Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

He leaned back and drew a line of striped fish out of a basket. Mr. Haddy called them sheepshead fish. They were strung through their gills, five plump ones.

"Now you gut those fish, Mr. Haddy, and Mother will start the cookstove. The kids will clear the deck and we'll have us some real food. Or would you rather put into Santa Rosa and eat last month's beans?"

Mr. Haddy took the fish and started slitting them. Up ahead, Jerry and the twins had crawled out of their sleeping bags and were rubbing their eyes. Mother set out a basin of fresh water, so we could wash, and then she fired up the cookstove (this was a steel barrel, cut in half, with a grid over the top), and she put the coffee on.

"I'll tell you another thing," Father said. "We're not stopping at Santa Rosa."

Mr. Haddy was opening the sheepsheads like envelopes and pinching out tube clusters of gray guts. With some of this slimy spaghetti on his fingers he said, "First you say you ain't want to go to Trujillo, because you ain't want to see no missionaries. Now you make me into a fishmonger and say we ain't gung to Santa Rosa. Nothing wrong with Santa Rosa, for hell sake."

Father said, "I've been looking at the map."

"Fadder and his map," Mr. Haddy said. He scraped the fish as if he were punishing them and punishing his thumb, and sent the tarnished silver scales flying across the deck.

"I didn't say we're not going there," Father said. "I said we're not stopping."

We ate the fish under the foredeck awning because of the occasional squalls. Mr. Haddy cut a fishhead open, and in its brain was a fragment of a clear substance, like glass, a knuckle of it. Father decided to wear it around his neck. "Like a Zambu feller," Mr. Haddy said, and then he told us to look up. There, under long chutes of rain, were a jetty and some yellow buildings and the green stripe of jungle shore. Mr. Haddy said, "That is Rosy there."

It was, Father said, a dark insult on the green Mosquito Coast, no more than ten low buildings and a church steeple. Steam and smoke, red-tiled roofs, and half a dozen kids on a jetty.

"We stop at Rosy?" Mr. Haddy said.

Father said, "I never stop until I get where I'm going."

"If I am steering this lanch, I land back there, Fadder," Mr. Haddy said. He looked at me sadly. The whites of his red-rimmed eyes were stained with brown blotches. We had passed the jetty and the beach. Mother told him not to worry. He said he was not worried, but he was pretty confused.

"Keep your shirt on," Father shouted from the wheel house.

The twins were at the bow. "You can see the bottom," April said. And Jerry hurried forward for a look.

"I ain't even know why 1 ain't steering," Mr. Haddy said. "I always steered before. Look — that brown surfy water — that is the rivermouth. Now what the man doing?"

There was a break in the shore, and at this wide opening a river current met the rising tide. The surf rushed sideways spilling silt onto sandbars. Further on I could see sticks and branches beating down toward the sea.

Father swung the launch onto this brown inland tide. A fisherman standing knee-deep in green breakers cast his net over the water and waved to us. Little Haddy nosed into the current, sending up spouts on either side of the bow.

"This ain't the way, Fadder!" Mr. Haddy cried. He was still seated, frowning near the leavings of our breakfast, the fish bones and bread crusts and coffee cups. "Him no yerry," he mumbled. "Him no keer."

He got to his feet and went to the wheel house to complain.

"Please, Mister. This ain't no cayuka. This is a lanch!"

"Sit down," Father said.

"I'm the steerer," Mr. Haddy said. "I ain't steer up these rivers."

"That's no ordinary river — that's a flood," Father said. "It's funny. First time I saw Santa Rosa on the map I didn't notice the river, and when I did notice it, it looked small. It was the rain that gave me the idea. She's in flood. There's enough water in this river to take us most of the way to Jeronimo."

"It ain't for lanches! We get broke on a rock-stone!"

"He doesn't trust me," Father said.

"If you don't lose me license, you lose me lanch. Oh, my hat!"

The launch had started bucking in the current, throwing the awning from side to side. The old iron clanked and rubbed. "Allie!" Mother cried, as she was soaked by a shower of spray. Now the boat seemed light, and it tipped easily in the surf of the rivermouth. I held tight, fearing that it would go over.

"I can't do this alone," Father said. "I need your help, Mr. Haddy. Now hop up there to the bow and if you see any rocks, you give me a shout. We're fighting the current, so there's no sense cutting the engine down. Now what do you say" — more spray hit the wheel-house window—"are you on my team or not?"

"Another spearmint," Mr. Haddy said. He was not smiling. "Ain't like these rivers. Fellers up there in that jungle — black fellers — they got tails!"

It was the Aguan River, Father said, and on the Santa Rosa bank people had started to gather, maybe thinking that we were going ashore. They carried baskets of fruit, bunches of coconuts, and straw mats. When they saw us heading into the middle of the stream and moving against the floating branches and the debris of broken cane stalks, they sang out, calling us to shore. Their tottering dogs yapped at us, too.

We traveled on, past the settlement that lay behind Santa Rosa, the sloping shacks and the huts on stilts and the rows of overturned canoes on the riverbank. We passed the gatelike entrance of a green lagoon, and pushed on, struggling in the river that brimmed at our bow. It was hotter here, for the sun was above the palms and the storm clouds had vanished inland. There were no mountains, or even hills. There was nothing but the riverbank of palms and low bushes and yellow-bark trees, and the sky came down to the tree-tops. The high muddy river had flooded the bushes on the bank.

Mr. Haddy hung over the bow with a sounding chain. He was singing sorrowfully and showing us the seat of his pants. From time to time, he called out "Rock-stone to port!" or "Rock-stone dead ahead!" The ocean was astern, and then we turned on a riverbend and it was lost to view, gone with the fresh breeze and the sting of salt and the fish smells. We were enclosed by jungle on the short reaches of the river, and each tree shrieked with birds and insects. They were loud, like the sound in your ears when you eat potato chips. The launch took on a different character. At sea it had seemed dilapidated and very small. But here, furrowing up this narrow river, it seemed large and powerful, its engine booming against the banks, startling the herons and chasing the butterflies aside.

"Look at the road hog," Father said, as Mr. Haddy jangled the chain at a man in a canoe. Mr. Haddy was pointing out birds to Jerry and the twins and catcalling to women who paused in their clothes-scrubbing on the gravelly parts of the bank to watch us pass.

"They never see a lanch here before," Mr. Haddy said.

Mother said, "How far are we going?"

"Until we hit bottom," Father said.

We managed fifteen miles or more, traveling upriver until noon, before Mr. Haddy began shouting about rock-stones all around. He didn't give signals, he just howled. The water was not so muddy here — I could see eels and schools of tiny fish on the gravel bottom. In places there was barely enough room between the banks for the launch's width to squeeze through, and the rapid water slowed us and splashed onto the deck.

It was on one of these narrow twisting canals that I saw the men in the trees. I took them for rooty stumps, strange boulders — anything but men. Their heads were propped on branches, and some were squatting under bushes, black shiny-skinned men. Some knelt, facing away from us. We were so close to them I could not tell Father without their hearing me. Some held sticks and spears and fishnets, but they were silent and did not threaten us.