“A candlenut.”
“What’s a candlenut?”
“Smitty can figure it out.”
Theodore gave him an odd look.
“You be a good buddy now and go on.”
The kid stood there, looking as if he wanted to argue.
“Buddies, remember?”
Theodore looked down and crammed some nuts into his pockets, then picked up the bat. He gave it one last look of longing before he ran back through the trees.
And Hank stood there, staring at nothing but an old memory.
* * *
Muddy flewlow overthe jungle, darting in and out of the tall ebony trees and flying around a giant banyan with a crown as big as a mosque. He circled above a figure, a tall man with black hair, who stood near a candlenut tree as stiff and unmoving as a statue.
Drifting on the trade wind, Muddy circled, then flew down and lit on the upper branches of a nearby dragon tree with thick foliage, a squat shape, and a branch with a view of the clearing.
Finally Hank shifted, bending and picking up a broken branch from an ebony tree. He gripped the branch in two hands, then shook it slightly as if he were testing the weight of it. He rested it on his shoulder like a bat. And again he stood there, silent and looking angry.
He grabbed one of the candlenuts from the three-foot pile, tossed it high in the air, and swung. He hit it. The nut sailed over the trees like a home run.
He picked up another nut and slammed it east. Another and slammed it south. Another and slammed it north. He hit pop flies. He hit fouls. He hit every nut in the pile. Again and again, like fly balls.
When the nuts were gone, he let the branch drop to the ground. He leaned on it while he tried to catch a breath. Sweat glistened from his forearms, forehead, and face, and poured down his neck and temples.
Muddy heard a slight rustling and looked down. Margaret stood beneath the dragon tree with Theodore. Muddy watched them, wondering what they would do. She held onto Theodore’s small skinny arm, then bent toward the boy and lifted a finger to her lips, signaling him to be quiet. She waved him back into the trees, taking easy, quiet steps backward. They just stood there, watching.
Hank didn’t move. He was still bent over the branch like a tree broken by a wind too strong.
Theodore stared at him as if he’d lost his best friend. Very quietly he looked up at Margaret and said, “Hank said he didn’t know how to play baseball.”
She pulled Theodore back a bit closer to the tree trunk and whispered, “Let’s leave him alone for now, okay?”
“But he said he couldn’t teach me. He said he didn’t know how.”
“I know, sweetie.”
“Just like he saidhedidn’t know how to be a dad.”She looked down at the boy and held out her hand.”And he forgot the question game. He forgot. He never forgets. It’s like a circle.”
“Hank has some troubles on his mind, Theodore. I don’t think he forgot on purpose.”
Theodore’s expression said he didn’t understand. He turned and looked back at Hank one last time, then, his head hanging down, he slid his hand into Margaret’s and they turned and walked away.
Muddy watched them leave and quietly move into the dense thick jungle. They had only gone a few feet when Theodore began to cry.
26
The next morning Lydia announced that Christmas was four days away.
Sitting outside the hut, the group looked at her. Hank had been showing Theodore how to tie knots in a line they would be using to fish. Annabelle was tethered to Margaret while she tried to scrape burned breakfast from a skillet. And Lydia was playing with a clocklike contraption with sand and water vials, a maze, and a pulley. It made strange sounds—gurgles, the hiss of falling sand, and achink-chinksound when one of the cog wheels turned. She had brought the gadget out of Muddy’s bottle for entertainment.
“I figured out what it is,” Lydia announced. “It’s a timepiece.” She pointed to a wheel with levers. “Look.”
