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