JOHNNY WINS A FRIEND
Just as the first faint glow of dawn lighted the shattered walls and
yawning windows of the ancient Guatemalan jail from which Johnny Thompson
had been so strangely released, the Spanish child in his arms stirred,
then sat up to stare about her. At that moment a tall, dark Honduran came
walking rapidly across the plaza.
“Don del Valle!” Johnny started. This was the man who owned a fifth of
all the banana land in Central America, the man who had ordered him
thrown into jail.
“What next?” he thought.
Not knowing whether to break and run, or stand his ground, he hesitated
until the man was upon him.
“Hah!” the man exclaimed. “At last!”
Johnny was on his feet in an instant, prepared for flight. “He’s been
looking for me,” his thoughts raced on. “Now he’s found me, he’ll find me
another jail. He’ll put me in. If he can catch me. He can’t.” Yet for the
moment he stood still. Why? Probably he did not know why, but it was well
that he did not run.
“Where did you find the child?” This was the question the dark-skinned
del Valle shot at Johnny. At the same instant the child Johnny had
protected during the terrifying earthquake sprang into the Honduran’s
arms. The man’s tone was not harsh as it had been the night before.
“Why I—” Johnny tried to think. “I really didn’t find her. She found—that
is, we fell over each other, so we decided to camp here until the earth
began standing still.”
“But you, my young friend? You are in jail. Is it not so?”
“I was in jail.” Johnny felt a creepy sensation running up his back. That
had been a terribly uncomfortable jail. “The—the jail wasn’t safe,”—his
face twisted into a quizzical smile—“so I came over here to the plaza.”
As he spoke the child was pouring words, soft melodious Spanish words
into Don del Valle’s ears.
“I am sorry,” said the Honduran. “I was hasty. You should not have gone
to jail. My child here, who was lost from us in the catastrophe, tells me
you were her protector. You have returned me good for evil. Pardon. You
wished to ask me something? Bananas, was it not? You should know that I
have no bananas to sell, that they are all contracted for by your
American fruit company.”
Johnny’s heart leaped. Luck was coming his way. Providence had sent him
an earthquake to cast down his prison bars and a child to plead his
cause. Before his mind’s eye came the faces of good old Kennedy, of Madge
Kennedy and of Captain Jorgensen. He might be able to help them yet. At
any rate he was not to go back to jail.
“But you don’t understand,” he found himself saying to the rich Spaniard.
“It is only the six hands I ask. They are not contracted for. Two-thirds
of a ship load is all I need.”
“Ah! Six hands you say.” Don del Valle stroked his beard. “It might be
arranged.”
“But you are hungry!” he exclaimed. “The walls of my house are cracked,
but it has not fallen. The great shudder is over, please God. My servants
have cleared away the rubbish and put things to right. We will have
coffee and hot corn cakes in the garden. After that we will talk of these
six hands. Come!”
He led the way through streets strewn with debris. The child, flitting
back and forth like a sunbeam, placed a confiding hand first in Johnny’s,
then in her father’s brown palm.
In spite of the havoc wrought by the earthquake, Don del Valle’s garden
was still very beautiful. The broken fragments of a great flower-filled
urn had been cleared away. Two fallen trees still lay prone amid a
blazing bed of flowering plants. In the background, in the midst of a
luxuriant growth of strange tropical and semi-tropical plants, a path led
to inviting realms beyond.
On a broad piazza they sat in rosewood chairs around tables of solid
mahogany, munching hot corn cakes and sipping coffee. There was Don del
Valle and his wife, a very beautiful Spanish lady. Besides Johnny and the
little girl, there were no others.
“She is their only child,” thought Johnny as he noted how tenderly they
cared for the dark-eyed girl. “What a privilege to show her a kindness.”
The talk ran on about matters quite foreign to business. They speculated
regarding the extent of damage done by the earthquake and the area shaken
by it.
“And have you many earthquakes in the United States?” asked the lady.
“I have never experienced one before,” Johnny replied. “Our land is very
broad and flat. It has little backbone. Mountains are the backbone of the
land. At times the backbone appears to shake up a bit.”
“Ah yes!” said the Don. “It is quite true. Our land is very much
backbone, almost nothing else.”
Johnny was interested in everything that these people had to say, but was
very anxious to get down to business. He had come to purchase bananas,
twenty thousand bunches at least. There was need of haste. Skipper
Jorgensen’s ship, the _North Star_, was lying before Belize in British
Honduras without a cargo—at least it had been lying there three days
before. There was no telling at what moment some one might offer him a
cargo of cocoanuts, chicle, mahogany or a combination cargo of all. Then
Johnny’s chance of helping Kennedy and his granddaughter by getting off
their year’s crop of grapefruit would be gone.
“And that,” he told himself, “would be a great tragedy.”
“And now,” said his host, as the others moved away and the servant
disappeared with the dishes, “we may talk. We must make it brief. I am a
busy man. In this city I operate two stores, a cotton mill and a
warehouse. I must find out at once the extent of damage done by the
shock. You want bananas?”
“Six hand bunches.”
“Ah yes, you wish only the six hand bunches. And how can you use six hand
bunches? The Fruit Company will never purchase them. How can you hope to
dispose of them? They are not used. Either they are not gathered at all,
or they are given to the stevedores or are cut up and cast into the sea.”
“That’s just it,” said Johnny, leaning eagerly forward. “It was just
because you do not care for them, because you have no contract with the
Fruit Company to deliver them, that I thought you would be willing to
sell them to me.”
“Sell them!” The man’s eyes lighted. “I could almost give them to you.
Five cents a bunch. That would pay for gathering and bringing them to the
wharf. But you?” He turned his eyes upon the boy. “What will you do with
them? If the Fruit Company cannot handle them, how can you?
“You see,” he smiled, “because you were kind to my child, I like you. I
do not wish to see you cheat yourself.”
“Look!” said Johnny, rising to pace the stone floor. “You grade your
bananas according to the number of groups on a stem. You call those
groups hands. For a bunch having seven hands the Fruit Company pays
twenty-five cents; eight hands thirty-seven and a half; nine hands or
more fifty cents. If a bunch has only six hands they will not buy it. Is
it not so?”
“_Si, Si, Senor._ It is true.”
“But are the bananas on the six hand bunch smaller? Are they less sweet?
Will they spoil more quickly than those on the other bunches?”
“No, _Senor_.”
“Then why are they not as good?”
The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders for reply.
“They are as good, exactly as good!” Johnny struck the table with his
open palm. “Small bunches are a little more trouble to handle. That is
the only difference. There are plenty larger. The Fruit Company takes
only what it wishes and reaps a rich reward from this. But we will handle
the six hand bunches.
“In America,” his tone became quiet, “there are thousands of poor people
who would gladly eat more bananas. Their children love them. Do they eat
them? No. Why? Because, while you sell a bunch, one hundred bananas, for
a quarter, in the United States one must pay a quarter for five.
“There may be legitimate reasons for the great difference in price. I am
not going to look into that. It is not my task. But for once, in a little
corner of our great country, there will be cheap bananas. Six hand
bunches. You sell them to me for five cents a bunch and I will do the
rest. How many may I have? Twenty thousand bunches?”
“Twenty-five thousand, _Senor_. On my three plantations there are this
many small bunches. You may have them all. I will give you a note to my
manager at Porte Zalaya. He will have them brought to the docks at once.”
“In regard to the pay, I—”
“You will pay when your people pay you for the bananas,” said the
generous Spaniard. “Send me a draft. If the money does not come to you,
then it will never come to me.
“And now,” he said, “I must go. Come inside, and I will instruct my
secretary about the note you are to carry to my manager at Porte Zalaya.”
Ten minutes later, stepping on air, Johnny made his way toward the
railway station.
“Now,” he said to himself, “if only I can reach the _North Star_ before
Captain Jorgensen contracts for another cargo, all is well. I’ll make it
snappy.”
He had not lived in Central America long enough to know that in this
little world of sudden revolution and many strange surprises, things are
almost never done snappy. It is the land of _manana_ (tomorrow), a land
where nearly everyone believes that _manana_ will do very well for all
“snappy” business.