by Mike Resnick
I left Madame Sarcosa’s and headed across the street to where I’d seen Merry Bunta standing the day before, and tried to figure out where she could have vanished to so quick, and then I saw that she’d been standing in front of a hotel, so I walked in and asked the desk clerk where the Buntas were.
“Beats me, Señor,” he said with a shrug.
“Well, why don’t you look in your guest book and give me their room number?” I said. “And make it snappy, this being the first day of the rest of my life.”
“They checked out early this morning, Señor,” he said.
“Did they say where they was headed?”
“Inland, Señor, to Señor Bunta’s vast estate.”
“I don’t want to seem picky,” I said, “but the whole of South America is inland from here. You got any more specific address?”
“You don’t like inland?” he said. “How about dense, impenetrable jungle?”
“How does he get his mail?” I asked.
“He comes into town twice a year for it.” The clerk stared at me. “What business do you have with Señor Bunta?”
“None,” I said. “It’s his daughter I’m after.”
He nodded his head knowingly. “A lovely young girl,” he said. “And of course she’s in line to inherit the Bunta fortune.”
“Yeah?” I said. “How much is Old Man Bunta worth?”
“I do not know, Señor. But I know he doesn’t trust banks. He keeps it all in a strongbox on his estate.”
“You don’t say,” I said.
“I just did say.”
“And you ain’t got no idea how I can find him?”
He shrugged. “Just go inland and ask the natives.”
I thanked him for his time and walked back out into the street. I decided not to bother the desk clerk by checking out of my hotel, so I stopped by the local store, bought a toothbrush and a canteen, filled the canteen with beer, and I was ready to find the woman of my dreams, to say nothing of the family fortune.
I faced the west, so the Atlantic Ocean was behind me, and I figured I might as well start marching toward the setting sun, and keep doing it day in and day out until I finally ran into someone who could tell me where Merry Bunta lived.
The first full day was uneventful, and the next ten weren’t much different. I never saw a living soul, and truth to tell tapirs ain’t much for conversation. I crossed a couple of rivers, which were filled to overflowing with crocodiles or alligators—I couldn’t tell one from the other, but I ain’t never encountered one of either persuasion what didn’t have a lean and hungry look to him, with an emphasis on the hungry. Anyway, they’d chased all the snakes up onto solid ground, and some of ’em were more than a little bit reluctant to share it with me, so I started zigging and zagging, still heading west, but in a route that more resembled Merry Bunta’s outline than a straight course.
After another six days I came upon a village with a bunch of half-dressed little guys and their women. They must have been hunting monkeys, because they had a collection of little monkey heads that they seemed mighty proud of. They kept jabbering at me about them, but since none of ’em spoke American and I didn’t speak no Jabber, I never did find out what it was about these here monkey heads that got ’em so excited. Finally, after an hour or two, as we was sitting around a fire and watching the womenfolk cooking up a big pot of something, I figured I might as well see if any of ’em could help me on my romantic quest.
“Excuse me, Brother,” I said as one of ’em was jabbering about the weather, or maybe the snakes that had all kind of gathered around to listen and beg for scraps, “but I happen to be embarked on a search for the woman of my dreams, and I was wondering if any of you could point me in the right direction?”
They just kind of stared at me, so I kept on speaking.
“I know it ain’t too likely, you being a bunch of godless heathens what don’t speak no civilized language and probably eat your babies, but if anyone can just kind of point me in the direction of my lady love, whose name happens to be Merry Bunta, I’d be much obliged.”
Well, actually, I had planned to say “I’d be much obliged”, but before I could get the words out they’d all jumped to their feet and pointed off to the west.
“Merry Bunta! Merry Bunta!” they kept shouting.
I couldn’t believe my luck, that the first village I’d stumbled upon knew the woman what had captured my heart.
“Now, you’re sure?” I said.
They seemed pretty sure. They all kept pointing to the same spot and yelling “Merry Bunta!”
“Well, she sure seems to have established a fan following,” I said. “I want to thank you for your help, and now I think I’ll head off to find the rarest treasure all Brazil has to offer.”
And I took maybe three steps when two of the bigger ones grabbed my arms.
“Merry Bunta!” they yelled.
“Ain’t I going in the right direction?” I asked.
They pointed to the west. “Merry Bunta!”
“Then why are you holding me back?” I said. “I know these ain’t my Sunday-go-to-meeting duds, but I lost them in a game of chance back in Rio. Besides, once I declare my love, it shouldn’t make much difference to her, and anyway I figure neither of us are gonna stay dressed for long.”
I headed off again, and this time they just looked at me as if I committed some social error, like maybe I hadn’t brung no flowers to their womenfolk, but no one tried to stop me and I soon left the village far behind me.
I traveled west for a few more days. I couldn’t remember what berries was safe to eat, so I settled for cooking up some eggs I had found, and you wouldn’t believe how mad that made the anaconda what laid ’em, even though I’d left her a few hundred. So I figured I’d only eat fish eggs after that, which I seemed to remember was a pretty ritzy food back in the glittering capitols of Europe, but I guessed wrong again, and I found out that an enraged mama alligator can hold a grudge even longer than an angry mama anaconda. I found me a clutch of condor eggs, but as quick as I’d tap on the shell to bust ’em open, a baby condor would tap on his side of the shell, and before I could figure out what code we were conversing in, out he’d pop, and there went my breakfast. Not only that, but three of ’em decided I was their mama, and I had to keep feeding ’em all the insects I kept plucking out of my hair until they found a lady condor that seemed to be in the adoption business and went off with her.
I’d been getting myself pretty thoroughly lost, though I kept walking toward the setting sun, and just when I was sure I wasn’t never going to see another human being again, a passel of ’em burst out of the forest up ahead and started racing toward me, yelling, “Merry Bunta!”
“Well, I’ll be hornswoggled!” I said. “How did Merry know to send a greeting party for me?”
Strangely enough, not a one of ’em stopped to answer me. Instead, they just ran by me like I wasn’t there.
It was puzzling, but I finally decided I’d run into a tribe what was all near-sighted to a fault, and I kept on heading in my true love’s direction.
This here near-sightedness must have been catching, because before night fell I’d come across two more tribes what kept yelling Merry Bunta’s name and running right past me, and I figgered that once I’d found Merry and built my tabernacle, I’d import the best optometrist in Brazil once me and God reimbursed ourselves for expenses.
The next morning I came to one lone little guy, wearing a loincloth and not much else. He ran right up to me like Satan was hot on his heels and began repeating Merry’s name over and over.
“Hold on, Brother,” I said, grabbing his wrist before he could break into a run again. “Can you tell me where I can find Merry Bunta and her father?”
He pointed back the way he’d come. “Merry Bunta! Merry Bunta!” he hollered.
“Fine,” I said. “Lead the way.”
He got kind of panicky and began trying to pull me in the other direction.
He nodded his head vigorously. “Merry Bunta!” he said.
“Well, fine, then,” I said. “Let’s go.”
He tried to break loose again, and finally it dawned on me. There wasn’t nothing wrong with anyone’s eyesight. They just all figured that none of ’em had a chance with Merry when matched up against a handsome young buck like myself, and they were just clearing out because they knew after one look that the race to Merry’s heart was already won.
“Okay, Brother,” I said. “I understand your motives, and I approve of them. But I ain’t met no one what’s stuck around more than ten or twelve seconds, and I’m gonna be needing a best man, and failing that a best little feller in a loincloth, so why don’t you come along with me, and I promise if you stick around we’ll invite you over to dinner of a Sunday at least twice a year.”
He pulled all the harder to get free of me.
“All right,” I said. “It’d fair break your heart to be in the vicinity of such blonde beauty and know it’s been spoken for. I can sympathize with that. Only one of us can win her delicate ladylike hand and all the good stuff that it’s attached to. Go on your way, little friend, and no hard feelings.”
I let him go. He looked at me like I was crazy, and headed off in the general direction of Madrid and Paris, though of course Rio was in the way.
As I walked I realized that Old Man Bunta must be a pretty good hand with a rifle, because suddenly I couldn’t hear a single bird singing. In another couple of hours I figgered that he had about as big an appetite as I’d ever encountered, because not only wasn’t there nothing with wings left in the area, but there wasn’t nothing with legs neither, not tapirs, not deer, not sloths, not even monkeys. I decided that I approved, because the sooner he et himself to death the sooner I could share his strongbox with Merry. Then I figgered that I didn’t want her worrying her pretty blonde head about such weighty matters, and it made more sense for me to just handle whatever was in the box myself.
After another five miles I began to realize that most of the money from the strongbox was gonna have to be spent on seed and fertilizer, because there wasn’t nothing growing—not even a blade of grass. The trees was dead, the bushes didn’t have no leaves left on them, and I couldn’t see nary a flower.
I was still puzzling on why Merry and her father would want to live in a place like this when I finally saw a house off in the distance, and I knew I’d reached my destination at last.
There was a little stream betwixt me and the house, and I knelt down next to it and doused my head in the water. Then I plucked a fish from where it had latched onto my nose and slicked my hair back with my hands, which was the best I could do since I’d left my comb back at the hotel in Rio. For a minute I thunk of taking a quick dip, since I’d been wearing the same duds for months and hadn’t had ’em washed since my last friendly visit to Madame Sarcosa’s, but I figgered if I did that I’d have to wait a couple of hours for ’em to dry, and I was too anxious to take Merry Bunta in my arms, so I just kept running my hands through my hair til it didn’t run into no more six-legged intruders, and then I set off to meet the love of my life.
I’d just about reached the house when an old guy with a shotgun opened the door and stared at me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, stepping out onto the porch.
“I’m here to pay court to your daughter, the most beautiful flower in all of God’s South American garden,” I said, and then added: “That is, if you’re Harvey Bunta, and if you ain’t, you might as well start packing your things right now, because nothing’s gonna stop me from hooking up with the delectable Merry.”
“Are you mad?” he said, kind of wide-eyed and surprised that a rival would footslog this far into the wilderness just to beat his time with Merry.
“Mad with passion,” I said. And then, since there was still a possibility that he was her father and not a suitor, I clarified it by saying, “With an all-encompassing and almost-Platonic passion.”
“You are a fool!” he snapped. “Didn’t you see all those men heading toward Rio on your way here?”
“You mean all them little guys in their South American skivvies?” I said. “Yeah, I kept running into them.”
“Didn’t you pay any attention to them?”
“Sure did,” I answered. “I kept asking where I could find Merry Bunta, and they kept pointing me in this direction.”
“Idiot!”
“That ain’t no way to talk to your future son-in-law, or maybe your rival, depending on who you are, which you ain’t told me yet.”
“I’m Harvey Bunta, and you are either the dumbest man I’ve ever met or else you’ve got yourself a real sweet tooth for punishment.”
“Aw, come on, Harvey—or should I call you Dad?—this ain’t no way for us to begin our relationship.”
“Not to worry,” he said grimly. “It’ll end in a day or two.”
I looked at his shotgun. “You ain’t thinking of trying to run me off, are you?”
“Idiot!” he said again. “You’re stuck here. We’re all stuck here!”
“I can’t imagine what you find so attractive about this here place, Harvey,” I said. “Ain’t nothing growing for miles around.”
“This place was greener than you can imagine just two days ago,” he said. “Why the hell didn’t you listen to those natives?”
“I did,” I told him, getting a little hot under the collar that he wasn’t taking my word for it. “I kept asking ’em where I could find Merry Bunta, and they kept pointing me in this direction.”
“Didn’t you wonder why they were all racing hell for leather in the opposite direction?”
I didn’t want to give him the real reason, because I didn’t want no prospective father-in-law to think I was stuck on myself when nothing could be farther from the truth, so I just said that I figgered it was payday and they were all racing off to Rio to spend their money.
“They were running away,” he said.
“From sweet little Merry Bunta?” I scoffed.
“From marabunta.”
“That’s what I said,” I told him.
“Marabunta,” he repeated, and spelled it for me. “Not Merry Bunta.”
“There’s a difference?” I asked.
“Merry Bunta is my daughter,” he said. “Marabunta are army ants. We’re surrounded by about six billion of ’em.”
“Six billion?” I repeated. “I guess that’s too many for you to stomp on ’em, huh?”
He just glared at me.
“So where are they now?” I asked.
“Their main force is about a mile to the south of us,” he said, “and it’s headed this way. There’s another bunch that’s been approaching from the west. They eat everything in their path.”
I figgered it was too bad Rosie Sanchez wasn’t here, because I had long since come to the conclusion that nothing could eat her beans and tortillas and survive.
“Well, Dad Harvey,” I said, “if it’s a war they want, it’s a war they’ll get.”
“You call me Dad Harvey again, and the first thing they’ll get is your buckshot-riddled corpse.”
“These here ants are making you kind of tense,” I said. “That ain’t no way to talk to your future son-in-law.”
“I take great comfort in the fact that you and I will both be dead by sunset tomorrow,” said Harvey. “I’m only sorry that Merry will also die beneath the marabuntas’ onslaught.”
That got my fighting blood up, because I was bound and determined that nothing was gonna crawl all over Merry’s ripe young body before I did, and I decided it was time to start coming up with a plan of action.
“You got any gasoline, Harvey?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I figger we’ll pour it on the marabunta and set fire to it.”
“I got si
x gallons of gas. There’s seven billion ants out there.”
“I thunk you said six billion,” I said.
“They multiply fast,” he answered.
“Can they swim?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Harvey. “I’m usually so busy watching out for alligators and anacondas and the like when I’m in my boat that I don’t pay much attention to what kind of insects are frolicking in the water.”
“Well, even if we can’t kill ’em all,” I said, “at least we can discourage ’em.”
“Yeah? How?” he asked.
“You say the main body of the enemy is coming from the south, right?” I said. “I’ll just set a fire betwixt us and them, and that ought to discourage them.”
“Just how long do you think three gallons of gasoline will burn?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But even after it goes out, the ground figgers to be mighty hot on their tender little ant bellies.”
He shrugged. “What the hell. The gas is in canisters around the side of the house. Go get it.”
I got three gallons of gas and brung it back with me.
“Now, where’s the delectable Merry?” I asked. “I wouldn’t want to trap her on the wrong side of the fire.”
“She’s in the house,” he said.
“Fixing some vittles, I hope?” I said.
“Nah, just sitting there shaking like a leaf. The thought of being et alive by a bunch of godless insects put her off her feed.”
“Well, you can tell her not to worry, now that Lucifer Jones is on the scene.”
“You’re Lucifer Jones?” he said, surprised. “I heard about a Lucifer Jones while I was in Rio, but I guess you can’t be the same one.”
“Why not?”
“You ain’t been lynched yet.”
I figgered I’d explain all them misunderstandings later, but the main thing now was to get the war underway, so I walked about half a mile south and parceled out the gasoline, spreading it as far as I could. Then I sat down and waited, and it wasn’t too long before the enemy showed up in force just atop the next rise, so I lit a match and tossed it onto the ground, and two seconds later there was a blaze you could have roasted half a dozen dinosaurs in.