Banana Republic

by Rawson, Eric;

  “Where’s Buck?” Porter said. He stood over him and put his hands on his hips.

  Dr. Grieg motioned toward the distance. “Over at the telegraph office. This affair requires guidance from higher up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the line was cut.”

  “There are wounded men at the barracks.”

  The doctor eyed him bleakly. “So you’ve come to bother me.”

  “If you’ll do the sawing and stitching, I’ll apply the plasters. Do you have any ether?”

  “Hell no,” he said. “I don’t suppose those boys have any money.”

  “I don’t suppose they do. Let’s go.”

  

  Butch Higbee manned the throttle of the locomotive while the regular engineer stood behind him. He was back in the saddle, fighting and killing and riding the iron beast. The gunsmoke had mostly blown off, the dead filibuster—one of the no-account convicts—was laid out in the cuartel, tins of beans had been uncrated and consumed. Higbee was ready for more, but he expected that with Francisco Flores gone to his reward none of the uncaptured federales would stick around to fight. Still, he had to keep up the spirits of the troops. He pulled the cord of the whistle, a five-note Nathan, letting it scream a G-major 6th for fifteen seconds. He wished the locomotive were a Consolidation class or—oh Lordy!—a Mohawk, but even this Mogul 2-6-0 oil-burner had enough steam-driven motive power to plump his privates.

  The air brakes hissed. Steam poured from the valves. A brass band had accumulated on the wharf and was playing, with frantic brio, military marches from around the globe. “Those boys are real spirited,” the regular engineer shouted in Higbee’s ear.

  Again he pulled the cord and the whistle screamed. From the boxcars erupted bloodthirsty cries and the hee-hawing of banana mules. The sky was streaked with purple and gold. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.

  

  Before the troops left for the interior, Higbee had drawn aside Roy Hannity, the ex-cop, and shared his plan to extract the combination to the custom-house safe without physically damaging Elliot Evans and provoking the Marines into coming ashore. Leonard Vaught favored waterboarding the customs agent, but Higbee suspected that sooner or later the red-headed lunatic’s knife would come into play, so he nixed the plan. Roy Hannity’s job was to make sure Vaught did not kill Evans until Higbee returned. He had decided that Vaught was too great a liability to bring along on the march to the capital. He might end up killing some of the campesinos they were counting on to join the insurrection.

  As soon as the federales heard that Frankie Flowers was dead and the commandante was wounded, the soldiers, recognizing a chance to collect their back pay and get a decent supper, had joined the Americans. Their wounded comrades, sewn and bandaged by Porter and Dr. Grieg, had been spirited off by friends or family. So it was that Vaught and Hannity found themselves in the deserted barracks, tying Elliot Evans to a straight-backed chair with some rope they had found in a storeroom. Vaught stuffed a cloth in the customs agent’s mouth. While Hannity observed from the doorway, Vaught positioned Cornelia Anderson’s gramophone on another chair a few inches in front of Evans and pointed the horn at his face. Then he fitted Isabel Eames Whitaker’s recording of C’est les contrabandiers le refuge ordinaire onto the machine. He stuffed his ears with cotton balls, followed by candle wax.

  “You wanna plug yer ears,” Vaught said to Hannity.

  Hannity yawned. “Naw. I’m gonna take a nap.”

  “No you ain’t. Yer takin’ the first shift.”

  “Like hell I am.”

  “This ain’t a discussion. Yer takin’ the first shift. I ain’t had a dump in six days, and I can feel it movin’.”

  The look in Leonard Vaught’s eyes convinced Roy Hannity to remain in the barracks. He took the jar of cotton balls and began to stuff his ears.

  Vaught cranked the handle of the gramophone and hit the lever. A soprano voice shrieked from the horn. Vaught leaped back like a cat from a frying pan. He cursed for a couple of minutes, while Evans rolled his eyes in wild terror and shook his head back and forth. His arms and legs strained against the ropes, and the tendons in his neck stood out like steel cables.

  “We’ll play that one till it wears out!” Vaught shouted. He tapped a cardboard box on the floor with the toe of his boot. “We got plenty more.”

  

  As the sound of the chuffing, clacking, creaking train faded into the dense jungle, walking back along the tracks into town in the gloaming came Butch Higbee. He was primed for glory, but he had realized, as the train pulled onto the mainline, that there was no way in hell he could entrust the recovery of the custom-house receipts to a pair of corrupted human being like Leonard Vaught and Roy Hannity. He turned over the throttle to the regular engineer and hopped off the snorting iron beast.

  

  Leonard Vaught wiped his anus with a piece of newspaper and dropped it into the wooden commode. When he stood up, he looked inside. He poked the pile of excrement with his index finger, separating the solids. Then he dropped the seat and wiped his finger on his trousers. He ran a hand through his red hair. Adjusting his suspenders, he wandered back to the front of the Hotel de los Estranjeros. From overhead came muffled thumps and shrieks of laughter.

  The bar was empty save for Cornelia Anderson, who sat on her high stool gazing into space with a mooncalf expression while she rinsed glasses and set them to dry on a towel.

  “Hey, bitch, where the hell is ever’body?”

  Cornelia shook off her dreams. She looked at the little gunner as he strutted in, cock of the walk. “What did you say?”

  “I said where the hell is ever’body?”

  “The other thing.”

  “Hey, bitch.”

  Cornelia stared at him long enough to give him the fidgets. “If you ever disrespect me again, you little pipsqueak, I will put you over my knee and beat your skinny ass black and blue.”

  A gleam sprang into Vaught’s eyes. “You will?”

  Cornelia corrected course: “I’ll poison your punch and stand over your dying body reading aloud from the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” he muttered.

  “Ma’am!”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I make myself clear?”

  Vaught scowled and stared at his shoes. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What are you doing here anyway? The train left twenty minutes ago.”

  Vaught’s head jerked up. “It did? Higbee too? Goddammit!”

  “Din’t you hear the whistle?”

  “I thought that was the dinner whistle.” Vaught’s face grew dark, and some inner spring seemed to tighten. “God dang it! Now I’m hungry.”

  “Kitchen’s closed.”

  “What am I s’posed to do?” he wailed. “They didn’t leave us no rations at the barracks.”

  “There’s a buncha dead birds outside. I hear parrot don’t taste bad with some salt.”

  Vaught beat his fists on the sides of his head. “It rankles, you know what I mean? Gettin’ left behind. Rankles!”

  “I suppose so,” Cornelia said.

  Vaught paced around the room in agitation, and then came over and hopped up on a barstool. He looked earnest. “Do you ever wonder what yer own guts taste like?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Yer own guts, lady. If you ate ’em, how’d they taste?”

  They sat in silence for some time. The thumping and shrieking went on overhead.

  “I don’t suppose,” Cornelia Anderson said, “there’s any way to find out.”

  “No.” Vaught shook his head. “That’s what ever’body tells me. By the way, you might wanna send someone to empty the commode. It’s pretty bad.”

  She was relieved to see Butch Higbee coming up the street toward the hotel.

 


  Elliot Evans slumped against the ropes that held him to the chair. Worn-out discs littered the floor. Leonard Vaught, ears stuffed with cotton and candlewax, was about to drop the needle on Non mi dir for the thirtieth consecutive play.

  Butch Higbee grabbed Evans by the hair and jerked his head up. “Are you ready to spill the combo?”

  Evans shook his head and grunted. Higbee let go of his hair and slapped him disgustedly. “Let ’er rip,” he said to Vaught. “Then go wake up Hannity to spell you. You can get some shut eye.”

  “I ain’t sleepy,” Vaught said. “Jest hungry.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “I will.” Vaught was tossing his knife from hand to hand. He flicked it, and it nicked into the wall and quivered.

  

  He appeared to have been trampled to death by mules. A Vesuvius foreman had found the body on the road outside town and reported it to McCoy after he returned from viewing the President of the Republic lying on the plaza with a bullet hole in his forehead.

  McCoy climbed back on his horse and rode down the hill. He went along the road, which was strewn with tin cans and ammunition, into the jungle. After a few minutes he saw the man lying in a shallow ditch. His legs, chest, and head had been mashed by mighty blows.

  “It was mules, all right,” McCoy confirmed as he and Whitaker, two hours later, stood over the mutilated body. “Two of them bolted from Higbee’s outfit.” Flies buzzed around the blood-sticky clothing and climbed over what was left of the man’s face. Above them the buzzards hovered, ragged angels. “A horse’s hoof is smaller.”

  McCoy shuffled through the papers he had retrieved from the unfortunate man’s wallet. “He’s a Pinkerton operative. Name’s John Foot. He might be down here on behalf of—” He shuffled the papers. “Imperial Insurance Company, New York. I can find out if he came on one of our steamers.”

  Whitaker thought for a moment. He slapped his boater against his open hand. “You realize what this means, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” McCoy said uncertainly.

  “Frankie Flores planned to slip away with the national treasury. Imperial Company insures this so-called government, and they sent this Pinkerton down to keep an eye on things.”

  “It could be that he had other business,” McCoy objected. “A place like this attracts bounty-hunters and investigators.”

  “A Pinkerton did not show up coincidentally at the very moment we were planning an expedition against the government.”

  “So where’s the loot?”

  “We’ll see about that. If Terencio arrives at the capital and finds the cupboard bare, he’ll be tempted to rescind concessions and put the squeeze on foreign business. That would about cook my goose. I won’t stand for it.” He clapped his hands to emphasize his point.

  “We should telegraph New York to let the Pinkertons know about Mr. Foot,” McCoy ventured.

  Whitaker shook his head. “The telegraph’s out of operation. Grieg can sign the death certificate. We’ll put him on ice and send him to New Orleans.” He examined the dead man. “Somebody has to scoop that up. Are the prisoners at the barracks?”

  “Gone with the train. They couldn’t wait to join up.”

  “What about your own men?”

  McCoy shrugged. “The less they know the better. Right now they’ve got a job keeping order on the plantations.”

  “All right. You stay here and scare off the mischief-makers. I’ll find Pierre and arrange for the removal. I understand he works as a mortician.”

  “Vulture,” McCoy said reflexively.

  Whitaker clapped his hat on his head and swung himself up into his gig. He slapped the reins and shouted “Giddup, Henry” and trotted down the road, which a few hours before had carried the scruffy mob of filibusters to their first battle in the Vesuvius Fruit Company’s attempt to ward off the depredations of Wall Street capitalists and advance its aim of uniting the Isthmus in a smooth-functioning network of mules, ships, and trains.

  

  They will tell you in Coralio, as they delight in telling the stranger, of the conclusion of that tragedy. They say that the countenance of the dead man was marred sadly by the effects of the shot; but he was identified as the fallen president. They will relate to you how the new government sifted the towns and raked the roads to find the valise containing the country’s surplus capital, but all in vain. They buried the dead man, without honors, back of the town near the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a real a boy will show you his grave.

  As his fingers flew over the typewriter keys, Porter could not help thinking that his report was premature. In point of fact, he had no idea what had become of the body of Francisco Flores, but he was eager to file the report with the Associated Press. Stories boiled in his head. The work took his mind off Isabel. Whenever he stopped typing, he started wondering what she would do now that Flores was dead.

  

  As Porter approached Hilario’s dry goods store, three men laden with rifles and shotguns hustled out. One of the men was Hilario himself, of the waxed mustache and elongated aspect.

  “Pierre,” Porter said to him as they dumped the firearms into a cart hitched to a donkey with white flowers painted on its face and flanks. He wondered if they were selling the guns or hiding them.

  Hilario’s face darkened. “Pierre?”

  Porter tried out some Spanish. “Está aquí?”

  Hilario spat, and the other men muttered. “Pendejo, hijo de puta, escoria,” etc., which Porter took to mean that Pierre was, indeed, inside the store.

  He went through the door and over to the telegraph cage and rang the bell.

  Pierre, wearing his green eyeshade, slid in from the storeroom. He put his hands flat on the counter, a proprietor.

  “He’p you?” There was not a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

  “I need to send a telegram,” Porter said. “I have a report to file.”

  “Telegram?”

  “Yes, a telegram—Morse code, two cents a word.”

  “Ain’t workin’, no.”

  “Oh.” Porter had not anticipated this possibility.

  “Come back in one hour,” Pierre said. “Mebbe go for a haircut.”

  “But you’re the barber.”

  “Mebbe a shave too.”

  Porter went outside and walked down toward the waterfront. Stone-faced merchants sat in their tiny shops along the street, swatting flies with palm fans. A pack of baying, rib-skinny dogs chased a chicken. Overhead three or four buzzards wheeled. As he passed the cuartel, gusts of scratchy song reached his ears: Isabel, sounding rather worn. He wondered if it was meant as entertainment for the filibusters who had been left behind.

  On the plaza ordinary life had resumed. Vendors hawked, shoeshine boys pestered, dockworkers sat in the heat, waiting for the banana train to come back. The unicyclist in the French sailor’s outfit patroled the perimeter of the plaza. Under the bullet-riddled guanacaste tree, a red-haired man with powder burns on his face sat roasting a bird over an open fire.

  Porter bought an orange. He walked over and stuck his head into the custom house. The interior showed signs of a rampage. Elliot Evans was nowhere in sight.

  Porter went back outside and surveyed the lagoon while he peeled the orange and ate it. The fruit steamer had sailed, as had the German—or Dutch—destroyer, but the American gunboat, tethered to two smaller vessels, was still anchored beyond the reef.

  After what seemed like an hour, he returned to Hilario’s. The donkey cart was gone.

  Pierre was leaning on the counter in the same position in which Porter had left him. “Can I send the telegram now?”

  “Telegraph ain’t workin’.”

  “But you told me to come back in an hour.”

  “Yep. Telegraph still ain’t workin’, Mr
.—?”

  Porter felt the panic rising. “You said to come back here as if the telegraph would be working in one hour.”

  “Telegraph ain’t workin’ for a day, mebbe two,” Pierre said. “Somebody need to mend the wire.”

  “So why did you tell me to come back in one hour!”

  “I had somethin’ to attend to. Took me a hour.”

  Porter turned around and, as he had on a previous occasion, began to mentally catalog the contents of the shelves. Meakin crockery, scotch bowls, tin pans, cast-iron skillets, enameled coffee pots, kettles, Barlow knives.…

  At length he collected himself enough to say: “Why didn’t you tell me an hour ago that the telegraph wouldn’t be working for two days? I could have waited until then to file my story.”

  “So why you come back now? You finna write a piece about the telegraph bein’ broke? Power a the press and all.”

  “Why are you still walking around?”

  “Wanna buy some bullets for your li’l gun?” Pierre said. “I give you a good deal.”

  The reason for this twist in the conversational thread became apparent in another moment when he heard the clipped flat arrogant voice of Walter Whitaker:

  “Well. If it isn’t our foreign correspondent.”

  Porter turned around with careful deliberation. “Howdy, Mr. Whitaker.”

  “You’ve been making a nuisance of yourself, Mr. Porter.”

  “You’ve been keeping busy yourself,” Porter said in his best Texas drawl.

  Whitaker’s pale blue eyes looked as placid as raging waters. A flush crept up his neck. “I hear you’ve been riding my horse, Mr. Porter.”

  “The rumors are true.” Still drawling. “Just borrowin’, as if from a good neighbor.” Over Whitaker’s shoulder, through the window, Porter could see Henry hitched to Whitaker’s little gig. Henry looked as fine as ever. “I thank you kindly,” Porter said. “I do.”

  “You turned down my offer of a job as a publicity man,” Whitaker said. “I expected you would. You’re a stupid person. Fortunately, I’ve been able to use your name for my own purposes.”

  “So I’ve been reading.” Porter chewed his lip. “Who’s been authoring on my behalf?”