"Look at the teeth marks! After dark, this place is crawling with creatures. You're not in the mountains anymore — this is the jungle, boys."
"We have been in the jungle."
"Not this wild — this is not Olancho, and it is not Tegoose. The people here are descended from pirates and cannibal Caribs. Spiders as big as puppies? Vultures that pick you clean? This is the Mosquito Coast! That's why I advise you to go downriver, where you can shut the doors and windows. If anyone slept outside around here, there would be nothing left in the morning — not even bones."
The toothy man turned to his friends.
"For example, where are you sleeping tonight?" Father asked.
They did not say.
"It better be indoors and far away from here. You could lose more than a finger!"
We worked through the afternoon, digging the hole, sealing the houses, and wishing we were at the Acre, while the three men talked among themselves. They were restless, they watched us work. They had hot nervous eyes in sick faces, and they moved in flicks like lizards, crouching whenever they looked around.
Each time they stared at Father, he held up his finger stump and said, "It will be dark soon!"
They crept away, ignoring him.
This excited Father — their indifference. "I am giving you a chance," he said. Now he was almost pleading. "I am offering you my cayuka. You would be wise to shove off. It gets dark around here very fast."
The men played with Clover and April under the guanacaste tree.
Mr. Haddy said, "Where I gung sleep, Fadder?"
"I've got a bed for you," Father said, then he shouted to the men, "Get away from those kids!"
He picked up his claw hammer and walked over to them, past the torn-open or blinded houses.
"I don't care if you stay here, but keep your hands away from my children."
"They are very intelligent children."
"They have intelligent parents," Father said.
"Yes. They are telling us all the wonderful things you can do."
Clover said, "I didn't say anything, Dad. It was April."
April said, "Clover was boasting about your shaft to get geothermal energy out of volcanoes."
"That's a water hole," Father said. "This dry season has turned us into Zambus. We're just fighting for water. Keep your trap shut, girls, and go do something useful."
The men slunk to the river. We could not see them, we thought they had gone, but at twilight they returned. It was the hour the mosquitoes and bats woke and began flying. The men were slapping at their heads, rubbing their ankles, and scratching holes in their shirts.
In their absence, Father's mood had changed. He sulked, he chewed his cigar. He did not speak to any of us, but instead walked around mumbling. He took his tools over to Fat Boy and stood on a ladder, hammering the upper walls near the hatchway. But when he saw the men again, he began laughing. It was dark now. Mr. Haddy brought a lantern from the boat. Flimsy insects skidded around the lantern's glass chimney. I stood watching with Jerry.
Father was still laughing. He said, "I am a fool. You said you liked it here, and I did not believe you. But I am fully convinced now. You meant what you said. You are staying the night here, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"I would not be surprised if you decided to stay two nights, or more. Maybe until the rain comes and we start planting — and that's weeks away!"
"We will stay until we are ready. Then we will go."
Saying that, the man had the face of an insect, one that settles on a bean pod and burrows until it has eaten its fill. Insects make little probing twitches, but they have no more expression than a pair of pliers. The men looked that way — pincer lips and eyes like rivets. Insects.
"I am not a savage," Father said. "I am not going to lay hold of you and make you prisoners. It was your choice all along. But it's dark now." He took the lantern and put it near their faces, bringing the insects near their insect eyes. "You can't go anywhere."
The men stared at the mosquitoes and jumping moths.
"You would be fools to leave now. We haven't got much, but what we have is yours. This infestation — look, there is a termite on the glass, see his jaws? — has left us short of houses. But we can provide food and shelter."
"He is a very sensible man."
"I do what I can."
"He understands."
"When I saw you up there in that — was it a Twahka village? — I took you for prisoners."
The men smiled and slapped the insects away from their cheeks and ears. Holding the lantern this way. Father was tormenting the men.
"I thought, 'Slaves!'"
The men laughed as they fanned the insects away.
"But you were the guests of those Indians," Father said. "And now you are our guests. Look—"
A mosquito had settled on Father's arm. He allowed it to stay there a moment, and then he brought his hand down on it. He showed the men the squashed mosquito, the smear of blood.
"Dead! But don't feel sorry for him. That's not his blood — it is my blood!"
The men stepped back. Father had wiped the blood on his finger stump.
"This is Mosquitia!" Father said.
"You are right. There are more creatures here than in the mountains of Olancho."
"The Mosquito Coast is full of surprises," Father said. "That is why we like it, right, Mr. Haddy?"
"I sleeping on me lanch, Fadder."
"You do that, Figgy. Charlie, you take Jerry into the house or you'll be eaten alive—"
We started toward the house, which was now the only complete building in Jeronimo. Jerry took my hand — he was worried, his hand was damp. He tossed his head to keep the mosquitoes away.
"— and you gentlemen can use the bunkhouse."
Jerry said, "What bunkhouse is he talking about?" — Father had said the word in English—"We don't have a bunkhouse."
The lantern was swinging — Father was leading the men to Fat Boy. In the circle of mothy light he raised the ladder to the hatchway entrance on top.
Some minutes later, Father was at the screen door of the Gallery, talking as he entered.
"They want food. Put it in this pail, Mother, and I'll bring it across."
He jangled the pail down, and Mother ladled wabool into it. Then she made parcels of beans and rice, wrapping them in banana leaf, and put them into a basket.
"We're stuck with them," she said.
Father's face was blank, his long nose raw with sunburn. He stared at the floor where we were eating. It was as if he had run through all his moods on this confusing day and now had none left. He lifted his feet, and, letting them flap, he moved around the room like a goose.
He said, "Stuck with them? We're not stuck with anyone. If I believed things like that, we'd still be back in Hatfield." His voice was flat, he was still stepping back and forth across the floor. "No one who has the slightest spark is ever stuck with anyone in this world, or has to endure a minute of oppression. We proved that. Mother. We all choose our own thunderjug and sit on it and take the consequences."
Mother was smiling.
"Thunderjugs," Father said. "That's what we used to call chamber pots down in Maine."
***
It was after midnight, still so hot the grass and trees howled with insects. Frogs bellyrumbled in the shrunken river, and I could hear the current sucking at the reeds. These were the noises I heard the seconds after I woke. Father had put his hands on my face. In that darkness, I thought it was one of the men who had come to strangle me.
"Get your shoes on and follow me."
We had no lights, yet there was enough moonglow in the clearing for me to see the empty houses and the stacks of wood that had been torn from the roofs and floors. Jeronimo had been like this months ago, when we were building it — purple pickets in an empty crater, and the barracking crackle of the jungle.