The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(90)
Neither do I.
Off in the distance, men are dying and I can’t help but think of all the stories we wrote about the Maine, the fervor we whipped up with Evangelina’s case, the statements Hearst made to me when I first spoke with him in his office about using the news to shape policy.
Did we push the world to this point? Were we heroes or were we too caught up in our circulation battle?
Maybe Pulitzer was right all along. Maybe I don’t have the stomach for this.
How many will be dead when the smoke clears?
One million men volunteered. When they signed up all over the country, did they envision the reality of what war would be like? Of the horror of battle? Is this what my father experienced? Were these the memories that haunted him?
When the smoke clears and the battle ends, the dead and wounded lie on the ground off in the distance. We were careful to stay out of the line of fire, but it’s still close enough to smell the blood and the gun smoke, to hear the cries of the wounded. It’s close enough to see death on a scale I never have before.
Hearst pulls up alongside me on his horse, and mine shies away for a moment.
“Edward Marshall was wounded,” Hearst yells to our party. “Shot in the back. Stephen Crane carried him off the battlefield and then went to file his dispatch. They’re saying we lost sixteen Americans. Dozens are wounded. The Spanish casualties are a bit lower. They’re claiming a victory, too.”
He sounds so alive, so invigorated by the conflict despite our losses. He’s been waiting for this war for years, and now that it’s here, it seems he wants to drink every drop of it.
“Will Marshall survive?” I ask, horrified at the thought of one of my fellow reporters lying on the battlefield wounded.
“I think so. He seemed in pretty good spirits, all things considered. Let’s go back to the boat and get to work.” Hearst grins at us. “We got some good material today. I don’t think anyone else could have done better.”
Hearst and a few reporters break off from our group to speak with some of the soldiers, and I and the others race back on our horses to board the Sylvia and begin writing the stories we will file. When we get back to the boat, Hearst is nowhere to be seen, but the rest of us discuss the battle before we sit down and begin writing, the air filling with the sound of typewriters.
Finally, Hearst walks into the room where we’re all working.
“Look who we found,” he announces. He moves aside, and another figure comes forward.
Hearst claps the man on the back, and I blink, convinced I’m hallucinating the image before me.
Rafael stares back at me.
Forty
We all dine on an elaborate feast aboard the Sylvia. Throughout the dinner, I try to follow the conversation, but my gaze drifts toward Rafael seated at the opposite end of the table. He borrowed evening clothes from one of the other men, and he looks as handsome as he did in New York in his impeccably tailored attire. He’s quiet for most of the meal, while the rest of the diners seem to be filled with a buzz from the excitement of battle. The only explanation Hearst had provided earlier for Rafael’s presence was that he had been separated from his men and we would give him a ride to meet them. Then he whisked Rafael and the rest of the men away for brandy and cigars.
Halfway through the dinner, the Wilson sisters rise from their seats and begin dancing, laughter spilling out throughout the room. Hearst is in high spirits for his journalistic triumph today, and there’s no question everyone will be celebrating long into the night.
As soon as I can excuse myself from the rest of the party, I do, and I sit near the bow of the Sylvia, the sounds of the celebration drifting toward me, but for the most part the night is silent, the weather still.
Despite bathing, it feels like the smell of smoke and death still lingers, and I’m more than a little embarrassed by how affected I was by the battle. Everyone else seemed to greet it as a grand adventure, but I couldn’t see it as anything other than a tragedy as those men died around us.
“Do you mind if I join you?” a voice asks from the darkness behind me.
My breath hitches. “No.”
Rafael sits beside me on the boat, and for a moment, I struggle to come up with the right thing to say to him, afraid that I’m already wearing my emotions on my sleeve after the tumult of the day.
“I think my heart stopped when I saw you standing on the boat in front of Will,” Rafael says unceremoniously.
And just like that, it seems as though he’s decided to pick up exactly where we left off at New Year’s, no pretense between us. Perhaps the war stripped that away from us.
My response is tangled up in my throat, and a sob escapes instead.
My shoulders shake with it, the floodgates opening. I’m not even sure why I’m crying, or where my tears are coming from, only that I feel as though I have been pushed to the brink by all I’ve seen today, war something I was unprepared for.
Rafael wraps his arm around me, bringing me up against his side, holding me in his embrace.
He smells like the cigars he smokes, the drink he and Hearst favor, and what I once thought to be impossible happens, and I relax inside his arms, listening to the thudding of his heart.
Neither one of us speaks as I cry in his arms, the sound of the others celebrating on the opposite side of the boat intruding on our private moment, until all my tears are gone.