Banana Republic

By Eric Rawson

When William Sydney Porter faces prison for embezzlement in Austin, Texas, he catches the first tramp steamer to Central America. The year is 1905. He washes up in the town of Coralio, in a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S. and a government at the mercy of American scoundrels, drunks, and robber-barons.Porter establishes himself as a newspaper printer, despite violent opposition from the most powerful individual in the country—Walter Whitaker, the president of the Vesuvius Fruit Company. Whitaker sees Porter's newspaper as a threat to his plans to overthrow the government and install a puppet who will give him concessions to build a railroad to the new Panama Canal.Loosely based on the history of U.S. intervention in the banana wars of the early twentieth century, as well as on the life and stories of O. Henry, Banana Republic is a comic tale of greed, ambition, and gunboat diplomacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regal House Publishing
• Release date: Mar 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781947548176

Book preview

Contents

Banana Republic

Copyright © 2019 Eric Sean Rawson. All rights reserved.

Dedication

Quote

Banana Republic

Acknowledgments

Banana Republic

Eric Sean Rawson

Regal House Publishing

Copyright © 2020 Eric Sean Rawson. All rights reserved.

Published by

Regal House Publishing, LLC

Raleigh, NC 27612

All rights reserved

ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781947548916

ISBN -13 (epub): 9781947548176

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941552

All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

Interior and cover design by Lafayette & Greene

lafayetteandgreene.com

Cover images © by C.B. Royal

Regal House Publishing, LLC

https://regalhousepublishing.com

The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For Callie

Quote

For CallieInconsistencies in the historical record are entirely the intention of the author.

Banana Republic

On an overcast morning in July 1905, as he was recovering from a hangover at his desk in the loan office of the First National Bank of Austin, William Sydney Porter observed a pair of federal marshals, trailed by a crowd of bank employees, striding down the long room. Their boots on the hardwood floor sounded like doom.

Porter watched them with the air of a poker player who knew he could not bluff with his busted flush. He closed his books and arranged them on the upper-right corner of the desk. He stood, smoothed his waistcoat and trousers, put on his Stetson hat, and extended his arms, offering his wrists to the handcuffs. Gentlemen.

William S. Porter? one of the marshals inquired.

The same.

The cuffs closed on his wrists with two heavy clicks.

Is the money readily accessible?

No, sir, Porter said, despairing. He wondered how in the hell it had come to this.

Step along, then.

Travis County jail?

The marshal eyed him. That’s right. Leavenworth, soon enough.

Fortunately, a man of no means who has married a woman of some means often has a father-in-law with a reputation to protect and domestic tranquility to ensure. So, late that afternoon when William Sydney Porter heard the clashing of the key in the lock, he did not need to look up from the game of craps he was engaged in to confirm that freedom was, temporarily, his. As he walked down the steps of the jailhouse into the scorching Texas evening sunlight, he had two dice in his front pocket and, in the other, four brass buttons and a ten-cent piece, which were the only valuables the other prisoners had had on them. He reflected that they were now the only valuables he himself possessed.

What came next he would not soon forget: tearing himself from the wild grasp of his beloved Athol on her sickbed, the uncomprehending tears of little Margaret, the iron set of his father-in-law’s jaw as the old man slammed from the room. Porter knew that he would have many days and nights to revisit this scene, so he did not prolong it. I’ll send for them when I’m situated, he told himself. All will be forgiven.

The temper of the times was boom or bust. When a fall came, it came fast, completely. A man often needed to exit in a hurry, tearing himself from hearth and home, from his friends and fellow citizens, and find a place where he could reconstitute himself. Texas had once been such a place, but the frontier was closed and the rule of law had birthed a civic life. There was, Porter knew, nowhere left to run but south.

A fugitive could do worse than the village of Coralio. So he had heard.

Coralio. A gem hidden in the band of green that stretched along the Caribbean from Mérida to Panama. A place where a person could disappear into the sunshine.

***

The white morning sun shattered on the surface of the lagoon. The air was stifling and smelled of salt, mud, guano, and oranges.

The American consul, Geddie, felt the ache rise behind his eyes. He was reclining on a wicker chair on the veranda, his slippered feet on the low railing. A copy of The New York Times, dated Wednesday, June 28, 1905, was draped over one arm of the chair. He had a dead cigar clamped between his teeth. He could not remember if he had shaved this week.

A ship’s siren wailed, and he peered with faint interest into the blinding distance. A skiff detached itself from the shadow of a freighter anchored beyond the reef and began to move toward shore.

The consulate was a two-story block of clapboard surrounded by clumps of banana palms and magnolias full of noisy birds. From a pole on the roof of the veranda a gargantuan American flag hung exhausted in the heat. A monkey squatted on the railing next to Geddie’s feet, eating peanuts from a brass bowl and tossing the shells into the consul’s lap. She was a threadbare creature named Sybil, prone to diarrhea and fainting spells, but she had never bitten him and she had never run off. She had nicotine-colored tufts of hair above her eyes. He loved her.

From the hill that loomed over the consulate drifted the faint strains of a soprano singing Vissi d’arte. The thin distant sound of the recording had an irritating effect. Geddie reached inside his shirt with his left hand and massaged his flank and moaned to himself. At age forty-four, the consul felt entitled to occasional displays of self-pity. He had been in Coralio for almost seven years, looking after American interests and observing, with a detachment that bordered on the morbid, the withering of his intellect. Geddie had been a tremendous reader, despite his Yale education, but after three or four years of relentless heat and recurrent malaria, it had no longer seemed worth the effort to open a book. Even the newspapers, arriving in bales a week after publication, were too much to bear. He struggled through the front pages to see what his friends and enemies were up to back home and felt exhausted.

He had decided that his inability to appreciate the printed word was balanced by a deepening philosophical streak, born of boredom and despair. Lately, he had been considering the nature of man in a hostile universe, the Augustinian problem of time, what Aquinas in the Summa thought about the simplicity of God, and so on and so forth. On these hot mornings he ruminated like a seminarian tending to his last ember of faith.

Geddie squinted into the shattering marine light. He watched the skiff creep across the reef and into the flaccid green water of the lagoon. Two oarsmen with muscles like beef jerky rowed, while a tall individual clad in a business suit and a white Stetson stood in the bow. Saluting. Geddie glanced up at the limp hem of Old Glory hanging over the front of the veranda roof. He had never seen the American flag affect a visitor this way. He knew the freighter, the Valhalla, and he knew the kind of people she cast upon this shore—forgers, confidence men, embezzlers, train-robbers, corrupt public officials, bigamists, smugglers, defrocked ministers, freebooters, filibusters, debt-encumbered reprobates, prostitutes, poisoners, and cutthroat jungle adventurers. Men and women who loved their homeland but did not necessarily respect it.

The region was crawling with them.

***

The melody of C’est les contrabandiers le refuge ordinaire on the gramophone filled the bedroom like thin perfume. Isabel Whitaker found that hearing her own fabulous voice in the morning before she had dressed was both a tonic and an invocation, a prayer that the day be short and hope be strong. On this particular recording, her Micaëla reached near the empyrean. She had confirmed it a thousand times with her own ears.

When the music ended with a loud scratching of needle on disc, she became aware of another sound, a ship’s siren. A light leaped into her bloodshot hazel eyes. She went over and lifted the gramophone needle, smoothed and primped her greasy auburn hair, and strolled to the window. She pulled back the lace curtain with one finger and with her other hand drew a pair of mother-of-pearl Lemaire opera glasses from the pocket of her dressing gown—it was all she was wearing—and lifted the glasses to her eyes.

The red roof of the consulate showed through the palm fronds. Fifty yards downslope, the skiff bumped against the dock. One of the oarsmen flung a rope over a piling. The passenger dropped his salute and leaped out of the boat. He reached back, and the oarsman handed him a valise and what appeared to be a mandolin.

As the stranger started up the path toward the consulate, the two oarsmen heaved a black steamer trunk onto the dock. The path was choked with witchgrass and wandering jew, and the newcomer more than once had to clear his way with the toe of his boot. Isabel, fingering a greasy ringlet of hair, noted with satisfaction that his travel-wrinkled clothes were cut in the latest style—cuffed trousers, high-buttoned waistcoast, and a striped four-in-hand. He was a sharp, well-built dude, with strong hands and—oh!—wonderful Lucchese boots. Finally. Someone who didn’t look like he had washed out with the bilge water.

He was the one: the ticket home.

***

The newcomer paused at the foot of the steps and put down his valise—alligator skin, the consul observed. The man gestured at the veranda roof with his mandolin. That’s a helluva flag, he said. You can see her five miles out.

It is, Geddie agreed. He took the unlighted cigar out of his mouth. You’re a patriot, are you?

Heart and soul.

Wincing, Geddie swung his feet to the floor and pushed himself upright. Then step up and plant yourself on American territory.

The newcomer picked up his valise. As he started up the steps, Geddie hollered into the house. Pierre! Get your ass out here!

He turned back and stuck out his hand. The fingers were yellow with nicotine and smudged with ink from the newspaper. I’m the official representative here. John Buchanan Geddie. They call me Buck.

They shook hands. William Sydney Porter. They call me Bill.

Have a seat, Bill. Geddie swiveled his head toward the screen door. Pierre! What’re you up to in there?

There was no sound from inside the house.

Porter stepped across the veranda and leaned his mandolin against the white clapboard. He stepped back and sat on one of the three wicker chairs on the porch. The smell of roasting peppers came from somewhere.

The monkey ran back and forth along the railing, shrieking and hurling peanuts at the newcomer, who ignored her. Geddie felt a flush of admiration for the man’s manners. He looked about thirty years old, with eyes the color of gunpowder. A healthy red stain crept up his neck.

The consul waved a hand toward the house. Pardon the shouting. Kidney troubles make me tetchy. He winced and rubbed his side and dropped back into his chair, knocking the newspaper off the arm. "I heard the Valhalla’s horn last night. Tarry here long enough and you get to know the steamers by their sirens."

Out of New Orleans, Porter said. The captain plans to take on a cargo of fruit for the home market.

That is a statement of the obvious.

Geddie wondered how much William Sydney Porter had paid for his passage. He knew the captain of the Valhalla, an Irishman named Kennedy who could play the concertina exceedingly well. He made a mental note to ask the captain what the unlogged passenger rate was these days. He continued: The only ships we get down here are fruit steamers and smuggler yachts. Maybe an ocean liner stopping for mail. No one’s found another reason to anchor at this particular portal of hell.

The visitor’s laugh rang genuine.

Geddie leaned toward him. So what did you do?

What did I do about what?

Kill a man? Plough thy neighbor’s garden?

Porter grinned. I’ve never killed a man.

You’re not some kind of drummer come to sell us the latest vitaphonographical contraption unlike anything you can buy from the Sears Roebuck catalogue?

And if I were?

Geddie leaned closer and swept his wet dead cigar in a wide arc. You’d be wasting your time. They always are. Look around you.

Waves of heat shimmered on a dusty strip of sun-faded buildings. A few brown chickens scratched for insects in the long grass. A vicious-looking mule was pulling a cart stacked with green bananas. The cart had no driver; the mule had made the trip so many times that it no longer required one. Two-hundred yards beyond, men in dirty white shirts and pants unloaded massive stems of bananas from boxcars and carried them on poles along the wharf, where men with no shirts and dirty white pants were loading them onto skiffs for transport to the Valhalla. Someone in a straw hat kept blowing a whistle. A wispy blond fellow leaned in the doorway of what Porter supposed was the custom house, a tin-roofed shack that was being strangled by creeping vines.

Porter turned back to the consul. Not much of a market for gadgets, I guess.

There are three types of men who come down here, the consul explained. Those running from the law, those running from their creditors, and those running from their familial responsibilities. Which type are you?

What about the drummers with their vitaphonographical contraptions?

Geddie drew his eyebrows together. The newcomer had wit. Hmm. Those belong with the dreamers and the mountebanks.

So there are five primary types, Porter pointed out.

Those last two are not types. The mountebanks are fascinating men, each with his own tale of life on the low, and the dreamers are— Geddie clamped his teeth on his cigar. Hell. Maybe the dreamers are a type. He gazed out at the blue hazy sea. There are four primary types that come down here, he said.

Four.

Geddie turned back to his guest. The mountebanks are a subspecies of the law-runners.

Of course.

So which are you?

A dreamer, I guess. I write some poetry.

You can do that back in Oklahoma, for Christ’s sake.

Texas.

All right, Texas.

Porter pushed back his Stetson and scratched his head. I’m determined to travel the globe?

No, sir, Geddie said.

And why not?

Geddie pointed his cigar at Porter’s chest. Those are not traveling clothes. Those are go-to-work-at-the-insurance-office-Rotary-Club-luncheon clothes. Those are house-on-Oak-Street-Sunday-morning-at-the-First-Presbyterian-Church clothes. Except for the boots. Those are uptown-backroom-Saturday-night boots. I bet you play a wicked hand of cards. And that hat. Well, that’s just ironical.

Now it was Porter’s turn to stare off into the distance, beyond the mangroves and nipa palms, beyond the foul lagoon, beyond the skiff pulling up to the rusted side of the steamer, out to sea, north. The monkey threw a peanut shell at him. He said, Then I’ll own to the first type—running from the law.

Federal?

Indeed. Bank embezzlement.

What’s the statute of limitations?

Three years, said Porter. He fought down a sudden despair.

How do you plan to pay for your upkeep? I don’t suppose you’ve come with the fruits of your crime.

Nope, said Porter. But I have my typewriter. As I said, I write.

Poetry.

Sketches, stories, reports—and not too badly. I printed a weekly in Austin for a while, mostly local notices and humorous bits that attracted some circulation. Sold some stories to the Western A.P. I thought I might have another go at the printing angle.

You aim to make a living at that?

"That’s my ambition. My aim is redemption."

Redemption!

Too much?

I don’t know. Most men don’t have anything in them worth redeeming. Geddie got to his feet. Pain shot through his kidneys. He shook his head. Just when I was starting to like you, too. He turned and bawled at the screen door: Pierre! Haul your ass down to the dock and get that steamer trunk! Then show Mr. Porter to the hotel!

Porter stood up politely and picked up his alligator-skin valise.

In the future, it’s better that you don’t come onto the porch, Bill. Geddie’s tone was friendly. As a representative of the American government, I’d be obligated to detain you.

The consul, despite his pouchy eyes and sagging skin, looked like he might mean business. Porter bent over and retrieved his mandolin from where it was leaning against the clapboard.

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