Sorcerers!, page 17
And was gone.
"Where are they now? The young women, I mean."
Captain Sneed said that he was blessed if he knew, adding immediately, "Ah. Here they come now."
Both talking at once, they asked Jack if he felt all right, assured him that he looked well, said that they'd spent the night at Government Guest House (there was one of these in every out-district capital and was best not confused with Government House, which existed only in the colonial capital itself: the Royal Governor lived there, and he was not prepared to put up guests below the rank of, well, Governor).
"Mr. Boyd arranged it. We met him in King Town. He was 28coming here anyway," said Felix, looking long and lovely. "He's an engineer. He's . . . how would you describe him, May?"
"He's an engineer," May said.
Felix's sherry-colored eyes met Limekiller's. "Come and live on my boat with me and we will sail the Spanish Main together and I will tell you all about myself and frequently make love to you," he said at once. Out loud, however, all he could say was, "Uh . . . thanks for wiping my beard last night . . . uh. . . ."
"Don't mention it," she said.
May said, "I want lots and lots of exotic foods for breakfast." She got two fried eggs, buttered toast of thick-sliced, home-baked bread, beans (mashed), tea, orange juice. "There is nothing like these exotic foods," she said.
Felix got egg on her chin. Jack took his napkin and wiped. She said that turnabout was fair play. He said that one good turn deserved another. She asked him if he had ever been to Kettle Point Lagoon, said by They to be beautiful. A spirit touched his lips with a glowing coal.
"I am going there today!" he exclaimed. He had never heard of it.
"Oh, good! Then we can all go together!"
Whom did he see as they walked towards the river, but Filiberto Marín. Who greeted him with glad cries, and a wink, evidently intended as compliments on Jack's company. "Don Fili, can you take us to Kettle Point Lagoon?"
Don Fili, who had at once begun to nod, stopped nodding. "Oh, Juanito, only wan mon hahv boat which go to Kettle Point Lagoon, ahn dot is Very Big Bakeman. He get so vex, do anybody else try for go dot side, none ahv we odder boatmen adventure do it. But I bring you to him. May-be he go today. Veremos."
Very Big Bakeman, so-called to distinguish him from his cousin, Big Bakeman, was very big indeed. What he might be like when "vex," Limekiller (no squab himself) thought he would pass up knowing.
Bakeman's was the only tunnel boat in sight, probably the only one still in service. His answer was short. "Not before Torsday, becahs not enough wah-teh get me boat ahcross de bar. Torsday," he concluded and, yawning, leaned back against the cabin. Monopolists the world over see no reason to prolong conversation with the public.
Felix said something which sounded like, "Oh, spit," but wasn't. Limekiller blinked. Could those lovely lips have uttered That Word? If so, he concluded without much difficulty, he would learn to like it. Love it. "Don Fili will take us to," he racked his brains, "somewhere just as interesting," he wound up with almost no pause. And looked at Don Fili, appealingly.
Filiberto Marín was equal to the occasion. "Verdad. In wan leetle while I going up de Right Branch. Muy linda. You will have pleasure. I telling Juanito about it, day before yesterday.
Limekiller recalled no such conversation, but he would have corroborated a deal with the devil, rather than let her out of his sight for a long while yet. He nodded knowingly. "Fascinating," he said.
"We'll get that nice lady to pack us a lunch."
Jack had a quick vision of Tía Sani packing them fried eggs, toast, beans, tea, and orange juice. But that nice lady fooled him. Her sandwiches were immense. Her eggs were deviled. She gave them empenadas and she gave them "crusts"—pastries with coconut and other sweet fillings—and then, behaving like aunts the whole world over, she ladled soup into a huge jar and capped it and handed it to Limekiller with the caution to hold it like this so that it didn't leak. . . . Not having any intention to have his hands thus occupied the whole trip, he lashed it and shimmed it securely in the stern of Marín's boat.
He had barely known that the Ningoon River had two branches. Parrot Bend was on the left one, then. The dory, or dugout, in use today was the largest he had seen so far. Captain Sneed at once decided it had room enough for him to come along, too. Jack was not overjoyed at first. The elderly Englishman was a decent sort. But he talked, damn it! How he talked. Before long, however, Limekiller found he talked to May, which left Felix alone to talk to Jack.
"John Lutwidge Limekiller," she said, having asked to see his inscribed watch, "there's a name. Beats Felicia Fox." He thought "fox" of all words in the world the most appropriate for her. He didn't say so."—Why Lutwidge?"
"Lewis Carroll? Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, his real name? Distant cousin. Or so my Aunty Mary used to say."
This impressed her, anyway a little. "And what does Limekiller mean? How do you kill a lime? And why?"
"You take a limestone," he said, "and you burn it in a kiln. Often pronounced kill. Or, well you make lime, for cement or whitewash or whatever, by burning stuff. Not just limestone. Marble. Oyster shells. Old orange rinds, maybe, I don't know, I've never done it. Family name," he said.
She murmured, "I see . . ." She wound up her sleeves. He found himself staring, fascinated, at a blue vein in the inside of her arm near the bend. Caught her gaze. Cleared his throat, sought for something subject-changing and ever so interesting and novel to say. "Tell me about yourself," was what he found.
She gave a soft sigh, looked up at the high-borne trees. There was another blue vein, in her neck, this time. Woman was one mass of sexy veins, damn it! He would simply lean over and he would kiss—"Well, I was an Art Major at Harrison State U. and I said the hell with it and May is my cousin and she wanted to go someplace, too, and so we're here. . . . Look at the bridge!"
They looked at its great shadow, at its reflection, broken by the passing boat into wavering fragments and ripples. The bridge loomed overhead, so high and so impressive in this remote place, one might forget that its rotting road-planks, instead of being replaced, were merely covered with new ones . . . or, at the least, newer ones. "In ten years," they heard Captain Sneed say, "the roadbed will be ten feet tall . . . if it lasts that long."
May: "Be sure and let us know when it's going to fall and we'll come down and watch it. Ffff-loppp!—Like San Luis Rey."
"Like whom, my dear May?"
The river today was at middle strength: shallow-draft vessels could and still did navigate, but much dry shingle was visible near town. Impressions rushed in swiftly. The day was neither too warm nor too wet, the water so clear that Limekiller was convinced that he could walk across it. Felix lifted her hand, pointed in wordless wonder. There, on a far-outlying branch of a tree over the river was an absolutely monstrous lizard of a beautiful buff color; it could not have been less than five full feet from snout to end of tail, and the buff shaded into orange and into red along the spiky crenelations on the spiny back ridge. He had seen it before. Had he seen it before? He had seen it before.
"Iguana!" he cried.
Correction was polite but firm. "No, sir, Juanito. Iguana is embra, female. Dat wan be macho. Male. Se llama 'garobo'. . . ."
Something flickered in Limekiller's mind. "¡Mira! ¡Mira! Dat wan dere, she be iguana!" And that one there, smaller than the buff dragon, was of a beautiful blue-green-slate-grey color. "Usual," said Filiberto, "residen en de bomboo t'icket, which is why de reason is call in English, 'Bomboo chicken'. . . ."
"You eat it?"—Felix.
"Exotic food, exotic food!"—May.
"Generalmente, only de hine leg ahn de tail. But is very good to eat de she of dem when she have egg, because de egg so very nice eating, in May, June; but even noew, de she of dem have red egg, nice and hard. Muy sabroso."
Jack turned and watched till the next bend hid the place from sight. After that he watched for them—he did not know why he watched for them, were they watching for him?—and he saw them at regular intervals, always in the topmost branches; immense. Why so high? Did they eat insects? And were there more insects to be taken, way up there? They surely did not eat birds? Some said, he now recalled in a vague way, that they ate only leaves; but were the top leaves so much more succulent? Besides, they seemed not to be eating anything at all, not a jaw moved. Questions perhaps not unanswerable, but, certainly, at the moment unanswered. Perhaps they had climbed so high only for the view: absurd.
"Didn't use to be so many of them, time was.—Eh, Fil?" asked Captain Sneed. ("Correct, Copitan. Not.") "Only in the pahst five, six years . . . it seems. Don't know why. . . ."
But whatever, it made the river even more like a scene in a baroque faery tale, with dragons, or, at least, dragonets, looking and lurking in the gigant trees.
The bed of the river seemed predominantly rocky, with some stretches of sand. The river ran very sinuously, with banks tending towards the precipitate, and the east bank was generally the higher. "When river get high," explained Don Fili, "she get white, ahn come up to de crutch of dem tree—" he pointed to a fork high up. "It can rise in wan hour. Ahn if she rise in de night, we people cahn loose we boat. Very . . . peligroso . . . dangerous—¡Jesus Maria! Many stick tear loose wid roots ahn ahl, even big stick like dot wan," he pointed to another massy trunk.
Here and there was open land, limpiado, "cleaned," they said hereabouts, for "cleared." "Clear. . . ." Something flickered in Limekiller's mind as he recollected this. Then it flickered away. There seemed, he realized, feeling odd about it, that quite a lot of flickering was and had been going on his mind. Nothing that would come into focus, though. The scenes of this Right Branch, now: why did they persist in seeming . . . almost . . . familiar?. . . when he had never been here before?
"What did you say just then, Don Fili?" he demanded, abruptly, not even knowing why he asked.
The monumental face half turned. "¿Qué? What I just say, Juanito! Why . . . I say, too bod I forgot bring ahlong my fisga, my pike . . . take some of dem iguana, garobo, cook dem fah you.—Fah we," he amended, as one of the women said, Gik.
"We would say, 'harpoon' ": Captain Sneed, judiciously. "Local term: 'pike.' "
The penny dropped. "Pike! Pike! It was a pike!" cried Limekiller. His body shook, suddenly, briefly. Not a lance or a spear. A pike!
They turned to look at him. Abashed, low-voiced, he muttered, "Sorry. Nothing. Something in a dream . . ." Shock was succeeded by embarrassment.
Felix, also low-voiced, asked, "Are you feverish again?" He shook his head. Then he felt her hand take his. His heart bounced. Then—Oh. She was only feeling his pulse. Evidently it felt all right. She started to release the hand. He took hers. She let it stay.
Captain Sneed said, "Speaking of Pike. All this land, all of it, far as the eye can reach, is part of the Estate of the Late Leopold Albert Edward Pike, you know, of fame and story and, for the last five or six years, since he died, of interminable litigation. He made a great deal of money, out of all these precious hardwoods, and he put it all back into land—Did I know him? Of course I knew him! That is," he cleared his throat, "as well as anyone, knew him. Odd chap in a multitude of ways. Damnably odd. . . ."
Of course that was not the end of the subject.
"Mr. Pike, he reetch. But he no di trust bonks. He say, bonks di go bust, mon. People say he'm, now-ah-days, bonks ahl insure. Mr. Pike, he di say, Suh-pose insure company di go bust, too? ¿Ai, como no? Ahn he di say ah good word. He di say, 'Who shall guard de guards demselves?' "
Some one of the boatmen, who had theretofore said nothing, but silently plied his paddle, now spoke. "Dey say. . .Meester Pike. . .dey say, he deal. . . ." And his voice dropped low on this last word. Something went through all the boatmen at that. It was not exactly a shudder. But it was there.
Sneed cleared his throat again as though he were going to cry Stuff! or Piffle! Though what he said was, "Hm, I wouldn't go that far. He was pagan enough not to believe in our Devil, let alone try to deal with him. He did, well, he did, you know, study things better left unstudied . . . my opinion. Indian legends of a certain sort, things like that. Called it 'the Old Wisdom'. . . ."
Limekiller found his tongue. "Was he an Englishman?"
The matter was considered; heads were shaken. "He mosely Blanco. He lee bit Indio. And he hahv some lee bit Block generation in he'm too."
Sneed said, "His coloring was what they call in The Islands, bright. Light, in other words, you would say. Though color makes no difference here. Never did."
Marin added, "What dey cahl Light, here we cahl Clear." He gestured towards shore, said, "Limestone." Much of the bankside was composed of that one same sort of rock, grey-white and in great masses, with many holes and caves: limestone was susceptible to such water-caused decay. In Yucatan the water had corroded deep pits in it, immense deep wells and pools.
"Now, up ahead," said Captain Sneed, "towards the right bank of the river is a sort of cove called Crocodile Pool—No No, ladies, no need for alarm. Just stay in the boat. And almost directly opposite the cove, is what's called the Garobo Church; you'll see why."
Often in the savannahs they saw the white egrets with the orange bills, usually ashore amidst the cattle. Another kind of egret seemed to prefer the sand and gravel bars and the stumps or sawyers in midstream, and these were a distinctive shade of blue mixed with green, though lighter than the blue-green of the iguanas. Something like a blackbird took its perch and uttered a variety of long, sweet notes and calls.
Swallows skimmed and brighter colored birds darted and drank. And like great sentinels in livery, the great buff garobo-dragons peered down from the tall trees and the tall stones. Clouds of lemon-yellow and butter-yellow butterflies floated round the wild star-apples. Here, the stones lay in layers, like brickwork; there, the layers were warped and buckled, signs—perhaps—of some ancient strain or quake. But mostly, mostly, the stone rose and loomed and hung in bulbous worm-eaten masses. And over them, among them, behind them and between them, the tall cotton trees, the green-leaved cedars, the white-trunked Santa Maria, and the giant wild fig.
"Now, as to how you catch the crocodile," Captain Sneed answered an unasked question; "simple: one man stays in the dory and paddles her in a small circle, one or two men hold the rope—"
"—rope tie around odder mahn belly," Marín said.
"Quite so. And that chap dives. Machete in his teeth. And he ties up the croc and then he tugs. And then they haul them up you see. Simple."
Felix said, "Not that simple!"
May said, "Seems simple enough to me. Long as you've got a sound set of teeth."
Limekiller knew what was coming next. He had been here before. That was a mistake about his never having been here before, of course he had been here; never mind, Right Branch, Left Branch; or how else could he know? Down the steepy bluff a branch came falling with a crash of its Crack! falling with it; and the monstrous garobo hit the water with a tremendous sound and spray. It went down and it did not come up and it did not come up.
And then, distant but clear; the echo. And another echo. And—but that was too many echoes. Jack, who had been looking back, now turned. Spray was still flying up, falling down. Ahead: One after another the garobo were falling into the river. And then several at once, together. And then—
"Call that, 'The Garobo Church,' " said Captain Sneed.
That was an immense wild fig tree, hung out at an impossible angle; later, Limekiller was to learn that it had died of extreme age and of the storm which finally brought half of its roots out of the ground and forward into the water and canted it, thus, between heaven, earth, and river. It was a skeletal and spectral white against the green green of the bush. Three separate and distinct ecologies were along that great tangled length of great gaunt tree: at least three!—things crept and crawled, leaped and lurched or lay quiescent, grew and decayed, lived and multiplied and died—and the topmost branches belonged to the iguana and the garobo—
—that were now abandoning it, as men might abandon a threatened ship. Crash! Crash! Down they came, simply letting go and falling. Crash!
Sound and spray.
"Won't the crocodiles eat them?" cried Felix, tightening her hold on Jack's hand.
The boatmen, to whom this was clearly no new thing, all shook their heads, said No.
"Dey going wahrn he'm, el legarto, dot we comin. So dot he no come oet. So cahn tehk care. Horita el tiene cuidado."
"Tush," said Sneed. "Pif-fle. Damned reptiles are simply getting out of our way, they don't know that we haven't any pike. Damned old creepy-crawlies. . . ."
Only the sound of their crashings, no other sound now, and Limekiller, saying in a calm flat voice, "Yes, of course," went out of his shirt and trousers and into the river.
He heard the men cry out, the women scream. But for one second only. Then the sounds muffled and died away. He was in the river. He saw a hundred eyes gazing at him. He swam, he felt bottom, he broke surface, he came up on his hands and knees. He did not try to stand. He was under the river. He was someplace else. Someplace with a dim, suffused, wavering light. An odd place. A very odd place. With a very bad smell. He was alone. No, he was not. The garobo were all around and about him. The crocodile was very near up ahead of him. Something else was there, and he knew it had crawled there from the surface through a very narrow fissure. And some thing else was there. That! He had to take it and so he took it, wrenching it loose. It squilched, but it came. The crocodile gazed at him. The garobo moved aside for him. He backed away. He was in the water again. He—
"Into the boat, for Christ's sake!" old Sneed was shouting, his red face almost pale. The boatmen were reaching out to him, holding hands to be grasped by him, smacking the waters with their paddles and banging the paddles against the sides of the boat. The women looked like death. He gasped, spat, trod water, held up something—
