Outlaw in India by Philip Roy

Author:Philip Roy
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Ronsdale Press
Published: 2012-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I SMELLED COFFEE. Melissa was awake. I looked down at Hollie and he looked up at me. “There are snakes here, Hollie. Snakes. Watch out for snakes, okay?”

There was a wooden veranda that wrapped around the house. The branches of trees reached down and touched it as if the trees were trying to make the house part of the forest. The monkeys had the run of the roof. I didn’t trust those monkeys. I didn’t know why, but there was something about their movement that just struck me as untrustworthy. They were small, brown, skinny monkeys with long tails. They ran around quickly, stopped suddenly and stared to see if we were watching, as if they were hiding something. Hollie sniffed at them from the ground. I didn’t think he trusted them either. “Watch out for the monkeys too, Hollie.” I knew that he would.

We stepped onto the porch and our feet made hollow drum sounds, almost like music. Melissa came to the door and spoke from the other side of a dark mosquito screen. “Well. You made it up the river all right. Where is your boat?”

“I tied it to your boathouse.”

“Yes, well, you will have to remove my boat first before you can put yours inside. You can tie mine up on the riverbank for the while. Do come in. I’ve just made coffee.”

We left our sneakers on the porch and entered the house in bare feet. Melissa’s house was beautiful inside. At a glance it looked like a museum to me. There was lots of really old, fancy, carved furniture. There were paintings, tapestries and photographs on the walls— mostly old ones, and some very beautiful ones. There was one photograph in particular, of a young woman standing in a field, staring out at the vastness. The girl reminded me of Melissa in a way, and I wondered if it was her when she was young. She led us into the kitchen where we sat down at the table, and she served us very dark coffee with cream and sugar. Radji was shy about coming inside. He watched me put cream and sugar in my coffee and did everything exactly the way I did it. Melissa put a plate of cookies in front of us and I took one, broke a piece off and gave it to Hollie, so Radji did the same.

“How big is your boat?” I asked.

“Not so big. I suppose it is fifteen feet or so. It is a rowboat. It is very old but very dependable. My father had it for years and years before me. That is the way things are in India— people keep things for a very long time.”

I took a bite of the cookie. It was old too. “When did you move here?”

“What, to this house?”

“No, to India.”

She looked at me strangely. “My dear young man, I was born here. I’ve lived in India all my life, except for a few years in a finishing school in London. Awful place!”

“Oh.

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