place,” I told Ma–
jor Veloso the day when I first spot­ted the old for­eigner.
I had seen him from a dis­tance, a lonely fig­ure in a mo–
tor­ized chair tak­ing in the fresh air on the porch of the
sec­ond house. I could tell he was a for­eigner because his
skin shone red from sun­burn and because he wore a wide–
brimmed straw hat and cargo shorts with knee length
white socks under black leather shoes. No Cuban I knew
would be caught dead wear­ing such an out­fit. The old man
on the motor­ized chair waved at me, but I pre­tended not
to have seen him.

Major Veloso and I were deep in the for­est, half a ki–
lome­tre away from the farm, chop­ping trees to fix a fence
that the cows had torn down at sun-up. A burly black man
in his early for­ties, he had been demoted and ban­ished to
the farm after a sol­dier elec­tro­cuted to death while work–
ing under his com­mand. I didn’t learn this through gos–
sip. He told me him­self, like he told all five sol­diers in the
farm, low­er­ing his head so I couldn’t see the pain in his
eyes. We all loved Major Veloso. He addressed us with the
respect­ful usted and he was fair and will­ing to get in trou–
ble with his supe­ri­ors over his sol­diers, whom he regarded
as his children.

Major Veloso was the strongest man I had ever met,
with mas­sive arms hang­ing from broad shoul­ders and
end­ing in thick pli­ers for fin­gers. But he had never lifted
weights in a gym. His daily work­out rou­tine con­sisted of
pushups and squats. Then he’d stand in front of a punch–
ing bag that he may have built him­self, and start hit­ting it
with blows so pow­er­ful that it swung back and forth and
side­ways like it was full of air instead of sawdust.

Sometimes I wished the farm’s boss could replace the
punch­ing bag. He was a semi-retired coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence
lieu­tenant colonel, a wretch by voca­tion and pro­fes­sion, a
200-pound crab of a man who’d instructed us to shoot to
kill if any­one attempted to steal his cat­tle. I sus­pect the
Major, too, would’ve liked the lieu­tenant colonel to stand
in front of his punches.

The morn­ing when I asked Major Veloso about the
for­eigner he had hacked, in only one hour, six or seven
thin trees to my two shrubs. Now he finally decided to
take a break. He dropped his old machete and gulped
down water from his canteen.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, rolling his round, gen­tle eyes.
“That yuma lives there—for a few months a year any­way.
He is friends with Alicia,” he added with a con­spir­a­to­r­ial
wink as he handed me the canteen.

“With Alicia?” I repeated, and using my fatigue shirt
sleeve to wipe the sweat that streamed down my fore­head,
I accepted the canteen.

“Well, she may be ugly and fat,” said Major Veloso,
“but he’s ugly and fat and old, too, not to men­tion he’s in
a wheel­chair, which means she really is work­ing for that
money if you ask me.”

I grunted my agreement.

“On the other hand,” I said, “with his dol­lars, he
could’ve got­ten him­self a much younger, bet­ter look­ing
chick.”

Major Veloso shrugged.

“You know what, Latour, I don’t really know, and I
don’t really care. Let’s get back to work.” And with that
he hauled up the young pine tree that lay at his feet,
dropped it on top of a mas­sive shoul­der, and strolled off as
I watched in disbelief.