Banana Republic

by Rawson, Eric;

  

  Walter Whitaker felt about his daughter, Pauline, approximately the way he felt about his aged mother: she was loved best from a distance. Pauline attended Mrs. Chatham’s school in the Garden District. It was not the most rigorous girls’ school in New Orleans, but it was the most expensive, and it was not a Roman Catholic institution. He would have sent her to the Chapin School or Brearley, where her grandmother could keep an eye on her from the Upper East Side, but Pauline refused to live in New York. He suspected that her apparent stubbornness was actually a product of ennui. She was not a willful girl. He could not bear her company.

  Mrs. Chatham’s school was housed in a white, columned mansion which had belonged to a sugar-cane planter and merchant named Bradley, whom Whitaker despised for beating him to the acquisition of land in both Cuba and Haiti. He refused to visit Pauline at Bradley’s former abode, so he set a date with her at a tea room in the French Quarter.

  The day was cold and rainy. The tea room smelled musty and sweet, like peonies.

  “I’ve been reading about you in the papers, Daddy,” Pauline drawled with exquisite boredom. She was wearing a new pink dress and hat, despite the season. “It all sounds utterly exciting.”

  “It’s not,” Whitaker snapped. He could not understand why the longer Pauline was at Mrs. Chatham’s the more lethargic she became. Perhaps it was a nutritional deficiency or some kind of female trouble that was exacerbated by the company of other idle young women.

  “I thought the drawing of the mule was marvelously pointed and droll.”

  Whitaker did not say anything. He picked up the large envelope that lay on the table and opened it and slid out the sheets of legal paper, all scrolls and fancy capitals.

  “This promises to be uninteresting,” Pauline said. She nibbled on an orange-blossom madeleine, decided she didn’t care for it, and nibbled on a profiterole. She made a face. “Too, too much,” she said.

  Lifting the documents one by one, Whitaker explained: “I’m leaving these in the offices of Howard & Leroux should you need to consult them. Here I detail the terms of your trust as it is now constituted. These are the deeds to my properties in the United States and abroad. This is my last will and testament, signed and witnessed this morning. In the event of my demise, you will take sole ownership of Vesuvius Fruit Company. I’ve decided that Isabel is on probation for the immediate future. Mr. McCoy will continue to run the day-to-day operations.”

  “I suppose I’ll also be responsible for your untenable debts.”

  Whitaker looked at Pauline as she sipped her tea, a picture in pink. He wished he had a son, so that he could hit him.

  

  The Giants, behind Christy Mathewson, clinched the World Series at the Polo Grounds in Game Five. In the end, the series was a lackluster affair, with a combined batting average below .200. But in Coralio, the week had been a howling success. The games set the standard for future episodes of wanton abandon. Although only two persons had died—one of a heart attack brought on by an overdose of cocaine and the other by aspirating his own vomit as he lay in a gutter—dozens had blacked out drunk, many had acquired gonorrhea infections, and several had lost important articles of clothing, which were now being sold in the second-hand store on Calle Ancho. The Salcedo Brothers’ second trumpeter ruptured the vessels in both his eyes, and three local businesses were smashed up by impetuous fans celebrating victory—or mourning loss, who cared?

  Buck Geddie had not attended the final four games. The past days had been a nearly-unbearable ordeal of sweats and chills, omens and premonitions, oppressions of the spirit and whipping waves of physical pain. He could not keep down a cup of broth. He had not slept in days. He had neglected Sybil’s diaper. On top of everything else, he could no longer control his own bowels. Three or four times a day he had to change his undergarments. Life, after disappointing him, was now humbling him.

  He was crouched on the toilet with the Times, chewing his cigar and blinking to clear his clouded vision, when he heard a muffled voice call from outside. He gazed bleakly at the iguana that crept across the opposite wall. Its yellow eye rotated in its socket as it searched for prey.

  There was the voice again, summoning. No one responded. Where did the staff go after sundown? Geddie pushed himself upright with a terrific groan and hitched up his trousers. He tossed his cigar in the toilet and moved toward the window on unsteady feet and lifted the sash. He stuck his head into the night. “What!”

  “Howdy,” said a voice he recognized as Bill Porter’s. The Texan emerged into the semi-circle of light that spilled from the window.

  The consul looked at the face beneath the pushed-back Stetson and said: “This is inconvenient, Bill.”

  “I heard about the morphine crisis,” Porter began, without preliminaries, “and I figured you were suffering.”

  “You figured right.”

  “So I made up some medicine. Here.” He stretched on his toes, one palm braced on the clapboard siding of the consulate, and handed a blue bottle up to Geddie.

  The consul took it in both hands. He pulled the cork and sniffed. “This isn’t some of Grieg’s coriander water, is it?”

  “My own formula,” Porter told him, relaxing back on his boot heels. “Guaranteed to relieve kidney pain and restore vigor.”

  “Palliative or curative?”

  “A little of both, I hope.”

  “What do you know about mixing medicine?”

  Porter hung his head.

  “What?” the consul inquired.

  Porter cleared his throat. “I hate to admit it. I’m licensed by the State of North Carolina to compound and dispense medicaments of all varieties.”

  Geddie did not understand.

  “I’m a pharmacist, dammit.”

  A light broke across the consul’s features. “There’s no shame in that, son.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d spent time in the back of a drugstore.”

  “I suppose,” said the consul. “It never helps to look too closely at anything.”

  Porter held up another, smaller blue bottle. “I brought something for Sybil, too. Where is she?”

  “She’s around somewhere, taking her exercise. What is that?”

  “Private recipe.”

  Geddie reached down from the windowsill and took the bottle.

  “That will help with her digestion,” Porter said. “It’ll also kill worms.”

  Geddie held a bottle in each hand and looked from one to the other. He did not know what to say. Finally he said: “I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about ‘that’s right liberal of you, Bill,’” Porter said. “‘Thank you kindly.’”

  “I do thank you. Anything I can do for you?”

  “Not much,” said Porter. “Like Sybil, I’m just out for my exercise. Thought I might get drunk. Care to join me? I could use a friendly ear.”

  Geddie was the kind of man who felt obliged to return one favor with another, but tonight he was just too itchy and jumpy to leave the house, and he told Porter so. “But I’ll lean out the window and chat,” he said.

  “Outstanding,” Porter exclaimed. He pulled a sheaf of papers from his jacket and unfolded them. “Let me read you what I’ve been working on.”

  There was a great, full moon, and the sea was mother-of-pearl. Almost every sound was hushed for the air was but faintly stirring, and the town lay panting, waiting for the night to cool.

  Offshore lay the fruit steamer Andrador, of the Vesuvius line, full-laden and scheduled to sail at six in the morning. There were no loiterers on the beach. So bright was the moonlight that a man could see the small pebbles shining on the beach where the surf wetted them.

  Then down the coast, tacking close to shore, slowly swam a little sloop, white-winged like some snowy sea fowl. Its course lay within twenty points of
the wind’s eye; so it veered in and out again in long, slow strokes like the movements of a graceful skater.

  The tactics of its crew brought it close to shore, this time nearly opposite the consulate. But the Andrador was the sloop’s destination. No doubt some passenger with a sailing permit from up the coast had come down in the sloop to catch the regular fruit steamer on its return trip. Like a coquettish pigeon the little boat tacked on its eccentric way until at last its white sail was lost to sight against the larger bulk of the fruiter’s side.

  When he stopped reading, Geddie said: “That’s a true story.” He glanced toward the lagoon. “Although you’ve exaggerated the intensity of the moonlight. There’s been a thin overcast these last three nights.”

  “Maybe you could help me finish it,” Porter suggested hopefully.

  “If you want to know who’s visiting the Andrador in the middle of the night, you’re asking the wrong man.”

  “I don’t think that sloop was carrying anyone who had booked passage home. With all the trench-digging and soldier-drilling and news-trickling from New Orleans, I think that somebody wanted to come ashore without being observed. Who would that be?”

  “Bill, I’ll say it again: you’re asking the wrong man.”

  “Who should I be asking?”

  “You might want to examine your motives, son. I can’t believe this is a matter of your natural curiosity.”

  “Maybe not entirely. I’m hoping it has something to do with that son of a bitch up there on his hilltop.”

  “You could ask Elliot Evans, but I doubt he’d help you.” Geddie hesitated. “You best leave it alone. But since I know you won’t, you might ask that rot-gutted fathead Pierre.” A wave of nausea washed over him. The top of his head expanded and contracted. He shivered. “You’ll have to excuse me, Bill. I’m not feeling myself.”

  It was time to crawl into bed for another week.

  

  Henry, the fine bay gelding, bore the person of Pierre—dark shades, white Stetson, buttermilk-colored suit with a scarlet necktie—down Calle Severo and up Calle Grande, which steamed like a kitchen in the afternoon heat, past the schoolhouse and the recently looted shops, past the customs shack and the church, across the blighted plaza. It had been raining—one of those sudden ghastly downpours that every afternoon washed away the morning’s dust—and the wharf and plaza were puddled with oily black slicks. As they crossed the plaza, man and horse were bothered by someone wearing a French sailor’s suit and riding a unicycle.

  “Sors d’ici, connard!” Pierre shouted at him. “Tu n’appartiens pas ici!”

  “Baise toi,” the unicyclist spat. “Putain de cajun.” He rode around the horse in tight circles, voicing his disapproval, all the way to the entrance of the hotel, and then scooted up the deserted sweltering street past the cuartel.

  Pierre dismounted with a scowl and tossed the reins over the rail at the side of the portico. He stroked Henry’s nose, and Henry nuzzled his shoulder.

  As he skulked toward the entrance, a hand shot out of the shadows and grabbed him by the collar and pulled him behind one of the columns of the portico. His dark glasses flew off and rattled on the flagstones.

  “Whoa, brother!” Pierre shouted. “Who that?”

  Porter swung him around, causing him to stumble. He had not meant to be rough. “Sorry.”

  He straightened Pierre’s collar and brushed off the buttermilk-colored lapels. Then he remembered the oft-repeated advice never to give the Cajun an inch. He yanked a button off Pierre’s coat and stuck it in his pocket and thought, This is shabby behavior, kid.

  Pierre fell back a step and fixed his mud-colored eyes on the wall behind Porter’s head. He fingered the cloth where the button had been. “What you want, mister? I ain’t got money.”

  Porter inched to his left in an effort to align his face with Pierre’s gaze, but Pierre kept shifting his focus. “Listen, what can you tell me about the Andrador? I want to know who came ashore after dark on Thursday.”

  “Who’s askin’?”

  “I’m asking!”

  “Mr.—?”

  “Porter! Bill Porter is asking!”

  “Whaddya do round here, Mr. Porter?” Pierre said coldly and shifted his gaze so that he was looking at Porter’s hat.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Porter could feel the blood pounding in his temples. But: “Okay. Okay, fair question. Since my newspaper office burned down, I’ve been working as a foreign correspondent.”

  “What foreign gov’ment you work for, Mr. Porter?”

  “I don’t work for any foreign government! I’m reporting from territory—this territory—that is foreign in relation to the Associated Press. Which I work for. In New York. That is, the Associated Press is headquartered in New York. That is to say, I’m reporting from foreign soil as far as the readers back home are concerned.”

  “I ain’t on foreign soil. This my home.”

  “You told me your home’s in Port-au-Prince.”

  “I ain’t there no more.”

  “You’re on foreign soil in relation to Louisiana, which is, no doubt, your birthplace.”

  “Seems ruther complicated.” Pierre tilted his head back and looked at the paint peeling from the ceiling of the portico. “At some point a man acquires a idea of hisself and he clings to it come what may. That’s the God-honest truth.”

  Porter could hear the train chuffing in the distant jungle. In a short while, laborers—probably clinging to ideas of themselves—would swarm across the wharf to haul loads of green bananas to the skiffs. He grasped Pierre by the shoulders and peered into his unfathomable muddy eyes:

  “Who came ashore from the Andrador night before last? More than one person?”

  Pierre shook Porter off and puffed up his cheeks like a frog.

  “I’ll buy you a bottle of guaro,” Porter said.

  Pierre let out a noxious cloud of onions and alcohol. “Two fellers. One, he took the train outen here. Heard he rent himself a mule, gonna trek to the capital.”

  “Someone who works for Walter Whitaker?”

  “Don’t think so, no.”

  “But American?”

  “Mebbe.”

  “Why did he come ashore at Coralio?”

  Another shrug. “Dude look like a Pinkerton you wanna know the truth.”

  “What about the other?”

  Pierre shrugged. “Disappeared. Mebbe he went back.”

  Porter chewed over these pieces of information. A Pinkerton operative might have a hundred reasons to come ashore, given the number of fugitives who were frittering away their ill-gotten gains in Coralio; but what would a Pinkerton man be doing in the jungle? Or on his way to the capital?

  Pierre licked his chapped lips and straightened his red necktie. “So how ’bout that bottle?”

  “You’ve been informative,” Porter admitted. He touched the brim of his Stetson. “Thank you. Tell Cornelia to put it on my tab.”

  “Okey-doke,” Pierre said and trickled off toward the door to the lobby. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  

  There it was again. That name: William Sydney Porter.

  Butch Higbee could not open a newspaper without reading about what Vesuvius Fruit Company was planning to do about Francisco Flores. Today it was some drivel about the company’s steamer Andrador and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency taking an interest in the developing coup. Whitaker had told him nothing about calling in the Pinkertons, but he supposed the more the merrier. Still, getting the news from Porter rather than his boss really got Higbee’s goat.

  He tossed the paper in the gutter and headed for the Carousel to recruit a translator. He had a meeting with some ex-cons who claimed to speak Spanish.

  

  The New York Times, November 22, 1905: The season of grand opera opene
d at the Metropolitan Opera House last night with “La Gioconda.” The cast contained Nordica, Homer, Caruso, Scotti and Plancon. Mrs. Astor, who never misses a first night at the opera, was one of the early arrivals. Mrs. Vanderbilt was in Box No. 31.

  Isabel let out a little scream. She scrunched the newspaper and hurled it at Monroe, who looked hurt and whimpered off behind the sofa.

  

  Porter had a feeling that the unbaked dough of his life was starting to rise. He paused, his fingers hovering over the keys of the Underwood typewriter, to consider this metaphor. It sounded puffy. And why did he refer to himself in the third-person? He sighed and leaned back in his broke-bottom chair and stared out the window of Room Five at a sky banded with high gray clouds. He could hear the soldiers drilling in the street below and a rabble of dogs tearing something apart on the plaza while the shoeshine boys egged them on.

  Porter had decided it was time to engage in the long-postponed reflection on his life and imminent death by a banana man’s bullet. He had hoped, as everyone has hoped, that his death would be of calculable consequence, and he was not happy with the infinitesimal impact on the world he estimated would result from his demise. His mother and father were dead, his wife was dead, his Uncle Clark was dead. He had no siblings, no cousins worth kissing, no boon companions left in Texas. His daughter, Margaret, was too young to know him as anyone but a stranger. In any case, he supposed it would be better if he stayed out of Margaret’s new life in Pittsburgh until she came of age and could forgive his neglect or at least understand his excuses. When they reunited, he was determined that the dough of his life, et cetera.… He stood up and started pacing around the room. That is, if he lived long enough to reunite.

  He had avoided thinking about these matters for thirty years, but circumstances forced him to consider that there might be no future for William Sydney Porter. He had never feared death. For him, as for many, it was a remote probability, personally. The ragged wing had brushed his cheek from time to time, but always he had escaped, easily and thoughtlessly and without religion. His was a gambler’s view of mortality, a utopia of possibility, a parallel life. He could not accept that the odds were infinitely in favor of his eventual passing.