by Lou Cameron
“Not if it doesn’t bother you. I know some of us Anglos say dumb things, but I’ve been down here a while.”
She smiled archly as she poured and said, “Your little French friend prefers even less cream in his coffee, from what my servants tell me.”
“Oh? I’ve heard they have a grapevine. I suppose you got a full report on my wild and wicked ways, too?”
She dimpled and said, “You seem to be more discreet. Your friend tends to be noisy for a man who’s unshaded window fronts on the green. But everyone to his own taste. Sugar and cream?”
“I like my coffee any way it comes, as long as it’s hot.”
Luisa lowered her lashes and flushed a becoming shade that went well with her dress and copper hair. She murmured, “We were talking about the Carib rebels, Dick.”
“We were? Okay, what do you know about this Mamma Macumba and her zombies, or whatever?”
Luisa said, “Not much, even though I was raised here on Nuevo Verdugo, save for my finishing school in England, we Christian Creoles hardly ever see the bush natives and, of course, when we do, somebody usually gets hurt.”
He frowned and said, “That reminds me. One of the foremen says he thinks that man who tried to hack you up yesterday came in with a recent shipment of laborers from Costa Rica. Have you any idea now why he might have attacked you?”
She shrugged and said, “No, but he was obviously too drunk to know what he was doing. He might have just run amuck and we were simply lucky.”
“You call that luck, Luisa?”
She batted her eyelashes and said, “Well, we might not have met for days and days if that pobrecito hadn’t introduced us so dramatically.”
She was really coming .on. But Hispanic girls flirted the way other girls did needlework. Having a chaperone in view gave a dame certain advantages, he supposed. She was probably only half aware of it and, of course, she wasn’t wearing his tight pants. .
He shifted in the chair as he sipped black coffee. That came on stronger and hotter than he’d expected, too. He told her what he planned to do across the middle of the island and she said, “How clever of you. I’m surprised nobody ever thought of that before, Dick.”
He said, “So am I. I’ve been going over the maps. I noticed you and some other Creole families have bigger haciendas than I expected. Do you mind if I get personal?”
“About my land? Of course not. My holdings are a matter of public record. Between my dowry lands and my late husband’s, I own about five square kilometers, or is it miles? Being a Crown Colony is so confusing.”
“It’s a big spread, either way. What I wanted to ask about was whether you Creoles have been approached to sell your old claims.”
She shook her head and said, “We haven’t. Our original coastal fincas, or plantations, compliment the planned economy London had in mind. We grow beef and other food for the workers imported by the company. So there’s no rivalry. As a matter of fact, to put it in a vulgar way, we never had it so good.”
“Try it another way. Could any Creole expand his holdings if the big sugar company was driven out, Luisa?”
She thought before she answered, “Why would anyone want to do that? With the British gone, we’d have nobody to sell to. We’d go back to subsistence agriculture on a forgotten island. We can’t grow crops for the world market with the small native population. Our only export is sugar, and very little of that, thanks to those silly natives.”
“Then there’s no reason anyone wearing pants might have for driving Pantropic Limited out, right?”
“I can’t think of anyone, Dick. Even the jungle natives will lose in the end if Pantropic pulls out. Though of course they can’t see that.”
He sipped some more coffee before he asked, “How do you figure the natives stand to lose, Luisa?”
“Oh, no doubt they’re happy making babies in the jungle at the moment. But we’re on an island. If we all just went away and left them to their own devices for a few more generations—”
“They’d wind up eating each other, like the natives on other small overcrowded islands. But maybe they’re not worried about the distant future. Pantropic Limited is clearing all the fertile land right now!”
She nodded and said, “Of course. But civilization only speeds up what’s bound to happen sooner or later and it can save a lot of pain and trouble. My Spanish ancestors have a lot to answer for, but they did stop a lot of cannibalism and human sacrifice, and who’s to say an Indian is not happier wearing pants and going to Church every Sunday?”
He might have said some Indians he’d met didn’t agree. But he’d had this discussion before, and didn’t think beating a dead horse made much sense. So he said, “Meanwhile, nobody can tell me how many of those Black Caribs there are, or just what their Mamma Macumba wants.”
“Does it make any difference, Dick?”
“Hell, yes. Making a deal beats fighting any day. We’d still be fighting Indians back in the States if Washington hadn’t got most of them to sign treaties in the end.”
“Our Mosquito Coast Indians are a bit more primitive, Dick. As you know, the Black Caribs add African superstitions and somewhat advanced tactics to the original Carib culture, which was wild indeed to begin with. They say Mamma Macumba is part Ibo. The African Ibos were noted in the slave days for being clever and more treacherous than other tribes.”
“All the more reason she’d be smart enough to see the advantages of a peace treaty. How did you Creoles handle them before the Anglo-Americans came?”
“We didn’t, really. The Caribs gave their name to this sea in their day by ranging like red Vikings in their dugouts. But white men, starting with Columbus, have tended to fire cannons at them out on the open water. So they’d become landlubbers by the time slaves started running off to join them. The Negroes feared the sea from the beginning, associating it as they did with slave ships. So for many years the Black Caribs have stayed well back in the jungle, out of slave-raiding range of the coast. My people, on the other hand, preferred the coastline with its cool breezes and opportunities for trade. So until very recently the island was reasonably peaceful, with civilization hugging the coastline and the cannibals happily beating their drums in the interior.”
“Sounds homey. Do you know for a fact that the Black Caribs are cannibals, or did that story start because they wouldn’t go to Sunday School?”
“Your Spanish must be rusty, Dick. Carib means cannibal in my mother tongue. It’s not just Papist propaganda. Columbus actually found them eating Arawak Indians when he discovered and named the Caribs. He said the Arawak were gentle and harmless by the way, so we can assume he was being reasonably objective about non-Christian naked people. I know you think the early Spaniards were narrow fanatics, but Dutch and English explorers reported cannibalism among the Caribs, and more than one wound up in the pot.”
She took a sip of coffee and added, “To be fair, the Blacks who ran away to join them in the bush were less savage. Few West African tribes went in for that sort of diet. So I suppose a Black Carib would be less likely to eat you than a Red Carib, but they are all pretty truculent.”
“So I hear. But there must be some way to talk to them. The runaway slaves managed to find friends in the jungle.”
“Not all of them, Dick. It’s estimated that nine out of ten slaves who ran off to the bush were killed and eaten by man or beast. Here and there an Indian tribe took in a fugitive. But it was the exception rather than the rule. I’ve heard runaway slaves were put through brutal initiation rites, so that only the tougher ones survived to intermarry and blend into the tribes.”
He nodded as he remembered how Creeks and Seminoles back home had adopted runaways, while Cherokee and most other American Indian tribes had sold them back to the slave catchers for trade goods.
He said, “They’ve been telling me how tough the Black Caribs are since I drifted down here from Mexico. How come, if the Blacks had better manners than the home-grown variety, that it�
�s the Black Caribs everyone’s afraid of?”
Luisa said, “It’s probably partly racist. Black Caribs are bigger and, of course, darker. But it’s mostly because other Caribs have slowly been tamed by intermarriage and salt.”
“Salt?”
“Yes. Wild Indians are mad for salt because of their bland jungle diet. The missionaries have made more friends distributing salt than with all the glass beads and calico combined. But, of course, tribes along the Mosquito Coast can get salt from the sea and salt marshes so they see less advantage in being tamed.”
He pursed his lips and thought about that before he nodded and said, “Okay, Mamma Macumba’s people can’t blend in because they look like a white colonist’s picture of a born cane cutter and they don’t need salt–but why? You said they don’t come out of the bush to the sea coast, Luisa.”
She said, “Well, I’ve never been deep in the jungle obviously, but they say there are salt springs near the center of the island.”
“Which end?”
“South, I believe. Does it make a difference?”
“It sure does. I want to fence the guerrillas off. I don’t want to drive them even crazier. If we pen them down in the south end with plenty to eat and salt with which to season it, they may just stay there.”
“I thought you said they couldn’t get through your machine guns and barbed wire in any case?”
“They can’t, but I don’t want to have desperate men trying. I hope to pen them down there with minimal bloodshed. They may not even try to cross the cordon, once we clear it.”
She smiled at him and mused, “You’re an oddly gentle man, for a soldier of fortune, Dick. I thought men like you delighted in battle?”
He shrugged and said, “Nobody but a sadist or a fool delights in battle. I’m in this line because I was pushed into it in the first place, and I’m pretty good at it in the second. But I’m a live-and-let-live guy, if people are willing to stay off my toes.”
He drained his cup and added, “I’d better get going. You don’t want to hear the story of my life.”
Her eyes were glowing as she smiled up at him and said, “Oh, but I do, Dick. Will you come back some time and tell it to me?”
Captain Gringo stood with Burton in the bow of the steam launch as it puffed along the leeward coast of Nuevo Verdugo. The tubby craft was a forty-footer with boiler amidship and no awning to catch the sometimes treacherous wind. So it was hot as hell, even in the bow. He was explaining to Burton how he intended to tow in barges with jungle clearing equipment once he’d surveyed the narrow waist of the island, but the other American didn’t seem to be listening.
Burton glanced back to see that the guards they’d brought were chatting with the launch crew before he cleared his throat awkwardly and said, “Captain, my wife tells me you came over to fuck her last night.”
Captain Gringo’s face went wooden Indian as he met Burton’s gaze, unwinkingly, and said, “Oh?”
Burton laughed nervously, and said, “Yeah, she said you have a bigger prick than me and that you made her come. Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Bitch was the exact word I was looking for.”
Burton said, “I know. She over-did it with the part about coming. That had to be a lie even if you didn’t have an alibi.”
“I’ve got an alibi as well as a big prick?”
Burton winked and said, “Don’t be coy. I happen to know who you were in bed with last night.”
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Couldn’t any woman on this fucking island keep her mouth shut? He wondered what the colonel was going to say about all this.
Burton winked again and said, “Yeah, Willie May spotted you leaving that Irish girl’s room at the infirmary about the time Alice says you were humping her. I don’t know why Alice plays these stupid games.”
“She may be trying to get somebody killed. That’s the usual reason. How come you and Willie May share so many cozy secrets? Uh, never mind, I don’t think it’s any of my business. I’ll just tell Mab to be a bit more discreet in the future.”
Burton said, “Look, we’re not back home and Black stuff’s not that bad.”
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Alice was barking up the wrong tree, but he didn’t owe her any favors now. Let her think her old man was fooling with some mestizo if she wanted. It was kind of funny in a pathetic way. Willie May wasn’t just darker than what would be approved of by Anglo-American Society. She had a pickle ass and her face would stop a clock.
As if he’d read the taller Yank’s mind, Burton said, ‘The nigger wench is ugly, but she likes to screw, which is more than I can say for Alice. I knew she was shitting me even before Willie May told me about you and the nurse.”
“You and Miss Willie May must have had a busy night.”
“Oh, she wasn’t spying on you and the nurse. We have a little love nest in the quarter, and she was on her way home across the green when she spotted you slipping out of the infirmary. She told me this morning on the docks about it. Alice, of course, was bragging about seducing you at breakfast.”
Captain Gringo stared at the wall of jungle along the shore for a time before he shrugged and asked, “Why are you telling me all this, Burton?”
“Because I don’t want to get beaten up or killed, of course. If I know Alice, her next move will be to tell you I know everything and that I’m in a towering rage. I don’t want a guy your size worried about me coming after you and doing something foolish.”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “I’d be foolish indeed if I got excited about a husband with nothing to be jealous about.”
“Oh shit, she isn’t going to tell you she told me you’d fucked her. She’ll probably say I accused her and blah blah blah. Knowing you’re innocent, she’ll expect you to get indignant and come gunning for me. How do you think we should work it out?”
Captain Gringo said, “Well, we’ll be landing soon. I’ll take my men and bull through a survey line. Meanwhile, you’ll circle the island in this launch to pick us up on the far side. We ought to meet there at about the same time if I’ve judged the distances right.”
“Damn it, I was talking about my wife.”
“Yeah, your wife, not mine, thank God. I don’t know why she’s trying to sic us on each other either, but it’s not my problem. My problem is to see how feasible my idea of a fortified cordon is. I’m in charge of security. You’ll have to take charge of your wife.”
So they dropped it for the time being, and in a little while the launch put into a preselected cove down the coast.
As Captain Gringo, Gordo, and three guards leaped ashore, Burton asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to tag along?”
Captain Gringo said, “We’re not playing tag. I’m depending on you to meet us on the far side. It’s a hell of a way to walk if you screw up.”
“I’ll be waiting for you there. I expected you to take at least one of the machine guns.”
Captain Gringo hefted the Browning pump in his right hand and said, “Scatter guns are best in thick brush and a Maxim is too heavy to lug through this mess. We won’t need the machine guns until we hack out a clear field of fire for them.”
He hadn’t come all this way to give a lecture on basic tactics, so he nodded to his men and said, “Let’s go. See you later, Burton.”
The shoreline was marshy. It didn’t improve when they moved into the trees. Gordo ordered a man named Jose to go ahead with his machete, but the underbrush wasn’t much of a problem once they left the sunny shore growth. The mud underfoot was sticky marl the color and consistency of half-congealed blood. Captain Gringo said, “Jose, bear to your left. This low ground’s no good. We’ll have to see if we can run a -contour line to the far shore.”
Jose didn’t know what he was talking about, but he hacked through a vine and headed that way. Gordo asked what they were doing, and the American explained, “Nuevo Verdugo seems to be two anticlines, or let’s say gentle bulges, connected by this neck that can’t ma
ke up its mind if it’s land or sea. If we clear our cordon along the slight slope to the north, they’ll have to come at us wading through this shit. So while it means a little longer defense line than I had planned, it makes for a better one. We’ll knock the trees down in this swamp while we’re at it.”
Gordo stared up at the sunlit forest canopy high above, and said, “Forgive me, my Captain, but I have cleared much land in my time. These trees are monstrous. It would take an army a year to cut through here as you wish.”
Captain Gringo noticed the ground was getting firmer and he explained, “We’re not going to do it with machetes, Gordo. You know those big steam tractors they use to plough the cane fields?”
Si, they look like locomotives that have wandered from the tracks.”
“They’re almost as powerful, and God knows there’s plenty of fuel standing all around here. I figure we’ll attach a long length of anchor chain between them, build up a good head of steam in each, and let ’em rip. The chain should cut a good swathe as we drag it through here.”
“You mean you intend to pull down all these trees by combing the jungle flat?”
“Sure. None of these trees have very deep roots and the ground is soft. We’ll snake the logs to the shore with another tractor and let the current have what we can’t use for firewood or lumber. A lot of logs will be used to fortify the machine gun nests, of course.”
Gordo thought. Then he nodded with a grin and said, “I see how we can do it. I remember the company used tractors to pull stumps when we first started clearing. I wonder why they did not think of your idea with the chains?”
“Colonel Gage is all right. He just hasn’t gotten used to the idea that the world no longer runs on muscle power the way it did when he was growing up. They were still screwing around with picks and shovels when I left Panama. They’re going to need those new steam shovels before the Canal down there ever gets dug. But the world is run by old men, and old men cling to the ways they learned years ago. This has been a fast-moving century, Gordo. I’m only in my thirties and most of what they taught me at West Point is already out of date.”