Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

Father looked at everyone in turn and his mouth bulged with satisfaction. "Why should I go wild?" he said. "I knew it was going to happen."

Jerry said, "What about Drainy and the other kids?"

"They went away," Clover said. "All of them, in the man's motorboat."

"What did I tell you?" Father said. He was grinning at the Zambus and they were grinning back.

Mother had come down from the Gallery with April, who was moping. Mother said, "I did everything I could, but they wouldn't listen. They didn't hear, they didn't recognize me, they were so frightened."

"Don't tell me," Father said firmly. "I know all about it. The Maywits ran off with that moral sneak in some polluting pig of a boat. Figgy's friend. You don't have to spell it out. I took one look across the clearing and I knew."

Hearing "Figgy," Mr. Haddy came forward and said, "It were puppysho. Them people jump everyways and we ain't get a dum bit of peace. Ma Kennywick scared out of her skin and bellyaching ever since. Peaselee, he bawling too, about seeing some dum fool with ruckbooses. Man, we glad you here, Fadder."

Father waited, then said, "And I know something else."

He smiled and took a mouthful of the silence and swallowed it.

"Fadder know." This was Francis Lungley, telling Bucky.

"Those Maywits have got a lot to learn."

If he knew everything, why didn't he know their real name?

I said, "Maywit isn't their name. It's Roper. They're all Ropers."

"Who says?"

I told him what the kids had said, but I did not mention the Acre or that they were all afraid of him. Jerry, Clover, and April said nothing — they let me take the blame for knowing. Father was still smiling.

Mother said, "You should have said something before this, Charlie."

"I thought Dad knew."

Father said, "What else do you know?"

I was going to say — Those men you called slaves didn't look like slaves, and the Indians looked scared. The ice melted before they could see it. You wouldn't let us rest, you made Jerry cry by talking about the Holiday Inn, and it was a terrible trip, worse than the river trips and probably a failure.

But I said, "Nothing else."

"Then I still know more than you do," he said — but when had I ever doubted that? — "because I know they're coming back."

We went down to the bathhouse and stripped off our clothes. Father set the showers going — what a marvelous invention! It was like a car wash, with jets of water shooting from pipes on the walls. We were all inside, jostling in the fine spray, in the half-dark — Father, Jerry, the Zambus, and me. Fat Boy's fire was out, so there was no hot water, but no one minded. The busy harmless sting of the showers took off the mountain dust and the bad memories.

Mother said, "I wouldn't be so sure about that, Allie."

"She doesn't believe me," Father said. "Pass the soap."

He was proud of his soap. We had made it ourselves out of pig fat we had traded for ice. It was greasy yellow soap and felt like a handful of lard. "No additives," Father said. "Why, you could eat that soap!"

"You weren't here."

"Didn't have to be."

"It was horrible," Mother said. "That missionary — Struss."

Father said, "I know."

Hollering through the bathhouse walls, Mother said, "It seems he was up in Seville in his boat. I don't know what he saw there, but it must have been those ridiculous people praying. He came back accusing us all of blasphemy and spreading the lies of science."

"Soap up." Father said to the Zambus. They always washed in a squatting position, never standing up. Also, they kept their shorts on when they took baths. I couldn't see them in the dark bathhouse, but I could hear the water pelting against their heads, and their spitting and guffing.

"Could they have been on their knees, praying to the refrigerator?" Mother said. "Whatever it was, your Reverend Struss was pretty upset. He came in swinging. We were doing harm, he said, leading his people astray. He was mostly yelling at the Maywits — he called them the Ropers. He made them get down at the riverbank while he splashed water all over them. It was a service of purification, he said, washing them clean of the sins we had taught them. Mrs. Kennywick didn't know which way to turn, and Mr. Peaselee freaked out."

Father said, "I could have told you."

"I ordered him off the property. I said you were due back in ten minutes and you'd sink his boat."

"Good thinking," Father shouted back through the wall. "I would have, too!"

"They packed their bags. I mean bags. Paper ones. And they all left."

Father said, "So they ran out on us."

"They is scared," Mr. Haddy said. His mouth was against the bathhouse wall, his front teeth sticking through. "The preacher is yartering about soldiers and trouble and ruckbooses."

Father shut off the water.

"What soldiers?" he said, as we dripped.

"In the mountains. Over the hills. Down the river. Up the trees. With ruckbooses. Russians and what not. Peaselee hear them."

Clover said, "He said you were just as bad as the soldiers."

"Peaselee said that?"

"The man. The missionary. He called you a Communist."

Father led us out of the bathhouse. The Zambus hopped and danced and shook their fingers to get dry. Father wore a flour sack around his waist, his hair was dripping, and his body was as white as marble. He held one arm up, like a statue in front of a courthouse.

"None of this is news to me," he said. "But I'll tell you something you don't know. They'll be back, as sure as anything. Because this is a happy place, and the world isn't. The world is plain rotten. People are mean, they're cruel, they're fake, they always pretend to be something they're not. They're weak. They take advantage. A cruddy little man who sees God in a snake, or the devil in thunder, will take you prisoner if he gets the drop on you. Give anyone half a chance and he'll make you a slave: he'll tell you the most awful lies. I've seen them, running around bollocky, playing God. And our friends, the Maywits — sorry, Charlie, the Ropers — they'll be lonely out there. They'll be scared. Because the world stinks!"

He started up the path to the house, taking long white strides. "They'll be back — just you wait. Remember where you heard it. Remember who said it."

Mother stepped beside him and said, "How did it go with the ice?"

Father was still walking. He grunted. I listened hard, then I heard him say in a low voice, "We had shrinkage. I knew it was a mistake to lug so much of it that far."

So he did not lie after all.

***

And the Acre in the jungle was ours. It was not the same without Drainy preaching and Alice doing the cooking and Peewee and Leon making baskets, but now, with fewer of us, it seemed larger, and we were able to spread out. Each of us had his own sturdy lean-to. We brought a rope from Jeronimo and fixed a swing to a tree by knotting the dangling end and sitting on it. Father would not have allowed this in Jeronimo. It wasn't useful, because if someone wasn't swinging on it, it just hung there — that would have been his objection — and was the waste of a good rope.

We ate yautia roots and wild avocados, and we repaired the camouflage in all the man traps — four of them, the deep holes nicely disguised with boughs. One day, in a trap, we saw a snake eating another snake — half of it choked down his throat and both snakes thrashing their tails. The eater could not crawl away or stop eating, so we could study it in safety. We brought it back to Jeronimo.

"There's a perfect symbol for Western civilization," Father said.

A spider monkey passed through our church tree another day and sat there picking his teeth. He watched us with curiosity, as if he wanted to play.

Then he sniffed, leaped from the tree, landed near a bush, and tore a small fruit ball from it. On his upward bounce he was back in the tree, eating it. He gnawed the skin and sucked out the inside, then rolled across the bough and tumbled away, yanking branches.