Chapter II

"W'en yo' fadah wake up in de mawnin' time wid' 'im marinah stiff out in front o' him--"

"Mek fun," said Miss Buckner, rising regally, "an' be a dam set o' fools all yo' life." She buried the butt in a Mexican urn, and strode by Anesta sprawling half-robed on the matted floor. "Move, gal, an' le' me go out dey an' show dis black sow how we want 'ar fi' stew de gunga peas an' fowl."

"Oh, me don't wan' fi' go to no pahty," yawned Hyacinth, fingering the pages of a boudoir textbook left her one evening by an Italian sea captain, "me too tiad, sah."

"An' me can't see how de hell me gwine mek up to any man if me got fi' fling in him face a old blue ship me did got las' week. W'en is Scipio gwine bring me dat shawl him pramise fi' giv' me?"

"Me no fond ha-tall o' any 'Panish man," cried Anesta, "an' me don't see how me can--"

Miss Buckner swung around, struck. "Yo' t'ink so, he, his dat wha' yo' t'ink? Well, yo' bess mek up unna mind--all o' unna! Well, wha' a bunch o' lazy ongrateful bitches de whole carload of unna is, dough he?"

Suddenly she broke off, anger seaming her brow. "Unna don't know me his hindebted to him, no? Unna don't know dat hif hit wasn't farrim a lot o' t'ings wha' go awn up yah, would be street property long ago--an' some o' we yo' see spo'tin' roun' yah would be some way else, an' diffrant altogaddah."

"Ah know not me."

"Ah know Oi ain't owe nobody nothin'--"

"Yo' think yo' don't! But don't fool your-selves, children, there is more to make the mare go than you think--I see that now."

She busied herself gathering up glasses, flouncing off to the pantry.

The Palm Porch was not a canteen, it was a house. But it was a house of lavish self-containment. It was split up in rooms, following a style of architecture which was the flair of the Isthmian realtors, and each room opened out on the porch. Each had, too, an armor of leafy laces; shining dust and scarlet. Each had its wine and decanters, music and song.

On the squalid world of Colon it was privileged to gaze with hauteur, for Miss Buckner, the owner of the Palm Porch, was a lady of poise, charm and caution. Up around the ribs of the porch she had put a strip of canvas cloth. It shut out eyes effectively. Glancing up, one saw boxes of rosebush and flower vines, but beyond that--nothing. The porch's green paint, the opulent flower pots and growing plants helped to plaster on it the illusion of the tropical jungle.

There clung to Miss Buckner an idea of sober reality. Her hips were full, her hands long, hairy, unfeminine, her breasts dangling. She was fully seven feet tall and had a small, round head. Her hair was close to it--black, curly. Courageously she had bobbed and parted it at a time when it was unseasonable to do so, and yet retain a semblance of respect among the Victorian dames of the Spanish tropics.

Urged on by the ruthless spirit which was a very firm part of her, Miss Buckner was not altogether unaware of the capers she was cutting amid the few beings she actually touched. Among the motley blacks and browns and yellows on the Isthmus, there would be talk--but how was it to drift back to her? Via Zuline? Shame! "Who me? Me talk grossip wit' any sahvant gyrl, if yo' t'ink so yo' lie!" But the lack of an elfin figure and the possession of a frizzly head of hair, was more than made up for by Miss Buckner's gift of _manners_.

"Gahd, wha' she did got it, he?" folk asked; but neither London, nor Paris, nor Vienna answered. Indeed, Miss Buckner, a lady of sixty, would have been _wordless_ at the idea of having to go beyond the dickty rim of Jamaica in quest of _manners_. It was absurd to think so. This drop to the Isthmus was Miss Buckner's first gallop across the sea.

And so, like sap to a rubber tree, Miss Buckner's manner clung to her. Upon those of her sex she had slight cause to ply it, for at the Palm Porch few of them were allowed. Traditionally, it was a man's house. When Miss Buckner, beneath a brilliant lorgnette, was gracious enough to look at a man, she looked, sternly, unsmilingly down at him. When of a Sabbath, her hair in oily frills, wearing a silken shawl of cream and red, a dab of vermilion on her mouth, she swept regally down Bolivar Street on the way to the market, maided by the indolent Zuline, she had half of the city gaping at the animal wonder of her. Brief-worded, cool-headed, by a stabbing thrust or a petulant gesture, she'd confound any fish seller, any dealer in yampi or Lucy yam, cocoanut milk or red peas--and pass quietly on, untouched by the briny babel.

In fact, from Colon to Cocoa Grove the pale-faced folk who drank sumptuously in the bowl of life churned by her considered Miss Buckner a woman to tip one's hat to--regal rite--a woman of taste and culture. Machinists at Balboa, engineers at Miraflores, sun-burned sea folk gladly testified to that fact. All had words of beauty for the ardor of Miss Buckner's salon.

Of course one gathered from the words which came like blazing meteors out of her mouth that Miss Buckner would have liked to be white; but, alas! she was only a mulatto. No one had ever heard of her before she and her five daughters moved into the Palm Porch. It was to be expected, the world being what it is, that words of murmured treason would drift abroad. A wine merchant, Raymond de la Croix, and a Jamaica horse breeder, Walter de Paz, vowed they had seen her at an old seaman's bar on Matches Lane serving ale and ofttimes more poetic things than ale to young blond-headed Britons who would especially go there. But De Paz and De la Croix were men of frustrated idealism, and their words, to Miss Buckner at least, brutal though they were, were swept aside as expressions of useless chatter. Whether she was the result of a union of white and black, French and Spanish, English and Maroon--no one knew. Of an equally mystical heritage were her daughters, creatures of a rich and shining beauty. Of their father the less said the better. And in the absence of data tongues began to wag. Norwegian bos'n. Jamaica lover--Island triumph. Crazy Kingston nights. To the lovely young ladies in question it was a subject to be religiously high-hatted and tabooed. The prudent Miss Buckner, who had a burning contempt for statistics, was a trifle hazy about the whole thing.

One of the girls, white as a white woman, eyes blue as a Viking maid's, had eloped, at sixteen, to Miss Buckner's eternal disgust, with a shiny-armed black who had at one time been sent to the Island jail for the proletarian crime of prædial larceny. The neighbors swore it had been love at first sight. But it irked and maddened Miss Buckner. "It a dam pity shame," she had cried, dabbing a cologned handkerchief to her nose, "it a dam pity shame."

Another girl, the eldest of the lot (Miss Buckner had had seven in all), had, O! ages before, given birth to a pretty, gray-eyed baby boy, when she was but seventeen and--again to Miss Buckner's disgust--had later taken up with a willing young mulatto, a Christian in the Moravian Church. He was an able young man, strong and honest, and wore shoes, but Miss Buckner almost went mad--groaned at the pain her daughters caused her. "Oh, me Gahd," she had wept, "Oh, me Gahd, dem ah send me to de dawgs--dem ah send me to de dawgs." He was but a clerk in the cold storage; sixty dollars a month--wages of an accursed silver employee. Silver is nigger; nigger is silver. Nigger-silver. Why, roared Miss Buckner, stockings could not be bought with that, much more take care of a woman accustomed to "foxy clothes an' such" and a dazzling baby boy. Silver employee! Blah! Why couldn't he be a "Gold" one? Gold is white; white is gold. Gold-white! "Gold," and get $125 a month, like "de fella nex' tarrim, he? Why, him had to be black, an' get little pay, an' tek way me gal picknee from me? Now, hanswah me dat!" Nor did he get coal and fuel free, besides. He had to dig down and pay extra for them. He was not, alas! white. Which hurt, left Miss Buckner cold; caused her nights of sleepless despair. Wretch! "To t'ink a handsam gal like dat would-ah tek up wi' a dam black neygah man like him, he, w'en she could a stay wit' me 'n do bettah." But few knew the secret of Miss Buckner's sorrow, few sensed the deep tragedy of her.

And so, to dam the flood of tears, Miss Buckner and the remaining ones of her flamingo brood, had drawn up at the Palm Porch. All day, the sun burning a flame through the torrid heavens, they would be postured on the porch. Virgin to the sun's gentle caresses, with the plants and flowers keeping the heat at bay, they'd be there. Slippers dangled on the tips of restive toes. Purple-lined kimonos falling away gave access to blushing, dimpled bodies. Great fine tresses of hair, the color of night, gave shadows to the revelations, gave structure.