The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux

Author:Paul Theroux
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Travel, Adventure, Suspense & Thriller
ISBN: 9780618658961
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 1981-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Pacing the clearing with Clover, Father looked like a man showing his daughter around the zoo—impatient and proud and talking the whole time and sort of holding his nose. Then, from the other side of the firepit, we heard his loud voice.

"Okay, the game's over. We can see you! Stop hiding—you're just wasting your time! Come on out of there, we're not going to hurt you! Get out from behind those trees!"

His voice rang against the jungle's straight trees and high ceiling. He kept it up for several minutes, yelling at the bushes, while we watched. Clover peered at the ferns Father was beating with a stick. He looked the way Tiny Polski had when he was flushing bobwhites in Hatfield.

The amazing thing was, it worked. We saw we were surrounded by people, more than twenty of them. This took place as we were staring, and they appeared in the same way as they had vanished before, without a movement or a sound. One second, Father was shouting "Come on out!" in the empty clearing, and the next second the people were there and he was shouting the same thing in their faces. We did not know whether Father had really seen them or was just pretending.

The women wore ragged dresses and the men wore shorts. But these clothes did not hide their nakedness. They seemed to represent clothes rather than serve any covering purpose. We could see their private parts through the rips and tears. And the children—Clover's age and mine—were stark naked, which was embarrassing.

"Carkles and wilks," Mr. Haddy said, and stuck his teeth out.

Father said, "They don't look so bad to me. Are you sure this is the place?"

Francis said it was.

We expected Father to say hello. He didn't. He turned his back on the people, as if he had known them a long time, and he said, "Okay, let's go" over his shoulder—meaning them. "Follow me—we've got work to do."

Three of the men—they looked a little like Francis, except that they were nakeder and had bushier hair—followed Father to the duckboards.

"You stay here," Father said to us. "Relax, get acquainted, make yourselves known."

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