Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

This did not convince the Maywit children, and when I told them that Father had said there was a war coming in the United States they just laughed. This made me lose heart and talk hollowly, for why else would anyone ditch the United States to sweat his guts out in the jungle? And I knew more than that. I had seen the inside of Fat Boy. That glimpse came back to me, and now, whenever I thought of Father, I saw the hanging tanks, the wilderness of crooked iron, the tubes like a brain in a sleeve, and all the tiny hinges. It had been like seeing the inside of someone's house, and, by studying it knowing them better I knew a person best from something he had made, and in Fat Boy I had seen Father's mind, a version of it — its riddle and slant and its hugeness — and it had scared me.

It was because of this, talking about Father in these whispers, that we skipped the baptism altogether and went and collected crazy ants instead. We floated them on the pool and watched them struggle on the skin of the water's surface.

Returning from the Acre that day, we saw Little Haddy at the mooring. Some men were earning tall bottles of gas up the path to Fat Boy, and others were rolling steel drums along logs that served as rails.

Peewee let out a yell when she saw Father. He was outside Fat Boy, working a hand pump, emptying one of the drums into a pipe. What frightened Peewee was his mask. It was a gas mask, for safety, but it gave him a snout and huge bug eyes. A skull and bones was stenciled on the drum.

"He always wears that when he's working with poison," I said.

This word poison had a worse effect on the Maywit kids than the weevil mask, and they ran straight into their house with their fingers in their mouths.

It had taken ten days for Father to get the ammonia and hydrogen from Trujillo to Jeronimo. Mother told us the story of his adventures. Threats in the town. Nosy people. Honduran soldiers accusing him of smuggling explosives. Arguments and almost a fistfight. "How many pushups can you do?" Trouble with vultures. A hard time on the river, which was too shallow in places. Scraping the boat bottom and being followed by unfriendly Zambus and more vultures. A slow and dangerous trip. Into Jeronimo with their keel dragging on the riverbed.

There were only four gas masks — Father, Haddy, Harkins, and F. Lungley. Because of the danger of fumes, we were not allowed near Fat Boy until the transfer of ammonia and hydrogen was made and the pipes sealed. Father worked all night without lamps or firelight. The full moon gave the clearing a milky-pink shine, like mother-of-pearl, and Fat Boy looked like a block of dark marble, a monument or tomb in the jungle.

The four masked men jumbled in and out of Fat Boy, and all we heard was the clanging of steel drums and gas bottles, and Father saying "Watch it!" and "Careful!" and "Move over!" and the howler monkeys they called baboons, their googn!

In the morning, Father was highly excited. If anything had gone wrong, he said, we would have been blown sky-high along with half the valley — probably ended up in Hatfield, in smithereens.

"I have just spent the most dangerous twelve hours of my whole life," he said.

"Sounds to me as if it was dangerous for us too," Mother said.

"Sure, but you weren't aware of the danger, so you could sleep in blissful ignorance."

Mother said "I like that," and turned her back on him.

"I am the only person here who knows how lethal that stuff is. I took full responsibility. Was I scared? No, ma'am."

"We might have been killed!"

"You wouldn't have known what hit you. I can give you my cast-iron guarantee of that. You'd have been atomized, with a smile on your face."

Mother said, "Thanks, pal."

"Don't worry. All the seals are on. In fact, this afternoon I'm going to fire him up." Father saw me listening in the doorway. "Quit grinning and spread the news, Charlie. I want everyone over there to watch."

***

"This is why I'm here," Father said, after lunch. "This is why I came."

He was standing in front of Fat Boy's firebox with a handful of matches. Mr. Haddy was next to him, and the Maywits nearby with their gray-faced kids. Clover and April sat on the ground with the Zambus, Harkins and Peaselee on kegs, Mrs. Kennywick in the armchair she had dragged over from Swampmouth. There were some other strangers watching from beyond the beanfields.

"I'll bet you still don't know what this is for," Father said.

"Cooking," Mr. Haddy said, and put out his teeth.

"No guesses," Father said. "You saw Lungley and Dixon put those trays of water on the shelf inside this monster. Now we're going to light a little fire here with this weeny match."

"Steam engine. Boiler work." Mr. Haddy clowned for the nervous people.

"Can it! But stick around. You won't believe your eyes."

He called Peewee over and said that as she was the youngest it was she who should light the first fire. "When we're all dead and gone, you'll still be around, Peewee. You can tell your grandchildren that you were here on this historic day. Tell them you lit the fire."

Father struck a match on the seat of his pants and showed her where to hold it. There was some kindling in the firebox. Peewee put the match to it and up it went.

The Zambus grasped their ears. Ma Kennywick blew out her cheeks, and Mr. Maywit said, "Never mind." No sound came for several minutes, only the fire pop. The birds and bugs of Jeronimo went silent. The people held their breaths and went shiny-faced with waiting.

A single gloop dropped inside Fat Boy, as of liquid plunging in a pipe's plump bubble, and we moved, turning from the fire to where the sound had glooped in Fat Boy's midsection. Now we could all hear each other breathe.

Mr. Haddy licked his teeth. "Shoo!"

"Wait for it," Father said.

More plungings, and the trembling of pipes, and the creak of swelling tanks — it was a sense, announced in muffled percolations, of loosening in Fat Boy's belly. It was not one clear sound, but rather a vibration in the plant and all around it. The ground hummed beneath our feet. Liquid was shifting, still rising, and there was a final surge that slowed the vibrations, and the whole plant seemed to stir. The surrounding jungle murmured to the same beat, which was like the throb of a vein in your head in the progress of an almighty bowel movement.

Mr. Maywit said, "They is queerness coming out from the chimbly."

"Smoke," Father said.

"He stop bellyaching," Drainy whispered.

Father said, "This is going to take a little while. Everyone get comfy. Sit down where you are and let your mind wander. But don't think about war or madness."

"They is just what I think about," Ma Kennywick said.

Mrs. Maywit put her chicken eyes on Father and said, "Kin we pray?"

"If you feel the need, go right ahead. But I honestly wish you wouldn't, because then you'll treat this as a miracle — which it isn't. Rather than as a magnified piece of thermodynamics — which it is."

But I could tell from their faces and postures that they were all praying. They sat compactly, with their necks drawn in, like birds in the rain.

From time to time, Father stoked the fire. But there was not much fueling to be done — it was a small fire, and after it started its whistles and sucks, he kept it damped down.

"This is where it's all happening," Father said. "This is the center of the world! You don't have to go anywhere — you're where it's at!"

A half-hour passed in this way. Then Father stopped talking and climbed the stepladder. He read the thermometer that stuck out, and he looked pretty satisfied. Fifteen more minutes, he said, and after that time had gone he mounted the ladder again and crawled into the hatchway.

"Hope we ain't have to drag him out by his stumps," Mr. Haddy said.