Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

But he came in singing. The dining-room door opened and Father entered, still wearing his baseball hat. His face was pale and whiskery and there were finger-smears of grease on his nose. He sang,

Under the bam.

Under the boo.

Under the bamboo tree!

"Amen, brother," Rev. Spellgood said.

"You can call it the power of prayer, Gurney, but I call it hydrostatics. Gaw, I could eat a horse."

He told us what he had done. He had worked until midnight repairing a pump. "The bushings were shot," he said. Then the bulkhead had been emptied of seawater. But this had only corrected the list slightly. Supervising the crew ("It was fun — like being back at Polski's and chewing the fat with those savages"), he had had them redirect the pump and empty a ballast tank and then winch back the shifted cargo containers. "One had a new Toyota in it — a huge great stupid Landcruiser, one of these Nipponese nightmares." They had not finished the job until dawn, but the ship had gained speed and had stopped yawing.

"Your friend the captain went to bed about four, when it was touch and go." Father winked at me. "Couldn't take the strain. What did I tell you about four-o'clock-in-the-morning courage?"

The waiter brought him coffee and eggs. Father spoke to him in Spanish. The man listened, clicking his teeth.

Father then said to us, "I told him he's got nothing to worry about. I've fixed everything down below. It ought to be clear sailing from now on. As for me, I'm going to hit the hay. Smile, Mother."

"I was thinking about that poor old captain. You know, you can be an awful bully."

Father put his elbows on the table and whispered, "It was wonderful the way the men were following my orders. Once I got that pump working they were on my side. Mother," he said — and his white face frightened me—"I could have started a mutiny down there!"

With Father asleep, the ship was quieter, and throughout the day the clouds softened, the storm abated, and Rev. Spellgood's voice and the gospeling were now louder than the wind in the shrouds. When the sun came out it was tropical, and it scorched all the dampness from the ship. Late that afternoon, Father appeared. He was shaved and tidy and went for a stroll on the afterdeck. Both the Spellgoods and the Bummicks asked him when we might arrive. Father discussed various possibilities. He basked in their praise and he called the crewmen by name and joshed them in Spanish.

Captain Smalls remained on the bridge. He did not invite anyone to eat with him. In fact, we never saw him again.

"He's just ashamed," Father said. "It's only natural. I suppose he thinks I've got a college education."

Emily Spellgood followed me from deck to deck. She gave me a fishing line she had stolen from one of her brothers. Father had managed to impress even this boastful girl. I spent the rest of the time fishing, with her behind me. I caught a few flat bony ones, and one with stiff upright fins like wings, and one as purple as a pansy.

Emily said, "I have to go to the bathroom."

My face went hot. I pretended there was something wrong with my fishing tackle and began to fuss with it.

"Do you have a girl friend, Charlie?"

I said no.

"I could be your girl friend."

She looked so sad and plain and lonely. And she was a few inches taller than me. I said all right, but it had to be a secret.

She touched my leg and squeezed. It was the first time a girl had ever touched me, and my leg jerked so hard I thought it was going to shoot out of its socket. She widened her eyes and in a whisper said, "Now I'm going to the bathroom to think about you."

She ran away, and I waited. I thought my poison ivy had come back, I was so itchy. I could barely see straight to fish. But the next time I saw her she was praying near the winch platform.

That was the day we arrived at La Ceiba. The sea was flat and green, and the land behind it was a range of mountains, black and blue, with clouds hanging on them in smoky rolls. We sailed toward the pier and the clouds sank farther down the mountains and into the racks of trees, revealing a ridge of peaks, some like the spiky backs of monster lizards and others like molars.

SEVEN PELICANS with dark freckled feathers flew low over the green sea in formation like a squadron of hedge clippers. Father said, "I hate those birds." There were gulls and vultures, too. "There's something about a coast that attracts scavengers," he said. There was a cow on the beach, and railway boxcars on the pier, and the low town of La Ceiba looked yellow and jammed. Hundreds of men met our ship, not to welcome us but to quarrel with each other. Everything was backward here. Father said, "You kids can go on ahead — you've got your knapsacks," but we were so alarmed by the heat and noise we waited for him to finish with the passport official and load his tools and seed bags into a black man's cart. Then we followed with Mother, who seemed to be holding her breath.

The Spellgoods, still gospeling, were met by a troop of black girl choristers in pink dresses and tipped-back straw hats. The Bummicks were hugged by people who looked just like the Bummicks — a boy, a woman, and two old men in khaki. There were wooden motor launches tied up at the pier, taking on crates of dried soup and sacks of rice. They had canvas awnings instead of cabins, and names like Little Haddy and Lucy and Island Queen.

I never saw so many people doing nothing except sitting and standing and calling names. But where the pier met the main road, they were selling baskets of fruit and greaseballs wrapped in green leaves. There was a fat black woman in a torn dress with a white cockatoo on her shoulder. She wore a dirty pair of blue bedroom slippers and was selling oranges. Father bought six oranges and said to us, "How much were these at the A and P in Springfield?"

Clover said, "Thirty-nine cents each."

"And I just bought six for a quarter. I guess we came to the right place!"

Father plunged through the crowd, and Mother said, "I love him when he's happy. Look at him go."

He hurried to the beach, and when we caught up with him he said, "I can't see anyone invading this town. I really can't imagine landing-craft on this beach. Can you, Mother?"

"Why would they bother?"

"That's what I mean."

He said he wanted to walk down and feel the sand between his toes. The black man remained on the road with our belongings in his cart. He looked as if he was used to waiting. We walked past a long low building that faced the ocean. In front of it, on the beach, a boy with a rifle was watching two other boys digging a deep pit in the sand. Father said the diggers were prisoners — that low building was the Central Jail.

"In the States, jailbirds like them are watching TV, so don't tell me digging holes is torture. They're just burying their grievances."

The cow was ambling slowly toward some shacks, her hoofs sinking in the brown sand. I had never seen a cow so skinny, and what was a cow doing here? Nearby, a dog was gnawing the skull of what looked like another dog. The sea was brown, the lazy waves flipped plastic bottles, and rags, and hacked-open coconuts onto the blackish sand. Standing at the rail of the Unicorn, I had seen this beach as dazzling white, but up close the digging prisoners, the cow, the dog snarling at the skull — all these and the stinking air gave it the atmosphere of a crusted and crazy jungle shore. The Mosquito Coast, Father had called it — it was a good name. Barefoot people watched us, but no one swam in the water. One man down the beach threw a limp round net into the low waves. Then he dragged it out, shook its sinkers, and held it in his teeth while he untangled it. And he threw it in again. I watched him do this eight times — not even a minnow. It was more washing than fishing. We could hear people calling out on the pier, and the clang of the ship's booms. The Unicom lay yellowing in the setting sun. I was sorry we were not still on it.