know. Something to look forward to. . . .”
Jo groaned. “It was a lot easier back when I was setting up these classes than now when I have to teach them!”
“Yes, that’s always the way. But you’re so industrious, you’ll keep on plugging.”
Jo groaned again. “Yeah, that’s what’s worrying me.”
Dad laughed, “Okay, honey, I’m off.”
Jo got up, went over and hugged her father. “Thank you, Dad, so much for helping out. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re so busy—this is so sweet of you.”
“Honey, there’s nothing more important to me than you and your brother and sisters. In whatever and whenever you need me, you know I’m there for you.”
“I know, Dad. And I’m here for you too.”
“Yes, Jo, you are—you’re always there for everybody.”
“Hmmummm,” cleared a throat at the door. “Miss Archer, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course, Mr. Fennelman. How is that student you are tutoring coming along?”
“Slowly, slowly,” said Lawrence, tousling his few front strands of hair and sidling up next to Jo.
“I’ll see you later,” winked Dad, starting for the door.
“Just a second, Dad,” cried Jo in desperation, “You’ve been teaching for so long, I think you can help us with this question.”
Lawrence frowned, as Jo dragged her father back into the room. “Well,” said James Archer, eyeing his daughter with a “Thanks a lot!” look. “So, what seems to be the trouble, Lawrence?”
Lawrence fumbled around for something to say, as Jo shuffled up the papers on her desk—now, if she could just make her escape, while Dad had him occupied. A furtive glance, a stealthy stealing along the wall, and Jo slipped out the door and fled. The letter went with her, unnoticed.
2
At the same time Jo was slipping out of the door of her classroom at David B, a world away in the land of Jo’s birth—the Dominican Republic—Basil and Starling Heitz were racing out of Puerto Plata as quickly as their rattle trap of an unreturned rental pickup truck could take them. The cause was a “misunderstanding” between them and a prospective investor over some salted iron pyrite in what they had purported to be a vein of gold begging to be mined on some otherwise nearly worthless terrain that they claimed to own in the usually lush farm land of the Cibao region.
Puerto Plata is a lovely, tourist-oriented city on the northern coast of the island of Hispaniola, renowned for its all-inclusive resorts, its golf courses, and its longtime, old-moneyed visitors, all of whom, as a village policy, were protected by the local policia. As a consequence, the Heitzes were speeding off into the interior on little Route 5. Their plan: cross the mountains before nightfall, work their way along the border of Haiti, and lose themselves in the peninsula that extended down to the generally undeveloped south, where they would definitely not be known. Here, in what they’d heard were the comfortable little cities of Pedernales and Barahona, they would once again see what fortune would bring.
So far it had not brought them much. They had come to the Dominican Republic after reading about a recent discovery of the gold that had eluded Columbus and his soldiers of fortune so long ago. Of course, they imagined themselves in a plush tropical paradise surrounded by millionaires who would throw money at them. They’d begun in La Romana, a city beloved by tourists as well as humanitarian and church mission groups, but nothing developed. The government years before had hired a Canadian firm to mine the gold and dreams of being 49ers Latin-style evaporated as fast as their meager capital. Puerta Plata beckoned, so they traveled north, but that was disastrous. So here they were at this moment, somewhere west of the mountain village of Platanal, as Route 5 yielded to a precarious winding road, identified only with the number 18, that went up and up and up. Dusk began encroaching upon the mountain fastness like a bad case of disclosure, until both of the erstwhile bunco stock conspirators realized that hiding in the hills was a very poor idea—to say the least. Star was the first to speak.
“What a dump!” she grumbled. “There’s like absolutely nothing up here! There’s not even like a gas station. There’s no restaurants. There’s no nothing!”
Basil offered a suggestion. “Shut up!” he growled.
“I will not! If you hadn’t oversold him, we would be at the casino right now.”
“Me? Me? You were the one talking about gold prices and the government disenchantment with the Canadians and how, if we just offered them four pesos out of every ten, we could clean up!”
“Well, you weren’t bringing it home! You knew he had some kind of surveyor set to check it out and some lawyer looking at the documents. What’d you imagine they were gonna find when they checked out our coordinates?”
“Well, how was I to know that old guy was sharper than he looked?”
“You never figure out anything in time. You just push on and on until the whole thing blows up.”
Basil glowered at her, but he had no answer to that, and they settled into a grim and completely unsatisfying temporary ceasefire, both licking their recent wounds, which cut a lot deeper than this little common skirmish.
Presently, Star said, “Bo, I’m scared. These roads are so little and there’s no lights and there’s no guard rails. The sides are falling away and it’s a sheer drop over the side. We haveta stop!”
Basil strained into the darkness. “I don’t like it either. We got gas—I look ahead—not like you said. But you’re right this time. We could run off the side and no one would find us.”
The little truck rolled slowly to a halt in the center of what now looked like a tiny path. There was no sound but the wind.
“I can’t see anything.” Basil opened the door and began feeling his way up the path. He came back almost immediately. “I don’t think anybody’s gonna come this way tonight. There’s no place to stay. We gotta make do.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Me too.”
“Where we gonna sleep?”
“Well,” said Basil pointedly, “we could pile the suitcases out on the roadside and stretch out in the truck bed.”
“Not on your life,” snapped Star. “Not my suitcases! They stay safe in the back. You can stretch out on the ground.”
“Right! And get eaten alive by mosquitos.”
“Well, what’s your plan?”
“We’ll just start at dawn.”
A night cramped in their little rental with the mosquitos banging against the windows like suicide bombers did little to improve their disposition. Morning entered gently like a blessing. Basil simply woke up, started the truck, and was winding down through little clusters of country houses when Star finally woke.
“Where’d
