El Cañaveral/The Sugarcane Field

Jorge Torrente

Las Villas province, Cuba
Sierra del Escambray
March 7, 1961
1 A.M. 

Motherfuckers,  Antonio De la Huerta thought. Motherfucking bandits. That’s what they are. Not rebels, like they choose to call themselves. Bandits. We were rebels fighting Batista, but these… these…  He was sick and tired of lying flat on his stomach. I can’t see shit. Lately, nothing goes my way. Nothing. Everything turns into a Herculean task. Yeah, Herculean, that’s good, Tony, really good… Yeah, tell Reynaldo all about it…

Thick clouds hung over the mountains, hugging the tall peaks and obscuring the moonlight. It was almost pitch black, punctured only by irregular flickers of eerie light from the silent electric storm overhead.

Eerie? Eerie is not the word, he kept on going, more like unearthly, hellish. If the Devil exists, he’s around, maybe snooping on me… who knows on whose side he’s on…  Devil, my brother, give me some more light, even if it is from your fire. He tried to smile but managed only a grimace. Still, his eyes had grown used to the dark. He had some grasp of the terrain in front of him.

A small house with a thatched roof stood not far from the first slopes of the nearby Sierra. A rectangular sugar cane plot, approximately 150 by 500 yards ran from the house almost to the end of the mountain’s dense forest. The sugar canes were tall and thick. The breeze played with the tops of the closely grown plants, creating gentle ripples that ran the breadth of the field. The daytime greens and yellows were muted by the surrounding gloom. Aside from the sugar cane, there was no vegetation of any kind—the ground around the house had been tilled.

There were people inside, he had no doubt about it. Antonio could see the glow of a kerosene lamp through the windows and sometimes he caught a glimpse of movement. Sometimes he thought he saw someone moving outside the house too, but he was never sure. It was maddening.

“¡Damn!” he couldn’t help it.

“Lieutenant?” Sergeant Morales whispered with a start. “Sir?” De la Huerta was lost in his thoughts and didn’t answer. The sergeant looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the house.

The smell of rain hit Antonio’s nostrils. Shit, that would be the last straw.

He had a company of soldiers deployed around the targeted area. There was a platoon at the base of the mountain, another beyond the cane field, the third on the opposite side of the house and one he kept with him on a small promontory from where he had the best view.

Four hours! Four fucking hours and nothing! Man, oh man… The radio silence he had ordered didn’t help his state of mind. “Call only if something happens,” he had told his men.

It seemed like a long time since he had buried his brother in Havana. Since then he had been going up and down these mountains, hoping to run into the bandidos that had killed Reynaldo. He had questioned numerous local families, threatened them, all to no avail. How many search and destroy missions had been launched? It was always the same thing: a company here, a platoon there, and not one culprit had been found. He had expected thousands of soldiers charging up the mountains to flush out and pulverize the enemies of the Revolution. Instead, the army’s retaliation had turned into a half-assed wild goose chase.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he had told himself. “We are playing cat and mouse with the sons of bitches that wiped out the San Luis garrison.” And in desperation he had ignored the chain of command and had complained directly to the recently promoted Comandante “Olo” Pantoja, who had been a bit vague.

But two weeks later he had received the call from Captain Puig.

“Lieutenant De la Huerta, we have intelligence that tonight a party of six to eight men will bring a wounded man down from the mountains to the Castillo’s house. He will be picked up tomorrow morning by a vehicle and taken to Trinidad’s hospital.”

“A wounded man?” Antonio’s heart skipped a beat.

“Yes, wounded three months ago. The wound has become severely infected and…”

“Three months ago? Is he one of the bandits that attacked my brother’s unit?”

“It seems so,” responded Captain Puig. “Comandante Pantoja wants you to handle the operation. Capture the injured man, everyone coming with him and all those in the house.”

“Do we know the time?”

“No.”

“How do we know this is not another wild goose chase?”

“I don’t think it is,” the captain responded with a hard edge in his voice. “This information is from the Department of State Security and you know how reliable they are. Variables can occur, of course, but this might be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Or should I tell Pantoja you’re not up to it? That you’re tired of all the running around?”

“Well, hold on now… I didn’t say that…”

“Good luck, Lieutenant.”

It was now well past 4A.M. and Antonio could see no movement around the house. None of his lookouts had reported anything. There was still light in the house, but no other sign of life. The people inside were probably sleeping. This operation seemed no different from the previous ones, a dead end, and if it started raining as the humidity in the air suggested, keeping tight control over the targeted area would become impossible.

De la Huerta was weary of lying on the ground. He wanted to roll on his back and watch the capricious movements of the dark clouds above. He didn’t.

Ah, Reynaldo, you were so excited about joining the army. For what? The darkness of the grave like the darkness of this night?

“One-one here, six men toward the house,” came softly over the walkie talkie.

Antonio stiffened. His eyes re-focused on the view before him. One-one was the code he had given the squad deployed amid the thick vegetation at the base of the mountain. He shifted to peer over in that direction. After several agonizing seconds, he saw a silent and fast-paced column of men approaching the house.

“One-one, Papa here. Nobody else?” Tony whispered back over the radio.

“Affirmative.”

“Everybody, keep your positions.”

The six rebels moved with confidence, evidently unaware of the trap. Two of them bore a stretcher that didn’t seem to slow them down. Noiseless, shrouded by darkness, they moved with the sure-footedness of men thoroughly acquainted with their surroundings.

“Follow me,” De la Huerta ordered his platoon. Trying to stay as low as possible, he advanced quickly towards the enemy.

The six rebels were in the middle of the open area between the house and the sugar cane plot when something, perhaps a footstep, alerted them. They froze, and turned towards the noise. The four not carrying the stretcher swiftly pulled their weapons from their shoulders and held them ready.

“Stop right there you sonsofbitches! We are the army!” De la Huerta ran towards his prey.

The four rebels opened fire.

The soldiers responded.

In the house, a woman screamed.

One of the stretcher bearers fell. A skinny man toppled from the stretcher to the ground. He too had been shot. Two of the rebels moved sideways, firing long bursts at their attackers, and went into the house. The other three stood their ground, also shooting, but one was hit in the left shoulder and staggered back. Somehow, he regained his footing and, following the other two, ran into the sugar cane field disappearing from sight.

Gunfire erupted from two windows of the house.

The soldiers crouched and turn to face this new threat. Antonio, slowing down, turned to the man carrying the radio: “Call the platoon leaders! I want that sugar cane field surrounded!” He charged again, this time straight at the house.

Antonio ran fast, bent over low to present a smaller target. As he got closer to the house he could make out the faces of the two men firing from the windows.

The soldiers’ continuous fusillade became more accurate by the second. Splinters of wood flew off the windows and dozens of bullets sheared the thin wooden walls. One of the soldiers’ bullets found its mark. The head of a man in a window exploded. The other rebel disappeared from his window.

The woman screamed again, as if she had also been hit.

Antonio charged the closed front door and slammed his shoulder into it. The door didn’t buckle.

“Don’t shoot, I surrender!” a man called from inside.

The soldiers behind Antonio stopped firing.

“Surrender?!” Antonio shouted. “Now? You son of a bitch!” He shot the lock up, emptying what was left in the cartridge. With frantic motions, he replaced the empty clip.

He rammed the door open with his left shoulder and entered the house firing a long burst as he swung his rifle from right to left trying to hit every human form inside.

These are Reynaldo’s killers… a voice in his head insisted… They killed my brother…

When his men entered the house, Antonio was standing frozen in the middle of the small room, his eyes disconnected from reality. Gunsmoke floated free in the stuffy air.

A woman was dead on the floor, one of her arms extended towards a young boy who lay close to her. No older than twelve, he had been shot in the chest and was bleeding heavily. His mouth moved like that of a fish out of water. The body of one rebel lay nearby, half his skull blown away. The other had been shot several times and was on the floor in the final convulsions of life. Blood and lumps of brain spattered the walls. Blood pooled into several depressions of the coarse cement floor. A little girl sat with her back against the wall, opposite the entrance. Blood speckled her face and clothes. She shook uncontrollably, her mouth half open with a scream frozen in her throat. Her bulging, tearless eyes were fixed on the man standing in the middle of the room, his weapon still smoking.

“Lieutenant, are you alright? Are you shot?”

Antonio didn’t answer. His eyes refocused, darted around, as if he was coming out of a trance. Without saying a word, he turned and walked out of the house.

“I thought they surrendered,” said one of the soldiers that had entered the house.

“Don’t even say it,” another one said as he walked to the little girl and picked her up tenderly. Speaking softly to her, he walked out of the house.

The three surviving rebels pushed their way through the tall cane, heading for the end of the field where the mountain began, but even for fit men, advancing through the mature sugar cane was not easy. The long and narrow razor-edged leaves slashed their skin, sweat got into their fresh cuts and their arms, necks, faces and eyelids soon burned like hell. Squinting to protect their eyes, they kept on going. If they were very lucky, and the soldiers were slow, they might make it. Still, a feeling of doom weighed heavily on their shoulders.

Inside the sugar cane plot, the wounded rebel was falling behind. His left arm was dead and the bleeding was making him weak; the tall canes were holding him back.

“Get out! Out of the fucking canes… now!” he ordered himself.

He turned right, towards the side of the field.

“Easier on the outside… I can make it… I have to make it…” he panted… “I move fast… always have… soldiers… house…” he was short of breath… “for sure… no… not here… dying… in this shitty… oh…” he stumbled, but managed to stay on his feet… “why…there it is… edge of field… bit more… I’m out… soldiers… won’t see me…Yes..!” 

Without missing a step, the wounded rebel burst out of the field. He gripped the M-2 rifle with his white-knuckled right hand, index finger reaching for the trigger. His left arm dangled from his wounded shoulder, blood plastering the shirt to his chest.

While one detail of soldiers attended to the dead and wounded and another searched the house, the rest had converged on the sugar cane field. They were about to finish sealing off the perimeter when a man blasted out from the field.

The man ran like a madman, rifle swinging wildly in one hand.

A few yards away, a young soldier was walking his way.

Both men stopped in shock and stared at each other. Both raised their weapons and pressed the triggers. The skinny soldier was blown backwards. The older, heavier rebel, also hit several times, staggered back a few wild steps. A holler escaped his throat—the sound of a dying animal.

The soldiers shut him up.

The two other rebels inside the field heard the scream and the gunfire.  

“Fuck that… they’re closing on us… fucking soldiers… hurry… get to the mountain…” said the one in front as he ran… “We’re ahead of them… Yeah, man… We’re gonna make it…” He reached the end of the field and didn’t slow down. The mountain was up ahead, right within his grasp. “Oh man, oh man…” he would be running up the mountain in no time. He glanced back and yelled at the other rebel, who had stopped at the edge of the field: Vamos! Vámonos!

“Stop right there!” shouted one of the soldiers firing a warning shot.

The rebel cast about desperately. Soldiers were everywhere—ahead, to the right, to the left. “Goddamned communists! ¡Viva Cuba Libre!” He raised his weapon. Half a dozen rifles stopped him short.

Concealed beneath the sugarcane, the remaining rebel watched his friend go down. With one knee on the ground, winded, gasping for air, he watched in silence. Slowly, quietly, so as not to disturb the cane, he retreated into the thick of the field.

“What’s that gunfire?” Antonio asked over the radio.

“Two men came out of the sugar cane firing their weapons.”

“And?”

“Shot, Sir.”

“Two men? Shot! I want the last one alive, you hear me! I want him alive!” Turning to Sergeant Morales he ordered: “Go make sure those morons don’t shoot my last bandit. Get on it!” Not wasting a second, he ran to the trucks that had brought them there and grabbed two five gallon petrol cans. He returned to the wind-blown side of the field and poured all the fuel on the sugar canes. When the ground was soaked, Antonio shouted: “We are going to torch down the cane! Come out now!”

Inside the field, the desperate rebel quickly weighed his options. He knew that if he surrendered, they would stop at nothing to make him talk. Like others before him, he would either break or die under questioning. A prisoner of the army had no rights, had no defense. You couldn’t hire a lawyer. He shook his head. Se acabó—I’m finished. As he took a hard look at his double barreled shotgun, he remembered the old story about a legendary hero his grandfather used to tell him.

He wasted no time. Running zigzags inside the cane field, he finally found what he was looking for: a clearing. At the center of the clearing, he started digging a hole in the ground. He used both ends of the shotgun—the steel barrels to break the surface and the wooden butt as a makeshift shovel. The hero in his grandfather’s story had also been trapped in a burning sugar cane field. The crafty man had dug a deep hole in the ground and had buried himself in it. The flames had swept over, but he had been spared from harm and from falling into the hands of the Spaniards. According to the story, you needed a deep hole in the middle of a wide clearing so the heat wouldn’t roast you alive.

“My Lord, my God,” he whispered as he dug, “give me enough time to dig a proper hole.” The legendary hero had stayed under the ground until after the Spaniards tired of looking for him and left the area. It was then that he had crept out and rejoined his rebel troop. At least, that was how the story went.

As the rebel dug, he heard the crackling of advancing flames. Fanned by the constant breeze, they came his way rapidly. As the fire approached, it consumed with blistering heat everything in its path. The characteristic sweet scent of burning sugar canes permeated the air.

“All night it looked like rain, but not a drop. Damn!” he said out loud without stopping. “Deep. How deep? The fucking story doesn’t say how deep this cursed hole has to be or how wide the clearing. Damn!” The glow of the fire got brighter by the moment.“Out of time! Damn! I’m running out of time!” The hole was barely two feet deep. It looked like a shallow grave.

Not thinking straight anymore, he got in. From a sitting position he scooped soil back into the pit. First, he covered his feet, then his legs, thighs and groin. After laying down, he started to cover his abdomen and chest. He cracked open his shotgun, took out the two unused cartridges and threw them into the sugar cane. He angled the shotgun away from the wind, laid it on the ground and left it ready to use as a breathing duct. He then finished covering his upper torso and, before covering his head, noticed that the sky had acquired an ominous red hue. After burying his head the best he could, he finished by worming his arms into the hole, pushing them down as deep as they would go. He put his lips against the end of the shotgun barrel. It tasted of metal and oil.

“Oh, God!  Oh, God!  Oh, God!”

He heard the two cartridges he had thrown away exploding and felt the ground getting hotter by the second. As the heat increased he considered jumping out of the hellhole and running away, but it was too late for that now.

“Oh, God!  Oh, God!  Oh, God!”

He heard the fire raging above him. Then he felt it on his skin. Within moments the pain became intense, scalding, unbearable. His head hurt horribly. He thought his brain was about to boil. The last conscious thought that crossed his mind was that his grandfather’s story was just that, a story.

And maybe God heard his pleas after all, because he was unconscious when the hot air came through the shotgun barrel and scalded his lungs; didn’t feel the steel burn his lips and tongue, nor the excruciating pain when his penis and testicles burned away, or when his right eye melted out of its socket.

The sugar cane plot burned like a field of matches. Half an hour later the soldiers stood before a bare, black, and smoldering field. No one had come out of it and no one was on it.

“I can’t believe you let him escape!” Antonio screamed at his men and darted onto the smoldering field. He zig-zagged across it, furiously kicking mounds of dirt and ash. He would inspect every inch of this blasted field. This was a regular bandido he was looking for, not fucking Houdini.

Reluctantly, his men followed him and started to comb the blackened soil. Here and there hot embers still glowed red.

“Lieutenant!” called a soldier. “Look at this!” He was staring down at his feet and backing away slowly.

Antonio ran over the ashes toward the man. As he came closer, the stench hit him. He saw a red, swollen hand protruding from the ground. 

“Lieutenant… I think the man dug himself into the ground. I just stepped on him and that hand popped out. Qué peste—what a stench!” The soldier turned green and vomited.

 “Pull that son of a bitch out of there!” Antonio ordered.

The men looked at him in disbelief. They glanced at each other, hoping the next guy would do it.

Enraged, Antonio used the butt of his rifle to scrape away the dirt and ashes from the buried man. The odor of burnt flesh assailed his nostrils. The faint smoke rising from the body blended with that from the ravaged field—the pervasive sweetness of the incinerated plants mixed with the acrid offense of the burnt man.

Seeing that none of his soldiers even attempted to help him, so taken aback were they, Antonio went ahead and grabbed the smoking boots of the motionless rebel and pulled him out of his shallow grave. As he did, what was left of the man groaned and shreds of his burned clothes tore away. Slabs of skin and adipose tissue remained stuck to the ground. The right half of the man’s head and face were grotesquely disfigured, and both lips remained glued to the end of the shotgun barrel he had been breathing through. Incredibly, his vegetative functions were still struggling. He opened his puffed-up left eye, softly moaned again and slightly opened his mouth as if trying to get fresh air into his scorched airways.

“Who are you?!” Antonio screamed at the man.

No response.

Antonio pulled his sidearm from its holster and crouched. He used the tip of his Makarov pistol to shove the man’s head to the right in a futile attempt to get the left eye’s full attention.

“I’m going to shoot you if you don’t talk!” he screamed at the dying man’s face.

The soldiers stared at each other.

“Lieutenant, sir, that man is practically dead,” Sergeant Morales said. “Shoot him out of his misery.”

“Shut up!” Antonio straightened and returned his pistol to its holster. He looked at his men defiantly, his hand resting loosely on the weapon.

“Lieutenant,” another man started softly.

“Shut the fuck up!”

Sergeant Morales took a deep breath, stepped forward, and shot the burned man in the head.

“What the fuck did you do!” shrilled Antonio, clamping his right hand on the grip of the Makarov.

Acting on terrified instinct, Sergeant Morales raised his weapon. He wasn’t fast enough.

A shot rang out.

With a look of disbelief, Sergeant Morales fell to his knees, looked at his chest, and pitched forward.

“He killed my prisoner!” Antonio shouted. With the Makarov still smoking in his hand, he looked around at his men.

The corporal who carried the radio equipment walked discreetly away from the scene and called headquarters. As he finished his message, a light rain began sprinkling the field.

Less than an hour later, under a heavy downpour, Captain Puig arrived.

Sergeant Morales didn’t die. “It was my fault,” he declared days later at the inquiry.

He was given an honorable discharge with full retirement.

Antonio De la Huerta’s shoot-out with the sergeant would be ruled self-defense by the military court. The rest of his actions that night were considered war actions. 

Jorge Torrente was born and raised in La Habana, Cuba. Medical Doctor. Adventurer at heart. Mariel refugee.