Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

I glanced around but did not see anything. I had the steering to attend to.

"Me yerry," Francis whispered. He began muttering like a bush Zambu. He said he heard six paddlers — three pipantos.

"Never see no lanch like this," Mr. Haddy said.

Darkness came. It seemed to grow out of the riverside. The trees swelled, fattened by the blackness. The high curve went out of the sky. Pinheads of stars appeared and brightened into blobs.

"They still back of us in the rock-stone."

And night was around us. The water still held a slippery glimmer ahead, and behind us was the paddle wheel's loose froth, spreading in the current.

Soon we saw the lanterns of Jeronimo and the sparks from Fat Boy's chimney stack. The lights were small and very still on shore, but they poured from the bank and leaked yellow pools into the river. I heard someone say, "Here they come."

In the bedroom that night, Jerry said, "I could have gone with Dad. But I didn't want to. We were at the Acre all day. Ma let us."

"I saw two snakes," I said. "One almost bit me."

"We built another man trap. You don't know where it is. You'll fall in and kill yourself, Charlie."

"Go to sleep, crappo."

Later, through the bamboo wall, I heard Mother consoling Father. At first I thought she was speaking to April or Clover, her voice was so soft. But she was talking about the ice, and the boat, and his hard work. It was all brilliant, she said. She was proud of him, and nothing else mattered.

Father did not object. He said, "It wasn't what I expected. I didn't want that. They prayed at me, Mother."

"I'd like to go upstream sometime," Mother said.

"We'll go. It's not what you think. You won't like it. It's bad, but in the most boring way. Oh, I suppose they're all right — they'll be able to use the ice for something. But what can you do with people who've already been corrupted? It makes me mad."

***

It was two weeks before we went back to Seville, and in those two weeks we kids spent more time at the Acre, in our little camp by the pool. It pleased me to think that our camp was sturdier than anything in Seville. We wove hammocks out of green vines. We ate wild onions. The hammocks gave us rashes, the onions gave us cramps. A water dog crept out of the pool one day and we chased it into a trap and beat it to death with sticks. Then we cut it into pieces and dried the meat strips on a tripod, Zambu-style. But the next day the meat strips were gone. Peewee said a monster had come and eaten them, but I guessed it was an animal, because the tripod was not high enough.

We collected berries. Some were to eat, and others kept mosquitoes away if you rubbed them on your skin and let the juice dry. Alice Maywit showed us a cluster of purple ones and said, "These is poison."

Clover said, "I don't believe you. You're afraid of everything. I bet they're blackberries or something."

"Want to eat one, girl?" Drainy said. He showed her his wire-bending teeth.

Clover looked as though she was willing to try, just to show off and prove she was right, but I punched her hard and told her to stay away from them.

"No hitting!" she said. "That's the rule — Dad said so!"

"This isn't Jeronimo," I said. "This is our Acre and we have our own rules."

That was the pleasure of the Acre — that we could do whatever we wanted. We had money, school, and religion here, and traps and poison. No inventions or machines. We had secrets — why, we even knew the Maywits' real name. We could pretend we were schoolchildren, or we could live like Zambus. That day was a good example. Drainy suggested that we take off all our clothes, and he pulled down his own shorts to show he was serious. Then Peewee did the same, and so did Clover and the others. Alice yanked her dress over her head and dropped her bloomers, and I stepped out of my shorts. The eight of us stood there giggling and stark naked, but I was so ashamed I jumped into the pool and pretended I wanted to swim, while the others compared bodies and danced around.

Alice was standing at the lip of the pool.

"Ever see a carkle?"

She knelt with her knees apart and pinched the black wrinkles in her fingers, and for a moment I thought I was going to drown.

"What's that?" She closed her thighs and listened.

I heard nothing but the usual noises. Alice said she heard horseflies. She saw one coming toward her and she looked steadily at it and got very worried. She said it meant there were strangers about.

We quickly put on our clothes and left the camp by the river path. Minutes later, we saw canoes. They were Indians, Alice said. She had known that from the horsefly. The canoes were old and waterlogged dugouts, and the paddlers looked like the Seville people, their thin arms sticking out of rags, and broken straws in their bushy hair.

"They're trying to spy on us," Jerry said.

But they could not see us watching them. We had outsmarted them, and we laughed softly — even April, who was usually afraid — seeing them struggling upstream in their old canoes.

"They're coming from Jeronimo," Clover said.

"Good thing they ain't see us naked!" Drainy said.

"They'll never find our camp," I said. "No one will find the Acre."

I was glad that we had this safe place in the jungle. And now, because I had seen Seville, I knew that ours was a well-ordered camp — better than the villages made by real jungle people.

We mentioned the canoes in Jeronimo. No one had seen them. Father said, "Maybe Munchies! Maybe Duppies!" and tried to frighten the Maywits.

On the morning Father said we were going back to Seville, Mr. Peaselee, who was doing fireman duty, let Fat Boy's fire go out. The ice melted. Father said, "We might have to cancel the trip. Everyone to the Gallery!" He gave a lecture about responsibility and good habits, and did we think Fat Boy could live without care and attention? Fat Boy was kind because we were careful, but if we were careless he would turn dangerous. If we neglected to do our duty, he would split open and take his revenge by killing us all. Father said, "He's full of poison!"

After Fat Boy was stoked and new ice was made and packed, I heard Father say, "You can't take your eyes off these people for a minute."

Mother said, "That's just what Polski used to say."

"Don't compare me to that turkey."

"You're getting shrill, Allie."

"Poison," Father said. "Hydrogen and enriched ammonia — thirty cubic feet of each one. You'd be shrill too, if you knew the danger."

"I'll get the food," Mother said, and walked away.

Father saw me listening. "I'm the only one around here carrying the ball. Why is that, Charlie? You tell me."

I thought, He really does sound like Polski.

We left for Seville — the Fox family, no one else. Father pedaled and talked the whole time.

"Don't think I'm enjoying this," he said. "The last thing I want to do is go back to Seville. I'd just as soon go back to Hatfield. But we're obliged. We can't drop them after one shipment. I thought we might inspire them, help them out, cool their fish and give them time for farming — do all the things that ice lets you do. That's the whole point, isn't it? Give them the benefit of our experience? But I know what they'll do with the ice — they'll cube it and dump it into their glasses of Coke and just go haywire like everyone else."

"You didn't say anything about Coca-Cola," Mother said.

"Give them time."

We made Seville in under three hours, Father pedaling furiously and shouting about how he was going to dynamite a canal through the jungle and dredge the hyacinths out of the river. In his angry mood he imagined the grandest schemes. At the mahoganies we were met by five Seville people — they popped out of the spinach and the grass and startled us. They had seen us on the river, they said. But we had not seen them. They danced around Mother, telling her to be careful.