Banana Republic

by Rawson, Eric;

  “For what?”

  “Your future. I brought these cards all the way from the Third Ward for jest this occasion. You can shuffle, bright boy.”

  Porter slowly returned to his seat. Higbee sat on a chair at right angles, resting the Luger on the top of the table. Porter took the pack and broke the seal. He shuffled the cards, once twice thrice, squared them, and put the deck on the table. Higbee cut for the queen of diamonds.

  “Not bad,” said Porter. He cut for the ace of spades.

  Higbee’s hand twitched on the Luger. “Do that again.”

  “Do that again or you’ll kill me, or do that again and you’ll kill me, or do that again and you definitely won’t kill me?”

  “That’s right, slick.”

  “Okay.”

  Porter shuffled the cards and cut. The ace of spades. “Do you want to shuffle?” he inquired.

  Higbee stuck his gun in its holster and shuffled the cards noisily, squared the deck, and slammed it on the table. “Do it.”

  Porter cut for the ace of spades.

  “Damn! You jest can’t stop, can you?”

  Porter shook his head. “It’s easy to go too far,” he said. “As you know.”

  Higbee brought out the Luger again.

  “I thought we were cutting for my future,” Porter protested.

  “This is it, pal.”

  “Listen, Higbee,” he said, speaking rapidly, “I’m sure you have plenty of things to be pissed about in your life, but I’m not the one you want to aim your—what is that, some kind of German gun?—anger at. I have money. How does two grand in gold certificates sound?”

  “The last time you had a dollar to your name was when you scampered with my game bank,” Higbee said. “I don’t imagine writin’ for the papers pays too good. In any case, you ain’t gonna be doin’ no more a that.”

  Porter was tired of people pointing guns at him, but he could not believe that this was the last time it would ever happen. He looked Higbee straight in the eye. “Ten grand.”

  In the distance, a ship’s siren sounded, long and low.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” Cornelia Anderson strode into the bar. “Butch, what’re you doin’ with that thing? Put it down!”

  Higbee looked at her in alarm. “I ain’t finished!”

  Cornelia wedged herself between them, her back to Porter. “You most certainly are finished, buster. This ain’t the place for bloodshed, and this ain’t the man to bleed. I have a fondness for this fella, and I’m gonna be very cranky if anything happens to him. You unnastand me?”

  Higbee looked up at Cornelia indecisively.

  “For crying out loud, give me that pistol.”

  Higbee fidgeted. He dithered. Flailed in a desperate welter of indecision and frustration. Finally, handed her the Luger. “It ain’t fair,” he complained.

  Cornelia put the pistol inside her shirtwaist and helped him up. She slipped her arm through his. Stroking his back, she murmured, “There, there, Butch. Everything’s gonna be fine. Let’s take a little walk, you and me. Just the two of us. It’s a lovely evening. Have you seen the moon tonight?”

  “It is a lovely moon,” Higbee allowed.

  “You come along with me.” She reached up and rubbed the back of his neck.

  Higbee gazed at Porter with longing. “I was fixin’ to get things done,” he said forlornly.

  “There, there.”

  “I really need to find some dynamite.”

  Cornelia patted him on the arm. “Sure, honey. We gonna get you a nice big stick. Pierre! Get in here, you pie-faced idiot!”

  Pierre oozed in, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. “I can get you some dyn’mite. Got a case over the store.”

  He gave Porter a muddy-eyed blank stare of non-recognition.

  “See, Butch,” Cornelia soothed, stroking the filibuster’s hair. “Everything’s gonna be fine. Let’s go find you something to blow up, big guy.”

  

  As Walter Whitaker rolled down the road in his gig, sipping from a bottle of Hostetter’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters to settle his system after the disturbing scene with the dog and his wife, he heard the sound of the motorcycle sputtering to life at the top of the hill. It reminded him to have an automobile shipped from the States, a runabout, for these after-dark excursions. And gasoline; he needed more gasoline.

  There was yet enough daylight to make out the road. A gibbous moon had appeared over the lagoon. As he reached the foot of the hill, he found a donkey cart blocking his way into town. A family of campesinos had crowded into the cart. He took their presence as a kind of personal rebuke. He cracked his whip and shouted at them to clear the way and then hurled the bottle of stomach bitters at the beast. The donkey would not budge. Whitaker gave up and pulled the gig to the side of the road and climbed out. He threw the reins over a branch.

  Hurrying against the fading light, he cut through the old pirate cemetery stuffed with four centuries of avarice and ambition, Spanish explorers, British privateers, American filibusters, gentlemen bandits, freebooters, sea-rovers, picaroons, and desperados of various creeds and nations, joined together now in the fellowship that awaits us all, and came out on Calle Secondo near the burned-out firehouse.

  

  The stew bubbled on the stove. By now it did not smell so bad. If other concerns had not occupied his mind, Porter might have sampled a bowl.

  He stretched up and felt along the top shelf of the cupboard, got hold of the Gladstone bag with his fingertips, and inched it along the shelf until he could pull it down. He shut the cupboard door and unsnapped the bag for a quick check: money. Lots of money.

  

  Whitaker continued along the narrow nameless street, past the barbershop, where Pierre was shaving someone—was that his man Higbee?—while Cornelia Anderson watched and scolded. He went past the little shops that sold cheap wares to the dockworkers and locals, and turned in front of the cuartel, emerging onto the plaza, where the first lamps had been lighted. A swarm of shoeshine boys raced toward him. He shoved them away, knocking one to the ground and trampling him.

  At the Hotel de los Estranjeros he reached into his pocket to feel his pistol and felt a surge of satisfaction.

  As far as Whitaker was concerned, William Sydney Porter was dead in his bed.

  

  The night was quiet, eerie. Except for the crowing of a solitary rooster, the rap of his boots on the cobbles was the only thing Porter could hear as he made his way along the Calle Grande by the light of the yellow-white moon. Porter carried the big Gladstone bag in one hand and his alligator-skin valise in the other. His mandolin was clenched under one arm.

  Right before he reached the consulate, he came on a family sitting in a donkey cart.

  “Qué pasó?” Porter inquired.

  The man pointed at the donkey.

  After wheedling, begging, threatening, massaging, prodding, pulling, and, finally, offering it some medicinal sarsaparilla he had in his pocket for the sea voyage, Porter got the donkey in motion. The cart creaked on its way out of town with no further words exchanged between locals and gringo.

  As he approached the consulate, Porter spotted the Hendee motorcycle propped against the clapboard siding. Its engine ticked as it cooled. The voices of Isabel Whitaker and Buck Geddie drifted on the soft air.

  “Sybil! You naughty girl. Don’t throw nuts!”

  Sybil said something in her animal language.

  Geddie chuckled. “It’s a pleasure to see her back in the pink. You know, she reminds me of you, Isabel.”

  “I should say not!”

  “Yes, she does. She’s her own person. Vain, a little thoughtless, not one in ten-thousand like her. She’s entitled to her own set of rules. If she wants to throw nuts, she can do it.”

  Isabel sighed. “Ho
w in the world did I end up here, Buck?”

  Porter eased out of the shadows into a patch of moonlight in front of the veranda. He put down the Gladstone bag and the valise and balanced his mandolin on them.

  “Evening, folks,” tipping his hat.

  The consul had his stockinged feet on the railing. “Howdy, cowboy. We were just not saying a thing about you.”

  Porter heard a noisy puffing sound behind him, and he turned to find Dr. Grieg.

  “Evening, doc.”

  “Bill.”

  The quarantine doctor continued past him and up the steps of the consulate. He parked his bulk on an empty chair. “Evening, Isabel.”

  “How are you, Herman?” She leaned over and gave his knee a squeeze.

  “Sardines for supper?”

  “With horseradish,” said Isabel. Then she added, proudly, “I took another bath.”

  “This is a red-letter day.”

  The consul lit a cigar, the match flame briefly illuminating his face. For several minutes, the three sat in silence, listening to Sybil chatter and gazing out at the bright stripes of lights on the ocean liner and the scattered lights on the fruit steamer. The Tacoma with her two ships in tow was dark, looming. Little waves rippled across the lagoon.

  Geddie spoke: “Before you go, Bill, there’s something I need to get off my chest. I don’t want you to carry off the wrong impression of me, even if the truth casts me in an unflattering light.”

  “I’ve always reckoned that honesty is just another sort of mask,” Porter said. “But I don’t begrudge the man who wears it. Say what you need to, Buck.”

  Geddie’s cigar glowed. “Well. I was the fiend. I was the one who burned your printing press. Poured kerosene in the firehouse and touched a match to it. That’s all there is to it.”

  Isabel gasped.

  Dr. Grieg spat and grunted with some satisfaction, as if the solution to a puzzle had snapped into place.

  Porter did not say anything.

  “Well?”

  “You were acting out of kindness,” Porter concluded.

  “That was my aim. I caused some trouble to prevent greater trouble. If you gave up your newspaper, Walter Whitaker might vacate his promise to kill you. I’ve had long experience with the man, most of it unpleasant—no offense, Isabel.”

  “None taken,” said Isabel.

  “I guess I thought I was saving your life.”

  They sat in silence. After a while Porter said, “I apologize for putting you in that position, Buck. I don’t imagine it’s in your job description.”

  “To tell the truth,” the consul said, “the job has been evolving. It’s going to get more complicated from here on out, especially if you take that bag with you. Am I wrong?”

  “No,” Porter said. “Think about it this way: the money was going to end up in the pockets of whichever politico could lay his paws on it, all at once or trickled out over time. This way, Walter Whitaker is going to have a difficult time propping up this private government of his. The U.S. of A. might be forced to do something.”

  “Hmm. Meanwhile, Terencio’s men are going to tear this town apart looking for that thing.”

  Dr. Grieg stirred to his feet. “We need to get a move on. I have tongues to examine and papers to sign before I can get to bed. That fruiter out there needs inspecting too.”

  Isabel stood.

  Sybil, who was pulling the consul’s hair with her tiny fists, leaped onto the rail and scampered toward her.

  “Goodbye, my darling,” Isabel said to her.

  She bent for her suitcase.

  “William Porter!” a voice barked, and out of the shadows of the magnolias strode Walter Whitaker, holding his .38 Colt double-action Army & Navy revolver given to him by John J. Pershing.

  Geddie leaped to his feet and flung his cigar at Whitaker in a shower of orange sparks. “On the porch, Bill! Now!”

  Porter grabbed the Gladstone bag and bounded up the steps and threw himself in front of Isabel. He whirled, every muscle and sinew as tense as drawn steel.

  “Step out here, Porter,” Whitaker demanded in his flat clipped voice. He pointed the gun, steady, at the veranda. “I’ll shoot you where you stand if I have to, but I’d rather do it out here on my own territory.”

  Geddie moved again, putting himself between the two men. He glared down at Whitaker. His expression was alarmed but not fearful. He looked fed up.

  “Have you gone stark-raving mad?” he said. “This man has sought refuge in the American consulate. You shoot him here, and I’ll have you up on a murder charge. Don’t think I won’t. And who do you think you are—‘my territory’?”

  “Murder charge! That sonuvabitch went too far! I told him not to, but he did it anyway. I warned him what would happen.”

  “I’m going in the house,” Dr. Grieg said.

  “Please stop this!” Isabel cried.

  Without turning, Geddie said: “All of you, go inside. You too, Bill.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ll shoot,” Whitaker said furiously.

  “Go inside,” Geddie repeated. He kept his eyes locked on Whitaker. “Doctor, help her inside, please. Move on now, Bill.”

  Shoes scraped on the floorboards. The screen door creaked open and, a moment later, slammed shut.

  “Dammit, Buck,” Whitaker fumed. “This man comes into my town, upsets my business, beds my wife, and thumbs his nose at me in the pages of every newspaper in America. I look like a fool. He’s not fit to live.”

  “You can’t kill an American citizen on this property.”

  “The man’s making off with the national treasury, isn’t he?”

  “That’s not your concern, Walter.”

  “You’re going to arrest me, is that it?”

  “If it comes to it.”

  “You can’t extradite me.”

  “Step onto this porch, and I won’t have to.”

  “Pshaw! It would take an army.”

  “Fortunately,” said the consul. “I have one sitting off shore. Now go the hell home.”

  “Get him back out here!” Whitaker shouted. He swung the gun to his left. Aa roaring tongue of flame shot from the barrel, and with a shriek, little Sybil was knocked from the railing. She hit the floor of the veranda with a sickening wet sound.

  Geddie staggered, in the whirling moment between what had happened and his registering it. He dropped to his knees and began to crawl across the veranda, making strangled noises, toward the little monkey.

  Whitaker blinked with surprise; his mouth opened but he did not speak.

  “Drop your gun.” Porter said. Standing with the Derringer pressed against the back of Whitaker’s head, he whispered: “Easy does it.”

  He reached around from behind, feeling the warmth of Whitaker’s body, and locked his fingers around Whitaker’s wrist and then stepped left, wrenching the arm. Whitaker made a sound, and the revolver tumbled to the grass. Porter kicked it away.

  He heard the screen door slam and Isabel’s cry of grief as she rushed across toward the consul. The door slammed again as Dr. Grieg came onto the veranda.

  With a violent movement, Whitaker shook Porter off and glared at him furiously. “You’re not leaving.”

  “That’s not for you to say.”

  “I haven’t finished with you, you son of a bitch.”

  “Where I come from, a man threatens you with a gun, you shoot him and the judge buys you steak and beer.” Porter pressed the short barrel of the Derringer against Whitaker’s forehead.

  “We’re not in Texas, and you’re not going to shoot me.”

  “Go to hell, Whitaker.” He did not shoot him.

  On the veranda, Isabel and Dr. Grieg crouched beside the consul, who was sitting with his legs crossed, sobbing, rocking little Sybil in his a
rms and kissing the top of her soft sweet head.

  

  Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand denouements. Sufficient unto each “turn” is the evil thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne may have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound the moment they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic bicyclist who retires head-first from the stage in a crash of china-ware. Neither do they consider that their seat coupons entitle them to be instructed whether or no there is a sentiment between the lady solo banjoist and the Irish monologist. But our program ends with a brief “turn” or two; and then to the exits. Whoever sits the show out may find the slender thread that binds together, though ever so slightly, the story.

  

  Leonard Vaught gave Elliot Evans a final disgusted kick in the groin. The customs agent appeared to be unconscious.

  Vaught crunched across the shingle of broken records and exited the rear of the barracks. The evening had grown dark. A good smell wafted from the hotel. As he came into the street, his stomach made a sound like a marsh-creature sloshing in the mud.

  He hightailed it along the edge of the plaza, bounced through the portico, and pushed into the lobby. No one was at the desk.

  He banged on the bell until Cornelia Anderson came downstairs and yelled at him to cut it out.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “You’re friends with that custom man, Evans, ain’tcha?

  “What about him?”

  “He ain’t too healthy. Fact is, he’s batshit outta his mind, and his face ain’t much to look at neither. You might render him some aid over at the barracks.”

  She told him he was a vile little prick and hurried off to find some clean towels.

  Vaught was irritated beyond reason by her response. He cursed, harsh and long, cursed a childhood of icy latrines and weevily bread with lard, the cottonfields and the canebrakes, cursed the books he couldn’t read, the fat cats and the politicians and the United States Army, cursed the women who had cursed him all his life, and went into the kitchen, ready to bust up the china.