Limekiller!

It all made sense, it made, all of it, excellent sense. Wilbur Velasquez had moved the corrugated iron to Mt. Maria because, at the time he had moved it, people were roofing houses at Mt. Maria. The cultivators there were cultivators in a small way, they were of a thrifty disposition, they straightened nails as long as there were bent nails to straighten; and they bought sheets of corrugated iron as they had money to spare to buy them. One by one. Sheet by sheet. It would not have paid Wilbur to have moved the material sheet by sheet from Port Caroline, so he had moved it en masse, and erected a ramada to cover it. Since that time, however, there had been a decline in the price of bananas, and, as a result, no one now at Mt. Maria was buying corrugated iron. And, as Wilbur did not know who would want it next, or where, or how much — being (as he more than once point out) neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son — he had simply. and sensibly. left it where it was.

Ascander Haddad had cement in sack at his two properties because he sometimes required cement at his two properties. Moreover, his neighbors, did they require cement, and from time to time they did, would certainly find it more convenient to buy it by the bucket right there at Mile 23 or at Bendy Creek, rather than come down to Port for it. It was not news to Ascander that no fresh supply was coming soon from King Town, but that was no reason why he should have moved such supply as he had from right where it was.

And Gladdy Piggott, cousin to Lemuel, like every small lumberman in the colony, followed the age-old practice of moving the saw-mill — or, exactly, its machinery — from cut-over site to uncut-over site, every few years or so. His present machinery was standing idle back at St. Austin’s Range, because, for one, he had not felt like bidding for the most recently offered Government contract; and, for another, because most of his sawyers had moved on to Pine Tree Creek, formerly Plum Tree Creek. And, as for the cut timber left over at the old mill at Bamboo Point, why, that was safe enough there, it was even getting seasoned there. It was like money in the bank, there.

Paint, now. There was some paint of the sort wanted, in Port Caroline. Not enough. There was enough to make enough, though, at the Forestry Station in Warree Bush — where, no one knew why, more had arrived than had been ordered, last year: and had of course stayed there ever since. Why not? It was perfectly safe there. If someone were to require it. someday. well.

And so on. And so on.

Stepping out into the pre-dawn was like stepping into a clean, cool pool. Already, at that hour, people were about. grave, silent, polite. the baker setting the fires, the fisherman already- returning with their small catch. The sun climbed, very tentatively, to the edge of the horizon. For a moment, it hesitated. Then, all at once, two things happened. The national radio system, which had gone off the air at ten the night before, suddenly awoke into Sound. Radios were either dead silent or at full-shout. In one instant, every radio in Port Caroline, and in the greater Port Caroline Area, roared into life. And at the same moment, the sun, suddenly aware that there was nothing to oppose it, shot up from the sea and smote the land with a blast of heat.

Trucks began to roar and rattle along the rutted roads, past the bending coconut palms, past the golden-plum trees whose fruit was never suffered to become ripe, lest the worms get at it, crushing under their wheels the violet flowers of the jacarandas. But these were either Government trucks or else the trucks of the Citrus Company: it made no difference to them what supplies Jack Limekiller wanted. And as to the privately-owned trucks, well.

“Well, sah. Mile 23? Well, sah. Me nevah go pahss Mile Ten, sah. Pahss dot p’int, sah, not ee-nahf business warrant de treep, de time, de gahs, sah.”

Ascander Haddad, who had the two or three sacks of cement at his house there, made the trip daily. But he made it in the smallest motor vehicle in all of British Hidalgo: and he made it with his widowed sister, who acted as his secretary-treasurer, and who was the largest woman in all of British Hidalgo. There was not even room for a bag of corn-starch, let alone sacks of cement.

Mount Maria? People lived at Mt. Maria, they were not recluses, not hermits, they came to Port, didn’t they? They transported things back, didn’t they? Yes. Yes, they did. And they did it according to a twice-monthly schedule involving the Mt. Maria Bethlehem Church and the Mt. Maria Bethlehem Church Vehicle (it surely rated a capital letter, being always referred to as “De Vehicle”). However, attend: Firstly, the twice-monthly trip of The Vehicle had just occurred. Secondly, the or The Vehicle had gone back to St. Frances of the Mountain for its annual overhaul.