Read Online Pig's Foot by Carlos Acosta - Free Book Online Page B

four legs and José assured him that he would not allow God Himself to touch the old nag’s tail. He yoked the beast up to the cart and they set off while the dawn sky was still dark and the dew still settling.
    It was a long journey. Geru’s little cotton skirt embroidered with flowers grew damp with dew, as did Benicio’s shirt and his patched shorts. Benicio tried to touch Melecio’s shorts to see whether they too were wet, but his brother quickly covered himself with his hands.
    They stared at the cows, at the mud-caked farmers tilling the earth, at the steep mountains of the Sierra Maestra which looked like giants standing guard over the valley. Butterflies and dragonflies were beginning to flutter across the lush green plain. It was a glorious day and, for the first time in a long while, José and Betina seemed happy.
    ‘Hey, Benicio, you see those canebrakes over there on the left? That’s where we used to work, me and your fa—’ Betina gave José a clip round the ear. ‘You and who?’ my grandfather asked. ‘Me and a good friend.’ It was a terrible job, José added, telling his children that when they grew up they should plant crops or raise animals, because working on a sugar-cane plantation was backbreaking and badly paid. They would soon be adults and it was time for them to think about what they were going to do with their lives. At this point, Melecio said he wanted to be a cook. Grandfather protested that the kitchen wasn’t his and pinched his arm.
    An hour later, the family found themselves in the little square of a small town with stately detached houses, most of them built from stone. In earlier times, El Cobre was known as ‘ el barrio negro ’ – the black neighbourhood. The area had been populated by ‘the king’s slaves’, some of the few slaves in Cuba to receive an education. Most of them worked in the copper mines, and they were educated because the work required a greater level of knowledge.
    The Americans had taken control of most of the strategic sectors of the Cuban economy. In addition to sugar production, they held sway over the mines, public services, banks and much of the land; they also owned the Cuban Electric Company and the Cuban Telephone Company, and much of the power industry including coal, oil and alcohol. The first thing José, Betina and the children noticed when they arrived was the number of white men, all of whom spoke a strange language.
    ‘Look, Mamá, milk men,’ shouted Melecio.
    ‘They’re not made of milk,’ said Benicio. ‘They’re white because they come from a faraway place where the sun doesn’t shine.’
    Geru pointed out that the sun shone everywhere, so that could not be the reason they were white. In the end, they asked Betina who said, ‘Where do white men come from? Juanita says they come from Alaska.’
    ‘Alaska! What’s Alaska?’
    Betina explained that, according to Juanita, Alaska was a place where ice came from, where everything was white and it was always very cold.
    ‘Well then, that’s where these men must come from,’ said José, ‘because they’re the coldest people I’ve ever met.’
    ‘So they come from Alaska,’ Melecio concluded and Betina nodded slightly.
     
    None of the children had ever seen anywhere like this: concrete houses, cobbled streets; here was a town with no grass, no trees, no animals. They studied everything with great curiosity. José tried to recognise some of the places he had haunted years earlier before Oscar rescued him and signed him up to the war, but all of the old taverns were gone now, as were the markets and the grocery stores. The town was brand new with signs everywhere in English. ‘It’s time to go,’ said José and turned the mare towards the outskirts of the town where the old church stood.
    When they reached the cathedral, José tethered the horse to a tree fifty metres from the church courtyard. Benicio, Geru and Melecio’s eyes grew wide and their mouths gaped to see