“The Señor Rene’s,” the Indian explained as he held out the knickers. “Señor will fit—no?”
“Yes—sure. Rene’s not so much shorter than I. And I bathe in the river, huh, Joaquim?”
“Yes, Señor. But watch for the electric fish. They send shock and sometimes people die from it.”
“Well, I’ve got enough electricity in me without clashing with those fish, Joaquim. Thanks for the tip, anyway.”
And so he bathed without incident, shaved and dressed, then strolled toward the Pemberton hut, a broad, low structure of mud and thatch. Felice and her grandfather were on hand to greet him.
The building boasted of three good-sized rooms, that is, it was one vast room partitioned off into three. Two of the partitions, Felice explained, were used as bedrooms and the third, a wide room across the front of the hut, was their dining-living room.
That room, into which Hal was ushered, boasted of a fair-sized dining table, a half-dozen rickety chairs, an antique sideboard, and a dilapidated couch. The kitchen, Felice explained, was in Joaquim’s hut and under his own supervision.
They sat down to a nicely set table and Hal perceived that Felice’s slim brown hand had given the extra touches in honor of a guest. A worn but clean tablecloth gleamed under the candlelight, and the silver, he was certain, had graced the table of many generations of Pembertons in Virginia.
Hal ate his fill of chicken, fish, sweet potatoes, cooling pineapple, and two cups of coffee. True, it was rather bitter and was flavored with condensed milk, but coffee had never been so welcome and he sat sipping the second cup with some Brazilian cigarettes which Old Marcellus kept for guests.
The old man was pleasant, and he beguiled Hal with divers tales of his experiences in the Amazon jungle. Now and then a note of bitterness would creep into his feeble voice, but upon looking at Hal’s smiling countenance he would dismiss his subject and begin on another. But always he seemed to come back to the same subject, that of his long missing son.