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Recently widowed and now retired, Billy Bryan is "coming to the end of many things". Then a long-forgotten scrapbook stirs memories of a distant past -- and beckons him and his grown daughter on a reluctant journey to relive his role in history. In 1947 Billy Bryan is playing winter ball in Cuba, his future as uncertain as that island country's. Then one fateful night Bryan witnesses a young student radical named Fidel unleash an amazing curveball. So begins Billy's tug-of-war with destiny....

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Recently widowed and now retired, Billy Bryan is "coming to the end of many things." Then a long-forgotten scrapbook stirs memories of a distant past--and beckons him and his grown daughter on a reluctant journey to relive his role in history. In 1947 Billy Bryan is playing winter ball in Cuba, his future as uncertain as the island country. Then one fateful night Bryan witnesses a young student radical named Fidel unleash an amazing curveball. So begins Billy's tug-of-war with destiny. . . .

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Castro's Curveball

Bison Books

Prologue

We are up above the clouds?safe for now. Even through the plane's window, theCaribbean sun feels as hot and dream inducing as I remember it.

Besides me, my daughter Cassy sleeps the sleep of the innocent and thestubborn. With my fingertips, I slowly bring her head, with its fine blondhair, to rest on my shoulder. Softly, so as not to wake her, I stroke her neckjust as I'd done when she was a child. I listen to the roar of the jet engines,feel this southern sun again on my face for the first time in many years, andwonder what we have gotten ourselves into.

Cassy has her mother's round face and my sharp nose. Some would say that shewould have been better off with a little less of each, but I don't think that.When she was seven or so, I can remember walking the fields out in back of ourhouse and talking to God about her, wishing her plain. Please, let her be aplain girl, a plain Jane. I was convinced only that would keep her safe in thisworld. For I know that the pretty and the beautiful, those talented and thegifted, the ones made closest to His image, always end up getting hurt. Of thatyou can be sure.

As with most conversations I've ever had with God, the results weren't exactlyas I'd hoped for. In terms of her looks, my daughter didn't turn out to beclassically beautiful. But there's something about her smile, the way hergray-blue eyes sparkle, that people, especially boys, always seem to enjoy.Even I am not immune to being carried aloft by her enthusiasm. After all, sheis the one who has led me back to Cuba after all these years.

My Cassy flies all the time. She is the lone flight attendant on a commuterairline making hops from Buffalo to Cincinnati or Washington or Boston. Shemakes at least four round trips a day, five days a week. That's why she gotsuch a kick out of how they do things on this Cubana Air flight. No drinks orsnacks. Instead candies?peppermint, butterscotch, mango?are offered up instraw baskets to keep our ears from popping. There are no other services onthis ninety-minute flight from Cancùn to Havana.

Cassy's breathing is soft and relaxed. I turn from her to look out the window.Far below, in between the clouds, I catch my first glimpse of Cuba in more thanforty years. It's how I remember it?a ribbon of white sand beach and then mileafter mile of dark-green interior. After all the times I meant to come backhere, especially that night in '53, it seems strange to come back now, with agrown daughter in tow. If it wasn't for Cassy, I would have stayed inMiddleport, NY, living on my high school teacher's pension, learning to be awidower after thirty-seven years of marriage. I am coming to the end of manythings, and, quite simply, I want to be left alone.

My wife, Laurie, died nine weeks ago this Tuesday. I especially miss her oncold mornings and late at night when every sound, real or imagined, echoesthrough the empty farmhouse on Slayton Settlement Road that we filled withdevotion and purpose for all those years.

It's funny. Once upon a time I thought that I would be enjoy being alone again.Staying married, learning to overlook the small trespasses that mount over theyears, can exhaust anyone. A man can be married to a veritable saint, as Ibelieve I was, and yet he can still find himself walking the fields in back ofhis house, wondering where he will find the strength to hold himself, hold themarriage together. That's what being married does to you. It demands penance inthe form of compromise and responsibility. When your living it, it can all seemto be too much at times. But now I find myself trying to make sense of adifferent kind of pain.

Here again, I think that God has fed me a little off speed pitch to keep me offbalance. He has taught me that missing someone you loved deeply makes you longfor the days of making adjustments, enduring the rounds of petty disagreementsthan can dim any marriage. Though she is gone, my wife remains, as she alwaysdid, very much with me. As I sit here, suspended above an island that once heldsuch promise for me, I don't feel worthy of such devotion.

I feel this and simply want to fade away; try and wrestle thos feelings to somekind of stalemate. That's what I had planned to do until Cassy found that damnscrapbook.

Leave it to my whirling dervish of a daughter to take it upon herself to cleanmy house, attic to basement, days after her mother's death. I had told hernothing of Cuba, the years I spent playing baseball there. It was her mother,even through she had every reason to want to forget those years I spent inCuba, who put those scrapbooks together, kept them tucked away where I couldn'tget at them. It was only when she lay in a foggy shroud of pain killers nearthe end that she mentioned Cuba again, told me how proud she would have been ifshe could have seen me that last year. All I could do was squeeze her hand, awhispered thank you barely able to tear its way past my constricted throat.

After the discovery of the scrapbook, one thing led to another. Cassyespecially liked a photo she found from those times of a farm boy struggling tolead a pack of plow horses. She had it framed and after I reluctantly told herwho took it, she wrote repeatedly to Cuba, eager to locate more of thisphotographer's work. To my amazement, her efforts were rewarded.

First came the letters, with stamps of orange-tipped butterflies and oldgenerals. In a neat script, the photographer's daughter, Eván Fonseca,told a fantastic tale. One in which her mother, Malena Fonseca, and I werecompanions in that time before the revolution. She told my daughter that weshould visit. How there were plenty of Americans down here. How she met themevery day on the streets.

To further convince us, she sent cheaply made books of her mother's works.Published in Spain and Mexico, they were filled with black-and-whitephotographs of Cuba before the revolution. Then came the volume simply entitled"Fidel." In flipping through the shots of the Cuban president, my Cassy came toa picture of me and my best friend at the time, Chuck Cochrane, and, standingbetween us, a boyish Fidel Castro. Yes, that Fidel Castro.

He was so skinny back then. No bushy beard. Just a wisp of a beard that Iremember he had only started to grow. At times he was so self-conscious andunsure of himself that he constantly covered his upper lip with his hands,looking more like a blushing teenager. Other times he was as brash as a schoolyard bully.

In the photograph, all of us were smiling like fools in the bright mid-day sun.The caption said the picture was taken in 1947.

Our plane banks and we begin our descent into Havana. Americans aren't legallypermitted to enter Cuba. Back in Cancun, we had bribed who we hoped were theright people. We had been told repeatedly what to say, how to act, when wereached customs in Cuba. Sitting by the side of Mexicana Hilton pool, a gentlebreeze sweeping in from the gulf, it had seemed so easy. But now, as I lookagain at my precious daughter, I worry that this trip will bring us onlyheartbreak and sorrow. When you're as old as I am, you can sense trouble comingfrom a long ways off. It is another curse of growing old. Often you can see thefuture, but nobody ever heeds your warnings.

Around my neck, tucked inside my shirt, hangs a pouch with one thousand dollarsin it. Another thousand dollars, also in small bills, is in my money belt, withthe final thousand underneath Cassy's left armpit, riding in a shoulder holstercontraption.

Because Americans cannot draw on U.S. banks in Cuba, we won't...