81. Marriage Proposal

81.

Marriage Proposal

There’s a sixteen-year-old Peruvian girl in first class who has been flirting with me.

She’s cute, with gold-capped teeth which sort of sets off her pretty smile.

Her brother, a youth of fourteen, tells me she wants to marry me and even produces an engagement ring which he has made of glass beads and copper wire.

I’m flattered. Wouldn’t she make a terrific souvenir of the Amazon Jungle?

But when the captain hears of the proposed engagement, he banishes me to the steerage below. It seems he has his own plans for the girl, but he shouldn’t be so greedy. He’s already got three young girls living with him in his cabin!

I spend the last night aboard with the common herd below in “Second Class”. I have taken the whole marriage proposal thing as the harmless play of some kids, but I find out the girl is absolutely serious. Sixteen is the proper age for a woman to marry down here and she is looking for a suitable man and I qualify.

Some of the boat’s crew has heard about the proposed marriage and follow me below and hassle me in various ways. They want to see how tough Americans really are and I am the only one handy. I am pretty weak from more or less constant diarrhea and am no fighter anyway but I manage to bluff my way out of any violence--lucky for me since I would certainly lose! I am also more or less saved from the toughies by the sighting of city lights in the distance: Iquitos—the end of the journey for this boat.

...