But even when he was not talking for fun, I had to keep my head down or he'd say, "What are you grinning at, Charlie?"
Yet who wouldn't grin at some of the things he said?
"We've got to keep our traps shut," he would say, "or everyone and his brother will be down here on top of us, all the movers and shakers, opening gas stations and drive-in movies and fast-food joints. Issuing catalogues. Oh, sure, they'd strap a facility here and another facility over there. Sock a K-Mart next to Fat Boy and get the floating buyers. And you can bet your bottom dollar they'd find room for a Toyota dealership up on the Swampmouth path. This would be all parking lots from here to the hills. Facilities! They'd be ramming them down our throats."
Mr. Maywit said, "Wish we had a Chinese shop."
"He wants a Chinese shop!" Father said.
Mr. Maywit flinched. "Buy some salt and flour and oil."
"Save your money," Father said. "You don't need any Chinese shops. The sea's full of salt — sea salt, the best there is. No additives. Flour will be easy as soon as that corn is ready: we're going to mill it ourselves. Look at it — wonder corn! I brought that hybrid seed myself, all the way from Massachusetts. It's three times the size of your Honduras varieties."
"He say oil," Mr. Harkins said.
"I heard him, and my reply is, 'Peanuts!' Next to the spuds, there's a half acre of goobers. But give them time. Don't rush them. Are you going somewhere?"
As soon as the potatoes and yams were harvested he was going to ban the planting of cassava. It was a lazy man's crop, he said. Like bananas. True, there was no weeding to be done, but cassava exhausted the soil and there was no nutrition in it. Growing it would turn us all into funny-bunnies.
Work continued on Fat Boy, the fixing and welding of more pipes, the sealing of the tanks, and finishing the firebox and the chimney. Now, no one feared it. In fact, the Zambus preferred to work inside it because it was so much cooler there. It had double walls, and the roof and south side were faced with polished tin sheets that bounced the direct rays of the sun.
"If those were solar panels, we'd be self-sufficient in electricity," Father said. "But we don't need electricity or fossil fuels — this is a superior civilization."
We tested it for leaks by filling it with water. There was a fine spray peeing from nine joints, which Father marked and sealed when it was drained. Then Father declared it finished and said that he and Mr. Haddy were going to Trujillo.
"Plasma — for Fat Boy," he said. He had arranged for some hydrogen and ammonia to be sent to Trujillo. He had not wanted it shipped all the way to Jeronimo for fear of arousing missionary curiosity and getting more unwelcome visitors, like Mr. Struss or anyone of the Spellgood persuasion, or Toyota dealers.
"Used to shine windows up the Dunker with ammonia water," Mr. Maywit said.
"Up the Shouter," Mrs. Maywit said.
"Never mind," Mr. Maywit said.
Mr. Haddy remarked that there wasn't a glass windowpane in the whole of Jeronimo, which was true.
"You can do anything with ammonia," Father said. "The ammonia clock is the most accurate timekeeping device in the world. You don't believe me?" — Mr. Maywit was frowning—"Listen, the tick-tock in it is the oscillation of the nitrogen atom in the ammonia molecule. Francis knows all about it, don't you?"
Francis said, "For true, Fadder."
"I employ enriched ammonia," Father said. "What do you think I was doing up there in La Ceiba? Spitting in the plaza, like all the other gringos? No, sir. I was juicing up my ammonia. That's my secret, really. The more enriched it is, the quicker your evaporation. You'll see."
Mr. Maywit said, "I hear that."
"He do it all himself for the spearmint," Mr. Haddy said, while the Zambus stared. "He richen it. That is the way."
"It's more toxic," Father said. The Zambus laughed at "toxic." "But once it's sealed into the system, there's no danger. And it's everlasting. Take the acids in your stomach. They're not toxic, but they're powerful substances. They could bum a pretty big hole in your shirt if they leaked out. And there's ammonia in nature — you know, rotting vegetable matter, seawater, soil, even urine."
Mr. Maywit said he had heard that, too. "You want I come to Trujillo? I buy some salt and oil for Ma."
Father put his hand on Mr. Maywit's flour-sack shirt, where it said La Rosa on the shoulder. "I need you here, coach. From now on you're my field superintendent. You've got to stay, so you can tell me what to do."
Then he spoke to everyone — Mrs. Kennywick, the Zambus, Harkins, Peaselee, the Maywits, and us.
"I take orders from you," he said. "You're in charge here. And if you want Fat Boy to work, you'll have to send me down the river to Trujillo. To get his vital juices."
Eventually, Father encouraged them to say, Yes, please go—
"In the meantime, pick some of those tomatoes. Him" — he poked Mr. Maywit's flour-sack shirt—"he wants a Chinese store!"
Mother asked him how long he would be away. Father said he guessed anything up to a week, "barring unforeseen circumstances."
The next day, the Little Haddy, streamlined for the river, left Jeronimo for the coast. Mr. Haddy was working the sounding chain and Father was at the wheel. Mr. Haddy said for all to hear, "But this used to be me lanch."
We ran along the riverbank, nearly to Swampmouth, but lost them in the deep green foliage Father had once compared to old dollar bills.
***
With Father away, Jeronimo was very quiet — no speeches or songs, and the hammering stopped. The only sounds were the flap and splash, the prunt-prunt of the pump tower on the bank, and the sloosh of water in the culverts. The rest was the usual murmur of jungle, as continuous as silence, birds and bugs and monkey squawks, which changed in pitch with the heat and became a pressurized howl after nightfall.
Mother did not take charge. When Father was around, we did things his way, he kept us jumping, but Mother had no inventions and never made speeches. When she did talk, it was often a gentle request for someone to show her the local way of doing something.
The pepper-drying was a good example. After the small red peppers appeared in the low bushes, Mrs. Maywit said they would have to be dried. If Father had been around, he would have blazed a ten-sided tub out of sheet metal and called it his Pepper Hopper, or something of the kind, for drying peppers, the way he had made the fish trap and the bathhouse and the bamboo tiles.
But Mother got Mrs. Kennywick and Mrs. Maywit to explain how to string the peppers and hang them. "You know best," she said. It was a day's work, this pepper-stringing, Mother and the other women squatting side by side on a mat in the yard, knotting the peppers on twine so that the lengths of them looked like firecrackers. Father would not have done it. and he certainly wouldn't have squatted. He would have made himself a chair, probably a recliner, with a work surface pedal-operated maintenance-free out of steamed and bent saplings. "Look how she fits the contours of the body, Mother!"
Mother had the Zambus teach her how to gut and skin animals like pacas, and how to peg fish to a plank and dry them, and how to smoke meat. They were slow, dirty, traditional methods, but she was in no hurry, she said. And these became our lessons in Jeronimo — the household tasks of the jungle people, the preparation of things we picked or caught. She made sure that each of us understood the gutting and smoking. We were not free to play until we had mastered these chores.
This was different from Father's way. He was an innovator. He thought nothing of getting a dozen people to peel wood or dig ditches, and he would not tell them why until they had finished. Then he would say, "You've just made yourself a permanent enhancement!" Or he would ask them to guess what a particular thing was for (no one so far had guessed what Fat Boy was for), and laugh when they gave him the wrong answer. He had his own way of doing things, and he liked telling people that their own methods were just waste motion. "Now I'll show you how it ought to be done," he'd say, and as they gawked, he'd add, "How do you like that little wrinkle?"