Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

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.

“What’s the matter, Pablo?” Callahan asked. “You feeling O.K.?”

“I don’t know,” Pablo said. “Sometimes you get the idea all anybody’s interested in down here is money.”

Mr. and Mrs. Callahan looked at him pleasantly.

“Well,” Callahan said, “that’s because it’s such a materialistic society down here. They don’t have the same kind of spiritual values we have up home.”

“Right,” Mrs. Callahan said, “one gets caught up in it.”

Pablo smiled and stood up, thinking that he might have trouble with these people. “Hope to see you at five,” he said.

On the way out he said so long to Cecil.

When Pablo was on his way, the Callahans drank another round.

“Jesus, it’s depressing,” Mrs. Callahan said. “They’re all such creeps. And what we really need is an extended family.”

“The only question these days,” Callahan said, “is, will they turn on you? It’s sad but that’s the way things are.”

“I think I’ve just decided,” Mrs. Callahan said, glancing toward the bar, “that I don’t like him. I think he’s Cecil’s idea of a gag.”

“He’s a deserter,” Callahan said. “Those guys are usually a good bet.”

“Maybe we’re supposed to think he’s a deserter. Maybe he’s a Fed.”

“He’s too fucked up to be a Fed. I mean, they’re just not that good.”

“Maybe we can get by without him?”

“I don’t think so,” Callahan said.

They sat in silence for a while.

“Look, Deedee, on the level of instinct I go for him. I think he’s the best man we’ve seen. I think he knows how to take orders. I’m sure he doesn’t like it much — but I think he takes them.”

“I don’t like him,” Mrs. Callahan said.

“There’s three of us and one of him — and he can’t really navigate. But I’ve got to get his passport and check him out. Cecil probably knows where it is.”

“It’s your decision,” the woman said.

“I used to like it,” Callahan said, “when the baddest thing around these parts was me. These days I’m just another innocent abroad.”

Mrs. Callahan finished her rum and lit a small thin cigar.

“It’s really scary,” she said. “People are getting to be a disgrace to the planet.”

Callahan smiled dreamily.

“We’ve been lucky, kid. We’ve met some dingalings but we’ve met some sweethearts, too.”

Mrs. Callahan waved the cigar smoke away from their table.

“Don’t get me going,” she said. “I’ll start to cry.”

Six stories below Holliwell’s window, a French teen-ager and her mother were playing in the swimming pool. The women were fair; their bodies were tanned and charged with the sunlit sensuality of fruit in the softening afternoon light. The daughter was doing laps and even within the confines of the Panamerican’s pool it was apparent that she was a fine swimmer. At each length, she performed a racer’s turn while her mother watched her with a brown arm resting on the tiles, shading her eyes from the sun and sipping lemonade from a tall iced glass. Tame parrots wandered among the plants before the poolside suites. Beside the wall that divided the hotel pool from the Compostelan street outside, two Indians in braided uniform jackets hosed down the garden, looking neither at the guests nor at each other.

Holliwell was sitting on his pocket balcony watching the Frenchwomen when it occurred to him that, against safety and reason, he felt like going to Tecan after all. The Corazón Islands stood off her Caribbean coast, enemies to winter and the emptiness that awaited him at home. Tecan was what it was, but it was also, like Compostela, the sweet waist of America. A seductress, la encantada , a place of pleasure for the likes of him.

Beyond the snow bird’s impulse was his mounting curiosity about the Catholics there. It would be strange to see such Catholics, he thought. It would be strange to see people who believed in things, and acted in the world according to what they believed. It would be different. Like old times. He owed nothing to anyone; he could go or not. What he might do and what he might see there would be no one’s business but his own.

He put away the thought and drank more and the pool below him surrendered to shade. He had stayed in his room in the expectation that some sort of social invitation would come from the university, that someone there would at least call to welcome him.

No calls came, however, and he suspected that it must be because of Oscar. Perhaps they imagined that they were being preyed on by a faggot cabal.

Fuck them, he thought, pacing the tile floor drink in hand. They would despise his address. Leftists and rightists alike would find it so much gringo decadence.

The women would be puzzled and threatened, they would turn to their husbands for explanation. The husbands would explain about gringo decadence. That professor, they’d say, smacking their lips, he’s a friend of Ocampo’s, he’s a maricón. It’s no surprise he feels that way.