Banana Republic

by Rawson, Eric;

“Do bring your instrument around in the evening,” Geddie said. “I strum a guitar. We’ll sit out back of the treeline before the mosquitoes get too thick.”

  “I’ll do that,” Porter said.

  “But if I were you I’d rethink that printing business. A gentleman over in La Ceiba tried to get up a subscription for an expatriate rag a few years back. He fell down a well. Everybody wants to read about themselves until they do. —Pierre!” Geddie shouted at the screen door. “Get out here, you mule!”

  

  Pierre turned out to be a slouching rawboned person of suspect origin. He told Porter he was Haitian and rattled off some lines in French to prove it. Looking him over, Porter doubted the man’s veracity. He had dirt-colored hair that tufted like the feathers of a diseased bird and a complexion like a grilled tomato. The cadence of his speech was that of the bayou. The man was a Cajun through and through, right down to his white rubber boots. In any case, Porter decided not to challenge him. Everyone, he reflected, is entitled to the creation of his own character.

  The two men, sweating and mottled, were short-stepping it across the plaza with the steamer trunk between them. Pierre had a rattling clump of keys on a leather thong around his neck. With his free hand he carried the alligator-skin valise. Porter grasped the neck of the mandolin with his.

  “Whatcha got in here? A cast-iron stove?”

  “This, mon frère, is my stock and trade,” Porter said.

  “I sure didn’t sign up for this, no.”

  “It is mind-boggling hot,” Porter agreed.

  “Some of us got things to do. I wanna lug all day, I go backa Port-au-Prince.”

  They arrived at a two-story building with a wooden cistern on the roof. He would later write of the Hotel de los Estranjeros, in a stab at accuracy, that it was a dreary hostelry, in great disuse both by strangers and friends. A grove of orange trees crowded against one side of it, enclosed by a low, rock wall over which a tall man might easily step. The house was of plastered adobe, stained a hundred shades by the salt breeze and the sun. As the two men staggered toward the portico, a spritz of tobacco juice hissed on the flagstones in front of them, and a man in a dirty canvas suit, carrying a decayed medical bag, lumbered out of the shadows. “You lousy sack of turds,” he snarled. “Where have you been? I missed my breakfast.”

  “Embrasse moi tchew,” Pierre said in a tone that made the man grunt with satisfaction. He shot another brown stream at their feet and abruptly heaved himself over the rock wall and into the street. The two of them, Porter thought, had had this exchange more than once.

  Porter and Pierre wrestled the steamer trunk through the entrance of the hotel and into the lobby. They dropped it with a tremendous thud. Pierre let out a whoop and sagged against the brass rail that ran along the top of a mahogany reception desk. Porter tapped on the bell. “Who was that specimen?”

  “That’s the quarantine doc. Grieg. Reckon he’s headed to the Valhalla to look over the outgoin’ bodies.”

  “He was waiting for you.”

  Pierre gave a shrug. “I cook a little ’round here.”

  “He doesn’t seem to like you.”

  Pierre let out a whooping breath. “It’s them that serves the public gets the most surliest treatment,” he said and looked despondent.

  “I say this often, but it’s worth repeating,” Porter said cheerfully: “I could use a drink.”

  His companion brightened. “It’s custom for the new res’dent to buy the—” sizing him up—“first three rounds.”

  A woman with a nest of copper hair and superior shoulder muscles appeared behind the high desk. She wore a high-collared shirtwaist of a devastating shade of mustard. She pointed her chin at Porter. “Quién es?”

  “Yanqui,” Pierre muttered.

  “Speak up, you rotten piece a gerbege,” she shouted in Chicago English.

  “American,” Pierre said more loudly.

  The woman scowled and turned her attention to Porter. “Welcome, mister. Cornelia Anderson’s the name. I hold the deed to this joint.”

  “Bill Porter.”

  She examined him up and down, taking his measure. “How long?”

  “Pardon?”

  “How long will you be staying?”

  “Three years, minus a week or two.”

  “Statute of limitation?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Porter admitted. “They always go after the beautiful ones.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Cornelia Anderson patted her hair. She pushed the ledger across the counter and dipped a pen in the inkwell. “Three dollars a week, cash American.”

  Porter, aware that he was being measured, passed a five-dollar coin across the counter with a flourish. “Do you extend credit?” he asked.

  “That seems premature.” She turned to Pierre. “Move that trunk upstairs to Number Five,” she commanded. “You got the key?”

  Pierre shook the clump of keys on the leather thong around his neck and muttered.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Nothin’, Connie.” He started thumping the trunk across the lobby.

  “Don’t you scratch my floor!”

  Pierre ignored her.

  “Give him a bottle on me,” Porter offered generously. “I understand it’s customary. What kind do you favor?”

  “We stock whatever you want at the bar. Eat in there too, you can stomach it.”

  “Guaro,” Pierre called from across the room. He smacked his lips like a goat with scrapie.

  “Guaro it is. On me,” Porter repeated. He wondered what guaro was.

  Keys rattling, Pierre began to thump the trunk up the stairs. Cornelia Anderson watched him with narrowed eyes. “You show him a shred a respect, he’ll eat your guts for breakfast and shit ’em out on you by bedtime.” She shifted her gaze to her new tenant and demanded, “Is that what you want?”

  “I would like to avoid that,” Porter said. “I hope the kitchen’s still open. All I’ve had to eat for two days is something the ship’s cook called toad-belly.”

  Cornelia Anderson shouted after Pierre. “When you finish with that, hustle back and cook this man some taters and eggs.”

  The steamer trunk thumped onto the next step.

  She turned back at Porter. “You want something to drink with that?”

  “Rum, I guess.”

  “White, gold, dark, or black?”

  “What goes with potatoes and eggs?”

  “Gold.”

  “Make it a double.”

  She looked him over. “I’ll bring the bottle.”

  

  Cornelia Anderson was explaining: “This ain’t a theory. When I’m properly charged up, the Cubs sweep the series, I don’t care who they’re playing. It’s what they call electromagnetical manipulation of the lumiferous ether. Those with right knowledge can direct the outcome of reality.”

  “You must have a splinter from the bleachers at Westside,” Porter said, only half-listening. He was tired and hot and a little drunk from rum. “Maybe a lock of Cap Anson’s hair?”

  Cornelia scoffed. “This is scientific, Mr. Porter, not some kinda voodoo. It’s manipulation. See, there’s lines a force in the atmosphere. You have the correct instrument, you can make ’em vibrate to your will. I have the instrument. It’s called a dynamic cathode, and I know how to use it.”

  “Was that the contraption I saw behind the front desk?”

  “That’s a telephone.”

  “I mean the one with the glass tubes.”

  Porter did not know much about electromagnetism, but he had his doubts about its effects on the National League pennant race. “Last I read, the Giants were leading by fifteen games,” he pointed out.

  “That’s because I need to make some adjustments to the longitudes. Wait till they’re in
Cincy in August. They’re gonna catch fire.”

  “Cincinnati’s leading the league for average. Seymour’s a shoo-in for the batting title, and Odwell already has six home runs.”

  “They have their own ethereal operator,” Cornelia explained, as if tutoring a dimwitted child. “Bertha Vanderhoof.”

  “Six!”

  “Hitting for power don’t mean nothing.”

  “What about the Pirates then?”

  “They got Mary Wales and Sister Samantha Adams.”

  “So it’s a female thing.”

  “Don’t be a jackass.”

  While they were talking, they had reached the end of the corridor. Cornelia Anderson threw open the door. Porter put down his valise and walked around Number Five, noting its charms. Terracotta floor, frosted-glass transom, jalousies, an armoire in battered mahogany, a washbasin with a chamber pot under it and a spotted mirror on the wall above it, an iron-framed bed with a white chenille coverlet under a mosquito net suspended from the ceiling, a writing table, and a cane chair with a broken seat. On the wall hung a reproduction of Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray and Black in a gilded bamboo frame.

  Porter laid his mandolin on the steamer trunk, which Pierre had left at the foot of the bed. He went over to the window and looked out. On the side street some soldiers were drilling in front of a low-slung building with a long unpainted wood porch. The soldiers in their patched blue uniforms marched with fair precision, while a red-haired sergeant who was not more than five feet tall shouted in a hard staccato voice at a soldier vomiting in the gutter. The bantam sergeant, the thermostat of his rage set on high, stamped up clouds of red dust. Porter had served in the Texas Rifles for a spell, mainly as a ploy to attract women at social events. He had passed many evenings in and out of his uniform in hay barns and hidden bowers. His heart still leaped at the sight of soldiers on parade.

  He turned back to the room as Cornelia Anderson finished her monologue. “And that’s the only way the Giants can take the pennant! Some progress, huh?” She set her mouth and glared at him accusingly. He felt he had missed something essential. There was a long silence. He said:

  “I should be able to work here.”

  “Work!” Cornelia Anderson shouted. She stepped over and laid heavy hands on his shoulders, in the manner of a stern aunt. “Why would you work, man? This is a hotel room. You sleep here, you crap here, you satisfy your carnal urges. Nobody can do any work with those fools marching around down there. Besides, it’s too damn hot. You want a chippy, by the way?”

  “No, thank you. I have a wife.”

  Cornelia dropped her hands and looked around the room. She pointed to the steamer trunk. “Is she in there?”

  “I mean, I have a wife back in Texas. A lovely wife.”

  “Lovely? That’s the word?”

  “Exactly the word.”

  “Does that mean you want the girl? Ain’t many around this town.”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself.” She dropped onto the bed and flicked open a Japanese hand fan.

  Porter sat on the broke-bottom cane chair. “Tell me about the people who live here. I plan to start up a periodical dedicated to the region.”

  “You a writer?”

  “I’ve had some experience.”

  “You’re one a those fellas aims to be remembered by future generations.”

  Porter was shocked. “I am not! I report the news of the day.”

  Cornelia nodded. “So there’s three types that end up in Coralio—”

  “I’ve heard about the types. I want to know the individual cases who live along the coast.”

  “If you talk Spanish—”

  “English speakers,” Porter clarified. “At least until I pick up the lingo.”

  “Well, if you live out on the barrier isles or up’n British territory, you’re a third- or fourth-generation descendant. Other’n that, they tricked you off an island to work on the plantations or run you outta your old hometown, and now you waste your days watching the ships come and go. Brits, Frenchies, Filipinos, Germans, Dutchmen, Jamaicans, Sicilians, a few Turks. They come and go.”

  “And the Americans?”

  “Mostly like you—waiting it out. There ain’t much law out here on the coast.”

  “Who has the money?”

  “If you find out, let me know.”

  Porter smiled. “Who owns that spread up on the hill?”

  “That’s a man you wanna avoid. Walter Whitaker. When he calls for you—and he will—you should have a couple stiff ones before you go.”

  

  He arranged his writing table thus: in the upper right, the ormalu canister from the First National Bank containing six pencils; next to it, the tortoise-shell pen knife for sharpening the leads; in the upper left, the photographic portrait of little Margaret, age three, by William P. Strange of San Antonio, framed in pewter; in the center, the Underwood No. 5 typewriter. It was a marvel, a single-element, frontstroke machine with ribbon inking. The mechanism was chrome, and the case was gleaming black enamel, scooped in the front to reveal a wondrous concave hemisphere of strikers, which suggested an arrangement of tiny organ pipes.

  Porter adjusted himself on the broken cane chair, rolled two sheets of bond paper with a sheet of carbon paper sandwiched between them into the machine, stared through the window at a brown rat climbing a palm trunk, clenched his teeth in a fit of familiar anxiety, and then started typing:

  Dr. Grieg, the quarantine physician, was a man of fifty or sixty. Porter lifted his fingers from the typewriter. He tapped the backspace key to the doctor’s name, rolled the paper down a notch and typed Gregg. He rolled the paper back, hit the backspace key, one two three four five, and typed five x’s. Pulled the carriage return.

  He held his position by virtue of an appointment by the Board of Health of Mobile, Alabama; Gulfport, Mississippi; and New Orleans, Louisiana. Those cities feared the ancient enemy of every Southern seaport—yellow fever—and it was the duty of Dr. Gregg to examine crew and passengers on every vessel leaving Coralio for preliminary symptoms. The duties were light, and the salary, for one who lived in Coralio, ample. Surplus time there was in plenty; and the good doctor added to his gains by a large private practice involving the distribution of intoxicants and pain-killers. The fact that he did not know ten words of Spanish was no obstacle; a pulse could be felt, a medicament slipped into a needy hand, and a fee collected without one being a linguist. Add to this description of facts that the doctor had a story to tell concerning the operation of trepanning which no listener ever allowed him to conclude, and that he believed in brandy as a prophylactic, and the special points of interest possessed by Dr. Grieg—. He tapped the backspace key, one two three four five, and typed five x’s. —Gregg will have been exhausted.

  Porter leaned back in his broke-bottom chair and cracked his knuckles. He picked up a pencil and read over what he had typed without removing the paper from the Underwood, putting check marks over a particular word or phrase. He was surprised that without ever having met the man, he had written something so apparently true, and he decided to drink a small glass of rum to celebrate.

  

  Buck Geddie stood in his stockinged feet on the majolica tiles of his bathroom, trying to urinate into one of only two flush-toilets in the town. A reddish iguana had attached itself to the wall about head level, and it watched him with a yellow filmy eye. Dr. Grieg stood in the doorway, chatting while the consul undertook what, for the first thirty-seven years of his life, had been a not unpleasant task.

  “Goddammit, Doc. I can’t get a flow.”

  “That must be a monstrous stone.” Dr. Grieg shot a stream of tobacco juice at the sink. Missed.

  “What kind of medicine are you feeding me anyway?”

  “Paying customers get the patent stuff from Frisco.”

>   Geddie snatched a blue bottle from the shelf next to the toilet and held it over his head without turning around. “What’s this?”

  “Basically, that’s water with a little molasses and coriander in it.” Dr. Grieg rummaged in his medical bag. “Do you want me to leave the hypodermic?”

  

  William Sydney Porter stepped from the portico of the Hotel de los Estranjeros and paused to let his eyes adjust to the utter glare. He settled his hat on his head the way a person might replace a lid on a hot kettle. Across the street, men were working in rhythm as they transferred heavy green bunches of bananas from railhead to wharf, from wharf to lighter, and across the gelatinous lagoon to the fruit steamer, where the bunches were winched aboard. The empty lighters returned. The operation was a smooth conveyor that scarcely required the supervisory whistle. Such efficiency was a wonder to behold. It had a sedative effect on the flock of observers sitting in the patchy shade of a poinciana, mesmerized by the industry of others.

  Porter sauntered across the street and approached the custom house. He stuck his head inside. A blond man, hatless and coatless, sat at a drafting table, writing in a ledger with a Conklin Crescent Filler fountain pen with gold trefoil filigree, which seemed to Porter an unwarranted luxury for a public servant. Slivers of green and yellow light came through the gaps in the wall boards, illuminating the drafting table, boxes of paper records, and a slab-like Syracuse floor safe.

  “Howdy,” Porter said.

  The customs agent did not look up. Pen scratched on paper. In the distance, someone shouted and a dog barked insanely.

  “You speak English?”

  “American,” he grunted.

  “Ah.… I don’t suppose you have a telegraph key?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a wire coming to the roof.”

  “Telephone.” He pointed to the instrument on his drafting table.

  “I see. Could you direct me to the telegraph office?”

  “Follow the wire.”

  “You said it was a telephone wire.”

  “Follow the other wire.”

  Still no glance in his direction. Porter felt unwelcomed. He tried again, a hail fellow well met: “I’m Bill Porter!”