"Hice," the Gowdy said.
"Jesus Christ Almighty!" Father roared, and gave the Gowdy a shove, nearly knocking the old man over.
But no sooner had he spoken than every one of the people, including the Gowdy, dropped to his knees. The sudden movement startled the birds. A great uprush of them, big and small, shook the branches overhead, and these birds alerted the roosting birds, which took off like turkeys from the treetops. The sick puppy yapped and stumbled as the people knelt low, pinching their throats and murmuring.
"Ah Fadder wart neven hello bead name—"
"Cut it out!" Father said. "Get up — off your knees!" He tried to drag them up, then he turned to Francis and screamed, "You traitor, you gave me a bum steer! Thanks a lot!"
Mr. Haddy was laughing softly, relieved that they were Christians. And maybe he was secretly glad that Father, who seldom made mistakes, had blundered by taking ice here, when Mr. Haddy himself could more easily have shipped it to the coast and made a greater impression. He went forward to calm the confused people, who were still gasping and praying, and said, "You is good folks, but this is bush for true."
Father was so angry he vanished in the way the people in Seville had near the duckboards. He went up in a puff of smoke, leaving only his angry smell behind. We removed the rest of the parcels from the boat and talked to the villagers. They said that they had seen ice four or five times. They said it was wonderful stuff and they described it as cold stones that turned into water. Missionaries had brought it to them, and they believed that we were missionaries, too, and Father was our preacher. They wanted to know where we lived and if we had any food or salt to give them. The Gowdy boasted that everyone in the village was baptized.
He said they were waiting — waiting to go to Heaven and see the Lord Jesus. Mr. Haddy said it was a pretty rotten place to wait, full of monkey-shoo, but he could understand why they wanted to leave as soon as possible, for Heaven or anywhere else. Father returned — too late to hear any of this, which was just as well.
"I walked around the block," he said.
He would not speak to anyone in Seville. He said only that Francis had betrayed him. When the Gowdy tried to get the people started on a hymn, Father yelled as if he had hit his thumb with a hammer, and then said he would wait for us on the boat.
We left Seville. The people had begun to quarrel over the ice.
Father's moodiness made the trip back to Jeronimo mostly silent. But it was a faster trip. The contours of the river were not strange to us anymore, and the current was with us. Father made improvements on his map and we did not take any wrong turns. I worked the pedals. Father sat in the bow with Clover on his lap, sulking over his map, because the Seville people had seen ice before and because they prayed. "They might as well be in Hatfield, cutting asparagus," was all he said. He hugged Clover, like a big boy with a teddy bear. Francis and Mr. Haddy knew they were being ignored. They crouched amidships in the ice-storage vault with nothing to do.
After a while, Francis said he saw pipantos. Someone was following us, he said. Father did not reply or turn his head.
"Little one," Mr. Haddy said, looking past me. "Pipanto."
I glanced around but did not see anything. I had the steering to attend to.
"Me yerry," Francis whispered. He began muttering like a bush Zambu. He said he heard six paddlers — three pipantos.
"Never see no lanch like this," Mr. Haddy said.
Darkness came. It seemed to grow out of the riverside. The trees swelled, fattened by the blackness. The high curve went out of the sky. Pinheads of stars appeared and brightened into blobs.
"They still back of us in the rock-stone."
And night was around us. The water still held a slippery glimmer ahead, and behind us was the paddle wheel's loose froth, spreading in the current.
Soon we saw the lanterns of Jeronimo and the sparks from Fat Boy's chimney stack. The lights were small and very still on shore, but they poured from the bank and leaked yellow pools into the river. I heard someone say, "Here they come."
In the bedroom that night, Jerry said, "I could have gone with Dad. But I didn't want to. We were at the Acre all day. Ma let us."
"I saw two snakes," I said. "One almost bit me."
"We built another man trap. You don't know where it is. You'll fall in and kill yourself, Charlie."
"Go to sleep, crappo."
Later, through the bamboo wall, I heard Mother consoling Father. At first I thought she was speaking to April or Clover, her voice was so soft. But she was talking about the ice, and the boat, and his hard work. It was all brilliant, she said. She was proud of him, and nothing else mattered.
Father did not object. He said, "It wasn't what I expected. I didn't want that. They prayed at me, Mother."
"I'd like to go upstream sometime," Mother said.
"We'll go. It's not what you think. You won't like it. It's bad, but in the most boring way. Oh, I suppose they're all right — they'll be able to use the ice for something. But what can you do with people who've already been corrupted? It makes me mad."
***
It was two weeks before we went back to Seville, and in those two weeks we kids spent more time at the Acre, in our little camp by the pool. It pleased me to think that our camp was sturdier than anything in Seville. We wove hammocks out of green vines. We ate wild onions. The hammocks gave us rashes, the onions gave us cramps. A water dog crept out of the pool one day and we chased it into a trap and beat it to death with sticks. Then we cut it into pieces and dried the meat strips on a tripod, Zambu-style. But the next day the meat strips were gone. Peewee said a monster had come and eaten them, but I guessed it was an animal, because the tripod was not high enough.
We collected berries. Some were to eat, and others kept mosquitoes away if you rubbed them on your skin and let the juice dry. Alice Maywit showed us a cluster of purple ones and said, "These is poison."
Clover said, "I don't believe you. You're afraid of everything. I bet they're blackberries or something."
"Want to eat one, girl?" Drainy said. He showed her his wire-bending teeth.
Clover looked as though she was willing to try, just to show off and prove she was right, but I punched her hard and told her to stay away from them.
"No hitting!" she said. "That's the rule — Dad said so!"
"This isn't Jeronimo," I said. "This is our Acre and we have our own rules."
That was the pleasure of the Acre — that we could do whatever we wanted. We had money, school, and religion here, and traps and poison. No inventions or machines. We had secrets — why, we even knew the Maywits' real name. We could pretend we were schoolchildren, or we could live like Zambus. That day was a good example. Drainy suggested that we take off all our clothes, and he pulled down his own shorts to show he was serious. Then Peewee did the same, and so did Clover and the others. Alice yanked her dress over her head and dropped her bloomers, and I stepped out of my shorts. The eight of us stood there giggling and stark naked, but I was so ashamed I jumped into the pool and pretended I wanted to swim, while the others compared bodies and danced around.
Alice was standing at the lip of the pool.
"Ever see a carkle?"
She knelt with her knees apart and pinched the black wrinkles in her fingers, and for a moment I thought I was going to drown.
"What's that?" She closed her thighs and listened.
I heard nothing but the usual noises. Alice said she heard horseflies. She saw one coming toward her and she looked steadily at it and got very worried. She said it meant there were strangers about.
We quickly put on our clothes and left the camp by the river path. Minutes later, we saw canoes. They were Indians, Alice said. She had known that from the horsefly. The canoes were old and waterlogged dugouts, and the paddlers looked like the Seville people, their thin arms sticking out of rags, and broken straws in their bushy hair.