The Mosquito Coast

26

"I SAVED YOU from certain death," Father said.

Yes, we were alive in this waterworld.

"What are you going to do for me?"

What could we refuse? We owed him everything.

"You'll have to do as I say."

How else could we pay him back?

"Upstream," he said. "Downstream it's a toilet. You know that."

But even if this was true, it did not make our going easier. Every mile seemed like a mistake, because we were not free anymore. It was like the slow death in dreams of being trapped and trying to scream without a voice box. No one said anything.

In the space of a day our circumstances had changed. From a rained-on quarreling family, clinging with dirty hands to a mud bank and fearing worse floods, we had been turned into river people. Our main worry was that our hull would be sheared away by submerged rocks and we would sink like a brick. Jerry and I worked the sounding chain from the bow. The rutting and flapping of the outboard motor cleared the trees of monkeys — whitefaced baboons and ringtails here — and scared everything except butterflies.

The hard thunder rains of the lagoon and the ruination of our garden were nightmare memories. But the very moment we believed we were rescued and could make it to Brewer's to shelter safely in one of those stooping belfry-like huts, Father turned us around and began fighting us upstream.

Jerry said it looked dangerous.

I told Father I was scared.

Mother said, "Allie, why don't we take a chance on the coast? At least we know what's there."

Father called us savages. That kind of thinking had doomed mankind's carcass. Did we want our goose cooked? It was not the unknown that was dangerous, but the known. Only drowning people clung to wreckage. Those who bothered to seek the unknown were saved — but who bothered? Of course it was hard to get a heavy boat up a flooded river on one engine! That proved it was worthwhile!

He had been right in other things, so we went along with him in this, and found ourselves agreeing with everything he said.

"Dentists in the States had an interest in candy factories," he said. "Doctors owned hospitals. Detroit kept bankrolling oil wells. America had terminal cancer! I saw it was all leading downstream. Why didn't anyone else?"

An aerosol can of bug spray swept by us one day. Father did not question where it came from: he was too busy railing about it. And plastic jugs on the current. He railed more. He railed against fat people and politicians and banks and breakfast cereal and scavengers — there were turkey buzzards and muddy vultures right overhead. He bawled them out, he cursed machines.

"I look forward to the day when I can cut this outboard loose; turn it into the meat grinder it really is." All machines were grave-diggers, he said. Leave them alone for a minute and they bury themselves. That's all they were good for — holes.

"I had a Hole once."

He smacked his lips, congratulating himself. "I made ice out of fire!"

He named our floating hut the Francis Lungley, then changed it to the President Fox, and finally scratched Victory on its side with a nail. He said it was the world. It was twenty-seven feet long and six feet wide. He and Mother had the "master cabin" (the cookstove, the chair, the pelican-feather bed). With the excess weight of timbers thrown overboard or cut for fuel, our craft moved more easily in the water, with the hefty grace of a canal boat or a motorized barge in the Connecticut Valley. As soon as we were past the cutoff, where branches banged our roof, we plugged along the creek, staying midstream. Anywhere, Father said, as long as it was against the current.

We entered the Patuca that first day. We were surprised that this great river had been flowing all this time beyond the swamp to the east of our little Laguna Miskita — four hours' chug. But the river was hidden. We did not see it until we were almost on top of it. Father said he was not surprised at all: right again! The rain had swelled it over its red banks and into the trees, and made it silent and so wide that in some reaches it hardly seemed to flow at all.

Father worked the boat along the edge of the submerged banks, where the current was easy. We made slow progress, but, as Father said, "Where's the fire? What's the rush? This isn't a vacation — this is life."

At night we tied up to a tree and ate and slept with our smudge pots going, to drive off the mosquitoes. When a cloud of mosquitoes approached, its millions drooped over us like a terrible net and made a loud high-pitched hum, the sound a radio makes between stations.

With the river murmuring past us, slurping at our logs, Father said that in all the world we were the last ones left. If we yelled for help, no one would come. Oh, we might meet stragglers, we might bump into savages or even see whole villages on high ground that had been spared. But we were the only ones who knew that a catastrophe had taken place — the fire that had been followed by the thunder of war and the flood had been general throughout the earth. How could anyone here in Mosquitia know that America had been wiped out? It was man's narrow conceit that rain fell on him alone. But Father knew it was global. At each stage, he said, he had predicted what was to come. Even Americans themselves had seen the handwriting on the wall — they had talked about nothing else! But while they had sat and complained and twiddled their thumbs, Father had taken countermeasures to prevent our destruction.

"I may have exaggerated at times," he said. "But that was only to convince you of its seriousness, and get you moving. You're hard people to organize. Half the time you don't even believe me!"

What did it matter, he said, if he had been wrong about picky little things? He had been vindicated by great events. And what we had seen over the past year was the highest form of creation. He had outwitted the specter that haunted the world, by removing us from a fragile and temporary civilization. All worlds ended, but Americans had been sure that, in spite of the obvious flaws, theirs would last. Not possible! But Father would carry us safely upriver.

"Farter," Jerry said. "Farter, farter, farter."

Father did not hear him. He was shouting, "How can I be wrong if I'm going against the current?"

The coast was death. The current tended that way. So it stood to reason that it flowed from life — mountains and springs. There, among the volcanoes of Olancho, we would make our home.

This was what he told us at night, in the cabin, when we were tied to a tree and the frogs croaked and drawled outside. During the day he still talked, but with the outboard going we hardly heard a word he said.

The river seemed to swell out of the ground. It flooded the jungle. This was a wilderness of water. Tree stumps with crooked uprising roots tumbled past us. It rained less often — a sprinkle in the morning, a downpour in the afternoon. But, as Father said, we were waterproof. And we saved the rainwater to drink. The sun on the river turned the muddy current to brass. It gave the jungle a nice bright smack. Shining through the morning mist, it thickened the air with gold-spangled smoke that danced between the boughs. In places, there were clouds of white butterflies — regattas of them, tacking just above the water. Or blue ones, as big as sparrows, working their tottery wings so shyly they moved like beautiful scraps of silk flung out of the trees.

Two or three times a day we saw Zambus or Miskitos in cayukas, slipping quickly downstream. Often they waved to us, but the current took them so fast that no sooner had we spotted them than they were below us and around the bend.

"He's a goner," Father usually said as one went past. "He's a dead man. A zombie, not a Zambu. Going down to die."

They were wet, but they looked perfectly normal, paddling in their grubby underwear, riding across the fumbles of the current.

Jerry said that one of these days he was going to hop into our dugout and let the current take him to the coast. Father got wind of this, maybe from one of the twins, and ordered him into the dugout.

"In you go!"

Then Father cast it off and let it zoom downriver. Jerry was too terrified to paddle. He hung onto the seat and crouched with his head down and howled. When Jerry had almost traveled out of sight, Mother said, "Allie, do something!" and Father snatched up a line. It was attached to the dugout. He jerked it, toppling Jerry onto his face. Jerry was shaking as Father towed him and the dugout back.

"That was insane!" Mother said.

"I proved my point. I got my wish."

"What if the rope had snapped?"

"Then Jerry would have got his wish," Father said. "Anyone want to try it? I might just decide to let you go next time. Down the drain. Anyone interested?"

Another day, he caught me snoozing over the sounding chain. He punished me by putting me into the dugout and towing me behind the boat ("I sure hope that line doesn't snap! Better sit still!"), while my little canoe rocked and slewed in its wake.

We passed flooded villages. They wei; deserted — the wooden bones of huts standing in water, huts tipped over, others with fractured roofs, no more. These dead empty huts proved Father right. He said the people had been swept away — those were the folks in the long Johns we saw paddling down the drain to be swallowed by the sea.

"They won't need these," he said, as he picked alligator pears and limes and papayas and plantains off their trees. We found bags of rice and beans in some of these empty villages.

Father said, "This isn't a raid. It's not theft. And it's certainly not scavenging. They don't need this where they are."

But sometimes the birds beat us to it.

"Scavengers!"

One day we thought we saw an airplane, but our outboard was so loud we could not hear the plane's engines. Father said it was a turkey buzzard. What human had the sense to come here? This was the emptiest part of the map. In the whole world, this part of Honduras was the safest and least known — the last wilderness.

"But don't praise me — praise this boat." Our Victory was like a wooden pig in the water, creaking and oinking upstream. "She's futuristic!"

The rain had watered the ants and made them sprout wings. At sundown, these flying termites flaked onto the roof of our hut-boat. The jungle was dotted with these winged ants feeding. The twins called them cooties. The river water changed its color with every change in the weather, and it was different at every hour. I liked it brassy, its daytime green, the red mud bank showing underneath like soaked cake, its shoving, slipping bunches of spinach, the way it moved through the unmoving jungle.

At twilight the air was sooty with insects, and swampwater diseased the dark spaces under the trees. The sky grew clearer as dusk fell. Shadows straightened up and stiffened. Then a dirtying of the sky, and it was night, nothing to see, the black so black you could feel its fur against your face. Without the hot sun to burn it away, the smell from the trees was like the hum of green meat. The full river snuffled like a pack of hogs, and birds lolloped in the branches near us and made loud cranking cries. We felt sick at this still, leftover time of day. We tied up and sat among the smudge pots of our wooden floating hut and ate whatever we had managed to gather from the drowned villages.

"This is the future," Father said. He stuck his burned nose in our faces until we agreed we were cozy, we were lucky, we were having a good time.

"This is what it is," he said. "The fatal mistake everyone made was in thinking that the future had something to do with high technology. I used to think it myself! But that was before I had this experience. Oh, gaw, it was all going to be rocket ships."

"Monorails," I said.

Clover said, "Space capsules."

"Smellovision," Father said. "Video cassettes instead of school. Everything streamlined. Meals were going to be pills. Green ones for breakfast, blue ones for lunch, purple ones for dessert. You popped them into your mouth — all the nutrition you needed."

April said, "And space suits."

"Right," Father said. "Stupefied people with pointy ears and names like Grok wearing helmets and living in chrome-plated houses. Moving sidewalks, glass domes over cities, and no work except playing with computers and sniffing the smellovision. 'Get into the rocket ship, kids, and let's go have a picnic on the moon'—that kind of thing."

Mother said, "It might happen."

"Never. It's all bull."

Clover said, "I think Dad's right."

"Science fiction gave people more false hope than two thousand years of Bibles," Father said. "It was all lies! The space program — is that what you're saying? It was a hollow, vaunting waste of taxpayers' money. There is no future in space! I love the word — space! That's what they were all discovering — empty space!"

April said, "I think Dad's right, too."

"This is the future," he said. "A little motor in a little boat, on a muddy river. When the motor busts, or we run out of gas, we paddle. No spacemen! No fuel, no rocket ships, no glass domes. Just work! Man of the future is going to be a cart horse. There's nothing on the moon but ruts and pimples, and those of us who have inherited this senile exhausted earth will have nothing but wooden wheels, pushcarts, levers, and pulleys — the crudest high school physics, that they stopped teaching when everyone flunked it and started reading science fiction. No, it's grow your own or die. No green pills, but plenty of roughage. Hard backbreaking work — simple, but not easy. Get it? No laser beams, no electricity, nothing but muscle power. What we're doing now! We're the people of the future, using the technology of the future. We cracked it!"

***

He wanted us to feel, in our creaking hut-boat, like the most modern people on earth. We held the secret of existence in our smoky cabin. Now he never talked about changing the world with geothermal energy, or ice. He promised us dirt and work. That was glory, he said.

But after these short nights, he started the outboard and set the front of the hut against the current, and Jerry whispered to me, "He's killing us."

We stuck to the river's edge, creeping around the reaches and studying the flow of the current before we moved forward. We made five or six miles a day, and still had plenty of spare gas. And what did it matter if we used it all? We had the rest of our lives to get upriver.

I thought everyone except Jerry was convinced. But one day, as we furrowed along, the outboard went mad. It quacked, its noise climbed higher, became more frantic and animal, and soon it was shrieking. Birds exploded out of the trees. Then something snapped, and after a quack or two the engine went dead. But its echo continued to quiver in the jungle. The boat hesitated and became light and directionless. It tipped, it rolled back.

We were going downstream sideways on the river's tongue in silence under the dropping ants.

"Anchor!" Father vaulted toward the bow. "Get out the lines!"

Our anchor was beautiful — we had found it on the beach near Mocobila — a cluster-fountain of curving barbs on a thick shaft. But it was also very heavy. It took Father's help to get it over the rail, and by then we were moving so fast that it did not seem to take hold. Father jumped overboard and swam to the bank with a line. He secured us, the anchor caught.

We were in a curve of the river — the current swung us out on the line and held us gushing in the middle of the stream. Water plumed from either side, and the whole hut-boat tottered as we helped Father aboard.

We had lost the shear pin, he said. It wasn't much — only a cotter pin — but it meant the propeller had flown off and spun to the bottom of the river.

"Can't you make a new prop?" Mother asked.

"Sure I can. Pass me that lathe, the calipers, the machining tools, the set of lugs and files. What's that? You mean we only have spit and a screwdriver? Then I guess we'll have to dive for that old prop."

We looked upstream at the dark horns of waterflow pumping out of the river.

"Don't worry," Father said. "We have the rest of our lives to find it." He was smiling, biting his beard. He turned to Jerry and said, "What are you smirking at?"

"The rest of our lives. It sounds daffy when you say it like that."

"We'll see how daffy. You're going to dive for it."

"What about the alligators?" I said.

"You're not afraid of alligators," Father said. "You go after Jerry."

Mother said, "No — I won't let those boys go in there."

"Listen to me," Father said. "It's not a question of what you want. It's what I want. I'm captain of this ship, and those are my orders. Anyone who disobeys them goes ashore. Your lives are in my hands. I'll maroon you — all of you."

His large scarred hands were still dripping river water. His voice was a weapon — he was threatening to abandon us unless we jumped in — but what I feared most was being slung ashore in his raw fingers. His life here had made his hands terrible.

"Put on this harness," he said to Jerry, and gave him a line to tie around his waist. Jerry, with sick defiant eyes, kicked off his sandals and went to the side.

"It's somewhere in this dogleg," Father said. "We lost it near those trees. Probably hit a rock. The current can't take a lump of solid brass very far. Swim to the bank first, then go and get it."

Jerry held his nose and went overboard like a basket.

"I've been grooming you for this all along," Father said. "It's all preparation for survival." He pulled out a nail from his pocket. "This will do for a new shear pin. But we need the prop." He held the little nail between his fingers. "It's always something small that keeps you from savagery. Like those plugs. Like the prop. Like this. The shear pin held our whole civilization together. There's no better example of what a delicate balance there is between—" he looked upriver at Jerry's small white feet—"How's he doing?"

Jerry bobbed up and blew out water, but before he could regain his stroke he came downstream and caught hold of the boat.

"I can't see anything. The water's too muddy."

"Try again."

"He's tired, Allie."

"He can rest after he's found our propeller."

Mother said, "Let me go."

Father said, "What if you drown?"

"What if Jerry drowns?"

She said it in a slow suffocated way.

Father scratched his beard with his knuckles.

He said, "I need you here, Mother."

Jerry tried four times. Each time, the current pulled him back to us empty-handed. At last he was so tired he could not raise his arms, and Father had to tug the harness line to keep him from being taken downriver.

It was my turn. I swam to shore, then dived to the bottom at the place Father had indicated. I stuck my hands into the mud and raked it. The mud ran through my fingers. The churning river was like vegetable soup, with sunlight knifing into it and showing me long shadows I imagined to be alligators. As my breath gave out, I broke the surface of the river and saw that I had traveled almost to the boat.

"You're not serious," Father said. He made me swim back.

The sludge and weeds at the river bottom disgusted me. The dark current sucked at my legs. Mud floated into my face. But worse, being on Father's rope was like being a dog on a leash. Staying on it, I was in his power. But if I cut myself free of the rope, I would be swept downstream to drown.

It was a dog's life. I was glad Jerry had said the things he had. Why hadn't I told Father what I thought of him? A dog's life — because we didn't count, because he was always right, always the explainer, and most of all because he ordered us to do these difficult things. He didn't want to see us succeed, he wanted to laugh at our failure. And not even a gun dog could find a small propeller at the bottom of this river.

I told him I had swallowed water and felt sick and could not go down again.

He chuckled — I knew he would — and said, "Children are no use at all in a crisis. Which is ironic, because children are the cause of most crises. I mean, I can look after myself! I don't need food, I don't need sleep — I don't suffer. I'm happy!"

April said, "Dad, is this a crisis?"

"Some people might say so. We've got an engine we can't use. We've got a boat that won't move forward. We've got two cripples who can't find the prop. If the anchor or that line cuts loose we'll be wallowing down the drain. And it's getting dark. And this is the jungle. Muffin," he said, "some people might call that critical."

Mother said, "I want to try, Allie."

But Father was putting the harness around his waist. He tied the free end to the rail. He said the only thing he trusted to hold his lifeline was one of his own knots.

He went over the side with a heavy splash. We watched him take a dive, expecting him to find the propeller on the first try. He came up — he did not raise his hands. He dived again. He was a strong enough swimmer to hold his own against the current, but when he dived a third time he did not come up.

We waited. We watched the water ribbing over that spot.

Clover said, "Where is he?"

"Maybe he sees it," Mother said.

A whining net of mosquitoes came and went.

April said, "He's been down a long time."

"It's dark down there," Jerry said.

We stopped holding our breath.

More minutes passed. I could not say how many. Time did not pass precisely here. The day was light, the night dark: time was lumpish. Every hot hour was the same, silent and blind. He might have been under for an hour.

Mother went to the rail and plucked at the line. She lifted it easily and dragged it on board, coiling it, until she had its whole length out of the water. The end was kinked like a mongrel's tail, where the knot had been.

"He's gone!" Clover screamed. She became rigid. And she cried so hard she gagged, then cried more because she was gagging.

Jerry said, "I don't see him."

But Jerry had stopped looking. He was staring at me. His face was relaxed — very white and hopeful, like someone sitting up in bed in the morning.

Mother shook her head. She gazed at the torrent of water slooshing downstream. She did not speak.

I felt suddenly strong. A moment ago night was falling, but now everything was brighter. The sky was clear. Tiny insects fussed above the river. A quietness descended, like that sifting of gnats, and silvered the water and streaked it like a new tomb. This stillness sealed it.

"He's somewhere! He's somewhere!" But April's voice did not disturb the river or the trees. She clawed her hair. She held Clover and they gagged together on their sobs.

"We can drift," Jerry said. "We'll tie up tonight and go down the river tomorrow. It'll be easy."

I said, "What if Dad was right?"

"Don't be frightened," Mother said.

Jerry said, "We're not frightened!"

Mother said, "I can't think." Her listening face was lovely. It did not register a single sound. It did not hear April saying we were going to die, or Clover calling out to Father, or Jerry describing our easy trip down to the coast.

Little Jerry, set free, was scampering around the deck.

"Listen," Mother said.

The water trickling silver, the slouching jungle — it was an insect kingdom of small whistles, a world of crickyjeens.

A Zambu went by in a cayuka. That was like time passing, the duration of his coming and going. It was the only time here — a man's movement. This Zambu was alive.

"We won't die," I said.

Mother did not hear me, but I meant it. Our boat was small, and it hung precariously on a line in the middle of the river — on air, it seemed. But I had never felt safer. Father was gone. How quiet it was here. Doubt, death, grief — they had passed like the shadow of a bird's wing brushing us. Now — after how long? — we had forgotten that shadow. We were free.

"In a couple of days we'll be on the coast," Jerry said.

"We'll die there!" Clover said.

It was what Father had always said. I thought I believed it. But he had gone and taken fear with him. I heard myself saying, "We can get rid of this outboard. We'll build a rudder. The current will take us."

Jerry tried to make the twins stop crying. He was saying, "Don't you want to go home?"

Was it that forbidden word that did it?

There was a splash — explosive in this whistling world. There was Father's wet streaming head, his beard brushing the rail, the chunk of the brass propeller hitting the boards, and his howl, "Traitors!" Then all the light was gone.

27

FOR THE NEXT three days, as punishment, Jerry and I were towed behind the boat in the dugout. We ate in it and slept in it. It tailed and twisted like a plug trawled at the end of a fishing fine. There was hardly room to lie down. The barrel was between us, and the fruity, sourly luscious gasoline fumes mingled with the burned-cloth stink of the outboard's exhaust and gave me a prickly headache. We knelt in the water that seeped through the splits in this hollow log and we killed time by dragging a hook off the stern, hoping to gaff a catfish.

Father sat at the end of the thirty-foot towline, on the stern rail of the hut-boat, his back turned to us. I hated his shoulders, his greasy hair, the slant of his spine. I imagined how it would be to stick a knife in it, just below his ragged collar. Sometimes I saw myself doing it. There was no blood in my imagining — no scream, no struggle. Just a grunt of released air as the blade slipped in and the hilt smacked against flesh. Then he was gone, like an inner tube with a rip. I saw it so clearly my arm ached, as if I had already done it — punctured him.

I listened to him, thinking that he knew what was on my mind, and felt guilty. But all I heard was Mother arguing, trying to convince him to let us aboard. He would not discuss it. He said we deserved worse. He was hard to hear over the motor roar. He prided himself on the fact that he had never spanked us, or laid a hand on us in anger. But it would have been better for us if he had beaten us yesterday. This dugout and the bugs and the heat hurt more than a whipping.

"Let's cut the tow rope," Jerry said. "We'll show him!"

Jerry wanted to set us adrift. Maybe Father was testing us, to see if we had the guts to do it. But I would not let Jerry touch the line. I was afraid that it might snap all by itself, or that Father would cut it. Often, during those days, I fell asleep and woke up frantic, thinking we were spinning down the Patuca in this flimsy dugout.

I said, "If you touch that rope, I'll jump overboard and swim ashore. You'll be alone, Jerry. You'll die."

For the brief period of Father's disappearance, when I thought he had drowned trying to retrieve the propeller, I had not been afraid. We had the boat, and our hammocks, and Mother. But when he climbed aboard, he brought all the old fear with him. I was spooked again into believing that the storm had raged across the whole world and that there was death on the coast.

"I don't believe that cowflap," Jerry said when I told him.

Jerry was more violent in the dugout than he had ever been on the boat or anywhere else. Here, towed at the end of a line, he said forbidden things. He talked continually about running away and going home. What he said gave me nightmares, because he put my worst imaginings into words. We deserve to be punished in this dugout, I thought. We belong here.

"I hate him," Jerry said. "He's crazy."

I told Jerry that without my help he would never reach the coast.

"We won't make it upriver," he said. "It's impossible."

"How do you know?"

He kicked the barrel of gas, two thuds that echoed hollowly inside like the boom of a bass drum.

"It's almost empty. Dad can't run his outboard motor without gas."

"He'll paddle."

"He'll go backwards!"

Jerry laughed at the thought of it. He said he was glad I was worried.

"I'm going to tell him he's running out of gas. Watch him have a bird."

"Cut it out," I said.

"You're afraid of him, Charlie. You're older than me and you're scared. I'm not scared."

But his voice broke as he said it, and he had to swallow twice in order to finish speaking. This dugout punishment made him suffer. He had hardly slept, and he looked sick. When he wasn't complaining about Father, he was blubbering, sobbing like a baby. He sounded very young when he cried. He squalled into his hands, with his head down, so that Father wouldn't see him.

One night, hearing Father's laughter in the master cabin, Jerry said, "I'd like to kill him."

His voice came out of the darkness. Now he was breathing heavily, as if it had been a great effort to say that.

"He wouldn't be hard to kill." Jerry was panting. "We could sneak up on him. Hit him with a hammer. On his brain—"

"Don't say that, Jerry."

"You're afraid."

Yes, because you're saying the terrible things on my mind, I thought. I could feel the smooth handle of the hammer. I could hear it crack against his skull, and the skull part like a coconut — the leaking of pale water. I said, "No."

"I wish he was dead," Jerry said. He began to cry again. I was consoled by his tears. He was crying for me.

He claimed he saw a plane one morning, a small gray single-engine plane passing overhead. I did not see it. I told him he was dreaming. It was a turkey buzzard or a heron or a parrot. Any bird in flight here looked like a Cessna or a Piper Cub. Jerry cried because I refused to believe him. I sounded like Father, he said. Worse than Father.

"Mr. Haddy gave you those spark plugs and this gas. And Dad took all the credit! Who did all the fishing at the lagoon? We did! He was treating us like slaves, but what happened to his garden and all those stupid inventions? They got washed away. We saved his life!"

He was speaking my thoughts again and making me afraid.

I said, "If you tell him about Mr. Haddy, I'll tell him what you said — that you want to kill him."

This panicked Jerry. He knew he had gone too far.

"Anyway," I said, "he'll deny it."

"Because he's a liar. He's wrong about everything."

"You don't know that. There isn't any proof. He's probably right — Mr. Haddy agreed with him! You're eleven years old and your face is dirty. When Dad cut you loose in this dugout last week you cried your eyes out. You were glad when he towed you back."

"He tricked me. I wouldn't cry now. I'd go." But his eyes were red and crusted like two wounds.

Father looked astern, and, seeing us arguing (he could not hear what we said over the chatter of the outboard motor), he nodded and grinned as if to say, "That's just where you two punks belong."

Mother had said that if he was right, we were the luckiest people in the world. If he was wrong, we were making a terrible mistake. But she obeyed him. She was afraid, too.

"Maybe we'll find out if he's right or wrong," I told Jerry. "I don't want to go to the coast if it's a graveyard. And what's the point of talking about America, if it's not there anymore? Dad says it's not there — so did Mr. Haddy. What do you know, Thickoid!"

Jerry said, "We have a white house in a green field, with trees around it. There are birds in the trees. Catbirds and jays. The sun is shining. The noon siren is ringing at the Hatfield fire station. People walk by our house and look up the path. They're saying, 'Where are those Foxes?'"

"No," I said. But I saw it clearly. I saw the clouds over Polski's barn, and the valley hills and the corn. I smelled the goldenrod and skunk cabbage, pine gum, cut grass, the sweetness of dew on dandelions, the warm tar on country roads.

"'Did their old man take them away?' That's what they're saying." Jerry looked at me. He was surprised and a little fearful. He said, "Charlie, why are you crying?"

I put my hands against my face.

"Please don't cry," he said. "It scares me."

At last, Father let us aboard the boat. We were so ashamed of what we had been saying that we went straight to the bow and started working the sounding chain. We were burned and bitten and had the squitters bad. Jerry had been contrary in the dugout, but here he just looked miserable and did not say a word against Father. Instead, he cursed the twins. He even bit April on the arm, and the teeth marks turned purple. I was glad. I had wanted to bite her, and Clover, too, for a long time.

***

Every village we passed was washed-out or deserted — sticks of huts and a few fruit trees and a rotten-sweet latrine stink like the smoke smell of burned toast. They were green ghostly places, crawling with wet rats, all the dugouts sunk, and new vines twisted around the hut poles. Where roots showed, they were like stubbed toes, bruised black and raw, and long weeds hung in hanks from the crooks of branches like witches' scalps.

But one morning, after eleven days of pushing up this Patuca River, we came to a village that was not washed out or even flooded. It was on a high red bank at a bend in the river. A child was squatting in the shallow water by the riverside, doing his business, with a faraway look on his face, like a dog in a bush.

Father craned his neck for a better look at the village. Then he smiled. He seemed to recognize it.

He said, "I know where we are."

"Where, Allie?"

"You'll see."

The squatting child heard our engine. He covered himself with the rag he was holding and bolted up the bank. Father cut off the engine and tied our boat to a tree.

Now, on the bluff of the bank, where we had seen smoke and the straw peaks of huts, there were about fifteen men. They wore rags and they stared down at us with empty eyes.

"Miskitos," Father said. "Indians."

They were black, they were brown, they were yellowish, they were very skinny. Their thinness was like suspicion. They did not move.

Father jumped ashore and put his hand out.

"Hi, there. Naksaa!"

He was soon shaking hands with the men and talking a mile a minute in the way he did when he wanted to charm strangers. We had not seen him energetic and friendly for a long time. He had a habit, when he was in this good mood, of poking his finger stump into a person's chest and sort of tickling him as he talked. It worked on wild dogs and cows. It had worked on Mr. Haddy. It worked on these Miskito men.

He jabbed their ribs and said, "You did it this time, didn't you? You're a smart cookie, aren't you? You're really pleased with yourself. Quit laughing," he said, as he tickled them in turn. "What's so funny?"

It made the Miskitos giggle and jump. Though they had looked fierce at first, they were now talking to Father with friendliness. They no longer seemed interested in eating us, although they still looked hungry. They beckoned us into the village.

Mother said to us, "Stay together. I don't like this place. Let Dad do the talking."

Jerry said, "That's all he's good at."

"Watch your mouth," Mother said, and left Jerry to sulk.

"This village is a mess," I said. "These people, are starving."

"Dad knows where we are," Mother said. "Listen to what he says."

But what could he say? It was a dreary smoldering collection of huts made out of torn banana leaves and held together by knotted vines. The huts were roofed with bunches of thatch straw. There was savannah at the back, and jungle — like a smudge of mold — beyond that. The ground was muddy from the recent rain, and the whole place stank of dirt and old wabool and the smoke of wet firewood. We had seen villages like this before. It was Indian misery. Stalks of blackened plantains hung from some of the sorry huts, and nearby a lame dog chewed at a filthy fish head. A flat-faced woman was dragging a sled piled high with broken sticks. She muttered insanely as she went along. She spoke to Mother — something evil — then laughed through her tooth stumps. Another woman with wild hair scrubbing rags in a tin basin looked up and made a face then went on scrubbing.

"What did I tell you?" Father was speaking to us.

Swarms of loud flies buzzed around the people's faces and around their big dirty feet and scabby ankles. They found the black plantains, they skidded on the three-legged cooking pots. I did not see any gardens, but there were clumps of banana trees and skinny-maniocs near some of the huts. A loose pig snorted and pushed his snout at the rind of a papaya. In the middle of the shacks was a tin-roofed open-fronted shed. A sign over it said la bodega. Jerry and I looked inside, but saw only empty shelves and some hung-up flour sacks and a lantern.

"See?" Father said. "I was right."

Two Miskitos were beating the bark off a log. One was using a wooden mallet and the other a hatchet. They stopped their work and eyed Father. Then it was all silent, except for the pig and the dead monotonous buzz of the flies.

"This is it," Father said.

A crowd had gathered. The people stared at Mother's hair — the river travel and all the sun had turned her hair streaky blonde — but they were listening to Father. They had dry starved faces, the old-age look of hunger. Two men wore snakeskins around their necks, coralitos, red with black rings.

"This is the future!"

Father looked around in admiration.

The muddy ground steamed in the sun. The smoke and the smell of rotten roof thatch and wabool made me squint. Near their bony shacks, the ragged Miskitos squinted back.

"I've got to congratulate you people," Father said. "Put it there."

The Indians were surprised, but they shook hands again and smiled at him.

"You've got the right idea."

They looked pleased, as if no one had ever told them that before. Smiling, they looked less hungry.

One Miskito cleared his throat. He said, "We making a new cayuka," and pointed out the two men straddling the scarred log.

"That's the idea."

"You has a spare chopper?" It was the Miskito with the mallet.

"You don't need a chopper. A chisel maybe, to go with your mallet. I've got a chisel. We could come to some arrangement. You're going to have a nice boat."

"She hard work, uncle."

"I know all about it. But what's the hurry? You've got all the time in the world."

"You has a ripsaw, uncle?" This was one of the Miskitos with the peeling snakeskin around his neck.

"What do you want with a ripsaw? You won't get a ripsaw anywhere. There aren't any to be had. Buddy, believe me, you can live without a ripsaw."

A horsefaced man asked Father whether he had any sulfur for making chicle rubber.

Father said, "Don't mention sulfur to me, friend."

There was a wheelbarrow tipped on its side in a ditch. Father picked it up and righted it. He looked at it lovingly, as he had once looked at Fat Boy. He said it was a perfect piece of engineering, the fulcrum wheel, the handles that acted as levers, the built-in balance. A man could lift four times his own weight in it with a minimum of effort.

The Miskitos listened to Father praising this splintery old wheelbarrow and began to look at it as if it were enchanted.

"Ain't selling me barra!" The man who said this spat on his finger and wiped spittle on the handle.

"I don't blame you. That's going to come in mighty handy now that half the world is destroyed."

They were not looking at the wheelbarrow anymore. Father smiled at their open mouths.

"Haven't you heard?"

The holes in their eyes said no.

"Sure, it's practically all gone." Father waved his arms. "There's only a few of us left. Out there" — he gestured again—"they're all dead or busy dying."

Downriver — that was the world. They squeezed their eyes at it.

The horsefaced man said, "Why ain't we dead, uncle?"

"Because you're too smart. And you live right."

Father complimented them. He told them what he had told us, that this was a village of the future, that they were people of the future, the new men. They were lucky, he said, just living the simple life, while everyone else had gone to hell. Listening to him tell them they were in heaven here in this miserable village with its scrawny roosters and its black fruit and its one pig and its torn huts, they adjusted their rags and cheered up.

"They thought we were going to the moon," Father said. "Listen, no one's going to the moon."

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.

28

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.

"Fine by me," Father said. "How about this? Shall we put in here?"

Mother said yes, the twins agreed, and even Jerry was reconciled in a kind of stupid moody way. They were all beaten flat by Father, the heat had gotten to them — their brains were poached by the sun and river steam, like fish flakes in a skillet.

"No," I said, "let's go on." I swung my bamboo pole and pretended I was still full of beans.

This made Father glad. He used me as his excuse to keep going. He heaved his pole and said, "If it wasn't for you, Charlie, I would have made camp back there. Good drainage and a gravelly shore. I'm amazed. I think I've finally succeeded with you. Fourteen years old, and at last you're showing some backbone."

But I wanted to reach Guampu. How had Father forgotten that name? Maybe because he hated to think about the past, the mistakes and failures. Turn your back and walk away fast — that was his motto. Invent any excuse for going. Just clear out. It had made him what he was — it was his genius. Don't look back. Yet for me the past was the only real thing, it was my hope — the very v/ord future frightened me. The future spoke to Father, but for me it was silent and blind and dark. Guampu was part of the past, and with this name in mind I pestered him to push further up the river.

Father believed we were moving into the future. I felt the opposite — as if we might get a glimpse of the past. Anyway it was not far, and even if I was wrong I wanted the satisfaction of knowing whether or not my memory had tricked me.

Five days after leaving the Thurtles' village, at about noon, we heard an airplane. Its rumble-buzz came near. Though we could not see it, it brought me a familiar feeling: a plane going overhead was like getting a haircut. I ducked when I heard it, and I felt its shimmying teeth on the back of my neck. Father denied it was a plane. Crosswinds, he said. But he went silent — his face looked as if he had just sat on something like wet grass or cowflap. I was more hopeful then about Guampu.

I stayed at the bow, searching the river. There were pools of oil slick, little striped and hairy bruises stretching in the current. I spotted a green bottle on the gravel bottom, and a can of Diet Pepsi floating upright, and a kind of suds, like the froth from soap flakes. I saw a submerged sheet of paper curling as it went downstream, and more, and I thought of home, because each thrown-away thing was part of the past. This was the trash of that other world. It looked wonderful to me.

That same day, I heard singing — music muffled by trees. The water picked it up, and so did the light, the heat, the changes in the sky. I waited for someone else to speak.

"Allie." Mother listened. She had heard it.

"Birds."

It was not birds. It was church music.

Jerry said, "Who's singing?"

"Savages," Father said.

I said, "But this might be Guampu."

We rounded a bend, the jungle fell away, the sun was full on the bank. Set back from the river were bungalows with shiny corrugated roofs of new iron that caught the sun and flashed at us. At the center of the large clearing was a wooden white-framed church, with a steep roof and a belfry. It was all glorious and orderly and clean, a white harbor among the loopy trees and wild vines, standing straight on this crooked river.

Father's face was black. Paper peels of skin had burst on his nose and cheeks and left hot patches. He had seen the bungalows, the church, the flowerbeds. He lowered his head, looking double-crossed, and sweat dripped down his neck like fury.

"It must be a mission," Mother said. Then, sensing Father's rage — the smell he gave off when he was angry — she said no more.

A mooring lay ahead of us. It was a little dock of planks fixed to a row of oil drums. A Boston whaler with a fringed awning and some smaller dinghies were tied up.

Clover said, "Where are we, Dad?"

Father's mouth was shut tight, but there was fire in his eyes, the energy he called hunger. He clawed at his long hair and jammed his pole into the river, pushing us nearer the place, nearer the singing, and another sound — a generator chugging in a shed by the riverside. This was the back end of the mission. We saw a sewer pipe emptying into the river, and a little hill of bottles and cans and colored paper — more hope.

The singing stopped. Now there was only the generator.

We worked our way to the mooring. How lumpy and black our hut-boat looked next to the sleek hull of the whaler, with its yellow awning. What was our boat except a tarred and floating wreck of scavenged wood? It was ridiculous here, and made Father seem like a madman.

"We'll see about this." Father's voice was sand in a rusty bucket.

Mother lost her nerve then. She said, "Let's go on — let's leave it. It's got nothing to do with us. Allie, no!"

"They have real houses," April said.

"Look, there's a backboard," Jerry said. "They play basketball!"

I braced myself and said, "It's the Spellgoods."

"Booshwah!"

Mother said, "Tell us what you know, Charlie."

"The Spellgoods — don't you remember? They said they lived in Guampu. Emily said so. That preacher, with the family, from the—"

"Who's Emily?"

"One of the girls. She was on the Unicorn. The people who prayed."

"I knew it was savages," Father said.

"Allie, maybe they can help us."

"We don't need help!"

"We're filthy. Look at us."

Father said, "Those moral sneaks have been hiding here, polluting this place. You'd think they'd have more sense. There's no more world left!"

He leaped to the mooring and rocked on the planks in anger.

"I've got news for these people."

We followed him — chased him — up the stairs to where paths were laid out with borders of whitewashed stones. There were no more than ten bungalows, but they were neat, with flowerbeds in front of the piazzas and a vapory shimmer of heat rising from their metal roofs. Beyond them was a runway of mown grass, a landing strip cut into the jungle. But there was no plane, and no people came to meet us. We saw no one.

But the shutters of the church were open, and now we heard what was certainly Rev. Spellgood's voice.

"Jee-doof," he said slowly.

"I'll knock his block off," Father said.

Jerry said, "Is this the future, too?"

"I'm going to remember that, sonny!" Father kicked at the whitewashed stones. "Keep behind me."

"Let's go back to the boat, Allie. Let's get out of here."

"She's afraid," Father said.

"I've never seen you so angry."

"That's right," Father said. "Belittle me in front of the kids."

Spellgood was preaching in a high-pitched parroty voice, quoting Scripture. Sam-yool, he said, and something about ten cheeses and the Philistine of Gath.

"He'll wish he was in Gath."

We looked through the open window. I waited for Father's yell. It didn't come — only a hiss of disgust that traveled from deep in his throat, like poison gas escaping from a pipe, like Fat Boy on the boil.

The church was shadowy, but at the front, propped up on a table and being watched by a whole congregation of Indians in white shirts and white dresses, was a television set.

The set had a large screen, about the size of a car door, and there was Spellgood's face yapping on the screen. He was in color, but greeny-yellow, holding a slingshot and telling a story. Beside him was a giant green man with a gorilla face, plastic-looking, with fangs and a helmet. As Spellgood preached, he fitted a stone into the slingshot and made ready to snap it at the giant dummy next to him.

"They have TV here," Jerry said.

The Indians were so amazed by the program that they did not see us. It was a miracle to them — it was a miracle to me.

I said, "That program must be coming from somewhere. Maybe it's being relayed by satellite from the States."

"Impossible," Father said. His voice sounded tearful and thin, as it had the day he cried when Jeronimo was burned. "America's been destroyed."

"Where's the program coming from?"

"From inside that box. It's a video cassette. A tape, a trick, the old technology. The Indians think it's magic. Pathetic!"

He ran into the church and marched up the aisle and pulled out the plug. He started lecturing them, then "Wait!" he cried, for just as the picture fizzed and faded the Indians stood up. They filed out of the church. They were not startled, only bored and talkative when Father cut off the program. Before long, the church was empty and the Indians in white cotton were heading for the jungle.

The Spellgoods were nowhere to be seen.

"Back to the boat," Father said.

"Can't we look around?" Clover said.

"This place doesn't exist!"

He was not content to let us sit on the deck, watching the bungalows and enjoying this sight of the past. He ordered us into the cabin — the four of us kids — and pushed a board against the door. We sat there in the hut, wondering what was coming next.

"I think we're moving," Jerry said.

We were. I said, "He's taking us away."

But ten minutes later the cabin was still again. We heard the splash of the anchor and Father fumbling with ropes. He muttered to Mother, but none of his words were clear.

As the sun faded in the cabin's cracks and the air grew cooler, we heard a plane overhead. It came in low, as loud as hair clippers, then there was silence.

Clover asked me why Dad was acting so funny, and April said she wanted a drink. They annoyed me with questions, until finally they went to sleep. I fell asleep too, but woke up in the dark. Why not take the dugout ashore?

Jerry was already awake and ready to do whatever I said.

We crept through the hatchway that Mr. Haddy had broken the night he gave me the spark plugs and gas. We were anchored across the wide river, a little above Guampu. We could hear the generator and see the Guampu lights. But even without the lights there was enough moonshine on the river for us to see that the dugout was gone.

Jerry put his mouth against my ear and said, "He's taken it."

"Maybe he just cut it loose," I whispered. "So we couldn't leave."

"Let's swim."

We slipped over the side and made for the far bank, frog kicking and floating with the current so we wouldn't splash. All the lights in the mission were burning in a friendly winking way. I had never thought I would see an electric light again in my life. The only sound we heard was the generator down below, its chugging.

We started toward the bungalows, staying in what shadows we could find, then duck-walked to the largest house, where we saw a flickering light. It was the Spellgoods' parlor. They were all inside, watching television in the hypnotized way the Indians had watched the church-service program. The Spellgoods were eating ice cream out of big bowls, lifting the spoons to their blue faces. Off and on, they laughed. The show was puppets — a green cloth frog and a rubber pig with silky hair — and a real man in a suit talked to them as if they were human — the sort of show that gave Father fits.

Emily Spellgood was stretched out on the floor. She was only a year older since I had last seen her, but she was much bigger and skinnier. She had short hair and wore blue jeans and sneakers. Seeing how well-dressed she was, I got worried. Jerry and I had long hair. We were covered in river mud. The only thing we wore was short pants, which were sopping wet. I felt like a savage. I did not want to stay.

The Spellgoods were enjoying the puppet show, and even Jerry laughed until I made him sit down under the window with me so we could figure out what to do next.

We stayed there, listening to the program and the Spellgoods' remarks. After about twenty minutes, the program ended. There was an argument then, and lots of suggestions.

"Let's play Space Invaders," one of the little Spellgoods said. "I want to send your module into hyperspace!"

"No, let's run The Muppets again. I liked the part about the singing babies. They're cute."

"What about Star Trek?" Emily said. "We can see if they got out of that time warp."

Gurney Spellgood said, "No. It's late. We want something wholesome."

He clapped a cassette into the black box, and a program with organ music and preaching came on, called World Crusade for Christ. Then they all had more ice cream and sang the television hymns.

"We'll be here all night," I whispered.

"I don't care," Jerry said. He looked like a wolf cub. "At least it's real. I wish Dad could see this. Where is he, anyway?"

I was just going to say I'm glad he's not here, when the screen door banged out front. There was a skid of sneaker soles on the piazza, like rubber erasers. Someone was outside. I crawled to the piazza and saw a boy about Jerry's age looking dreamily at the bugs clustering around the lights — one of the little Spellgoods.

He was so neat and clean, with his wiffle and his white T-shirt, that he gave me a good idea. I shook my hair loose — it was down to my shoulders — and crouched below the piazza in the shadows. I gave a low whistle. The little boy jumped.

"Who are you?" he said. But he wasn't worried.

"Soy una amiga de su hermana, Emily." By whispering, I could give myself a girl's singsong voice.

He said in English, "What's your name?"

"Rosa," I squeaked. "Emily a casa?"

"She's watching TV."

I told him, still in squeaky Indian Spanish, that I wanted to talk to her.

"You're not supposed to be here," he said. "Twahkas aren't allowed at night."

I pretended to whimper, then said sadly — and I was sad! — "Lo mucho siento, chico. Voy a mi kiamp," telling him I was very sorry and that I would go home.

"Aw, wait a sec," he said. He yelled "Emily!" and went into the house.

Emily came out a moment later, but while she was still looking for me in the dark, I stood up and said, "It's me, Charlie Fox, from the banana boat, the one who killed the seagull. Don't be worried, I won't hurt you. Remember me?"

She made a goofy face and said, "What are you doing here? Hey, this is weird!"

"That's Jerry," I said, because he had just come out from behind the house, like a wolf. "We're going upriver with my folks. We're kind of stuck."

She came near me and said, "Hey, what happened to you? You're all dirty. You got smaller. Is there something wrong? Your hair's gross!"

I shushed her and said, "Can we talk where no one will hear us?"

But it was too late. Gurney Spellgood was at the window. "Keep it down, Emily." And then he saw me. He said, "Your parents are going to be wondering where you are, young lady. There'll be plenty of time for talking tomorrow."

Only my head showed above the piazza, and a good thing, too, because I wasn't wearing a shirt. But I had an Indian girl's long hair.

"It's okay, Dad," Emily said. "It's just a couple of Twahkas who want to be baptized."

"God loves you," Spellgood said. "Take their names, sweetie, and give them a shower bath and some Kool-Aid."

"Follow me," Emily said. She giggled as she led us across the field to the church, which was in darkness. We went behind it and sat under a tree. "He thought you were Indians. So did I! Hey, are you in trouble or something?"

"Kind of," I said. "We got here this afternoon."

"We were holding a baptism in Pautabusna. It's real gross there. We all went in the plane. Did you see our plane? It's a Cessna Directorial, a nine seater! Dad's got a license. He's logged five hundred hours. It's real neat, with a radio and fans and everything."

"How did you get it?"

I meant how in the world, but she said, "Contributions. We bought it in Baltimore. Dad flew it here. We came back on the Unicorn. I thought you might be on it, too. I looked for you, I really did. Hey, the things that were going through my mind about you were really X-rated! Why is your hair—"

"Emily," f said, "is Baltimore okay?"

"It's sorta freaky now. They closed down Dad's drive-in church. They couldn't pay the taxes — not enough people. That's why they gave him the plane."

Jerry said, "Is America still there?"

"Are you nuts or something?" Emily laughed. "Hey, this kid's really strange!"

I said, "My father says America's been wiped out. There's no one left but us. Because we're here. That's what he said."

"That's stupid," Emily said.

A whole country rose up and began to shine the moment she spoke those simple words. And Father seemed tiny and scuttling, like a cockroach when a light goes on.

Jerry said, "Yeah!"

"Gee, I thought my dad was weird!"

"That it all went up in flames," I said. "That's what he thinks."

"We were there three weeks ago. It's the same. It's real neat. I learned roller disco. But we had to come back here. If it wasn't for the plane, it'd be really bummy. But anyway we bought some new cassettes. We've got a video system, with games. And Rocky. Dad even lets us watch it. He says it has a wholesome message. It's about boxing — this real neat guy."

Jerry started hitting me. "I knew it," he said. "He was lying the whole time. The liar! I'm going home. I ain't going up the river in no boat!"

"Your brother's real strange."

I said, "Emily, we're in bad trouble."

"Really? That's incredible."

"Will you help us?"

"Sure! I want to. Hey, I used to think about you a whole lot. You can stay here."

"No. We have to get down to the coast."

"My dad can take you in the plane. It's only an hour and a half!"

"Isn't there another way?"

"The river."

"That's the way we came. My father would follow us. What about the roads?"

"There's only one. It's over there" — she lifted her hand and pointed to the darkness across the river. "It goes to Awawas, on the Wonks. That's where our jeep is, parked on the road on the other side. You can see it from the river. It's a Toyota Landcruiser. Four-wheel drive. Green, with black upholstery. We hold baptisms in Awawas. The Wonks is a real neat river. You can get to the coast that way. There's plenty of boats."

I said, "Emily, if you give us the keys to that jeep, we can get away. My mother will drive us to that place you said—"

"Awawas."

"Yes, and then we'll leave the jeep and get down the river somehow."

"Won't your father go crazy if you don't take him?"

"He's already crazy," Jerry said.

"He can do whatever he wants," I said. "That's up to him."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"When I thought he was right — yes, I was. Now that I know he's wrong. I'm not. Are you afraid of your father?"

"Mine's got a gun," Emily said, "'it's a Mossberg repeater. Plus it's got a telescopic sight. It's for the Communists. There's millions of Communists around here. Hey, if you combed your hair it'd look kind of cute, like James Taylor."

"Give us the car keys, please. We'll take good care of it."

"It's not a car — it's a Landcruiser. Hey, did your dad really say America's been wiped out? That's really incredible, you know? The people on the ship were talking a lot about him. He's really strange, they said. He's the weirdest passenger they ever had. Hey, I hope you don't mind if I say that! If someone said that about my father I'd cry, even though it's sort of true. Everyone said you were living with Zambus and running around nudo and climbing trees. I wanted to write you a letter. How do you like my hair? I had hot-curls, but Dad made me cut them off. Not wholesome enough. Want some money? I've been saving up. I could give you fourteen dollars. Gee, I wish I was a boy—"

At that moment, with a silence that was like a sudden thud, all the lights in Guampu went out. It was as if a black lid had been clapped onto the place. The chugging of the generator had stopped. Now I could hear frogs.

"That always happens," Emily said. "It must be out of gas."

The voices from the bungalow were loud.

"They're real mad. They were watching Crusade for Christ. Hey, did I tell you about the video machine? It's a Sony. Dad preaches on it. He can hold services even when he's not here, like today. The Twahkas freak out when they see it — they like it better than the real preaching. Sometimes they only stay when Dad's on TV! They all want to be baptized now, so they can watch—"

"If you don't get the keys, Emily—"

"Don't worry, chicky," she said, and stood up. "I'll get them. It'll be easier in the dark, anyway. Better not crash it." She walked away, saying, "This is weird, for cry-eye!"

When she was gone, Jerry started fussing. What if she couldn't find the keys? What if Dad was looking for us? He cried, he laughed, he kicked the tall grass. He said, "Dad's a crapster — a liar!" and "Jeez, what are we going to do?"

"Go home."

"Hatfield's so far away. You don't even know how to drive. Maybe we should stay here. I hate him, I could kill him." He took my hand. "Charlie, I'm afraid."

"You said you weren't."

"That girl's right. He really is crazy."

Emily came back wagging a flashlight, jingling the keys. "There's a power cut," she said. "My dad's ripping. He just had the generator overhauled. The church sent a guy down from Tegoose."

She shone the flashlight onto her own face. She was whiter. She had put lipstick on, there was green dust on her eyelids. The greasy red on her lips made her look older. She smiled and said, "Like it?" She had flecks of red on her teeth. It scared and excited me.

"Hey, I was thinking. You don't have to go right off. You could stay here awhile. Maybe meet some Twahkas. A few of them are really neat. We could go up in the plane. And don't you want to watch some TV?"

I said, "My father would kill us."

"He's incredible — worse than mine. Hey, why is your brother crying?"

"Never mind him. But remember — all of this is secret. Don't tell anyone about us. You have to swear. Cross your heart you won't tell anyone — not even your father."

"I won't squeal, honest."

"What if they ask?"

"Dad already saw you. He thinks you're Indians! They took the jeep before. They're always doing crazy things like that. I'll blame the Twahkas. It'll be easy."

She walked us to the riverbank. Before we crept into the water, she said she wanted to kiss me. I couldn't do it with Jerry watching, so I told him to start swimming. When I heard him splash, I kissed her cheek. She grabbed me and put her mouth against mine. Her lips were soft, our front teeth nicked together, she dug her fingers into my back and bumped me with her bones. I kept my arms straight down.

I had been worrying about how to get back to the boat, but I was so glad to get away from her kissing, the" river seemed easy. But the river was cold. I looked back and saw her little light and wanted to kiss her again.

29

MOTHER WAS AWAKE, standing outside the cabin, as we climbed on board.

"Where have you boys been?" She was trying to be angry, but she sounded scared. It is easy to know how people feel by the way they speak in the dark. Emily had shown me that, and now Mother.

"Over there," I said. "It was my idea, so don't blame Jerry." I looked for the dugout, but couldn't see it. "Where's Dad?"

Mother said, "I thought you were with him. I was keeping watch. Then all the lights went out."

"Their generator's busted." We strained to see the far bank, but Guampu was in darkness — just jungle, and the chalkmarks of white bungalows. I said, "He was lying to us, Ma."

I told her what Emily had said about Baltimore and America. That's stupid.

Mother said, "It doesn't matter."

"America's the same, Ma! There's nothing wrong!"

"He hated it the way it was. That's why he left. That's why we're here. He'll never go back."

"I'm not staying here," Jerry said.

"Neither am I," I said.

"There's no way out," she said. "We have to do as we're told."

"We're making a terrible mistake — that's what you said!"

In a sad defeated voice, Mother said, "I should never have said that to you. It's true, but we have to live with it. This is our life now." She was going to say more, but she was choked by her crying — it was small, like one of Clover's sobs.

"We can get out, Ma. There's a jeep parked right over there in those trees, on this side of the river." I showed her the keys and told her where I had gotten them. "You can drive us," I said. "The five of us — before he gets back."

"You mean, leave Dad behind? I can't believe what you're saying."

"It might be our last chance," I said. "Please, Ma. Wake up the twins and let's go. Hurry, or he'll stop us."

"You want Dad to come back to this boat and find we've run out on him? That's horrible, Charlie."

"I want to go home!" I grabbed Mother's shoulders and shook her.

"What about me?" she said. "Don't you think I'd jump at the chance to go? But look how dark it is. Dad's not here. I'm always so frightened when he's away."

She did not push my hands aside, but she was trembling so badly I let go. If she was not willing to drive, there was no way we could escape in that jeep. And yet I could tell she was weakening. She sounded as if she might agree. But she was scared. Father was somewhere out there in the dark — in the dugout or on shore.

I said, "Maybe he's left us."

"We can't do anything without him."

"He might not come back!"

Jerry said, "Please, Ma! Please!"

Mother's voice shook as she said, "I can't think straight in the dark."

"Tomorrow will be too late. Spellgood will be looking for his keys. He'll see our boat. We'll get arrested!"

A light leaped on in Guampu as I spoke. Now we could see the hard outlines of the bungalows. Behind them, like the bonfire of sunrise, something blazed. High flames turned the nearby trees green and gold, and wet them with light, and gave them frantic Zambu shadows. The fire set the birds squawking and scraping, and human shouts reached me at the same time as the stink of burning gasoline.

"Fire," Jerry said. The flames lit his face.

The generator was the next to go. The tanks went with a bang and blew the whole shed sideways into the river. Pools of fire and burning sticks moved quickly, dancing in the current. The people in Guampu were shouting, and the whole jungle was awake with monkey noises and the sounds of birds' wings thrashing the tree branches.

Mother said, "Oh, God."

The twins woke up and started calling from the cabin.

Jerry made slow scared groans in his throat.

And Mother was whimpering, hitting the boat's rail with the flat of her hand and saying, "Oh, God, oh, God, we should never have stopped here. Why didn't we keep on going?"

"Jerry, grab the twins," I said. "Come on, Ma, let's get out of here!"

"Sit down!"

It was" Father's voice. He appeared on the river, standing in the dugout, the flames behind him, his face a shadow-lump of menace.

"You're not going anywhere."

He was struggling with the dugout. He swept his paddle into the fiery reflections and swung alongside.

"Allie, what's happening?"

"The fire's under control. No one's hurt. They won't miss that plane. Good thing I saw it — did them a favor. Nipped it in the bud. Okay, spread out — we're moving."

"You're a liar!" Jerry said, and went at Father like a mutt. "You lied about everything! You said America was destroyed!"

"I was right," Father said. "Look at the flames."

"Liar! Liar!" Jerry said.

"Charlie, get this screamer into the bow. We're clearing out."

I said, "We're not going with you, not after those lies you told us. You made us suffer for nothing."

"Into the bow!"

"Allie, listen to him. He's got a plan."

"You!" Father said, and pushed Mother against the cabin. "You've always been against me. You always tried to undermine me. You're no more use than these kids!"

The firelight from Guampu, the burning plane, reddened his face and picked out his hairstrings and bored empty holes in his eyes. I was so afraid of his face then, and the twins crying in the cabin, that I grabbed Jerry and pulled him to the bow.

The boat still swung on the anchor. And there were two lines from the rail tied to a tree that leaned from the bank opposite Guampu. We could hear the Spellgoods' confusion and the flames beating like sails in the wind.

"Let's kill him," Jerry said. "We'll tie him up and bash him with a hammer. Then he won't be able to stop us. He deserves it."

"All right," I said.

"You do it."

"How?"

"With a hammer," he whispered. "Bash his head."

I never imagined it in those words. Hearing him repeat them made it impossible. The words were harsh brutes (hammer, bash) and frightened me with blood. The shouts from Guampu were like my wounded conscience shrieking.

"I can't."

"If we don't, he'll come after us. He'll kill us."

"Don't talk — don't say—"

"He lied to us," Jerry said. "He's dangerous. He burned their plane and blew up their generator. He hit Ma. That's what it'll be like from now on, if we stay with him — probably worse."

"Pull up the anchor!" Father yelled. "Get that line off the tree!"

"Don't do it," Jerry said. "He wants to leave. He'll take us further up the river. And he'll keep us there. He's in trouble for starting those fires. We'll never get home"

"The anchor! Hurry up!"

"Let's just leave," I said. "We can hop to that bank and get away. Come on, Jerry."

"He'll kill Ma and the twins. I know he will."

Then Father was behind us, and shouting.

"What's eating you two? Here, give me a hand with these lines, Charlie. Jerry, get a bamboo and start poling fast. If these savages see us, they'll be down on us like a ton of bricks."

He stepped into the center of the coiled sounding chain. Before I could think, or stop myself, I yanked it tight around his ankles. He tried to move and tipped himself over. He came down hard and smashed his head against the rail. He was not knocked out, but stunned and half smiling.

"I'm sorry!" I said. I was terrified. I kept telling him I was sorry, and went to help him up. But by then Jerry was working at tying Father's hands, looping rope around his wrists and thumbs.

"Do his feet," Jerry said. "Help me!"

I wound the rest of the chain around his ankles.

"I'm not going to bash him," I said. "I'm not going to kill him."

"Then tie him tight," Jerry said, and went on lashing Father's hands together. Father had taught us these knots.

"Allie, they're coming!" Mother cried from the stern.

Father seemed to understand, but he remained on his back, still enough for us to get double knots on his hands and feet. He murmured and drooled in a dopey, disconnected way, while I apologized for what we were doing to him.

"They've got lights," Mother said. She could not see us. "Allie, what do you want me to do?"

The airplane was still naming behind the bungalows, but the generator fire had been squelched by the jungle. On shore, in the darkness, we saw flickering lights — lanterns, spotlights — shaking on the far bank.

Mother kept crying out. Her voice roused Father, and now he opened his eyes and made a dive at us. But the knots held and tripped him. He banged his head again. He got to his knees and tried to work his hands loose. Jerry picked up an iron pipe from the deck and raised it over Father's head. I snatched it away from him and threw it overboard. Father had not looked up. He grunted over his knots, then gave a whimper of embarrassment and anger that he couldn't break the ropes in one hard pull.

"Hey," he said in a drunken way, and began biting at his wrists.

I did not want to be there when he freed himself. Jerry and I ran to the stern. I swung the dugout around to our side of the boat, away from Guampu, and told Mother to get in. She was holding the twins and crouching in the dark, looking toward the Guampu shore, where the small lights swung in the darkness and the distant plane burned.

A yell went up on shore. It was Spellgood, shouting in Spanish and also in an Indian language, maybe Twahka. His voice had a tunnel echo, as if he was shouting through a bullhorn or a megaphone.

"Get into the dugout, Ma. Please, hurry!"

There was a gunshot, not loud, but it had the malice of a poison dart and made a watery wobble and plop into the trees just behind us on the near bank.

"Where's Dad?"

"He's not coming."

Another gunshot, and more Indian squawks from Spellgood.

"Allie!" Mother called to him as she put April and Clover into the dugout. They covered their faces. They were so frightened they had no breath left to scream with. Jerry got in next, then Mother, who was still calling "Allie! Allie!"

I hopped in and shoved us away from the boat. We were only twenty feet from the bank opposite Guampu, but before we had gone halfway — one paddle stroke — a light settled on the cabin of the boat and lit it from behind. We were hidden by the boat, in its shadow, looking up.

Father stood and faced the light, and when he tried to cover his face, I saw that his hands were still tied.

"Communistas," Spellgood screamed. "Satanas!"

Mother said, "Allie — here! What's wrong with him?"

Father thrashed his tied hands against the cabin roof, beating the knots against the wood.

"Satanas! Diabolos!"

"Give me a hand here," Father said in a plain calm voice.

As he spoke, there was another gunshot. A moment before the far-off crack, there was a smaller sound, almost innocent, like a ripe plum dropping with a mush on the floor.

And Father went down on his knees saying, "I'm all right! It's okay! I'm alive!"

We had reached the bank. The kids jumped out, but Mother remained in the bow.

"Allie!"

"Don't leave me," he said. He lifted his tied hands. "I'm bleeding, Mother."

Mother snatched the paddle from me and in the same movement dug it into the river and shoveled us to the boat, while I held on.

"Who's there?" Spellgood said through his megaphone from across the river. He tried to find us with his light. "Who said that?"

Father groaned, and groaned again. "I can't move."

By standing up in the dugout on this safe side of the boat, we were able to roll Father over and topple him off the deck into the dugout. He gave an almighty yell, as if we'd broken his back, but we didn't hesitate. With one of his legs dragging in the river, and water spilling over the gunwales, we made it back to the bank, where the kids were waiting.

"Hurry," Mother said.

"I'm coming after you!" Spellgood cried.

Father said, "I can't get out of this thing."

Mother dragged him onto the bank and, still hidden from the Guampu shore by the shadow of our hut-boat, we untied Father's knots. But even with his arms and legs free, he could not move. He lifted his head, but the rest of his body lay heavily against the ground.

"Help me, Charlie," Mother said. "All of you — grab hold!" She yanked him through the bushes while we shoved at his legs.

There were more people on the far shore now. They must have heard the shouts. There seemed dozens of voices. They were calling out to us, and once or twice I thought I heard Emily saying my name. But the river was wide here, the Guampu shore fifty yards away. We moved along, not saying a word until we found the jeep. The voices continued from the other shore. It was as if they were lost and wounded and calling out for help in the darkness — not us.

30

DOWN THE DARK, leafy sleeve of road, with night pressing on our roof, the twenty-eight miles on the rutted track to Awawas seemed more like a hundred. Mother drove as fast as she could, slewing the jeep, grinding the gears. The rest of us sat in silence. We watched the birds roosting on the road and the kinkajou furballs with light-bulb eyes that froze in our headlong clatter. When Mother spoke, it was always to Father. "You'll be all right," she said. "I won't leave you, Allie."

Father did not reply. He was on the rear seat with his eyes half-open. The skid of mud on him from the riverbank gave off a stink like death.

Then, still dark, there was no road. We were thrown into a dead end of trees, ferns, bush tips against the headlights, the loud stomach of jungle. Mother shut off the jeep and cranked the brake. She climbed over her seat and made Father comfortable, talking to him softly, as if he was sleeping. She said, "You'll live, Allie."

With the headlights off we could see stars, the moonhole in the sky's blanket. The moon went down and branches laid cracks across it. There was no sun for a while, only a gray light that lifted and penetrated the trees like rising water, and waxed them with a blur of mist which, as dawn broke, was cut by straws of sun that thickened and blinded us. The surrounding jungle had changed each second, dark to watery, to misty, to waxy, to gray, thinly stripping the shadows from the jungle — a rising tide of light with a mirror behind it. It was as if, that whole time, we had been riding from darkness into light, slipping forward like scared people in a silent canoe, into this brighter place.

All the darkness had been bleeding out of the morning trees, becoming mud and water.

And dawn showed us that we were alone. The jungle at night was tall, and its cool gloom dripped darkness. But daylight here was pale yellow, broken by starved trees, with hot spots. This was a riverbank, and night foliage had become frail and top-heavy weeds. Ahead, where we had expected more jungle, was water, the Wonks, where all the darkness had been bleeding.

"Mother." His voice was like this fragile light.

I could not bear to see his goat-white face, the blood under his beard, the gluey crescents in his eyeslits. I walked to the river with Jerry, stepping over roots. There was a bullfrog at my feet. I wanted to jerk it on a spear. But after seeing Father, I couldn't do it. I looked for yautia and guavas instead.

Jerry said, "I don't want him to die."

We heard voices and looked back at the jeep. Two Indian men stood at the windows. They must have recognized it as Spellgood's jeep, because they were smiling and talking to Mother. We walked over as Mother got out.

"Find me a boat," she said. "And water. And food. Make it snappy!"

Only Father's head was alive. We knew that when we laid him on the ground. It was clear when Mother washed his wound. His head was alive, but his body was like a bag of sticks and seeds. The bullet had entered the side of his neck and burst out the back. His neck bone was not broken, but there were red strings and fat in the clawed-open wound, and a black bruise around it, like a large whelk of meat. Mother plugged it with cotton the Indians boiled for her, and then they put him on a plank and brought him to the river. They carried him feet first, like pallbearers, because they thought he was dead.

Mother propped him at the bow of the boat, which was a flatboat with a long-handled rudder. By this time, the twins' crying had attracted other Indians, and these people stood on the gravel bank, watching us and not asking any questions. Some of them ran back for more pots of beans and rice — English food, they called it — and wabool and jugs of coffee. One of the Indians told Mother that it was neither good nor bad if Father was dead — everyone died, it was the world's way, nothing you can do about it, so be happy, he said.

"You believe that," Mother said. "But I don't, so don't ask me to. Just get me out of here and give the preacher his car keys."

It was what Father would have said. She had taken on his determination in a kind of panicky way. She got us hopping for paddles and poles, and gave the Indians orders. She did not have Father's flair for gadgets, but she knew how to make these Indians rig up an awning for Father's head. And when an Indian tried to insist on coming with us, she told him firmly that she appreciated the offer but she didn't want his help. "And I'm not staying here another minute." One, more boastful than pious, had mentioned a church service. They were the sort of people Father had once called "Praying Indians."

Mother said, "I don't pray."

We pushed off in this flat-bottomed boat, Mother at the stern, holding the rudder handle, the twins in the center seat with the food, Jerry and I paddling on either side of Father at the bow.

"We going upriver?" Father knew we were afloat. He strained to see over the gunwales, but he couldn't.

"Yes," Mother said. "Upriver."

But she hooked us in the current and turned us downstream.

***

The rushing stew of this river was like the hurry of an oncoming tide, but perpetual. Moving water looked odd here, sucking along at the deadest, stillest banks. The last time we had gone down a river was on the Rio Sico, when we had escaped from Jeronimo. But the Sico was a creek compared to the Wonks, and that was in the dry season. The Wonks was fuller and wider than the Patuca even. We traveled midstream and went fast. There was hardly any need to paddle, except for steadying the boat on bends.

Father thought we were still on the Patuca, going upstream. He was happy — his head was happy, the rest of him was a sandbag.

"Pull hard," he said. "Away from the coast, away from the savages. There's death down there. Listen, the Mosquito Coast is the coast of America. You know what that means."

We gave him water and wabool, but he resisted eating. He said he wanted to starve himself until he got his strength back. "I'm not much use to you as a cripple," he said. "There's something wrong with my legs." And his arms, too — he couldn't move them. We fanned the flies off his face.

His big head was fixed in the niche of the bow like a goat in a halter, raving at us as we sped down the river, telling us that we were saved because we were going upriver, and sometimes crying.

He cried most when he saw the birds. They were harmless birds at first, parrots and crascos, but he raved and they turned into vicious creatures. They got bigger. They grew plumes and claws. Storks now planed overhead, then fish hawks, and finally vultures, which he hated worst of all. We had never seen vultures like this before. They were black, rather than shabby gray, and huge, with ragged wing tips and plucked necks and hooked beaks. They hovered without flapping, like wicked kites, looking feeble and patient in the summer sky.

"Take those birds away!" It was his old horror of scavengers, but now that he couldn't raise his arms, he was especially afraid. He was fearful of other things, too. The way the boat tipped — he couldn't swim as a cripple. The way flies gathered on his eyelids. Sudden noises. Fire. And he would not be left alone. He hated stopping. When we put in that first day at a riverbank village called Susca for bandages and fresh water, he made Jerry and me stay by him until Mother returned. He was not surprised there were villages here, and boats passing us, and Miskito cries. "This is where the last of human life is — upriver."

But we were fifteen miles down it and sliding toward the coast.

"Cover me up," he said. He made us move the awning, so that he would not see the vultures that followed us. And he said he hated the empty sky. "If I was in jail, I'd never look out of the window."

We were lucky, he said. The river was a labyrinth—"Easy to get in, hard to get out."

He raved when he was awake, and when he slept he howled in his dreams. There was always froth on his lips.

Easy to get in? We could not have gone upriver against this current if we had tried. At night we moored our flatboat near villages. Some were Moravian missions, praying Indians, and people from Pennsylvania. No, America had not been destroyed. Mother demanded food and water and medicine. The people were kind. She got all she wanted. We stopped at Wiri-Pani and Pranza, and at a place called Kisalaya we saw muddy wagons. Mother was told we were only three days from the coast, Cabo Gracias a Dios, which they called the Cape.

The twins had nothing to do. They were sick with worry, actually puking with fear at the rate we were moving. Mother stayed at the stern, wearing a straw hat from Susca. She heaved the long tiller, not looking to the left or right but sort of staring downstream past Father's head.

She did not speak to anyone but the twins, and she was too far from Father to reply to the things he said. I wanted to tell her that I had not meant for any harm to come to Father, only for us to escape. We had escaped, but in the worst possible way, down a river we didn't know, with the girls sick. We were carrying Father's head to the coast.

Every five miles was a village where crazy-sounding Indians shouted English at us. The Indians got blacker as we neared the coast, and the hanging vultures bigger and wickeder. Sometimes at night there were alligators. They scuttled from the bank and moved against the current. But they were cowardly, they did not attack, and when they bumped us with their snouts we made rag torches. Often sudden light stopped them, and the flames near their green nostrils always did.

The river was murkier and twistier nearer the coast, and the land swampy, so that cranes stood out like shirts hung on fenceposts. It was hotter here. The heat made Father rave more. His raving made me remember again how, in Jeronimo, climbing through Fat Boy, I had had a glimpse of his mind. I had seen just how tangled it was. I had been stumped by the plumbing of all its turns. What he was, he had made. His ravings came out of those orbits and circuits, that teeming closet of pipes and valves and shelves and coils — the ice maker, his brainache.

What he harped on most was this imperfect world. Well, I knew that one by heart. But there was more.

"I'm hurt." He said it again and again, as if he had just discovered it and hardly believed it. "I can't move — can't do anything."

"You'll get better," I said.

"Man sprang out of the faulty world, Charlie. Therefore, I'm imperfect. What's the use? It's a bad design, the human body. Skin's not thick enough, bones aren't strong enough, too little hair, no claws, no fangs. Drop us and we break! Why, we're not even symmetrical. One foot bigger than the other, left-handed, right-handed, our noses run. Look where our heart is. We weren't meant to stand up straight — our posture exposes the most sensitive parts of the body, heart and genitals. We should be on all fours, hairer, more resistant to heat and cold, with tails. What happened to my tail, that's what I'd like to know. I had to turn inventor — I was too weak to live any other way. Look at me. Look where seventy-five pushups a day got me. Yes sir, I'm going to live on all fours from now on. And that's what I'm fit for — hands and knees!"

He went on and on like this as we raced downriver under flights of butterflies and the ragged shadows of birds so high in the sky I had to get on my back like Father to see them properly.

"It's worse for other people. Women, Charlie, they're in bad shape. They leak, they drip. It's terrible about women's bodies, how they leak. All that blood, all that useless fat. They carry these bodies around with them all the time. No wonder they're so mad, wondering what they're for. It's humiliating to have a body with a design fault. I thought I was the strongest man in the world. I'm just pulp. Weakness makes you clever, but no amount of cleverness can save you if all the odds are against you. I'll tell you who'll inherit the world — scavenging birds. They're fit for it, everything in their favor. They are nourished on failure. The sky in America is black with them now. They just hang there, waiting. Get them away from me' There's sand in my eyes' I'm alive but I can't see Mother!"'

It was dreadful trying to paddle, with Father's screams in my ears. But it was so bad I hardly noticed the twists of the river, and it saved me from thinking much about what would happen to us on the coast.

Father insisted on his head being covered. He wore a hood, like a condemned man, and sweated in it. He did not see the lifting flights of ducks, the tumbling plovers, the flamingos, the seabirds that met us near villages with English names like Living Creek and Doyle. He went silent for long periods. His silences had always been worse than his howls. But now we thought he was dead. He still steamed of death. We knew he was alive by his skin, the way he came out in bites.

The sand flies got him. The tortoiseshell cockroaches in the boat bit him. Fevers shook him. He raved and struggled and opened his wound.

"Nature is crooked. I wanted right angles and straight lines. Ice! Oh, why do they all drip? You cut yourself opening a can of tuna fish and you die. One puncture in your foot and your life leaks out through your toe. What are they for, moose antlers? Get down on all fours and live. You're protected on your hands and knees. It's either that or wings."

On this flooded river, his voice cracked through his gallows hood. "Listen to me, people. Grow wings and they'll never get you!"

The river grew wider and lost its current. We had to paddle hard to move forward. With swamp at both banks there was nowhere to moor the boat, and all through the last hot night we kept going. Just before dawn, we saw a beacon — a lighthouse — and heard the slap of waves on the beach by the rivermouth. This was the Cape.

"What's that?"

He knew the sound.

"No!" And raised his arms for the first time.

He pulled down his mask and said, "Charlie, don't lie to me. Tell me where we are."

I bent down. I could not speak. Then I had to turn away, because with bared teeth I heard something violent in me urging me to bite his ear off.

"Vultures," he said, and then the terrible sentence, "Christ is a scarecrow!"

***

Yet it seemed as if everything Father feared was true. He had predicted this. The sky was thick with birds — ugly pelicans and gulls and vultures. They circled and soared, they swung across the great curve of tropical beach. And sometimes they hurried down and fed, for surfing through the breakers were large paddling turtles, with parrot beaks and baggy necks.

The turtles' shells were crusted with periwinkles and weedsuckers and hardened sea glop. More turtles worked their flippers up the shelf of sand, and others were backed into the low dunes. Blinking and brooding, they laid brown eggs. Their beaks were splashed with the soapy saliva of their effort.

They made no sound at all. Only the birds cried out, and when a turtle was tossed ashore on its back by a rogue wave, the vultures went for its unprotected neck and jerked it out of its shell. The gulls had the leavings. Sunlight made this nightmare more horrible — the massing turtle lids flopping along the shore and pooping eggs into the sand, the birds hovering in the sky, the heavy surf. It was the coastal hell Father had promised.

We chose a secluded spot in a palm grove down the beach, overturned our flatboat. and made camp. And Father wept. Each time he tried to speak he burst into tears. It was the sight of the sea, the Mosquito Coast. His tears said we had tricked him, failed him, brought him here to die.

Black Indians came in cayukas to stare at us. Father howled them away. Mother walked into Cabo Gracias, the village, and tried to find a doctor. People said the doctors were upriver, at the missions, or in La Ceiba or Trujillo — not here. She told the people she wanted a boat, to take us up the coast. But the boats were all going south, to Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas and Pearl Lagoon. They laughed when she told them we had no money.

We killed a turtle, and while vultures strutted nearby, swishing their wings and watching us. we roasted the fatty meat over our fire. We believed that the whole of Father's prediction had come true. We were dying on the Mosquito Coast, in the hot sand, among scavengers and scuttling turtles. It was worse than he had said.

America was safe — the Spellgoods' word had been verified by the Moravians — but we were far away, so what did it matter? Hell is what you can't have. The best memory we had was of living in the jungle. It was too late to go back — the river was impossible without a motorboat, and the vast expressionless sea made us feel small and lonely. We had escaped to the coast, but we were more than ever like castaways, clinging to this scrap of shoreline. We were tired and empty, and hardly spoke. Father could move his arms, but his legs were useless. He lay staring at the waves, the turtles, the birds. Every sunrise, he saw sea monsters gasping in the surf.

Yonder were sailboats, shrimpers, and fishermen. But none came near enough for us to see if Mr. Haddy was among them. No boats landed at this beach, and Father had scared the blacks away. The twins were too sick to stand up. They sat under the boat with Father.

Our hope was Mother. She still walked the three miles through the palms every day to Cabo Gracias, demanding medicine, and cloth for Father's bandages. "I'm not a beggar — I don't take no for an answer," she said. The people called her Auntie and said she was loco. Jerry and I collected turtle eggs and firewood. We listened to Father pleading to be taken upriver, we squashed the flies that settled on him.

"Which way is the river?" he said in a small voice.

He spoke in baby talk about living on all fours far away in Mosquitia, and about going to sea in a sieve. Usually he said nothing. He stared. Thoughts folded his brow. Tears gathered in his eyes and, without his making a sound, rolled down his cheeks.

Five days of this weakened us worse than the river had, and now this coast seemed a great mistake. Creatures here, the only life, fed on each other. We went around in our rags. The longer we stayed here, the more fearful we were of the ocean. Because of the turtles, we never swam, and because of the birds, we stayed under cover.

When I slept, I had food dreams. I dreamed of chocolate fudge cake and cold milk. I dreamed of our kitchen in Hatfield, how some nights I had gone down in the dark and opened the refrigerator to cool myself and look upon the lighted shelves, the cheese, the milk, the bacon, ajar of grape jelly, a jug of water, a pie, a pitcher of fresh orange juice. The kitchen was dark, but the inside of the refrigerator was bright and filled with clean food.

I was woken from this very dream one day by Jerry's shouts, and I was to remember that interruption. Jerry had seen a sailboat beating from the south. The wind was offshore. The boat tacked way out, then sailed in on a wave, its gray sail luffing, and plowed the beach.

"It's a boat, Dad!"

Father raised himself up and watched Jerry running toward the sailboat.

I said, "It might be Mr. Haddy."

"Where's Mother?"

I looked around. I had been sleeping. "She must be in the village."

The twins were asleep beside him. They slept holding hands.

"Go see who it is," Father said. He gave me a sneaky glance, his coward's glance, which was weak and wanting comfort and willing to ditch anything in order to get away — his blamer's look, which had a hint of sadness and self-hate in it. I saw his face. I did not size up his expression until later.

"Take your time," he said. 'Til be right here."

I left him with the twins and ran down the beach. Jerry had already reached the sailboat. He was talking to the man on board, who had turtles stacked around his mast and filling his cuddy like manhole covers. It was not Mr. Haddy, but he was willing to talk. He had broken his mainsheet, he needed some rope. He was talking about rope when we heard the yell.

"The twins," Jerry said.

It was a child's shriek, thin and complaining and pathetic.

"Mother! Mother! Mother! Mother!"

"You got trouble for true," the boatman said, speaking at the sound of the voice.

The twins were awake, rubbing their eyes, when we got back to the little camp. Father was missing, but we could see the groove mark of his body across the sand, like a lizard track, with handprints on either side. All fours.

"Mother!"

The strangled shout came from the other side of the dune.

He had dragged himself quite a distance from the camp. He had been hurrying. He lay on a slope of sand. He had been heading west, where the rivermouth was. But he was motionless now. Five birds stood over him — vultures — and they were attacking his head. They made cruel swipes at his scalp. They cast terrible shadows over him. They held parts of his flesh in their beaks. The birds looked up at me. I had interrupted them, I was screaming and waving my arms.

They were not frightened. This victory had taken away their fear. They hesitated, they hopped aside, they gave me a look at Father's head. I grabbed a stick from the sand, but even as I went forward, a vulture bent over and struck and tore again, like a child snatching something extra because he knows he will be scolded anyway, and this one had his tongue.