What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I thought I was finished with stories set in Cuba and the baseball and political worlds there. After all, I had already published a novel (CASTRO’S CURVEBALL) and a novella (HABANA LIBRE) set in that part of the world.
In early 2017, though, I visited the island for the fourth time since 1992. At first glance, much of the city hadn’t seemed to change. Ocean waves still sent spray into the air along the iconic Malecon breakwater. (BELOW) Marble columns flanked the narrow streets in Old Town and royal palm trees ran along the spines of the wider boulevards leading into the countryside.
But once I started to go around the city, talking again with the people, I realized that much had changed, especially in terms of baseball talent. Not that long ago, such star players as Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez had escaped to play in the U.S. major leagues by crossing the treacherous Florida Straits on rafts. Today, they are being spirited off the island aboard cigarette boats operated by crime syndicates, mostly from Mexico. In essence, they had traded one dangerous form of escape for another. By the time I flew home from that week-long visit, I was thinking about a new thriller based in Havana and the Caribbean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Hern%C3%A1ndez
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I’m fortunate to have a small room in our home in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is my office. It has a Varidesk, so I can work sitting down or standing up. The art on the walls ranges from favorite places (Ann Arbor, upstate New York and, of course, Cuba) to photographs by artists as Bob Sacha and my daughter, Sarah. Also, there’s a book shelf, with works by Fredrik Backman, Anne Lamott, Michael Ondaatje and so many others. They’re the ones I turn to when I lose my way, which I often do.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? When I was younger, and my kids hadn’t yet grown into adults, I often wrote at night. That’s the only time I often had to do my own writing back then. I also found odd moments on the Washington, D.C. subway or Metro. In fact, I wrote much of my novel, CASTRO’S CURVEBALL, my first tale set in Havana, on the Metro heading to my day job, then at USA Today. Back then I tried to write a page a day in my spiral notebook.
Once I got on the Metro and it was already a “bad day,” so I decided not to write that morning. But 10 minutes or so from my stop, I began to feel guilty, so I got out my notebook and scribbled away. Then it was off to work and I didn’t think anything more of that effort until later. That’s when I realized that those lines done on the Metro could be the voice of washed-up baseball player. Somehow perhaps more desperate and naïve than me. That became the voice of Billy Bryan, the narrator of that first novel and now this one, ESCAPE FROM CASTRO’S CUBA.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. A portion of Chapter 21, pgs. 130-133.
“C’mon, where is this kid?” Chuck said. “The door is closing fast.”
“Chuck if you don’t shut up,” Evan said from the backseat, “I’m going to slap you upside the head.”
“You can come up and try, sweet miss,” Chuck replied.
“Hey, hey,” I said, trying to calm both of them down. That said, my old Lions teammate was right. Time was running out fast, with it now approaching four in the morning in Monterrey.
Together we had watched the game earlier that evening on TV at a nearby sports bar, listening to the distant roars of the crowd. As expected, Team Cuba had trounced the college all-star team, 12-5. For tomorrow’s game, things would be even more locked down when it came to security.
Chuck looked back up at the team hotel. Almost all the rooms were dark and we knew it would be impossible to get another message through to Santos.
“He ain’t coming,” Chunk said. “God damn, he doesn’t have the guts.”
“I’m going to tear you a new one,” Evan said from the backseat, and Chuck and I couldn’t help smiling.
“Where did you hear that one?” I asked her.
“Where do I hear anything in your country?” she said. “The TV, the radio – it’s so much talk, talk, talk in this land. Before too long, it seeps into your bones. It’s like you have no choice.”
Chuck nodded at this. “I can’t disagree with that, darling.”
In the hours after the game, after the parking lot emptied to only a few cars, we had changed location and were now parked in an alley a block down from the Crowne Plaza.
“Let me take another walk by,” Evan said, sitting up. “See what I can see.”
See what I can see? Where did she come up with these sayings?
“I hate to say it, sugar,” Chuck told her, “but if you meander past that hotel at this hour, they’re going to arrest you for the oldest crime known to man,” Chuck said.
“Murder?”
“No, darling, whoring. I mean I may be old, but I ain’t dead and some Hondo is going to think you’re selling.”
“Chuck, I’m warning you,” Evan replied in a low purr that I knew was trouble. She was tired and anxious, like the rest of us.
““Please stay put, Evan,” Chuck added. “Here we’ll try this.” And he eased the car a little farther up the alley, poking the BMW’s nose out so we could see all the way down the street in either direction. Nothing was going on. A doorman paced back and forth, and the neon light reflected off the windows of the storefronts across the way.
“Reminds me of the old days back in Havana,” Chuck said. “When it got too late for anybody’s good.”
“What was that like?” Evan asked him, the anger fading from her voice.
“Havana?”
“Yes, back in those old days.”
Chuck turned the car off and glanced at me with a wry smile.
“In those days, Havana at night was the most beautiful place in the world,” he said. “Of course, it was corrupt and dangerous, too. But you can’t have everything, right? Everyone loves to harp on that now and for god’s sake we knew it back then, too. But most of all it was such a sight to behold. Such a beautiful land when everyone came out to play.”
“Why was that?” Evan asked. “What made it so special?”
“Different strokes for different folks, Evan. Billy and your mother used to love to go down to the harbor and watch the cars roll off the night ferry from Key West.”
I found myself nodding.
“Me? I liked to listen to Lola, she was my girl, or was supposed to be or should have been – anyway, she sang at Rivera. For her last song of the night, she nearly always belted out ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ By then it was well into the wee hours of the night, like it is now. The crowd had thinned out, sometimes hardly anybody was left if it was the middle of the week. But she sang that song because she knew I liked it and I always stuck around for the end of the last set.”
“What happened to Lola?” I couldn’t help asking.
“You know, Billy, I don’t rightly know now. Last I heard she was somewhere in Los Angeles, doing bit parts in pictures. It’s how too many things play out, right? You think you have all the time in the world. That you’ll stay in touch with the precious ones in your life forever, but it doesn’t work out that way, does it? You lose track and with each passing year it becomes too difficult to find them, downright embarrassing to reach out, and by then what’s the point anyway?”
Evan said, “You could still call her.”
“I don’t know, darling. That’s your generation talking. With guys like your father and me, it ain’t so easy, even though we do it so much in our heads all the time. I mean, I can close my eyes and just like that,” Chuck said as he snapped his fingers, “I’m back to those late nights at the Rivera. Even at that hour, Lola often had some well-wishers and I’d stay out of way. I mean what’s a hick ballplayer bring to the table in those kinds of situations, right? And afterward I knew she liked to change, freshen up, so I’d wait by the backstage door, sitting there on the steps, probably smoking another Cuban stogie. Somehow from that small alleyway I could see all the way down to the water and the lights atop the Nacional, and that’s where we often ended up. There was always time for a nightcap in Havana right, Billy? Even if we were playing a doubleheader the next day.”
“Always time for a nightcap,” I agreed.
“And what I remember the most? It’s the smell of the sea. Even well off the Malecon, farther inland, even near the old Colon Cemetery, you always knew you were close to the ocean in Havana. No matter how much it was built up — I mean heap upon heap of Mafia money and neon glow and big band music and foolish laughter, so many people carrying on. Through it all, the sea was always out there. It always seemed like it was only a few blocks away. I believe that’s what made the town feel so full of ghosts. The sea breeze was always coming off the Straits, holding everything so close to the heart.”
We grew silent inside the BMW, staring out upon that empty street as the night gathered around us. Everything Chuck had said was as true as anything can be.
Closing my eyes, I was back there, walking along the Malecon in Havana at dusk. Once again Malena was on my arm as we gazed upon the dark expanse of water.
“How far?” Malena would ask. It was a question she loved to ask, even though she knew the answer as well as I did.
“Ninety miles from Havana to the Florida Keys.”
“Only ninety miles,” she would repeat as if it was the most important number in the whole world. “And to think, we’re almost there.”
Then she would smile – a sight I’ll never forget.
“Papa,” Evan said. “Somebody’s out front.”
Opening my eyes, I saw that she was right. Chuck saw it, too.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? This is one of the sections where the novel “clicked” for me. I was able to incorporate the baseball world, the ongoing plot and this nostalgic look back at Havana (BELOW) in its heyday. Cuba may lie only 90 miles or so off the U.S. coast, but it is a star-crossed land, a place that arguably has lost its way in the world. One cannot write about Havana without remembering, at least in some small measure, the past and how important it still is there.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Usually, I write drafts and revisions on the computer. But in the case of the excerpt those pages were pivotal to the characters’ motivations. Billy, his daughter Evan and his old friend Chuck have all been betrayed by Cuba, yet they still love the land, the city of Havana. So, when I’m trying to write a section that carries this much weight, especially during revisions, I’ll sometimes switch back to the spiral notebook for a time. Once again, I’ll write it out, trying to make every word resonate.
Tim Wendel is the award-winning author whose titles include “Summer of ’68,” “Castro’s Curveball,” “Cancer Crossings” and his latest novel, “Escape from Castro’s Cuba.”
A writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University, he teaches fiction and nonfiction graduate-level classes. Many of his former students have been published, including Alma Katsu (“Red Widow”), Oliva Campbell (“Women in White Coats”) and Monica Hesse (“The Girl in the Blue Coat”). He has won the program’s Professional Achievement and Teaching Excellence awards, each three times.
His other honors include a CASEY Award finalist, Top History Book from the Latino Literary Council, Notable Book Award by the State of Michigan and an Editor’s Selection in the New York Times. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, Psychology Today, Gargoyle, GQ and Esquire. In addition, he has narrated six audiobooks (fiction and nonfiction) for Audible and other platforms.
“Tim Wendel has always chosen a distinct path of intimate stories within big topics,” says filmmaker Ken Burns, “those subjects revealed by his superb way at getting at the particular.”
@Tim_Wendel