Read Conquering Kilmarni for Free Online Page B

could be pretty heavy. That day each man would make quite a few trips from the yard to field six before the workday ended.
    Dressed, Peter found his father eating breakfast and sat down with him. Miss Lorrie brought him a grapefruit from one of Kilmarnie's own trees, then a plate of ackee and breadfruit. Both of those, too, grew on trees. To Peter the ackee tasted for all the world like scrambled eggs, and he was especially fond of breadfruit when Miss Lorrie roasted it first and then fried it in butter. He had learned at Knox that the first ackee seeds had come to the island in a slave ship, and the first breadfruit trees had been brought from the Pacific island of Tahiti by Captain William Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame, six years after the mutiny.
    Mr. Devon joked about the breadfruit that morning, saying that to him it tasted like an old sponge in disguise. Peter was relieved to see him so lighthearted. Perhaps his thoughts were on the new coffee trees. Or had the coming of Zackie Leonard into their lives begun to make a change in him, even if he didn't want it to? Whatever the answer, Peter fervently hoped the mood would last.
    "You'll be going up to field six, won't you, Dad?" he asked when they had finished breakfast.
    Mr. Devon nodded.
    "You mind if I come along?"
    "I was hoping you'd want to."
    On reaching the field, they walked together through the older coffee trees, now six to eight feet tall and heavy with green cherries, to the new section that was to be planted. Under Mr. Campbell's supervision, women were already at work planting the young trees that had been carried up from the yard.
    Peter stood beside one of the women and watched her. Kneeling in front of a hole dug days earlier with a fork, she first loosened the dark earth in the bottom of it with both hands. Then she stripped the black plastic "pot" off the young tree, placed the tree in the hole, and carefully refilled what was left of the hole with the earth that had been forked out. The last thing she did was stand up and press the replaced earth with her feet, on which she wore sandals with thick leather soles.
    "You want to do one?" she asked Peter.
    "Hey, yes!" Peter replied eagerly. "Yes, ma'am!"
    She stood by and watched him, correcting him when he would have planted the tree too deep, and he was just finishing the job when he heard a familiar series of shrill yelps. Turning, he saw Zackie Leonard's crazy Mongoose racing along the line of women, barking a happy greeting at each one. Zackie himself, with a machete in one hand, was talking to Dad and Mr. Campbell.
    They were close enough for Peter to hear what they were saying. Mr. Devon, it seemed, had asked the headman if there might be some kind of job for Zackie, and Mr. Campbell was sort of thinking out loud about it. "Well," Mr. Campbell said, "there is one thing he can do for us, maybe. The main track could stand bushing out, especially in those high fields from twenty-six on up. There's a lot of ferrel creeping in there." He turned to scowl at Zackie. "You think you can handle a job that big? We pay by the chain." A chain, Peter knew, was a measure of length.
    "Yes, suh." Zackie solemnly held up his machete. "Nobody is better than me with one of these."
    The headman smiled. "I can think of a couple of grown men who might be a bit better. But all right. Start at twenty-six, and I'll come up later to see how you're getting on."
    Peter stepped forward. "Dad, will it be all right if I go with him?"
    "You?" Mr. Devon said. "Why?"
    "I ought to learn how to use a machete, don't you think?"
    A heavy frown changed the shape of Mr. Devon's face. "You ought to do what?"
    "I mean it, Dad. All the kids here know how."
    "You don't have a machete."
    "I can get one back at the house." Dad didn't actually supply the workers, but did keep a few machetes in the garage in case one got broken. To a Jamaican countryman such a tool was a very personal thing. He bought his own, shaped the wooden handle to suit