“Are there elephants around here?” Biff asked. “Yesterday morning I thought I saw one out of my bedroom window.”
“Sure. Sure. Much elephants. Wild ones.” Chuba grinned. “But one you saw must be Suzie. She dig it here big. That means likes it here,” Chuba explained. Biff smiled to himself. “When they clear jungle to make the camp, many elephants used to push over trees, and pull them away. When job is done, Suzie and Tiny, that’s the other elephant, they won’t leave. So—who can make an elephant go when he no want to? They stay on.”
“Where did you pick up all this jive talk, Chuba?” Biff asked.
“Jive talk? You mean talk like American boys?”
“They don’t all talk that way. Jive talk is American slang. Some boys use it more than others.”
“I learn it from Muscles. He has many magazines come to him by the mail from United States. Many books of the comics, too. You like to meet up with Muscles? He come back from Rangoon early this morning.”
“I sure would,” Biff said.
There was no mistaking Muscles. Biff spotted him as soon as they entered the hangar. The plane maintenance mechanic, wearing only shorts, shoes, and a long white mechanic’s coat, towered over the small natives whom he was directing. Big was the word for Muscles. Biff could only compare him with some of the giant linesmen he had seen play for the Chicago Bears professional football team. He and his father went to the games in Chicago every now and then.
As the boys approached the plane Muscles was working on, they saw the powerful man heave an oil drum off the floor as if it were made of tissue paper. The drum could have weighed anywhere from one hundred to three hundred pounds. He up-ended the drum, and a heavy stream of thick oil flowed smoothly to the intake pipe. Muscles held the drum steadily for a couple of minutes.
“That ought to do it,” he said, and put the drum back on the floor. He looked at the boys.