Che Guevara's Marijuana & Baseball Savings & Loan: A Novel of the Early Days of the Peace Corps

CHAPTER

1

The Wall Street Journal called me Drug Lord of the Peace Corps. Hyperbole, I think, and less than accurate, as usual.

The more restrained New York Times called me America’s ‘grass’-roots ambassador. And the Village Voice, playful as ever, dubbed me the raja of ganja and the Peace Corps’ prince of pot.

Such sobriquets (87—I’ll explain this later) would clearly do damage to my reputation, if I had a shred of one left. But I have drifted beyond dignity.

I am more or less at peace. There’s a certain calm that descends upon you when you are no longer driven by ambition. I have passed through that membrane of desire.

It wasn’t always so. Once I measured my horizons on epic scales. At one time I had boyhood dreams that I might have a shot at becoming the first Oklahoman to become president—certainly the first mixed-blood Creek ever elected to congress.

I’ve scaled back my ambitions quite a bit since then. Being accused of almost single-handedly bringing down the Peace Corps hurts, I will admit. And being caught in a marijuana money laundering scheme with Che Guevara, even in the most positive light imaginable, is a career-limiting experience. Not to mention the pound of marijuana they found in my office (thanks, Larry). And then of course there’s the money which I readily admit I withdrew, and which was far less than advertised.

Plus there’s the undeniable fact that if you want to run for office in the United States, you’ve got to live there. I am currently in exile; living in an abandoned schoolhouse in an equally-abandoned rubber tree plantation near a farmed-out, petered-out fly-specked village in the Caribbean low country of Nicaragua, not far from Bluefields.

This old rubber plantation used to be crawling with dozens of people—Che Guevara and his rebels intent on overthrowing the hated government of Nicaraguan dictator Luis Somoza. I actually played baseball with El Che and Victor right over there, on the other side of the hen house. The revolution sputtered and died before it ever got going, of course, and those who could still travel high-tailed it to Bolivia. But I figure if the federales couldn’t find sixty men in these jungles, they sure couldn’t find one.

I also kind of like thinking that the best place for a man without a country is in a state without a country. Somoza and his boys couldn’t care less if this part of Nicaragua sinks into the sea, and I’m hoping that things will stay that way for a while, maybe quite a while.

I live here with old Casimiro, who’s been the caretaker of the plantation since forever. Everybody in the camp thought the old snaggle-tooth was slightly crazy, and he probably is, which is just fine with me. He leaves me alone; I leave him alone. I told him that Che, who Casimiro thinks is a god, will be coming back soon, so be quiet and lie in the weeds. He gave me a conspiratorial wink and five-toothed grin, then went hobbling off.

So I’ve got some time on my hands until I can find a way to get to Paraguay or some other country that hasn’t signed extradition treaties with the United States. I figure that setting down all my adventures on paper will help me clear my thoughts, at least, if not my name. I’ve got the time and it’s not like I have any pressing appointments. The old rubber tree plantation school teacher was kind enough to leave a drawer full of Anaconda brand ball point pens, and it’s a cinch Casimiro won’t be calling on them. There are also all these little blue examination books. There’s a whole box of them. I wonder if anybody else has ever written his memoirs on little blue books. I read somewhere that Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in pencil on like a hundred paper tablets, so here we go—Kiff and Peace; Peace and Doobies.

Just a note before I start laying out the whole story—some of the stuff I’m going to write about took place in English and some in Spanish, and I may have to use a little Spanish from time to time. But I’ll try not to be cute about it. I’ll stick to English as much as possible. I don’t know about you, but I get a little tired of those books that take place in Cuba or Mexico or somewhere and everyone is obviously speaking Spanish, but the book’s in English except for cute little Spanish words and phrases the author tosses in to remind you where you are. It’s usually some gnarly old grandfather who says stuff like "Si, mi hijita," and "Ay, Diós mio;" or the author writes miko and pinga to avoid writing dirty words in English. Not in this book. There probably will be some dirty words, especially if I quote my buddy John McNaughton correctly. But I might as well stick to English—it’s as close to the United States as I’m likely to get for a while.

Also I think I’ll write about everybody in the past tense, because I don’t know anymore who’s alive or dead—including me. Sometimes I think maybe I’m dead, living in purgatory or what do they call it—limbo. And while I may be living in the limbo on the other side of the tracks, I’m pretty sure I’m not in hell. Hell doesn’t have chickens. Probably.

CHAPTER

2

Chickens in the tropics have, I believe, few natural predators. This is probably lucky for the predators, because the scrawny, feral little raptors that live under my Nicaraguan schoolhouse wouldn’t make much of a meal, even for a ferret or a coati.

It was the same in my village in Costa Rica along the riparian jungles near Lake Nicaragua when I was in the Peace Corps. Costa Rican cooks didn’t dare serve the ugly, ropey cacklers as a separate dish, but cut them into unrecognizable chunks and disguised them in soups, mounds of rice and peas, even those fat holiday tamales wrapped in banana leaves that made you feel less than happy that Christmas was coming. Yes, that’s right—the Peace Corps. I’ll get to that.

We had chickens, lot of chickens, when I was growing up in rural Oklahoma. Almost everybody did, and they weren’t these feathery losers, either. They were big and plump—White Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, Brahmas, Plymouth Rocks, Cornish, Wyandottes, fat little banties. I know my chickens. That was my job around the farm when I was just a little guy, feeding them and watering them, bringing in the eggs. Sometimes I even had to chip the ice off the feeders in winter so the birds could drink. Winter seems like a foreign country to me now.

My name is Jack Harjo. Harjo is a Creek word meaning brave or crazy. It was a word most often used in battle, so it comes closer to meaning bold and reckless than nuts. It was a name given in respect and worn proudly. One of the great Creek chiefs from the old days was named Echo Harjo (in the typical Indian way of calling a spade a spade, he was called Echo because he stuttered) and near the turn of the century—Crazy Snake, Chitto Harjo.

Jack is an English word that can mean a naval flag, the third-highest face card in a deck, money, a six-tipped game piece used with a rubber ball in a game with the same name, an electrical plug, a devise to elevate a car to fix a flat, the act of elevating a car to fix a flat, or nothing (as in you don’t know jack). Used in combination with other words it can be a food (jackfruit, Monterey Jack, Cracker Jack, flapjacks, amberjack), stealing, a percussive hammer, a card game, masturbation, a handyman, a mule, a flower and a Halloween pumpkin.

Jack can also be, as in my case, a nickname for John, which sometimes caused me problems in Oklahoma.

How come your driver’s license says John and your check says Jack? asked the Humpty-Dumpty clerk, her eyes narrowing.

Cause Jack is a nickname for John, I offered helpfully.

Nicknames are supposed to be shorter than regular names. That’s why we use them. These are the same size.

I know. I can’t really explain that, I said. Then in a moment of inspiration that came from being broke and hungry, I added, You’ve heard of John Kennedy and Jack Kennedy, right?

Sure.

Well, they’re the same person, I said like a lawyer ending his summation.

Huh-uh, the clerk said in that friendly sing-song tone that means not only do I know you’re wrong, but I think you’re trying to pull my leg. One of them’s the daddy.

My daddy was John Harjo, semi-retired farmer and extremely lucky holder of mineral rights on eighty acres of land in the Turner Basin near Ardmore. This didn’t make us Cadillac-rich, but those two little grasshopper oil wells in the south forty kept us in new Buicks and nice clothes, and Mother in cigarettes. The money came in four times a year, regular as rain water, as they say.

Daddy was enough of an Indian that he got on the roles, which made him an official Indian. I’m only an eighth, which means I’m Indian to white people, and white to Creeks. Sort of the story of my life, I guess. Square peg.

My mother was a chain smoker, a gifted writer and anarchist. Lung cancer got her when I was still a senior in high school. My mother’s name was Elizabeth Langhorne Harjo, or so I thought, and she was one sharp cookie. She was a graduate of the University of Missouri’s school of journalism and wrote a twice-weekly column for the local newspaper, The Ardmorite. Her column was called Out of Left Field by Elizabeth Langhorne Harjo.

One day when I was in the sixth grade, I came running home from school where we’d been reading Tom Sawyer. Mother, I shouted, "Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemons. Are we those Langhornes? Are we related to Mark Twain?"

Mother laughed softly. No, child. I just use that name as an innocent homage to the great man. I had a professor who said most great writers have three names, and I thought Harjo needed a little fluffing out. If you promise to keep a secret, I’ll tell you my real maiden name.

I nodded my head uncertainly.

Welcher. Can you imagine going through life with that hanging around your neck? ‘So your daddy’s a welcher?’ ‘You wouldn’t welch on us, would you, Welcher?’ I think reason number four or five that I married your daddy was to trade in my last name.

What was reason number one?

Your daddy was, and is, the best-looking man I ever did see. You got his looks, Jack. Now it’s my job to get your brain to the same high level, and Tom Sawyer’s a real fine place to start. Bring your book here in the kitchen. You can read while I type.

Mother was tickled by the Out of Left Field title of her column, which was actually Daddy’s idea. Half the people who start reading it will think it’s about sports, she said with that smoker’s laugh that sounded a bit like a coughing sea lion. By the time they get to paragraph three, I can sink my Let’s Hear It for the Little Man hooks into them. If I haven’t got ’em by then I don’t want ’em anyway, they’re too dumb.

Her column was popular unless you were a governor, state senator or county commissioner. Left field, hell, Governor Murray yelled one day at a rally over at Madill. She’s a commie pinko. Daddy said that was nonsense; she was an equal opportunity bomb-thrower.

Both Daddy and I were in awe of my mother, adored her, but she could be a little stand-offish. When he came to visit the newspaper one day, Governor Murray told her that Elizabeth Langhorne Harjo sounded mighty formal. What do your friends call you? he boomed with that laugh-that’s-not-a-laugh.

Elizabeth Langhorne Harjo, she answered demurely. But you can keep calling me Commie Pinko. I’m starting to like it.

Mother could also be razor-blade funny, both in her columns and in person. One of her finest moments came when she was asked to participate on a panel with Congressman Arthur Wickerman at an Arrows to Atoms Semicentennial Celebration debate at Oklahoma City University in 1957 (by the way, although Oklahomans have a reputation for being unlettered, every single one of us knows what semicentennial means, thanks to us becoming a state in 1907 and our not being able to wait a hundred years to celebrate).

The debate was about the one man—one vote concept that was working its way to the US Supreme Court. Congressman Wickerman, who had already erected an Impeach Earl Warren sign in his front yard, despised the idea. Wickerman was a short, fleshy man who made you think he had a cigar in his mouth, even when he didn’t. He, like Governor Murray, hated communists and found them in every corner of America, especially universities and newspapers, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting Okies while we slept.

Congressman Wickerman never met an oilman or rancher he didn’t like and that particular day he was railing about how those Fellow Travelers Eisenhower and Earl Warren were trying to nationalize the oil fields and the cattle industry.

It’s just unbelievable that these communists and socialists can go wading in on election day and outflank and destroy our fine homesteading Oklahoma farmers, ranchers and oilmen, Wickerman said. Our people are producing things, making things grow, pulling riches out of the ground with their bare hands and a little luck, making life better for all of us. The socialists don’t own anything; they just want some of what we got. Do you really think it’s right for some socialist on welfare to get the same vote as the man who owns a piece of this fine country, who has a stake in the game? Of course not. Oklahomans are people of the land, and our land has a right to be heard. We’re getting shortchanged by those New York socialists, stacked up there like cordwood, voting against the hardworking ranchers and wildcatters who are filling Yankee gas tanks and bellies. Let me say this: if every socialist and his welfare mammy gets one vote, then our hardworking landholders should have two. It’s the land that makes us great, and the land should have a voice.

There was a smattering of applause, but the audience hadn’t really been expecting such a stem-winder or convoluted logic, and it took us a little by surprise.

Excuse me, Congressman, Mother interjected. Are you actually suggesting that dirt should have the vote?

"Very clever, Miss Langhorne Harjo. I guess newspaper women can twist words just as easily as newspaper men. I’m saying that true Americans who have a stake in this country deserve to determine its destiny. There is no evidence that these socialists and communists even know how to run a country. They can’t run Russia, and they sure as hell can’t run Oklahoma."

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, Mother said.

Just what the hell does that mean, College Lady? Wicker-man snorted, unused to being interrupted when he was on a roll.

Well, let’s see if I can explain it, Congressman. Let’s just say that even though there is an absence of evidence that you ever learned anything in school; that is not sufficient evidence that your brains are absent. Mother paused and rubbed her chin. Well, come to think of it, maybe I should choose my examples a little more carefully.

There was a burst of laughter, especially from the predominately student and faculty audience members. They had been waiting for a chance to laugh at that idiot, and Mother gave it to them.

Fuming and actually shaking his fist at my mother, Arthur Wickerman stomped out of the auditorium. He would get the Harjos back, at least one of them.

CHAPTER

3

I hung around the newspaper a lot in high school. If I didn’t have baseball practice, I’d head over to the Ardmorite after school and get in a good hour of reading and pestering the editorial staff before Daddy came in the pickup to take Mother and me home (like a lot of women who grew up before the war, Mother never learned to drive, and had no real interest in the subject).

Even though the Ardmorite was a daily, it only had a handful of employees in what they called the front office. Everybody, including Mother, did double duty and they used a lot of volunteers to write PTA, garden club and local sports stuff. I even got to try my hand from time to time on stories I couldn’t screw up: Leroy Costairs, son of Mr. and Mrs. Clovis Costairs of 821 N. Chickasaw Street, has been promoted to Private First Class. He is currently assigned to headquarters company, Fort Polk, La. where he is a technical specialist in the motor pool. Costairs is a 1956 graduate of Ardmore High School where he lettered in football and track.

I had two favorites at the paper. One was Art Triester, whose gloomy face was as wrinkled as an unmade bed. He was also bald, and his main wrinkles became three ditches that traveled all the way up his head to the back of his neck. Art had the title of advertising manager, although he didn’t manage anybody—he was it. He also wrote a weekly column called Ask Pepper, which was supposed to be written by a woman named Pepper Holiday. Art would make his weekly rounds of the shops that paid ten bucks a week to be featured, and then write a column in a breathless, girlie style: Just in time for Easter, the folks at Marge’s Little Shoppe have a new shipment of darling straw hats. There are only a few of the wide-brimmed ones left, so do go down to Marge’s today. And be sure to tell them Pepper sent you.

If you don’t mind me saying so, Art, you sort of make Pepper sound like Lucy Ricardo. Is that the way you figure women write? I asked him one day as we went through the daily task of breaking down the ads and saving the clip art. Over his shoulder I saw my mother roll her eyes and pretend to stick her finger down her throat.

Art feigned concentrating on stripping the tape off a drawing of some oranges he’d used for an IGA grocery store layout. I know Elizabeth is smirking behind me, but yeah, at least that’s how some women write. The advertisers don’t complain and people really believe there is a Pepper Holiday. It turns a buck for the paper, too. Besides, she’s the only woman columnist, he turned his head toward Mother for effect, "repeat, only woman columnist, who gets fan mail every week and not a single death threat."

My other favorite was Old Bob Hogan, the editor. He was probably younger than Art, but he had a lot of mileage on him. He was an alcoholic, I guess, and he had false teeth that rattled in the back of his mouth. This embarrassed him, so when he was on the phone, he’d take his teeth out and drop them in a glass of whiskey he kept on the desk. This was the only whiskey he’d touch until five