Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

They offered us calabashes of wabool, and Father ate some. Their coffee was made of mashed burned corn kernels, but Father drank it. They gave us bananas. Father said, "I draw the line at bananas." They handed him a stinking cigar. Father smoked it and said, "Best thing I know for keeping the bugs away."

And then they told us that it was not a village but a family. Their name was Thurtle. Every Miskito here was a Thurtle. They were fathers and mothers and children and cousins, in a complicated way, all Thurtles, big and small.

Father said he was not surprised to hear it. Families were the only social unit left. He introduced us and had Clover and April sing a song for them. The twins gave them "Bye, Bye Blackbird." The Miskito men did a slow heavy dance, stamping in a circle and clapping.

This village, the Thurtle family, was like twenty others we had seen and ignored. But that was months ago, and now Father was a different man. This was the proof that he was different. He was completely patient. He didn't ask them to change. He didn't turn up his nose at their sour wabool. He didn't call attention to their humming latrine or their thin crazy pig. He said it was a remarkable place. It was the village of the future he had described to us less than a week back, on the river. He praised the way these Miskitos lived, and said he much admired the knots on the vines that held their huts together.

While he talked, clouds gathered overhead and a light rain and a distant barrel-roll of thunder began. The Miskitos were afraid of thunder. This storm worried them. Father said that sense of fear had saved them — they had smelled danger, as he had.

He found a drum of gasoline behind the store. The Miskitos said it was for the generator, but the generator was broken. It had rusted out. They were waiting for a new armature.

"Don't waste your time," Father said. "What do you need electricity for?"

They said for the lights.

"What will you do when the light bulbs blow? You'll need new ones. But they can't be had for love or money. No light bulbs. Nothing!"

Father said they had what they had, and what they didn't have didn't exist.

The Miskitos understood this quicker than we had on the boat.

He told them if they wanted oil they could use fish guts or pig fat. And he needed the gasoline more than they did, because he was running low on outboard fuel. He was willing to swap them a chisel and a toilet seat for it, and he would throw in a mirror, if they really wanted one.

They said okay.

"Barter," he said to us, as he loaded the gasoline drum into the dugout. "That's how it's going to be from now on."

They should be glad he was taking this gasoline off their hands, he said, because it was nothing but a fire hazard.

"Admit it," he said, poking a man in the chest with his finger, "I just did you a big favor!"

The man giggled as Father poked him, and the other Miskitos laughed.

Mother said, "I think you've made a hit, Allie."

"I can't help it, Mother. I like these people."

Jerry whispered to me, "They're starving. They're dirty. Look at their houses. They haven't got anything. You can see their bones. Their noses are running. They're spackies."

I said, "This is what Dad said it was going to be like."

"It's horrible."

"Jerry, he was right."

And even Jerry had to agree that Father had predicted this.

Father was saying, "You know Up Jenkins?"

They said there was a certain Jenkins in Mocoron, but he had died from a bite of a bonetail.

"This Up Jenkins is a game."

It was the one we had played in Jeronimo and Laguna Miskita. It involved a person in one group hiding a coin in his hand, and the other group trying to find out who had it. The second group called out "Windowpanes!" or "Slammums!" or "Creepums!" The group that had the coin hidden among its players had to do precise things with their hands — windowpane, slam them, or creep them. Usually the coin fell out as they did it — before anyone could guess who was hiding it — and everyone laughed. It was a silly game, but the Miskitos liked it, and we played it on the counter of the shop until the rain let up.

Eventually, Father looked toward the Patuca and said, "Time to shove off."

They wanted us to stay. They were enjoying Up Jenkins and Father's friendly pokes. But Father said he did not want to take advantage of them. At the river, as they gathered to say good-bye, it seemed to me that Father's awful prediction had been right. They were Miskitos, but they looked like us. They were bitten and muddy and their rags were no different from ours. This was the future he had promised, and we were savages in it.

"You going upriver in you bodge?"

Father said yes.

"Mobilgasna?"

"How far is Mobilgasna?"

"Four hours."

"We're going farther."

"Wumpoo?"

"How far's that?"

"Two days."

"Then I'm going a month or a year. I'm going until I run out of river. I don't intend to stop until I get where I'm going."

On the boat, Father said, "Did he say Wumpoo?"

Mother said, "Something like that."

"Wumpoo sounds familiar. It means something. What?"

Mother said she didn't know. But Father was right. Wumpoo did sound familiar.

That night, moored below Mobilgasna (it was steeper here, the riverbanks piney and covered with boulders), we lay in our hammocks and heard Father boasting to Mother, "You just saw the future. It's not so bad. It just looks dirty—"

Then I almost fell out of my hammock. Wumpoo— Guampu! I remembered what it meant.

ONLY I REMEMBERED Guampu, that name, but I had reasons. I kept it to myself, sucking on the secret like candy. No one mentioned it again. The others were calm, or at least so depressed by the Thurtles' village that they were out of hope.

During the days we spent in the smell of hot mud, in the quiet reaches of this upper river, they figured we had come to the end of our travels. All this and only this for the rest of our lives, as Father liked to say. But I wanted to go on and keep floating, because of Guampu.

We saw more slubbery villages, where people had burned out scoops of jungle and hung up huts. We saw them weeding rice, scattering seeds, hauling clumsy carts, and sawing wood into planks. Mountains appeared — yellow-topped ranges to the north and west, with clouds blowing past them, as if the wigs of these peaks had slipped off. Between the villages were miles of unseparated jungle. Father congratulated himself on having boated us into the future. We were lucky, he said. We were safe, we were free, we were perfectly comfortable. Plenty to eat, and a hot engine behind us — maybe the last engine on earth. We were sailing through the wilderness in style! So he said.

But the Miskitos' oil was bad, water in it fouled the valves, and after a day of cursing it and coaxing it, Father threw the outboard motor into the river.

"Don't want it! Don't need it anymore! Just a headache! Give it a decent burial!"

It sank into the weeds and began bleeding rainbows.

We poled our hut-boat with long bamboos, throwing our weight on them at the bow and walking them to the stern. In this way we made quiet progress up the oozy edge of the river, and no waves.

The current was less swift and the sun shone all day, giving the water a warm buttery look. The trees in the tall forest were heavy with creepers and full of the clickety-click of monkeys and the hot frying sounds of crickyjeens. The flowers hung from some vines like bright bunches of rags, or with blossoms like shuttlecocks. There were clearings and beaches tucked into riverbends. Any of these places would do Father said We could stop anywhere and call it home.

"Why don't we?" Mother said.