"There is an empty house next door."
The Maywits' abandoned house — they had seen it.
"There is no roof on that house," Father said.
"You are mistaken."
Father turned to Mr. Haddy and said, "I told you to rip off that floor and roof, Figgy. Now get your crowbar and go do it — I want every rotten joist torn out."
The next noise we heard was Mr. Haddy crowbarring the Maywits' house apart — the crack and screech of boards, like pigs being slaughtered.
"Please excuse us," Father said. "We have work to do. No sir, we are not on vacation!"
The men followed him outside.
"My Hole," Father said. "You will have to stay here, above ground. I don't allow weapons in my Hole."
The man with the rifle said "Arquebus — ruckboos," and smiled.
Big Teeth said, "We will look around."
"Go down to the river. You will see a cayuka there. It is yours — paddle down to the coast."
"It is not necessary."
"That is what the ants say."
The men shrugged.
"I will tell you a secret," Father said. "We are self-sufficient. We can feed ourselves. But we can't feed anyone else. That is why I am suggesting you go on your way."
"We will consider your suggestion."
It occurred to me that the men spoke Spanish in a way I had never heard before. It was polite, some phrases were new to me, and no words were left out. They were educated men and seemed out of place here where everyone's Spanish was a jumble of Creole and English. I could not hear the men speak in their perfect Spanish without suspecting them of being dishonest. But that was one of Father's own suspicions — he always distrusted educated people, and I knew he hated these men.
"Good. I'll make you another one," Father said — his patience was wearing thin. "Put those ruckbooses away. They make me nervous. I am not asking you where you got them. I am just saying that I did not come here to look down the barrel of a gun. And I don't need another nostril, okay? Do you see any locks on these doors? See any fences? No? That is because this is the most peaceful place in the world. I want to keep it that way."
The men only smiled and held tight to their guns.
"Grab a shovel, Charlie, and climb in."
We lowered ourselves into the hole.
Father said to me in a whisper, "I thought those gentlemen were prisoners of the Indians. Seems it was the other way around. Kick me, Charlie, I'm a fool!"
About thirty minutes later, there was a noise above us — Mr. Haddy scrambling into the hole.
"Maywit house finished," he said. "I knock the shoo out of her. She look skelly, but I ain't see no hants."
Father's back was turned. He had a spade in his hand. He was shoveling and thinking.
Mr. Haddy said, "I ain't like them friends, Fadder."
"Not so loud, Fig."
"They sitting under the guanacaste."
"All right," Father said. "Take the roof and floor off your house and tell Harkins to do the same. If you can't find Peaselee, do his house, roof and floor. We've got infestation. We're going to ream these houses. Charlie, you get Jerry and take a bag of chicken manure and spread it in the cold store. Wet it until it stinks. Board up the root cellar and the bean shed. Tell Mother what you're doing—"
He gave us more instructions, and when he had finished he had named every building in Jeronimo, except one.
I said, "What about Fat Boy?"
"Don't touch him. Just make sure his fire's out."
Mr. Haddy gave Father a rabbity smile. "So if the hants eats everything and we pull down we houses, there ain't no way for the friends to stay."
"That's about the size of it." Father said. "I'm going to defuse the situation peaceably."
***
By lunchtime, Jeronimo was changed — Haddy house out top and bottom, Maywit house ditto, Peaselee stoop torn out and broken up, other houses unshingled, root cellar boarded, cold store boarded and manured, bathhouse plugged and manured, pumps tinkered apart — all of them wrecked, Father said, "in the interest of fumigation." Our house was still whole, and so was Fat Boy, but the rest were open to the sky or else shut down.
"It's war on the ants."
Mr. Peaselee and Mr. Harkins had not returned. This was probably a blessing, because their houses were in a sorry state and they would have been upset to see them. Mother said that Ma Kennywick had gone to Swampmouth to stay with her sister — the hammering and banging were too much for her. The Zambus remained out of sight, and yet I knew that although we could not see them, they were watching us from between the loops and chinks of the leaves.
It was drastic that Father had decided to pull most of the habitable houses apart. But it was not surprising, and none of us was worried. We knew how quickly he could build a house — we had seen him. He often said that destruction and creation were father and son. He had taken the Little Haddy to pieces and reassembled it in a sleeker form so that it could float upstream. We trusted his speed and ingenuity. But after so many months of laboring to make it work, who could have guessed that Jeronimo would be silenced and turned into a slum in the space of a morning?
The three men disappeared, tracked into the jungle with their guns. They returned for lunch.
Father was in a good mood now. He greeted them heartily and filled their plates with food. He said, "If you leave right after lunch you can make it to Bonito Oriental. There's a Chinese store there — Ling Hermanos. All the cans of Spam you could ask for, and probably some rum. Mishla and radio music. That's the place for you city boys—"
I was in the corner of the Gallery with Clover, April, and Jerry.
Clover said, "What's Dad done to all the houses?"
"Busted them up," Jerry said. "Whacked them apart. Charlie and me put chicken poo in the cold store."
April said, "It looks worse than when we came."
"I want to go to the Acre," Clover said.
"We can't do that," I said.
"Charlie's a spacky."
"I am not. Dad won't let us. He wants us to help him."
"There's nothing to do here. It's all crapoid."
Jerry said, "Haddy thinks those men are criminals and they're going to shoot somebody with their guns."
"They couldn't shoot us if we were in our camp," Clover said. "They wouldn't find us."
April said, "And if they tried, they'd fall in a trap."
This was a perfect day for our camp, and there was more water in our pool than in the whole of Jeronimo. I would have given anything to spend the afternoon there swimming. I wanted to leave this place, then come back and find the men gone and all the houses rebuilt.
But when I told the kids this, Mother said, "It's not polite to whisper."
Father had been talking to the men. Suddenly he stood up and said, "These gentlemen want to know how I lost my finger. That is an interesting story!"
He hovered over the men and began barking in Spanish.
"It was our first night here in Jeronimo. We were sequestered in this wilderness, believing we were well prepared — we had mosquito nets, sleeping bags, tents, real guerrilleros. We all went to bed and fell asleep. But I had my doorbell dream, my button-pushing nightmare. I was standing at the devil's door and trying to get in. I was pressing, and I didn't know it then, but I had stuck my finger clear through the mosquito net. In the morning, I woke up and tried to pull it out. Only there wasn't a finger there, but a stump! In the night, something had chewed off my digit — a rat, a bat, an armadillo, a peccary. We have creatures here."
He showed the men his stump.
"That is what I had left! It's a good thing I hadn't stuck my whole hand out — I'd be wearing a hook."
The men examined the finger stump. I could not tell whether they believed him, but Father had told the story vigorously and well.