"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.
V. THE MOSQUITO COAST
31
WE MIGHT HAVE gone on starving there. Coasters died every day. But a white man's death was news — a missionary, they called him. How he would have hated that! It got around, it reached Mr. Haddy. He came out of curiosity, and stayed with us when he saw who it was. When he cried, his tears reminded us that we had not wept at all. Exhaustion was stronger than grief.
And soon the breezes that had scorched us on the turtle beach below Cabo Gracias a Dios pushed us north along the Mosquito Coast. We sailed in a fair wind, with a cargo of dying turtles.
After Father died, time changed. The days were long and unbroken like a sentence with no commas and we felt lost like this.
There were moments when we half-expected him to show up, although we knew he was dead; expected him to appear somewhere astern and fling himself aboard and howl at us, as he had the day the shear pin broke on the Patuca. Seabirds rested on this boat. I saw them, and heard Father's howls in the wind. Mr. Haddy expected Father most of all. It made us watchful. We never talked about him, not a word.
We sailed past Caratasca, and when we came to Mocobila we hardly recognized it from the sea. The haulover at Brewer's, where we had scavenged, passed our rail, then Paplaya and Camaron. I felt we were heading home. I also felt we might die at any moment. We did not deserve more luck than we had had, we did not mention Father's death.
At night we sailed under twanging sheets, and in the daytime the heat laid us low. The boat rose and fell, plunging in the green water, taking us wherever.
Once I had believed in Father, and the world had seemed very small and old. He was gone, and now I hardly believed in myself, and the world was limitless. A part of us had died with him, but the part of me that remained feared him more than ever, and still expected him, still heard his voice crying, "They'll get me first — I'm the last man!" It was the wind, the waves, every bird, every cry from the shore. Like him, they thought out loud.
We saw the lights of La Ceiba early one dawn. But the wind was wrong. It took us out and tipped us further west, past the shacks, then beat us back until we could only put in near some palms, at a beach like the one we had escaped three hundred miles away, where Father lay buried among buried eggs. There was nothing here. Coconut litter, sea garbage, huts on stilts, pelicans, a cow — another wilderness. Father was not here, but his voice still rang over us.
Grief is a later feeling, as the sadness sifts down and makes your memory heavy and hopeless. It was too early for us to feel anything except the shock of relief, the leftover pain. We had been skinned alive and were raw. We had come through a fire, we still burned.
No, he was not here. But the pain was so strong I could not mourn him.
We dropped the sails. We drew up the boat and walked through the palms. What we wore was all we owned. But Mr. Haddy was turtle rich. He helped Mother walk, touching her arm for the first time, then tucking it in his, supporting her and looking proud.
Beyond the palms was a paved road, a parked jalopy, a driver. Soon we were inside, on our way back to La Ceiba and home. The world was all right, no better or worse than we had left it — though after what Father had told us, what we saw was like splendor. It was glorious even here, in this old taxicab with the radio playing.