by Paul Theroux
“City boys,” Father said to Mother.
The men were still breathing hard, as if with hunger.
“See, around here, if there’s no rain, there’s nothing to eat. Ask anyone. We’re down to our last provisions. The ants are all over the place. Our river’s turned into a creek. The next time you come, things will be different.”
“Where are your Zambus?”
Father wrinkled his nose. “Probably thought you were soldiers. They saw your ruckbooses.”
“We do not understand.”
“Arquebuses—guns. You’re in Mosquitia now,” Father said. “I didn’t have time to tell them you were friendly. I imagine they are out dipping their arrows in poison, aren’t they, Charlie?”
He was casual in the way he said this. And I knew from his voice what he wanted me to reply. I said, “Yes.”
“You sure had them fooled!” He had become jolly. He turned away from them and looked off the Gallery to where the river lay stinking and almost motionless. “Where are you going?”
“It is very pretty here.”
Father faced them. “It is crawling with ants!”
“We do not see any ants.”
“Of course. If you could see them, you could kill them.”
“Where is this ice you told us about?”
“We are not making ice. Look at that river—it is like a sewer. We need all the water we’ve got for the crops.”
The man who had done all the talking said clearly to the others, “He is not making ice.”
“There is not much river left,” Father said. “But there is enough to float a cayuka. This is the Bonito. It flows into the Aguan. I could draw you a map. It is about a day to the coast. You will like it there.”
“We like it here.”
“I wish I had room for you. But most of the houses have infestation. Ants. You’re lucky—you won’t find any ants on the coast.” “There is an empty house next door.”
The Maywits’ abandoned house—they had seen it.
“There is no roof on that house,” Father said.
“You are mistaken.”
Father turned to Mr. Haddy and said, “I told you to rip off that floor and roof, Figgy. Now get your crowbar and go do it—I want every rotten joist torn out.”
The next noise we heard was Mr. Haddy crowbarring the Maywits’ house apart—the crack and screech of boards, like pigs being slaughtered.
“Please excuse us,” Father said. “We have work to do. No sir, we are not on vacation!”
The men followed him outside.
“My Hole,” Father said. “You will have to stay here, above ground. I don’t allow weapons in my Hole.”
The man with the rifle said “Arquebus—ruckboos,” and smiled.
Big Teeth said, “We will look around.”
“Go down to the river. You will see a cayuka there. It is yours—paddle down to the coast.”
“It is not necessary.”
“That is what the ants say.”
The men shrugged.
“I will tell you a secret,” Father said. “We are self-sufficient. We can feed ourselves. But we can’t feed anyone else. That is why I am suggesting you go on your way.”
“We will consider your suggestion.”
It occurred to me that the men spoke Spanish in a way I had never heard before. It was polite, some phrases were new to me, and no words were left out. They were educated men and seemed out of place here where everyone’s Spanish was a jumble of Creole and English. I could not hear the men speak in their perfect Spanish without suspecting them of being dishonest. But that was one of Father’s own suspicions—he always distrusted educated people, and I knew he hated these men.
“Good. I’ll make you another one,” Father said—his patience was wearing thin. “Put those ruckbooses away. They make me nervous. I am not asking you where you got them. I am just saying that I did not come here to look down the barrel of a gun. And I don’t need another nostril, okay? Do you see any locks on these doors? See any fences? No? That is because this is the most peaceful place in the world. I want to keep it that way.”
The men only smiled and held tight to their guns.
“Grab a shovel, Charlie, and climb in.”
We lowered ourselves into the hole.
Father said to me in a whisper, “I thought those gentlemen were prisoners of the Indians. Seems it was the other way around. Kick me, Charlie, I’m a fool!”
About thirty minutes later, there was a noise above us—Mr. Haddy scrambling into the hole.
“Maywit house finished,” he said. “I knock the shoo out of her. She look skelly, but I ain’t see no hants.”
Father’s back was turned. He had a spade in his hand. He was shoveling and thinking.
Mr. Haddy said, “I ain’t like them friends, Fadder.”
“Not so loud, Fig.”
“They sitting under the guanacaste.”
“All right,” Father said. “Take the roof and floor off your house and tell Harkins to do the same. If you can’t find Peaselee, do his house, roof and floor. We’ve got infestation. We’re going to ream these houses. Charlie, you get Jerry and take a bag of chicken manure and spread it in the cold store. Wet it until it stinks. Board up the root cellar and the bean shed. Tell Mother what you’re doing—”
He gave us more instructions, and when he had finished he had named every building in Jeronimo, except one.
I said, “What about Fat Boy?”
“Don’t touch him. Just make sure his fire’s out.”
Mr. Haddy gave Father a rabbity smile. “So if the hants eats everything and we pull down we houses, there ain’t no way for the friends to stay.”
***
By lunchtime, Jeronimo was changed—Haddy house out top and bottom, Maywit house ditto, Peaselee stoop torn out and broken up, other houses unshingled, root cellar boarded, cold store boarded and manured, bathhouse plugged and manured, pumps tinkered apart—all of them wrecked, Father said, “in the interest of fumigation.” Our house was still whole, and so was Fat Boy, but the rest were open to the sky or else shut down.
“That’s about the size of it.” Father said. “I’m going to defuse the situation peaceably.”
“It’s war on the ants.”
Mr. Peaselee and Mr. Harkins had not returned. This was probably a blessing, because their houses were in a sorry state and they would have been upset to see them. Mother said that Ma Kennywick had gone to Swampmouth to stay with her sister—the hammering and banging were too much for her. The Zambus remained out of sight, and yet I knew that although we could not see them, they were watching us from between the loops and chinks of the leaves.
It was drastic that Father had decided to pull most of the habitable houses apart. But it was not surprising, and none of us was worried. We knew how quickly he could build a house—we had seen him. He often said that destruction and creation were father and son. He had taken the Little Haddy to pieces and reassembled it in a sleeker form so that it could float upstream. We trusted his speed and ingenuity. But after so many months of laboring to make it work, who could have guessed that Jeronimo would be silenced and turned into a slum in the space of a morning?
The three men disappeared, tracked into the jungle with their guns. They returned for lunch.
Father was in a good mood now. He greeted them heartily and filled their plates with food. He said, “If you leave right after lunch you can make it to Bonito Oriental. There’s a Chinese store there—Ling Hermanos. All the cans of Spam you could ask for, and probably some rum. Mishla and radio music. That’s the place for you city boys—”
I was in the corner of the Gallery with Clover, April, and Jerry.
Clover said, “What’s Dad done to all the houses?”
“Busted them up,” Jerry said. “Whacked them apart. Charlie and me put chicken poo in the cold store.”
April said, “It looks worse than when we came.”
“I want to go to the Acre,” Clover said.
>
“We can’t do that,” I said.
“Charlie’s a spacky.”
“I am not. Dad won’t let us. He wants us to help him.”
“There’s nothing to do here. It’s all crapoid.”
Jerry said, “Haddy thinks those men are criminals and they’re going to shoot somebody with their guns.”
“They couldn’t shoot us if we were in our camp,” Clover said. “They wouldn’t find us.”
April said, “And if they tried, they’d fall in a trap.”
This was a perfect day for our camp, and there was more water in our pool than in the whole of Jeronimo. I would have given anything to spend the afternoon there swimming. I wanted to leave this place, then come back and find the men gone and all the houses rebuilt.
But when I told the kids this, Mother said, “It’s not polite to whisper.”
Father had been talking to the men. Suddenly he stood up and said, “These gentlemen want to know how I lost my finger. That is an interesting story!”
He hovered over the men and began barking in Spanish.
“It was our first night here in Jeronimo. We were sequestered in this wilderness, believing we were well prepared—we had mosquito nets, sleeping bags, tents, real guerrilleros. We all went to bed and fell asleep. But I had my doorbell dream, my button-pushing nightmare. I was standing at the devil’s door and trying to get in. I was pressing, and I didn’t know it then, but I had stuck my finger clear through the mosquito net. In the morning, I woke up and tried to pull it out. Only there wasn’t a finger there, but a stump! In the night, something had chewed off my digit—a rat, a bat, an armadillo, a peccary. We have creatures here.”
He showed the men his stump.
“That is what I had left! It’s a good thing I hadn’t stuck my whole hand out—I’d be wearing a hook.”
The men examined the finger stump. I could not tell whether they believed him, but Father had told the story vigorously and well.
“Look at the teeth marks! After dark, this place is crawling with creatures. You’re not in the mountains anymore—this is the jungle, boys.”
“We have been in the jungle.”
“Not this wild—this is not Olancho, and it is not Tegoose. The people here are descended from pirates and cannibal Caribs. Spiders as big as puppies? Vultures that pick you clean? This is the Mosquito Coast! That’s why I advise you to go downriver, where you can shut the doors and windows. If anyone slept outside around here, there would be nothing left in the morning—not even bones.”
The toothy man turned to his friends.
“For example, where are you sleeping tonight?” Father asked.
They did not say.
“It better be indoors and far away from here. You could lose more than a finger!”
We worked through the afternoon, digging the hole, sealing the houses, and wishing we were at the Acre, while the three men talked among themselves. They were restless, they watched us work. They had hot nervous eyes in sick faces, and they moved in flicks like lizards, crouching whenever they looked around.
Each time they stared at Father, he held up his finger stump and said, “It will be dark soon!”
They crept away, ignoring him.
This excited Father—their indifference. “I am giving you a chance,” he said. Now he was almost pleading. “I am offering you my cayuka. You would be wise to shove off. It gets dark around here very fast.”
The men played with Clover and April under the guanacaste tree.
Mr. Haddy said, “Where I gung sleep, Fadder?”
“I’ve got a bed for you,” Father said, then he shouted to the men, “Get away from those kids!”
He picked up his claw hammer and walked over to them, past the torn-open or blinded houses.
“I don’t care if you stay here, but keep your hands away from my children.”
“They are very intelligent children.”
“They have intelligent parents,” Father said.
“Yes. They are telling us all the wonderful things you can do.”
Clover said, “I didn’t say anything, Dad. It was April.”
April said, “Clover was boasting about your shaft to get geothermal energy out of volcanoes.”
“That’s a water hole,” Father said. “This dry season has turned us into Zambus. We’re just fighting for water. Keep your trap shut, girls, and go do something useful.”
The men slunk to the river. We could not see them, we thought they had gone, but at twilight they returned. It was the hour the mosquitoes and bats woke and began flying. The men were slapping at their heads, rubbing their ankles, and scratching holes in their shirts.
In their absence, Father’s mood had changed. He sulked, he chewed his cigar. He did not speak to any of us, but instead walked around mumbling. He took his tools over to Fat Boy and stood on a ladder, hammering the upper walls near the hatchway. But when he saw the men again, he began laughing. It was dark now. Mr. Haddy brought a lantern from the boat. Flimsy insects skidded around the lantern’s glass chimney. I stood watching with Jerry.
Father was still laughing. He said, “I am a fool. You said you liked it here, and I did not believe you. But I am fully convinced now. You meant what you said. You are staying the night here, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I would not be surprised if you decided to stay two nights, or more. Maybe until the rain comes and we start planting—and that’s weeks away!”
“We will stay until we are ready. Then we will go.”
Saying that, the man had the face of an insect, one that settles on a bean pod and burrows until it has eaten its fill. Insects make little probing twitches, but they have no more expression than a pair of pliers. The men looked that way—pincer lips and eyes like rivets. Insects.
“I am not a savage,” Father said. “I am not going to lay hold of you and make you prisoners. It was your choice all along. But it’s dark now.” He took the lantern and put it near their faces, bringing the insects near their insect eyes. “You can’t go anywhere.”
The men stared at the mosquitoes and jumping moths.
“You would be fools to leave now. We haven’t got much, but what we have is yours. This infestation—look, there is a termite on the glass, see his jaws?—has left us short of houses. But we can provide food and shelter.”
“He is a very sensible man.”
“I do what I can.”
“He understands.”
“When I saw you up there in that—was it a Twahka village?—I took you for prisoners.”
The men smiled and slapped the insects away from their cheeks and ears. Holding the lantern this way. Father was tormenting the men.
“I thought, ‘Slaves!’ ”
The men laughed as they fanned the insects away.
“But you were the guests of those Indians,” Father said. “And now you are our guests. Look—”
A mosquito had settled on Father’s arm. He allowed it to stay there a moment, and then he brought his hand down on it. He showed the men the squashed mosquito, the smear of blood.
“Dead! But don’t feel sorry for him. That’s not his blood—it is my blood!”
The men stepped back. Father had wiped the blood on his finger stump.
“This is Mosquitia!” Father said.
“You are right. There are more creatures here than in the mountains of Olancho.”
“The Mosquito Coast is full of surprises,” Father said. “That is why we like it, right, Mr. Haddy?”
“I sleeping on me lanch, Fadder.”
“You do that, Figgy. Charlie, you take Jerry into the house or you’ll be eaten alive—”
We started toward the house, which was now the only complete building in Jeronimo. Jerry took my hand—he was worried, his hand was damp. He tossed his head to keep the mosquitoes away. “—and you gentlemen can use the bunkhouse.”
Jerry said, “What bunkhouse is he talking about?”—Father had said the word in Engli
sh—“We don’t have a bunkhouse.”
The lantern was swinging—Father was leading the men to Fat Boy. In the circle of mothy light he raised the ladder to the hatchway entrance on top.
Some minutes later, Father was at the screen door of the Gallery, talking as he entered.
“They want food. Put it in this pail, Mother, and I’ll bring it across.”
He jangled the pail down, and Mother ladled wabool into it. Then she made parcels of beans and rice, wrapping them in banana leaf, and put them into a basket.
“We’re stuck with them,” she said.
Father’s face was blank, his long nose raw with sunburn. He stared at the floor where we were eating. It was as if he had run through all his moods on this confusing day and now had none left. He lifted his feet, and, letting them flap, he moved around the room like a goose.
He said, “Stuck with them? We’re not stuck with anyone. If I believed things like that, we’d still be back in Hatfield.” His voice was flat, he was still stepping back and forth across the floor. “No one who has the slightest spark is ever stuck with anyone in this world, or has to endure a minute of oppression. We proved that, Mother. We all choose our own thunderjug and sit on it and take the consequences.”
Mother was smiling.
“Thunderjugs,” Father said. “That’s what we used to call chamber pots down in Maine.”
***
It was after midnight, still so hot the grass and trees howled with insects. Frogs bellyrumbled in the shrunken river, and I could hear the current sucking at the reeds. These were the noises I heard the seconds after I woke. Father had put his hands on my face. In that darkness, I thought it was one of the men who had come to strangle me.
“Get your shoes on and follow me.”
We had no lights, yet there was enough moonglow in the clearing for me to see the empty houses and the stacks of wood that had been torn from the roofs and floors. Jeronimo had been like this months ago, when we were building it—purple pickets in an empty crater, and the barracking crackle of the jungle.
Father carried a thick plank under his arm, but nothing else. It was a very clumsy weapon, if it was a weapon. We crossed to the cold store. The smell of damp chicken manure hung over it. Father knelt in the grass and drew breaths as if he was keeping count of them.
