The Deal
Previously in the timeline:
The Spanish Period to Home Rule. A curious twist of fate results in a British resettlement project for Black freedmen going to the depopulated southern reaches of an alternate Florida named Palmera.
The Lion's Cub, Part One. The Union of Palmera battles tides of unrest washing out from America after the Civil War, culminating in the traumatic rebellion called the Third Border War.
The Lion's Cub, Continued. The Gilded Age unfolds in Palmera in a mingling of glory and tragedy.
The Lion's Cub, Conclusion. The Union cautiously begins to carve out a place in the international orders of politics, finance and trade.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 1 ("Unseen Pressures Build"). On the eve of the Great War, new forces of nationalism, religion and activism are growing.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 2 ("We Shall Do What Must Be Done"). The Great War erupts, and the full cost in blood and moral compromise of Palmera's "lion's cub" aspirations becomes plain.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 3 ("Lift Every Voice and Sing"). Football, baseball and beach-side leisure provide windows onto three different episodes of postwar social change.
Resource Posts:
Palmera at the End of the Belle Epoque: A Snapshot. A map and a demographic summary of the Union of Palmera in the year 1914.
Glossary of Palmey English Terms. A glossary of Palmeyisms or otherwise unfamiliar language occurring in the text. Periodically updated as the timeline advances.
Other Story Posts:
Song of Songs. Though times are tough in the wake of the Great Tequesta Hurricane, little has changed in the rarified world of the social elite. Or has it?
Tequesta County, and Palmera's southeastern Atlantic coast generally, was eyed for large-scale development as early as the late 19th century, with a number of rail extensions and other projects being conceived but failing to come to fruition. It was rich in independent citrus, rice and coconut farms and fishing and shrimping operations—the area got something of a boost and attracted more settlers after the Great Freeze of the middle 1890s, which only Tequesta County's harvest survived—but it remained almost aggressively rural and was still to many minds quite criminally under-served by the post-war period.
Development south of the Masterman Line had hitherto favoured the Gulf Coast and the original core of Calusa around Eleutheria, but by the 1920s it was clear that Tequesta county's so-called “splendid isolation” could not last much longer. The only question was who would benefit from the boom that was surely soon to come. The epicentre of that boom would turn out to be the little coastal Township of Helena, named for its founder Helena Fletcher Giraud – an ex-slave Dustie who arrived in the region in the 1880s – near the Mayami River.
[After all the mentions of Chatta, we see a bit of it in action here. Warning for a couple of racial epithets.]
“Hardly worth the name.”
Moses Goff said it aloud, but mostly to himself, as the little Patterson rumbled along one of the dusty tracks that Zion parish dignified with the term “roads.” He clutched his attache bag tight, and kept a hand on his straw boater as if some part of him felt the next pothole might dislodge it. Every damned thing around him seemed to be rattling at once.
“Dammiloo, Mista Riddey?[1]” The driver beside him was one of the Operation's men. Mahogany-dark, his yellowed palms horned with calluses, his seersucker suit and bow tie making him look deceptively like a man of leisure.
Goff had never seen the man before. He made a point of seeing any of them as little as he could. They all seemed to have the same inscrutable, shark-like eyes. “The roads,” he added curtly. “I said they're hardly worth the name.”
“Dem wuttie nah fi yuh dam buyah, ki?” There wasn't much humour in the driver's chuckle. “Ah sake ah dis fi yuh buckrah dem a feli weh fi bassey dem a galang, eeh Mista Riddey.”[2]
“I'm not your 'buckrah'.” Goff heard the defensive note in his voice, but he couldn't help it. “I'll have you know I'm Lanney right back to the Providence. And you can kindly knock off the 'Mista Riddey' stuff, right? I'm here as a private citizen.”[3]
The driver gave him an unreadable look and disdained to dignify that last statement with an answer. It was a mercy, Goff decided as he retreated into his private misery. He'd been on the point of reminding the insolent bulloe that it was his own Operation's money that had been holding up land use permits for developers, and with them the eyes of the law, for years. The growing clamour from the farmers had damned near taken him out of office in the last elections, and might yet do so in the month to come. He had taken risks in this whole business that he didn't dare think on, excepting times like this when he found himself bouncing along a miserable backabush track with an ingrate at the wheel.[4]
Think about how you plan to get on if one of those self-righteous Dusties gets into office come May, he thought resentfully, his jaw clenching, his grip on his briefcase tightening. Let's see you mock me then with 'buckrah' this and 'Mista Riddey' that. No, you lot need me.
It was hard to hold onto the anger, though. Discomforts of both body and mind were crowding it out. The Chief Executive Magistrate of Tequesta could feel how sickly he appeared, and it wasn't just from the motion sickness he was prone to, although the automotive's jouncing did not help matters. He already missed the orderly, cheerful and above all flat streets of Hazeleyville. More than anything he'd wanted in a long time, he wanted this distasteful rendezvous to be over.
The setting sun gave the countryside around them an incongruously idyllic cast. They'd rolled through at least a half-dozen scatterings of homesteads and makeshift orchards that Goff was certain hadn't been there the last time one of the Operation's men had come to retrieve him. It gave him a curious sense of alienness in a county he should have known like the back of his hand, a sense that the land and its people were moving past him like a film reel that was too quick to follow.
He let a measure of relief banish that discomfiting thought as he saw a shadow on the near horizon. That at least was familiar: Helena's lighthouse, tied for tallest in the country and as close as the township approached having a claim to fame. It meant their destination was close at hand.
There. The broken-down brick shack was a familiar sight, its thatch roof just visible on the right through the trees beside a gravel-strewn turnoff. It looked even more dilapidated than the last time he'd seen it. The Operation called it the Habbu-Haas[5], though there hadn't been a farm here since well before the war. The sight of it gave him chills. It had, with what he knew to be good reason, the air of a place where very bad things could happen to the man who put a foot wrong. And the less time spent here, the better.
Goff was taken aback, though, when he saw light peeking through the boards on the shack's windows. Electrical light. He could hear the faint sounds of sawing fiddles and a woman's voice on a crystal set, could hear an engine-like chugging from the building's rear.
He couldn't help looking at the driver in surprise. “You hauled a generator out here?”
“Wi mek all dem a ting boh-boh fi yuh check, Mista Kenzey.” The driver grinned at his passenger's look of annoyance, clearly pleased at finding an 'honorific' that got under his skin even more. “Tuzhu-tuzhu.”[6]
“Yes, you're princes among men, of course. I think I can just glimpse the red carpet now.”
Sarcasm was the best antidote Goff could muster for the sour feeling in his stomach as he heard gravel crunch under the tyres. It's for him, he thought with trepidation. “Mista Nonay.”[7] He had a sense of stepping into uncharted territory here, but there was no point in regrets now. The die was cast. He was opening his door and climbing out the moment the Patterson came to a halt.
“Alright, then,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “Let's have a look at him.”
“Coo deh,” the lookout alerted them. “Fi yuh daal dem a yah. Cheh-cheh.”[8]
The stand of trees across from the Habbu-Haas had been a torment of stifling heat and scratching branches for most of the day. The pair of men leaning against the trunk of a dogwood behind the lookout – a wiry little man with tangled locks clad in sandals and rolled-up trousers – had been fighting off drowse and torpor, but the tension crackling in their companion's voice roused them with a start. He held out his spy-glass to the nearest of them.
The burly one calling himself 'Toby' snatched the glass and peered through it, grunting in approval as he saw the Chief Executive Magistrate climbing out of the car. The exalted personage of state authority was shaking life into his limbs and looking whey-faced as he contemplated the little shack.
“About time,” he said. “Weedy little bastard, eeh nah? Somehow I always expect these muckyas to be taller.”[9]
That drew a low laugh from the lookout. It didn't draw a laugh from the thin, sober-looking youngster who was calling himself 'Jake,' who said mildly: “There's no need to be vulgar, is there. Here, let me have a look.”
'Toby' shook his head as he handed over the spy-glass. He was a bull of a Lanney with a close military cut, golden skin and blue eyes. Solid rugby material, one of those intrepid souls who'd missed being old enough to serve in the War by a hair and always lamented it. Still, he regarded his partner with a hint of disquiet. All he said was: “Funny thing to worry about words at a time like this.”
“Not one iota shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”[10] 'Jake's' voice was cool as spring water as he quoted his scripture, watching Goff walk into the shack, his driver behind him. “The small things matter. How long should we wait?”
The lad was dark and neat and couldn't be a day over twenty-two. Somehow, though they were both dressed in shirt-sleeves, 'Jake' hadn't found himself slapping mosquitoes the whole day. Who knew but maybe the mosquitoes found him as creepy as his partner did. He sounded entirely too calm for the situation, which made 'Toby' think of something his old man had told him: that men without fear or even nerves weren't brave, they were crazy. A whole other ballgame.
Still, he was what the Society had sent. 'Toby' shrugged. “I figure we give them a few minutes to settle in. The foreigner should be less on his guard after they get talking.”
“And we're sure he doesn't have any hidden gunsels waiting in the wings?” 'Jake' handed the glass back.
The lookout seemed offended by the question. He took his glass and said disgustedly: “Wi nuh baggrey lon-tan fi a wi nuh kon a pereh, praan?”[11]
'Jake' looked blank. Must've made whyrah pretty recently, 'Toby' thought as he translated: “He says they haven't stayed alive this long without knowing what they're doing.”
The youngster nodded, drew a grunt from their companion as he said: “No offence, friend.”
He was digging a large revolver out of the back waistband of his trousers. He cocked the hammer, carefully checking the gun's mechanism with the air of someone who clearly knew his way around a firearm even if he didn't know his Chatta, so at least there was that.
'Toby' unbuttoned his own shoulder-holster, feeling the reassuring grip of his pistol. His palm was sweaty. He hadn't yet touched the hunting knife in its sheath on his right. He was trying not think too much about it. His pulse was racing a mile a minute.
The big man would never have admitted it to either of his companions, but though he was no stranger to the rough stuff, he had never actually killed anyone before. This was to be his baptism, and nobody needed to tell him how much of an honour it was to draw this particular straw.
His sponsor had told him: “You will need to dig deep, to find it in yourself to do things beyond your normal morality. Never forget that all we do is for the greater good of the Nation.” 'Toby' waited, tried to calm his breathing, and dug deep.
“You know what's funny?” They were the first words out of the Nonay's mouth. “I didn't expect the music down here to sound familiar.”
Goff blinked. “That so?”
“Yeah.” The Nonay was a big man, well over six feet, looming over the little table in the center of the shack's single room. He was intimidating, with muscle under his considerable fat. Sweat glistened on his broad brow and seeped through his suit at the armpits, but it wasn't the sweat of nervousness; his face betrayed not the slightest hint of fear or uncertainty. “I mean, we're practically in Africa here, aren't we? But that music on the radio, just listen to it.” He cocked his head with a smile, listening to the scrape of the fiddles, the strumming banjos and guitars, the woman's voice lilting heartbreak over top of it all. “Like fucking hillbilly music, you know? Here I was expecting drums and cauldrons and headhunters and instead it feels like I'm in goddamn Tennessee. Except for all the niggers with guns and half of them don't speak English, of course.”
Goff couldn't stop himself; he stiffened at the word 'nigger.' It was a word you hardly heard in Palmera unless it came from someone who didn't care if he lived or died, but the Nonay didn't look fatalistic. Just supremely confident. He studied the man, studied his eyes. They had that same dead-fish quality the Operation's men had.
He looked around the room. There were Operation men at each corner, looking relaxed, shotguns resting over their shoulders. The driver who'd brought him took up station beside one of them. Sitting at the table with a bottle of rum, three shotglasses and a briefcase in front of him was the one man he recognized without fail, a desiccated leather-tough specimen they called Two-Day, with white hair and dressed no matter the weather in what looked like an undertaker's suit. Two-Day looked at him and nodded but didn't say anything. He was as silent and impassive as his men.
The Nonay gave a booming baritone laugh. “You think they're gonna get out of line, do you?” He shook his head. “Don't you give it a second thought, pal. They work for me, now.” The way he said it, he didn't have to add: And so do you. He advanced on Goff with a great meat-hook outstretched. “They don't like my manners, they'll sure as hell like taking a cut of the pie we're about to bake down here, trust me. You can call me Jimmy.”
“Moses Goff.” He tried not to wince at the crushing pressure of the handshake. “Chief Exec—“
“Ah, save all that. We all know who you are and why you're here.” Jimmy gestured to the table. “Have a seat there, Mose. Let's talk business.”
They sat. Jimmy's chair creaked beneath him. The Nonay nudged the case on the table with one hand.
“Before we get to what's in there,” he said. “I'd like to see what you've got for me.”
Goff nodded. The sweat on his brow was nervousness. He opened his valise and dug out the sheaf of papers within, laying them in front of the foreigner. Jimmy looked at them. His lips moved a little as he read them, he was clearly no lawyer. But his eye was educated enough to be satisfied with what he was seeing. He tapped the top paper beside Goff's signature, grunted his approval.
“That's good, very good.” He grinned. “The boss is a big believer in cutting away the red tape. Good to see we've got a kindred spirit down here. We apply a little persuasion here and there and we'll be up and running in less than half a year, guaranteed.” He nodded over at the bag. “That's to get us started. You stay solid and you'll get a payment like that quarterly. Good old greenbacks from Uncle Sam, none of that goddamned funny-money you people use down here[12]. Have a look-see.”
Goff licked his lips. He pulled the bag toward him, opened it and looked inside. What he saw there made him feel almost light-headed. He pulled a sheaf of bills out and riffled through them, looked up to a raised eyebrow from Jimmy, and nodded. “We're good.”
“You're better than good, pal,” Jimmy laughed. “These niggers ever make you that kind of money?”
This time he ignored the word. “Are you sure you can... motivate the sellers?”
“Oh, we're good at persuasion.” Jimmy was uncorking the rum bottle now. “Especially when we're guaranteed a return on investment. It's unbelievable how you people let this place molder for so long, you know. I look around me here, you know what I see? I don't see swamps and villages and busted-down shacks like this.” He was pouring a shot into each of the glasses. “I see casinos, pal. Banks. Beaches full of beautiful women. Distilleries. Shipping yards, we'll make the Canadian border operations look like goddamn peanuts. I see a city, Mose, and that's what the boss sees, too. The kind of thing that takes vision, see?” He held up his glass. “And all of it'll be ours, all of it. We'll practically be able to print our own money before we're through. A saluti.”
“Sah yeh.” Goff and Two-Day said it together, the first words the Operation man had spoken[13]. The three of them clinked glasses and drank. Jimmy pulled a face, coughed and spluttered a little.
“And that's the good stuff, would you believe it?” He gave a wry chuckle as he pounded his chest, as if trying to restart himself. “Fucking firewater. Give me a good glass of vino any day, but hey. It'll make money—“
The door of the shack hammered open. The Nonay's eyes went wide as he dropped his glass. It felt as if time slowed as Goff turned to see who it was, sure that they were caught, that it must be the law. Stupid, stupid, stupid, you knew this was going to catch up with you, stupid—!
But it wasn't the law.
'Toby' was first in. The foreigner looked a lot bigger this close. He was surprised, but he didn't look frightened. The man's hand was steady as he reached for the pistol inside his suit. 'Toby' lifted his gun and trained it on him. Pulled the trigger.
No. He didn't. He tried to pull the trigger. He willed himself to pull the trigger.
Somehow, suddenly, his trigger finger didn't hear him. Blood roared in his ears as he watched the target's pistol come out. It was like he was watching from somewhere outside himself.
You're about to die, he told himself. Shoot him! You're a soldier, aren't you? Shoot him!
But he was frozen. The reality of killing a man wasn't like the fantasy of killing one. He'd visualized the moment a thousand times, waiting out there in the trees, and now he was frozen, cursing himself for a coward. None of the other men in the room so much as shifted a muscle. The pale jefe was gaping at him like a landed fish. The pistol trembled in his hand.
The Nonay gave a cold smile. The kind of smile that showed no hesitation. He was not frozen. He took aim, said something 'Toby' didn't quite scan that sounded like it was in Italian.
The crack of 'Jake's' revolver was deafening in the enclosed space.
Just like that, the Nonay was down. Groaning, writhing. The youngster walked over to him matter-of-factly. The Nonay started to shout something, his voice defiant, and then 'Jake' pointed the gun at his head and it cracked again.
Again. Again. And again. And again.
Before 'Toby' could make sense of what was happening, the Nonay was dead. There was a ruined mass where his head had been, a smear of bone fragments and flesh, blood and brain. There was a strange, flatulent noise, and a dreadful stench filled the little shack, and 'Jake' stood over the body, contemplating it dispassionately, his gun smoking.
The next thing 'Toby' knew, he was outside, vomiting noisily into the gravel. There was someone just behind him doing the same. The jefe. He felt a twinge of shame at having something in common with the corrupt little worm of an official, but there it was. His guts heaved again, the last of his lunch decorated the dirt. He straightened up shakily, kicked the gravel over, tried to gather himself.
He turned back. 'Jake' was at the door of the shack, regarding him quietly. “First time?” he said.
'Toby' nodded sheepishly. There was no point trying on bravado now. “Sorry about that,” he managed after a moment. “I... I meant to... I mean, I thought I would...”
“It's alright.” 'Jake' walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Gets to everybody the first time. You'll get used to it. And besides.” He looked at the hunting knife in its sheath under 'Toby's' right shoulder. “I'm just a trigger man. I don't do the surgeries. That's what you're here for.”
The "surgery." 'Toby's' head swam. The stench from the shack was still in his nostrils. He could smell it from here. “You're sure we need to—“
“It's part of the deal, Toby.” There was iron in the voice of the kid-who-was-not-a-kid. “The Operation want it clear that this is us, not them. It was their condition for coming on board.”
'Toby' scrubbed at his mouth. He looked to his left. Their lookout man was standing there, cool as you please, and he shrugged in confirmation of 'Jake's' point. “Buckrah dem wi a nuh farah. Buku-buku diggrey, ah yeh. Fi yuh chugu.”[14]
The man nodded at the shack. The Operation's men were emerging from it now, unhurried, looking if anything quite pleased at the day's business. The leathery elder they called Two-Day was standing with the jefe, who was shaking like a leaf, looking like he might faint dead away. Goff's eyes met his and Toby squared up his shoulders. Enough of having anything in common with that.
“Right then.” He nodded. Took a breath. Laid his hand on the hunting knife, walked determinedly back into the miasma of death wafting out from the Habbu-Haas. “Alright. Time to dig deep. I'll see you in a minute.”
“What... what the hell is he doing now?” Goff's voice was querulous in his own ears, but he didn't care. He felt like he was in a nightmare as he watched the big man pull a large, wicked hunting knife as he headed back into the shack. “What is this?”
“They friend, Mista Goff.” Two-Day had a gravelly voice that had always reminded him of an old door-hinge, rusty with disuse. There was a touch of sympathy in the man's eyes now. “We make yon-lo deal. Sorry I nuh tell you but 'im Nonay had to think wi him lackey fuh dis a work... and yuh nuh much a jawie, nuh 'fense.[15]”
Goff rubbed his temple. “Well, no, I'm not much of an actor. At least not for something like this, you've got me there.” But his mind still swirled with confusion. “What other deal? A deal with who?”
Two-Day's face crinkled in a rare smile. “Nuh fi dem Nonay, mi yuh rangah. Ey weri doekoe fi yuh sedu.” For once he showed a flair for the dramatic as Goff looked at him in confusion, like he was waiting to drop a bombshell, and then he said: “Kom-Payi.”[16]
The Chief Executive Magistrate of Tequesta county stood staring, the gears of his mind slowly unsticking until he finally said: “The Company.” And then, going even paler: “You... you can't possibly mean the Union Mercantile Company.”
It was the first time he'd ever seen a look on Two-Day's face that could be called smug. “Tru-tru. Buku-buku doekoe, ah yeh?” The Operation's bag-man actually laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Oorah-leh, Mista Goff. Wi fi a wani.”[17]
As Two-Day led him away, Goff couldn't stop himself from looking back at the Habbu-Haas. The question came out: “But... what is he doing in there?”
“Yuh nuh wan fi a kon.” The old man's tone went grim. “Mi yuh sirrey.”[18]
No, thought the jefe as he walked away and tried to blot the things he'd just seen from his mind. I probably don't want to know. Best to look forward. And it was dawning on him, with a sense of relief as powerful as a drug, that there was going to be plenty to look forward to.
By 1926, the Union Mercantile Company was the single largest private-sector employer in Palmera. Its transportation subsidiary alone – the Union International Transport Company – was running a small fleet of ocean liners, cruise ships in the Caribbean, passenger rail in-country and freight far beyond the nation's borders. Its radio station, Freedom Radio, founded to inform and entertain its passengers anywhere the UITC's trains and ships might go, was the nation's sole broadcaster. Union Mercantile was the largest of the parties interested in developing Tequesta county... and it took a dim view of competition in its backyard.
The Company, having dealt with and made use of unsavoury characters in every corner of the world it reached, had no qualms about making use of the Nono Nemo Society as a cat's paw at home, as seen here. Giacomo “Jimmy Diamonds” Diamante, the unfortunate agent of the Chicago Outfit who met his fate in the Habbu-Haas—where he was found grotesquely mutilated along with his untouched cache of good old Uncle Sam's greenbacks—represented one of the last attempts made by American gangsters to claim territory on Palmeran turf. While there would still be a Mafia presence in Palmera thereafter, it would be on the terms of the local syndicates from the mid-Twenties on.
The Operation that was bribing Moses Goff to protect its smuggling business was at this point a late survival of a very old tradition of pirates, wreckers and smugglers in the region. It too would become a cat's paw for UMC interests, an extension of the Company into the shadow economy of liquor smuggling and other sorts of vice and contraband. It would be transformed by the rise of modern Helena from the “backabush” operation of the likes of Two-Day and his men into a sophisticated criminal organisation with an international reach of its own. Goff, though there were serious questions raised about his corruption, would find his career so thoroughly bolstered by the development he brought to Tequesta county that he would go on to become one of the longest-serving “Jefes” in the nation's history.
The amount of human engineering needed to cut and dredge the mangrove swamps and create durable and tourist-friendly beaches at Helena and other nearby communities in Tequesta and Kingsland counties would, in the event, be successfully argued by the UITC as exempt from the law mandating full public access to natural beaches. The “man-made” beaches were not quite as segregated as MP Dunham had feared when he gave his fiery condemnation of a fellow Jucker in the Commons—but they were very much under the control of the tourism companies that ran them and were certainly built around the needs of the tourists, with locals an afterthought. In some views this actually wound up being the best of both worlds for Palmera: natural beaches in Utina and in the Caribbean Territories became lucrative leisure hotspots for the locals, while the nation was able to use her artificially groomed beaches to attract foreign tourism at highly profitable levels.
NOTES:
[1] “Dammiloo, Mista Riddey?”—“What's that, Mr. Chief?”
Riddey is a bit like saying bwana or massah and by this time is a word mostly used in humour.
[2] “Dem wuttie nah fi yuh dam buyah, ki?”—“What? Aren't the roads your damn job?”
“Ah sake ah dis fi yuh buckrah dem a feli weh fi bassey dem a galang, eeh Mista Riddey.”—“On account of this is how you Bosses like to see Black men living, right Mr. Chief?”
Buckrah is a word used to refer specifically to plantation masters, overseers and bosses of chain gangs. It doesn't necessarily mean a White Boss specifically, but that's often implied, as we can see from Goff's defensive response in which he reminds the driver that he's a Creole.
[3] “I'm Lanney right back to the Providence.”
The Providence was the most famous of the fifteen ships used to evacuate Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia to Palmera in the early 1790s. This is the close Palmey equivalent of boasting that your ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.
[4] "Bulloe"—goon, muscle. “Backabush”—deep rural.
[5] ”Habbu-Haas”—“Farmer's House.”
[6] “Wi mek all dem a ting boh-boh fi yuh check, Mista Kenzey.”—“We made everything the best it could be for your visit, Mr. Fifteen.” (Fifteen is a reference to the ships of the Nova Scotia fleet; he's switched to poking fun at Goff's boasting about his ancestry.)
“Tuzhu-tuzhu.”—“Just like always.”
[7] “Mista Nonay.”—“Mr. Northern.”
Nonay is the most common Chatta word for Americans.
[8] “Coo deh”—“Hear this / Listen up / Look alive”
“Fi yuh daal dem a yah. Cheh-cheh.”—“Your boys are here. Quick, look.”
[9] “eeh nah?”—“Isn't it so?”
“. . . these muckyas to be taller.”—Muckya means an important official, someone who is Kind of a Big Deal.
[10] “Not one iota shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” He's loosely quoting Matthew 5:18. This is a favourite scripture of Tribulationists, of whom 'Jake' may or may not be one.
[11] “Wi nuh baggrey lon-tan fi a wi nuh kon a pereh, praan?”—“We haven't lived this long without knowing how to operate, understand?”
[12] “that goddamned funny-money you people use down here”—Palmera started using paper currency with the onset of the Great War. Of course to certain American eyes, anything that isn't the greenback doesn't look like real money.
[13] “Sah yeh.”—“Bless.”
[14] “Buckrah dem wi a nuh farah. Buku-buku diggrey, ah yeh. Fi yuh chugu.”—“We don't kill Bosses. Way too much trouble, see. It's your prize.”
(That last more literally: “It's your scalp.”)
[15] “We make yon-lo deal. Sorry I nuh tell you but 'im Nonay have to think wi him lackey fuh dis a work... and yuh nuh much a jawie, nuh 'fense.”—“We made another deal. Sorry I didn't tell you, but the American had to think we were his lackeys for this to work... and you're not much of an actor, no offence.”
Two-Day is a primary speaker of Chatta trying to work up some English here, presumably hoping to put Goff at ease.
[16]“Nuh fi dem Nonay, mi yuh rangah. Ey weri doekoe fi yuh sedu.”—“Not with Americans, I can tell you. And there'll be more cash in your pocket.”
Two-Day giving up on the English and going full Chatta.
[17] “Tru-tru. Buku-buku doekoe, ah yeh?”—“True as it gets. Lots and lots of cash, see?”
“Oorah-leh, Mista Goff. Wi fi a wani.”—“Come on, Mr. Goff. Let's get a drink.”
[18] “Yuh nuh wan fi a kon. Mi yuh sirrey.”—“You don't want to know. I promise you.”
The Spanish Period to Home Rule. A curious twist of fate results in a British resettlement project for Black freedmen going to the depopulated southern reaches of an alternate Florida named Palmera.
The Lion's Cub, Part One. The Union of Palmera battles tides of unrest washing out from America after the Civil War, culminating in the traumatic rebellion called the Third Border War.
The Lion's Cub, Continued. The Gilded Age unfolds in Palmera in a mingling of glory and tragedy.
The Lion's Cub, Conclusion. The Union cautiously begins to carve out a place in the international orders of politics, finance and trade.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 1 ("Unseen Pressures Build"). On the eve of the Great War, new forces of nationalism, religion and activism are growing.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 2 ("We Shall Do What Must Be Done"). The Great War erupts, and the full cost in blood and moral compromise of Palmera's "lion's cub" aspirations becomes plain.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 3 ("Lift Every Voice and Sing"). Football, baseball and beach-side leisure provide windows onto three different episodes of postwar social change.
Resource Posts:
Palmera at the End of the Belle Epoque: A Snapshot. A map and a demographic summary of the Union of Palmera in the year 1914.
Glossary of Palmey English Terms. A glossary of Palmeyisms or otherwise unfamiliar language occurring in the text. Periodically updated as the timeline advances.
Other Story Posts:
Song of Songs. Though times are tough in the wake of the Great Tequesta Hurricane, little has changed in the rarified world of the social elite. Or has it?
The Deal
(Township of Helena, Zion Parish in Tequesta County, 11th of April 1926)
(Township of Helena, Zion Parish in Tequesta County, 11th of April 1926)
Tequesta County, and Palmera's southeastern Atlantic coast generally, was eyed for large-scale development as early as the late 19th century, with a number of rail extensions and other projects being conceived but failing to come to fruition. It was rich in independent citrus, rice and coconut farms and fishing and shrimping operations—the area got something of a boost and attracted more settlers after the Great Freeze of the middle 1890s, which only Tequesta County's harvest survived—but it remained almost aggressively rural and was still to many minds quite criminally under-served by the post-war period.
Development south of the Masterman Line had hitherto favoured the Gulf Coast and the original core of Calusa around Eleutheria, but by the 1920s it was clear that Tequesta county's so-called “splendid isolation” could not last much longer. The only question was who would benefit from the boom that was surely soon to come. The epicentre of that boom would turn out to be the little coastal Township of Helena, named for its founder Helena Fletcher Giraud – an ex-slave Dustie who arrived in the region in the 1880s – near the Mayami River.
[After all the mentions of Chatta, we see a bit of it in action here. Warning for a couple of racial epithets.]
* * *
“Hardly worth the name.”
Moses Goff said it aloud, but mostly to himself, as the little Patterson rumbled along one of the dusty tracks that Zion parish dignified with the term “roads.” He clutched his attache bag tight, and kept a hand on his straw boater as if some part of him felt the next pothole might dislodge it. Every damned thing around him seemed to be rattling at once.
“Dammiloo, Mista Riddey?[1]” The driver beside him was one of the Operation's men. Mahogany-dark, his yellowed palms horned with calluses, his seersucker suit and bow tie making him look deceptively like a man of leisure.
Goff had never seen the man before. He made a point of seeing any of them as little as he could. They all seemed to have the same inscrutable, shark-like eyes. “The roads,” he added curtly. “I said they're hardly worth the name.”
“Dem wuttie nah fi yuh dam buyah, ki?” There wasn't much humour in the driver's chuckle. “Ah sake ah dis fi yuh buckrah dem a feli weh fi bassey dem a galang, eeh Mista Riddey.”[2]
“I'm not your 'buckrah'.” Goff heard the defensive note in his voice, but he couldn't help it. “I'll have you know I'm Lanney right back to the Providence. And you can kindly knock off the 'Mista Riddey' stuff, right? I'm here as a private citizen.”[3]
The driver gave him an unreadable look and disdained to dignify that last statement with an answer. It was a mercy, Goff decided as he retreated into his private misery. He'd been on the point of reminding the insolent bulloe that it was his own Operation's money that had been holding up land use permits for developers, and with them the eyes of the law, for years. The growing clamour from the farmers had damned near taken him out of office in the last elections, and might yet do so in the month to come. He had taken risks in this whole business that he didn't dare think on, excepting times like this when he found himself bouncing along a miserable backabush track with an ingrate at the wheel.[4]
Think about how you plan to get on if one of those self-righteous Dusties gets into office come May, he thought resentfully, his jaw clenching, his grip on his briefcase tightening. Let's see you mock me then with 'buckrah' this and 'Mista Riddey' that. No, you lot need me.
It was hard to hold onto the anger, though. Discomforts of both body and mind were crowding it out. The Chief Executive Magistrate of Tequesta could feel how sickly he appeared, and it wasn't just from the motion sickness he was prone to, although the automotive's jouncing did not help matters. He already missed the orderly, cheerful and above all flat streets of Hazeleyville. More than anything he'd wanted in a long time, he wanted this distasteful rendezvous to be over.
The setting sun gave the countryside around them an incongruously idyllic cast. They'd rolled through at least a half-dozen scatterings of homesteads and makeshift orchards that Goff was certain hadn't been there the last time one of the Operation's men had come to retrieve him. It gave him a curious sense of alienness in a county he should have known like the back of his hand, a sense that the land and its people were moving past him like a film reel that was too quick to follow.
He let a measure of relief banish that discomfiting thought as he saw a shadow on the near horizon. That at least was familiar: Helena's lighthouse, tied for tallest in the country and as close as the township approached having a claim to fame. It meant their destination was close at hand.
There. The broken-down brick shack was a familiar sight, its thatch roof just visible on the right through the trees beside a gravel-strewn turnoff. It looked even more dilapidated than the last time he'd seen it. The Operation called it the Habbu-Haas[5], though there hadn't been a farm here since well before the war. The sight of it gave him chills. It had, with what he knew to be good reason, the air of a place where very bad things could happen to the man who put a foot wrong. And the less time spent here, the better.
Goff was taken aback, though, when he saw light peeking through the boards on the shack's windows. Electrical light. He could hear the faint sounds of sawing fiddles and a woman's voice on a crystal set, could hear an engine-like chugging from the building's rear.
He couldn't help looking at the driver in surprise. “You hauled a generator out here?”
“Wi mek all dem a ting boh-boh fi yuh check, Mista Kenzey.” The driver grinned at his passenger's look of annoyance, clearly pleased at finding an 'honorific' that got under his skin even more. “Tuzhu-tuzhu.”[6]
“Yes, you're princes among men, of course. I think I can just glimpse the red carpet now.”
Sarcasm was the best antidote Goff could muster for the sour feeling in his stomach as he heard gravel crunch under the tyres. It's for him, he thought with trepidation. “Mista Nonay.”[7] He had a sense of stepping into uncharted territory here, but there was no point in regrets now. The die was cast. He was opening his door and climbing out the moment the Patterson came to a halt.
“Alright, then,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “Let's have a look at him.”
* * *
“Coo deh,” the lookout alerted them. “Fi yuh daal dem a yah. Cheh-cheh.”[8]
The stand of trees across from the Habbu-Haas had been a torment of stifling heat and scratching branches for most of the day. The pair of men leaning against the trunk of a dogwood behind the lookout – a wiry little man with tangled locks clad in sandals and rolled-up trousers – had been fighting off drowse and torpor, but the tension crackling in their companion's voice roused them with a start. He held out his spy-glass to the nearest of them.
The burly one calling himself 'Toby' snatched the glass and peered through it, grunting in approval as he saw the Chief Executive Magistrate climbing out of the car. The exalted personage of state authority was shaking life into his limbs and looking whey-faced as he contemplated the little shack.
“About time,” he said. “Weedy little bastard, eeh nah? Somehow I always expect these muckyas to be taller.”[9]
That drew a low laugh from the lookout. It didn't draw a laugh from the thin, sober-looking youngster who was calling himself 'Jake,' who said mildly: “There's no need to be vulgar, is there. Here, let me have a look.”
'Toby' shook his head as he handed over the spy-glass. He was a bull of a Lanney with a close military cut, golden skin and blue eyes. Solid rugby material, one of those intrepid souls who'd missed being old enough to serve in the War by a hair and always lamented it. Still, he regarded his partner with a hint of disquiet. All he said was: “Funny thing to worry about words at a time like this.”
“Not one iota shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”[10] 'Jake's' voice was cool as spring water as he quoted his scripture, watching Goff walk into the shack, his driver behind him. “The small things matter. How long should we wait?”
The lad was dark and neat and couldn't be a day over twenty-two. Somehow, though they were both dressed in shirt-sleeves, 'Jake' hadn't found himself slapping mosquitoes the whole day. Who knew but maybe the mosquitoes found him as creepy as his partner did. He sounded entirely too calm for the situation, which made 'Toby' think of something his old man had told him: that men without fear or even nerves weren't brave, they were crazy. A whole other ballgame.
Still, he was what the Society had sent. 'Toby' shrugged. “I figure we give them a few minutes to settle in. The foreigner should be less on his guard after they get talking.”
“And we're sure he doesn't have any hidden gunsels waiting in the wings?” 'Jake' handed the glass back.
The lookout seemed offended by the question. He took his glass and said disgustedly: “Wi nuh baggrey lon-tan fi a wi nuh kon a pereh, praan?”[11]
'Jake' looked blank. Must've made whyrah pretty recently, 'Toby' thought as he translated: “He says they haven't stayed alive this long without knowing what they're doing.”
The youngster nodded, drew a grunt from their companion as he said: “No offence, friend.”
He was digging a large revolver out of the back waistband of his trousers. He cocked the hammer, carefully checking the gun's mechanism with the air of someone who clearly knew his way around a firearm even if he didn't know his Chatta, so at least there was that.
'Toby' unbuttoned his own shoulder-holster, feeling the reassuring grip of his pistol. His palm was sweaty. He hadn't yet touched the hunting knife in its sheath on his right. He was trying not think too much about it. His pulse was racing a mile a minute.
The big man would never have admitted it to either of his companions, but though he was no stranger to the rough stuff, he had never actually killed anyone before. This was to be his baptism, and nobody needed to tell him how much of an honour it was to draw this particular straw.
His sponsor had told him: “You will need to dig deep, to find it in yourself to do things beyond your normal morality. Never forget that all we do is for the greater good of the Nation.” 'Toby' waited, tried to calm his breathing, and dug deep.
* * *
“You know what's funny?” They were the first words out of the Nonay's mouth. “I didn't expect the music down here to sound familiar.”
Goff blinked. “That so?”
“Yeah.” The Nonay was a big man, well over six feet, looming over the little table in the center of the shack's single room. He was intimidating, with muscle under his considerable fat. Sweat glistened on his broad brow and seeped through his suit at the armpits, but it wasn't the sweat of nervousness; his face betrayed not the slightest hint of fear or uncertainty. “I mean, we're practically in Africa here, aren't we? But that music on the radio, just listen to it.” He cocked his head with a smile, listening to the scrape of the fiddles, the strumming banjos and guitars, the woman's voice lilting heartbreak over top of it all. “Like fucking hillbilly music, you know? Here I was expecting drums and cauldrons and headhunters and instead it feels like I'm in goddamn Tennessee. Except for all the niggers with guns and half of them don't speak English, of course.”
Goff couldn't stop himself; he stiffened at the word 'nigger.' It was a word you hardly heard in Palmera unless it came from someone who didn't care if he lived or died, but the Nonay didn't look fatalistic. Just supremely confident. He studied the man, studied his eyes. They had that same dead-fish quality the Operation's men had.
He looked around the room. There were Operation men at each corner, looking relaxed, shotguns resting over their shoulders. The driver who'd brought him took up station beside one of them. Sitting at the table with a bottle of rum, three shotglasses and a briefcase in front of him was the one man he recognized without fail, a desiccated leather-tough specimen they called Two-Day, with white hair and dressed no matter the weather in what looked like an undertaker's suit. Two-Day looked at him and nodded but didn't say anything. He was as silent and impassive as his men.
The Nonay gave a booming baritone laugh. “You think they're gonna get out of line, do you?” He shook his head. “Don't you give it a second thought, pal. They work for me, now.” The way he said it, he didn't have to add: And so do you. He advanced on Goff with a great meat-hook outstretched. “They don't like my manners, they'll sure as hell like taking a cut of the pie we're about to bake down here, trust me. You can call me Jimmy.”
“Moses Goff.” He tried not to wince at the crushing pressure of the handshake. “Chief Exec—“
“Ah, save all that. We all know who you are and why you're here.” Jimmy gestured to the table. “Have a seat there, Mose. Let's talk business.”
They sat. Jimmy's chair creaked beneath him. The Nonay nudged the case on the table with one hand.
“Before we get to what's in there,” he said. “I'd like to see what you've got for me.”
Goff nodded. The sweat on his brow was nervousness. He opened his valise and dug out the sheaf of papers within, laying them in front of the foreigner. Jimmy looked at them. His lips moved a little as he read them, he was clearly no lawyer. But his eye was educated enough to be satisfied with what he was seeing. He tapped the top paper beside Goff's signature, grunted his approval.
“That's good, very good.” He grinned. “The boss is a big believer in cutting away the red tape. Good to see we've got a kindred spirit down here. We apply a little persuasion here and there and we'll be up and running in less than half a year, guaranteed.” He nodded over at the bag. “That's to get us started. You stay solid and you'll get a payment like that quarterly. Good old greenbacks from Uncle Sam, none of that goddamned funny-money you people use down here[12]. Have a look-see.”
Goff licked his lips. He pulled the bag toward him, opened it and looked inside. What he saw there made him feel almost light-headed. He pulled a sheaf of bills out and riffled through them, looked up to a raised eyebrow from Jimmy, and nodded. “We're good.”
“You're better than good, pal,” Jimmy laughed. “These niggers ever make you that kind of money?”
This time he ignored the word. “Are you sure you can... motivate the sellers?”
“Oh, we're good at persuasion.” Jimmy was uncorking the rum bottle now. “Especially when we're guaranteed a return on investment. It's unbelievable how you people let this place molder for so long, you know. I look around me here, you know what I see? I don't see swamps and villages and busted-down shacks like this.” He was pouring a shot into each of the glasses. “I see casinos, pal. Banks. Beaches full of beautiful women. Distilleries. Shipping yards, we'll make the Canadian border operations look like goddamn peanuts. I see a city, Mose, and that's what the boss sees, too. The kind of thing that takes vision, see?” He held up his glass. “And all of it'll be ours, all of it. We'll practically be able to print our own money before we're through. A saluti.”
“Sah yeh.” Goff and Two-Day said it together, the first words the Operation man had spoken[13]. The three of them clinked glasses and drank. Jimmy pulled a face, coughed and spluttered a little.
“And that's the good stuff, would you believe it?” He gave a wry chuckle as he pounded his chest, as if trying to restart himself. “Fucking firewater. Give me a good glass of vino any day, but hey. It'll make money—“
The door of the shack hammered open. The Nonay's eyes went wide as he dropped his glass. It felt as if time slowed as Goff turned to see who it was, sure that they were caught, that it must be the law. Stupid, stupid, stupid, you knew this was going to catch up with you, stupid—!
But it wasn't the law.
* * *
'Toby' was first in. The foreigner looked a lot bigger this close. He was surprised, but he didn't look frightened. The man's hand was steady as he reached for the pistol inside his suit. 'Toby' lifted his gun and trained it on him. Pulled the trigger.
No. He didn't. He tried to pull the trigger. He willed himself to pull the trigger.
Somehow, suddenly, his trigger finger didn't hear him. Blood roared in his ears as he watched the target's pistol come out. It was like he was watching from somewhere outside himself.
You're about to die, he told himself. Shoot him! You're a soldier, aren't you? Shoot him!
But he was frozen. The reality of killing a man wasn't like the fantasy of killing one. He'd visualized the moment a thousand times, waiting out there in the trees, and now he was frozen, cursing himself for a coward. None of the other men in the room so much as shifted a muscle. The pale jefe was gaping at him like a landed fish. The pistol trembled in his hand.
The Nonay gave a cold smile. The kind of smile that showed no hesitation. He was not frozen. He took aim, said something 'Toby' didn't quite scan that sounded like it was in Italian.
The crack of 'Jake's' revolver was deafening in the enclosed space.
Just like that, the Nonay was down. Groaning, writhing. The youngster walked over to him matter-of-factly. The Nonay started to shout something, his voice defiant, and then 'Jake' pointed the gun at his head and it cracked again.
Again. Again. And again. And again.
Before 'Toby' could make sense of what was happening, the Nonay was dead. There was a ruined mass where his head had been, a smear of bone fragments and flesh, blood and brain. There was a strange, flatulent noise, and a dreadful stench filled the little shack, and 'Jake' stood over the body, contemplating it dispassionately, his gun smoking.
The next thing 'Toby' knew, he was outside, vomiting noisily into the gravel. There was someone just behind him doing the same. The jefe. He felt a twinge of shame at having something in common with the corrupt little worm of an official, but there it was. His guts heaved again, the last of his lunch decorated the dirt. He straightened up shakily, kicked the gravel over, tried to gather himself.
He turned back. 'Jake' was at the door of the shack, regarding him quietly. “First time?” he said.
'Toby' nodded sheepishly. There was no point trying on bravado now. “Sorry about that,” he managed after a moment. “I... I meant to... I mean, I thought I would...”
“It's alright.” 'Jake' walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Gets to everybody the first time. You'll get used to it. And besides.” He looked at the hunting knife in its sheath under 'Toby's' right shoulder. “I'm just a trigger man. I don't do the surgeries. That's what you're here for.”
The "surgery." 'Toby's' head swam. The stench from the shack was still in his nostrils. He could smell it from here. “You're sure we need to—“
“It's part of the deal, Toby.” There was iron in the voice of the kid-who-was-not-a-kid. “The Operation want it clear that this is us, not them. It was their condition for coming on board.”
'Toby' scrubbed at his mouth. He looked to his left. Their lookout man was standing there, cool as you please, and he shrugged in confirmation of 'Jake's' point. “Buckrah dem wi a nuh farah. Buku-buku diggrey, ah yeh. Fi yuh chugu.”[14]
The man nodded at the shack. The Operation's men were emerging from it now, unhurried, looking if anything quite pleased at the day's business. The leathery elder they called Two-Day was standing with the jefe, who was shaking like a leaf, looking like he might faint dead away. Goff's eyes met his and Toby squared up his shoulders. Enough of having anything in common with that.
“Right then.” He nodded. Took a breath. Laid his hand on the hunting knife, walked determinedly back into the miasma of death wafting out from the Habbu-Haas. “Alright. Time to dig deep. I'll see you in a minute.”
* * *
“What... what the hell is he doing now?” Goff's voice was querulous in his own ears, but he didn't care. He felt like he was in a nightmare as he watched the big man pull a large, wicked hunting knife as he headed back into the shack. “What is this?”
“They friend, Mista Goff.” Two-Day had a gravelly voice that had always reminded him of an old door-hinge, rusty with disuse. There was a touch of sympathy in the man's eyes now. “We make yon-lo deal. Sorry I nuh tell you but 'im Nonay had to think wi him lackey fuh dis a work... and yuh nuh much a jawie, nuh 'fense.[15]”
Goff rubbed his temple. “Well, no, I'm not much of an actor. At least not for something like this, you've got me there.” But his mind still swirled with confusion. “What other deal? A deal with who?”
Two-Day's face crinkled in a rare smile. “Nuh fi dem Nonay, mi yuh rangah. Ey weri doekoe fi yuh sedu.” For once he showed a flair for the dramatic as Goff looked at him in confusion, like he was waiting to drop a bombshell, and then he said: “Kom-Payi.”[16]
The Chief Executive Magistrate of Tequesta county stood staring, the gears of his mind slowly unsticking until he finally said: “The Company.” And then, going even paler: “You... you can't possibly mean the Union Mercantile Company.”
It was the first time he'd ever seen a look on Two-Day's face that could be called smug. “Tru-tru. Buku-buku doekoe, ah yeh?” The Operation's bag-man actually laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Oorah-leh, Mista Goff. Wi fi a wani.”[17]
As Two-Day led him away, Goff couldn't stop himself from looking back at the Habbu-Haas. The question came out: “But... what is he doing in there?”
“Yuh nuh wan fi a kon.” The old man's tone went grim. “Mi yuh sirrey.”[18]
No, thought the jefe as he walked away and tried to blot the things he'd just seen from his mind. I probably don't want to know. Best to look forward. And it was dawning on him, with a sense of relief as powerful as a drug, that there was going to be plenty to look forward to.
* * *
By 1926, the Union Mercantile Company was the single largest private-sector employer in Palmera. Its transportation subsidiary alone – the Union International Transport Company – was running a small fleet of ocean liners, cruise ships in the Caribbean, passenger rail in-country and freight far beyond the nation's borders. Its radio station, Freedom Radio, founded to inform and entertain its passengers anywhere the UITC's trains and ships might go, was the nation's sole broadcaster. Union Mercantile was the largest of the parties interested in developing Tequesta county... and it took a dim view of competition in its backyard.
The Company, having dealt with and made use of unsavoury characters in every corner of the world it reached, had no qualms about making use of the Nono Nemo Society as a cat's paw at home, as seen here. Giacomo “Jimmy Diamonds” Diamante, the unfortunate agent of the Chicago Outfit who met his fate in the Habbu-Haas—where he was found grotesquely mutilated along with his untouched cache of good old Uncle Sam's greenbacks—represented one of the last attempts made by American gangsters to claim territory on Palmeran turf. While there would still be a Mafia presence in Palmera thereafter, it would be on the terms of the local syndicates from the mid-Twenties on.
The Operation that was bribing Moses Goff to protect its smuggling business was at this point a late survival of a very old tradition of pirates, wreckers and smugglers in the region. It too would become a cat's paw for UMC interests, an extension of the Company into the shadow economy of liquor smuggling and other sorts of vice and contraband. It would be transformed by the rise of modern Helena from the “backabush” operation of the likes of Two-Day and his men into a sophisticated criminal organisation with an international reach of its own. Goff, though there were serious questions raised about his corruption, would find his career so thoroughly bolstered by the development he brought to Tequesta county that he would go on to become one of the longest-serving “Jefes” in the nation's history.
The amount of human engineering needed to cut and dredge the mangrove swamps and create durable and tourist-friendly beaches at Helena and other nearby communities in Tequesta and Kingsland counties would, in the event, be successfully argued by the UITC as exempt from the law mandating full public access to natural beaches. The “man-made” beaches were not quite as segregated as MP Dunham had feared when he gave his fiery condemnation of a fellow Jucker in the Commons—but they were very much under the control of the tourism companies that ran them and were certainly built around the needs of the tourists, with locals an afterthought. In some views this actually wound up being the best of both worlds for Palmera: natural beaches in Utina and in the Caribbean Territories became lucrative leisure hotspots for the locals, while the nation was able to use her artificially groomed beaches to attract foreign tourism at highly profitable levels.
* * *
NOTES:
[1] “Dammiloo, Mista Riddey?”—“What's that, Mr. Chief?”
Riddey is a bit like saying bwana or massah and by this time is a word mostly used in humour.
[2] “Dem wuttie nah fi yuh dam buyah, ki?”—“What? Aren't the roads your damn job?”
“Ah sake ah dis fi yuh buckrah dem a feli weh fi bassey dem a galang, eeh Mista Riddey.”—“On account of this is how you Bosses like to see Black men living, right Mr. Chief?”
Buckrah is a word used to refer specifically to plantation masters, overseers and bosses of chain gangs. It doesn't necessarily mean a White Boss specifically, but that's often implied, as we can see from Goff's defensive response in which he reminds the driver that he's a Creole.
[3] “I'm Lanney right back to the Providence.”
The Providence was the most famous of the fifteen ships used to evacuate Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia to Palmera in the early 1790s. This is the close Palmey equivalent of boasting that your ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.
[4] "Bulloe"—goon, muscle. “Backabush”—deep rural.
[5] ”Habbu-Haas”—“Farmer's House.”
[6] “Wi mek all dem a ting boh-boh fi yuh check, Mista Kenzey.”—“We made everything the best it could be for your visit, Mr. Fifteen.” (Fifteen is a reference to the ships of the Nova Scotia fleet; he's switched to poking fun at Goff's boasting about his ancestry.)
“Tuzhu-tuzhu.”—“Just like always.”
[7] “Mista Nonay.”—“Mr. Northern.”
Nonay is the most common Chatta word for Americans.
[8] “Coo deh”—“Hear this / Listen up / Look alive”
“Fi yuh daal dem a yah. Cheh-cheh.”—“Your boys are here. Quick, look.”
[9] “eeh nah?”—“Isn't it so?”
“. . . these muckyas to be taller.”—Muckya means an important official, someone who is Kind of a Big Deal.
[10] “Not one iota shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” He's loosely quoting Matthew 5:18. This is a favourite scripture of Tribulationists, of whom 'Jake' may or may not be one.
[11] “Wi nuh baggrey lon-tan fi a wi nuh kon a pereh, praan?”—“We haven't lived this long without knowing how to operate, understand?”
[12] “that goddamned funny-money you people use down here”—Palmera started using paper currency with the onset of the Great War. Of course to certain American eyes, anything that isn't the greenback doesn't look like real money.
[13] “Sah yeh.”—“Bless.”
[14] “Buckrah dem wi a nuh farah. Buku-buku diggrey, ah yeh. Fi yuh chugu.”—“We don't kill Bosses. Way too much trouble, see. It's your prize.”
(That last more literally: “It's your scalp.”)
[15] “We make yon-lo deal. Sorry I nuh tell you but 'im Nonay have to think wi him lackey fuh dis a work... and yuh nuh much a jawie, nuh 'fense.”—“We made another deal. Sorry I didn't tell you, but the American had to think we were his lackeys for this to work... and you're not much of an actor, no offence.”
Two-Day is a primary speaker of Chatta trying to work up some English here, presumably hoping to put Goff at ease.
[16]“Nuh fi dem Nonay, mi yuh rangah. Ey weri doekoe fi yuh sedu.”—“Not with Americans, I can tell you. And there'll be more cash in your pocket.”
Two-Day giving up on the English and going full Chatta.
[17] “Tru-tru. Buku-buku doekoe, ah yeh?”—“True as it gets. Lots and lots of cash, see?”
“Oorah-leh, Mista Goff. Wi fi a wani.”—“Come on, Mr. Goff. Let's get a drink.”
[18] “Yuh nuh wan fi a kon. Mi yuh sirrey.”—“You don't want to know. I promise you.”
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Definitely far fewer Americans who aren't part of the Great Migration.
