The Mosquito Coast

At just that second—Father as simple and obscure as a passerby, doubting me with his slack posture—the wave came. It slapped me hard from behind, traveled up my back and frothed against my neck, pushing me and making me buoyant, then just as quickly releasing me. I trembled with cold and grasped the rock tightly, thinking my chest would burst from the howl I held in.

  “He did it!” Jerry shrieked, running in circles on the beach. “He’s all wet!”

  Now I could see Father’s face. A wildness passed across it, like a desperate memory, making a mad fix on his jaw. Then he grinned and yelled for me to come in. But I let two more waves break over me before I gave up and staggered ashore, and against my will I started to cry from the cold.

  “That’s better,” Father said, while the twins whooped at me and touched my wet clothes. But it sounded as if he was complimenting himself, not me. “Take those shoes off.”

  Father carried a shoe in each hand as we walked up the beach toward Mother and the pickup truck.

  “Hey, put the kid’s shoes on." It was a voice behind us. “There’s glass and crap on this here thing.”

  We turned and saw a black man. He held a radio against his ear and wore a tight wool sock on his head. He blinked at Father, who was twice his size and still smiling.

  Father said, “You’re just the man I’m looking for.”

  The man switched off the radio. He looked truly puzzled. He said his name was Sidney Torch and that he did not live near here. But he had seen some kids breaking glass bottles on this beach, and it was dangerous to walk around barefooted or you would get slashed. But he did not want to start anything, he said, because he was nobody, going up to visit with his brother, and he had never seen us before.

  Father said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

  He said this in a kindly way, and the black man, who gave him a sideways look, began to chuckle.

  “No one loves this country more than I do,” Father said. “And that’s why I’m going. Because I can’t bear to watch.” He strolled along and put his arm around the man, Sidney Torch. “It’s like when my mother died. I couldn’t watch. She’d been as strong as an ox, but she broke her hip and after a spell in the hospital she caught double pneumonia. And there she was, lying in bed, dying. I went over to her and held her hand. Do you know what she said to me? She said, ‘Why don’t they give me rat poison?’ I didn’t want to watch, I couldn’t listen. So I went away. They say it was an awful struggle—touch and go—but she was doomed. After she died, I went back home. Some people might say that’s the height of callousness. But I’ve never regretted it. I loved her too much to watch her die.”

  All this time, Mr. Torch was twisting his radio knobs nervously. I had never heard Father’s story, but it was characteristic of him to tell personal details of his life to a perfect stranger. Maybe it was his way of avoiding betrayal, divulging his secrets to people he met by chance and would never see again.

  “That’s a real sad story,” Mr. Torch said.

  “Then you missed the point,” Father said.

  Mr. Torch seemed flustered, and when Mother saw me all wet and yelled at Father—“What are you trying to prove?”—Mr. Torch took gulps of air and backed away.

  But Father addressed him again. He had a proposition for him. “Mr. Torch,” he said, “I am prepared to sell you this pickup truck for twenty-two dollars, because that’s what she cost me to register.”

  “I just figured your kid should be wearing his shoes.” Mr. Torch said this very softly.

  Father said, “Or you can swap me your radio. There’s one on the truck. I’ve got no use for it.” He put his hand out and the black man meekly gave him the radio.

  We drove back to the ship. Mr. Torch sat in the back with Jerry and me. He said, “Your old man sure can talk. He could be a preacher. He could preach your ears off. Tell you one thing, though. He ain’t no businessman!” He laughed to himself and said, “Where you guys going?”

  We said we did not know.

  “That your old man there behind the wheel? If I was you I wouldn’t be so sure!”

  Jerry said, “My father is Allie Fox.”

  Mr. Torch scratched his teeth with a long fingernail.

  “The genius,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Torch said.

  Back at the ship, Father handed him the keys and said he could have the radio, too. He didn’t want it after all. We went up the gangway, and that was that.

  “Free at last!” Father said. We stood on the narrow deck outside our cabin. The lights of Baltimore gave the city a halo of glowing cloud. The night was not dark, but just a different sort of muddy light. The traffic noises were muffled and nervous. A breeze scratched at the ship’s side, and it seemed as though we had no connection with the city and were already at sea. We stared at the portion of dock where Mr. Torch had driven away in our pickup truck.

  Mother said, “If the police stop him, they’ll think he stole it. He’ll get pinched.”

  “I don’t care!” Father said. He was pleased with himself. “I just gave it away. ‘Take it!’ I said. ‘I’ve got no use for it!’ Did you see the expression on his face? A free pickup truck with a new transmission! Like the Worm Tub. I just gave it away! Like Polski and the job. Clear the decks!”

  But Mother said sharply, “What have you given away? A beat-up truck that was too much trouble to dump. A homemade icebox that stank to heaven. A job that wasn’t worth having in the first place.” “That’s what I mean.”

  “Don’t pretend to be better than you are.”

  Father was still staring down the hawser at Baltimore. “Good-bye, America,” he said. “If anyone asks, say we were shipwrecked. Good-bye to your junk and your old hideola! And have a nice day!”

  8

  WE SAILED from Baltimore on this ship, Unicorn, in the middle of the night. The cabin walls vibrated, as if shimmying on the teeth of a buzz saw. My bunk grumbled and nudged me awake. I put my face against the porthole and saw the sloshings on swells, like whitewash hosed over black ice. I heard a foghorn moan, a bell buoy’s clang, and a spray like pebbles hitting a tin pail. The steel door rattled, but none of the kids woke up. In the morning, we were in open sea.

  And there, in mid-ocean, the ship came to life. The dining room was full at breakfast—the other three tables occupied by two families. One of the families was very large. After we introduced ourselves, the grownups said good morning to Father and Mother and the children made faces at us. We were quiet strangers, they were noisy and seemed right at home here. They acted as if they had been on the Unicorn before. They were the Spellgoods and the Bummicks.

  “You’re Mr. Fox,” one of the men said to Father on our tirst day at sea. “You’ve already forgotten my name. But I remember yours.”

  “Of course you do,” Father said. “I’m much easier to remember than you are.”

  That man was the Rev. Gurney Spellgood. He was a missionary. At each meal he led his family—two tables of them—in a loud hymn, giving thanks, before they fell on their food. The Bummicks’ behavior was odder, for this brown-faced family of four always argued, and as their voices rose in competition they would begin to holler in another language. Father said it was Spanish and they were half-and-halfs. On the afterdeck one day, Mr. Bummick, who was hoggishly fat, told Father that what he had always wanted to do was bust a window in Baltimore, then run aboard the ship and sail away. “They’d never catch me!” Father told us to stay clear of the Bummicks.

  Apart from the Spellgoods’ prayer meeting, which was a daily affair, we seldom saw these people, except at mealtimes. At dinner on the second day, the nine Spellgoods were not at their tables.

  Father said to Mr. Bummick, “What’s become of our hymn-singing friends? I suppose they’re seasick—feeding the fishes, eh?”

  Mr. Bummick said no, they were with the captain. It was the captain’s practice to invite his passengers to take turns eating with him.

  “That’s funny,” Father sa
id. “I was thinking of inviting the captain to eat with me. But I decided not to. I don’t like the cut of his jib.”

  The Bummicks stared at him.

  “Just joking,” Father said.

  He never smiled when he told a joke. In fact, he sounded especially grumpy when he tried to be funny. It was embarrassing to know he was joking and to see the puzzlement on other people’s faces.

  The next night, the Bummicks ate with the captain.

  “I guess he’s forgotten all about us, Reverend,” Father said to Gurney Spellgood. “I’d much appreciate it if you said a prayer for us.”

  “The last shall be first,” Rev. Spellgood said. He folded his hands and smiled.

  Father said, “Some.”

  “Pardon?”

  “ ‘Men will come from the north and south, and sit at table in the Kingdom of God. And behold, some of the last who will be first, and some of the first who will be last.’ Luke.”

  Rev. Spellgood said, “I was quoting Matthew.”

  “You were misquoting,” Father said. Up went his blasted-off finger. “Matthew says many, not some. But the best part is in chapter nineteen. ‘Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.’ ”

  Rev. Spellgood said, “That is my watchword, brother. You have understood my mission.”

  “And yet I can’t help noticing,” Father said, waving his finger at the two tables of Spellgoods—there was a granny there, too—“you haven’t left anyone behind.” Quickly he added, “Just joking.”

  But after this, Rev. Spellgood tried to engage Father in discussions about the Scriptures and include him in the prayer meetings on deck. The next morning, Rev. Spellgood stopped him as he paced the deck with his maps. I was nearby, fishing from the rail.

  Father said, “We don’t look like much at the moment, Reverend, but time and experience will smooth us down, and we pray that we will be polished arrows in the quiver of the Almighty.”

  “Ezekiel?” Rev. Spellgood said.

  “Joe Smith,” Father said, and he laughed. “Prophet and martyr and founder of one of the twenty richest corporations in the United States.”

  Copperations was the way Father said it, with a quack of pure hatred.

  Rev. Spellgood faced the ocean and said, “ ‘Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.’ ”

  “Hosea.”

  “Habakkuk,” Rev. Spellgood said. “Chapter three.”

  “That’s chloroform,” Father said. But missing the quotation stung him. He turned on Spellgood and in front of his big family he said in an annoyed voice, “But how many pushups can you do? Hah!”

  The Spellgoods were silent.

  Father said, “ ‘Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.’ Ecclesiastes. Besides, I’ve got other weenies to roast.” And he went back to his maps.

  It was from one of Rev. Spellgood’s daughters, a girl named Emily, who had a chinless ducklike face, that I found out where the Unicorn was headed. It was now hot and sunny. Three days out of Baltimore and it seemed that spring had become summer. The crew walked around without shirts. I spent most of the day fishing.

  Emily came up to me and said, “You never catch anything.”

  “It’s too hot,” I said, because in the past I had always fished in brooks and in shady sections of the Connecticut River. “The fish go to the bottom in hot weather, and don’t eat.”

  “If you think this is hot wait until you get to La Ceiba,” she said. “Where’s that?”

  “It’s where you’re going on this boat, silly. In Honduras.”

  It was the second time in my life I had heard that name, and it had the sound of a dark secret.

  Then a young Spellgood boy joined us. Emily said, “This kid doesn’t even know where we’re going!” They both laughed at me.

  But it was worth being mocked to find out where Father was taking us. And now I understood the business with Mr. Semper and the men. They were from Honduras. Father was trading places. On the map outside the radio room, Honduras looked like the forehead of land on Father’s map, but smaller, now like an empty turtle shell, side view, with fingerprints all over it, and La Ceiba a polka dot on the coast. That town was almost worn away from being touched. And pins on the map showed our progress from Baltimore. The last pin was parallel with Florida, which was why we were so hot.

  The sea was as level as a rink—green near the ship and blue far-off. There was no breeze. The deck was a frying pan, and some of its paint had blistered from the heat. I kept fishing.

  Emily Spellgood would not leave me alone. She was about my own age and wore pedal pushers. She said, “It’s a whole lot hotter than this in La Ceiba. You’ve never been there, but we have. My father’s real famous there. We’ve got a mission in the jungle. It’s really neat.”

  I wanted to catch something, to show her up. I payed out my line and watched the flocks of seagulls that followed us. They hovered goggling over the stern, they bobbed in our wake, they dived for scraps that were sluiced out of the galley. They never settled on the ship, but they would scissor lumps of bread out of my hand if I held it to their beaks. Father hated them. “Scavengers!” But they gave me the idea for fishing. I had seen several pluck mackerel-sized fish out of the sea behind the ship.

  I used bacon rind on my hook—no float, and only enough of a sinker to let me fling the line out and troll. Emily stayed in back of me saying, “It’s called Guampu, we’ve got a fantastic motorboat, and all the Indians—”

  My line went tight. I jerked it. There was a human scream among the gull squawks. I had hooked a bird. The hook must have been halfway down his throat, because when he flew up he took my line with him, tugging it like a kite string and screeching. He beat his wings hard and tried to get away. He plunged into the wake of the ship, then came up again overhead and made as if to fly off. But when the line went tight he tumbled in the air and made pitiful cries. The other gulls fluttered foolishly around him, pecking at his head out of curiosity and fear.

  I let go of the line. It whipped across the water like a trout cast, and the big panicky bird flapped over the waves dragging fifty yards of fishing line from his beak. He did not fly far. A little way off, he flopped into the water and sat there splashing his head like a farmyard duck and raking his wings against the sea.

  “You killed him,” Emily said. “You killed that poor bird. That’s bad luck—and it’s cruel, too! I thought you were nice, but you’re a murderer!” She ran down the deck, and later I heard her yell, “Dad, that boy killed a seagull!”

  For the rest of the day, I walked around with an ache in my throat, as if I had swallowed a hook.

  Father said, “Kill one for me, Charlie”—how had he heard about it?—“but don’t let anyone see you.”

  The next time I saw Rev. Spellgood, he looked at me as if he wanted to throw me overboard. Then he said, “Have you said good morning to Jesus? Or do you just do pushups like your dad, and turn your back on the Lord?”

  I said, “My father can do fifty pushups.”

  “Samson could do five hundred. But he was wholesome.”

  That night it was our turn to join the captain for dinner. I had set eyes on him only once before this, when he was wearing his captain’s hat. Without it, and in his khaki clothes, he looked like any farmer, a little sour and shorthaired, about Polski’s age. He had no neck, so his ears, the lobes of them, reached his collar. His blue eyes had no lashes, which made him look as if he doubted everything you said, and gave him a fishy stare, like a cold cod on a slab. He had a small narrow mouth and fish lips that sucked air without opening.

  His dining room had a low ceiling, and the fittings were so darkly varnished they looked pickled—pickled shelves, pickled wallboards, and a pickled wooden chest that said CAPT. AMBROSE SMALLS on its lid.

  Captain Smalls was tal
king to another man when we entered the room. They were at the table, bent over some charts, and the man, whose shirt and hands were greasy, snatched his cap off when he saw us but kept talking.

  “It’s got to be the welds,” he said. “I don’t see what else it could be across there. Unless that pump is losing suction. You think we should seal the bulkhead?”

  “It’s number six—one of the biggest." the captain said. “Better check the ballast tanks. You say it's bad?”

  “At the moment it’s just a condensation problem.”

  The captain stood and squared his shoulders. “These good people are hungry. See me later.”

  The man rolled up his charts and sidled out of the room.

  Father said, “Instead of drowning your problems, why not teach them to swim?”

  The captain pressed his mouth shut and regarded Father with his flat lashless eyes.

  “Got a leak in your tub, eh?” Father frowned—he was joking. The captain frowned fishily back at him. “A bilge pump’s acting up on the port side. Nothing for you to worry about. It’s my problem.”

  “Must be a gasket in one of the cylinder heads,” Father said. “Sea water’s hell on gaskets. Perishes the material, even your so-called miracle fibers. All this heat. And gaskets don’t stand for neglect. They’ll just die on you. But that’s all right—we can swim.”

  “No cylinders—it’s a centrifugal pump. And we’re not even sure it’s the pump,” the captain said. “Please sit down.”

  Father jerked his napkin open by snapping it like a piece of laundry. He tucked it beneath his chin, giving himself a bib. Jerry and the twins did the same, but I put my napkin over my stomach, as Captain Smalls had done. Mother put hers on her lap. Father glanced at me and smiled, because I had imitated the captain.

  “Must be the vanes,” Father said. “Or it could be the motor. I wouldn’t advise you to seal the bulkhead. It’ll just fill up and you’ll get so complacent you’ll shut off the pump. That would set up vibrations. Sympathetic vibrations. They’d shake your teeth loose, raise hell with your ship—”

  “Your soup’s getting cold,” the captain said. “This your first visit to Honduras?”