Paul Theroux - The Lower River

Hock saw his chance to save himself, to get close enough to appeal for help. He was sure he was visible from the helicopter — how hard was it to pick out a tall white man in a bush shirt and tattered trousers, a bag in one hand, a fat snake wrapped around his right arm, which he held forward like a weapon?

The boy in the baseball cap pushed ahead of him, elbowing his way through the mass of children. Now that the rotor blades had stopped and the engine was silenced, only the music played — thumping joyous music — and the children who had been hanging back rushed toward the chopper, into the risen dust, making more dust, crowding Hock and nearly knocking him down.

“Over here!” he called to the man and woman in the open doorway. How clean they looked, how outlandish in their dress, the man in the cowboy hat and boots, the blond woman in her skintight suit. “Help me!”

They began tossing boxes and bags to the children who were nearest to them. At first they handed them over, but within seconds the children were fighting over them, and the man in the cowboy hat became frantic, flinging the bags, kicking the boxes out of the helicopter door, as though to distract the frenzied children.

The children, maddened by the sight of the bags, tore at each other.

“Please — help me,” Hock cried out, waving his bag. He relaxed his other arm, and the children near him, reaching for the bags, jostled his arm, bumping the snake. Feeling its coils loosen — the snake was blinded by the dust — Hock let go of its head and allowed it to drop into the dust. The snake’s whipping back and forth on the ground panicked a small knot of children, who kicked at it and stamped on it, crushing its head.

Even pushing as hard as he could, Hock made little progress against the small bodies so tightly packed ahead of him. Some children nearer the helicopter had begun to climb aboard, bracing themselves on the skids and clinging to the struts, attempting to crawl through the legs of the man and woman at the door.

Hock was shouting but could not hear his voice over the loud yada-boom, yada-boom. Tripped by the small battering bodies, he fell to his knees among the struggling children with dust on their sweat-smeared faces. Now kneeling, he was the height of a child himself.

He could see the man and woman clearly: the man’s expensive sunglasses and clean cowboy hat, the woman’s red lips, gleaming makeup, and unusually white teeth. Another man stood beside them with a video camera, shooting them, shooting out the door. Now the man in the cowboy hat was kicking at the children, fending them off with bags of food, and the woman was trying to keep her balance. She was open-mouthed, perhaps shrieking in fear, but all Hock could hear was the yada-boom. She looked clownish, costumed, like the man, dressed as though for a party or a concert, in great contrast to the mass of small children in dirty T-shirts, clawing at one another.

All this time the music played, energetic pumping rhythms that drowned out the children’s shouts and the woman’s shriek and the voices of the men at the helicopter door who seemed to be yelling at each other. No voices were audible, but the open mouths and wild eyes made it a scene of pure panic in the growing dust cloud.

Still trying to make himself heard, Hock got to his feet and fought on, stepping over the children, pushing others aside. His effort had the absurd indignity of a dream, all irrational and unreal, and what made it more dream-like was his slowness, his pathetic helplessness, and that he was ignored, humiliated, unable to call attention to himself.

The man in the cowboy hat met Hock’s eyes and lifted his sunglasses to verify with his own surprised gaze the sight of this frantic white man. He seemed to lean over, as though what he was seeing was not quite believable. He said something to the man behind him. But he had a pale debauched face, and there was no sympathy in the set of his jaw, and when he let his sunglasses slip down over his eyes and turned to throw more bags from the helicopter, at the same time kicking out at the climbing children, Hock flung himself forward.

“Help!” Hock screamed. He felt the strain in his throat without hearing the word, because now the music was overwhelmed by the roar of the engine, the chatter of the rotor blades as they began to turn. Turning faster, they stirred more dust, and the dust engulfed the children and the field while Hock hugged his bag to his chest. Two children dropped from the skids where they had been hanging. Yak-yak-yak-yak-yak, the helicopter rose into the sun, which cast an eerie glow through the dust; it was like a beetle swallowed by a storm cloud.

The rotor’s yakking diminished, the music grew softer, and the yelps of the children grew louder as they fought over the bags and boxes strewn on the ground. Seeing that they were occupied in this free-for-all, Hock turned to go, intending to run away from the choking dust, to the margin of the field, to take his chances in the bush.

But just as he turned, he saw, emerging from the trees, fifteen or twenty motorcycles rushing toward the center of the field like a pack of one-eyed animals. Side by side, the motorcycles converged as they came closer, heading into the mass of children.

Half an hour before, Hock had been sitting cross-legged in the shade of the tall grass and shrubs at the edge of the field, the snake coiled on his arm, feeling powerful. Then the confusion — the helicopter, the loud music, the strangers at the door, the dumped boxes and bags of food, the crazed children, his own desperation. The swelling uprush of dust had slowed him, and the eruption of children quarreling over the bags and boxes, tearing them to pieces, had shocked him. The helicopter taking off had made more dust, but no sooner had its noisy rotors disappeared than the blatting of the motorcycles began.

He was in danger of being trapped by the motorcycles. Some of them were knocking children down as the riders snatched at the bags, stacking them on their handlebars, shoving the children out of the way, chasing children who were tottering with bags in their arms. He dodged a skidding bike and headed toward the emptier part of the field, and on the way managed to pick up a bag, a bulging cloth sack of what he imagined to be rice or flour or millet.

He could not run. After sprinting a few steps, he stopped, gasped for breath, then walked, his face grimy from the sweat-smeared dirt, still breathing hard in the dust cloud that hung over the field.

He half turned to see how far he had come when the boys, flailing their arms, rushed at him, shouting. Resisting, Hock felt old and feeble, unable to repel them, and afraid of the very sight of them, their angry faces, their bared teeth. One of the reaching boys grabbed at Hock’s sack of flour, another boy clung to his arm — the arm where the snake had been coiled.

“Wait — wait,” Hock said, trying to calm them, because he knew he lacked the strength to fight them off. “What do you want?”

They were two of the bigger boys from the village of children, the boys who had led him here, knowing in advance that a helicopter was going to arrive, carrying — who? celebrities? politicians? — to distribute food. One of them was the boy who had woken him that morning with the words “The bud.”

“Wait — you not go.”

“Let go of my arm,” Hock said, hating the boy’s dirty hand on him, his bony grip. “Take the bag of food — you can have it.”

“We want you,” the bigger boy said.

In spite of the long trek here, and the struggle in the field, and the confused chase, these boys were still wearing sunglasses, and one of them the black baseball hat he’d had on in the village.

“I have to go home now,” Hock said, and absurdly, with a screeching insistence and pompous formality, “Don’t you understand? I have appointments! I have issues to settle.”