Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"No fires, I said." His face was wild.

The kindling wood must have been soaked in oil, because it went wheesht as it burst into flames and set the sticks and split logs above it chattering on fire, louder than Father's whisper. It roared against the bricks, and when Father shut the firebox door, I could hear it in the chimney, and the faintly foolish glugs of the liquid stirring in Fat Boy's pipes — swallows and burps, so sad tonight.

"We'll just have to let it burn. It's chock-full of logs. There's nothing we can do to stop it."

His voice was smaller than the rumble around us.

"Some devil has done this."

"The men—" But what could I tell him that he did not already know? He knew the men inside would freeze solid. I wanted to say something, because I saw them clearly, stretched out and gray, with frost on their faces.

"Start counting, Charlie. By the time you get to three hundred, there won't be any men in there."

He said no more. He led me back to the house in silence. He was gulping, as if he was counting too. The crackle of the fire, the swelling of Fat Boy's pipes, the creak of joints — it was like the quickened tick-tock of measured time.

Before we reached the house, we heard a rapping, a hammering inside Fat Boy — gun butts against the walls. Father went on gulping and started toward Fat Boy.

"If they lie down they'll be all right."

The hammering became frantic.

"They're trying to smash it." Father was not alarmed. He had built it himself, of mahogany planks on a bolted frame. He knew how strong Fat Boy was.

Four gunshots popped inside, then more. But they were muffled by the double walls, and I was not even sure they were shots until Father said the men were firing their guns.

"Allie, are you all right?"

It was Mother, standing on the Gallery in her white nightgown.

Father replied, but his words were drowned by the very loud noise that followed the shots — a great slamming inside Fat Boy. It was like barrels bumping downstairs over and over again. The trapped men were trying to fight their way out, beating on the door. They fired their guns, and the metal rang as their bullets hit pipes — and still the barrel-thud on the thick walls.

"Keep counting, Charlie."

Clover, April, and Jerry appeared with Mother on the Gallery. April was crying, and the others were saying, "Where's Dad?" and "What happened to Charlie?"

"What all this racky puppysho?" Mr. Haddy was behind us in his sleeping clothes — undershirt and striped shorts. He danced back and forth with fear.

"Get your head down, Figgy. Everything's going to be fine. A few minutes more—"

"What cracking?"

"Crickets."

But the noise grew louder, and there were tunnel yells, like buried-alive men screaming into dirt. That and the chiming of pipes. I knew those pipes — if you touched them, the cold metal tore the skin from your fingers. The whole building shook. The tin roof rattled. The noise in that darkness made Fat Boy seem huger than ever. The strangled echoes of so much drumming and fright, and the gunshots, made holes in the night air. The struggle was like hell in an immense coffin that had been nailed shut on people who were half alive.

"They're damaging him," Father said. He was not frightened, but hurt and angry. "They won't he down. They're going to put a hole in him."

He spoke as though something in his own head was breaking.

The kids were crying, and Mr. Haddy still dancing in his striped shorts.

"No!" Father cried. He started to rush forward.

Then the explosion came. It filled the clearing with light that scorched my face. It brought color to every leaf, not green but reddish gold, and it gathered the nearby buildings — the cold store, the incubator, the root cellar — shocking them with pale floury flame and then pushing them over like paper. It lifted Fat Boy from the ground, broke it, and dropped it, shoving its planks apart like petals, as the fireball of flaming gas shot upward like a launched balloon.

Father had turned away from the blast. One side of his face was fiery, the other black. He had one red eye. It was fixed on me, and it was so bright it looked as if it would burst with blood. His mouth was open. He may have been screaming, but the other noise was greater.

The boom was over, yet the power of it still made the trees sway as they did before a storm, tossing their boughs. Birds woke, and mewed. The planks that had broken from the walls had caught fire, and fire clung to the pipes that shot jets of blue flame like a gas burner, and inside there was a griddle-fat sizzle and a choking stink of shit-house ammonia that pinched my nose and stung my eyes.

Father dashed toward the flames, then put his hands over his face and ran back to us. His mouth was black, and now I could hear him.

"Follow me!"

He went rigid. He did not move a muscle.

"Follow me!" he yelled.

Mother and the children snatched at him and hugged him and pleaded. I thought they would tip him over. "Dad!" they shouted, and "Allie!" They were weeping and trying to make him move, and we were all gagging on the ammonia fumes.

Mr. Haddy moaned. "We all gung die."

"We'll get out of this poison," Father said, but still he did not move. I wondered if he was injured. His face was streaked and dirty. "There's more hydrogen in the tanks, the ammonia's going to flood us. Cover your faces!"

Across the clearing, lighting what was left of Jeronimo, Fat Boy burned. I had not realized that such a bright fire could be so quiet. The houses flamed like baskets, but it was the birds that made most of the noise. The clearing itself, its fringes and trees, caught, too. The fire spread fast. It was not the flames or the light, but the sewer stink of ammonia that made this seem like the end of the world. Another gas tank blew, and caused a tremendous wind of heat and poison.

With terrible croaks, Father rubbed his eyes and pleaded with us to follow him. But he did not move. When I saw him this way, and his red eyes, I began to cry.

I said, "I know a place—"

As I started away, they followed, and soon they were right behind me, pushing me along the cool path.

All this took less than five minutes: I was still counting.

And then there were various shocks in the dark, the way doors slam in a house on windy summer nights.

ALL THAT NIGHT, Fat Boy's fire showed over the treetops like a bright hat. Even the pissy snap of hot ammonia gas reached us here. The flames brought Jeronimo close. Rising sparks put the stars out and replaced them with flaming straws, and the climbing smoke clouded the sky.

I sat in our dark camp, the Acre, tortured by mosquitoes. I could not find the black berries we used for keeping bugs off in the daytime. The Jeronimo smoke was no help here in driving them away — and it seemed unlucky to build a fire so near to the one that had destroyed our home. It was still chewing, in the violent and greedy way flames feed on dry wood, and spitting the trees into the sky as ashes. The kids had crawled into a lean-to, where they hid and slept. Mr. Haddy's whimpering about his boat had become lazy snores. He had turned drunk and silly on sleep. Father had found a corner of the camp and put his head down. He slept like the others. He had not spoken a word.

"Get some sleep, Charlie," Mother said. She yawned. Soon she was asleep, and only I was left awake.

Sitting among these purring people, I discovered how long Father's nights were. He was usually the one who watched the night pass. There were rattles in the darkness, and the clash of dropping branches, and the brief gallop of falling trees. There were bat squeals and, because of the fire, some birds still mewing and others beeping like clarinets. These sounds — the birds' most of all — did not belong in the jungle. They were too harsh, they nagged and rasped in all the soft, black surrounding trees.