Limekiller!

ALONG THE LOWER MOHO (THE IGUANA CHURCH)

The Lower Moho is far different from the Upper Belize’s Eastern Branch, in which I so delighted when at Cayo; the latter, with its rushing current, visible bed of rock or of gravel, narrow and granite-bony banks, and its cataracts, is like muscular and sinewi- arms. The full flow of the Moho, current languid and slow, banks low and wide, bottom invisible but seeming to hint of mud, lush and lavish, is reminiscent of soft thighs and armpits. Often it is so wide and smooth as to resemble a lake, — I observed, bemused and entranced, a snow-white egret skimming slow and low- across the surface, his reflection like a double-goer companying with him beneath the mirror surface.

The first sign of human settlement was a barking dog. Then a thatched hut. And an Indian-dark Ladino boy who stared dully at us, not returning any of the greetings waved from our boat. totally different from the bright, alert, cheerful Mayan children of San Antonio. Then downstream came a very long motor-dory (remember, again, dory here always means dug-out) — perhaps a pin — containing eight people of all sizes: six Caribs and two Mestizos; the long boat towing a smaller one alongside. Hails w-ere exchanged. Next from the bank a bulky Carib lady with a multicolored broadbrim straw hat atop her red kerchief lowered her machete and waved. The tree line became broken, here was a corn- patch, here were bananas, and then came a house and groves.

“There is Bul’s place. He wants to sell. Do you want to buy?” “How much for how much?”

“Ten acres cleared and planted. He ask $300.”

“What does it cost to clear land here?”

Our commodore reflected. “For high bush. $20 an acre. For low bush. a little bit less.”

It seemed, then, to me, that “Bul” was in effect selling land for $10 an acre. Later I learned that things were not at all that simple. I gazed at the tangled shores, and asked about iguana — after all, the purpose of our voyage. “What shall I bring you back?” I’d asked. “Bring me back an iguana,” she’d said. And so here we all were. Before, I had seen the dragons in the trees; now I was to see them considerably closer up.

“No fear, there are plenty of iguana here. The next place belongs to the Spanish people who are good hunters of them. You will see.”

One of the boatmen looked at me. “You like bamboo chicken in the country you belong to?”

“Sir?”

“Bamboo chicken. Iguana and garobo. They not have them? Too bad. Taste veh-ry good. Just like chicken.” He smacked his lips.

“Not to eat. I don’t want them to eat. alive, alive-O,” I insisted.

He nodded. “We put them in box, put in leaves, she live six weeks. You feast she in your country.” After some vigorous, if confused interchange, it was established that (a) the iguanas could live six weeks just on the “leaves” put into their box; it was not meant that they would drop dead after only six weeks; and (b) it was not my intention to export them as victualry, ceremonial or otherwise. “He want keep for pet,” the boatmen said. And they gazed at each other and at me and at the river and the shores, with a blandness and toleration for foreign foibles which was mighty fine to see.

And so at length and at last to our first stop, the “Spanish people”, who were cunning and canny at hunting the dragon- minor. Now I perceived the utility of a muddy bank: they cut the motor and let the boat go, slide up, soft and easy, easy as can be. Higher up stood a newmade dory, upside down on blocks: easy, then, to understand why in some other country (I forget just where) dugouts are called “skins”: this one, of tawny-ruddy Santa Maria wood, looked indeed as though it had been fashioned from a skin of fine pale leather. This was the Martinez plantation; these, however, were Mestizo Martinezes, and hence no kin to the Carib Martinezes of Stann Creek. Also present were the Sanchez family people — they and those we passed in the big dory had been visiting here — and each family agreed to contribute one hunter for our little expedition.

Tomas Martinez was perhaps nineteen, taller than his hunt- partner (though not tall by northern standards) and broader, too, with a very fine Mestizo face, and a very light Mestizo coloring. Santiago Sanchez was perhaps sixteen and small and slender; his tilted nose, full lips, and darker skin perhaps hinted pleasantly of a Creole or Carib grandparent.

The house, thatched roof and pole sides, was actually two houses in some intricately connected fashion. Handsome black and white ducks abounded, of a sort I had never seen before (“What are these birds called? Have they a special name?” “Yes — they are called ‘ducks’ — d-u-c-k-s.”) and at the top of the steps a board blockade (in San Antonio it was a board blockade) served to keep the livestock out and the toddlers in. The forest pressed very nigh the little houses. Inside it was narrow and on the dark side, walls as usual covered with magazine and newspaper pages; I wondered what the settlers made of such pictures, here on the remote and incredibly quiet backwaters of the world.

“Many visitors here for the velorio, eh?” Mr. Zuniga asked. “Plenty rum?” A comely, middle-aged senora smiled faintly and shook her head. There was no sign of any excesses. A table stood near the wall, converted into an altar with a baldachin-canopy adorned with colored paper barber-stripes. An enamel dish of copper coins, candles, and a curious black-and-white photograph of a religious nature involving (but not seeming to be confined to) a crucifix, completed my rapid glimpse of the scene, and something was said of “Los Senores de Esquipula” — or so I understood it — but soon we were out of the house again and into the dories again. The whole thing was very Latin-American, Catholic, child-bright, and pagan.

I noted that each young hunter had a barbed harpoon with thin greenish nylon line (ubiquitous in B. H.) attached, intricately. Mr. Faustino Z. caught my glance and conveyed my alarm: We didn’t want to kill our dragons, we wanted them to live. The boys nodded. They spoke English well enough, but exclusively Spanish among themselves.

It was hopeless for me to estimate how far upstream we were, but later I learned that “Bul” (the place taking its name from the man) was approximately six miles from the sea; I’d guess that Casa or Quinta Ramirez was a few miles above Bul; and after that we proceeded perhaps another mile, foam-flecks floating on “the buxom flood” — and then they cut the motor and glided towards an enormous, colossal, gigantic monster of a giant wild fig tree, white and slick. It must have been at least a century old. Two of its immense branches hung far out over the stream. It had vines twisting all over it, and I do verily believe that its vines had vines! Clumps of grass flourished on it as it loomed up from the feathery green thickets of wild bamboo thorns, and on it, too, were all sorts of parasites and saprophytes; and likely enough (remembering the Anecdotes of Joseph Roberteau R-o-b-e-r-t-e-a-u) there were tortugas and crocodiles in cavernous hollows under its roots. It was an absolute Eighth Wonder of a tree, it was a whole ecology all to itself.

As we approached, the great gargoyles carven into the tree came alive, enormous garobos lifted their heads and commenced to dive off it into the water. The younger hunter, Santiago, took his harpoon and went ashore to climb the tree: he had to approach it from behind as the water side was too sheer and smooth. And all the while the Iguana Exodus continued — I expected Tomas to produce something like a huge butterfly net and catch them as they come down — scrabble! fall! PLOP! SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH! — but, no. Instead, he buttoned his shirt firmly over his thick, sturdy chest and said, “Put me under that limb over there” — the dory was paddled thither — several of the limbs trailed into the river, where they had collected enough debris to harbor minnows and insects and water weeds: enough to constitute a sort of sub-ecology -

To my perfect astonishment, he seized hold of the thin lower branches and, saying, “No other way up this tree,” proceeded to pull. haul. grip. and shinny himself from limb to limb. up and up. holding his harpoon with his toes, mind you — his toes!. Mr. Zuniga grinned at me. “Tar-san,” he said. And indeed it was — the most Tarzan-like thing I have ever seen, in the movies or out. Up and then in, on hands and feet along one of the chief- most limbs, Tomas proceeded slowly from the left; meanwhile, holding onto the thick vines and the branches which partially obscured him from us beneath, Santiago moved in from the right. And all the while, the iguanal Descent From Olympus continued, showering us time and again, till one would think they must surely all have dived off by now — but both small green girls and (in effect) great grim old men might still be seen glaring and crawling and be heard scrabbling and clattering.

. Tomas struck — hurled his barbed harpoon — an archaic, primitive, and beautiful gesture, one which I had never expected to see in my life: alas, it failed of effect, a twig deflected it, staff and barb and line alike fell like stones into the water. And did not rise again.

This surprised me, rather. I was more greatly surprised, though, when I realized that the line was not devised ever to be used (as I had thought) as a snare — picturing something like the pole-and- loop the Mongols used to take wild ponies on the run. I was a bit disturbed on seeing that the staff was to be used as harpoon alone — and now my surprise as the whole apparatus sank like a stone, for, surely, the weight of the iron barb could not have been sufficient; perhaps some troll, or, likelier an irate garobo, is holding it under? — Curious, unlike systems in often use elsewhere, there was no device attached anywhere which floated to show the location of the sunken staff (and it’s called just that, “the staff”) -

Santiago did not strike as yet (and that’s what it is called, too, “to strike”), and Tomas called to us that he saw a mountain cow drinking of the river, upstream. Off we paddled, not particularly quietly, and, not surprisingly, the tapir wasn’t there when we were; though the signs of its having been there were evident. underbrush broken by its heavy body, soft muddy bank enprinted by its heavy feet. Indeed, the slots and slides of tapir are evident all along the river: I looked back and, just for a few seconds, before grass and tree and bush intervened, saw the odd black form on the side of the hill. too big for a pig, too low for a cow, making its way in a gait between a trot and a lumber; it looked wrong, somehow — didn’t look dangerous, just wrong— “There ought not to be such an animal,” was my instant half-thought; seen broadside, in broad day, I felt no more than that about it; but had I for the first time “seen” it out of the corner of an eye and no hint as to what it was, I might well have wound up in the tip top of the great fig tree before I had stopped making ik-ik-ik noises: Mountain cow, go away from my door.

Meanwhile, back at “the Iguana Church” (for such, I later learned from a knowledgeable and pretty Papal Volunteer, was the local name for the Monster Tree), Santiago had been stalking a monster garobo: no sooner had we glided up, he struck — and pierced — the dragonet; the barb entered and held in the skin beneath the spiny crest, the staff came loose, as was intended, and followed, clattering and slithering, held fast by the line, as the great garobo carried it after him into the underbrush. We shouted, pointed, Santiago saw the staff, seized it, hauled it in slowly and steadily by the line with one hand as, machete in the other, he chopped away at the concealing vegetation —

— and all this on the tree! for, as I have said, grass and shrub and thicket had all taken root and flourished on the great canting trunk and limbs —

Tomas came to his assistance. What a thrashing there was in the tree! And so at length down came Dragon, by a line tied around his lengthy tail, was firmly grasped by Chocho and Ranq’el, the Carib boatmen, one hand at the nape of the neck and one at the back abaft the hind legs. He was a monster, at least five feet long from the slate-blue/grey-mottled snout and wattled chin to the tip of his tapering orange-brown tail, and dull near-black stripes vertically along his body. whence the name of tiger iguana, and rather seldom seen in the United States. He was, it seemed to me, of a somewhat duller color than the bright buff dragons of the East Branch of the Belize — but, fo’ true, I never saw one of these last up close. And his spines (whose perceptible limpness at the moment made visible the basic meaning of “crestfallen”) lacked the red tips of the Cayo dragons.

The manner of his being rendered harmless was curious. “Pull the claw through the hole where you strike,” advised Mr. Faustino Z., who knew whereof he spoke. The barb only penetrated the skin just below the spinal crest and only went in a short distance, — through this orifice (which F.Z. assured me would soon heal: “We put some mud or ash on it; cure him good.”) one claw of each forelimb was passed, after the limbs had been drawn up behind and above. The hind legs were similarly fastened by making a slight incision in the spare skin of one of them and passing the claw of another through it. He was now, if not totally immobilized, at least semi-totally so, being able only to slither a wee bit on his belly. “Touch his back if you like “I don’t like-” but don’t go near his head. He can almost mangle off a man’s finger if he get it in his mouth. Now,” he said, turning to the Nature Boys, “buscamos una embrita — Let’s look for a little female.”

I demurred, suggesting that one was, after all, enough. that I didn’t intend to ranch the beasts, after all. But Mr. Z. merely smiled. “No, no, must have another. Can’t leave poor brute alone — no one to talk to? — no one to scratch his back? No, no. ” he shook his head reproachfully, and added, “Altogether against the Natural Law.” He, too, I perceived, had been well-educated by the Jesuits.

Going upstream a bit, close to the north bank, I observed the covert of the bamboo thickets to be alive with dragon. no wonder Mr. Chocho (or Mr. Ranq’el) called it “bamboo chicken”! Santiago stood in the prow with his lance poised: a young Tashtego. Often his fingers tightened, his muscles tensed. Then he relaxed, murmuring, “Es macho. macho. tambien. ” We seemed to see nothing but males. Had they sent the females to the rear? Were all the ladies in hiding? Shame, if so. since they are all members of the Lucy Stone League. Or is it that the larger size and greater strength of the males stands less in need of protective coloration? Or do the females need it most now because they are with egg? Perhaps when the eggs are laid, when the dry time comes, when the rivers droop and the grass grows sere, perhaps then the garobo would be as near-invisible as the iguana now.

Meanwhile, Mr. Chocho has been thinking things over for himself. “Next garobo you see, Viejo” he says, companionably to young Sanchez; “you can strike for me. We feast him tonight at the velorio. Yes, yes. ” The idea clearly pleases him, he comes to a visible and audible decision; and, with exactly the same firm tone of an Englishman ordering a brace of grouse from his poulterer, “Put me up two. ” So first one garobo is “struck” for the festal pot, then another. As these are not destined to live long, Santiago is under less need to be particular about his aim — Tomas, too, who takes the harpoon for the second strike (we had grappled for the sunken staff, in the river beneath The Tree, unsuccessfully: but Tomas knows just where it fell, and I have no doubt will recover it later, in his own good time). A big garobo is lanced next, the dory grounds, Santiago leaps ashore and reels him in, chopping away bush, but being careful not to chop line as well. Big — but not as big as mine. The barb has sunken deep behind the coin-shaped mark above the wattles. Santiago saws at the barb with his machete, and I wince — probably needlessly, for, although the brute receives the treatment with a good deal of sullenness, he doesn’t so much as hiss.

And, finally, after a second festal bamboo chicken is secured, a fine green iguana, perhaps a third of her promessi sposo’s bulk, is taken. “En la pierna!” cries the boy, pleased at having not pierced the trunk. “Good!” Mr. F.Z. declares. “Now they have someone to talk to, each of them.” But Mr. Chocho’s attitude is perhaps a shade less philanthropic, “She have red egg in her,” he says, and he eyes her hungrily.

The catch or prey is trussed as described before, and we slip downstream, dropping off Tomas first, then Santiago; their fee for a good two hours of incredible dexterity being so low I am ashamed to record it here. Down the broad river once again. “There is Bul,” says Mr. Zuniga. “You want to see Bul?” I say, so let me see Bul. The dory noses up the crumbly bank and I hop gingerly ashore. intrigued, frankly, at the prospect of getting ten acres of cleared land planted in fruit trees and improved with a several-roomed thatched house, for S300. As a bargain, it’s hard to beat. “Oranges ready to reap,” says my guide, waving his hand. “Oranges here, banana and plantains there. Cassava: make good bread, good eating by self. Over there, [alligator] pears. This one tree is star- apple.” Or was it rose-apple? Anyway, no resemblance to lichee at all: pulpy fruit, custardy, with limp seeds: odd, but not bad at all.

I allowed myself to fall into neo-colonial reveries and dreams. Devise ways to net and snare iguana and garobo, more saving both of their lives and of the time involved: ship them to the U.S. for sale. Use Bul Farm as a focal point, hire Indians to grow rice and pay them in milpa land-use. With profits, hire them further to clear bush from surrounding Crown lands available on location ticket. Grow coffee, hire Indian woman to roast and pound and package in bark “bags” such as they make for other uses: drive Nescafe from its pre-emptive position.

Float good building stone down from San Antonio along Mafredi Creek to Black Creek and thence along the Moho, using barges fabricated of rafts and empty gasoline-drums (Drums Along The Moho): make sound foundations and two-storey walls thereof, with beams and maybe roof of Santa Maria wood, and panels of cedar — adopt local use of partitions of pole and palm to allow internal circulation of air. Furniture of mahogany, of course, — locally so cheap that it’s often left to rot. Maya girl. Creole girl. East Indian girl. Spanish, Carib girls. Each with own small but sufficient plantation. Knocked-up and barefooted. Cattle gotten cheap and one by one, grazing in the rice paddy-lands after the harvest of grain. Patriarch. Marry grandchildren/cousins to each other, create new not-totally-dusky race. Populate Toledo with my seed.

A mosquito bites me. And another. And another. I ignore them, observing the incredibly attractive carpet of the plant called “Bleeding Heart,” leaves like green valentines bearing upon them as though press-printed a similar design in purple-red. “Well,” says F.Z., pointing. I see the well, an unwalled pit in the dirt, and, beyond, the close-lapping river. I ask, “Isn’t this rather low along the water?” He assures me it is not. “Even in flood, never come up past here,” he explains, his gesture including most of the visible environs. To him, floods are mere inevitabilities of no great matter, and mosquitoes obviously do not exist at all. How thick they are! Slap. Slap. Slapslapslap!

— The bubble bursts, the dream subsides into the Moho with a gentle plop. So perish all plans in the Toledo, put into practice or not. Gently, very gently. not necessarily with hurricanes. not even firmly: but invariably and inevitably and seemingly without exception, the Toledo defeats every plan larger than a plantain patch. How- long will it be before the bush takes over the rice-fields as it has taken over the old Confederate-planted sugar-fields? — tall trees now growing within the old stone walls the unreconstructable Rebels slowly built at Seven Hills, shouldering slowly aside the vasty flywheels, red with rust. Who knew this land first and best? The Mayans. And they abandoned it for a thousand years! Land which defeated even the humble and patient and toiling Mayas, how long before you would defeat me? — my rafts sunken, my dories stove, my crops washed away, my house blowm in, my women fled into Belize or the bush — Well, it wouldn’t take that long. One year of mosquitoes and no fresh books to read would do it.

“How sick and gaunt poor Llewelyn-Rhys looks,” I had commented in Punta Gorda. “Known him for years,” was the reply. “He looks much better now than he used to —!”

I lead the way down the crumbling bank to the boat. The day had been mostly overcast and cool, now' the sun came out and I donned my dark lenses. Mr. Faustino Zuniga dripped water on the dark dragon heads to cool them. Slowly the forest receded, the mangrove swamps resumed. “Is there no high land around here?” I enquired. He nodded. “Inland. or upstream. ” A gesture of a dark hand leftwards, where the mangroves parted to reveal another stretch of water. “That is called Amado Creek. it goes up to Crique Antonio: very high lands there.” And he told me of this tributary, and of that, and for further fading moment dream and dream-house glimmer faintly in the fading sun. Maybe I will return, I thought. some day. and trace each stream to its source and find Arcadia.

Only maybe not.