"But I'll be back," he said. "I'll show you!"
Most of the Indians were still looking at his finger.
Then one of the Indians spoke very clearly, in Spanish. His face was square, and he had the thickest hair bunch, which stuck out like a short ponytail.
"Go away," he said. His teeth were black stumps.
Father laughed at him.
"I said it was an accident, Jack. Have you been over there? Do you know how long it takes to drag ice that far?" Surprised by the Indian's order, he had spoken in English. In Spanish he said, "Don't blame me! Ever seen ice? Ever touched it?"
"Go away," the Indian said.
"Thanks. We haven't eaten since yesterday. We had to bivouac on that mountain. Our water's used up and these kids are dead on their feet. Thanks very much."
"Go!"
The word was sharp, the Indian's black teeth were ferocious, but he looked very frightened. Father had been talking and trying to explain about the ice. Maybe he had not looked closely enough at these Indians to see that they were frightened. Maybe he assumed that their bewilderment had something to do with the marvel that had melted and leaked away.
The Indians were clay-colored and they stood there like pieces of pottery about to shiver into cracks. Who were we? they seemed to be thinking. Where had we come from? Had we fallen out of the sky?
"Real savages," Father said. He had not seen their fear. "I guess I got what I bargained for—"
They looked at Father's finger stump as he waved it around.
"If the ice hadn't melted, they'd be all over us — thank you, you're wonderful, please give us more, et cetera. But gentlemen, our plan has melted—"
Now the Indians were showing their teeth, the way their dogs had — black teeth, raw lips, squinting eyes.
"— and I can't stand this Neolithic hostility—"
Bucky said, "We go."
Francis said, "Yes, man."
"I'm not moving," Father said to the receding Zambus. "What about you, Charlie?"
I said, "I'm not moving either."
"Tell them that."
He took my hand and pulled me in front of him, making me face the Indians and cloaking me in his anger smell.
In Spanish, I said, "I am not moving."
"You heard what he said!"
But had they? They looked as deaf as when we had first arrived. The Indian who had told us to go away stood there picking blister scabs of dead skin from his elbow. Then he looked up and hissed, "Go."
"Tell him we're staying here until we get something to eat. That's the least they can do. A little hospitality won't kill them. We're not missionaries or tax collectors."
I told them this. As I was talking, Father was whispering to the Zambus, "This place is stranger than Jeronimo ever was. What I could do here! They haven't got a blessed thing. But look at those huts. They know how to make strong frames." When I finished talking to the Indians, he turned to me. "Tell them we want something to eat," he said. "I don't want anything for myself — it's the rest of you guys that need some grub. We eat, then we go."
The Indians, hearing me say this, looked uncertain.
"And tell them it's too hot here in the sun. We want to sit in the shade."
I managed to explain this, though I had to ask Father some of the Spanish words.
The Indian who had spoken (but all he had said so far was "Go away") backed to the largest hut and went inside.
Father said, "He's going to ask the Gowdy if it's all right."
The Indian reappeared and gestured for us to sit near that hut.
"Friendly little critters, aren't they?" Father muttered as we sat down. "What are they trying to hide? My guess is that there's something here they don't want us to see. Frankly, I'd like to snoop around."
Tired and hungry as I was, I would have been glad to get out of this place, and I knew from Jerry's face that he felt the same. Father was unruffled, still the Sole Proprietor of Jeronimo, if not the King of Mosquitia, passing whispers to his Zambus with his allpowerful air. He did not seem to notice — or if he noticed, did not care — that the Indians had crept across the clearing and sat watching us from a semicircle with their drooling dogs.
"Sure, this place smells," Father was saying. "They've got no organization. But it's a healthy climate. Cooler than Jeronimo. Fertile soil. Not many bugs. Lots of hardwood. You could work miracles here, if—"
But Father shut his mouth when the food and water were brought. He seldom showed surprise at anything, so his sudden silence now was as startling as one of his howls. It was the men who carried the gourds and baskets to us. He gaped at them, and, with his teeth clenched like a ventriloquist, said, "Will you look at that!"
Three skinny men, not Indians, stood over us. They were pale gray under their dirt and whiskers. Father whistled softly as he sized them up. They were tall and bony and looked bruised. They wore ragged trousers and broken sandals. Two of them had headbands, the sort worn by some of the Indians. Their faces were feverish and sunken, their skulls pressed against their sallow-gray skin. Their beards and bones made me think of saints in a picture book. But they were almost smiling, and as they placed the food before us they watched us closely with curious eyes.
"What did I tell you?" Father said to us. "This is what they didn't want us to see. They keep white slaves!"
The food was boiled bananas, flat greasy corncakes, fritters, and wabool. The water tasted of dog fur.
"Now it all makes sense! Hey," he said to one of the men in Spanish, "do you let these Indians tell you what to do?"
"More or less." The man did not seem concerned. He kept his feverish smile.
"What do you do for them?"
"We shine their shoes."
Father laughed at this. "You haven't lost your sense of humor." He passed the gourd of wabool to Jerry, without tasting it.
The Indians looked on from across the clearing, their heads lowered. The only sound from that direction was the growl of the dogs chewing fleas out of their gouged and scarred hindquarters.
"What is your name?"
One man wet his lips at Father's question, but another with stringy hair said, "We do not have names."
"Hear that? They don't have names."
Father glowered at the Indians. All around us in the tall trees, birds tooted and beat the leaves with their wings, and the sound of the stream was like the sound of tumbling boulders.
"Probably captured them down the pike and made them prisoners," Father said to Francis Lungley. "So these guys do all the dirty work."
"Gringo," one of the men said, hearing Father speak English. His starved face gave him a fine-lined expression that was both haunted and kindly. "North American, eh? Are you from the mission?"
"Do I look like a missionary?" Then Father whispered to him, so that the Indians would not hear. "No. We've got a settlement over the mountains. If you could get over there — slip out some night — you'd be safe. That's the best way to the coast."
The man nodded and passed his hand through his beard.
"Why did you come here?"
"I was just going to say. I brought some ice — half a ton. Well, almost. These Zambus and me. Those two are my boys, Charlie and Jerry. Wipe your mouth, Charlie."
"Where is this ice?"
"Melted."
The man smiled.
"You don't believe me?"
"Ice," the man said in Spanish to the others, and now they all smiled. The three men knelt before Father, and the first man said, "Where did you get your ice?"