Father had invented the pump for Polski a year ago. It had a sensitized finger prong like a root in the ground, and when the soil dried out, this nerve-wire activated a switch and got the pump going. Father, an inventor, was a perfect genius with anything mechanical. "Nine patents," he liked to say. "Six pending." He boasted that he had dropped out of Harvard in order to get a good education. He was prouder of his first job as a janitor than his Harvard scholarship. He had invented a mechanical mop — you held it tight and it jigged across the floor, then squeezed itself dry. Using that mop was like dancing with a headless woman, he said. He called it The Silent Woman. What he liked best was taking things apart, even books, even the Bible. He said the Bible was like an owner's guide a repair manual to an unfinished invention He also said the Bible was a wilderness. It was one of Father's theories that there were parts of the Bible that no one had ever read, just as there were parts of the world where no one had ever set foot.
"You think that's bad? It's anything but. It's the empty spaces that will save us. No funny bunnies, no cops, no crooks, no muggers, no glue sniffers, no aerosol bombs. I'm not lost, like them." He pointed at the savages. "I know the way out."
He touched the different parts of the pump with his fingers, like a doctor examining a baby for swellings, and still he talked about empty spaces and savages. I raised my eyes and saw them. They seemed to be creeping straight out of the wilderness he had just described. We watched them making for the upper fields, and though I knew they were only going out to cut more asparagus, they looked as if they were searching for some fingers to chop off.
"They come from the safest place on earth — Central America. Know what they've got down there? Geothermal energy. All the juice they need is five thousand feet underground. It's the earth's bellybutton. Why do they come here?"
Across the fields they went, the savages, hunched over and flapping. They had huge shoes and tiny tucked-down heads, and as they passed by the woods they scared the crows and started a racket of caws. The birds flew up like black gloves jerked from a line, rising backward and filling out their feathers with each wingbeat.
"No TV where they come from. No Nipponese video-crapola. Pass me that oil can. Up here, nature is young. But the ecosystem in the tropics is immensely old and hasn't changed since the world began. Why do they think we have the answers? Faith — is that what you're saying? Is faith just playing 'Come to Jesus' in A-flat?"
He locked the wrench over the threads of the protruding pipe, then poked the spout of the oil can at the pipe joint and squirted. With both hands he freed the pipe, and he sighed.
"No, sir. Faith is believing in something you know ain't true. Ha!"
He put his short finger inside the rusty trickle in the pump housing and pulled out a brass valve and a gush of water.
"You can't drink the water where those savages originate. It's got creatures in it. Worms. Weeds. They haven't got the sense to boil it and purify it. Never heard of filtration. The germs get into their bodies, and they turn green, like the water, and die. The rest of them figure it's no good there — spiders big as puppies, mosquitoes, snakes, floods, swamps, alligators. No idea at all about geothermal energy. Why change it when you can come here and go to pieces? Give me the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Have a Coke, watch television, go on welfare, get free money. Turn to crime. Crime pays in this country — muggers become pillars of the community. They'll all end up mugging and purse snatching."
The water was now pouring out of the pump, and the inside circuits ticked and measured.
"I'm not going into Northampton again. It's too upsetting. I'm sick of meeting people who want the things I've already had and rejected. I've had every dollar I've ever wanted, Charlie. And don't mention education. That cop this morning was educated — that Truant Officer — and all he wants is what they have on TV. I wouldn't send that guy out for sandwiches! I've had all that — what people crave. It doesn't work, and it's irritating to hear it praised ignorantly."
He grinned at me.
He said, "It's an imperfect world."
Now he was grinning at his cut-off finger.
"What are the Russians doing while those people are watching TV? They're conducting some very interesting experiments with water. They de-gas it, bubble everything out of it, including oxygen and nitrogen. When they've flattened it they seal it up in Mason jars, like preserved peaches. Put it aside for a while. Then, when they use this water on plants, they grow two or three times as fast — big healthy monsters. Beans climb off their poles, summer squashes like balloons, beets the size of volleyballs."
He motioned to the water.
"I'm just thinking out loud. What do you think? You figure there's something wrong with the rain? Say something."
I said I did not know.
"Figure someone ought to talk to God about rethinking the weather? I tell you, Charlie, it's an imperfect world. And America's in gridlock."
He cupped his hand under the spurting pipe and raised it to his mouth. Then he slurped it. "This is like champagne to those savages."
Smacking his lips he made it seem wonderful stuff.
"Things you and I take for granted, like ice. They don't have it in their country. If they saw an ice cube, they'd probably think it was a diamond or a jewel of some kind. Doesn't seem like the end of the world — no ice. But think about it. Imagine the kind of problems they have with no proper refrigeration."
"Maybe they don't have electricity," I said.
Father said, "Of course they don't. We're talking about the jungle, Charlie. But you can have refrigeration without juice. All you need is suction. Start a vacuum going and you've got refrigeration. Listen, you can get ice out of fire."
"Why don't they know that?"
"No way," he said. "That's what makes them savages."
He began putting the pump back together.
He said, "Must have all kinds of diseases." He gestured with his wrench in the direction the men had taken. "Them — they've got diseases."
He seemed both fascinated and repelled by them, and he communicated these feelings to me, telling me something interesting and then warning me not to be too interested. I had wondered how he knew these things about the men he called savages. He claimed he knew from experience, from living in wild places, among primitive people. He used the word savages with affection, as if he liked them a little for it. In his nature was a respect for wildness. He saw it as a personal challenge, something that could be put right with an idea or a machine. He felt he had the answer to most problems, if anyone cared to listen.
The crows returned to the woods, speeding toward the treetops, then circling warily and plunging to roost.
I said, "Are those men dangerous?"
"Not as dangerous as the average American," he said. "And only when they get mad. You know they're mad when they're smiling. That's the signal, like dogs."
He turned to me and smiled broadly. I knew he wanted me to ask him more.
"Then what?"
"They turn into animals. Killers. Animals sort of smile just before they bite you."
"Do those men bite?"
"Give you one example. Know how they do it? Kill you? I'll tell you, Charlie boy. They hollow you out."
Holler ya out was the way he said it, and when he did I felt as if my scalp was tugged by a hundred sharp claws.
"That's why it would take courage to go there — and not ordinary gumption, but four-o'clock-in-the-morning courage. Who's got that?"
We worked outside until the sky turned the color of naming Sterno, then started home to supper.