Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

Father hesitated before he replied. I had never seen him hesitate before. I guessed he was doing a calculation.

He said, "I sure am tempted to try."

"This is your chance, Fox. You'd be doing both of us a favor."

Father looked up at the parlor ceiling and said, "I see a vast cooling plant and cold store. It's on seven or eight levels, the size of two barns and then some, with your catwalks inside and your reflectors and insulation outside. Looks like a cathedral, with a chimney for a steeple. What's that bulge in the ground? That's your power unit, the main hardware, the worm tubs, the tanks of coolant, the heat supply. All your pipes and tanks are underground, sheathed in lead, in case of nuclear war, accidents, and acts of God. Your chimney has baffles and coils to conserve heat and redirect it back to the main supply, the fire itself — recycling the heat, so to speak. But there's waste heat — there always is — and that's why we have ducts built into the chimney. Now this is blown across a grid, and that's where your incubators come in. That's your battery in both senses — your egg hatchery, your heated runs for young chicks and chickens that are going to supply you with fuel in time to come Methane gas Nothing wasted. You've got your refrigeration. You've got your ice. You've got your heat. Sell the eggs you don't need and have the rest for breakfast. Cool down your vegetables. Use your chicken shit for methane. It's a perpetual-motion machine. Run a duct to your house and you're air-conditioned — cool in summer, warm in winter. Cheap, simple to operate, no waste, foolproof, and profitable. There's only one thing."

Polski had crept out of the hydraulic chair like a raccoon out of an unsprung trap. He was watching Father with a gentle hopeful expression, smiling sadly as Father described this vision of the cooling plant. In an uncertain voice, and clearing his throat, Polski said, "What's that?"

"I don't want to do you a favor. You just want this thing to cheat people and put up prices and starve the market."

I thought Mr. Polski was going to cry.

"You can't make me sell that asparagus." Polski glanced around, as if looking for a place to spit, and still puckered he said, "I only wish I knew what to do with it."

"Eat it."

"You're talking yourself out of a job, Mr. Fox."

"It's better than you talking me into one, seeing as what the job is."

Polski said, "Keep talking. I might have to let you go."

"Careful now." Father crossed the room, fished a cigar out of his humidor, and took a long time lighting it. When it was smoking he stared at it and said, "I'll go where I'm appreciated."

Polski had turned away from Father and now he was talking to his own two feet. He said, "I don't want to make things tough for you."

"People who say that always mean the opposite. That sounds like a threat."

"Take it any way you like."

"Mother!" Father called out. His shout made Polski jump. "He just threatened me!"

Mother, wherever she was, did not reply.

Polski said, "I knew it was a mistake to come over here." He shuffled slowly to the door. I felt sorry for Polski just then, looking so small, with Father trumpeting cigar smoke at him and the little man's wrinkles of defeat on the shoulders of his jacket, and his tiny head going through the door. I had wanted Father to make peace with Polski, and for things to continue as before. Now, I knew, something had to happen.

I went back to my room on all fours, wondering what.

The next thing I heard was Polski starting his Jeep, and Father muttering "Grind me a pound," and then very clearly, like a moo in a stall, Mother's voice.

"You fool."

"I'm happy, Mother."

"What do you want?"

"Elbow room. I just realized it."

"Please, Allie—"

And Father said, "I never wanted this. I'm sick of everyone pretending to be old Dan Beavers in his L. L. Bean moccasins, and his Dubbelwares, and his Japanese bucksaw — all these fake frontiersmen with their chuck wagons full of Twinkies and Wonderbread and aerosol cheese spread. Get out the Duraflame log and the plastic cracker barrel, Dan, and let's talk self-sufficiency!"

"You're talking nonsense."

"Listen," Father said, but I heard nothing more.

WHEN FATHER said, the next day, "We're going shopping," I was sure we were going to the dump. We seldom went store shopping. There was little need — we grew practically all our own food. Hard work kept us at Tiny Polski's, and there was a danger in being in stores during the day — we might be collared by policemen or truant officers for playing hooky from school. "Then you'll be in school," Father said, "and I'll be in its rough equivalent — jail. What have we done to deserve that punishment?" Secretly, I wanted to go to school. I felt like an old man or a freak when I saw other children. And secretly, I preferred factory-made cakes, like Devil Dogs and Twinkies, to Mother's banana bread. Father said store-bought cakes were junk and poison but I guessed that his real objection was that the few times he caught me sneak-eating, I had to tell him that I paid for the food with money that Polski had given me for doing odd johs And Polski told me that Father was peculiar, which was another secret to keep We bought salt brown flour fruit shoelaces and other small things in Hatfield or Florence but shopping usually meant a trip to the dumps and junkyards around Northampton where we helped Father pick through the noisonous piles of trash for the wire and metal he used in his 'inventions.

There were seagulls at the dump. They were fat, filthy squawkers, and they roosted on the plastic rubbish bags and tried to tear them open. They chased each other, and they fought for scraps, and they rioted when the garbage truck came. Father hated them. He called them scavengers. They squawked, and he squawked back at them. But struggling up the loose hills of bags and crates, with a pitchfork in his hand, and screaming at the birds that hopped around him and nagged over his head, it sometimes seemed as if Father and these lazy fearless gulls were fighting for the same scraps.

"Now there's a perfectly good set of wheels," Father would say, scaring the gulls and forking an old baby carriage out of the reeks and shaking off the orange peels. Other people took things to the dump — Father hoicked stuff out and carried it away. "Some jackass junked that."

But today, a normal working day, we raced past the greenhouses and rose gardens in Hadley, and hurried through Northampton, and sped toward the pike. Mother was in the cab with Father, and I crouched in the back with the twins and Jerry.

"I'm going to look at ten-speed bikes," Jerry said.

Clover said, "We can buy ice cream," and April said, "I want chocolate."

I said, "Dad won't let you. And we're not going shopping — this isn't the way."

"It is," Jerry said. "It's Dad's short cut."

No — we were far from Northampton, in the country. We came to the Connecticut River and followed it. It was wide and greasy and less blue than it was near Hatfield. There were brick buildings on the far side, and soon the city of Springfield. We crossed the bridge and had to hold to the sides of the pickup truck because of the strong mid-river wind. In the river were bits of plastic foam, gone yellow like slabs of ham fat.

We had never shopped in Springfield before. People on the sidewalks seemed to know this. They stared at us standing in the back of the pickup and holding to the roof of the cab. We kept going until we came to a shopping plaza, where we parked — people still staring. Father got out and told us to follow him and stay together. He was in a good mood, but as soon as we entered the K-Mart store he started muttering and cursing.

Mother said, "Are you sure about the hats?"