Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

It was what I had hoped for, but one look at Father told me that it would never happen. His face was black. He waved us away and howled at Mother.

"Will you please stop encouraging him! We've hardly started on the garden. We have the boardwalk to build, and the fishpond and the chicken run. I'm trying to lay a solid foundation here, and I'm getting no help at all. Figgy," he said, towering over Mr. Haddy, "can't you see that we've got work to do?"

"That is the other reason why I come," Mr. Haddy said nervously, gripping his wrist to hide the place where his watch had been. "This Miskita lagoon ain't no place for decent folks. It a swump and a bother. They got tails up here. Them baboons — hear them? They worrying about the rain, and they worrying for true. Cause when the rain come, they gung be frashing and you spearmint gung be all wet, Fadder."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Brewer's pretty decent for a family."

"He's suggesting it's indecent here. This savage, who gave my watch away, is insinuating—"

Mother said, "Don't be so rude. Allie."

"Someone sent him here. Who sent you, Fig?"

"No, man!"

"You go back and tell whoever sent you that this is our home now. We live here. This is a pioneering effort."

Mr. Haddy chewed his lips.

Jerry spoke up. "I want to go with Mr. Haddy."

"See what you've gone and done!"

Mr. Haddy tried to move. But his feet had become big and undependable. He dragged them — still holding tight to his wrist — he stumbled, he almost sat down.

"All right, Jerry — drop your bucket and go. Get a move on. But remember this. If you go, you go for good. Don't come back. I don't want to see your face again."

"Allie!" Mother said.

"That's policy," Father said to Jerry. "Are you man enough to do it?"

Jerry blushed and he looked away as tears came to his eyes.

"Then get back to work, boy." Father's voice was like sandpaper.

Clover said, "I didn't want to go in the first place, Dad," and Jerry glared at her.

"These conchs will make a lovely stew," Mother said. "Take a seat, Mr. Haddy."

But Mr. Haddy had not recovered from "See what you've gone and done!" He glanced down at his feet, perhaps wondering why they would not take him out of here. Then he eyed Father and looked afraid.

Father said, "And here it comes."

The black cloud had massed in the east while Father had been thundering. The wind dropped, and for a little while there was no air to breathe. Sweat darkened Father's beard.

"I hate that thing."

The cannon roar, the crumbling walls, the bricks booming in America's cellar.

"Tonda pillitin rock-stone!" Mr. Haddy usually worried in Creole.

"And I'll tell you something else. I know why you came here today — because you finally heard about the trouble in the States."

I wanted Mr. Haddy to speak. He was silent. Father took a step toward him. Mr. Haddy's body said no, but his face said yes.

"Admit it, Figgy," Father said, and another thundercrack shook the lagoon.

"I hear something about it," Mr. Haddy said.

"That it was wiped out!"

"Yes, Fadder."

"And you're scared," Father said. He was staring Mr. Haddy in the face.

"For true."

"That's why," Father said slowly — he was smiling—"I call this the future."

The barge-hut on the mud bank, the rowboat, the sluice pump that took seven men to work, the garden of seedlings, the trashpile, the flies, the rats jumping, and the howler monkeys drumming googn! googn! googn! googn!

When a person is suffering and afraid, his ailments are obvious and his injuries stick out. I saw a dent in Mr. Haddy's forehead that I had never seen before.

Father said, "Before you go, look around — tell me what you see."

Mr. Haddy glanced from side to side, and swallowed, and said, "You talking about that trashpile, Fadder?"

Jerry whispered to me, "Trashpile is right. This whole place is a dump. That's why I wanted to go. Didn't you?"

"I see a thriving village," Father was saying. "I see healthy kids. Corn in the fields, tomatoes on the vines. Fish swimming and pumps gurgling. Big soft beds. Mother weaving on a loom. Curassows that eat out of your hand. Monkeys that pick coconuts. A ropeworks. A smokehouse. Total activity! That's what I see. And anyone—"

Mr. Haddy had started away. He was hurrying now, driven by the force of Father's words. There were only words. None of the things existed. Then Mr. Haddy was gone, and Father was speaking to us.

"— anyone who doesn't see it has no business here."

Soon, he was snapping his rope at the outboard. It was like strangulation.

I was thinking of Mr. Haddy, stumbling on his big flapping feet in the dark, when Jerry said again, "Didn't you, Charlie? Didn't you want to go with him?"

"No," I said.

"Dad's crazy."

The way he said it gave me goose pimples.

"That's why I want to go." he said. He started to sob, but he put his face down. He did not want me to see him.

"If we don't help him, we'll all die," I said.

"I don't want to help him!"

Jerry was miserable. He squalled about Dad persecuting him and favoring the twins. Dad kept coming up to him and saying, "You're awfully dirty." He called him a slacker. He made him climb trees. Of all of us, Jerry had been the sickest with the squitters, and he looked it — pale cheeks, dusty long hair, and a skinny neck, and scabs where he had scratched at his fleabites.

The weather had affected Father. In the humid heat and silence of the lagoon, he had fallen silent. With the thunder he had begun to argue with Mother. He became moody, he yelled, he picked on Jerry. He knew that Jerry called him Farter, and now he would not leave the poor kid alone. Jerry was angry and helpless.

"I want to go home," Jerry said. It was the forbidden word.

"This is home," I said. I told him that as America had been destroyed, we had escaped just in time. There was nothing of it left, except what washed up on the beach near Brewer's Lagoon.

"That's what Dad says."

"Mr. Haddy said so, too!"

"I don't care," Jerry said. He scratched his bites. He had never looked sicker. "I'm sorry Mr. Haddy went away. He'll never come back."

"Don't you see? We have to trust Dad."

"I don't trust him. He's just a man who sleeps in our hut."

I could not cheer him up. And his anger gave me doubts, so — secretly, while Father was out hammering a coop for the curassows he planned to rear — I asked Mother. What had happened to the United States — had it been destroyed?

The question made her sad. But she said, "I hope so."

"No," I said.

"Yes." She pushed my hair out of my eyes and hugged me. "Because if it has been, we're the luckiest people in the world."

"I said, "What if it hasn't?"

"Then we're making a horrible mistake," she said.

I was too big for her lap. I knelt beside her and thought for a moment that Father's hammering and the thunder was the sound of her heart.

"But it has," she said. "You heard Mr. Haddy."

And I had heard the thunder. But that, too, was a promise without proof. Mother was asking me to believe her. It was like the weather, this thunder period that was all sudden noise, promises of rain and storms. No one knew when it would come, or what it would be like, or how long we would have to go on watering our straggly garden of flopped-over seedlings. No one knew anything.

WHEN THE RAIN did come, it was so thick it was as if we were being punished for doubting the thunder — and then I believed everything. It did not plump down, but fell like iron swords out of the black sky, slicing our backs and twisting branches from the trees. It tore into the sand, it cracked against boulders, it beat against the sea and made a clatter beyond the surf. It was not like water at all, but like blades and buckshot.