Slowly, almost reluctantly, the old man answered. “Well sah. Me know few teeng. Fah true. Me know few teeng. Not like in w’ol’ days. In w’ol’ days, me dive fah conch. Yes mon. Fetch up plan-ty conch. De sahlt wah-tah hort me eyes, take bush-yerb fah cure dem. But nomah. No, mon. Me no dive no mah. Ahl de time, me wyes hort, stay out of strahng sun now . . . Yes mon . . .”
Limekiller yawned, politely, behind his hand. To make conversation, he repeated something he had heard. “They say some of the old-time people used to get herbs down at Cape Manatee.”
Alfonso Key flashed him a look. The old man said, a different note suddenly in his voice, different from the melancholy one of a moment before, “Mon-ah-fe?. Mon-ah-fev is hahf-zttow, you know, sah. Fah true. Yes sah, mon-ah-ta? is hahi-mon. Which reason de lah w’only allow you to tehk one mon-ah-fei? a year.”
Covertly, Jack felt his beer. Sure enough, it was warm. Key said, “Yes, but who even bother nowadays? The leather is so tough you can’t even sole a boot with it. And you dasn’t bring the meat up to the Central Market in King Town, you know.”
The last thing on Limekiller’s mind was to apply for a license to shoot manatee, even if the limit were one a week. “How come?” he asked. “How come you’re not?” King Town. King Town was the reason that he was down in Port Cockatoo. There was no money to be made here, now. But there was none to be lost here, either. His creditors were all in King Town, though if they wanted to, they could reach him even down here. But it would hardly be worth anyone’s while to fee a lawyer to come down and feed him during the court session. Mainly, though, it was a matter of, Out of sight, somewhat out of mind. And, anyway—who knows? The Micawber Principle was weaker down here than up in the capital. But still and alclass="underline" something might turn up.
“Because, they say it is because Manatee have teats like a woman.”
“One time, you know, one time dere is a malm who mehk mellow wit ah mon-ah-tee, yes, sah. And hahv pickney by mon-ah-tee.” It did seem that the old man had begun to say something more, but someone else said, “Ha-ha-ha!” And the same someone else next said, in a sharp, all-but-demanding voice, “Shoe shine? Shoe shine?”
“I don’t have those kind of shoes,” Limekiller told the boy.
“Suede brush? Suede brush?”
Still no business being forthcoming, the bootblack withdrew, muttering.
Softly, the owner of the Cupid Club murmured, “That is one bod bobboon.”
Limekiller waited, then he said, “I’d like to hear more about that, Captain Cudgel. . .”
But the story of the man who “made mellow” with a manatee and fathered a child upon her would have to wait, it seemed, upon another occasion. Old Captain Cudgel had departed, via the back door. Jack decided to do the same, via the front.
The sun, having vexed the Atlantic coast most of the morning and afternoon, was now on its equal way towards the Pacific. The Bay of Hidalgo stretched away on all sides, out to the faint white line which marked the barrier reef, the great coral wall which had for so long safeguarded this small, almost forgotten nation for the British Crown and the Protestant Religion. To the south, faint and high and blue against the lighter blue of the sky, however faint, darker: Pico Guapo, in the Republic of Hidalgo. Faint, also, though recurrent, was Limekiller’s thought that he might, just might, try his luck down there. His papers were in order. Port Cockatoo was a Port of Entry and of Exit. The wind was free.
But from day to day, from one hot day to another hot day, he kept putting the decision off.
He nodded politely to the District Commissioner and the District Medical Officer and was nodded to, politely, in return. A way down the front street strolled white-haired Mr. Stuart, who had come out here in The Year Thirty-Nine, to help the war effort, and had been here ever since: too far for nodding. Coming from the market shed where she had been buying the latest eggs and ground-victuals was good Miss Gwen; if she saw him she would insist on giving him his supper at her boardinghouse on credit: her suppers (her breakfasts and lunches as well) were just fine. But he had debts enough already. So, with a sigh, and a fond recollection of her fried fish, her country-style chicken, and her candied breadfruit, he sidled down the little lane, and he avoided Miss Gwen.
One side of the lane was the one-story white-painted wooden building with the sign DENDRY WASHBURN, LICENCED TO SELL DRUGS AND POISONS, the other side of the lane was the one-story white-painted wooden building where Captain Cumberbatch kept shop. The lane itself was paved with the crushed decomposed coral called pipeshank—and, indeed, the stuff did look like so much busted-up clay pipe stems. At the end of the lane was a small wharf and a flight of steps, at the bottom of the steps was his skiff.
He poled out to his boat, where he was greeted by his first mate, Skippy, an off-white cat with no tail. Skippy was very neat, and always used the ashes of the caboose: and if Jack didn’t remember to sweep them out of the caboose as soon as they had cooled, and off to one side, why, that was his own carelessness, and no fault of Skippy’s.
“All clear?” he asked the small tiger, as it rubbed against his leg. The small tiger growled something which might have been “Portuguese man o’war off the starboard bow at three bells,” or “Musket-men to the futtock-shrouds,” or perhaps only, “Where in the Hell have, you been, all day, you creep?”
“Tell you what, Skip,” as he tied the skiff, untied the Sacarissa, and, taking up the boat’s pole, leaned against her in a yo-heave-ho manner; “let’s us bugger off from this teeming tropical metropolis and go timely down the coast…say, to off Crocodile Creek, lovely name, proof there really is no Chamber of Commerce in these parts…then take the dawn tide and drop a line or two for some grunts or jacks or who knows what…sawfish, maybe…maybe…something to go with the rice and beans tomorrow ... Corn what we catch but can’t eat,” he grunted, leaned, hastily released his weight and grabbed the pole up from the sucking bottom, dropped it on deck, and made swift shift to raise sail; slap/slap/…and then he took the tiller.
“And thennn…Oh, shite and onions, I don’t know. Out to the Welshman’s Cayes, maybe.”
“Harebrained idea if ever I heard one,” the first mate growled, trying to take Jack by the left greattoe. “Why don’t you cut your hair and shave that beard and get a job and get drunk, like any decent, civilized son of a bitch would do?”
The white buildings and red roofs and tall palms wavering along the front street, the small boats riding and reflecting, the green mass of the bush behind: all contributed to give Port Cockatoo and environs the look and feel of a South Sea Island. Or, looked at from the viewpoint of another culture, the District Medical Officer (who was due for a retirement which he would not spend in his natal country), said that Port Cockatoo was “gemütlich.” It was certainly a quiet and a gentle and undemanding sort of place.
But, somehow, it did not seem the totally ideal place for a man not yet thirty, with debts, with energy, with uncertainties, and with a thirty-foot boat.
A bright star slowly detached itself from the darkening land and swam up and up and then stopped and swayed a bit. This was the immense kerosene lamp which was nightly swung to the top of the great flagpole in the Police yard; it could be seen, the local Baymen assured J. Limekiller, as far out as Serpent Caye ... Serpent Caye, the impression was, lay hard upon the very verge of the known and habitable earth, beyond which the River Ocean probably poured its stream into The Abyss.