In the darkness before dawn, the packet boat gave a sudden lurch — and stopped. Were we sinking? No, but we were stranded on a reef, and had to wait for the tide to come up to depart. There we sat, with the boat sort of tilting to one side, watching an astonishing red sunrise. Then villagers from the town of Placencia appeared in dories, with bunches of sweet ripe bananas for the passengers, and ropes to pull the stranded boat off the reef. The boat was made of old peeling wood, which looked like it could splinter at the least pressure. But when the tide came up, they gently teased the groaning packet boat off the reef, and down we sailed to Punta Gorda Town, just a day or so late.
In remote PG town, in the south between the Guatemalan and Honduran borders, we were met by Avram’s friends, the Zuniga family, who were Caribs or Garifuna, an Afro-Indian blend. They had helped Avram buy a sort of homestead title to a property called Moho Bul, and they were looking after the land. We were there to see it, swathed in mosquito netting like Katherine Hepburn in African Queen.
Yet another boat trip, this time a motorized dory, along the Caribbean coast to the mouth of the Moho River. Then up a lazy river, through endless shades of green, to Moho Bul. It was beautiful. Ten acres cleared and planted with mangos and alligator pear (avocado) and citrus and all the wonderful tropical fruits, and rice. Forty more acres of bush with stands of old growth mahogany trees. A mud and thatch hut, and even a dory tied to a little dock. Moho Bul had everything. It also had mosquitoes. Many mosquitoes. The British were doing some mosquito abatement in the settled areas, but not at Moho Bul.
It was too late to sail to the Iguana Church, so I never saw it, alas. We swam in the warm green Moho River (later we heard rumors of alligators) and feasted on mangos and other ripe fruit. Then it was time to sail back to Punta Gorda Town. Bv the time we reached the Caribbean, the sun had set. That night there was a phosphorescent sea, and the water glittered and sparkled like a thousand galaxies.
Later, Avram left British Honduras to write his immortal Limekiller stories. B.H. became the independent nation of Belize, famed for its Mayan ruins, beautiful barrier reef, and ecotourism. The elder Zunigas died, and the family dispersed. Nobody took care of Moho Bul, and it reverted to bush. The old growth mahogany trees were poached, and the Tiger Iguanas were hunted to near extinction (except perhaps for one pair of senior citizen Dragon-Tigers, comfortably retired in the San Francisco Aquarium).
Recent reports have brought better news. A Mayan family now lives at Moho Bul, with some help from an aid group. They are keeping the planted area cleared, and keeping their culture alive. Now there are fruit trees again at Moho Bul, and a thatched hut, and a dory tied up to the little dock. Mayan children, and turkeys poke around in the dirt. I suppose the mosquitoes are still there too. It’s a timeless place. Drop by and see it yourself, next time you’re down that way.
AFTERWORD
by Ethan Davidson
I was very young when I lived with my father, Avram Davidson, in British Honduras. My main memory is of being attacked by an angry chicken. But I also remember him taking me up the Moho river to look at the plantation of Moho Bul, with its fruit trees and its one room house, which had a roof made of coconut thatch, and a dirt floor.
After Avram left British Honduras in the 60’s, he continued to send money to a local family to maintain Moho Bul. In 1977, he sent me down to what was, by then, Belize to see how it was doing.
As there is no transportation from Punta Gorda to the property, I hired the services of an Englishman who lived next door to Moho Bul.
He took me up to his home in his boat, a dugout canoe with a motor. Traveling up the Moho river, I saw what Avram had described, the trees full of iguanas in many different colors, some green, some red, some grey.
He cooked and served dinner. The menu was rather limited. Seven-up, rum, and iguana. It really did taste like chicken.
We drank, and he told me about his life. He ran a small hunting lodge for British soldiers stationed in Punta Gorda. What do you suppose they hunted? Iguanas.
He was not alone. On market day, Mayans would come into town with dugout canoes full of live iguanas, their mouths sewn shut. As for the Garifuna (an ethnic group made of Africans and Indians who had intermarried), they enjoyed digging for buried iguana eggs in the sandy beaches.
The next day, he took me to Moho Bul. Swatting away mosquitoes, I saw the sad truth. The place had not been maintained. It was in ruins. The house had fallen down. Some of the fruit trees had survived, but only because fruit gatherers had cleared bush from around them so that they could take the fruit.
I contacted Avram and explained the situation. He sent me some money, which I gave to the Englishman, with the understanding that he would hire some Mayans to clear the bush around the surrounding trees. And this he did.
In 1993, shortly before Avram died, I returned to Belize again to look in on the land. I settled the taxes, and visited Punta Gorda. But the Englishman was not there. He had had an argument with a local policeman, and had been shot.
So I hired a Garifuna man to take me to Moho Bul. There, I was once again in for a surprise. The land was clear, because there was a small Mayan village there. Apparently, after the Mayans had cleared the land, the Englishman had told them they could stay, and they did.
I didn’t really object to the Mayans living at Moho Bul, they were putting it to better use than I ever would. But there was one thing that did make me sad. During the whole boat trip, I did not see one dragon in the trees.
¡LIMEKILLER! First Edition 2003¡Limekiller! by Avram Davidson, edited by Grania Davis and Henry Wessells, was published by Old Earth Books, Post Office Box 19951, Baltimore, Maryland, 21211-0951. Two thousand copies have been printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.. The typeset is Berthold Baskerville, Newsel, and Lithos Black, printed on 60# Glatfeltner Supple Opaque Recycled Natural. The binding cloth is Pearl Linen. Design and typesetting by Garcia Publishing Services, Woodstock, Illinois
AVRAM DAVIDSON was one of the great masters of short fiction of the twentieth century, a writer who won the major awards in the science- fiction, fantasy, and mystery genres — the Hugo, Edgar, and World Fantasy Awards — while constantly pushing at the boundaries of those genres.
Davidson was born on 23 April 1923, in Yonkers, New York. During the Second World War he served in the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman and saw overseas duty in the South Pacific. He was in China at the time of the Japanese surrender in September 1945. He was in Palestine just before the creation of Israel in May 1948, and apparently served as a medic in the newly-formed Israeli armed forces, and then worked for a while as a shepherd. Davidson began publishing short stories and essays in Orthodox Jewish Life in 1949, and then in Commentary, under the name A. A. Davidson. In July 1954, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published its first story by Davidson, “My Boyfriend’s Name is Jello.” In the early 1960s, while editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, he lived in Mexico. In the middle and late 1960s, he lived in British Honduras and in the San Francisco Bay area. In later years, he moved to Washington state, where he died on 8 May 1993.
He published seventeen novels and wrote more than 200 stories and essays during his lifetime. Among his best- known stories are “Or All the Seas with Oysters,” “The Necessity of His Condition,” “The Affair at Lahore Cantonment,” “The Golem,” and “Naples,” all collected in The Avram Davidson Treasury (Tor, 1998), the first of several collections marking the literary rediscovery of Avram Davidson.