Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

We were at the beach that day — Jerry, Father, and I — hoicking up wire for the coop. From the east there were waterspouts, five of them, then five more, and the cloud bank burst apart and came at us, bluish-black. Big hard drops were flung out of it, and skins of rain shook our way, and long mops of shower swished toward the beach.

Father's cap flew off and his clothes flapped and turned black and stuck to his muscles. His beard dripped and at his feet was a spackle and spurt as the rain dug pebbles out of the ground. He began shouting almost at once. He raised his fists. We listened carefully to him, and even Jerry was obedient — no talk of "Farter" now. We had not expected this, though Father was pleased and almost choking as the buckshot hit his face.

"This is it! What did I tell you? Grab that wire — look alive!"

We slogged across the haulover sand and headed back to our lagoon, fighting the wind, which was blowing from the jungle. Father was sculling like mad and grinning as the rain dashed the creek. There were three inches of water in the dugout as we left the neck of the creek, and there we saw the squall hit the lagoon and whip it, stirring lumps out of it.

"The wind's veering," Father said. "It's a rotary storm."

Jerry said, "We won't have to water the garden now."

Where was the garden? Where was the hut? The lagoon had gone dark. The white margin squeezed against the bank was the froth of waves. Then I saw it. Under the stooping trees, through the blowing glint of the rain, lay the huddle of our camp, drenched black, while everything heaved around it — flying branches, tattered leaves, fists of water.

Father said, "I'll find something for you to do, Jerry. This rain's put us back into business." He took Jerry by the arm and screamed, "Now do you believe me?"

The rain lashed Jerry's face, but Father's hand was under Jerry's chin, lifting Jerry's face to that fury.

"Yes," Jerry said, and the rain was in his mouth. "Yes, please!"

The shutters of the hut were down and latched. Mother and the twins were inside, but the bullet noise of the rain on the roof was so loud we could not hear each other speak. With the windows sealed, the air was flat and stifling. We sat cross-legged, eating fish and eddoes, listening to the rain batter our camp and burst against the hut.

Father smiled and made the lip motions of, "We're perfectly dry."

Mother frowned, as if to say, "It's all terrible."

"Ingrate!" Father yelled, above the storm.

There were noises all night — the scrape of loose boards blowing out of the junkpile, the crash of trees falling nearby, the sizzle-smack of rain on the tin patches of our hut walls. It excited me and made my heart beat fast. That flipping of my heart kept me awake. I imagined that the rain had driven the rats out of the junkpile. They were desperate, massing around the hut, their wet black backs moving like a greasy torrent, and they were gnawing our walls. The storm had made the country seem vast. We were not at the shore of a lagoon. We were a speck in the hugeness of Honduras, at the rim of its violent coast.

The shutters strained to open. It was the pressure of wind, lifting them and rattling the hinges. The four of us kids slept in the forward part of the hut. The other kids were asleep. I lay awake, as I had the night we rushed out of Jeronimo, and tonight the frantic sound of rain was like fire — flames cracking against the house, filling the air with the ashy stink of mud. I pressed on my heart to slow it, so that I could breathe and sleep.

One shutter was shaking worse than the others. I grabbed it, to steady it, and it banged my thumb. When I pulled my hand away, the boards began a fearful rattling and, before I could secure it, the whole shutter lifted, splintering one board and yanking screws out of the hasp. Rain shot through the window. I reached for the flapping shutter, and a cold wet thing closed over my hand. Before I could scream, another cold wet thing reached in and felt for my mouth.

"Don't bawl," a bubbly voice said.

My first thought was that it was Father, with a crazy nighttime idea. The sour fingers were on my teeth. I said, "Dad—"

But it was Mr. Haddy, his dripping face at the window and his wet eyes bugged out. He let go of me and whispered, "Come here, quick."

I slipped out wearing only my shorts. It was one of Father's Jeronimo ideas — wear as little as possible in the rain, Father said, because skin dries faster than clothes.

Mr. Haddy was standing in the mud with his arms hanging down. I could not see him clearly, but I could hear the rain beating on his hat.

"Busted you hatchcover," he said.

"You scared me." I was shivering with cold. The rain blistered on me and stung my skin.

Taking my hand, and putting his face so close to mine that the rain dribbled from his face to mine, Mr. Haddy said, "You ain't tell Fadder I come here in this" — lightning made his face go purple and his lips black and his teeth blue—"Mudder!"

"How did you get here?"

"Poled and rowed," he dribbled. "You a good boy for true, Charlie."

I had the impression that he was very hungry and that he was going to bite me.

"The creek's not wide enough for a pair of oars."

"She rising."

I saw his rowboat on the bank.

"Come in the hut and get dry," I said.

"Fadder inside?"

"Yes."

"I ain't gung." He slopped to the bank. "I got some parcel of cargo for you."

He heaved a barrel out of the stern of the boat and squashed it into the mud. Then he squatted near it and took a plastic pouch out of his pocket and handed it to me.

"This is sparks and that is gas-erl. You take urn."

"It's raining, Mr. Haddy," was all I could say. It was midnight, and stormy, and he had broken a shutter and clamped his hand over my mouth — to bring these things. What were they for?

"Raining for true. That is why I come here."

"Dad's asleep." I hoped he was.

"He vex with me." Mr. Haddy rolled the barrel along the bank and pushed it into the junkpile and leaned a log against it. He said, "This is for Fadder's outboard engine."

"What shall I do with them?"

"You ain't tell him where they come from. Tell him you found um. Charlie, you wants me to die?"

"No."

"Then don't mention Haddy," he said. "Now help me lanch me boat."

We dragged the boat into the water and Mr. Haddy got in. The lightning broke over the trees at the far end of the lagoon. A yellow-blue glimmer swelled in the sky. stuttering like a fluorescent tube, and lit the ugly clouds. Now Mr. Haddy was hunched over his oars.

"She gung fill up. All the rivers gung be high and you garden gung be drowning. They gung be water everywhere. Then maybe Fadder fix his outboard engine and come down to Brewer's. We look after him. I take all yous to the Wonks. Do some fishing and turkle catching."

"He doesn't want anyone to look after him."

"You want to get drownded?"

"Father won't let us drown. He's got a plan. He wants it to rain. It's dry inside the hut. This is our home."

Googn!

"Them baboon just hear you, Charlie."

The howler monkeys were drumming in the thunder rumble across the black lagoon, and the rain's boom and crackle made a deep cave of the earth and filled the sky with dangerous boulders, too big to see. And all around us in the wet and noise was this dark edge of monkeys.

It made me remember.

I said, "Mr. Haddy, is it true about the United States — has it been wiped out?"

"Hard! Hard! Everywhere! Look" — but there was nothing to see—"she flooding!"

"Are you sure? Where did you hear it? You mean, there's nothing—"

She flodden, he kept repeating in a terrified voice. He moved his arms. The propped-up oars helped me pick out surfaces.