Orson Card - 27 Short Stories

later."

He came back in, carrying the wadded-up sheet, just as she was leaving. "All done here," she said. "We'll stop by my house to start that soaking. I'll carry it now." He didn't hand it to her. "I've got it," he said. "Aren't you going to give her a clean sheet?" "There are only four sheets in the village," she said. "Two of them are on my bed. She

won't mind lying on the mat. I'm the only one in the village who cares about linens. I'm also the only one who cares about this girl." "She likes you," he said. "She smiles like that at everybody.

"So maybe she likes everybody." Anamari grunted and led the way to her house. It was two government hovels pushed together. The one served as her clinic, the other as her home. Out back she had two

metal washtubs. She handed one of them to the Yanqui boy, pointed at the rainwater tank, and told him to fill it. He did. It made her furious. "What do you want!" she demanded. "Nothing," he said. "Why do you keep hanging around!''

"I thought I was helping." His voice was full of injured pride. "I don't need your help." She forgot that she had meant to leave the sheet to soak. She began rubbing it on the washboard.

"Then why did you ask me to ..." She did not answer him, and he did not complete the question. After a long time he said, "You were trying to get rid of me, weren't you?" "What do you want here?" she said. "Don't I have enough to do, without a Norteamericano

boy to look after?"

Anger flashed in his eyes, but he did not answer until the anger was gone. "If you're tired of scrubbing, I can take over." She reached out and took his hand, examined it for a moment. "Soft hands," she said.

"Lady hands. You'd scrape your knuckles on the washboard and bleed all over the sheet." Ashamed, he put his hands in his pockets. A parrot flew past him, dazzling green and red;

he turned in surprise to look at it. It landed on the rainwater tank. "Those sell for a thousand dollars in the States," he said. Of course the Yanqui boy evaluates everything by price. "Here they're free," she said.

"The Baniwas eat them. And wear the feathers."

He looked around at the other huts, the scraggly gardens. "The people are very poor here," he said. "The jungle life must be hard." "Do you think so?" she snapped. "The jungle is very kind to these people. It has plenty for

them to eat, all year. The Indians of the Amazon did not know they were poor until Europeans came and made them buy pants, which they couldn't afford, and built houses, which they couldn't keep up, and plant gardens. Plant gardens! In the midst of this magnificent Eden. The jungle life was good. The Europeans made them poor."

"Europeans?" asked the boy. "Brazilians. They're all Europeans. Even the black ones have turned European. Brazil is just another European country, speaking a European language. Just like you Norteamericanos. You're Europeans too."

"I was born in America," he said. "So were my parents and grandparents and great- grandparents." "But your bis-bis-avos they came on a boat."

"That was a long time ago," he said. "A long time!" She laughed. "I am a pure Indian. For ten thousand generations I belong to this land. You are a stranger here. A fourth-generation stranger."

"But I'm a stranger who isn't afraid to touch a dirty sheet," he said. He was grinning defiantly. That was when she started to like him. "How old are you?" she asked. "Fifteen," he said.

"Your father's a geologist?" "No. He heads up the drilling team. They're going to sink a test well here. He doesn't think they'll find anything, though."

"They will find plenty of oil," she said. "How do you know?" "Because I dreamed it," she said. "Bulldozers cutting down the trees, making an airstrip,

and planes coming and going. They'd never do that, unless they found oil. Lots of oil."

She waited for him to make fun of the idea of dreaming true dreams. But he didn't. He just looked at her. So she was the one who broke the silence. "You came to this village to kill time while your

father is away from you, on the job, right?"

"No," he said. "I came here because he hasn't started to work yet. The choppers start bringing in equipment tomorrow." "You would rather be away from your father?" He looked away. "I'd rather see him in hell."

"This is hell," she said, and the boy laughed. "Why did you come here with him?" "Because I'm only fifteen years old, and he has custody of me this summer." "Custody," she said. "Like a criminal." "He's the criminal," he said bitterly. "And his crime?" He waited a moment, as if deciding whether to answer. When he spoke, he spoke quietly

and looked away. Ashamed. Of his father's crime. "Adultery," he said. The word hung in the air. The boy turned back and looked her in the face again. His face was tinged with red.

Europeans have such transparent skin, she thought. All their emotions show through. She guessed a whole story from his words, beloved mother betrayed, and now he had to spend the summer with her betrayer. "Is that a crime?"

He shrugged. "Maybe not to Catholics." "You're Protestant?" He shook his head. "Mormon. But I'm a heretic." She laughed. "You're a heretic, and your father is an adulterer." He didn't like her laughter. "And you're a virgin," he said. His words seemed calculated to

hurt her. She stopped scrubbing, stood there looking at her hands. "Also a crime?" she murmured. "I had a dream last night," he said. "In my dream your name was Anna Marie, but when I

tried to call you that, I couldn't. I could only call you by another name." "What name?" she asked. "What does it matter? It was only a dream." He was taunting her. He knew she trusted in

dreams. "You dreamed of me, and in the dream my name was Anamari?" "It's true, isn't it? That is your name, isn't it?" He didn't have to add the other half of the

question: You are a virgin, aren't you?

She lifted the sheet from the water, wrung it out and tossed it to him. He caught it, vile water spattering his face. He grimaced. She poured the washwater onto the dirt. It spattered mud all over his trousers. He did not step back. Then she carried the tub to the water tank and began to fill it with dean water. "Time to rinse," she said.

"You dreamed about an airstrip," he said. "And I dreamed about you." "In your dreams you better start to mind your own business," she said. "I didn't ask for it, you know," he said. "But I followed the dream out to this village, and you

turned out to be a dreamer, too."

"That doesn't mean you're going to end up with your pinto between my legs, so you can forget it," she said. He looked genuinely horrified. "Geez, what are you talking about! That would be

fornication! Plus you've got to be old enough to be my mother!" "I'm forty-two," she said. "If it's any of your business." "You're older than my mother," he said. "I couldn't possibly think of you sexually. I'm sorry

if I gave that impression." She giggled. "You are a very funny boy, Yanqui. First you say I'm a virgin-•, "That was in the dream," he said. "And then you tell me I'm older than your mother and too ugly to think of me sexually." He looked at her ashen with shame. "I'm sorry, I was just trying to make sure you knew

that I would never-" "You're trying to tell me that you're a good boy." "Yes," he said. She giggled again. "You probably don't even play with yourself," she said. His face went red. He struggled to find something to say. Then he threw the wet sheet

back at her and walked furiously away. She laughed and laughed. She liked this boy very

much. The next morning he came back and helped her in the clinic all day. His name was Sam Monson, and he was the first European she ever knew who dreamed true dreams. She had thought only Indios could do that. Whatever god it was that gave her dreams to her, perhaps it was the same god giving dreams to Sam. Perhaps that god brought them together here in the jungle. Perhaps it was that god who would lead the drill to oil, so that Sam's father would have to keep him here long enough to accomplish whatever the god had in mind.