Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"You can do anything with ammonia," Father said. "The ammonia clock is the most accurate timekeeping device in the world. You don't believe me?" — Mr. Maywit was frowning—"Listen, the tick-tock in it is the oscillation of the nitrogen atom in the ammonia molecule. Francis knows all about it, don't you?"

Francis said, "For true, Fadder."

"I employ enriched ammonia," Father said. "What do you think I was doing up there in La Ceiba? Spitting in the plaza, like all the other gringos? No, sir. I was juicing up my ammonia. That's my secret, really. The more enriched it is, the quicker your evaporation. You'll see."

Mr. Maywit said, "I hear that."

"He do it all himself for the spearmint," Mr. Haddy said, while the Zambus stared. "He richen it. That is the way."

"It's more toxic," Father said. The Zambus laughed at "toxic." "But once it's sealed into the system, there's no danger. And it's everlasting. Take the acids in your stomach. They're not toxic, but they're powerful substances. They could bum a pretty big hole in your shirt if they leaked out. And there's ammonia in nature — you know, rotting vegetable matter, seawater, soil, even urine."

Mr. Maywit said he had heard that, too. "You want I come to Trujillo? I buy some salt and oil for Ma."

Father put his hand on Mr. Maywit's flour-sack shirt, where it said La Rosa on the shoulder. "I need you here, coach. From now on you're my field superintendent. You've got to stay, so you can tell me what to do."

Then he spoke to everyone — Mrs. Kennywick, the Zambus, Harkins, Peaselee, the Maywits, and us.

"I take orders from you," he said. "You're in charge here. And if you want Fat Boy to work, you'll have to send me down the river to Trujillo. To get his vital juices."

Eventually, Father encouraged them to say, Yes, please go—

"In the meantime, pick some of those tomatoes. Him" — he poked Mr. Maywit's flour-sack shirt—"he wants a Chinese store!"

Mother asked him how long he would be away. Father said he guessed anything up to a week, "barring unforeseen circumstances."

The next day, the Little Haddy, streamlined for the river, left Jeronimo for the coast. Mr. Haddy was working the sounding chain and Father was at the wheel. Mr. Haddy said for all to hear, "But this used to be me lanch."

We ran along the riverbank, nearly to Swampmouth, but lost them in the deep green foliage Father had once compared to old dollar bills.

***

With Father away, Jeronimo was very quiet — no speeches or songs, and the hammering stopped. The only sounds were the flap and splash, the prunt-prunt of the pump tower on the bank, and the sloosh of water in the culverts. The rest was the usual murmur of jungle, as continuous as silence, birds and bugs and monkey squawks, which changed in pitch with the heat and became a pressurized howl after nightfall.

Mother did not take charge. When Father was around, we did things his way, he kept us jumping, but Mother had no inventions and never made speeches. When she did talk, it was often a gentle request for someone to show her the local way of doing something.

The pepper-drying was a good example. After the small red peppers appeared in the low bushes, Mrs. Maywit said they would have to be dried. If Father had been around, he would have blazed a ten-sided tub out of sheet metal and called it his Pepper Hopper, or something of the kind, for drying peppers, the way he had made the fish trap and the bathhouse and the bamboo tiles.

But Mother got Mrs. Kennywick and Mrs. Maywit to explain how to string the peppers and hang them. "You know best," she said. It was a day's work, this pepper-stringing, Mother and the other women squatting side by side on a mat in the yard, knotting the peppers on twine so that the lengths of them looked like firecrackers. Father would not have done it. and he certainly wouldn't have squatted. He would have made himself a chair, probably a recliner, with a work surface pedal-operated maintenance-free out of steamed and bent saplings. "Look how she fits the contours of the body, Mother!"

Mother had the Zambus teach her how to gut and skin animals like pacas, and how to peg fish to a plank and dry them, and how to smoke meat. They were slow, dirty, traditional methods, but she was in no hurry, she said. And these became our lessons in Jeronimo — the household tasks of the jungle people, the preparation of things we picked or caught. She made sure that each of us understood the gutting and smoking. We were not free to play until we had mastered these chores.

This was different from Father's way. He was an innovator. He thought nothing of getting a dozen people to peel wood or dig ditches, and he would not tell them why until they had finished. Then he would say, "You've just made yourself a permanent enhancement!" Or he would ask them to guess what a particular thing was for (no one so far had guessed what Fat Boy was for), and laugh when they gave him the wrong answer. He had his own way of doing things, and he liked telling people that their own methods were just waste motion. "Now I'll show you how it ought to be done," he'd say, and as they gawked, he'd add, "How do you like that little wrinkle?"

He had never been a good listener. But he knew so much he did not have to listen. We had heard his voice going like the Thunderbox wherever we were, and since the day we arrived, Father's chatter had been as constant as the Jeronimo locusts from morning to night, and it was louder even than the googn-googn-googn-googn of the howler monkeys. But now his voice was gone. Nothing was built, there were no inspections, the forge went cold. No talk of "targets," no sessions in the Gallery, and we stopped hearing "I only need four hours' sleep!"

We cleared the fish trap, weeded the garden, and picked the first tomatoes. Mother ran things smoothly, offering suggestions, not giving orders. She made cassava bread, something Father had not thought of doing. Mrs. Maywit provided the recipe. And Mrs. Kennywick showed her how to make wabool out of rotten bananas.

In her quiet, inquiring way, Mother discovered an amazing thing. She had the idea that it would be educational for us to learn the names of the trees in and around Jeronimo. She asked the Zambus what they were called, and what they were used for, so that a little printed sign could be tacked to each trunk for us to memorize. She found out that a good few of the trees at the southern end of the clearing were sapodillas. Even the Maywits didn't know that. The Zambus called them "chiclets" and "hoolies" and explained how to extract rubbery sap from the trees and boil it and pound it into sheets.

"There's enough chicle here to make a ton of rubber," she said. She thought this was funny. "That's what Allie would say. Wait till he hears. He'll make us all galoshes."

Father's work was work, Mother's work was study and play, but mostly she left us to ourselves. We did not feel supervised as when Father was around, and little by little we ventured farther from the clearing, and even out of Jeronimo itself, away from the splash of our waterworks and the googn of our monkeys.

***

Leaving, hacking a path, and setting up a camp had been my idea. It was like one of Father's challenges, but I challenged myself to go by daring the others — it gave me courage. We dared the Maywit children, too, and called them names, and soon they were shouting "Crummo" and "Crappo" at each other. Alice and Drainy were not afraid, but the little ones, Leon and Veryl (who was known as Peewee), were timid and always lagged behind.

We found a path that led away from the river and into a part of the jungle that was thick with screaming birds — bill-birds and crascos. There were monsters here, Drainy said, and all the Maywit kids agreed that it was in places like this that you met your Duppy. Clover said they were crapoid for thinking that. We put up our camp near a deep pool in a little pocket in the jungle, about half an hour's walk from Jeronimo, through flame trees and lianas.