"The hybrids," Father said. "I practically kill myself making ice, and all I'm remembered for is the seeds I bought in Florence, Mass."
"And peppers like this!"
"You came to Jeronimo and did some work, eh? I paid you off in seeds? Too bad about the ice. It was a good idea, but a little unwieldy."
The Miskito was saying, "Yes, yes."
Father said, "I invented this boat."
"Everybody got pipantos," Mr. Haddy said. "And them that ain't, got cayukas."
"This is my boat," Father said.
The Miskito insisted on taking us to see his garden, so we climbed the bluff above the sandbar and walked to his hut. It was a rickety patched hut of grass and palm leaves, but his garden sprawled beautifully around it. It was tall tassely corn and unpropped tomato vines, peppers, string beans, and summer squashes. There were muskmelons, too. These vegetables looked out of place in an Indian's garden. There were no papayas, avocados, calabashes, or granadilla. This was like Hatfield; like Jeronimo. The Miskito had grown them all from seeds that Father had given him months before, when he had crossed the ridge to visit us. He had done a day's work, or more, and taken the seeds as payment. He had never known seeds to sprout so quickly and bear such plump fruit.
Father snapped a string bean and said, "Kentucky Wonders!"
There were bananas near the hut, the sort of plantains the Indians called "plas," because they were like flasks. But Father said the Miskito deserved no credit for growing them — they grew all by themselves.
We heard the sound of whipping. It was the Miskito's wife, thrashing rice stems against a frame and letting the rice grains fall on a cowhide mat. She stopped when the Miskito called her, and she served us wabool and fried bananas and roasted ears of corn. And she plucked Mr. Haddy's curassow and trussed it to a spit over the fire.
Father would not eat anything.
"Don't take it personally," he said, waving the wabool away.
Mother said, "It's their custom. You know that."
"What about my customs?" Father said.
I felt he had not changed at all, for he had always said this in Jeronimo.
He grinned at the Miskito.
"I'm saving up for later," he said. "Hunger's a good thing. Makes you determined. Food puts you straight to sleep. That thing you've got in your hand there" — the Miskito was holding the burned and greasy curassow—"that's a soporific. Sure, you knew that, didn't you? I'm not talking about starvation, but hunger. It's nature's mainspring. It's a kind of strength."
He smiled at us. We sat on the ground, gnawing-bones alongside the Miskito's pig named Ed.
"There's only one thing I really and truly crave," Father said. "Think you can fix me up with a bath?"
Speaking carefully and with sign language and noises, he explained that he wanted some privacy and hot water and a basket. The Miskito provided him with what he wanted. Father then hung the finely woven basket from a tree and had the Miskito fill it with hot water, so it streamed like a shower. This ritual took place behind the Miskito's hut. We heard Father encouraging the Miskito and spitting water and scrubbing himself.
Mr. Haddy said, "Fadder got customs, for true!"
"That shower bath was better than a meal," Father said when he was done. His face was pink. His ears stuck out. He jumped in the sun to dry. "And it's taken the edge off my appetite. I needed that. I'm ready, Mother."
The Miskito was bewildered by all this business and by Father's talk. As if to please him, he sent his wife into the garden to gather vegetables, about four bushels in pretty baskets. And as a last present, he handed Father the pole to his pipanto. Father went through the motions of refusing these gifts, but he accepted them when the Miskito loaded the baskets into the pipanto and waited by it, screaming softly for Father to go aboard.
Mr. Haddy said, "He saying 'lukpara'—ain't worry."
Father stepped in and said, "I'm just borrowing it, Fred. You can have it back any time you like."
***
That was how we came to be floating down the Rio Sico that day. Father poled and Mr. Haddy hung over the bow looking for obstructions. "Rock-stone!" he cried, when he saw one. There were only five inches of freeboard, but there was not a ripple in this river. It was forty miles to the coast, and Father calculated that the river was flowing at four miles an hour.
"Not fast enough, is it?" he said.
As soon as we rounded the first big bend and the Miskito's hut was out of sight, Father beached the pipanto. He found some loose wood for us to use as seats, wedging the planks amidships. He took off his shirt and rigged up an awning, tucking the tails into the starboard gunwales and stretching it over bent benches. He secured it by its sleeves.
"Looks like an oxygen tent! That's so you don't get heat stroke." He picked up a bundle of twigs. "And this is to give us a little speed. This is a real witch's broom!"
He lashed the twigs to the end of the pole, tying them with vines and turning it into a broomlike oar, so that he could scull from the stern one-handed.
Then he made a smudge pot to keep the stinging gnats away, and, smoking, we set off again. He promised that we would be on the coast by nightfall.
"Anyone get a look at that Miskito's hut?" he asked.
"They all look like that," Mr. Haddy said.
"That doesn't make it lawful, Figgy. That pokey little thing will fall down in the first rain. He was a generous man and he had a spectacular vegetable garden, thanks to me, but that was some miserable hut." We passed more huts on the riverbank, more Miskitos, pigs, and dogs. Father said, "Pathetic."
"You've got a gleam in your eye, Allie."
"Because I've just worked out what kind of hut suits this terrain."
"You said you were through with inventions."
"I didn't come here to live in a grass hut," he said. "I'm not Robinson Crusoe. Give me a little credit, will you? Hey, don't touch those baskets!"
Jerry had taken out a tomato and was polishing it on his knee. Father ordered him to put it back.
"We'll stop and get monkey food, if you're hungry, but don't eat those vegetables. Those are hybrids. Eat those and you're living on our capital. When we get where we're going, we'll take them apart and use them for seed. They're ripe enough."
Mother said, "That's unfair."
"It's propagation."
"You haven't changed a bit."
Father swept his broom back and forth. He said, "My whole way of thinking has changed. No more chemicals, no ice, no contraptions. Jeronimo was a mistake. I had to pollute a whole river to find that out."
Mother said, "All Jerry wants is one lousy tomato!"
"That tomato represents a whole row of vines. It contains a garden, Mother. Use your imagination."
"Please don't fight," Clover said.
Mr. Haddy said, "Fadder having another speerience."
"Everybody shut up," Father said. Then, "Who said anything about brain damage?"
Father went on sculling us downriver with his broom, shouting the whole time. And he predicted that before nightfall we would be at Paplaya on the coast, within striking distance of Brewer's Lagoon. Mr. Haddy turned around and stuck his teeth out at the name.
"We could walk down that beach to Panama," Father said.
"We could walk up it to Cape Cod," Mother said.
Father laughed. "Cape Cod's been blown away. We got out just in time. There's nothing left — nothing at all. It's gone, don't you understand?"
Mother said, "What are you talking about?"
"The end of the world." Father pointed north with his broom handle. "That world. Burned to a crisp."
"Jeronimo is back there," Mother said.
"Jeronimo was nothing compared to the destruction of the United States. It wasn't only the burning buildings and the panic. Think of the people. Remember Figgy's curassow? The way roasting made the meat fall off the bones? That's what happened to millions of Americans. Their flesh just slipped off their bones. Then the scavengers came. Hatfield's all ashes."