An exerpt from the book:

….The Casa-de-Putas was just above the town. As was appropriate to an establishment which took much of its trade from the commerce on the river, it had its own wharf – even equipped with a small a-frame crane and a block and tackle, which looked strong.
        Carlos went in and brought the Proprietor down to help in carrying the Harpsichord up to the house. The Saloonkeeper stood on the quay as Frye threw back the sail and when he saw the instrument, the man exclaimed
        “Madre de Dios!”
        He glanced at Frye and said:
        “Eet bootiful, Senior. Too mucho mi Casa! Mucho Gracias . . . Gracias.”
        With the aid of the crane, all of Frye's men, and two roustabouts (evidently customers from the bar), they manhandled, without damage, the worthy object of a Prince's delight into the barroom of a dirt-floored bordello 60 miles up a muddy river in the heart of the rainforests of Central America.
         When the proprietor laid a floor of fresh planks down in one corner, Frye positioned the instrument so that the player would have a view of the room, and accepted
         “The best in mi Casa”.
        Carlos and Frye sat down to drink at a small table in the corner opposite the instrument, well away from the bar, and the rest of Frye's crew returned to El Cid.
        Then a woman appeared on the stairs by the bar and, in the accents of the Low Country of the American Carolinas, she said:
        “Well, thank you Gemmen . . . I do thank you very kindly . . . Don't you think the instra . . . ment fits surprizz . . . in . . . ly well in the simplicity of this Hall?”
        Curiously, she was quite right. The room was whitewashed plaster, with a high ceiling of exposed, adz-cut beams. There was no decoration on the walls other than that provided by several kerosene lamps on swivel wall-sconces with mirror reflectors. The beautifully finished parquetry of the rosewood Harpsichord contrasted against the stark quality of the room in a way that enhanced the impact of the skill of the artisan who had made it. The woman went on:
        “May I play for you?”
        She was dressed in a very simple black gown, which reached the floor.
         As she walked toward the instrument, Carlos and then Frye stood up, and then bowed to the woman. She smiled and bowed in return. Frye had brought no piano bench, so the proprietor had placed a whiskey barrel at the keyboard, and now the woman sat on this.
         It was too low and she stood again. At this, Carlos went to her, and removed the blanket from his shoulder and folded it and placed it on the barrel. The woman said:
        “Thank you, Sir. What may I play for you?”
        Carlos said nothing, and returned to their table. The woman looked at Frye, but he was dumbstruck and tongue-tied.
        In a skillful resolution to the tension, she turned to the keyboard, and ran her fingers up and down the keys, and it was very beautiful. Just scales, but she was clearly very good, or at least she had once been. Frye judged her to be fifty or a little under, an example of his predilection for
        “Oldies but goodies.”
         And he wondered that a white salt-and-pepper haired American Southern Belle, whose voice was a cultured version of those Frye had heard in the shacks outside Camp Lejune, should be here turning tricks. But Rama was a good example of:
          “The end of the line”,
 so Frye stopped his silent inquiry.
            Now she played. At first, she played a Baroque piece, which was very ornate, as if to match the instrument.
            They applauded when she paused.
            The bar was now growing crowded, as this Pied Piper gathered her audience.
            Then she played a Spanish air, lighter than before, and jaunty in its tone. At this, an accompaniment sounded to her song. Frye and Carlos turned; two guitarists had come in the door and now each had one foot on a chair and they were strumming the beat behind the Harpsichordist's lead.
            When the Trio finished with a flourish, the room exploded with laughter and applause.
            After a moment's silence, in surprising violence, a violin struck a note, played across two of its strings and they turned to find a gray-bearded fiddler at the foot of the stairs, ready to play, his bow held high above his head, his eyes bright with laughter, and his clerical collar just visible behind the violin.
            The filled room roared its approval
            “Ole, Padre . . . Ole . . . Ole!”
            He repeated the chord, and the Harpsichord answered the same chord. The guitars replied in a strummed harmony, and the room was absolutely silent.
            Then the woman at the keyboard raised her right hand slowly. She said, just above a whisper
            “Malaguena!”
            The room exploded approval, and her hand came down quickly, and they played.
            If Frye had often grasped for a definition of “soul”, then his mind asked the question again as he listened to this unlikely quartet explore the Spanish consciousness.
             Then the guitars were joined by the rhythm of a rattle, played by an extravagantly-mustachioed graybeard. Somehow the rattle seemed to symbolize the soul whose definition Frye sought.
             The rattle was made from the lower jaw of a horse, or perhaps a mule. The teeth were all in place, although now they were loose. The bone had been dyed a deep purple color and the rattle had been decorated in flourishing lines by scraping the dye away to reveal the gray of the bone.
            The man kept the beat by holding the end of the lower jaw, just above the incisors, in his right hand and striking one side of the mandibular with the heel of his left palm. The vibratory rattle of the molars made an eerie sound that spoke to Frye of the dimensions that must define soul: death, a meaning beyond death.
            But again, Rob Frye's mind balked at the “mystery” and he knew the horse was dead, as the player of its lower jaw soon would be. As Robert Chance Frye hoped he soon would not be. Then Carlos put his hand on Frye's shoulder and, with his lips at Frye's ear, in the din:
            “We must go, quickly. Don't look at the front door.”
            Of course Frye covertly did, at once. The two National Guard Officers were just inside. Frye turned away quickly. Carlos went on:
            “We'll go out the back to the Latrine. Now!”
            Under cover of the happiness of the crowd mesmerized by the melancholic Spanish song dramatically played by the pick-up orchestra, the two men ducked out the back and down to El Cid. 
            The engine started at once and Frye left the dock. They went up stream for a short way, made a one-eight-oh turn and came back down stream, full parade, close past the General Store Quay.
        Carlos saluted the Caballeros on the veranda with a beer bottle and they returned the salute with their cups. The girl who had saved Frye stood in the doorway, and when the ex-Marine looked her way, she blew a kiss in his direction.
            Frye felt that kiss on his cheek and raised his free hand and pressed the spot. He could hear the girl squeal and break into her lilting, lighthearted laughter.
            Some lady....

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A Review by Hugh Fox:

 Banana Shooter II.
By Dick DeBold
2008; 272pp; Higganum
Hill Books, PO Box 666,
Higganum, CT 06441,
$19.95.

     In a sense there are two books here, the first one about a foundling raised by Catholic nuns, the second one about a little known military involvement of the U.S. in Nicaragua during the 1920’s. Nicely fused together into one, unified whole!And the writing carries you along throughout. It’s not a book you can put down: “Eventually Rob was too old to be a serious candidate for adoption or foster care, so he became a permanent fixture at the Protectory...the boy’s education was spotty, took place in several schools, all run by the Catholic holy orders....One event will help in understanding the Robert Chance Frye tight-lipped, clenched-first attitude toward the Church.” (p.11) Hard to stop quoting/reading isn’t it? Based on De Bold’s own life as an alumnus of the New York Foundling home, it’s very graphic, tense, drags you into the plot and refuses to let you go. And the same is true for the Nicaraguan part too: “ ‘The Germans and the Japanese are planning a War!....I think the Japs are...resurveying a route for a sea-level canal to connect the Pacific Ocean with the Carribean.Second, they are aiding the Germans to find a suitable location for a Submarine refueling and resupply base on the Central American Coast.” p. 255.
     A total “solipsist of the present moment,” as he wrote me in a recent letter, De Bold’s obsession with the Now turns everything he writes into H.D. TV believability. Altogether a Great Read! 

                -- Hugh Fox, Small Press Review. 

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