A Flag for Sunrise (15 page)

“Wait a minute,” Tony said, “wait a minute, let it go.” Tabor saw that Tony had a bill in his hand. “The poor guy’s all fucked up. I’m
going to give him something.” He slid a U.S. twenty along the tabletop. Tabor looked down at it.

“Don’t you give him a thing,” Bill said. “A punk like this?”

“Here,” Tony said kindly, “here you go, Pablo. Take it.”

“No, you don’t, baby,” Bill said. He snatched up the bill from under Pablo’s eyes and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

“Look,” Tony said. “Maybe I did come on to him. The poor guy’s a mess. Let him have it.”

Bill sighed, took the twenty out of his pocket and threw it on the floor.

“This is a hell of a way to start out,” he said to Tony crossly. He watched Pablo start toward the money on the tile floor. “Pick it up and get out,
Pablo.
We intend to eat here.”

Pablo crouched over the bill.

This is it, he thought. I’m gonna have to kill these fuckers.

Bill crossed his bare legs while Pablo reached for the bill. The tip of his expensive hiking boot swung casually in front of Tabor’s face.

He pocketed the bill and looked up; Bill was looking down at him with an expression of mild disgust.

“You really wouldn’t like the penal colony, Tex.”

“He wouldn’t,” Tony said. “The wind comes howling off the lake and God knows if they ever heard of lobster Newburg.”

Tabor stood up and staggered toward the door without turning around.

O.K., he told himself when he was outside, with the shoeshine boys clustered around him. Twenty bills is twenty bills. If I’d have killed them I’d be sorry.

Cursing his way through the beggars and shoeshine boys, he decided on a drink. There was a place by the docks called the Paris where he sometimes stopped by in the vague hope of finding a billet. Wearily he took his hard-earned twenty down there and settled himself at the bar. The place was empty except for a few Compostelan Navy sailors crowded about the new pinball machine. Freddy Fender was on the jukebox, singing “El Rancho Grande.” Pablo was on conversational terms with the bartender, a big Belizean, who liked Hawaiian shirts and platform shoes and wore a crucifix around his neck.

“How you doin’, mon?” the Belizean asked him.

“I think I’m on a trapeze,” Pablo said.

“De darin’ young mon,” the Belizean said. Pablo ordered a margarita, the one he got came in a little ready-mix bottle, appropriated from the national airline.

“How you mate today? Mister Tony?”

“He ain’t my mate. He was buyin’ drinks is all. I was drinkin’ em.

“Nothin’ wrong wi’ dat. But now he fren’ come.”

“Yeah,” Tabor said. “His friend come. A couple of cocksuckers.”

“Dat put it harshly,” the Belizean said. “But he’s a bounder, dat Tony. Pretty boys all de time. Mon got no shame.”

“He’s a fool,” Tabor said.

“Dass true, dass true. But he fren’ look out for him now.”

“How the hell do you know all this?” Tabor demanded. “Everybody knows everything in this fucking place.”

“Well,” the Belizean said, “das de entertainment, you know. Got to take it like you fin’ it, bruddah.”

“Shit,” Pablo said.

“Hey, bruddah—you a sailin’ mon?”

“I do a little of everything,” Pablo said cautiously.

“I know where you get a billet, if you de right fella. Mon wid a boat lookin’ for crew.”

“Yeah?”

Cecil brought him another bottled margarita.

“But he nobody’s mark, dis chap. He in business.”

“Shit,” Tabor said, “send him my way.”

“Lemme ask you somethin’ di-rectly, bruddah. You a black or a white mon?”

Tabor nearly fell off his stool. He had been asked the same question once before and it had gone badly for everyone.

“What do I look like?”

Cecil kept his easygoing smile.

“I ain’t no Yankee, mon. People all de same to me. But dis boat chap, he might see somethin’ I wouldn’t notice.”

“I’m a white man,” Pablo said evenly. “Anybody can see that.”

“Den you be O.K. wid dis man. Because I suspect he don’t want colored for his crew.”

He’s just sensible, Tabor thought.

“Lemme put dis to you, bruddah. You lay ten bills on me I make arrangements wi’ dis chap. I tell him you my old times fren’. Squared away sailin’ mon.”

“How come he goes to you looking for crew?”

“Because I know everybody, mon. I help him out in de past.”

“Ten bills,” Tabor said, “that’s a hell of a lot. What if he turns me down?”

“Take it or leave it, mon.”

Pablo leafed through the bills in his wallet, covering the top with his palm, glancing over his shoulder suspiciously. Cecil watched him with amusement. Pablo found a U.S. ten and handed it over.

“This better not be a rip-off,” he told Cecil.

“Put you mind at rest, my fren’,” Cecil said with a contemptuous smile. “Come roun’ after three o’clock and you be talkin’ to de commander.”

He went out and sat in the little square across from the navy base where there was a statue of Morazón. Cecil’s words stayed in his mind; they savored to him of treachery and double cross.

I already talked to enough commanders, he thought. He suspected Cecil of betraying him to American body snatchers.

They were turning Pablo around again. Within the same hour, he had been humiliated by cocksuckers and practically called a nigger to his face. He doubled up on the bench and ran his hands through his hair. The crazy birds in the trees along the Malecón hooted down at him.

Grim and frantic, Pablo set out through the siesta quiet for the drugstore. The druggist was waiting for him, leaning against the shutters of his shop with a singularly geek-like expression. He had taken off his green smock and was wearing a dark sport coat with three or four ball-point pens in the breast pocket. When Pablo walked by, the druggist fell into step with him. They crossed to the shady side of the street.

“Ritalin?” the druggist asked.

“Uh-uh,” Tabor said. “Gotta to be amphetamine, pure and simple.”

“Dexamil?”

Pablo nearly snarled with exasperation.

“No downers in it.”

“Benzedrin’,” said the druggist.

It was the most beautiful Spanish word Pablo had ever heard.

“Benzedrino,” he said. “Fuckin-A.”

“Twenty dollars,” the druggist said as they walked.

“Are you kiddin’ me? For how many?”

“For
cincuenta.
Fifty tablets.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tabor said. “Shit, O.K.” He was in no mood to bargain.

They turned into a narrow dirt street bounded on both sides by corrugated-iron fencing on which there were a great many posters celebrating the party in power. The druggist gave Pablo an unmarked bottle with the tablets inside. Pablo handed over the twenty. The morning’s financial exchanges were making him dizzy.

All anybody cares about in this fucking country, he thought, is money.

When he opened the bottle to inspect the pills inside, the druggist began to hiss and flap at him to put it away.

“Aw, fuck you,” Pablo said, but he stuck the bottle in his trouser pocket.

At the corner, the pharmacist turned away and waddled purposefully back toward his drugstore. There was no one else in sight.

Pablo caught sight of a Coke sign at the end of the next block and trucked on toward it, imagining the rush, hoping to Christ he had not, been taken.

The sign stood over a little flyblown
tienda
, where there was a counter with some pastries and a coffee machine. Pablo went inside and whistled between his teeth. After a while a sleepy old woman came out from the back of the shop to sell him a Coke.

He gave her one of the coins with the general on it—five
ratones, gibrones
, whatever—and stared her down in case she decided to fox him out of the change. Nervously, the old woman counted coins into the upturned palm which Pablo held imperiously before her.

Then he went outside, propped the Coke under his arm and took out the bottle the geek had sold him. They were Benzedrino all right, little yellow tablets, three hundred migs.

Hot shit, Tabor thought; he swallowed two of them with his warmish Coke and leaned back in the shade of the corner building.

On his empty stomach, he began to get the rush fairly early on and it felt like the real thing.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Tabor said. His being began to come together. When he had rested against the wall for several minutes, a little boy appeared and approached Tabor with his hand out. Tabor happily doled out a handful of
cabrones.
But the boy did not go away—he planted himself before Tabor and pointed at the Coke bottle in his hand.

Just as he was about to hand the boy the bottle, Tabor experienced his true rush. He was moved almost to tears.

As the boy watched him wide-eyed, Pablo wound up like Dizzy Dean and sent the bottle hurtling into the wall of the building across the street—where it smashed magnificently, sending thick shards of bottle glass in all directions.

“Ay,” the kid said.

“Ay,” Tabor said. “Aye aye aye.” He gave the kid a thumbs-up sign and set out for the docks with music in his heart.

“Well, he’s gorgeous,” the blond woman said to her companion, “but don’t you think he’s a thug?” Cecil had pointed Pablo out to them at the bar.

The man with her was about fifty, his face deeply tanned and fine-featured. His haircut made him look like a boy in a magazine ad for a military school, gone gray.

He shrugged and lighted a cigarette.

“They’re all sort of the same. If you think he’s gorgeous that’s good enough for me.”

“Cecil is doing one of his Cecil numbers on us,” the woman said. “He’s pissed off because you wouldn’t hire his cousin.”

“Hell,” the man said, “I’m sure he never set eyes on this dude any earlier than last week. I’d just as soon have it that way.”

“You know, he thinks it’s racial. He heard you make that remark about being born on the dark side of the moon.”

“I don’t care what Cecil thinks. If I keep hiring those no good
ratones
Cecil says are his cousins I’ll really be in trouble.”

“Damnit,” the woman said. “Whatever happened to the carefree college boy we always dreamed of?”

“I don’t want a carefree college boy,” the man said. “I want a bad guy I can keep in line.”

The woman glanced over at Pablo and worried the lime in her Cuba Libre with a candy-striped straw. “But don’t you think this cat looks a little demented?”

“Could be he’s high on something,” the man said, without looking over. “That could be bad. On the other hand—as long as he can work—it could make him easier to handle.”

“Are you sober enough to talk to him? I’d like a closer look.”

“Sure,” the man said. “Let’s run him past.”

The woman picked up her straw and waved it languidly until Cecil caught her signal. He walked over to Pablo, who was beginning to fret over his beer, and leaned toward him.

“O.K., bruddah. Front and center for de mon. I tell dem we know each other from New Orleans.”

Even being ordered front and center did not stay the surge of optimism that flooded Pablo’s heart. He swung off his stool and marched confidently toward the table where the couple sat. He had been watching them, a little greedily. They looked rich and heedless, the lady sexy and loose. They aroused his appetites.

“My name is Callahan,” the gray-haired man said when Pablo stood before him. “This is Mrs. Callahan.”

“Right pleased to meet you,” Pablo said. “Pablo Tabor.”

“Well, we’re right pleased to meet you too, Pablo,” Mrs. Callahan said. “Please have a seat.”

Pablo sat down. Mrs. Callahan called for two more rum and Cokes and another beer for Pablo, while he and Mr. Callahan looked at each other blankly.

“So you’re a buddy of Cecil’s?” Callahan asked.

“No sir, he ain’t my buddy. He knows me, though. From New Orleans.”

“Salvage diving, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Callahan asked brightly.

“Yeah,” Pablo said, confused. “There was a little of that.”

Mr. and Mrs. Callahan looked at each other quickly. Cecil brought the drinks. He had a smile for everyone.

“Well, the thing is, Pablo,” Mr. Callahan said, “that the missus and myself have a boat and we’re looking for a crewman. She’s a powerboat.”

Pablo nodded.

“Do you have any seagoing experience?”

“Well,” Pablo said. “I can steer. I’m pretty handy with engines. I can operate and maintain any kind of radio equipment you got. If you got radar I can work with that too.”

“You must have been in the service.”

“Coast Guard,” Pablo told him, taking the chance.

“Good for you,” Callahan said. “Can you navigate?”

“Guess I could get a fix on a radio beacon. I never used a sextant much.”

“How come they call you Pablo,” Mrs. Callahan asked. “Are you part Cuban or something?”

“I ain’t part anything,” Pablo said. “I’m American.”

“Have a passport?” Callahan asked him.

“They got it where I’m staying. I believe they’re a bunch of crooks over there.”

“I see,” Mr. Callahan said. “Now that could be a problem. We might have to work on that.”

Pablo chewed his thumbnail. “Where is it you and the lady were going to take your boat?”

“Oh,” Callahan said, “up and down the coast. Maybe do a little island hopping. We’d want you for less than a month. You could leave the vessel any number of places.”

“Could I ask you about the salary?”

“Well, I usually leave that to my number one. But I can tell you it’s higher than customary. Because the work is hard and we have our standards.”

“That’d be O.K. with me,” Pablo said.

“I’ll tell you what,” Callahan said. “We have a few things to check out before we can give you the O.K. If you check back here around five—either we’ll be here or we’ll leave a message with Cecil.”

“Jeez,” Pablo said. “I was hoping you could tell me one way or the other.”

Callahan smiled sympathetically. “Sorry, sailor. No can do. But I’ll tell you what”—he slipped Pablo a fistful of local notes across the table—“buy yourself a few beers.”

Pablo sighed behind his Benzedrine and took the bills. Bank notes had slipped back and forth under his hands all day.