George Allan England

“ The widow blew a ribbon of smoke from those red lips into the sunlit air under the palm-tree, kissed her slim hand at Benninglon, and laid that hand on her heart.
“Good night!” gulped Bennington, and fled.
BENNINGTON spent three weeks of toils and complications incredible to one who knoweth not the ways and customs of folk in the spig belt. He wrote, however, enthusiastic letters home to Beatrice, all about the land flowing with milk and honey. In case something might yet be salvaged from the wreck, he might never have to own the awful truth. ”

“ To be the landlord of any widow whatsoever is liable to disturb a nervous man. How much more so, when that widow turns out to be like the one now looming up over the horizon of Bennington’s apperception? ”

“ Then the right hand rose to the full, ripe, red, moist lips, the cigarette was set between them; the widow took a deep chestful of smoke and let it drift from those lips, as per above, all round Bennington’s dizzy head. The smoke enveloped him like Circean censers on the Isle of What’s-Its-Name, when Ulysses and his men had the Big Picnic. ”

“ Darkness and mystery, emptiness, heat and the terror of a sudden, violent death brooded. How easy an ambuscade in the night, from behind any wall—a knife-thrust—a body slid into the river! Then the alligators would take charge of the undertaking-job. Mysterious disappearance of one Americano. No one would ever know, but Smeady—and fear would seal his lips. Bennington gulped dryly and stumbled on. ”

“ He therefore passed an unusually peeved evening in the posada bar, his heart filled with un-Lincolnian “malice toward all and charity toward none”—least of all toward café-au-lait widows with hibiscuses and jasmines in their hair.
Bennington retired early to theoretical rest under the ragged mosquito-bar in his white-walled cell off the patio. He was poison-mad. His sleep was a nightmare of heat, bugs, peevishness. ”

“ Bennington reached the finca after a blistering walk past all the attractions mentioned by Smeady, and then some, including a hut where he inquired the way. Inside the hut a citizen was dining, with wife and offspring. Two chickens, on the table, likewise dined. One dog, lying on the earthen floor, likewise dined on bones flung down. One chick, standing on said dog, likewise dined, entomologically. There were pigs, too. Bennington hastened on.
Without the widow to overcome the effect of Finca Rica, the blow—after that lathering, blistering walk—would have put Bennington to the mat. ”

“ You’ve got one chance in eighty-seven thousand! Next minute, it’ll be one in eighty-eight thousand! For the love o’ Pete, hombre, pronto on the fade-away!”
Smeady shook him again, so that Bennington’s teeth did a bolero with castanet accompaniment. Yes, it must have been the shake that caused the chatter. Surely, who could have suspected that Bennington would be afraid? Even if he were, it must have been fear of hurting Sanchez that made Bennington’s Angers tremble so that he could hardly fasten his buttons or tie his shoes. Howbeit, he dressed in record time. No commuter ever did better. ”

“ Los Cerditos, on the Rio Pútrido in the República de Chivo, did not appreciably resemble its portrait in the Citras Fruit Sales Company’s prospectus.
Ail Bennington could see, strung along the mud-and-mangrove bank of the Rio, was a weary aggregation of dubious ’dobies, prone peons, mangy mongrels, grave goats and blasé buzzards badly in need of chloride of lime, the ensemble simmering in a haze of heat and hayhennies. [1] Hayhennies are those microscopical, tropical flies that set up their derricks and drill for oil on any exposed portion of the anatomy, preferably the shining dome. ”

“ You’re lucky to be goin’ north, with a skin that don’t look like a sheet o’ postage-stamps. It’s me that’s gotta stay here an’ catch it. Here, here’s a souvenir for you.” He slid a shriveled lemon into Bennington’s hand. “You’ll prize it—it’ll prove to your friends that you got somethin’ off your finca, anyhow. Good luck to you. S’iong!”
Bennington pocketed the lemon. He felt grateful for even that. At all events he would have something for Beatrice; he was not going home completely goose-egged. Smeady, meantime, slipped out of the freight-port into the launch, cast off and departed. ”

“ Well, say—”
“You see, I didn’t want to let the place stand idle, as the insurance is higher, that way, and also as the house is mostly on Jaffray’s finca, and if there was no one living in it, to protect it—’cause there’s a law you can’t move a house with a live tenant in it an’ it wouldn’t do to kill this one—why, Jaffray might pull the house all the way over on his land, or shove his land under the corner that’s still on yours, and then he’d own the house.” ”

“ There’s a heavy fine for botherin’ buzzards. They’re part o’ the police. Then you keep out in the country, a piece, by the pest-house an’ the graveyard—”
“Cheerful locality, eh?”
“Yes, kind of. An’ then you pass the execution-ground where they garrote people, or shoot ’em if they’ve got pull enough to dodge the twister. Then you reach Jaffray’s place, next to youm. Jaffray’s fences is bad. Look out for his bull. That’s some bull he’s got.”
“I should worry about Jaffray’s bull, after a finca-salesman’s!”
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing. Good day.” And Bennington started for the door. ”

“ Says she’s a widow, anyhow. Search me!”
“If I did, I know what I’d find, same as on me,” said Bennington, scratching again.
“She’s got no husband, anyhow,” continued Smeady, unmoved. “So that prob’ly makes her a widow. She’s an all-right party, even if she is a little back on her rent, that’s four pesos a month.”
“Back on her rent, is she? How far back?”
“From now, continuous. Back to when she moved in. That’s seven months ago, the third of last August.” '
“Great business! Why the devil don’t you get a tenant that’ll at least pay enough to keep up the taxes and insurance and goat-bills?” ”

“ Even the lightning gets tired and quits before it hits the ground. There was a boit of it got stuck that way, lawst week, on Armstrong’s Lago Viscoso finca. Stuck, sir, twenty feet above his house. Armstrong had to make an hombre go up on the blinkin’ roof and lasso it. Burned up seven ropes before they got it down. Oh, a bally hole!”
BENNINGTON wiped sweat and flies from his worried brow and departed in quest of the agent for the property, one Smeady by name. ”

“ An’ then there’s the int’rest on the back taxes an’ insurance, too.”
“So? Well, about this goat, now, I wont pay it!”
“Yes,” said Smeady, an anxious look in his eyes, which were both rheumy and rummy. “Yes, but this here goat belonged to Pablo Sanchez.”
“I don’t care if it belonged to all inferno!”
“But hombre, this here Sanchez is one o’ the rurales, here. He keeps his own private cemetery. He’s mighty proud of seein’ it grow. Last year a Tignosos man grabbed one of Sanchez’s goats that was eatin’ the wire off his fence, an’ said he’d butcher it if Sanchez didn’t pay damages. ”

“ The only thing that worries me is Beatrice handing out the I-told-you-so line of talk. Well—I can fix her, some way. I can frame a good one about a revolution, an earthquake and a tornado, with smallpox on the side. I know I’ve dropped a couple of thousand, but she’ll be so glad to get me back she wont say boo. I didn’t get stung in a business way, anyhow. Fire-eating rurales aren’t business. ”

“ Oh, yes, yes. That’s law, in Chivo. Houses left layin’ round on other people’s propitty more than thirty days belongs to ’em. Folks are so kind of careless, like, about their houses, down here, you’ve got to have a law like that to keep the place from gettin’ all cluttered up So I figger this here tenant of yours is a good investment, Mr. Bennington. You see, she—”
“Oh, it’s a she, is it?”
“Yep. A widow. ”

“ But there’s them back taxes.”
“Back taxes?”
“Yes, since 1907. Them has got to be made up before you can get your deed.”
BEDDENING ominously, Bennington returned.
“You mean to tell me—”
“Yes. But it aint over about two hundred pesos. Sorry if the Citrus Sales Company didn’t tell you, but I can show you the papers. An’ there’s that insurance, too.”
“What insurance?”
“On the house.”
“Oh, to Halifax with that! I don’t want any insurance—wont pay it!”
“It’s the law, here. The Ayuntamiento makes you take it, and if you don’t pay, they charge it on the tax-bill. ”

“ When he Ands out you’ve blew, he’ll be tryin’ to dissect me. 'Cause he knows I’m your agent, an’ he’ll figger I helped you do the pronto sidestep. You’ll get to the States alive, maybe, but what about me? ”