Limekiller!

The barkeep yawned again. “Reside en el bush? Why you not live like old-time people? Dey not dreenk rum. Dey not smoke cigarette. Dey not use lahmp-ile. Ahn dey not pay toxes, not dem, no.”

“Me no want leev like dot. Whattt? You cahl dot ‘leev’?” He emptied his glass with a swallow-, dismissed any suggestion that Walden Pond and its tax-free amenities might be his for the taking, turned to Limekiller his vast Afro-Indian face. “Filiberto Marin, senor, is de mahn to answer stranger question. Becahs God love de stranger, senor, ahn Filiberto Marin love God. Everybody knows Filiberto Marin, ahn if anyone want know where he is, I am de mahn.” Limekiller, having indeed questions, or at any rate, A Question, Limekiller opened his mouth.

But he was not to get off so easily. There followed a long, long conversation, or monologue, on various subjects, of which Filiberto Marin was the principal one. Filiberto Marin had once w'orked one entire year in the bush and was only home for a total of thirty-two days, a matter (he assured Jack) of public record. Filiberto Marin was born just over the line in Spanish Hidalgo, his mother being a Spanish Woman and his father a British Subject By Birth. Had helped build a canal, or perhaps it was The Canal. Had been in Spanish Hidalgo at the time of the next-to-last major revolution, during which he and his sweetheart had absquatulated for a more peaceful realm. Married in church!. Filiberto Marin and his wife had produced one half a battalion for the British Queen! “Fifteen children — and puros varones! Ahl son, senor! So fahst wre have children! Sixty-two year old, and work more tasks one day dan any young man! An I now desires to explain we hunting and fishing to you, becahs you stranger here, so you ignorance not you fahlt, senor.”

Limekiller kept his eyes in the mirror, which reflected the passing scene through the open door, and ordered two more low- tax rums; while Filiberto Marin told him how to cast nets with weights to catch mullet in the lagoons, they not having the right mouths to take hooks; how to catch turtle, the tortuga blanca and the striped turtle (the latter not being popular locally because it was striped) —

“What difference does the stripe mean, Don Filiberto?”

“¡Seguro! Exoctly!!” beamed Don Filiberto, and, never pausing, swept on: how to use raw beef skin to bait lobsters (“Dev cahl him lobster, but is really de langusta, child of de crayfish.”), how to tell the difference in color between saltwater and freshwater ones, how to fix a dory, how to catch tortuga “by dive for him — ”

You want to knowr how to cotch croc-o-dile by dive for him? Who can tell you? Filiberto Marin will answer dose question,” he said, and he shook Limekiller’s hand with an awesome shake.

There seemed nothing boastful about the man. Evidently Filiberto Marin did know all these things and, out of a pure and disinterested desire to help a stranger, wanted merely to put his extensive knowledge atjack’s disposal.

Of this much, Limekiller was quite clear the next day. Fie w as far from clear, though, as to howr he came to get there in the bush where many cheerful dark people were grilling strips of barbacoa over glowing coals — mutton it was, with a taste reminiscent of the best old-fashioned bacon, plus. well, mutton. He did not remember having later gone to bed, let alone to sleep. Nor know the man who came and stood at the foot of his bed, an elderlv man with a sharp face w'hich might have been cut out of ivory. this man had a long stick… a spear?. no.

Then Limekiller was on his feet. In the moon-speckled darkness he could see very little, certainly not another man. There was no lamp lit. He could hear someone breathing regularly, peacefully, nearby. He could hear water purling, not far off. After a moment, now able to see well enough, he made his way out of the cabin and along a wooden walkw-ay. There was the Ningoon River below. A fine spray of rain began to fall; the river in the moonlight moved like watered silk. What had the man said to him? Something about showing him. showing him what? He could not recall at all. There had really been nothing menacing about the old man.

But neither had there been anything reassuring.

Jack made his way back into the cabin. The walls let the moonlight in, and the fine rain, too. But not so much of either as to prevent his falling asleep again.