Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

There was no fluid in Fat Boy's pipes. Because of the echo, it was like being in something gigantically dead. The shadows were cool twisted pipes that creaked as I climbed. 1 swung myself to a prickly grid that Drainy Maywit had made with his teeth, and crawled across it, finding my way with my fingers.

Just as I said to myself Don't look down, I looked down. And kept looking. I recognized what I saw. This was no belly — this was Father's head, the mechanical part of his brain and the complications of his mind, as strong and huge and mysterious. It was all revealed to me, but there was too much of it, like a book page full of secrets, printed too small. Everything fitted so neatly and was so well bolted and finely fixed it looked selfish. I could see that it had order, but the order — the size of it — frightened me. Like the human body, he had said — but this was the darkest part of his body, and in that darkness were the joints and brackets of his mind, a jungle of crooked iron and paunchy tanks hanging on thin wires and soldered-over scare tubes like vines in monkey shadow the weight of metal hoses forking to the ceiling, and everywhere the balance of small hinges.

It made me dizzy. I could not understand enough of it to feel safe. I thought, You could die here, or — trapped inside — go crazy.

I fought for the door at the top and pushed it open. Below the hatchway were straw hats. Someone — not Father — screeched up at me. They set a ladder against Fat Boy and let me down, and they all looked at my face pretty worriedly.

"He ain't bawling anyway," Francis Lungley said.

"You're next, Fido," Father said, and hurried Lungley to the door. "In you go! Take your time — get acquainted!"

One by one he sent them in, slammed the door, and made them climb through the pipes to the top hatchway, so they would not be afraid, except Mrs. Maywit, Mrs. Kennywick, and the children. They said they were willing, but Father said, "That's all that really counts — willingness."

He said he was sending the people inside so that they would conquer fear, and I believed him. But I also guessed that he wanted to amaze them with his Yankee ingenuity and give them a glimpse of his mind — the model of it inside Fat Boy. As for me, I did not mention this. I knew what I had seen. And I was glad Father had bullied me into going inside. He was making me a man.

Everyone compared the experience with something different. Mr. Maywit said it was like being up the bell tower in the Dunker church. The Zambus said it was like a certain slate cave in the Esperanzas, and Mr. Harkins said he had had a dream like it once, but when he tried to explain, his voice cracked and tears came to his eyes. Mr. Haddy said, "Shoo! It like some of these banana-boat engine rooms. Boiler and narrers." Hearing all this, Jerry fussed to go in, but Father refused.

"I hope you all admired that mesh over the evaporator lungs," Father said. "That nice piece of work was Drainy's doing."

Drainy had fixed the mesh with his teeth, making it the way he made his wire toys, with clips and clasps and fastenings that he gnawed into place and pinned with his molars.

"And as you might have noticed, Fat Boy isn't breathing," Father said. "That's why I wanted you to see him now, before he's got some life in him. Then he'll be dangerous and off limits. He's going to have work to do, and we don't want anyone traipsing around his guts then."

The smooth mahogany planks of the enormous icehouse caught the green and gold of the sun in the jungle clearing and glowed like skin.

"You won't believe what this old boy can do."

Father was proud of it and glad there were people here as witnesses. No one doubted him, or anything he made. He liked leading us around in the morning, from the pump at the river to the bathhouse and through the fields, pointing out how trim everything was, the water gushing and wheels turning and the hybrids shooting up and vegetables heavy on the plants. We walked along paths we had paved, past plants we had planted.

What Father had promised the first day in Jeronimo was now there for everyone to see — food, water, shelter. It was all as he predicted, but more orderly and happier than we had imagined. And on these early-morning inspections, he took Mother by the arm and spoke to everyone by speaking to her.

He called this notch in the jungle a superior civilization. "Just the way America might have been," he said. "But it got rotten and combustible. Greed panicked the worst into doubledipping, and the best fell victim to the system."

The Zambus didn't know what he was talking about, but they liked the way he talked. He could make them laugh by shouting, "Rheostats! Thermodynamics! The undistributed middle!"

He said, "I was the last man left."

But even when he was not talking for fun, I had to keep my head down or he'd say, "What are you grinning at, Charlie?"

Yet who wouldn't grin at some of the things he said?

"We've got to keep our traps shut," he would say, "or everyone and his brother will be down here on top of us, all the movers and shakers, opening gas stations and drive-in movies and fast-food joints. Issuing catalogues. Oh, sure, they'd strap a facility here and another facility over there. Sock a K-Mart next to Fat Boy and get the floating buyers. And you can bet your bottom dollar they'd find room for a Toyota dealership up on the Swampmouth path. This would be all parking lots from here to the hills. Facilities! They'd be ramming them down our throats."

Mr. Maywit said, "Wish we had a Chinese shop."

"He wants a Chinese shop!" Father said.

Mr. Maywit flinched. "Buy some salt and flour and oil."

"Save your money," Father said. "You don't need any Chinese shops. The sea's full of salt — sea salt, the best there is. No additives. Flour will be easy as soon as that corn is ready: we're going to mill it ourselves. Look at it — wonder corn! I brought that hybrid seed myself, all the way from Massachusetts. It's three times the size of your Honduras varieties."

"He say oil," Mr. Harkins said.

"I heard him, and my reply is, 'Peanuts!' Next to the spuds, there's a half acre of goobers. But give them time. Don't rush them. Are you going somewhere?"

As soon as the potatoes and yams were harvested he was going to ban the planting of cassava. It was a lazy man's crop, he said. Like bananas. True, there was no weeding to be done, but cassava exhausted the soil and there was no nutrition in it. Growing it would turn us all into funny-bunnies.

Work continued on Fat Boy, the fixing and welding of more pipes, the sealing of the tanks, and finishing the firebox and the chimney. Now, no one feared it. In fact, the Zambus preferred to work inside it because it was so much cooler there. It had double walls, and the roof and south side were faced with polished tin sheets that bounced the direct rays of the sun.

"If those were solar panels, we'd be self-sufficient in electricity," Father said. "But we don't need electricity or fossil fuels — this is a superior civilization."

We tested it for leaks by filling it with water. There was a fine spray peeing from nine joints, which Father marked and sealed when it was drained. Then Father declared it finished and said that he and Mr. Haddy were going to Trujillo.

"Plasma — for Fat Boy," he said. He had arranged for some hydrogen and ammonia to be sent to Trujillo. He had not wanted it shipped all the way to Jeronimo for fear of arousing missionary curiosity and getting more unwelcome visitors, like Mr. Struss or anyone of the Spellgood persuasion, or Toyota dealers.

"Used to shine windows up the Dunker with ammonia water," Mr. Maywit said.

"Up the Shouter," Mrs. Maywit said.

"Never mind," Mr. Maywit said.

Mr. Haddy remarked that there wasn't a glass windowpane in the whole of Jeronimo, which was true.