Hazards (6 page)

“Oh, we’re gonna eat well tonight, Reverend!” he said. “Hey, Bella, come on over here. There’s someone I want you to meet!”

Not many women could make Rama look like a boy in comparison, but Bella was one of ’em. I made a mental note to thank my Silent Partner for arranging for me to meet her before I hooked up permanently with her sister.

Bella kind of undulated across the clearing toward me with a big friendly smile on her face. Her hair was kind of sand-colored — that’s dry sand, not the way it looks after a monsoon or maybe being trampled by a herd of terrified elephants — and her skin was smoother than any satin I ever seen. And I’d have given odds that there wasn’t a straight line anywhere on her.

“Bella,” said MacNamarra, “this here is Reverend Lucifer Jones, who’s announced his intention of marrying into our family, one way or t’other.”

“Howdy, Bella,” I said, taking her hand in mine. I was going to kiss it in a courtly manner until I saw it was covered with tapir blood. “I’m mighty pleased to make your acquaintance, and if I can be allowed to say so, you and your sister are the two most beautiful women it’s been my pleasure to encounter on this continent.”

“Gobble,” she said.

“We’ll get around to it,” I said, “but it ain’t dinnertime yet, and besides someone’s got to clean and baste the tapir.”

“Gobble gobble gobble,” said Bella.

“Uh…Brother Corny,” I said, “would I be correct in assuming that ain’t no verb?”

“What can I tell you?” he said. “I got
two
bird girls. Built a mansion for each of ’em and their husbands.” He started fingering his shotgun again. “I’d sure hate for you to disappoint me, Reverend.”

I took another look at his gun and decided that if push came to shove, I’d be even more disappointed than him, to say nothing of being more full of holes.

“Brother Corny,” I said, “such a thought couldn’t be farther from my mind. I’ll be mighty glad to stay for dinner and decide which one of your beautiful daughters I plan to pay court to.”

“Now that’s more like it!” he said enthusiastically. “Hell, I might even break out a bottle of my prime drinkin’ stuff!”

I allowed as to how that could ease the pain of kissing my bachelorhood good-bye, and he told the girls to go clean and cook the tapir and got a couple of clucks and a gobble in response, and then he asked me if I’d like to see the insides of the chartreuse mansions.

“Ain’t no hurry,” I told him. “I figger I’ll be moving into one of ’em soon enough.”

“I like your attitude, Reverend Jones,” he said, slapping me on the back and damned near sending me sprawling.

“How’d you ever get in the middle of this here jungle in the first place, Brother Corny?” I asked.

“We was looking for Buenos Aires,” he answered. “Saw a bunch of little naked folk off in the distance, and figured we must have hit the place during carnival season. We followed the parade for a few days, and then one morning they was all gone and we were stuck here in the middle of nowhere, so I got to work building Chicky and me a house, and—”

“Chicky?” I interrupted him.

“I always called her my little chickadee,” he explained. “Of course, that was before she done produced two ever littler ones.”

Well, we swapped life stories for the next hour, and he spent another hour asking me about the Clubfoot of Notre Dame and the Insidious Oriental Dentist and some of my other adventures and exploits and encounters, but if you’re reading this here account you probably already read them books so there’s no sense my repeating it all here. Anyway, I’d just brung him up to the present when Rama and Bella came out and clucked and gobbled at us, and he allowed as to how that meant dinner was ready, and we went inside and sat ourselves down at a table he’d made out of some defenseless tree that probably never did him no harm, and then the girls brought out a slab of meat that tasted as good as it smelled and a lot better than it looked, and we fell to feeding our faces.

When it was over MacNamarra lit up a cigar and told me that I’d brung him up to date about me, but I’d kind of left out the rest of the world, and he was sort of curious about it.

“For example,” he said, “did Woodrow Wilson keep us out of that little skirmish over in Europe?”

“For a while,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Only problem with all them foreigners is that they speak European and probably don’t believe in God and maybe eat their young, but other than that I can’t see that they’re all that much different from Americans except for being dumber and uglier.” He paused for a moment. “How about the fat guy with the girl’s name?”

“I ain’t quite sure who you’re talking about, Brother Corny,” I said.

“You know,” insisted MacNamarra. “He pitches for the Boston Red Sox. Calls himself Dolly or Honey, something like that.”

“You mean Babe Ruth?”

“That’s the feller!” he exclaimed. “I sure wouldn’t want to find myself alone in the men’s room with a guy called Babe. Whatever happened to him?”

“Traded to the Yankees, last I heard,” I told him.

“Good,” he said. “Ain’t no way Boston was ever going to win a pennant with a fat guy named Babe on the team.”

“Anything else you got a driving desire to know?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “You think my Rama and Bella could make it as Floradora girls?”

“Ain’t no Floradora girls no more,” I told him.

“Oh?” he asked, looking his disappointment. “What happened to ’em?”

“Talking pictures put ’em out of business,” I said.

“Talking pictures?” he repeated, kind of frowning.

“Like unto Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, but with talking,” I explained.

He threw back his head and laughed. “Talking pictures!” he guffawed. “By God, I’m gonna like having a son-in-law with a sense of humor!”

He began telling me about how he still had a pile of money in some Missouri and Oklahoma banks, except for the part he’d invested in Anaconda Copper, and I decided telling him about 1929 would just depress him, so I never brung it up.

We talked a bit more, and then he led me out to a tiny shed.

“Good night, Reverend,” he said. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you joining our little family.”

I heard a kind of snorting sound from the shed.

“Uh…I don’t want to sound unduly alarmed, Brother Corny,” I said, “but exactly what is residing in there?”

“Just Sadie, our pet pig,” he said. “Don’t mind her. She’s a right friendly sort, unless you get her mad.”

“Maybe I should just sleep in one of the houses,” I suggested.

“Rama lives in one and Bella lives in the other,” he said. “T’wouldn’t be moral, you spending the night under the same roof with one of ’em until after you’re married.”

Sadie grunted and the shed shook.

“Maybe I’ll just sleep on your rocking chair,” I suggested.

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. “If’n you don’t mind being et alive by bugs and having snakes crawl all over you, I can’t see why it should bother me neither.”

“On second thought, Brother Corny,” I said hastily, “I can see that Sadie’s a beloved member of the family, and I wouldn’t want her suffering no pangs of rejection.”

“Well, good for you, Reverend!” he said, slapping me on the back, which was starting to get more than a little sore from all these displays of friendship. “I like the way you think. Hell, build your tabernacle on the property here, and I just might join it. Probably get you three or four Indians, too, provided your religion ain’t got nothing against nudity or cannibalism or virgin sacrifice or any of them other little local customs.”

I thanked him for his concern and his confidence and his pig, and then I went off to spend the night with Sadie, who truth to tell smelled better and hogged the sleeping area less than some women I could name.

Came morning I wandered over for some breakfast, and Rama and Bella were all scrubbed up and looking their prettiest, than which not a lot of things and hardly no women were prettier, and MacNamarra asked me if I’d made my choice yet, and I told him I was still considering which of these lovely damsels I was going to grace with my hand in marriage, and I realized that I was going to have to come up with some kind of answer pretty soon, because while he smiled and allowed that it was a pretty tough decision, I noticed that his shotgun wasn’t never out of his reach.

I began reviewing my options. There were probably worse fates than marrying Bella and having an occasional friendly rendezvous with Rama, or vice versa. Hell, MacNamarra was so desperate to marry ’em off I don’t think he’d have raised any serious objections to me marrying both of ’em in the same modest little ceremony on his front porch — but I knew that sooner or later I’d get a little tired of bird talk. Probably in something under three minutes.

I could high-tail it for civilization, but I didn’t know where civilization
was
, and besides I wasn’t quite as young as I’d once been and I figgered it was mighty unlikely that I could outrun MacNamarra’s buckshot.

And then it occurred to me that there might very well be an alternative that didn’t involve getting hitched
or
getting shot. It wasn’t no sure thing, but it made a lot more sense than a long lifetime of chirping or a very short lifetime of no chirping.

“Hey, Brother Corny,” I said, “as long as I’m gonna spend the rest of my natural life here, how’s about me going out hunting with Rama and Bella and kind of getting the lay of the land?”

“Sure,” he said. “Whoever you marry, you figger to get her pregnant right away and keep her pregnant for years and years, so you might as well start acquainting yourself with the landscape.”

“Fine,” I said, standing up. “Ain’t no time like the present.”

“Girls,” said MacNamarra, “go with him so he don’t get hisself so lost that he can’t find his way back here. And if he tries to run off, fire two or three warning shots into his bow.”

“You mean across my bow,” I corrected him.

“I know what I mean,” he said. “Okay, girls, get a move on.”

Rama and Bella headed off toward the jungle, and I didn’t seem to have no choice but fall into step behind them. We wandered far and wide, to say nothing of high and low. Every now and then Bella would start gobbling and pointing, and sure enough there’s be a jaguar watching us from an overhanging branch, or Rama would begin clucking a blue streak and I’d see an anteater staring at us from behind some bushes.

But I wasn’t after jaguars or anteaters, nor any other fish or fowl. I never did find what I was looking for, and at day’s end we went back to the chartreuse mansions, and I reacquainted myself with Sadie, but we were off again the next morning, and the morning after that, going farther afield each time — and on the fifth day we finally ran into a couple of well-muscled good-looking young men, each wearing a little dinky loincloth and carrying a bow and arrows, and it was clear that they were just about the right age for getting hitched.

Thank you, Lord
, I said silently.
Now I owe You one.

“Howdy,” I said to them when they became aware of our presence, and I could tell right off that they were smitten by Rama’s and Bella’s beauty. “I hope we ain’t intruding on your hunting grounds, and by the way where’s the nearest city?”

“Quack quack quack,” said the one on the left.

By God, Lord,
I thunk,
You outdone Yourself this time!

“Does your friend always talk like that?” I asked the one on the right.

“Squawk squawk squawk squawk squawk,” he said.

I took a quick look at the girls, and I could tell they’d already lost their hearts and were preparing to lose a couple of other things as well, and there wasn’t no doubt that the young men were hopelessly in love too.

The five of us went back to the chartreuse mansions, and when MacNamarra saw what I had in tow, and especially when he
heard
what I was bringing back for his girls, he was so happy he forgot all about shooting me. He broke out his drinkin’ stuff again, and before dark I presided at the ceremony what joined the bird boys and the bird girls together for all eternity, and then I stood clear just in case Brother Corny had a tractor and was going to let the girls use it to plight their troughs, and after spending one more night in Sadie’s company while each girl honeymooned in a chartreuse mansion, I announced that it was my intention to be on my way, because when you’re a man of the cloth whose business is saving sinners, you just naturally got to go to where the sinners congregate, and that meant a city.

“I’ll come with you,” said MacNamarra.

“I’d of thunk you’d be the happiest man in the world,” I said.

“I am.”

“Then why are you leaving now that you got both of your girls married off?”

“Truth to tell, Reverend,” he answered, “that bird talk was driving me crazy, and now suddenly there’s going to be twice as much of it as there was. I got to go where they speak some human language.”

“Well, it’d be un-Christian to refuse you a favor,” I said, “so pack up your gear and let’s be going.”

“I promise I won’t be no bother to you,” he said. “I just got to hear a human voice. Yours ain’t much, and it don’t make sense very often, but it’s better than clucking and gobbling.”

He kissed the girls good-bye, slung his shotgun over his shoulder, packed a satchel of ammunition and another of drinkin’ stuff, and off we went. He wasn’t too bad a traveling companion, except that he’d kick me awake two or three times each night and ask me to talk at him.

I think we’d been on the trail a week when we came to a village smack-dab in the middle of the jungle. It wasn’t much of a village, just four or five huts, and sitting in front of one of ’em was an almost-naked lady who was about MacNamarra’s age and maybe three or four times his weight.

“Good morrow, Madam,” he said, bowing low to her. “Has this here village got a name?”

She answered him in the very same language them guys what wasn’t Indians had used on me a couple of weeks earlier, and she guv him a great big smile, and I could see that her teeth were busy rotting away, and even from where I stood I could tell that she hadn’t bathed in the last ten or twenty years, but none of that bothered MacNamarra.