Our Man in Belize by Richard Timothy Conroy

Author:Richard Timothy Conroy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466891609
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

11: THE LAST PARTY

The boss’s mood was not improved when his Renault died in the consulate driveway. Something to do with the steering wheel—ignition interlock, which in those days had not reached the high state of development it now enjoys. Unfortunately, the agent for Renault in the colony was Mr. Simmons Turnip, former ship’s engineer, who, as we have seen, approached problems with the same delicate touch he would use on the fouled anchor of a Liberty ship, or more to the point, on blasting a road through a granite outcropping.

I suggested we send the car in the pouch back to Washington, but Pruitt was determined that if he kept after Mr. Turnip, miracles would happen. This was not the age of miracles, however, and while Mr. Turnip was able to get the whole steering mechanism of the Renault disassembled, he was unable to put it back together again. So he left the car in a pitiable state, languishing on the consulate’s driveway, and he retired to his machine shop and crane yard out on cemetery road to study the manuals and await inspiration.

All that saved the consulate staff from the full attention of Pruitt’s displeasure was the near completion of his sailboat, well ahead of schedule, since it was not yet October. Only a few details remained to be concluded. A fitting here, a bit of canvas glued down there—some varnishing, whatnot.

Then came what I had feared for months, ever since I learned that Harvey served two masters, the minister of labor and ourselves. The day came that Harvey told me that he was called to become president of the dockworkers’ union. “I don’t know I can do it,” Harvey said. “Now I gonna have to negotiate with the British, and I purely don’t understand what they talkin’ about.”

I slept on that one. And it came to me. It has always been true that I do my best thinking early in the morning when I’m otherwise too unconscious to move. The answer was simply this: language had its analogue in theology. One must consult the sacred texts to understand the mysteries that so baffle. Wealth of Nations, I thought. Harvey needed to talk the talk, and how better to learn how to talk to British colonials than to advance to their own eighteenth-century way of thinking? When I was awake enough to move, I hunted up my copy of the monumental Adam Smith work, and later that day, I presented it to Harvey. “Read this,” I said, “and at least some of the mysteries of the British colonial empire will be revealed.”

I’m proud to say that in the weeks that were to come, Harvey assumed control over the dockworkers, and his first negotiation of an agreement with the British was successful. Not so successful, however, were our efforts to replace Harvey.

A miscalculation on my part: it seemed to me that it would be wise to find a replacement who was more exclusively loyal to the consulate. I assumed that

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