Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

Selfishness had made him clever. He wanted things his way — his bed and his food and the world as well. His explanations of events were as ingenious as his inventions. Had there been a war in the United States? Were people after him, as he said? Was it a fact that he was being hunted because "they always kill the smart ones first"? We did not know. But if you believed any of this, you could be very happy here. You did not notice the heat or the insects or the darkness that buried you at night. Father's talk took away your sense of smell. After hearing him speak about America, it comforted you to think that you were so far away on the Mosquito Coast. It comforted him!

Here he was, shouting his plans at us and grinning at our bewilderment. It might be simple scheming, like improving the pipanto pole, or making a smudge pot out of a coconut husk, or describing the foolproof house he was going to make. Or it could be almost batty.

"What a thoroughly rotten job God made of the world!"

I had never heard a single person criticize God before. But Father talked about God the way he talked about jobbing plumbers and electricians. "The dead boy with the spinning top" was the way he described God. "And the top is almost out of steam. Feel it wobble?"

He seldom let up. It was like part of the jungle racket, after our escape from Jeronimo. Like the pava birds and the crickyjeens and the nighttime tattoo, along the Rio Sico and where we turned into the Rio Negro for Paplaya. But of all the jungle sounds that I heard, and that static could be very surprising, the clearest of them, and the most often, was the sound of Father's voice, crying out for comfort.

***

It took us several days of "coasting," as Father called it, to reach Brewer's Lagoon. After all the talk and boat towing and the halt salty breeze, I expected something blue — sand, surf, palms, a beach. But Brewer's was an inland scoop, and its haulover was a neck of high ground that hid the ocean and blocked the pleasant sound of waves sluicing the sand and making the pebbles jiggle.

We were in mud here. The lagoon was wide and flat and swampy. It was brown water stretching boggily to a brown shore. No ripples — it was a dirty mirror with some stubs of weeds, and cut-down palms like old lampposts. A film of mud and fine silt covered the banks around it, and flies gathered where green cowflap lay drying at the edges of the still, dark puddle.

"It's creepy," Mother said.

"Don't be unhelpful." Father looked at me. "She's bitter."

Mr. Haddy crowed when he saw Brewer's Village. His mother lived there. The huts were piled against the shore. They were shaped like belfries and stained the same color as the lagoon. Zambus paddled dugouts toward the jetty sticks. It was a steamy afternoon, the sun a purple hoop in the gray sea haze.

Father said, "This is where we part company."

"Ain't you coming with me, Fadder?"

"No. I mean, you're not coming with me."

Mr. Haddy gulped, as if trying to guzzle his fear. But it seemed jammed in his throat and fluttering like a chunk of Adam's apple. He said he wasn't ready to go ashore just now.

"Figgy's dragging his feet."

"They gung say, 'Haddy, where you lanch?'"

"You can tell them about your experience. I've got a wife and four kids and nothing else. You don't hear me complaining."

Mr. Haddy opened his mouth and took a big bite of air and wailed, "1 ain't got nothing left!"

Rocking down the pipanto from stern to bow, Father slipped his watch off his wrist. It was an old expensive watch — gold with a gold strap. Father was proud of it. It had survived our flights and failures. Strong, waterproof, and accurate, it was the one valuable item on this boat. Father had often said that it was now worth twice what he had paid for it and each year its value increased. But more likely it had been a lucky find at the Northampton dump.

"It's money in the bank, Fig."

Mr. Haddy shook his hands into his trousers. "I ain't take you watch."

"I've got no use for it anymore — have I, Mother?"

He dragged Mr. Haddy's skinny hand out of the pocket and pushed the watch over his struggling fingers. And he laughed.

"Son, observe the time and fly from evil."

Mr. Haddy looked at Mother. He said, "Speerience."

"Keep it," Mother said. "You've been a good friend to us."

Smiling mournfully at the watch, and wetting his teeth, Mr. Haddy said, "But where you gung, Fadder?"

Father said, "We're going to paddle up the blackest creek in this lagoon. And we're going to find the smallest cranny of that creek, where there's no people or plagiarism. Trees, water, soil — the basics are all we require. We'll hole up there. They'll never find me."

"You ain't like Brewer's?"

"Too exposed," Father said. "I don't want to be visited by scavengers."

The pipanto had drifted toward Brewer's Village. It was belfry shacks and cooking fires and mud banks and wet Zambus and a dog.

"I want a real backwater. Solitary. Uninhabited. An empty corner. That's why we're here! If it's on a map, I can't use it."

"Laguna Miskita ain't on no chart."

"How small is it?"

"Fadder, it so small," Mr. Haddy said, "when you gets there you ain't believe you there."

While Father sculled the pipanto to the jetty, Mr. Haddy gave us directions: two miles along Brewer's shore to the cutoff, and then inland for three miles. "Go till you ain't go no more." Gratefulness made him prolong his directions, but when we dropped him and he slogged through the mud to his mother's hut, he did not look back. He was admiring his new watch, lifting his wrist, and soon he was surrounded by children, Creoles and Zambus, singing at him.

It was painful for me to see him go. He was not ours anymore. We were alone again — the first family, as Father kept repeating. But without our old friends — Mr. Haddy, and the Maywits, and our Zambus, and Ma Kennywick and the rest — it felt like the last family.

***

We had found the creek draining into Brewer's and made our exit. Father sculled to where it opened into a string of lagoons. The last was Laguna Miskita. It had to be — we could go no further. Except for another creek, which led sideways into it and was too small for even a cayuka, there was no more open water. It was nowhere, it was a dead end, there was not a hut to be seen. We turned over our pi-panto on the shore and propped it up with poles. This was our house. There were herons and kingfishers here, and overhead some pelicans. In the low gray trees at the edge there stumbled some wild cows with cloudy eyes. The lagoon bubbled and streamed with stripes of decay. It was the color of cooked liver. Flies buzzed around us. Even the mud bubbled, and the pressure of rotten gas underground made holes on the banks, like the dimples on clam flats.

"We're alone here," Father said. "Look, no footprints!"

He said that from now on our life would be simple — gardening, fishing, and beachcombing. No poisonous contraptions, none of the Jeronimo mistakes, nothing fancier than a flush toilet. A vegetable plot here, a chicken run over there, a good solid hut that could take the rain.

"Chickens?" Mother said. "Where are you planning to get chickens?"

"Curassows." Father said. "Chickens is just a generic term. We'll raise curassows — we'll tame them."

"What else?"

"Nothing. That's the beauty of it. Survival means total activity. There isn't time for anything else!"

"It'll be an ordeal," Mother said.

"An ordeal is a square deal."

That night and for many nights afterward, we slept under the propped-up pipanto. It was cool at night and we made smudge pots to keep the mosquitoes away. Each day we worked at making the place comfortable. We had done it before, at Jeronimo, but until we started beachcombing we had no tools here, except the burned machete. We built a latrine and a cooking area and Father paced out a garden — the soil was so black and soft on the shore it would hardly need tilling, he said.