All Due Respect Issue #2

by Owen Laukkanen

  Use a bar for a church, and God might be hammered when he answers your prayers.

  * * *

  Liam Sweeny is an author and a web artist. In his free time, he is a disaster responder for the American Red Cross, specializing in information and planning.

  The Gulf

  By Scott Adlerberg

  FRANK AND VERA LEFT THE restaurant. The smell of conch and broiled butter drifted out to the warm street. It had rained that evening, and the shallow pools on the asphalt glistened. With the shops closed the town looked deserted, but they heard voices coming from the bars. Frank said he wanted a drink.

  “A rum and Coke. That would be nice.”

  “After I work off this meal,” Vera said.

  They walked by their hotel, and a dark figure crouched in the entrance hailed them. When the person straightened up, they recognized the chubby man who’d come to them last night, offering passage across the gulf.

  “You people,” he said. “Still going to Guatemala?”

  “Yes,” said Frank.

  “I can take you. Whenever you want.”

  “We didn’t forget. Don’t worry.”

  He and Vera continued on, leaving the center of town behind. The moon, a plump orange, lit the way, and the road skirted a stone wall built above a cliff. Past the wall was the sea; stars shone in the black water.

  “I love this spot,” Vera said, and she paused to enjoy the view.

  Frank reached out and grasped her hand.

  As they resumed their stroll, a pickup truck roared by. A few British soldiers stood in it wearing fatigues. None carried arms. They grinned when they saw Vera, and some of them called out to her.

  “Hop on. Room over here. Want to get married?”

  She didn’t acknowledge the men but spoke in a muted voice to Frank.

  “Goddamn pigs. Get out of the country.”

  “Don’t start,” Frank said.

  “Belize is supposed to be independent.”

  “It is.”

  “Guatemala isn’t going to attack.”

  “You don’t know that. With territorial disputes, anything’s possible.”

  “I just don’t see it happening.”

  “I’m sure that makes the Belizeans feel good.”

  Vera pouted and removed her hand from his grip. She walked quickly, glaring into the distance. Her sudden aloofness irritated Frank, but he checked himself from saying anything more. He didn’t want another political discussion. They’d been together for nearly three months and kept having these kinds of arguments.

  A wind was blowing. Its gentle current skimmed his face, and the sound of the waves lapping at the cliff soothed him. Head angled, he glanced at Vera. She did have a ripe, attractive body. And in this moonlight, when her sun-baked skin was copper-colored and her short-banged hair golden, how could he not be glad they’d met? His friends back home would rag him for having a white girlfriend, but none of them knew how depressing solitary travel could be. In northern Mexico, during the early part of the summer, he’d ridden the buses and trains alone, eaten meal after meal by himself. The journey had begun as a journey into loneliness.

  But still. You know it was a mistake. To do it without protection was risky enough, and you can’t say you don’t deserve this mess. Imagine if she wanted to keep the baby, though. That would be the worst.

  The road split into two branches, and instead of clinging to the coast, as they had the previous night, they turned inland. Past a bend, in a plot of weeds, a house on fat stilts appeared. It had a red tiled roof and gray shingled walls, and a man was nestled in the hammock on the porch.

  “Wait! I want to talk to you.”

  The man swung into furious motion and sprinted down the steps to the yard.

  “Wait!”

  Both Frank and Vera burst out laughing. Brusque salutations typified Belize’s informality and came as a welcome change of pace after the usteds and comprimisos of Mexico.

  “What’s up?” Frank said.

  The man was as thin and solid as a flagstaff. He had wooly hair, a dusky complexion, and pockmarked cheeks. As he loped through the grass he displayed a long stick, and Frank felt his lips curling inward, his smile fading. Vera had already gone rigid with tension.

  “Where you from?” the man asked.

  “The States,” Frank said.

  “But where, boy, where?”

  “New York City. The Bronx.”

  “Oh, the jungle.”

  “Jungle’s the word,” Vera said, shouting her agreement.

  “You from there, too?”

  “Thank God, no. I’m from Vermont.”

  “She’s the nature girl from Vermont,” Frank said, and Vera smirked at him. Well, why had she disparaged New York?

  Without drama, without a hint of aggression, the man raised his stick. He put one end of it into his mouth. His hands slipped up and down the wood as if he were playing a saxophone, and in his growing exuberance, he imitated a musician’s body language. His shoulders dipped; one sneakered foot tapped in a puddle; he rocked on his left heel while humming a song. Neither Frank nor Vera could identify the song—his humming was raspy and unmelodious—but when he completed his performance, he winked, proud of himself.

  “Wasn’t that something?” he said. “Like my music?”

  Vera nudged Frank’s arm and said. “Let’s go. I’m getting tired.”

  “I’m wide awake,” Frank said.

  “It’s jazz,” the man said, snapping his fingers. “I like your American music.” He swayed to the rhythm of a new composition, and Frank saw he was becoming less steady on his feet. “Jazz,” he said. “Jazz.” And each time he opened his mouth, he exhaled the scent of rum. Frank was afraid he’d get overwrought, and sure enough he did, losing his balance, staggering forward into Vera. She drew back in gaping, pale-faced disgust. The front of her blouse, the white material, had been marked with a circular pattern of the man’s sweat.

  “I wanted to wear this tomorrow,” she said. “Now I have nothing even halfway clean.”

  The man shrugged, indifferent to her distress. He said, “Tonight’s important. Know what’s happening?”

  “Tell me,” Frank said, his attention on Vera.

  “We killing an English soldier tonight.”

  “What?”

  “We killing one very soon. Come on.”

  He danced about and waved his arm. “You’re invited,” he said. “You can watch.” And as he moved down the road, Frank trailed after him. Frank wanted to see where this adventure would end.

  “A couple of comedians,” said Vera. “What are you doing?”

  “You’ll be pleased,” Frank said. “They’re knocking off one of those jerks.”

  “You’re the jerk. How could you follow him? He’ll bring you somewhere and bump you off.”

  “I listening,” said the man, who had stopped. “I hearing you.”

  “She doesn’t mean it,” Frank said.

  “Are you English, girl?”

  “I’m going,” Vera said.

  The man rushed over to Vera and poked her chest with the stick.

  “You bastard,” she said. “You think I like those soldiers? I can’t stand army people of any nationality.”

  “English, English, English,” he said, and he spat to the side, exhibiting contempt. He threw down the stick and grabbed Vera, and she had to wrestle with him. While she did, Frank watched, and an electric sensation hot as fire convulsed his loins. The feeling surprised him as much as it would have shocked her had he mentioned it, and finally he intervened, pushing the man from behind. The man crashed against the pavement. He cursed, rolled onto his back, lay still. He had a cut high on his temple, and the line of blood extended to his chin.

  “You’re no American either, boy,” he said, his disappointment apparent.

  Vera was running away, heading toward the coastal road. Frank knew he should chase her, give her his immediate support, but he wondered what excuse to make for his
sluggish reaction to the man’s assault. Unable to think of anything, he became dejected. He asked the man whether he had any rum in his house.

  “Sorry I hit you,” he said, as the man got up. “You didn’t give me much choice.”

  “Are you American or not?”

  “Of course I am. I’m an American and I like jazz. Especially yours.”

  “Then why’d you push me to the ground?”

  “She’s my girlfriend,” Frank said. “Or she was till a minute ago.”

  “She’s white, you black. You defend her?”

  Frank went “pphh,” scoffing at the question, but the man rattled with laughter. “Poor fella,” he said. “He lost his white meat and that makes him sad.”

  “It’s not like that at all.”

  “Yes, it is. You shamed to admit it…Come on. Happy hour.”

  While Frank waited on the porch, the man walked into his kitchen. He dragged out a pair of wooden stools, and on the next trip, his arms full, he brought glasses, a half-empty bottle of rum, and two chilled bottles of Coca Cola. They mixed their drinks and sat gazing at the lime-green weeds below them.

  “I do like her,” Frank said. “We get along well overall.”

  “She’s white. She only wants you for one thing.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Don’t,” said the man. “I been to England and I had a lot of white women. They all wanted me for just one thing.”

  Frank drained his glass and served himself a second rum and Coke. As he sipped, he contemplated the Belizean. The blood on the side of his face had congealed; he hadn’t bothered to wash it off. And even without this rust-red smear he was an ugly man, with his spare build and the pockmarks in his cheeks. Nothing about him suggested a lady-killer, a black Casanova, and Frank concluded that his boast had been wishful thinking.

  “Hear what I telling you. The English girl—”

  “She’s not English,” Frank said.

  “Still. Get a different bitch. A black bitch will respect you.”

  Frank gulped down his drink and put his glass on the floor. The English, white people, women: the man resented all of them, and the vehemence of this resentment disturbed Frank.

  “I wouldn’t want to be like you,” he told the Belizean. But when he considered this statement, he blushed. He felt the heat in his face. Hadn’t he felt a spasm of excitement watching the man rough up Vera?

  “Thanks for the rum,” he said, and he hopped off the stool, propelling himself toward the steps.

  “Wait,” the man said. “You haven’t seen us kill the English soldier yet.”

  “You’re not killing anyone. You just wish you could.”

  “But where you going?”

  “To apologize.”

  “Don’t do that. You’re forgetting everything I said.”

  “I’m trying,” Frank said. “I’m trying.”

  Vera had run back to town, attracting a volley of calls as she passed the bars. “I’m waiting, girl…You need me…Some body.” It was the usual stuff, and she only hoped that none of the men would come out and approach her. None did, and at last she stepped inside the hotel.

  A planet, she thought. Give me a planet where I can send the subhumans. There won’t be many men on the earth after that.

  She tramped up the stairs and down the corridor. She dug in her pocket for the key to the room. Good thing she always held it, not Frank; in Veracruz, he’d lost their hotel key at the beach. She switched on the light and took off the blouse the drunken man had sullied with his perspiration. It smelled of his sweat, and she hurled it into a corner, nauseated. Then, stripped completely, she went over to the sink. Using soap and a towel, she scrubbed every part of herself the man had touched. She imagined that she was wiping away an invisible scum, a bacterial film his fingers had secreted. When she finished, she consulted the mirror, admiring the beauty of her cleansed skin, still marble-smooth, still with its lustrous tan. Her hysteria dissolved. But she became annoyed thinking about the incident, and banged her hands against the glass. She could hardly believe that Frank hadn’t joined her when she bolted from the scene. He must’ve stayed with the Belizean, following him out of curiosity. That was perverse. If trouble resulted, Frank would have no one but himself to blame for it.

  Vera stretched out on the bed. Her ribcage ached and she breathed hard. But she jogged a mile or two each morning and needed little time to recover her wind. She waited, motionless, and when she’d revived, came to a decision.

  “The hell with Frank,” she said.

  A few minutes later, bearing her knapsack, dressed in a mud-stained shirt and dungarees, Vera left the room. She descended the stairs. From the entrance, she slipped into a hallway, and though it had no lights, she continued to advance until she was standing on the set of steps that terminated in the basement, a wide room lit by the moonbeams shining through a vacant window. Here, underneath the hotel, lived the man who’d offered to take her and Frank across the gulf. He had shown them his place yesterday, telling them to seek him out whenever they were ready to depart.

  “My name is Man,” he’d said. “Man-Man.”

  Vera discerned his rotund form lying in a hammock suspended from the ceiling.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You were asleep.”

  “Come in and sit down,” he said.

  He untangled himself from the hammock and plodded across the concrete floor. His naked paunch, all creased flesh, jiggled with his every stride.

  “Come and sit,” he repeated, indicating a cot covered in crumpled linens. “Where’s your friend?”

  “It’s only me,” said Vera. “I want to go to Guatemala.”

  “Now?”

  “If your boat’s ready.”

  Man-Man peered at her with squinting eyes, and the brown dome of his head shook as if he were having a laugh.

  “We’ll go in the morning,” he said. “Nine o’clock?”

  “Why wait? Nothing wrong with this weather.”

  “It’s the gulf, mon, the gulf. Very dangerous at night.”

  Vera ran over to the far wall and leaned out the window. “Careful,” Man-Man said. She was poised above a rocky slope that plunged into the sea. The gulf, a liquid field of shimmering black, looked tranquil, and from the horizon to the highest constellations the sky was luminous.

  “I’m not worried,” she said, wheeling around. “We won’t sink.”

  But Man-Man said she’d forgotten about the customs office. Before leaving Belize, she would have to go there to pay her exit fee and get her passport stamped.

  “And what about your friend?” he said. “You and him been fighting?”

  “I’m traveling alone,” Vera said. “That’s it.”

  “Do what you want. I’ll take you in the morning.”

  Vera marched back across the basement, halting at the foot of the dark steps. “Now where do I go?” she said.

  “You have a room upstairs.”

  “The hell with that.”

  But to a get a different room would be impossible since the manager had gone home, and she didn’t want to search for another hotel at this hour.

  “Sleep here,” Man-Man said, as if he too had weighed her options. “I don’t mind. No charge.”

  He pointed again at the cot, with its dirty sheets, and said he would sleep in the hammock.

  “That’s nice of you,” said Vera, “but I can’t throw you out of your bed.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “Really. Let me have the hammock.”

  “Whatever you like.”

  She saw his tongue emerge, a brown wedge. She watched the tongue as it caressed his lips, making them shine. Then it vanished, sucked back into his smiling mouth, and Vera shifted her gaze to his legs, bent slightly and straddling his shadow.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Forget it.”

  And she visualized the two of them sitting in a motorboat. For most of the ride across the gulf, nobody would be in sight, nobody in hea
ring distance.

  Would she be safe?

  She fled up the stairs and into the unlit passage. The knapsack rubbed against her spine; in the cellar Man-Man shouted. Sensing his pursuit, she raced on, and underneath the bulb in the vestibule, she met Frank. He was entering the hotel, and Vera, erupting with joy, clasped his hand.

  Then she realized that she’d panicked. She and Frank were by themselves. Man-Man had not run after her, and it dawned on her that she might have misjudged him. Was that possible?

  Frank meanwhile was talking. Vera listened, caught up by the urgency in his voice, but she could make no sense of his words. He spoke too fast and everything sounded disconnected. Over and over he said, “I’m sorry,” and she heard him say, “I was shocked. I admit it. It took me a second to respond.”

  Suddenly she understood. He was apologizing for not having promptly defended her against the drunken man.

  “You took more than a second,” Vera said. “Much more.”

  “At least you weren’t hurt.”

  “Thanks. And where were you all this time?”

  “At a bar.”

  “With your friend?”

  “Of course not,” Frank said. “I left him right away, but—”

  “I know. You were so embarrassed you needed a drink.”

  “Well…”

  Frank craned his neck, looking behind her. It seemed he had just noticed her knapsack, and in his wrinkled brow she could read his question: what was she doing in the entrance hall anyway?

  “The door to the room is unlocked for you, key’s on the table.”

  “Are you serious?” Frank said. “A little thing happens and you’d rather travel alone? You have that…” He pointed at her stomach. “…inside you.”

  “That, as you so call it, is a fetus, and what I choose to do with it is my business.”

  “But you said—”

  “You heard what you wanted to hear.”

  “But it’s my child, too. You can’t just go off if you’re going to keep it.”

  “Only if I promise to get rid of it. That’d be okay.”