Limekiller!

“Well, now, remember, Mommy, few you have to pick any flowers: snakes.” Mommy said she wasn’t likely to forget, but she put on her boots and took her stick, like a good one. Limekiller did not tell them that the chances of being fatally bitten by a snake here were very much less than being fatally struck by a car in their or any other home town: better they be over- than under-cautious.

Sometimes he really had to over-do this, particularly with some of the people called hippies, whose religious principles evidently forbade their wearing shoes, let alone boots, save under such duress.

No, no buildings here. There was a ramada —”

“A lean-to, is that?”

“Not quite: just a roof held up by four poles, keeps off the sun and, sometimes, the rain. - but it fell down. I’ll have to put it up again. sometime…”

Sometime, yes. Were he near any settlement, however small, he could have put it up in a couple of hours, on the old, the good old, barn-bee principle. Supply the materials, the tools, the rum, and up it would go! But. this far away. away from even a hamlet or a habited hut. he’d have to bring people here. And, so pay them. Of course he could do it himself, nothing to it, ahahahah. - Sometime.

“Wellll. ” Doctor, a.k.a. Ed, stretched his limbs, surveyed the scene, surveyed the soil. Finding this last covered with a blanket of bushery, he said, “Say, isn’t thatcher coleus plant growing all around?”

“Yes. Local name: Bleeding-heart.” Waited for them to say, How picturesque. To say, Those plants would cost plenty, back home. They said both. Next, Doctor poked and delved with his stick. “Hm. Seems like your nice, rich soil here would grow lots of real good corn and,” here he paused, adding, “and stuff.”

Mrs. Doctor’s agricultural vocabulary was not perhaps as rich as your soil, but it was richer than his; stuff, she quickly expanded into yams, sweet potatoes, cabbages, coffee, rice, sugar cane, sutrus- fruits, beans, vetchtable pears; yes: she had done some home-work. He nodded, she pounced. “Well, why don’t they, then?” she asked. He tried to explain the colony’s (very well, the Emerging Nation’s, then) lack of a really strong farming background. “For one thing, this was always a timber economy —”

„— and the Spaniards they were always coming and raiding the coast; yes. But, John, that was a long time ago. Why don’t they farm more, now? How come thee poor Government always has to import food. when they could grow it here, right here?”

A scented breeze blew down upon them, a breeze from scented Lebanon? well, not really. But scented all the same. Limekiller, seeing their noses wrinkle, said, “Bay. I mean, the kind that bay rum is made from.”

Another pounce. “Yes, and they import that, too. Why don’t they make it here.”

Time to be firm. “Well, Mrs. - Ella — because they don’t know how."

They could learn, couldn’t they? Yes… in theory. they could learn. what they would live on while they were learning, was of course something else. They could fish, yes. Hunt, yes. There was wild fruit and “other edible plants,” yes. “Those who aren’t used to the bush, though, Ella, well, somehow, they just don’t take even to living in it. Down here…”

Doctor Ed now spoke, and what he said was somewhat surprising. From Doctor Ed, that is. Perhaps he had heard something. “Some of them are afraid of living in the country — the bush, as they call it — is that it, John?” Limekiller must have nodded, or perhaps only his face showed it. “Well, what are they afraid of! Snakes? Animals?”

John Limekiller suddenly felt no reason to beat around the bush. “The White Creoles are afraid of spirits,” he said. “In other words, not the bottled kind. Spooks. They call them ‘spirits.’”

Ella said, promptly, “Dumpies and jubbies, the Colored Folks call them, isn’t that right, John? What? ‘Duppies and jumbies?’ My mistake!” She gave a sudden, honest laugh, not at the fears of the White Creoles or the Colored Folks: at her own mistake. Jack suddenly liked her a lot more.

“Well, the idear of your National Development being held up by what I hafta call ‘superstition’. well. Further words evidently failed Ed. He shook his head.

How it was Mrs., Ella’s, turn to surprise Jack. “Call it by any name you like,” she said; “my great-grandmother McRae, she came right off the boat from Scotland, and, do you know what, John? She had the second sight!” Dr. Ed grunted. It was not one of your large, loud, belligerent grunts; but it was audible; it did not disturb her. “‘Oh, I can see the spuruts of the living,’ is what she used to say; what she really meant of course was the dead; not that they were always dead, of course, just that she put it that way so’s not to scare people; and, as Daddy knows very perfectly well, Granny McRae, she was never approved wrong! — So don’t you talk to me about ‘super- stution,’ young man,” Ella wound up; and closed her mouth in a firm, straight line.