This Side of Jordan (19 page)

“Want a card?” the older fellow asked him. “We'll get you one up front.”

Alvin coughed again and shook his head, not feeling much like playing games tonight. He hated beano, anyhow. His aunts played it at the Farrington auditorium once a month for a nickel a card and Uncle Henry thought it was a smart racket, even though Aunt Clara told Hattie that beans were for eating, which Alvin thought was pretty funny.

“We're from Ashtabula,” said the woman with the punk in her hair. Did she just give Alvin the glad eye? “My name's Margaret and these are my friends Alice, Hazel and Bertha. We're Couéists on a pilgrimage.”
“Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better,”
the dwarf chirped, quoting Émile Coué's famous auto-suggestion.

“Indeed, we are,” Margaret enthused.

“Glad to know you,” Alvin said, politely, although truthfully he didn't really care one way or another. He had met quite a lot of people on the road since Easter and could just as soon have given them all the raspberry. He felt his forehead for a fever and found it warm. He knew he ought to go back to the cabin and lie down again, but he also wanted to see what sort of stunt the dwarf was putting over on these dumbbells.

“I told you, this ain't no roadside pulpit,” said the man with the cigar. “How about we just play the game and let this little fellow finish his story.”

“Certainly,” Margaret agreed.

The other three women smiled sweetly at the farm boy. One of them down at the end of the table wearing ear puffs gave him a wink. She reminded him of the old nurses he knew at the sanitarium who fed him cod liver oil five times a day and made him walk up and down the halls with his bottom showing and joked about it when they thought he was asleep.

Thunder rumbled in the rainy distance and Alvin saw lightning flash. He sniffed the damp air and decided it was warmer than before he had taken his nap, which meant a thunderstorm rising. Alvin wondered what everyone was doing out here playing beano under a tent in this weather. If a tornado blew through this tourist camp, that'd be it.

“42, LADIES AND GENTS, 42!”

“Where was I?” the dwarf asked, sliding a bean onto his card. He seemed preoccupied, distracted by an errant thought. Alvin wondered if Rascal had a worry in the world besides where his next meal was coming from. Not a damned thing since Hadleyville had seemed to trouble him.

“Mosquitoes of the foreign tropics,” the ruddy fellow said, tapping ash off his cigar into the mud behind him. He smiled at Alvin and gave him a friendly nod. The farm boy looked away.

Margaret interjected, “Speaking of which, I've been bitten so often this summer I feel like a dartboard. Isn't that true, Alice? Our tourist sleeper hasn't proven to be bug-proof at all, has it?”

“No, dear,” the woman seated across from Margaret replied. “Not at all. We need a shower of Flit.”

She wore eyeglasses that had fogged up in the rainy air. How she could see her card well enough to play was a mystery.

“You ought to've bought a good wall tent like I suggested,” said the woman with ear puffs. Alvin noticed that her card already had three beans horizontal on the middle row. “You know, Hazel and I haven't had any bother whatsoever with mosquitoes.”

“Well, Bertha, I should say you've been very fortunate, indeed,” Margaret remarked, forcing a smile. “They've given us thunder this entire trip.”

“Yes, but Hazel and I also prepared well.”

“I tell you,” Alice insisted, “we ought to have brought along some Flit.”

“9, LADIES AND GENTS, 9!”

“Actually, my mother's used oil of cloves for years,” said Hazel, fixing her own elastic hair net, “and she's never been mosquito bit. Not once.”

That explained the spicy odor Alvin had smelled when he sat down at the table.

Putting a bean on his card, the ruddy-faced fellow said, “When I was with the First Nebraska at Manila in '98, we seen mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. If you got bit by one of them, you were finished. It's the sickliest place on earth.”

“I detest mosquitoes of all sorts,” Margaret said, with a shiver. “They're despicable pests.”

“Well, thanks to the mosquito,” the dwarf said, trying to maneuver himself back into the conversation, “poor Uncle Augustus was virtually addicted to quinine for the final thirty-three years of his life. He never recovered from the recurring spells of malaria he contracted on a secret mission for Queen Victoria to Java.”

“Where?” the farm boy asked, hoping to get under his skin. Whenever Alvin felt sick, he enjoyed sharing his misery with others. Easiest was making his sisters cry. Mary Ann acted like a baby whenever she got teased. Everyone in the family hated that.

“The Dutch East Indies.”

“Never heard of it,” Alvin said, with a practiced sneer and a fake giggle.

The dwarf clucked his tongue. “Well, it's very far away in the Java Sea, south of Borneo. You know, you really ought to consider studying geography some day.”

“Says you.”

“44, LADIES AND GENTS, 44.”

Margaret shifted a bean onto her card, then told the dwarf, “My friends and I hope to travel around the world one day.”

“We believe all roads lead to Rome,” said Bertha, winking again at Alvin.

“You ever been to Borneo?” the ruddy fellow asked Rascal after a puff on his cigar.

The dwarf shook his head. “No, but twice dear old Uncle Augustus circumnavigated the globe. He was the bravest man I ever knew. His photograph was taken on six continents and I saw each of them on the walls of his library when I was a boy. At every supper, he led us in a toast to the seven seas, ‘
Sail and sail, with unshut eye / Round the world for ever and aye.'”

“He ought to've been with me and Dewey at Manila in '98. Now, there was something to sing about.”

“I want to hear this little fellow's story about Queen Victoria,” Bertha said, playing with her beans.

“Yes,” Margaret agreed. “Let's hear his story.”

“Are you certain?” the dwarf asked. “It's quite frightening.”

“Are there ghosts involved?” asked Hazel, a slight tremble in her voice. Alvin almost laughed aloud. Now he knew these folks were dumbbells.

“No,” Rascal replied, “but there'll be many horrible deaths. I had nightmares for a month after I first heard the story myself.”

“Oh, I adore a good nightmare!” said Alice. “Do tell your story.”

“Sure, go ahead,” the ruddy fellow agreed.

“All right.” The dwarf smiled. “Well, in April of 1883, my Uncle Augustus and a fellow from Stepney by the name of Louis Hurlburt hired onto a tramp steamer as firemen sailing to Java. Apparently, the Queen was quite worried about Dutch intentions concerning Singapore and wished to discover how earnest its colonial regents had become. Uncle Augustus said Java was a wonderful paradise of the most lovely orchids and ancient temples, yet also terribly dangerous in those years. Why, a grown man might be gored to death by a wild ox, drown into a dark mangrove swamp, or earn his fortune in oil and rubber according to the whims of fate.”

“Gee, maybe I'd ought to go hunting there one day,” Alvin interrupted, as thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain had lightened to a steady drizzle, hissing in the cottonwoods nearby.

“Oh, I should think you'd be fortunate not to be eaten by a royal tiger. It's one of the most perilous jungles on earth.”

“36, LADIES AND GENTS, 36!”

“I wouldn't be at all ascared. I shot a bear once from my bedroom window.”

“Now, that takes some doing,” the ruddy fellow remarked, placing a bean on his card.

“Sure it does.”

“Well, having devoted considerable study of my own to the Dutch East Indies,” the dwarf continued, “I've always been astonished by the course Mother Nature took in that strange corner of the earth. Did you know there are wild fig trees in the forests of Java whose branches droop downward to become roots for even more trees? Its leaves are so large, the Javanese natives use them as plates for their meat. And there are great bats with wings five feet or more across. I've read authentic reports of sleeping babies snatched from their bamboo cradles and whisked away into the dark by those infernal creatures.”

“My goodness!” Margaret exclaimed. “That isn't true, is it?”

Alvin shook his head. “'Course it ain't. He's just pulling your leg.”

“Look it up in the
Geographic
,” Rascal said. “Only a month after sailing into Bantam Bay, Uncle Augustus saw lemurs hunting birds at night with eyes that glowed red as coals. Why, he personally killed a wild hog and six Java musks for food when he became lost in the jungle by the Vale of Poison at Butar, where he nearly perished in a fog of deadly carbonic acid gas after rescuing two hundred Javanese native children from Dutch slavery inside a secret diamond mine.”

“Well, I'll be switched,” said the ruddy fellow.

“What a marvelous story!” Alice remarked.

“56, LADIES AND GENTS, 56!”

The dwarf studied his card for a moment. “Oh, it's only the beginning. You see, Java is called the ‘Land of Fire' because of its many volcanoes. Above the blue sea, in the Straits of Sunda, one of these fire towers, Mount Perboewatan on Krakatau, began spewing smoke and steam. Naturally, my uncle and Mr. Hurlburt were somewhat concerned, but after the Queen wired a secret message ordering them both to remain in Java, there could be no thought of departing. Posing as Pieter Van Dijk, a coffee and tobacco grader from Amsterdam, Uncle Augustus traveled all summer from port to port within the Straits, while hot volcanic ash rained down upon the sea and a huge black thundercloud of smoke spread out from Krakatau. In the meantime, Louis Hurlburt had secured a position as a stoker aboard the Dutch mail steamer
Governor General Loudon
, which was ferrying interested parties back and forth to the volcanic island for scientific observation.

Uncle Augustus sailed there in late May and was quite astounded by the smoke clouds and the constant hail of stones and fire. He went ashore with a crew of engineers. The wide beach was buried under a foot of thick pumice and two feet of ash. All vegetation on Krakatau had disappeared, only bare stumps and a few leafless trees remained and the air smelled of sulfuric acid. Uncle Augustus gathered up a small collection of black pitchstones when he left Krakatau. In fact, I have one of them in my bedroom at home. It's a wonderful souvenir.”

“19, LADIES AND GENTS, 19!”

“Oh, I'd love to see it one day,” Bertha said, then checked her card. She sighed.

The dwarf smiled at her. “Perhaps you shall.”

At another table, a woman rose with a child in her arms and walked off into the rainy dark toward the roadside stand. She was crying. Alvin saw a fellow in suspenders and a felt hat jump up and start after her. The pitchman left the podium and caught the fellow at the edge of the tent and had a few words with him. Some people at another table began hooting for the pitchman to go back to the podium.

The dwarf said, “Well, by August, Mount Danan on Krakatau had also erupted and all the Straits were cast into utter darkness. On Sunday the twenty-sixth, Uncle Augustus crossed from Prinsen Island north to Telok Betong at Sumatra where he had a dinner appointment with a Dutch admiral who much admired good cigars. The admiral's daughter, Elise Van Leeuwen, who also attended, negotiated a trade with my uncle involving a crate of South American coffee for a collection of lovely Java sparrows Miss Van Leeuwen had recently purchased at Katimbang. By now, ships had arrived from all over the world, maneuvering in the Straits to witness the great paroxysm. Lightning flashed in the black clouds over Krakatau. Earthquakes rumbled across the islands. The admiral's daughter grew fearful and left dinner early for a steamer heading back east across the Straits to Anjer. After she had gone, Uncle Augustus began proposing a toast to the glory of Dutch rule in the East Indies when a tremendous explosion thundered across the Straits. Uncle Augustus rushed from the saloon with the admiral to watch a great black cloud rise into the dark heavens from Krakatau. He knew he ought to quit the port, as well, but a morning telegraph from Anjer had stated that the
Loudon
was already en route to Telok Betong, and Uncle Augustus felt duty bound to wait for Mr. Hurlburt. The admiral, however, decided to leave immediately aboard the gunboat
Berouw
to evacuate both his wife and daughter for Batavia on the northwestern coast of Java. After saying good-bye to his worried host, Uncle Augustus went to have one last glass of whiskey at the Bergen Hotel near the River Koeripan.”

The pitchman quit arguing with the fellow in the felt hat and went back to the podium where he grabbed another disk. “71, LADIES AND GENTS, 71!”

“An old soak, was he?” said the ruddy fellow, leaning back in his chair. He laughed out loud.

Alvin saw a woman wearing a cotton dress and a blue Sunday bonnet join the pitchman at the podium. She spoke in his ear, which appeared to upset him, because he spilled the cigar box of disks into the mud.

Rascal frowned. “I beg your pardon? Misusing liquor was very common in those days and I'm sure the volcanic rain had quite a lot to do with his intemperance that dark afternoon.”

“You said it.”

The pitchman climbed down off the podium to retrieve the disks while the woman in the Sunday bonnet shook a finger at him. A gust of wind rippled the string of lights.

The dwarf scowled. “Look here, none of us can imagine in the least what it must've been like to feel the very earth tremble underfoot like Judgment Day. Now, as I was saying, when Uncle Augustus finally left the hotel, he found people dashing here and there, carrying their children and valuables away from the port. Another infernal blast thundered across the black waters from Krakatau and within the hour a rain of ash and stones began to fall. The wind was blowing fiercely from the northwest when Uncle Augustus stood on the pier looking across Lampong Bay for the
Loudon
and saw the first volcanic waves approaching from Krakatau. They rose from the sea much too quickly to permit escape by anyone on the shore. Having nowhere to go, Uncle Augustus ran to the end of the pier and dove into the bay just ahead of the first big sea wave. When he rose again from the deep, he saw the waves had swamped the pier and poured across the postal road into town, destroying the government offices and all the other buildings at sea level and chasing the survivors up to the District Hall on higher ground. The crew of a pilot boat that had ridden out the danger in deeper water found Uncle Augustus grasping a wooden crate. He was given dry clothing and a cup of hot tea and a biscuit and told to stay off the decks as large stones from Krakatau were falling now all across the Straits. Soon, the salt ship
Marie
anchored nearby and signaled the arrival of the
Loudon
from Anjer, and Uncle Augustus persuaded the captain of the pilot boat to ferry him over to the mail steamer.”