25 José María, the American Fruit Company, 1968

Guaro had the same effect on him as it did on his father. His father was a sad drunk. His name was José María too. He was just like him. His father, him. Breath, and hair, and eyes were all his father’s, not his.

“He is the part of me I’ve kept secret from Teresa all these years,” José María said to the bartender. “No, perhaps better said, I am the secret I’ve kept from her.

“This guaro tastes fine, cantinero. You’ve got to be the only poor bastard in the whole country serving drinks tonight. Pour me another shot. This heat is loosening my tongue, and it’s about time I tell someone everything. The truth, you could say. Because a real man won’t let anyone else tell his story, even if it is a shameful one.”

It was Good Friday, and all of José María’s siblings were dead. His chest was warmer than the roads outside. There weren’t any clouds tonight. No rain, no breeze. The bartender smudged glasses with a filthy cloth, half listening to José María.

“I asked you for another shot, bartender. This is fine guaro and it’s warming my chest and making it feel like the outside. Make it two, why don’t you. ¿It’s still early, right?”

José María had had a rough day.

“Hijueputa, what a rough day,” he said.

José María’s father was always as drunk as he was tonight. His breath always the same, always smelling of café, guaro, or agua dulce when it was cold in the mountains. His family had lived between mountains on a banana plantation. The eleven of them: his mother, father, and nine children including him. As far back as José María could remember, he carried bananas to mills. Working with bananas since he was ten.

“¿Do you know how old I am now?” he said to the bartender. “Thirty. So that’s twenty years of grabbing, carrying, cutting off, eating bananas.”

José María’s father died when he was ten. He came back from the Civil War in ’48 and started drinking more. Then he stopped working on the plantation, so when José María’s brothers and he were of age and brawn, their father sent them, one by one, to work in his place. He beat José María’s mother more. He would leave the house only to go to the cantinas, and when he came back, José María and his siblings would hide beneath the bed. All piled on top of one another like blocks, watching their father’s shadow on the wall pulverize hers. Their mother had a favorite pillow, pink and lacy, and used it to cover her mouth to mask every yelp. They all hated him. José María did especially, and he told him so. Then he got beat with a riding crop. José María never cried. They were all his father’s hostages. His mother and them. But José María knew that his mother, deep down, liked it. She flirted with other men to get a rise out of his father. She loved him because he was the only man she had ever loved and the only man whose fists she knew as intimately as his lips.

“‘You look just like him,’ my mother would tell me after he died,” José María said. Discomfort chased his liquor. “‘You have his eyes,’ she would say. ‘And his body. Come closer so I can feel it again.’

“But I don’t like to talk about what she would say to me after he died.”

His father cracked his skull on a jagged boulder one night on the side of a road. “He died, and everything went to shit.”

José María and his brothers had to work even harder to support their mother and sisters. All his world became bananas. Sometimes they felt like his own hands.

“¿Is it really eleven o’clock? I didn’t hear the train. Maybe it’s drunk too.”

 

THE OTHER LABORERS slapped his back when they entered the cantina. They said, “¡Hey, kid! ¿Why are you sitting there like an old man? ¡You look like my grandfather, hunched over like that!” They said, “¡Come drink with us and relax! ¡Christ has died, and we drink to honor the dead! We’ll take shots to make us forget how hot this night is.”

But when they noticed José María hadn’t budged, they whispered loudly to one another about how he’d been called into the plantation doctor’s office.

“I saw Héctor earlier, here next to me,” José María said to the bartender. His tawny hair parted to the side. Still a hole through his chest and a wound so big it almost split his arm in two.

Dead men only visited this late at night.

“Although I couldn’t call Héctor a man,” José María sighed. “He was too young, too beautiful, too feminine, for anyone to call a man.”

Héctor said that back when José María looked at him: José María, you are not a real man either. Not anymore.

“He said that, but I didn’t yell or argue with him, because I didn’t want you to think I was crazy or something.” The bartender tended at the other end of the bar now. “I didn’t want you to kick me out,” José María said to where he’d been standing.

“Bartender, I’m going out to have a cigarette. Pour me more guaro. And get me some bread—¿do you have bread? Let’s make this my Communion. ¿Why are you laughing, bartender? I’m serious.”

It was hot out. As hot as the night José María ran away at thirteen. The night he left the plantation, his mother vanished into the sugarcane stalks. José María packed a calabash gourd with water from a spring and a tamal to eat, and stole one of the plantation’s horses. It was fast. Rain had started the moment he left, but the horse didn’t slip in the clay or the mud or anything. He just had to get away. That toad mocked him, and he could still hear it even though the rain was pouring as hard as it could. It pounded the road. The sky cracked and flashed, but all José María could hear was that toad laughing at him. It croaked and croaked, and its body got so big. He’d never seen a toad get that big before. And its eyes burned. They were as silver as the Devil’s; staring into them made José María’s chest burn like fire too. And its stench stung his nose—the animal’s hide spewed guaro that smelled spoiled. As though it had been stewing in its body for months. When it croaked, José María could smell that toxin. The rain washed his face and filled his nose, but he could still smell that poison. Like spoiled guaro.

“Hey, cantinero, another,” he said when he returned to his stool. “Just one more. All I need is one more. A shot of your freshest guaro. Just one more.

“Yes, of course I work here. I haul the bananas to the mill sometimes, but I mostly chop them from the trees.”

José María had worked at this plantation ever since he found Teresa again. But his machete was getting dull. Every banana bushel made it duller, and his knuckles more calloused. The Company even made them labor in the rain. José María’s black rubber boots always let in the mud, but he worked as hard as he could. They stank sometimes: the bananas and the roots—some chemical they used to protect the tree. It stung the little cuts on his fingers. But the overseer repeated that it was safe. The American doctor, too, he promised José María that the chemical wasn’t the reason why he was called into his office today. It’s harmless to humans, the doctor had insisted.

“Hey, the radio, turn it louder,” he said to the bartender. “I know this song.”

“Historia de un Amor” wafted out of the portable radio in a staticky and sensual whisper. This is a love story like no other.

“¿Did you know this is the song that was playing when I met Teresa? It was at a wedding in Puntarenas. Close enough to the beach that they could hear the waves scurry crabs back to the feet of the palms.”

The bride and her groom were rich. José María was a waiter there. He passed out triangular shrimp sandwiches and champagne. The women looked at him like he was a peasant. He didn’t blame them, though.

“All those high-society broads are the same. ¿Have you ever had to deal with them? They’re the worst. My mother-in-law is one.”

Looking at the couple saying their vows, everyone could tell they didn’t mean a word of it. Their money sparkled in their pockets and it said the vows for them. Those two powerful families would keep their power intact. But José María didn’t care, because before the reception, he saw Teresa in her purple dress. An elegant gold cross on a gold chain accentuated her collarbones. Her mother was dressed exactly the same. Teresa’s skin was the color of freshly brewed coffee, and so was her mother’s. But Teresa’s hair was thicker, shinier. She was the most beautiful girl José María had ever seen. Every man in the church thought so too. They all fought the instinct to gawk, in case God was watching them closely in His house. Even the shameless groom found it hard not to let his eyes wander from his wife and catch a glimpse of the way Teresa spoke softly out of the side of her mouth to her mother.

“Bartender, ¿did you know this was the song Teresa and I first danced to? A bit melancholic, I know, but you have to admit the beauty of this song.”

He was the only one at that wedding Teresa agreed to dance with. The other men jumped around all night, trying to court her. That bunch of rich boys bouncing like awkward cocks, losing the beat every time she broke through the circle to perform her sensual bolero alone.

“When the music finally paused, I asked her to dance. She waded in the folds of her dress for many moments, considering it. And for an instant, beneath her coffee-brown skin, she blushed red as an eclipse. Then she led me to the middle of the dance floor just as the band’s guitars began.

“Hey, turn it up loud enough so I can remember the maracas. And Teresa’s oils, her mother’s scowl. And her smile, rebellious and falling in love with me.”

They kissed that night as if it were the last time either of them would spend on earth. As if the whole world would be swallowed up by the rising surf. Underneath the shivering palm trees at the edge of the tide that threatened to drown every grain of sand and every star in the sky, Teresa fell for him. And he fell for her too.

“If I’m being honest, Teresa is the only memory I hold willingly.”

But José María couldn’t do it anymore. No … not anymore. After today, never. Never again.

“Good memories don’t matter in doctors’ offices,” José María growled. “Those jerks wear robes as white as bishops’ and they touch you just the same; probe you, prick you with needles, and latch on to your balls with clammy fingers and tell you to cough. I especially hate it when the doctor’s a gringo. They all speak Spanish the same: mechanically, like an instrument with no music coming out. And, have you ever noticed, their eyes are cold and metal, like scalpels? Their hair as yellow as piss samples, and their skin as white as the milk they tell you to aim into a cup. Then they test it, examine it, extract what they need from it, and finally find something wrong. Something wrong with you, something they say to you as if it doesn’t mean anything. Like it always was and always will be, and you’ve always known it to be that way. They read off their clipboards, in mechanical Spanish, things that will make you walk differently, fuck differently, blink differently. Things that weren’t that way yesterday or the day before, but would be there tomorrow and the day after. Fuck, man—they say it without lips. Instead, they let the news slither through their teeth, like their teeth were made of steel, hard and cold like their eyes.”

Sterile.

That’s what the doctor told José María.

Sterile.

José María, not a man like his father or his brothers or the other laborers.

Sterile.

“For many years,” the doctor said.

Sterile for many years.

“But I have two daughters,” José María snapped back. His two daughters.

“Not likely,” the doctor said. “Not yours,” he whispered.

Not his. Their smiles, not José María’s. Their eyebrows, their chins, their knees, not his. They were never his.

“¿Then whose? ¿Whose flesh, whose smiles, then?”

“Probably not yours,” the doctor repeated. Without lips, over and over. Not yours, not yours. Someone else’s.

Sterile, remember?

The doctor studied José María, tapped his foot, and, when José María could stand again, thrust a clipboard into his hands. It had papers, crisp, scribbled on. “Sign it,” the doctor said.

“But I can’t read English,” José María answered.

“Oh, that’s fine,” the doctor said. And in mechanical Spanish, he paraphrased it. “You’ve been like this for years,” the doctor reassured José María. The Company tested him when he first started this job eleven years ago. José María couldn’t remember that far back. They had chosen not to mention the results, the doctor said. Afraid José María might have been emotionally scarred and that his work would be affected. The doctor said it didn’t matter how much the dew from the trees stung the little cuts on José María’s fingers. “It’s harmless. It has always been,” he repeated, annoyed. “Not our fault. Please sign, Mr. Sánchez. Here. You can go now,” he said. “As you leave, please ask Mr. Suárez to enter.”

“But that bastard’s a liar,” José María said to the bartender. “It can’t be.”

He was a man, he insisted, and those girls were his. Teresa would never have done that to him. She couldn’t have.

“¿How could she?” he said, looking all around the bar as it spun. “¿Who could it be, then? ¿Who?

“Him,” José María said decisively. “The sculptor. I see the way he looks at her, the way he’s always looking at her. A thief eyeing another man’s treasure. Loving it long before he’s gotten his grimy paws on it, as if it hadn’t ever belonged to the man he would steal it from. Son of a bitch. I’ll kill him. That bastard. I’ll kill them both. If it’s true, I swear to God, I’ll kill them both.”

José María paid his tab with all the colones in his pocket and stumbled out into the mud-dirt road of the plantation. He knew in his gut what Teresa had done. His love of eleven years. The mother of his two children, who the doctor said weren’t his.

A cool, rum-sweet voice distracted him, persuaded him out of the plantation along La Guaria Railroad. He saw a few dogs circling a tree but didn’t care enough to watch what they were admiring. The rum-sweet voice dissipated and was replaced by the horrendous sound of the cane toad. It had been seventeen years since he first heard it, but he was sure it was echoing from somewhere tonight. Somewhere he knew well. He followed La Guaria Railroad toward the damned toad’s aria, which cursed him and laughed at him in the same breath. His breath was his father’s breath. His ribs crackled. Very slowly, he zigzagged along the steel rails. Stench from his mother’s hair flooded his nostrils. Rosewater.

José María lit a cigarette to rid his lungs of the stench. He punched the gravel between the ties. His knuckles hardly bled, so he aimed for the steel instead. He made himself vomit to rid his stomach of the vibrations originating from the toad’s belly.

José María, his mother had cooed the night he ran away. How handsome you are … how handsome. She grasped his trembling palm to place somewhere awful, but he grabbed both her ring fingers and snapped them backward. His mother jerked away and unleashed a wail so loud that it curdled her own blood. A wail of defeat, of desperate love. That night, he ran until he reached the grove’s edge, where a massive toad, a meter tall, sat before him and laughed as haughtily as the Devil does on Sundays.

José María sprinted down the track of La Guaria Railroad now. As drunk as his father, he tore through the moonlit night, heading toward Barrio Ávila. He followed the loathsome toad’s song as it choked on spoiled guaro. It haunted him, growing louder as he drew nearer to his house’s unlocked door. The house where Teresa and his maybe-daughters slept. He had to find out if they were his. His feet hit the gravel like hammers.

José María’s tail found him with the help of the moonlight, and like a viper, it prepared to strike.

 

AMERICAN FRUIT COMPANY

GENERAL OFFICES, 588 20TH STREET NW, WASHINGTON, D.C.

CABLE ADDRESS

AMERIFRUITCO { SAN JOSÉ D.C.

VINCENT RICHARD SMITH, M.D.

ATTENDING PHYSICIAN

JOHN AUGUSTUS SMITH JR.

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

COSTA RICA DIVISION

SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA

April 7, 1968.

Uncle:

I am unsure if you are receiving my correspondences. I have sent four letters now to which you have not responded. I suspect the fires in D.C. may have something to do with the misplacement. I cannot believe the height of the flames in the papers.

I must repeat my warnings. I fear repercussions for this assignment. The tension on the plantation is palpable; I feel it even in the office as the workers sign the consent forms and as they walk by. The laborers huddle around the gate of the White Zone as if planning something. The Banana Division Managers underestimate the threat. They say there has not been an uprising in twenty years. In response, they have reduced the price of the cantina alcohol. They say anesthetizing the workers will stave off rebellion. But this news the men are receiving has made them restless, and no amount of imbibing will extinguish it. Informing them of the examination results was a mistake, I know that now. Some are smarter than they come off and suspect the Company. Others are able to read English and have deciphered the forms. It is like a pot of boiling water here. It will spill over. You and the board must send directions quickly before an incident.

Respectfully,