Full of Beans

Beans lives in a shotgun-style rental house on Curry Lane. The house has termites and other pests. The Currys rent the house from “some shirttail cousin” of Beans’s father (10). At the house, Beans’s mother presses Beans and Kermit to take their three-year-old baby brother Buddy outside so she can work; she does other families’ laundry (by hand) for money. Beans and Kermit put Buddy in the wagon and walk to the waterfront. Buddy falls asleep in the wagon on the way. The boys see a stray dog following them, one that follows them often.

At the waterfront, they see fishing boats with caught fish, the turtle kraals (bins for turtles to be bought for meat), and Johnny Cakes, a boatman in a white linen suit and Panama hat whom many assume is a criminal. He has three coffins on deck; he says they are victims of a malaria epidemic in Havana. He claims he brought the corpses home to their families. Kermit calls him a Good Samaritan.

Back home, the brothers see that Poppy, their father, is back from searching the Keys for work. Poppy hugs Beans and helps put a cornstarch paste on Ma’s hurting hands (the detergent from laundering is harsh on her skin). A fire bell goes off, but they can tell from the coded ringing and the fire card they keep in the house that it is not near them. That night, Beans and Kermit go to bed in their room upstairs, but Beans cannot sleep because of the heat and mosquitoes. He overhears Poppy’s plan to go to New Jersey for work. Poppy says he will send for them all to move there once he has a job. When Poppy leaves a few days later, Beans asks him if they will all move, and Poppy says no. Beans thinks of this as another adult lie.

Beans’s best friend is Pork Chop Soldano. The Soldano house is always busy with people coming and going because they have a phone many borrow and because Pork Chop’s mother sells lottery tickets for the Cuban lottery called bolita. Beans enjoys Mrs. Soldano’s cooking, including bollos, spicy black-eyed pea fritters. Together with Ira, another boy in their gang, Pork Chop, Beans, and Kermit play marbles against the Mighty Mibsters. Bean’s gang, the Keepsies, are undefeated in the neighborhood, and they expect to win. On the way, they see the dog again, whom Beans calls Termite, and a boy named Marvin, whose nickname is Too Bad. Too Bad asks where they are going, but the boys avoid answering Too Bad, whom Beans thinks is annoying. The Keepsies win the marble game. Dot, the best female player on the island, challenges Beans to a game, but Beans refuses to play her because she is a girl.

Duval Street, a main thoroughfare of Key West, has little activity, but the movie theater and the ice cream shop are still open. These are favorite spots for Beans. He especially loves the movies; movies with young child actors are of strong interest. He loves movies with Spanky McFarland, Wheezer Hutchins, and Baby LeRoy. The gang gets the idea of selling something like many street vendors do in town. Their idea to “make” gum by scraping it from dilly trees—and pre-chewing it for softness—goes nowhere. Then Beans gets the idea to cut up fruit dropped from fruit trees around town; if you get it from the ground, it is not stealing, even on private property, and it is free.

They convince Too Bad to climb and shake the trees to make the fruit fall, gathering it up. They cut it up at Too Bad’s house, where Beans notices a fire key to an alarm box. That means Too Bad’s family has the important responsibility of setting off the fire alarm inside one of the alarm boxes if needed. They sell the fruit in cups to fishermen on the waterfront and make a nice profit. Beans sends Too Bad to fetch the rest of the fruit when they run low, but as he returns, he becomes ill from eating all the extra fruit on the way. Not only do they have no more fruit, but Too Bad vomits on Beans’s bare feet. They reject Too Bad’s request to be in their gang.

The boys’ fruit-selling scheme works so well that they plan to see a movie featuring child star Shirley Temple. On the way to the theater for the early evening show, Beans passes Jelly, a prisoner in the jail who, like other prisoners, goes home for supper because the prison cannot afford to feed inmates. Then they pass Mr. Stone, who is trying to convince a gathered crowd that tourism is the answer for Key West. He says the town’s management is now under the federal government’s control. Someone in the crowd says, “He’s one of them Roosevelt New Dealers” (38). Mr. Stone tells the people that the tourist season will begin December 1 and that federal money will pay for supplies—but unpaid volunteers must complete the work to make Key West tourist-friendly. The townspeople yell and complain.

Beans and Kermit get to the theater before the other boys, but Kermit admits to Beans that he has intestinal worms again. Beans is frustrated but knows the movie money must go to medicine to rid Kermit of worms. At Mr. Gardner’s pharmacy, Beans buys worm syrup; back at the theater, he tells the other boys that he and Kermit cannot view the film. Beans takes Kermit home, then goes for a walk. It is dark because the power company shut down the streetlights when the town quit paying bills. He passes a bar where local men like to drink. Johnny Cakes hails Beans and tells him he wants Beans’s help with a job. Beans is suspicious and wants time to think about it, but Winky, drunk at the bar, harasses Beans: “That kid’s my best worker […]. He’ll crawl through anything for me. And I do mean anything” (44). That does it for Beans; he rejects being a good kid, as they get suckered all the time, and accepts whatever job Johnny Cakes has for him.