Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

Our camp looked worse than any Miskito or Zambu settlement I had seen. I was glad we got no visitors, because I knew they would find it strange. If they did not laugh at us, they would pity us. It was clear that we had come here with nothing, and now owned only what we had found on the beach.

In the late afternoon, when the black cloud hung in the east and our smoke was rising, our settlement looked like a dump on a gray shore, where desperate people had come to die. "We're escaped prisoners," Father said. That's what he thought of America. But if we were lost, and trapped in this coastal swamp, weren't we still prisoners?

It was the feeling I had when I saw our hut and the junk from the dugout, from the middle of the lagoon. Jerry and I had learned the knack of using the circular net. and we were excused bucket brigade if we brought back fish or eels. We liked paddling to the far end of the lagoon, so we couldn't see what Father called home.

About a week after the storm cloud first appeared, Jerry and I were in the dugout, fishing, and heard a loud noise. It sounded like cannonfire.

"Dad's started the outboard," Jerry said.

It was what I had thought, or wanted to think — it would take an outboard to get us out of here.

We paddled to the settlement, where Father was standing on the dry solid mud. His eyes were empty. He was listening.

Jerry said, "You got the outboard going!"

"What if I did?"

"We can go home," Jerry said.

It was a forbidden word.

"Sucker!" Father said.

The loud sound banged again. It was not the outboard. It was the roar of distant thunder.

"Why don't you ever believe me?"

The thunder kept on, sometimes like cannons and sometimes, slowly and terribly, like brick walls collapsing into a cellar. Like a whole civilization keeling over and ruining itself on its own dead weight, Father said. It was out there, where the cloud was. He grinned at us. "War!"

From the opposite side of the lagoon came a loopy reply to the thunder— googn! googn! googn! googn! — and the same four notes again, but softer. It was a howler monkey. Each time the thunder roared, the howler monkeys drummed and googned.

There was an even odder result of the thunder. All around the lagoon, as if woken by the noise, creatures began to break out of their buried eggs. First the tortoises and iguanas emerged, then the alligators. The eggs were hidden in the mud, but when these slippery scaly things crawled out, they dragged the shells with them and left this broken eggshell crockery on the bank. Beneath the booming skies the lagoon came creepily alive.

During this thunder period, Mr. Haddy shuffled down the bank-side from Brewer's approach. He was bright-eyed and grinning like a hatched iguana, with phlegm on his front teeth. He brought us a parcel of conch meat and a live chicken tied up with string, and a bag of sugar. He scratched his back by pushing it against a tree, all the while staring at our junkpile. Then he kissed the twins and said, "How is it? Is it right here?"

"Pass me that rope, Charlie," Father said. He showed no surprise at Mr. Haddy's visit, and when I gave him the rope he wound it around the spool of the Evinrude and jerked it, making it go whop-whop-whop and stink of bird fat. Father's hair flew.

"Brang you some conk."

"Do I look hungry?" Father then ignored him and went on jerking the starting spool.

"Wheep! Wheep! Wheep!" Mr. Haddy mimicked the noise very well. "That is a spearmint for true!"

"This?"

"A motor with no sparks and no erl!"

"This is just to keep me sane." Father made it spin again. "Helps me think. I'm planning my boiler and my walkways. You've got to keep the mud off somehow!"

"Brang you some sugar."

"White sugar," Father said. "It's the worst possible thing you can stick in your mouth. Not an ounce of nutrition in it, only calories that burn up so fast they fizzle every B and C vitamin in your body. It gives you cramps, causes kidney failure, makes you tired, and — did you know this? — it's as addictive as dope. Figgy, I came here to get away from that poison."

"I bring you gas and erl next time," Mr. Haddy said. "And a set of sparks."

"Don't want them."

"Why you burning chicken fat?"

"Because we're not going anywhere," Father said.

Mr. Haddy saw Jerry.

"How is it, Jerry-man?"

"Don't talk to him. He's in the doghouse."

Mother said, "I can't imagine how you found us."

"Come down the cutoff. Look this way and that. I have a speerience, then I hear Fadder's voice. How you like this tonda? Man, we gung get some storms, Ma!"

He looked around our camp and sniffed like a rabbit, taking it in.

"Hell of a place this Miskita lagoon."

"We're still getting settled." Mother said. "It doesn't look like much at the moment, but Allie has plans. You know Allie."

"Spearmints," Mr. Haddy said.

Father did not smile. He wrenched the engine with his rope and said, "Back to work, people."

"You garden pretty close up to the water. That you bodge?"

"Hut," Mother said.

"House," Father said.

"House, huh?" Mr. Haddy traced its shape with his head. "House pretty close up to the water, for true."

"The water's over there," Father said, opening his mouth wide to say it plainly. He pointed down the mud bank to the lagoon shore.

"Gung be up here when this rain come. Gung be over that trashpile. How that trashpile get there? Howlies? Baboon? Jacketman?"

Father came close to Mr. Haddy with his rope, looking as if he was going to twist it around the poor man's stringy neck. He said, "Why are you trying to upset everyone?"

Mr. Haddy appealed to Mother. "I ain't trying, Ma!"

"Allie's just mad because it hasn't rained."

Father said, "I have no control over the elements. If I had, the world wouldn't be such a mess. Talk to me about things I can control. Like my temper. Which I'm controlling at this moment."

"It rain when it ready," Mr. Haddy said. "And when it come, you wants it to go way. That how it is. We gung get some rain for true. That gung be speerience!"

"You haven't stated your business," Father said. "What exactly do you want?"

"Say hello and how is it. Tell you about me new boat."

"Tell us how you lost your new watch."

So that was it. Father had noticed; none of us had. Mr. Haddy was not wearing the gold watch Father had given him. That was why Father was acting ratty.

Mr. Haddy said, "That the same story as the boat story. I swupped me watch for me boat. Not a lanch. Sailing boat. Couldn't work her through the cutoff in this low water, so I walked. Want to see her?"

"No," Father said.

"I call her Omega, like the watch. She a pretty thing."

"I had that watch fifteen years."

"It three — three-thirty," Mr. Haddy said, turning his pleading eyes at the halo of hazy sun, to prove that he knew the time without the watch.

"He just gave it away!" Father said.

Mother said, "I thought you approved of that sort of thing."

"For me boat," Mr. Haddy said. "She a sweet boat."

"A boat ain't the answer."

"I ain't ask no question."

"Try asking yourself where you're going to be in fifteen or twenty years."

"Tell you where I be next week — Cabo Gracias." Mr. Haddy turned to Mother. "Got me a job. Shipping conks and hicatees out of Caratasca. Take them down to Cabo Gracias. You know the place?"

Mother said no.

"That is the Cape, on Wonks' mouth. She is some river. Make this Patuca look like a piddle. Want to come down, Ma?"

Mother said, "I'd love to. We could bring the kids."

"I take you for a good sail, sure. Look at the manatees. Look at the turkles. Few weeks more and that place be crazy with turkles laying eggs. The sweet green water and the nice sand. Kids go swimming, we go fish, and all the world is right here."