He walked back to the restaurant door, looked up the street, looked down the street. “Doc-tor! — Here he comes now.”
In came a slender Eurasian man; the District Medical Officer himself. (Things were always happening like that in Hidalgo. Sometimes it was, “You should see the Premier. Ah, here he comes now. Prem-ier!) The D.M.O. felt Limekiller’s pulse, pulled down his lower eyelid, poked at spleen and liver, listened to an account of yesterday. Said, “Evidently you have had a brief though severe fever. Something like the one-day flu. Feeling all right now? Good. Well, eat your usual breakfast, and if you can’t hold it down, come see me at my office.”
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 coming 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 sherrv-colored eves met Limekiller’s. “Come and live on by 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 Marin. 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 maybe not enough wah-teh get me boat ahcross de bar. Zoraday,” 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 Marin was equal to the occasion. “ Verdad. In wan leetle while I going up de Right Branch. Muy linda. You will have pleasure. I tellingjuanito 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 Tia 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 Marin’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.”