Down there were cornstalks, eight-and-a-half feet high, with cobs a foot long—"So big, it only takes eleven of them to make a dozen." We had fresh fruit and vegetables and an incubator (Fat Boy's spare heat) for hatching eggs. "Control — that's the proof of civilization. Anyone can do something once, but repeating it and maintaining it — that's the true test." We grew rice, the most difficult of crops. We had a superior sewage system and shower apparatus. "We're clean!" An efficient windmill pump overrode the water wheel on the ice-making days. Most of the inventions had been made from local materials, and three new buildings were faced with Father's bamboo tiles. We had a chicken run and two boats at the landing and the best flush toilets in Honduras. Jeronimo was a masterpiece of order—"appropriate technology," Father called it.
We produced more than we needed. The extra fish we caught swam in a tank Father named "the Fish Farm" — his names were always a little grander than the things themselves. We harvested more than we could eat, but the excess was not sold. Some of it he gave to people in return for work, though he never handed out any food to beggars. What he preferred to do was cut the produce open — watermelons, say, or cucumbers or corn — and empty out the seeds and dry them. He would give these to anyone who helped him. There was always work to do — he was determined to straighten the river and clear it of hyacinths, for instance. "It could take a lifetime," he said. "But I've got a lifetime! I'm not going anywhere!" River workers were rewarded with blocks of ice and bags of seeds. "Hybrids! Burnees! Wonder corn! Miracle beans! Sixty-day tomatoes!"
We were happy and hidden. All you could see of Jeronimo from the river was Fat Boy's square head and tin hat and the smoking chimney stack. "Low visibility," Father said. "I don't want to be pestered by goofball missionaries in motorboats who want to come up here and ooze Scripture all over us."
It was now November, the weather like Hatfield in July, and Jeronimo was home. And for this, Father said, no one had said a prayer or surrendered his soul or pledged allegiance or dog-eared a Bible or flown a flag. We had not polluted the river. We had preserved the ecology of the Mosquito Coast. And all because we had put our trust in "a Yankee with a knack for getting things accomplished" — him. He often said that if it were not for white-collar crime and stupidity and a twenty-cent dollar and the storm clouds of war, he could have done the same things in Hatfield, Massachusetts.
All this was plain from the Gallery, which had just wobbled with the earth tremor, and where Father was saying, "If I had the hardware, know what I'd do?"
The others were still fearfully gray and did not reply.
Mother said, "What would you do, Allie?"
"Sink a shaft."
He singled out the Maywits and Mrs. Kennywick and talked to them, because they had been praying hardest and were in a way still quaking themselves.
"The kind of hole they make in the Santa Barbara Channel or the North Sea. Your diamond bits, your giant platform, your whole drilling rig. I'd drill down — what? — four or five thousand feet and tap the energy resources right under here." He stamped his foot on the Gallery floor. "Just the way your chicleros tap a sapodilla tree. Same principle."
"You make me a sweet li'l raincap. Fadder," Mrs. Kennywick said. But her voice told that she was still thinking of the earth tremor.
"The rumble reminded me. Why doesn't anyone else put two and two together? See, the mistake they make in drilling for oil is that they're missing a golden opportunity. They've got all the hardware, but as soon as the oil starts gushing they pump it dry and bore another one. Talk about foolish and short-sighted!"
"But Fadder ain't do that foolishness," Mr. Maywit said to Mother, as if he knew what was coming. He looked fearful, or perhaps he just seemed so to me because I knew his real name was Roper.
"I'd let it gush," Father said, "and go on drilling. Go past the shale, lengthen the bit, go past the granite — lengthen it some more — and penetrate the bowels of the earth."
"Shoo," Mr. Haddy said. "That is a spearmint for true."
"That earth tremor we just had was a geological crepitation, a subterranean fart, from the bowels of the earth. There's gas down there! Superheated water, steam under pressure — all the heat you need!"
Mr. Peaselee said, "Ain't we hot enough now, Fadder?" And Mr. Harkins said it was so hot it was bringing out the crapsies, though I had no idea what he meant by this.
"Dad's not talking about the weather," Clover said.
"Listen to that little girl," Father said.
Everyone looked at Clover. She basked for a while under their watery eyes.
"Geothermal energy! Don't laugh. There's only a few places in the world where it's practical, and you're lucky enough to be living in one. The whole of Central America is a repository of high energy. You're on a fault line — thin crust, loose plates — listen to the volcanoes. They're calling out and saying, 'Geothermal! Geothermal!'—but no one's doing anything about it. No one seems to understand how the modern world got this way — no one except me, and I understand it because I had a hand in making it. Everyone else is running away, or pursuing wasteful and dirty technology, or saying his prayers."
"We ain't praying no more," Mrs. Kennywick said.
"The promised land is in your own back yard! All you have to do is get through that flowerbed, and drill the crust and tap the heat. We've been on the moon, but we haven't been in our own basement boiler. Listen, there's enough energy down there to do our cooking until kingdom come!"
I had to grin. Only Father would think of cooking by drilling to the earth's core. "Won't cost a nickel," was his usual boast, "and think of the benefits — a great invention is a perpetual annuity."
Father was excited by the earth tremor and his idea, and he infected the others on the Gallery with his excitement and optimism — just those feelings alone, because I was sure they had not understood a word he said.
"I see a kind of conduit, a borehole," he said. "Down go the drills, up comes the heat energy. I've already proved I can make ice out of nothing but pipefittings and chemical compounds and a little kindling wood. That took brains. But listen, any dumbbell can dig a hole. Why don't we? There's a good reason — we haven't got the hardware. Not yet. There's certain things in this world you can't make out of bamboo and chicken wire. But I'll tell you something else. Siphoning off the geothermal energy — I mean, in a huge way — might put a stop to these earth tremors, or at least take some of the kick out of them. See, I am talking about nothing less than harnessing a volcano!"
He had them twitching with this speech, and they looked eager enough to snatch shovels and start digging wherever he pointed.
All except Mr. Haddy. He stood up and cleared his throat and said, "That is a good spearmint, but it take an awful lot of brains. Between times, Lungley and me want to ship some ice down Bonito and Fish Bucket."
"Still dying to impress your friends, aren't you?"
"Ain't got friends down there," Mr. Haddy said. "But I can use me lanch like the old-time days, loading and sailing. That is my occupation, Fadder."
"I take it you're not interested in geothermal energy."