Banana Republic

by Rawson, Eric;

  From one of the tents came eerie croaks and clacks, a rattle of metal, a ceaseless rustling. A lantern illuminated the other tent from within.

  Pierre raised the flap and stuck his head inside. “Somebody need somethin’?”

  “Jesus Christ Almighty!”

  Two men leaped up, tipping over a backgammon board and scattering checkers all over the tent. The smaller man grabbed the hot barn lantern that was hanging from the ridgepole. He let out a scream and dropped to the ground, thrashing and clutching his burned hand to his stomach, while the lantern swung in a wild arc overhead. A horrendous screeching erupted from the next tent.

  “You!” shouted the larger, bearded man. “You! What do you want, you fleabag?”

  “Donald, ain’t it?” Pierre said, pushing his shoulders through the flap. He looked over the scene with his muddy insolent eyes. “You folks in town?”

  “Yes, we’re in town!” Donald thundered.

  His companion was moaning and crawling around on his hands and knees to retrieve the spilled checkers.

  “Sellin’ cargo, I reckon.”

  “What do you think is in that other tent?” Donald demanded.

  “Sound like parrots to me.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “Must be shippin’ to Europe. They’s a French cruise steamer due tomorra.”

  “You, sir, are a master of deduction. The faculty at Berkeley would be lucky to have you. Now get the hell out of here.”

  The burned man poured a handful of checkers onto the backgammon board and pushed himself onto his camp stool. He and Donald glared at the intruder, who looked as unperturbed as a dead raccoon. The parrot tent began to calm down.

  “Okay,” Pierre said. “See you folks over the store tomorrow. Cash only. By the way, your donkey run oft. I rent you a fine horse for the trip home.”

  He slid back and let the flap drop and went on his way.

  

  The expeditionary force, nearly a hundred strong, came ashore ten miles east of Coralio shortly after eight p.m., wading through the last forty yards of surf to the rocky beach. The Hornet and the Emma were anchored, lightless, in the overcast night. They had killed the afternoon on the windward side of the barrier islands, before gliding into the unoccupied space between the U.S.S. Tacoma at Coralio and the U.S.S. Chicago at Solitas. On the beach, some wrinkled Carib fishermen sat on driftwood logs around a sputtering fire, mending their nets and watching the invaders haul crates of ammo and tinned beans out of the landing boats.

  Major Butch Higbee—he had been appointed to the rank by Terencio Flores—reviewed the plan with his officers, who until a few days before had been Bourbon Street low-lifes, prairie cutthroats, hillbilly croppers, and Buffalo Soldiers he had known in the Philippines. They would bushwhack four miles diagonally inland to a hamlet called San Manuel, where a pack of Vesuvius banana mules was waiting for them. There they would pick up the main road and roll into town the next morning with the sun behind them at twenty degrees.

  While the larger fraction of the filibusters sorted rifles and ammunition by torchlight, Lieutenant Vaught, rubbing his oversized hands with relish, plunged into assembling the Hotchkiss machine gun. When the gun had been set up on its heavy tripod, it looked like a gigantic lethal insect. Vaught issued a blood-curdling rebel yell. Higbee figured he must have learned it from an uncle or an elder cousin who had served in the Alabama conscripts. Vaught looked like a man who had never had a father.

  “God damn!” Vaught let loose a shrill laugh. “This is gonna be a massacre!”

  He squeezed the trigger, croaking out a stuttering ba ba ba ba sound as he swung the weapon to and fro. “You want a piece a this? Huh? You think those Springfield pea-shooters can match this old thing, you black sonsabitches? Huh? Goddang soldiers fallin’ all over the place, that’s what it’s gonna be.”

  Higbee beckoned to one of the ex-cops he had recruited in New Orleans, a beefy mass of murderous intent known as Roy Hannity, and ordered him to keep the ammo away from Lieutenant Vaught until they reached Coralio. It was too late. Lieutenant Vaught had assigned four privates to look after the ammunition and haul the gun through the brush. Well, then, maybe the privates should gradually fall back until they had put, say, a hundred yards or more between the lieutenant and the machine gun.

  Terencio Flores, the once and future president, lingered around the edges of the preparations, watching the piratical band of mercenaries with a blank expression. He had indicated to Higbee that he would bring up the rear until they had captured the garrison and taken control of the railhead. And cut the telegraph line; no point in spreading the news. As soon as they reached the interior plantations, they would connect with the bands of filibusters who had been filtering into the country for the last two weeks, attend to the wounded, and reprovision from the Vesuvius company stores. Then as they moved through the countryside, recruiting from the peasant masses, Flores would assume his position at the head of the column.

  Flores had, surprisingly, been a popular president, despite the fact that he had closed most of the schools, appropriated vast tracts of communal land for Vesuvius Fruit Company, thrown himself lavish military parades and birthday parties, could not prevent regular military incursions from bordering countries, and saddled his people with the massive debt that the Morgan combine was now collecting from the government’s only regular source of income, the customs receipts. But unlike his cousin Francisco, who was polished and cosmopolitan, Terencio Flores looked, spoke, and acted exactly like the citizens, who harbored some small hope that even if he offered no education, medical care, or material improvements, they might one day rise, individually and as a nation, to a standard of living equivalent to rural Mississippi. Higbee figured it would be a cinch for Terencio to stir up popular discontent with Francisco as the little army climbed into the Cordillera.

  When the last boatload of equipment had been dumped on the beach, Higbee’s men passed around bottles of whiskey, sharing them, in a wild moment of fellow feeling, with the old Carib fishermen. Then they strapped on their weapons and smashed the whiskey bottles on the rocks and urinated in the bushes. Cursing and groaning as if they had never before suffered an hour of hardship, they fell into rough ranks for the march through an unforgiving morass of brambles, crags, vines, mud, and slime. Fortunately, Higbee had hired a good lot of burly ex-cops as his sergeants. The big Irishmen from New Orleans had several motivational techniques they were eager to put into service. Higbee himself was sizzling with excitement at the prospect of mixing it up with the enemy. He could hardly wait to initiate hostilities. Swaggering to the head of the column, he lit a big fat stogie and roared: “Move out, boys!”

  Someone started a hoarse crapulous chorus of “Red River Valley,” and the cutthroats and low-lifes and hillbillies stopped cursing and bitching and joined in. Off they went:

  From this valley they say you are going. We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile, For they say you are taking the sunshine That has brightened our pathway a while…

  The Carib fishermen watched the soldiers-of-fortune disappear noisily over the gravel-banks into the jungle darkness. They looked at one another in the firelight, shrugged with the knowledge that someone was always going to trample over their beaches and shoot up their villages, and returned to their work.

  The Hornet weighed anchor and slipped back up the coast.

  

  Porter was hanging out in the deserted hotel bar with Herman Grieg. He was moody. Morose. A little drunk, talking to the doctor about this and that. About nothing. He had not experienced the bittersweet rush of virtue the hero is supposed to feel when he gives up the woman for her own good. Instead, he kept discovering new reasons to resent Walter Whitaker, whom he blamed for forcing Francisco Flores to scamper from the country with enough money to establish Isabel in style anywhere she wished to go.

  Porter poured a shot
of guaro and took it in a lump.

  “That’s some aggressive drinking, Bill,” Dr. Grieg said. “You’re about to tip off the edge.”

  “I know. Cheers.”

  Dr. Grieg chewed and spat. He was looking grubby and impoverished. There were only so many first mates to pressure for bribes.

  “How come Walter Whitaker never put an end to you, doc?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Doesn’t he object to paying for the quarantine papers?”

  The doctor spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “If I weren’t useful, I wouldn’t be here. My signature is worth the world to Vesuvius in every port from Corpus Christi to Tampa. I say who sails and who sits and stews.”

  The telephone rang in the lobby, and after a moment, Cornelia stuck her head in. “For you, Herman.” She looked around at the empty room and scowled and returned to the front desk.

  When he came back, Dr. Grieg seemed irritable. He dropped into his chair.

  Porter said: “What?”

  “Walter Whitaker’s man, McCoy. Wants me to inspect some fruiter coming in at dawn. The Emma. Never heard of her.”

  “Do they usually call you for inspections?” Porter took out his notebook and patted his pockets for a pencil.

  “Never,” Dr. Grieg said. “I hope this doesn’t set a precedent. You know I value my sleep.”

  

  At first light, the Hornet sounded her siren. She could be seen anchored a mile west of the lagoon, daring the Navy to come get her, which they did, seizing the ship for violating the Neutrality Act, despite Captain Johnson’s protest that she was laying over to take on supplies, as per instructions from her owner, Mr. J. L. R. Nixon of Pensacola, Florida. The commander of the Tacoma, strutting around like a small-town constable, yanked his bulldog pipe out of his mouth and retorted that he knew all about this Nixon fellow and the Hornet’s mission and that he was taking command for the purpose of towing her to New Orleans as evidence in the case against Walter Whitaker, a private U.S. citizen sponsoring the overthrow of a sovereign nation. No, it did not matter whether the United States of America was acting on behalf of Wall Street financiers, the commander’s mission was not political. Cap’n Johnson, we can arrest you, too, if you like. Just keep flapping your trap.

  The naval officers were upset to discover there was no one on the Hornet but a crew of sad-eyed, rope-muscled Sicilians eating breakfast in the galley. The officers’ footsteps echoed in the empty cargo hold. One of the bluejackets found a recent copy of the Picayune lying on a pallet. “Hey, Lieutenant, look at this.”

  Under the headline Banana Armada on the Move ran seven column-inches detailing the Hornet’s flight from Louisiana, even though the ship had not yet departed when the newspaper went to press. The reporter included an interview with Walter Whitaker of the Vesuvius Fruit Company, who declared that by expanding throughout the Western Hemisphere, U.S. businesses were doing what the government was too cowardly to do: ensure the well-being of our fair nation. The details of the Vesuvius invasion were laid out as plain as paper, including the date and time of the landing. But, the lieutenant decided, the Picayune’s crystal ball was clouded; he could see no indication that the Hornet had landed an army that morning. He tossed the newspaper into the bilge water.

  Hooking up a towline was going to take some time. The commander did not like that the Tacoma had been forced out of position, vis-à-vis the town of Coralio, but he supposed that a couple of hours wouldn’t make any difference. He puffed judiciously on his pipe. His lieutenant assured him that they were the victims of false reports.

  

  A couple of hours later, the Emma hove into view and anchored within shouting distance of the Tacoma. Even before the captain’s gig reached her, a queue of skiffs was wending its way from the wharf with loads of green bananas. The wharf was crowded with Jamaican dockworkers methodically going about Vesuvius business. The industrious buzz carried across the water on a slight breeze. A gull lamented, far far far, and the soldiers from the cuartel could be heard taking target practice in one of the trenches.

  The Navy boarding party could find nothing in the hold of the Emma but the blocks of ice and pallets of bananas. On the foredeck Walter Whitaker sat in a canvas-back chair, paging through a mildewy Bible he had found in his cabin. He was the Emma’s only passenger. That the president of the Vesuvius Fruit Company should travel on one of his steamers—and by now the Emma was registered to Vesuvius and was no longer an oyster-lugger—was not unusual. In fact, he explained tightly to the lieutenant, it was the most sensible means by which to shuttle between Coralio and New Orleans. It was his standard practice. The ship’s captain confirmed that this was the case. The lieutenant replied that in America no one, not even a man named Whitaker, was above the law. Whitaker reminded him that they were not in America and that the Emma was registered in the Caymans. The lieutenant told him that he didn’t give a tinker’s damn about the infernal Caymans, he had a good mind to have the Emma hooked up like the Hornet. Whitaker told him, in a chilly tone, that if he didn’t evacuate immediately, he would personally toss him into the drink.

  In the middle of the conversation the quarantine doctor came aboard. He was panting from the climb up the ladder from the boat.

  “Walter,” gasped Dr. Grieg. “Welcome back.”

  “Good morning, Herman.”

  “Mind if I have a look at the crew, seeing that they’re bound back to Gulfport?” He spit over the rail and hitched up his trousers, spit again, adjusted his steel-rimmed spectacles.

  “The lieutenant was just leaving. One way or another.”

  “Not on my account, I trust,” Dr. Grieg said to the lieutenant, who gave him the mad snake-eye. Dr. Grieg finally caught a deep breath and surveyed the buzz of activity. He had the air of someone who was willing not to get involved. “Shall we begin?”

  “Sign the papers,” Whitaker ordered. “You don’t get paid extra for wasting my time.”

  Whitaker stood up and tossed the Bible on the deck chair. “For some reason reading scripture puts me in a money-making mood. I’m going ashore with you.”

  

  Funny, Geddie thought, how so many things go on at once, a kind of layer cake of experience. Chanca had baked a soggy, multilayered banana cake the previous evening, and it was still on his mind. He could not remember when he had enjoyed eating something as much. He was strumming his guitar on the veranda while Sybil scampered about, chipper and chattering, a picture of good health. He had given her a spoonful of Bill Porter’s new concoction, and she had responded splendidly.

  On the lagoon, a dinghy bearing Walter Whitaker, immaculate in a white suit and boater, and Herman Grieg, seedy and rotund, moved at an angle across the procession of heavy-laden banana-skiffs. Two stevedores rowed.

  Some sailors were tethering the ex-oyster-lugger Emma and the ex-gunboat Hornet to the American battleship Tacoma, which had moved out of position to the west of the mouth of the lagoon.

  In the space formerly occupied by the Tacoma was a newly arrived hundred-twenty-meter ocean liner, the Pierrot, putting in for mail and light cargo. In the distance, a German destroyer was moving back and forth along the horizon like a target in a penny shooting-gallery.

  

  The filibusters finished the six-mile hike to Coralio, relieved of their burdens by the pack of bad-tempered banana mules that had been waiting at San Manuel, without encountering a living soul or, apparently, being noticed by one, although they were lofting torches and singing and cussing and fighting among themselves like Dixie Democrats at Christmas dinner with their Detroit in-laws. The whiskey had worn off, and the men were dehydrated. Their heads pounded. Their tongues tasted like shoe leather. They sweated in the calescent morning air. Many had acquired a fungal infection on the trip from New Orleans and were having trouble breathing. The water in the well at San Manuel
had been brackish, and the men were afraid to drink it. All the huts had been deserted, not even a fire smoldering. The villagers had taken every scrap of food and material comfort with them, leaving only the irritable mules stamping around in a makeshift enclosure beside the well, without a wrangler to look after them, unless he was hiding in the jungle watching—which he probably was, now that Higbee thought about it. The men were slipping into a funk of melancholy.

  On the road they came across an emaciated cow which Lieutenant Vaught used for machine-gun practice, drawing a public rebuke from Higbee for wasting ammunition, and sending Vaught into a seething spasm of near-mutinous resentment. On a brighter note, the men cheered up considerably as Vaught tore the bellowing beast to pieces with the Hotchkiss. Higbee saw that the incident had restored morale and stoked enthusiasm for the shooting to come, so he said no more about it.

  It was hard to tell where the edge of town was, but as they marched onto the Calle Grande, the sun behind them, Higbee observed, not for the first time, that with the exception of the Vesuvius-owned wharf and the Vesuvius-owned railroad, there was nothing that he, personally, would bother defending.

  

  The filibusters moved along the Calle Grande, firing their weapons in the air in defiance of Higbee’s orders and singing “Camptown Races.”

  Señor Gerardo followed his babbling students out of the schoolhouse.

  Camptown ladies sing this song, Doo-dah! Doo-dah!

  Camptown race-track five miles long, Oh, Doo-dah day!

  The children scattered into the neighborhood, climbing trees and scaling walls to get a better view. The church bell began to toll from the plaza. Shouting erupted on the wharf as the dockworkers scrambled toward the cover of the boxcars on the wye. The vendors on the plaza fled to the steps of the church, where the recovering addicts were emerging from the cellar, bleary and blinking. The habitués of the New Century and the Bar Coralio, having gotten an early start on their guaro-drinking, poured out to watch; the rougher ones fingered the pistols in their pockets, eager for action. The bumboats and banana skiffs made a beeline for the French ocean liner, the closest point of refuge.