He had barely known that the Ningoon River had two branches. Parrot Bend was on the left one, then. The dory, or dugout, in use today was the largest he had seen so far. Captain Sneed at once decided it had room enough for him to come along, too. Jack was not overjoyed at first. The elderly Englishman was a decent sort. But he talked, damn it! How he talked. Before long, however, Limekiller found he talked to May, which left Felix alone to talk to Jack.
"John Lutwidge Limekiller," she said, having asked to see his inscribed watch, "there's a name. Beats Felicia Fox." He thought "fox" of all words in the world the most appropriate for her. He didn't say so."—Why Lutwidge?"
"Lewis Carroll? Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, his real name? Distant cousin. Or so my Aunty Mary used to say."
This impressed her, anyway a little. "And what does Limekiller mean? How do you kill a lime? And why?"
"You take a limestone," he said, "and you burn it in a kiln. Often pronounced kill. Or, well you make lime, for cement or whitewash or whatever, by burning stuff. Not just limestone. Marble. Oyster shells. Old orange rinds, maybe, I don't know, I've never done it. Family name," he said.
She murmured, "I see . . ." She wound up her sleeves. He found himself staring, fascinated, at a blue vein in the inside of her arm near the bend. Caught her gaze. Cleared his throat, sought for something subject-changing and ever so interesting and novel to say. "Tell me about yourself," was what he found.
She gave a soft sigh, looked up at the high-borne trees. There was another blue vein, in her neck, this time. Woman was one mass of sexy veins, damn it! He would simply lean over and he would kiss—"Well, I was an Art Major at Harrison State U. and I said the hell with it and May is my cousin and she wanted to go someplace, too, and so we're here. . . . Look at the bridge!"
They looked at its great shadow, at its reflection, broken by the passing boat into wavering fragments and ripples. The bridge loomed overhead, so high and so impressive in this remote place, one might forget that its rotting road-planks, instead of being replaced, were merely covered with new ones . . . or, at the least, newer ones. "In ten years," they heard Captain Sneed say, "the roadbed will be ten feet tall . . . if it lasts that long."
May: "Be sure and let us know when it's going to fall and we'll come down and watch it. Ffff-loppp!—Like San Luis Rey."
"Like whom, my dear May?"
The river today was at middle strength: shallow-draft vessels could and still did navigate, but much dry shingle was visible near town. Impressions rushed in swiftly. The day was neither too warm nor too wet, the water so clear that Limekiller was convinced that he could walk across it. Felix lifted her hand, pointed in wordless wonder. There, on a far-outlying branch of a tree over the river was an absolutely monstrous lizard of a beautiful buff color; it could not have been less than five full feet from snout to end of tail, and the buff shaded into orange and into red along the spiky crenelations on the spiny back ridge. He had seen it before. Had he seen it before? He had seen it before.
"Iguana!" he cried.
Correction was polite but firm. "No, sir, Juanito. Iguana is embra, female. Dat wan be macho. Male. Se llama 'garobo'. . . ."
Something flickered in Limekiller's mind. "¡Mira! ¡Mira! Dat wan dere, she be iguana!" And that one there, smaller than the buff dragon, was of a beautiful blue-green-slate-grey color. "Usual," said Filiberto, "residen en de bomboo t'icket, which is why de reason is call in English, 'Bomboo chicken'. . . ."
"You eat it?"—Felix.
"Exotic food, exotic food!"—May.
"Generalmente, only de hine leg ahn de tail. But is very good to eat de she of dem when she have egg, because de egg so very nice eating, in May, June; but even noew, de she of dem have red egg, nice and hard. Muy sabroso."
Jack turned and watched till the next bend hid the place from sight. After that he watched for them—he did not know why he watched for them, were they watching for him?—and he saw them at regular intervals, always in the topmost branches; immense. Why so high? Did they eat insects? And were there more insects to be taken, way up there? They surely did not eat birds? Some said, he now recalled in a vague way, that they ate only leaves; but were the top leaves so much more succulent? Besides, they seemed not to be eating anything at all, not a jaw moved. Questions perhaps not unanswerable, but, certainly, at the moment unanswered. Perhaps they had climbed so high only for the view: absurd.
"Didn't use to be so many of them, time was.—Eh, Fil?" asked Captain Sneed. ("Correct, Copitan. Not.") "Only in the pahst five, six years . . . it seems. Don't know why. . . ."
But whatever, it made the river even more like a scene in a baroque faery tale, with dragons, or, at least, dragonets, looking and lurking in the gigant trees.
The bed of the river seemed predominantly rocky, with some stretches of sand. The river ran very sinuously, with banks tending towards the precipitate, and the east bank was generally the higher. "When river get high," explained Don Fili, "she get white, ahn come up to de crutch of dem tree—" he pointed to a fork high up. "It can rise in wan hour. Ahn if she rise in de night, we people cahn loose we boat. Very . . . peligroso . . . dangerous—¡Jesus Maria! Many stick tear loose wid roots ahn ahl, even big stick like dot wan," he pointed to another massy trunk.
Here and there was open land, limpiado, "cleaned," they said hereabouts, for "cleared." "Clear. . . ." Something flickered in Limekiller's mind as he recollected this. Then it flickered away. There seemed, he realized, feeling odd about it, that quite a lot of flickering was and had been going on his mind. Nothing that would come into focus, though. The scenes of this Right Branch, now: why did they persist in seeming . . . almost . . . familiar?. . . when he had never been here before?
"What did you say just then, Don Fili?" he demanded, abruptly, not even knowing why he asked.
The monumental face half turned. "¿Qué? What I just say, Juanito! Why . . . I say, too bod I forgot bring ahlong my fisga, my pike . . . take some of dem iguana, garobo, cook dem fah you.—Fah we," he amended, as one of the women said, Gik.
"We would say, 'harpoon' ": Captain Sneed, judiciously. "Local term: 'pike.' "
The penny dropped. "Pike! Pike! It was a pike!" cried Limekiller. His body shook, suddenly, briefly. Not a lance or a spear. A pike!
They turned to look at him. Abashed, low-voiced, he muttered, "Sorry. Nothing. Something in a dream . . ." Shock was succeeded by embarrassment.
Felix, also low-voiced, asked, "Are you feverish again?" He shook his head. Then he felt her hand take his. His heart bounced. Then—Oh. She was only feeling his pulse. Evidently it felt all right. She started to release the hand. He took hers. She let it stay.
Captain Sneed said, "Speaking of Pike. All this land, all of it, far as the eye can reach, is part of the Estate of the Late Leopold Albert Edward Pike, you know, of fame and story and, for the last five or six years, since he died, of interminable litigation. He made a great deal of money, out of all these precious hardwoods, and he put it all back into land—Did I know him? Of course I knew him! That is," he cleared his throat, "as well as anyone, knew him. Odd chap in a multitude of ways. Damnably odd. . . ."