Nights in Key Largo Kendric W. Taylor

The Fire

The wind was blowing steadily towards the Clark house. . .

By Frank I. Sillay

I’ve lived here on the farm literally all my life. I was even born in this house.

There was a time when it was bustling with people; Mum, Dad, and all the kids, but now there’s only me, and I’m an old woman now. I never married. I always did everything I had time to do, but what with helping with the younger kids, chores on the farm, and looking after Mum and Dad as they got older, there just never was room for romance, or a family of my own. I don’t know how my whole life just slipped away without my noticing.

There are only two houses on this road, mine, and the one next door, where the Clarks used to live. Because we’re so far from the main power lines, with no other houses on the way, the cost of hooking up electricity was always prohibitive, so I’ve always operated with kerosene lamps. The Clark house is only about thirty yards away, and back when both houses were full of life, it had the feeling of a little village, but

nobody lives there now. Jim Clark still owns the place, but he uses the land for offseason grazing for the cows on his big dairy farm down on the main road, and sometimes he has a few sheep on the place. The house has been used for storing hay for the last twenty years.

You’ll understand how the fire was such a shock to me, living out here on my own. Jim Clark was setting up to dock the tails of the year’s new lambs. There were only two or three dozen of them, and he had put them in an improvised pen between the two houses. He’d set up a little charcoal burner to heat the iron for cauterizing the wounds where the tails had been cut off, and he’d just got the fire going; hadn’t even done the first lamb, when the dry grass caught fire. Well, you should have seen him! He was so upset, rushing around, trying to decide what to do, then trying to do it.

It only took a moment for the fire to catch strongly, and the wind was blowing steadily towards the Clark house (thank goodness!). He turned the lambs loose, and they scattered to the four winds. I expect some of them are running yet. Next, he took the bucket he had set up to collect the tails in and used that to take water from the rain barrel next to his house to try to fight the fire. I’ve never seen an old man like him move so fast. He worked so hard to try and put out the fire, but nothing he did helped. It almost seemed like he was making it worse. Once the house caught, he turned over the rain barrel – by then half empty – but it didn’t help. He ended up just standing helpless, watching his childhood home go up in flames, which it did in a remarkably short time. By the time the volunteer fire brigade arrived, there was very little left to burn except for the remains of the hay bales stacked inside.

Bob Gort, the fire chief, who also sells insurance, had a lot of questions that he wanted to ask me after Jim had gone, and fortunately, I was able to tell him the full story, as I’ve told you here. It was just a tragic accident, and Jim fought bravely to save the day, but failed.

. . . It took careful planning. The wind needed to be in the right quarter, and it had to be a day when that silly old cow next door was athome, twitching the curtains, and sticking her nose into everybody’s business except hers. It worked perfectly, that old bastard Gort tried his best to disallow the insurance claim, but thanks to her nosiness, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. And I made sure she didn’t see me the night before, when I floated a couple of gallons of kerosene on top of the rain barrel.

Winter in Iceland Photo by Tony Tedeschi

Nights in Key Largo

The scene in the bar grows more feverish in the late night heat.

By Kendric W. Taylor

“Do we have to listen to this morbid little pimp much longer?” We were in Key Largo, the finest bar in Central America, my favorite of any bar, maybe of anywhere I’d ever been. In a lifetime of bar-flying, this is where I’d land, where I’d return time and time again, the place I’d head for as soon as I was in Costa Rica. My name is Thompson, and I had been bouncing around down here in Latin America for what seemed like forever, trying to support myself as a freelance writer, or tour guide, or whatever else borderline legal I could turn my hand to in hope of

earning a few dollars, or pesos, or reals or sols -- anything with a picture of some old guy with a beard and some numbers on it that I could cash. “Hell, it’s too crowded in the other rooms, Mike,” I said, “Let the kid sing. At least he’s chased everyone out of here so the air can circulate.” “Well, he sucks.” Mike grumbled, “I’m going outside to the main room and look around.” Located in the capital city of San José, Key Largo squats perspiring in the hot tropical night, frequented by losers and the lost, potheads and drunks, real estate hustlers, scam artists, gunrunners and tourists. Lining the long mahogany bar back in the 1980s a few male patrons actually still wear white linen suits, their conversation across the wide countertop hushed and furtive, their eyes shifting and darting, the deals endlessly discussed and seldom made; the unattached females eyed but not pestered, the occasional working girl tolerated, but not encouraged. We filled a corner under an open window in one of the cavernous back rooms, a group of sketchy travel agents from the states I’d been hired by a millionaire resort owner to herd around while they were attending the travel Bolsahere in the city. Beer bottles sweat interlocking rings on the greasy table as we peer through the gloom. Grateful for the slight breeze picked up by the slowly twirling ceiling fans, I’m doing my best to ignore the whining post-flower child torturing his guitar up on the stage, trying to keep the conversation going with my weathered group of so-called tourism professionals. This is one of several evenings during the week at Key Largo dedicated to spotlighting musical groups touring Latin America. All were welcome here -- good, bad or indifferent. They come and play, singularly and in groups, unbooked and unbidden, pass the straw hat and depart unremembered for the border -- any border -- sometimes right from the stage. This musical imposter had been performing for about ten minutes, long past polite forbearance, finally succeeding in propelling Mike and most of the audience from the room. I know what Mike is looking for -- he’s been itching after it the whole trip. We had just come back to San Jose after two days in a jungle camp in southwestern Costa Rica. From the highway, we had followed a single track in, little more than a path really, muddy, holed, and slashed by fast shallow streams, leading ultimately to a rugged tourist outpost perched uneasily on a sloping verdant hillside. We were doubled up in small rough-hewn cabins clinging to the gullied slope around a communal bathing hut, and aside from a few limited explorations outside the camp we had little to do other than enjoying the fecund serenity of the rain forest. While the others were off dodging snakes in the rain forest looking for butterflies, I had been contenting myself with sitting on the side of the pool chatting with the lovely blackhaired executive of the airline that had flown the group down from Florida, playing underwater footsie with her while planning a rendezvous on her next trip down. It was like living in an erotic travel poster. Later, in the evening, after a buffet dinner by the pool, one of the drivers called me aside: “Don Tom, Señor Mike is asking for drugs and women.” “Where the hell does he think he is? We’re in the middle of a jungle,” I explained needlessly. “Sorry Pepé. Tell him to restrain himself until we get back to

the capital. Maybe taking these outdoor showers with just that thin bamboo partition between us and the females agitates him. It does me.” “I know,” Pepé nodded slowly, “I see you look at the airline senorita at dinner.” On our last morning, relaxing with my cabin mate on the porch under dripping eaves, he gazes at an orange frog hopping past in the muddied clearing ,and murmurs: “Ho-hum, another day in the jungle.” It was time to go back to San Jose. Once a fine colonial mansion, the Key Largo sits ample and solid halfway down Calle 7, near midtown, across from a shaded park. Its façade is now faded and peeling, decades of tropical sun and rain leaving their mark; tall, weathered shutters frame the wide windows. A modest patchy yard surrounds the house. Behind the wrought iron gates, a slate walkway leads beneath a bower of palms up to a wide, plantfringed step and a heavy wooden front door. Inside, minimal renovation has been done over the years. It’s as if its former residents had pulled out one day – just up and left -- carrying musty trunks and cracked family paintings a quick-step ahead of their creditors; their heavy furniture dragged through the large rooms and piled outside onto the back of a pickup, the whole creaking pyramid pulling away with white-haired Grandma clinging on the top in a rump-sprung easy chair, nothing remaining in the echoing rooms but a few framed sepia photographs of aunts and uncles in white linens, gazing down at the rolls of dust and the scraps of unpaid bills. The highly polished bar occupies one wall of what once was the front parlor. Fan-shaped planter’s chairs cluster by the windows; small cafe tables and wire-backed chairs crowd in upon one another in groups. There were several other large rooms on the main floor, dimly lit by guttering candles, the stale beer-soaked air churned by the tired ceiling fans. The patrons drink and dance, play cards and toss darts. I’ve never seen anyone eat anything here. The present owner, an American -- from Indiana, he claims -- lives on the top floor in a modest apartment with rattan furniture and a cluttered rolltop desk. Opposite, French doors open onto a sparse patio rimmed with yellowing potted plants. At sunset a striped awning flutters in the rising breeze above the few sun-faded deck chairs. Right now though, my business is not at Key Largo, certainly not at mid-day. No, I am headed for the Blue Marlin, a dark bar at street level beneath the Hotel del Rey. I am looking for another member of the group, a bad-tempered alcoholic from California. I had unwittingly urged a friendly beer upon him that first day, at a memorable lunch at a commune in the hills near the capital to sample the unique cookery of a group of middle-aged Yuppies dedicated to vegetarianism and Native American cuisine. He accepted the beer with a resigned shrug; quickly drained it, then another, and kept on drinking throughout lunch. Now sporting a 30 degree list, he came back to town with us, and then disappeared. The meal was quite good actually, centered around heaps of potatoes and corn, and after, the group’s leader, a former banker from San Francisco, a stocky Caucasian with a brightly colored headband, long gray pigtails, leather chaps and beaded moccasins, got up to pow wow, regaling us at great length about how the commune emulated the tribal way in every detail of their lives, sounding like someone in a 50s B-Western. After what seemed like many moons he wore down, and was

asked by one of the group if he was apparently so keen on following native American Indian ways, wouldn’t it be more authentic to live in . . . say . . . North America?” “Jesus, get real, Man!,” the answer snapped back. “Do you know what rents are like in the States?” Ah, good old American horse sense. A day later, breakfasting at an outdoor café across from the Opera House, our missing group member suddenly looms up, nastily drunk, insults my dark-haired companion, ignoring the fact that she had flow him here gratis, and disappeared again down the street. So, this left me no choice but to search for him the following day in the only place I could think of, the last refuge for deteriorating North American white males –the Blue Marlin. Once there of course, out of the sun and adjusting my eyes in the smoky gloom, I realized that asking for a fat, drunken American was like looking for a stoner at a Grateful Dead concert. Most of the men in here – no – all of the men in here -were in Costa Rica for one reason -- women. Middle-aged and older, widowers or divorced, lonely, broke, dumb or stupid, they were here because they have heard that the Ticaswere young and beautiful and favor older Norte Americanos. Partially true: Many Ticas(as female Costa Ricans are called), do like Americans, particularly their money. The women respond to ads placed in the English-language Tico Timesadvertising for guides, or secretaries, or companions -- matrimony the unstated but ultimate object. The women, young and generally attractive, queue up with their dueñasto be interviewed for the positions. The men were mainly interested in only one position – the prone. The females in turn, search closely for signs of advancing age and diminished capacity. The eager male questioners quickly find that major life insurance and sufficient income to support the prospective bride’s extensive family were a prerequisite. The women just as quickly discover that many of the men have only small, fixed incomes, modest pensions, or Social Security, and couldn’t get additional insurance any easier than they could maintain an erection -- one a minus, the other a plus for the young ladies. Disappointed but undaunted, the women send their aunts and uncles back to the farm for another day, and the Americanos drift down to the Blue Marlin where the hookers aren’t so picky. Soon I’m talking to Phil, a filthy old felon with white hair, potbelly, and four day’s stubble on his face. “I’ve got plenty of money,” he brags to me, “own a box factory. Got too old to scare up anything decent, so I sold the factory, dumped the second wife, came down here to buy me a young chippie. I tell ‘em about my boat, send a car for ‘em, take ‘em sailing, they think I’m Errol Flynn. Been doin’ that up north for years, and it always gets them. Dumb bitches. But now I got cancer. I spend my days getting drunk and taking one of these bimbos here upstairs at night when I can get it up. Then one morning Idon’t get up. Get it? Great, huh?” Better you than me, brother. I head back to Key Largo for a talk with Jimmy, the owner: “Thanks for letting me come upstairs,” I tell him. “The group was really impressed meeting you the other night. Actually, I told them you were Robert Vesco. You know, the fugitive financier, the securities fraud guy that’s on the lam. You look a lot like him with that moustache.”

“How do you know I’m not?” “Um, Jimmy, listen, downstairs in the bar? C’mon, how many drug deals go down there every night? Arms deals too, I bet?” “I never heard any.” “Oh. Well. Listen, one of the travel agents has gone missing. Been a couple of days now; well, actually, he’s been gone for a week. I keep hoping he’ll turn up. Got any ideas? I’ve looked in the Blue Marlin.” “Ha. I’d say check the morgue, but you’ve already been there. Those people in the Blue Marlin are already dead. They oughta keep them in roll-out cabinets in the wall.” “OK, I just thought I’d ask. You always know everything that goes on around here in the capital.” “Ah, you can’t tell about boozers, especially on a binge. He’ll turn up, or he

won’t.

“By the way, you’re not thinking about doing one of your stories about me, are you,” Jimmy says, staring hard. “Not based on what you’vetold me.” “I hope not. “Listen,” Jimmy explains, “these guys in the bar downstairs are a bunch of scam artists who couldn’t make in it the States. Half of them are real estate speculators down here selling each other underwater pecan groves. OK, once in a while an arms deal involving 1903 Springfields or World War One Enfields might get bandied about: not a Kalashnikov in the bunch, so it usually falls through. These bums -almost all of them -- are about one step away from being three-card monte dealers in Times Square. Or probably dead like your drunk. C’mon down to the bar, Tompkins,” he says, getting my name partially right, while grabbing my arm, “I’ll buy you a beer.” Downstairs the bar is throbbing. It’s a packed house. Jimmy spots me a pilsner and leaves me with a nod to the bartender, glad-handing his way past the regulars. I wave to a group of river rafters here for the Travel Bolsa. One of them told me he’s looking for financing to take the first group of rafters down the Yangtze River in Communist China. I’m ready to sign on. Only the fact that he’s just returned from the banquet tonight attired in his idea of formal eveningwear -- a tee shirt with a necktie painted on it -- gives me pause. I have visions of him negotiating with gimleteyed Chinese communists in that getup. Key Largo buzzes with conversation, cigar smoke drifts out the open windows on the heavy tropic air. In the next room, an Afro-Caribbean calypso band from Limón throbs into the night. I’m going there tomorrow. It’s completely different from San José. While everyone up here is light skinned and speaks Spanish, with a certain old world formality, Limón is Afro-Caribbean: humid, unpaved, tumbledown, laughter and music bursting out of windows and along the muddied streets. Workers from various Caribbean islands, along with Chinese and Italians, were brought to Costa Rica in the mid 1800’s by the United Fruit Company to build the railroad from San José to the coast, to haul bananas from the highlands down to the Caribbean ports.