Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

The others were still fearfully gray and did not reply.

Mother said, "What would you do, Allie?"

"Sink a shaft."

He singled out the Maywits and Mrs. Kennywick and talked to them, because they had been praying hardest and were in a way still quaking themselves.

"The kind of hole they make in the Santa Barbara Channel or the North Sea. Your diamond bits, your giant platform, your whole drilling rig. I'd drill down — what? — four or five thousand feet and tap the energy resources right under here." He stamped his foot on the Gallery floor. "Just the way your chicleros tap a sapodilla tree. Same principle."

"You make me a sweet li'l raincap. Fadder," Mrs. Kennywick said. But her voice told that she was still thinking of the earth tremor.

"The rumble reminded me. Why doesn't anyone else put two and two together? See, the mistake they make in drilling for oil is that they're missing a golden opportunity. They've got all the hardware, but as soon as the oil starts gushing they pump it dry and bore another one. Talk about foolish and short-sighted!"

"But Fadder ain't do that foolishness," Mr. Maywit said to Mother, as if he knew what was coming. He looked fearful, or perhaps he just seemed so to me because I knew his real name was Roper.

"I'd let it gush," Father said, "and go on drilling. Go past the shale, lengthen the bit, go past the granite — lengthen it some more — and penetrate the bowels of the earth."

"Shoo," Mr. Haddy said. "That is a spearmint for true."

"That earth tremor we just had was a geological crepitation, a subterranean fart, from the bowels of the earth. There's gas down there! Superheated water, steam under pressure — all the heat you need!"

Mr. Peaselee said, "Ain't we hot enough now, Fadder?" And Mr. Harkins said it was so hot it was bringing out the crapsies, though I had no idea what he meant by this.

"Dad's not talking about the weather," Clover said.

"Listen to that little girl," Father said.

Everyone looked at Clover. She basked for a while under their watery eyes.

"Geothermal energy! Don't laugh. There's only a few places in the world where it's practical, and you're lucky enough to be living in one. The whole of Central America is a repository of high energy. You're on a fault line — thin crust, loose plates — listen to the volcanoes. They're calling out and saying, 'Geothermal! Geothermal!'—but no one's doing anything about it. No one seems to understand how the modern world got this way — no one except me, and I understand it because I had a hand in making it. Everyone else is running away, or pursuing wasteful and dirty technology, or saying his prayers."

"We ain't praying no more," Mrs. Kennywick said.

"The promised land is in your own back yard! All you have to do is get through that flowerbed, and drill the crust and tap the heat. We've been on the moon, but we haven't been in our own basement boiler. Listen, there's enough energy down there to do our cooking until kingdom come!"

I had to grin. Only Father would think of cooking by drilling to the earth's core. "Won't cost a nickel," was his usual boast, "and think of the benefits — a great invention is a perpetual annuity."

Father was excited by the earth tremor and his idea, and he infected the others on the Gallery with his excitement and optimism — just those feelings alone, because I was sure they had not understood a word he said.

"I see a kind of conduit, a borehole," he said. "Down go the drills, up comes the heat energy. I've already proved I can make ice out of nothing but pipefittings and chemical compounds and a little kindling wood. That took brains. But listen, any dumbbell can dig a hole. Why don't we? There's a good reason — we haven't got the hardware. Not yet. There's certain things in this world you can't make out of bamboo and chicken wire. But I'll tell you something else. Siphoning off the geothermal energy — I mean, in a huge way — might put a stop to these earth tremors, or at least take some of the kick out of them. See, I am talking about nothing less than harnessing a volcano!"

He had them twitching with this speech, and they looked eager enough to snatch shovels and start digging wherever he pointed.

All except Mr. Haddy. He stood up and cleared his throat and said, "That is a good spearmint, but it take an awful lot of brains. Between times, Lungley and me want to ship some ice down Bonito and Fish Bucket."

"Still dying to impress your friends, aren't you?"

"Ain't got friends down there," Mr. Haddy said. "But I can use me lanch like the old-time days, loading and sailing. That is my occupation, Fadder."

"I take it you're not interested in geothermal energy."

"Interested, sure thing, for true. But that spearmint, man, is real large. We ain't got all them holes and poles!"

"Not yet," Father said.

Mr. Haddy stuck his teeth out and blinked like a rabbit.

"How much ice do you want to take downstream?"

"Coupla hundred pounds. Two-three sacks."

"Hardly worth the trouble." Father said. "Why not take a ton?"

Mr. Haddy laughed loudly in surprise and relief. "She sink me old lanch!"

"Ice floats, Figgy" — Mr. Haddy smiled at the word—"You can tow it."

"How we do that?"

"Take an iceberg."

"Icebugs and bowl-caynoes," Mr. Maywit said to me, but clear enough for Father to hear. "Fadder sure is a miracle man!" Mr. Maywit looked very frightened.

"We could make an iceberg before breakfast," Father said.

It was the sort of challenge Father enjoyed, something grand and visible — a task that was also a performance. He had objected to Mr. Haddy taking a few sacks of ice to the coast, but towing an iceberg — that was a different story.

***

I had visualized a pyramid, its sides submerged, its point sticking up, being tugged by Little Haddy. But Father's iceberg was egg-shaped, and as tall as he was, to concentrate its coldness and limit its melting. He calculated that a single block made from many smaller blocks would be reduced by only a third if they floated it to Bonito Oriental, and it would still look like an iceberg in Fish Bucket. It would not make the coast. "But we're just proving a point here — not trying to change anyone's life. We'll see how it shakes down."

He told Mother it was mainly a morale-builder. "I like it when you get an idea and no one laughs. They deserve an iceberg."

Mr. Haddy was very proud. The iceberg was his boast, and he would captain the Creoles in taking it downstream.

"I'm just obeying orders," Father said. "If Figgy wants an iceberg, he's going to have it."

All work was put aside for this. Fat Boy was stoked and all the pumps primed. We had been keeping Fat Boy purring, but we only removed ice when we needed it for the cold-storage room, where we kept dead hens and vegetables. "We're a thoroughly refrigerated settlement," Father said. But the truth was that ice was not a necessity so far. It was a novelty, like Father's idea of geothermal energy. Why drill five thousand feet down to get at a volcano's bowels? To provide Fat Boy with an endless heat supply. One scheme justified another. We could have done without them, but, as Father said, why live like savages? "In the end Robinson Crusoe went back home! But we're staying."

He said, "Someday, there'll be a conduit here, self-sealing and perpetual, and this whole refrigeration plant will be operated by geothermal energy. We'll have ice coming out of our ears and won't have to chop another stick of wood. Think of the future!"

That was the day we made the iceberg. We pumped water into Fat Boy and kept the firebox full and listened to the fizz and bubble in the pipes. Father ran back and forth on the path to the riverbank, where the ice bricks were taking shape as an oval iceberg.