Best Kept Secrets

by Rochelle Alers

  “There’s nothing wrong with the air in here unless you think you’re too good for—”

  He never completed his sentence. Samuel Cole had turned on his heel and was heading for the door. The bearded man panicked. “Wait!” Samuel stopped, but did not turn around. Rising to his feet on wobbly knees, the man managed to walk the half-dozen steps that left him less than a foot from the stranger who’d sought him out. He stared at the broad shoulders under a white guayabera. “Mr. Cole?”

  A knowing smile flitted across Samuel’s face, but vanished within seconds, replaced with an expression of annoyance. “I need information from you, information I’m willing to pay for. But not here.”

  “How much are you willing to pay?”

  “That depends on you.” A deep sigh and a rush of rum-soured breath wafted in the oppressive air behind him. “If you tell me what I need to know, then you can name your price.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Are you familiar with the United Fruit Company?”

  There was a pulse beat of silence before the man said, “Quite familiar. I worked for them for two years before I was fired.”

  Samuel turned and stared at the unkempt man. He was tall and thin. No, emaciated was a more appropriate description. “Why did they fire you?”

  “I got sick.”

  Dark eyes regarded a pair of gold ones, glittering with rage and something else. It took less than three seconds for Samuel to identify the something else: revenge.

  “What did you come down with?”

  “Consumption, also known as pulmonary tuberculosis.”

  Samuel successfully curbed the urge to take a step backward. “Are you contagious?”

  “No. Not now.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I got a clean bill of health last week.”

  Praying that he wasn’t being lied to, Samuel forced a smile. Tuberculosis had claimed the lives of his father and grandmother. The debilitating disease had laid waste to their bodies with fatigue, weight loss and a persistent cough with green, yellow, and finally bloody sputum.

  “What did you do at United Fruit?”

  “I worked in their accounting department.”

  “Are you an accountant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you attend college?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much can you tell me about their financial stability?”

  “That all depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how much you’re willing to pay me for the information.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Enough money for a ticket back to the United States.”

  Samuel blinked once. “What are you going to do, or where are you going once you get back?”

  “That is for me to decide.”

  Samuel felt a strange, numbing comfort. There was something in the man’s tone that belied his outward appearance. His speech and choice of words revealed that he was educated, and there was a spark of defiance in his eyes that reminded Samuel of himself. The same look he’d given Charles Cole whenever he sought to break his spirit.

  “Have you eaten?”

  The gold eyes were steady. “Not today.”

  “Do you have a change of clothes?” Samuel asked, continuing his questioning.

  The man shook his head. “I don’t have the money right now to pay the woman who does my laundry.”

  “I don’t want to insult you, Mr.—”

  “Kirkland. It’s Everett Kirkland.”

  “Mr. Kirkland,” Samuel said softly, “you need to wash and change your clothes. I’m going to give you some money so you can clean yourself up. Meet me at the Casa del Caribe in three hours.”

  He handed him a ten-dollar gold note. It was enough money to feed Everett Kirkland for at least a week, that is, if he didn’t squander it on rum, but definitely not enough for a ticket to get him back to the States. And if Everett was serious about wanting to return to the United States, then Samuel knew he would keep their appointment.

  If it hadn’t been for his voice, Samuel never would’ve recognized Everett Kirkland. He’d bathed, shaved and wore a clean shirt and slacks; he’d also gotten a haircut. Without the beard, his thin, angular face was made up of sharp angles that did little to detract from what should’ve been quite a handsome countenance. And despite the large portions of food on the table in the hotel dining room, Everett ate sparingly.

  Samuel listened intently, not interrupting as the accountant talked openly about growing up in Tennessee as an only child of elderly schoolteacher parents. A maiden schoolteacher aunt encouraged him to attend Tennessee State University in Nashville after his mother and father died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. Three months after he’d graduated, he went to work for a colored insurance company in Richmond, Virginia.

  “How did you wind up in Costa Rica?” Samuel asked as Everett paused to take a swallow of a blended drink of rum, mango, pineapple and guava juices.

  Everett stared across the small table at the man who would provide him with the opportunity to return to the United States after a three-year absence, and despite his current financial status he knew instinctively that he and Samuel were more alike than not.

  “My aunt made me promise her that after she passed away I’d take time off and travel. I kept her promise, took a leave from the insurance company, went to New Orleans and boarded a tanker that was scheduled to go through the Panama Canal. I got off in Colombia and met a photographer. The National Geographic Society had sponsored an expedition for her to take pictures of the Amazon River and Brazil’s rain forest.

  “I became her assistant as she took hundreds of pictures of trees, vines, flowers, snakes, monkeys, birds and fish. She came down with malaria, so instead of returning to Washington, D.C., she came back here.”

  “And you came back with her,” Samuel said, smiling.

  Everett nodded and closed his eyes. “I was twenty-four and in love with a woman ten years my senior.” He opened his eyes and met Samuel’s amused stare. “I gave up everything for Eladia. My job, my country, and in the end a part of myself.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly, with no expression on his face. Everett focused on a small lizard that had attached itself to the wall behind where Samuel sat.

  “She recovered from her bout of malaria, developed the photographs of the expedition, and then took off again. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going, only saying I should stay at her place until she got back. I was running short of money so I got a job with the United Fruit Company and waited. After the first year I stopped waiting, and halfway through the second year I all but forgot what she’d looked like.”

  “What about her family? Hadn’t they known where she’d gone?”

  “She wasn’t Costa Rican.”

  “What was she?”

  “Panamanian.”

  “What about the National Geographic Society? Did you contact them as to her whereabouts?”

  Resting an elbow on the table, Everett cradled his chin on his hand. “I cabled them, but no one would give me any information because I wasn’t a relative.”

  Samuel leaned forward. “Why didn’t you go back home?”

  Shrugging a thin shoulder, Everett affected a sad smile. “I was in love, and a part of me wouldn’t permit me to believe that she wasn’t coming back. The woman who owned the house where she lived told me that Eladia would stay away for years, but whenever she came back she would pay her all of her back rent.”

  “I can see why you’ve waited,” Samuel said softly.

  “I’m through waiting.” A muscle twitched in Everett’s lean jaw. “Getting sick and not knowing if the next day was going to be my last has made me look at life very differently now.”

  “How’s that?”

  A pregnant pause ensued. Samuel thought perhaps he’d asked a question that was too personal in nature. After all, he did not know anythi
ng about Everett Kirkland aside from what he’d just revealed. He stared at him, seeing things he hadn’t noticed before. The slanting gold-flecked eyes reminded him of some of the Chinese-Cubans he’d seen during his recent trip there. The bridge of his nose was narrow, which made his flaring nostrils more pronounced, and his sun-darkened skin was layered with shades of gold to alizarin. He was only an inch or two shorter than his own six-foot, two-inch height, but Everett’s weight loss made him appear taller.

  “I will never love someone more than I love myself.”

  “What do you want, Everett?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Samuel decided to be straightforward. It was the only way he knew how to be. He abhorred evasiveness and detested innuendoes. That was why he’d respected Arturo Moreno’s decision not to sell him his sugarcane plantation, because he’d not softened his declination with an apology and sugary words layered with a falsity that would leave him angry, bitter and filled with resentment—emotions that would prove detrimental in future endeavors.

  “What do you want for yourself? Where do you see yourself in the next five to ten years?”

  “How truthful do you want me to be, Samuel?”

  “I’d like complete honesty.”

  “I don’t want to be in the position where I’d have to wait for someone to offer to feed me, or sell myself like a whore for boat fare, and I don’t ever want someone to order me about before they will sit down and talk to me.”

  Samuel recoiled as if he’d been struck across the face. “Don’t blame me for your predicament.”

  “I’m not blaming you,” Everett countered, his voice lowering to just above a whisper. “I accept full responsibility for my own fucked-up predicament.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Samuel crossed his arms over his chest. Flat broke, hungry and having faced death from a fatal disease, Everett Kirkland had come at him like a rabid coon.

  “How old are you, Everett?”

  “Why?”

  “Just answer my question.”

  “You like giving orders, don’t you, boss man?”

  Pushing back his chair, Samuel rose quickly. “I don’t have to take your shit.”

  Half rising, Everett reached out and grasped his wrist. “Sit down. Please,” he added when he saw Samuel glaring at the fingers gripping his arm.

  Samuel shook off the hand and sat down. “Let’s get something straight, right here, right now. I didn’t come all this way to waste my time arguing with someone who has messed up his life, and then feels the need to lash out at someone who had nothing to do with it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Cole,” Everett mumbled.

  “You’ve already called me Samuel, so why act remorseful now?”

  “I wasn’t raised to be disrespectful.”

  “Neither was I,” Samuel countered. “Now, I’m going to ask you again. How old are you, Everett?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “When will you be twenty-nine?”

  “Next February. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you after you tell me about the United Fruit Company.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  Everett Kirkland told him things about Costa Rica and the United Fruit Company that he didn’t have time to read in a book. He learned that Costa Rica was the first Central American country to export coffee and in 1892 Minor Keith, a New Yorker turned Texas pig farmer, had obtained concessions to build a railroad employing thousands of Jamaicans, Chinese, Europeans and indigenous Ticos. He displaced local banana growers before securing a monopoly on the production of the fruit. After merging with the Boston Fruit Company in 1899 he expanded his empire and subjected immigrant workers to restrictive systems, such as payment with scrip.

  “How much influence does the United States have here?”

  “They have their noses everywhere in the Caribbean, Central and South America,” Everett said, frowning. “They’ve intervened in Colombia, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua and Guatemala.”

  “Who are United Fruit’s competitors?”

  Everett shook his head. “They don’t have any. If your intention is to buy a banana plantation, then I suggest you save your breath and what money you have.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Approach them with a plan to ship their bananas throughout the States and the Caribbean.”

  “Why not offer to buy shares in the company?”

  “You don’t want to get caught up in the ongoing politics of labor unrest coupled with the unstable governments in this region. A prolonged strike can lead to a loss of profits and eventual bankruptcy.” Everett hesitated, frowning. “What experience do you have with crop production?”

  Samuel told him about the soybean company he’d established with his brothers. A knowing smile softened the sharp angles in Everett’s face. “You’re really an ambitious son of a bitch.”

  Samuel’s smile matched his. “No more ambitious than the arrogant son of a bitch talking to me.”

  Everett touched his glass to the one next to Samuel’s right hand. “Touché. Tell me about your soybeans.”

  Samuel picked up his glass for the first time and drained it, the combination of fruit juices and rum pleasantly intoxicating on his palate. He explained the properties of the soybean to Everett, comparing it to the peanut. “It’s a crop of the future on this side of the globe even though it’s been a food staple cultivated in Asia for over five thousand years. Richer in protein than most meats, it also contains calcium, vitamins and many other nutritional minerals. Its oil is extracted for the manufacture of paint, soap and other nonfood products. A major advantage of planting soybeans is that they don’t deplete the soil like tobacco.”

  “Why don’t you concentrate on growing soybeans?”

  “I did for four years until I sold my share to my brothers.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to control my own company.”

  Everett squinted, as he appeared deep in thought. “Have you considered becoming an importer and exporter?”

  “No. How would I do that?”

  “Buy your brothers’ soybean harvest, sell it abroad, then export produce that’s not grown in the States.”

  Excitement shimmered in Samuel’s eyes as he contemplated the accountant’s proposal. Everett was young, only two years older than he was, and worldly. “How would you like to become a wealthy man, Everett?”

  A hint of a smile touched Everett’s mouth. “I’d like that very much.”

  “I believe it can become a reality if you come work for me.” He had the resources to start up another company, but needed Everett’s education and business savvy.

  He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out an envelope and pushed it across the table. “There’s enough in there for a ticket to the States, my telephone number, and a little extra to take care of whatever it is you need to get back on your feet. Once you’re settled, give me a call.”

  Samuel stood up and walked away, leaving Everett staring at the envelope. It was a full five minutes before he opened it and counted the contents.

  Samuel Cole had just saved his life.

  Chapter 5

  I ask no favors for my sex… All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy.

  —Sarah Grimké

  I can’t believe I’ve become a prisoner in my own home. M.J. sat with her bare feet resting on a padded footstool, staring at the open book on her lap. She hadn’t turned a page in fifteen minutes.

  She’d become a prisoner because she refused to bend to her father’s will. He had forbidden her to leave the property or accept visitors—except those he approved of. The man whom Jose Luis wanted her to marry was repulsive. He was too old and there was something about him that reminded her of a reptile.

  The photographs Antonio had taken of he
r were duplicated and were now on display from Havana to Santiago de Cuba. She’d sat mute while her father ranted and railed for almost an hour about how could he show his face in polite society now that she’d ruined the Diaz name where no self-respecting man in Cuba would have anything to do with her?

  She didn’t want a Cuban man—not one who would treat her as chattel, like his lands, servants and other material possessions. She wanted to be M.J. and not some man’s mi esposa. She wanted to complete her education and tour Rome, Paris, Barcelona and London, and do so much more than most Cuban women in her station did; but family honor had to be preserved at any cost. And that meant not marrying out of her class. Pressing her head to the back of the cushioned chair, she closed her eyes, knowing she had to formulate a plan to regain a modicum of independence.

  M.J. hadn’t realized she’d dozed off until she heard someone calling her name. One of the live-in maids stood in the doorway. “Yes, Hilda?”

  “Senorita, you have a telephone call.”

  The words were barely out of the woman’s mouth when M.J. sprang to her feet and raced down the staircase to the first floor. Her heart pounded a runaway rhythm as she neared the small, round table cradling the telephone.

  Picking up the receiver, she cleared her voice. “Hola.”

  “M.J.?”

  Her dimples deepened as she grinned from ear to ear. “Hello, Samuel.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m well. In fact, I’m wonderful.” She was wonderful. His soft, drawling voice sent shivers up her spine.

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “Are you, Samuel?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Glad you’re talking to me?”

  “Of course I am, M.J. Why do you think I’m calling you?”

  “Is it because you’re planning to come to Cuba?”

  “I’m already in Havana.”

  M.J. couldn’t stop her knees from shaking. Groping for a nearby straight-back chair, she sat down. “When did you arrive?”

  “A couple of days ago.”

  “And you’re just calling me?”

  A deep laugh came through the earpiece. “Your father warned me that you were outspoken.”