The Mosquito Coast [antikvár]

We drove past Tiny Polski's mansion house to the main road, and then the five miles into Northampton, Father talking the whole way about savages and the awfulness of America - how it got turned into a dope-taking, door-locking, ulcerated danger-zone of rabid scavengers and criminal millionaires and moral sneaks. And look at the schools. And look at the polidcians. And there wasn't a Harvard graduate who could change a flat tyre or do ten push-ups. And there were people in New York City who lived on pet food, who would kill you for a little loose change. Was that normal? If not, why did anyone put up with it? 'I don't know,' he said, replying to himself. 'I'm just thinking out loud.' Before leaving Hatfield, he had parked the pick-up truck on a rise in the road, and pointed south. 'Here come the savages,' he said, and up they came, tracking across the fields from a sickle of trees through the gxunmy drizzling heat-outlines of Polski's barns. They were dark and their clothes were rags and some had rags on their heads and others wide-brimmed hats. They were men and boys, a few no older than me, all of them carrying long knives. Father's finger scared me more than the men did. He was still pointing. The end of his forefinger was missing to the big knuckle, so the finger stump, blunted by stitched skin folds and horribly scarred, could only approximate the right direcdon. 'Why do they bother to come here?' he said. 'Money? But how could it be money?' He seemed to be chewing the questions out of his cigar. It was mid-morning, already too hot for Massachusetts in May. The valley looked scorched from the dry spring we were having, and the shallow ditches were steaming like fresh cowflap. In the furrows II