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 THE
TACO TRUCK
HOW MEXICAN STREET FOOD IS
TRANSFORMING THE AMERICAN CITY

ROBERT LEMON

FOREWORD BY JEFFREY M. PILCHER

© 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved

Maps of the areas discussed in this book can be found at

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books.lemon/taco_truck

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lemon, Robert, 1979– author.
Title: The taco truck : how Mexican street food is transforming the American city /
Robert Lemon.
Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018056752| ISBN 9780252042454 (hardback) | ISBN
9780252084232 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Hispanic Americans—Social life and customs. | Mexican Americans—
Nutrition. | Food trucks—United States. | Tacos—United States. . | Food habits—
Social aspects—United States. | United States—Social life and customs—21st
century. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Hispanic American Studies. |
COOKING / Regional & Ethnic / Mexican. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration &
Immigration.
Classification: LCC TX361.H57 L47 2019 | DDC 641.84—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056752

E-book ISBN 9780252051296

Cover images: Taco truck in Tulsa Oklahoma (photo by Robert Lemon); skyline
background image (©iStock.com/Terriana).
To my grandmother, Rosalina B. Gonzalez (1911–
2006),
for all the love she gave me through her cooking.
 CONTENTS

Foreword by Jeffrey M. Pilcher

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Engaging Taco Truck Space
1Remaking Oakland's Streets
2Formalizing San Francisco's Informal Street Food Vendors
3Making Sacramento into an Edible City
4Landscape, Labor, and the Lonchera
5Community Conflict and Cuisine in Columbus
6Cooking Up Multiculturalism
7Food, Fear, and Dreams
Conclusion: An Evolving American Space
Notes
References
Index
Color plates
 FOREWORD
JEFFREY M. PILCHER

The local mobility of taco trucks represents a microcosm of

geographical and social mobility in the twenty-first century. Food
vendors spread across the United States as part of the great Mexican
migration that began with the peso crises of the 1970s and 1980s,
accelerated with the North American Free Trade Agreement in the
1990s, and largely ended with the United States’ own financial crisis
in 2008. Like previous generations of migrants who found
opportunities in small food businesses—think of hamburgers, pizza,
chop suey, and deli—Mexicans gained a measure of social mobility
by traveling to find work, or at least to find a customer willing to pay
for a cheap and tasty meal of carne asada. But for a generation of
Americans facing downward mobility due to corporate offshoring and
anti-union politics, and who are increasingly unwilling to risk moving
in search of better employment, Mexican workers who would take
the most unenviable jobs became a target of nativist outrage, as
during the 2016 election when populists fulminated against “a taco
truck on every corner.” Nevertheless, attempts to treat taco trucks as
an immigration problem fundamentally misrepresent the situation for
countless U.S. citizens who make a living by vending and for whom
restrictive city ordinances and ongoing police harassment are civil
rights issues.
 In seeking to resolve these political and social conflicts around
food and mobility, we would do well to remember their historical
antecedents. In the 1880s, American migrants to the cities of San
Antonio, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, found the local Mexican
population and food to be simultaneously threatening and alluring.
Tourists eagerly sought out street vendors known as “chili queens”
to sample their tamales and chili con carne, even while fearing the
unaccustomedly piquant taste and the risk of gastrointestinal
disease. Health reformers soon arrived on the scene, seeking not to
improve Mexican neighborhoods’ access to clean water and sewage,
which was the real cause for concern, but rather to restrict the
vendors to “zones of tolerance” that were shared with prostitutes. By
essentially criminalizing chili con carne, police were free to harass
Mexican food (and sex) workers, while still leaving them accessible
to adventuresome tourists, an arrangement that persisted until the
civil rights movement.
Today, that movement's gains have never seemed more imperiled,
as taco trucks have replaced nineteenth-century tamale carts as
racialized symbols of criminality. Robert Lemon's book therefore
provides a timely account of the myriad small and large ways that
privatization and gentrification have restricted the rights of citizens
and residents to the use of our cities. Using techniques of urban
geography, he maps the evolving spatial dynamics of twenty-first-
century Jim Crow, which attempts to segregate racialized sites of
production from elite white spaces of consumption within the
neoliberal city. In interviews with taco truck vendors, Lemon
describes the strategies they use to navigate this hostile urban
terrain and reach their customers. The book also provides an
invaluable account of community organizers and progressive
municipal officials who have pioneered ways of supporting vendors
with the logistical and legal infrastructure needed to prepare healthy
food, thereby positively contributing to urban landscapes. But
perhaps the most important point is that taco truck workers, simply
through their everyday presence, occupying city streets and selling
food to hungry customers, embody the democratic ideals of liberty
and equality for some of the most downtrodden within American
society.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to begin by thanking Steven Hoelscher for helping me

develop a sound geographical framework for this project. His
insights and critical assessments of my work were always
constructive and motivating.
Indeed, very many mentors and scholars along the way provided
great input to how I could bring distinct themes of urban geography,
cultural geography, architecture, landscape architecture, city
planning, food studies, Latino studies, and Mexican immigration
together. Bill Doolittle has always provided pragmatic evaluations of
theoretical issues. Elizabeth Engelhardt helped me tie the work into
food studies; Rebecca Torres offered astute insights into Mexican
immigration to the United States and how best to incorporate other
socioeconomic Latino issues into cultural landscape studies. I owe
many thanks to Paul Adams as well: his brilliant comments and
suggested readings throughout my entire research process helped
me to better establish many of my theoretical points, and he kept
me from following blindly into a number of prevailing dogmatic
positions. Furthermore, I would like to thank John Radke, who
encouraged me to pursue the cultural geography of taco trucks. And
I owe a debt of gratitude to Jefferey Pilcher for his historical
perspective of Mexican food as well as his time in writing the
foreword to this book.
This research would not have come to fruition without all the
people I interviewed over the past few years, especially the taco
truck owners who so generously shared their personal stories and
their cuisines with me. Without their big-heartedness and willingness
to work with me on this study, I would not have had a book to write.
Moreover, my interaction and experience with these individuals gave
me keen insight to the hopes and aspirations of so many migrants
who struggle every single day to carve out a space for themselves in
the United States. I cannot mention many individuals by name
because they are undocumented. But they know who they are; and I
have made it clear to them, throughout my research, that this work
is as much a chronicle of their stories and struggles as it is a
scholarly explanation of their everyday spaces. However, I can name
two individuals: George Azar and his mother, Mercedes Azar. George
Azar owns a taco truck in Sacramento, California. When I first met
George, he was kind enough to spend countless hours with me
going through personal taco truck archives and recounting the
history of taco trucks in Sacramento. His recordkeeping of the taco
truck conflicts in Sacramento provided me incredible documentation
to strengthen my argument in chapter 4. His and his parents’
generosity to me not only made my research attainable but also
pleasurable.
Additionally, I would like to acknowledge all other individuals who
graciously agreed to be questioned. I interviewed numerous city
planners, council members, city staff, and business owners in Austin,
Texas; Oakland, California; San Francisco, California; Sacramento,
California; and Columbus, Ohio. I do not have the space to name
each individual, but I appreciate their time and interest in my work.
However, I would especially like to thank some of the people whose
business operations I critically and spatially deconstruct throughout
this book: Emilia Otero, operator of La Placita; Caleb Zigas, director
of La Cocina; Matt Cohen, owner of Off the Grid; Randall Selland,
principal and chef at The Selland Group; and Bethia Woolf and Andy
Dehus, owners and operators of Columbus Food Adventures. I really
valued their time and appreciated that they opened up their business
operations for me to evaluate from a very critical geographical
framework. They are all good-hearted individuals trying to bring
immigrant cuisine practices to the forefront of American society.
 I would also like to thank Charlotte Friedley, who created and
designed the beautiful online maps that complement this book. Tim
Mollette-Parks helped me rework a few sections of this book where I
was having some difficulties with clairvoyantly making my points. A
huge thank you to my copyeditor, Catherine Vanhentenryck, for
reviewing my writing for most every chapter of this book. And I must
thank all the dedicated individuals I worked with at the University of
Illinois Press for getting this manuscript onto bookshelves.
Last but not least, I need to thank my immediate family. First my
cats, thank you Demi, Dani, and Alli. My three cats sat on my lap or
by my side (often literally holding my hand) many endless nights. It
is no surprise that Demi naps by my side and Alli purrs in my lap as I
write this. I would have never been able to make it through so many
all-nighters without the emotional support of my furry feline family.
And I must thank my parents, Carl and Maria Lemon. My parents
have given me nothing but love and encouragement during the eight
demanding years I have been working on this book.
 INTRODUCTION

ENGAGING TACO TRUCK SPACE

Ok. I suck in a lot of ways. I am snobby about food. I can't stand dirty dishes in the sink
and I don't want anyone touching my stuff that is in “order.” I also, would never THINK of
going to Boyes Hot Springs [in Sonoma County, California] and eating from a TACO TRUCK.
Never. EVER.—Enter Brown Eyes—With knowledge of all the ins-and-outs of Sonoma that I
never even KNEW existed, here we suddenly are, in front of a TACO TRUCK. In BOYES HOT
SPRINGS. Hand TO PEARLS. So, I said nothing. I waited in line…I expected not much - not
NOTHING…It was a TACO TRUCK. In BOYES HOT SPRINGS…I unwrap my foil-lined plate. It
smells nice, dare I say great?? What they produce out of that truck is pretty damn tasty. I
love the carne asada plate with the meat, the beans, the lettuce, sour cream and
guacamole and the little packet of corn tortillas that I pretend I will never need, but eat
ever last bite of. Should you have a craving for Mehicano flare [sic], take a trip to La
Bamba, and have no fear!—Katie W.
—Yelp Review of La Bamba Taco Truck in Sonoma, California, April
26, 2013

Sonoma County, California, is best known to tourists for its lush

vineyards and sophisticated wines, not its taco tastings. But in
Sonoma, Napa, and other agricultural counties throughout California,
taco trucks are as ubiquitous to California's landscape as grapevines
and tomato groves. On the outskirts of downtown Sonoma, the
owner of La Bamba taco truck makes tacos for the many Mexican
migrants who have arrived in Sonoma County to harvest grapes.
Taco trucks follow the workers to the “factories in the field.”1 During
the day, the trucks owners serve tacos from roadsides that run
through vineyards. At night, some of the taco trucks park in Boyes
Hot Springs or in Aguas Calientes, the little Mexican barrios just
outside of Sonoma's town center. Taco trucks are nomadic. They are
as migratory as the Mexican day laborers. In fact, their movements
parallel one another. By feeding Mexican migrants tacos along roads
that meander between the grapevines, taco trucks socially shift
spaces that are designed primarily to produce capital.
When Katie W., as she identified herself in her Yelp review, came
across one such taco truck, it was a “Hand TO PEARLS” moment, as
she put it. Encountering an enigmatic environment where one would
least expect it is enthralling, especially if it offers something exotic to
eat. But it is ignorant, and perhaps a bit arrogant, not to associate
taco trucks with California vineyards. Why would someone not
expect to find a taco truck in Sonoma County? The answer relates to
the spatial cloak of the capitalist mode of production, which hides
production methods by removing them from consumption spaces.
Neoliberal cities are exceptionally good at concealing the circuits
of capital that sustain them.2 Urban planners and developers
highlight high-end consumption spaces over less appealing functions
of an urban landscape. A mixed-use shopping strip, for example, is
symbolic capital, while industrial and heavy commercial zones don't
positively contribute to a city's image. But it is the low-wage labor
that allows the neoliberal city to flourish. In most cities, developers
only present alluring images to consumers to entice urban living.
Consumers are seldom, if ever, formally presented the city as a
factory, and rarely do the middle and upper middle classes have to
encounter the production sites/sights of cities. They must seek out
these underbelly urban spaces, if they wish, but typically the middle
and upper middle class do so as urban explorers, not as factory
workers. There are many sides to a city, and all sides must be
investigated to uncover the role that a taco truck plays within an
urban environment that both produces and consumes. This is to say
that a taco truck's location elucidates the social and political ways in
which cities work. But a taco truck parked near vineyards conveys a
different narrative.
Perhaps if a person is standing in a supermarket, she may not
know the exact production methods that went into harvesting the
grapes she is about to purchase. As Harvey (1990, 423) says, “The
grapes that sit upon the supermarket shelves are mute; we cannot
see the fingerprints of exploitation upon them or tell immediately
what part of the world they are from.” But if a person is standing
near numerous vineyards in the middle of Sonoma County, she
should know exactly where the grapes are from and that they do not
pick themselves. Thus, pinot noir and tacos make a perfect pairing.
The consumption end of fine wine relies heavily on Mexican day
laborers and the cheap tacos they depend on. For Katie, the taco
truck is mysterious because it does not fit neatly into her privileged
perspective of Sonoma's picturesque landscape. And she does not
care to, nor have to, unpack the myriad meanings of the truck's
presence or its relationship to ethnic exploitation. Instead, she is just
another actor upon its space. And as she engages the taco truck's
social sphere to savor a taco, Katie innocently crosses boundaries of
class, ethnicity, and gender.
Taco trucks are by-products of the capitalist mode of production,
but they are also an economic response to a cultural demand. Taco
trucks are foremost emblematic of Mexican cultural identity. Mexican
immigrants who may or may not have U.S. citizenship typically own
taco trucks. They serve inexpensive, traditional-style tacos primarily
to Spanish-speaking, low-wage, mostly male, Mexican day laborers.3
The trucks exemplify an aspect of foodways; estranged emigrants
search for fond memories of home through food and through the
taquero—the taco cook—who knows how to make such food. At
most taco trucks, a visitor finds Mexican gardeners, construction
workers, or families sharing tacos, conversing in Spanish in diverse
Mexican dialects, and chatting with the taquero about their lives and
the news from Mexico. In this genial setting, taco trucks are
significant social spaces that foster various aspects of Mexican
cultural identity for immigrant communities through the practices of
everyday life.
Taco trucks are dynamic spaces, because not only do they create
a convivial atmosphere by linking place and time through culinary
customs, they are also mobile. Through a taco truck's mobility, any
given space can become a temporary place for people to eat tacos.
Taco trucks are capable of persistently producing new social spaces
and ascribing additional meanings to places, which can challenge the
ways in which people come to understand such spaces and places.
For these reasons, I define taco truck space as an evolving cultural
and culinary environment in which influences of local life continually
converge with economic, political, and social forces at myriad scales.
In other words, taco truck spaces are shaped by and, in turn,
express the uneven flows of capital between the United States and
Mexico, immigration patterns from Mexico, and foodways from
Mexico. Taco truck spaces are influenced by local politics, the social
structure of the neighborhoods in which the trucks are parked, and
community members’ personal perspectives on the presence of
Mexican culinary practices in semi-public and public spaces. Taco
trucks abstract space and create cultural ambiguities, which become
even more pronounced by the ways in which the trucks alter
streetscapes.
Taco trucks call our attention to the street simply by parking along
it. It is on the prosaic public street where they poetically express
socioeconomic paradoxes of capitalism, mixing and matching cuisine,
culture, and urban space. Taco trucks reconfigure private space by
making it public, and make public space private. Taco trucks in cities
normally park on public streets, in commercial strip parking lots, or
in vacant lots. A taco truck parked in a private lot invites people onto
the property for socioeconomic exchange. Likewise, as a taco truck
owner parks on a public street, he or she privatizes a public space by
making it a place to conduct business. In addition, by taking over a
section of the street to vend tacos, the taco truck culturally
appropriates the space. The American street becomes a place for
Mexican culinary culture. The public and private dimensions of taco
trucks mix, blur, and redefine the ways in which public and private
spaces have predictably functioned in the United States. For many
Americans these sorts of perverse practices are unfamiliar and can
be challenging to accept.
This book is a study of taco trucks’ social spaces along city streets
and how these spaces culturally unfurl into diverse urban
environments across the United States. More specifically, it examines
the evolution of taco truck space and the ways different communities
have interpreted its ambiguous practices. To take on this study of a
Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The
adventures of Captain O'Shea
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
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or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
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are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: The adventures of Captain O'Shea

Author: Ralph Delahaye Paine

Release date: May 1, 2024 [eBook #73510]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Charles Scribner's Sons,

1913

Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN O'SHEA ***
 BOOKS BY RALPH D. PAINE
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

CAMPUS DAYS. Illustrated. 12mo $1.50

SANDY SAWYER, SOPHOMORE. Illustrated. 12mo $1.50
THE STROKE OAR. Illustrated. 12mo $1.50
THE FUGITIVE FRESHMAN. Illustrated. 12mo $1.50
THE HEAD COACH. Illustrated. 12mo $1.50
COLLEGE YEARS. Illustrated. 12mo $1.50

THE STEAM-SHOVEL MAN. Illustrated. 12mo net $1.00

THE DRAGON AND THE CROSS. Illustrated. 12mo $1.25
THE WRECKING MASTER. Illustrated. 12mo $1.25
A CADET OF THE BLACK STAR LINE. Illustrated. 12mo $1.25

THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN O’SHEA. 12mo net $1.35

THE ADVENTURES OF
CAPTAIN O’SHEA
THE ADVENTURES OF
CAPTAIN O’SHEA
BY
RALPH D. PAINE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1913
 Copyright, 1913, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1913
 CONTENTS
PAGE
I. The Castaways 3

II. The King of Trinadaro 133

III. The Liner “Alsatian” 195

IV. The Branded Man 250

THE ADVENTURES OF
CAPTAIN O’SHEA
 THE CASTAWAYS

I
When the Cubans, led by Gomez and Maceo, were waging their
final rebellion against the immemorial tyranny of Spain, it may be
recalled that there was much filibustering out of American ports, and
a lively demand for seafaring men of an intrepid temper who could
be relied on to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. Such a
one was young Captain O’Shea, and, moreover, he was no amateur
at this ticklish industry, having already “jolted one presidente off his
perch in Hayti, and set fire to the coat-tails of another one in
Honduras,” as he explained to the swarthy gentlemen of the Cuban
Junta in New York, who passed on his credentials.
They gave him a sea-going tug called the Fearless, permitted
him to pick his own crew, and told him where to find his cargo, in a
fairly lonesome inlet of the Florida coast. Thereafter he was to work
out his own salvation. The programme was likely to be anything else
than monotonous. To be nabbed by a Yankee cruiser in home waters
for breaking the laws of nations meant that Captain O’Shea would
cool his heels in a Federal jail, a mishap most distasteful to a man of
a roving disposition. To run afoul of the Spanish blockading fleet in
Cuban waters was to be unceremoniously shot full of holes and
drowned in the bargain.
Such risks as these were incidental to his trade, and Captain
O’Shea maintained his cheerful composure until the Fearless had
taken her explosive cargo on board and was dropping the sandy
coast-line of Florida over her stern. Then he scrutinized his
passengers and became annoyed. The Junta had sent him a Cuban
colonel and forty patriots, recruited from the cigar factories of Tampa
and Key West, who ardently, even clamorously, desired to return to
their native land and fight for the glorious cause of liberty.
Their organization was separate from that of the ship’s company.
It was not the business of Captain O’Shea to enforce his hard-fisted
discipline among them, nor did he have to feed them, for they had
brought their own stores on board. Early in the voyage he expressed
his superheated opinion of the party to the chief engineer. The twain
stood on the little bridge above the wheel-house, the clean-built,
youthful Irish-American skipper, and the beefy, gray-headed Johnny
Kent, whose variegated career had begun among the Yankees of
’way down East.
The deep-laden Fearless was wallowing through the uneasy
seas of the Gulf Stream. The Cuban patriots were already sea-sick
in squads, and they lay helpless amid an amazing disorder of
weapons, blankets, haversacks, valises, and clothing. Now and then
the crest of a sea flicked merrily over the low guard-rail and swashed
across the pallid sufferers.
“Did ye ever see such a mess in all your born days?” disgustedly
observed Captain O’Shea. “And we will have to live with this
menagerie for a week or so, Johnny.”
“It’ll be a whole lot worse when all of ’em are took sea-sick,” was
the discouraging reply. “Doggone ’em, they ain’t even stowed their
kits away. They just flopped and died in their tracks. Why don’t you
make their colonel kick some savvey into ’em, eh, Cap’n Mike?”
“Colonel Calvo?” and O’Shea spat to leeward with a laugh. “He
is curled up in the spare state-room, and his complexion is as green
as a starboard light. There is one American in the lot. Wait till I fetch
him up.”
A deck-hand was sent into the dismal chaos, and there presently
returned in his wake a lean, sandy man in khaki who clutched an old-
fashioned Springfield rifle. At a guess his years might have been
forty, and his visage had never a trace of humor in it. Much drill had
squared his shoulders and flattened his back, and he stiffly saluted
Captain O’Shea.
 “Who are you, and what are ye doing in such amazin’ bad
company?” asked the latter.
“My name is Jack Gorham, sir. I served four enlistments in the
Fifth Infantry, and I have medals for marksmanship. The Cubans
took me on as a sharp-shooter. They promised me a thousand
dollars for every Spanish officer I pick off with this old gun of mine. I
have a hundred and fifty rounds. You can figure it out for yourself, sir.
I’ll be a rich man.”
“Provided ye are not picked off first, me hopeful sharp-shooter.
Are there any more good men in your crowd?”
The old regular dubiously shook his head as he answered:
“There’s a dozen or so that may qualify on dry land. The rest
ain’t what you’d call reliable comrades-in-arms.”
“Oh, they may buck up,” exclaimed Captain O’Shea. “Look here,
Gorham, you can’t live on deck with those sea-sick swine. Better go
for’ard and bunk with my crew.”
Jack Gorham looked grateful, but firmly declared:
“Thank you, sir, I belong with the Cuban outfit, and I’ll take my
medicine. It would make bad feeling if I was to quit ’em. They are as
jealous and touchy as children. I have a tip for you. There is one ugly
lad in the bunch, the big, black nigger settin’ yonder on the hatch.
They tell me he comes from Colombia and left there two jumps
ahead of the police.”
They gazed down at the powerful figure of the negro, whose
tattered shirt disclosed swelling ridges of muscle and more than one
long scar defined in pink against the shining black skin. Thick-lipped,
flat-nosed, he was the primitive African savage whose ancestors had
survived the middle passage in the hold of a Spanish slaver. He was
snarling and grumbling to a group of Cubans, and Captain O’Shea
pricked up his ears.
“Raising a row about the grub, is he? ’Tis a pity he could not be
sea-sick early and often.”
 “Why don’t you crack him over the head with a belayin’-pin just
for luck?” amiably suggested the chief engineer. “It would sweeten
him up considerable.”
“I am carrying them as passengers, you blood-thirsty old
buccaneer,” retorted O’Shea. “I must keep me hands off till they
really mix things up. But I do not like the looks of the big nigger. He is
one of your born trouble-hunters.”
“You take my advice and beat him up good and plenty before he
gets started,” was the sage farewell of Johnny Kent as he lumbered
below to exhort his oilers and stokers.
The night came down and obscured the hurrying tug whose
course was laid for the Yucatan passage around the western end of
Cuba. The lights of a merchant-steamer twinkled far distant and
Captain O’Shea sheered off to give her a wide berth. He had no
desire to be sighted or reported.
To him, keeping lookout on the darkened bridge, came his cook,
a peaceable mulatto who had a grievance which he aired as follows:
“Please, cap’n, them Cubans what ain’t sea-sick is actin’
powerful unreasonable. I lets ’em heat their stuff and make coffee in
my galley, but I ain’t ’sponsible for th’ rations they all draws. That big,
black niggah is stirrin’ ’em up. Jiminez, they calls him. At supper-time
to-night, cap’n, he tried to swipe some of th’ crew’s bacon and hash,
and I had to chase him outen th’ galley.”
“All right, George. I will keep an eye on him to-morrow,” said the
skipper. “Between you and me the Cuban party did not bring enough
provisions aboard to run them on full allowance for the voyage.
There was graft somewhere. But I’m hanged if they can steal any of
my stores. We may need every pound of them. I will see to it that
your galley isn’t raided. And if this big bucko Jiminez gets gay again,
give him the tea-kettle and scald the black hide off him—
understand?”
“Yes, suh, cap’n; I’ll parboil him if you’ll look out he don’t carve
me when he’s done recuperated.”
 The cook descended to his realm of pots and pans while Captain
O’Shea reflected that the voyage might be even livelier than he had
anticipated. With calm weather his forty passengers would recover
their appetites and demand three meals per day. They might whine
and grumble over the shortage, but without a leader they were fairly
harmless.
“I will have to lock horns with the big nigger before he gets any
more headway,” soliloquized Captain O’Shea.
For once he heartily desired high winds and rough seas, but the
following morning brought weather so much smoother, that the
pangs of hunger took hold of the reviving patriots, who arose from
the coal-sacks and crowded to the galley windows. The cook toiled
with one eye warily lifted lest the formidable negro from Colombia
should board him unawares.
Captain O’Shea leaned over the rail of his bridge and surveyed
the scene. Black Jiminez was making loud complaint in his guttural
Spanish patois, but his following was not eager to encounter the
rough-and-tumble deck-hands of the Fearless, besides which the
prudent cook hovered within easy distance of the steaming tea-
kettle.
To the amusement of Captain O’Shea, it was that lathy sharp-
shooter of the serious countenance, Jack Gorham, who took it upon
himself to read the riot act to the big negro. He regarded himself and
his duty with a profound, unshaken gravity. Jiminez overtopped him
by a foot, but pride of race and self-respect would not permit him to
knuckle under to the black bully.
“Will ye look at the Gorham man?” said Captain O’Shea to the
chief engineer who had joined him. “He is bristlin’ up to the nigger
like a terrier pup. And Jiminez would make no more than two bites of
him.”
“How can the soldier do anything else?” exclaimed Johnny Kent.
“He’s the only white man in the bunch.”
“I may as well let him know that I am backin’ his game,”
observed the other. He sang out to Gorham, and the veteran
infantryman climbed to the bridge, where he stood with heels
together, hat in hand. His pensive, freckled countenance failed to
respond to the captain’s greeting smile.
“Unless I am mistaken, Gorham, ye have it in mind to tackle a
job that looks a couple of sizes too large for you. Will ye start a
ruction with Jiminez?”
“Until the colonel gets on his legs I’m the man to take charge of
the party, sir,” answered the soldier, reflectively rubbing the bald spot
which shone through his thinning thatch of sandy hair.
“But I expect to take a hand,” petulantly declared the captain.
“This is my ship.”
“Excuse me, sir,” and Gorham’s accents were most apologetic.
“This is your ship, but it ain’t your party. The patriots are a separate
command. The big nigger belongs to me. If I don’t discourage him, I
lose all chance of winnin’ promotion in the Cuban army. If he downs
me, I’ll be called a yellow dog from one end of the island to the other.
I intend to earn my shoulder-straps.”
“And you will climb this big, black beggar, and thank nobody to
interfere?” asked the admiring Captain O’Shea.
“It is up to me, sir.”
“You strain me patience, Gorham. If ye have any trinkets and
messages to send to your friends, better give them to me now.”
Said the chief engineer when the soldier was out of ear-shot:
“Does he really mean it, Cap’n Mike? He’ll sure be a homely-
lookin’ corpse.”
“Mean it? That lantern-jawed lunatic wouldn’t know a joke if it hit
him bows on.”
“Will you let him be murdered?”
“We will pry the big nigger off him before it goes as far as that.
Have ye not learned, Johnny Kent, that it is poor business to come
between a man and his good intentions, even though they may be all
wrong?”
 Later in the day Captain O’Shea sought the state-room of the
prostrate Colonel Calvo. The sea was a relentless foe and showed
him no mercy. Feebly moving his hands, he turned a ghastly face to
the visitor and croaked:
“I have no interes’ in my mens, in my country, in nothings at all. I
am dreadful sick. I will not live to see my Cuba. She will weep for
me. The ship, she will sink pretty soon? I hope so.”
“Nonsense, colonel,” bluffly returned O’Shea. “The weather
couldn’t be finer. A few days more of this and ye will be wading in
Spanish gore to your boot-tops. I want to ask about your stores. Your
men are growlin’. Who is in charge of the commissary?”
“Talk to me nothings about eats,” moaned the sufferer. “Why do
anybody want eats? Come to-morrow, nex’ day, nex’ week. Now I
have the wish to die with peace.”
“The sooner, the better,” said the visitor, and departed.
The Fearless, with explosives in the hold and inflammable
humanity above-decks, pursued her hard-driven way through
another night and turned to double Cape San Antonio and enter the
storied waters of the Caribbean. Black Jiminez had failed to play the
rôle expected of him and the discontent of the patriots focussed itself
in no open outbreak. Captain O’Shea was puzzled at this until the
mate came to him and announced that the Cubans had broken
through a bulkhead in the after-hold and were stealing the ship’s
stores. This accounted for their good behavior on deck. The leader
of the secret raiding party was the big negro from Colombia.
“It seems to me that this is my business,” softly quoth the
skipper, and his gray eyes danced while he pulled his belt a notch
tighter. “But I must play fair and ask permission of the melancholy
sharp-shooter before I proceed to make a vacancy in the Jiminez
family.”
The interview with Gorham was brief. The captain argued that by
breaking through a bulkhead and pilfering the crew’s provisions, the
large black one had invaded the O’Shea domain. The soldier held to
it with the stubbornness of a wooden Indian that his own self-respect
was at stake. O’Shea lost his temper and burst out:
“If ye are so damned anxious to commit suicide, go and get him
and put him in irons. I will give you a decent burial at sea, though ye
don’t deserve it, you pig-headed old ramrod.”
“The moral effect will be better if I get him,” mildly suggested the
soldier.
The Cubans had learned that trouble was in the wind. Their
stolen supplies were to be cut off and this meant short rations again.
Angry and rebellious, only a spark was needed to set them ablaze.
When eight bells struck the noon hour they surged toward the galley,
making a great noise, displaying their sea-rusted machetes and
rifles. In the lead was Jiminez, a half-clad, barbaric giant who waved
a heavy blade over his head and shouted imprecations. The purpose
of the mob was to rush the galley and carry off all the food in sight.
The crew of the Fearless liked not the idea of going dinnerless.
When the excited patriots charged forward, there quickly rallied in
front of the deck-house fourteen earnest-looking men equipped with
Mauser rifles broken out of the cargo. In a wheel-house window
appeared the head and shoulders of Captain O’Shea. His fist held a
piece of artillery known as a Colt’s forty-five. In the background of
the picture was the resourceful Johnny Kent, who was coupling the
brass nozzle of the fire-hose.
Jiminez had decided to declare war. He appealed to the patriots
to use their weapons, but they showed a prudent reluctance to open
the engagement. One of them, by way of locating the responsibility
for the dispute, pulled a revolver from a holster and took a snap-shot
at the cook.
“I guess I’d better turn loose this hose and wash ’em aft, Cap’n
Mike,” sung out the chief engineer. “George is a darned good cook
and it ain’t right to let these black-and-tans pester him.”
Captain O’Shea bounded from the bridge to the deck, and the
crew of the Fearless welcomed him with joyous yelps. Instead of
giving them the expected order to charge the Cubans hammer-and-
tongs, he made for Jiminez single-handed. His intention was
thwarted. Between him and the burly negro appeared the spare
figure of Jack Gorham, who moved swiftly, quietly. With courteous
intonation and no sign of heat he affirmed:
“This is my job, sir. It’s about time to put a few kinks in him.”
The manner of the man made Captain O’Shea hesitate and feel
rebuked, as though he had been properly told to mind his own
business. With a boyish grin he slapped Gorham on the back and
said:
“I beg your pardon for intrudin’. ’Tis your funeral.”
Although the mob behind Jiminez failed to catch the wording of
this bit of dialogue, they comprehended its import. The extraordinary
composure of the two men impressed them. They felt more fear of
them than of the embattled deck-hands. The tableau lasted only a
moment, but a singular silence fell upon the ship.
Big Jiminez nervously licked his lips and his bloodshot eyes
roved uneasily. It was apparent that he had been singled out as the
leader, and that the sad-featured American soldier in the sea-stained
khaki viewed him as no more than an incident in the day’s work.
Captain O’Shea had stepped back to join his own men. Jack
Gorham stood alone in a small cleared space of the deck, facing the
truculent negro. The Cubans began to edge away from Jiminez as if
comprehending that here was an issue between two men. The
soldier had for a weapon that beloved old Springfield rifle, but he
made no motion to shoot.
Presently he sprang forward, with the heavy butt upraised. The
negro swung his machete at the same instant and the blade was
parried by the steel barrel. The mob had become an audience. It lost
its menacing solidarity and drifted a little way aft to make room for
the combatants. Instead of riot or mutiny, the trouble on board the
Fearless had defined itself as a duel.
The veteran regular handled the clubbed rifle with amazing ease
and dexterity. The wicked machete could not beat down his guard,
and he stood his ground, shifting, ducking, weaving in and out,
watching for an opening to smash the negro’s face with a thrust of
the butt. Once the blade nicked Gorham’s shoulder and a red smear
spread over the khaki tunic.
Jiminez was forced back until he was cramped for room to
swing. His machete rang against a metal stanchion and the galley
window was at his elbow. His black skin shining with sweat, his
breath labored, the splendid brute was beginning to realize that he
had met his master. From the tail of his eye he observed that the
Cubans no longer thronged the passageway between the deck-
house and guard-rail. He turned and ran toward the stern.
Gorham was after him like a shot. In his wake scampered the
crew of the Fearless intermingled with the Cubans, all anxious to be
in at the finish. Jiminez wheeled where the deck was wide. He was
not as formidable as at first. Fear was in his heart. He had never
fought such a man as this insignificant-looking American soldier, who
was unterrified, unconquerable. Gorham ran at him without an
instant’s hesitation, the rifle gripped for a downward swing. The
machete grazed his head and chipped the skin from the bald spot.
Before Jiminez could strike again, the butt smote his thick skull
and he staggered backward. Caught off his balance, his machete no
longer dangerous, he was unable to avoid the next assault. Gorham
moved a step nearer and deftly tapped his adversary with the rifle-
butt. It was a knock-out blow delivered with the measured precision
of a prize-ring artist. The machete dropped from the negro’s limp
fingers and he toppled across two sacks of coal with a sighing grunt.
The crew of the Fearless broke into a cheer. The mate on duty in
the wheel-house let the vessel steer herself and scrambled to the
bridge, where he was clumsily dancing a jig. The Cubans chattered
among themselves in subdued accents, and from the state-room
door peered the wan countenance of Colonel Calvo, who was
wringing his hands and sputtering commands to which nobody paid
the slightest attention.
Jack Gorham stood swaying slightly, leaning upon his
Springfield, and wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of his