Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island

“Well, now that the patient’s been found, I thought I’d tour the island.”

“Enjoyed yourself, I trust.”

“Completely.”

“Wonderful. Did you come across our natives?”

It took Teddy a minute. His head was buzzing constantly now. His legs were barely holding him up.

“Oh, the rats,” he said.

The warden clapped his back. “The rats, yes! There’s something strangely regal about them, don’t you think?”

Teddy looked into the man’s eyes and said, “They’re rats.”

“Vermin, yes. I understand. But the way they sit on their haunches and stare at you if they believe they’re at a safe distance, and how swiftly they move, in and out of a hole before you can blink…” He looked up at the stars. “Well, maybe regal is the wrong word. How about utile ? They’re exceptionally utile creatures.”

They’d reached the main gate and the warden kept his grip on Teddy’s arm and turned in place until they were looking back at Cawley’s house and the sea beyond.

“Did you enjoy God’s latest gift?” the warden said.

Teddy looked at the man and sensed disease in those perfect eyes. “I’m sorry?”

“God’s gift,” the warden said, and his arm swept the torn grounds. “His violence. When I first came downstairs in my home and saw the tree in my living room, it reached toward me like a divine hand. Not literally, of course. But figuratively, it stretched. God loves violence. You understand that, don’t you?”

“No,” Teddy said, “I don’t.”

The warden walked a few steps forward and turned to face Teddy. “Why else would there be so much of it? It’s in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe. We wage war. We burn sacrifices. We pillage and tear at the flesh of our brothers. We fill great fields with our stinking dead. And why? To show Him that we’ve learned from His example.”

Teddy watched the man’s hand stroking the binding of the small book he pressed to his abdomen.

He smiled and his teeth were yellow.

“God gives us earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. He gives us mountains that spew fire onto our heads. Oceans that swallow ships. He gives us nature, and nature is a smiling killer. He gives us disease so that in our death we believe He gave us orifices only so that we could feel our life bleed out of them. He gave us lust and fury and greed and our filthy hearts. So that we could wage violence in His honor. There is no moral order as pure as this storm we’ve just seen. There is no moral order at all. There is only this—can my violence conquer yours?”

Teddy said, “I’m not sure I—”

“Can it?” The warden stepped in close, and Teddy could smell his stale breath.

“Can what?” Teddy asked.

“Can my violence conquer yours?”

“I’m not violent,” Teddy said.

The warden spit on the ground near their feet. “You’re as violent as they come. I know, because I’m as violent as they come. Don’t embarrass yourself by denying your own blood lust, son. Don’t embarrass me. If the constraints of society were removed, and I was all that stood between you and a meal, you’d crack my skull with a rock and eat my meaty parts.” He leaned in. “If my teeth sank into your eye right now, could you stop me before I blinded you?”

Teddy saw glee in his baby eyes. He pictured the man’s heart, black and beating, behind the wall of his chest.

“Give it a try,” he said.

“That’s the spirit,” the warden whispered.

Teddy set his feet, could feel the blood rushing through his arms.

“Yes, yes,” the warden whispered. “’My very chains and I grew friends.’”

“What?” Teddy found himself whispering, his body vibrating with a strange tingling.

“That’s Byron,” the warden said. “You’ll remember that line, won’t you?”

Teddy smiled as the man took a step back. “They really broke the mold with you, didn’t they, Warden?”

A thin smile to match Teddy’s own.

“He thinks it’s okay.”

“What’s okay?”

“You. Your little endgame. He thinks it’s relatively harmless. But I don’t.”

“No, huh?”

“No.” The warden dropped his arm and took a few steps forward. He crossed his hands behind his back so that his book was pressed against the base of his spine and then turned and set his feet apart in the military fashion and stared at Teddy. “You say you were out for a stroll, but I know better. I know you, son.”

“We just met,” Teddy said.

The warden shook his head. “Our kind have known each other for centuries. I know you to your core. And I think you’re sad. I really do.” He pursed his lips and considered his shoes. “Sad is fine. Pathetic in a man, but fine because it has no effect on me. But I also think you’re dangerous.”

“Every man has a right to his opinion,” Teddy said.

The warden’s face darkened. “No, he doesn’t. Men are foolish. They eat and drink and pass gas and fornicate and procreate, and this last is particularly unfortunate, because the world would be a much better place with far fewer of us in it. Retards and mud children and lunatics and people of low moral character—that’s what we produce. That’s what we spoil this earth with. In the South now, they’re trying to keep their niggers in line. But I’ll tell you something, I’ve spent time in the South, and they’re all niggers down there, son. White niggers, black niggers, women niggers. Got niggers everywhere and they’re no more use than two-legged dogs. Least the dog can still sniff out a scent from time to time. You’re a nigger, son. You’re of low fiber. I can smell it in you.”

His voice was surprisingly light, almost feminine.

“Well,” Teddy said, “you won’t have to worry about me after the morning, will you, Warden?”

The warden smiled. “No, I won’t, son.”

“I’ll be out of your hair and off your island.”

The warden took two steps toward him, his smile dissolving. He cocked his head at Teddy and held him in his fetal gaze.

“You’re not going anywhere, son.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Beg all you want.” The warden leaned in and sniffed the air to the left of Teddy’s face, then moved his head, sniffed the air to the right of it.

Teddy said, “Smell something?”

“Mmm-hmm.” The warden leaned back. “Smells like fear to me, son.”

“You probably want to take a shower, then,” Teddy said. “Wash that shit off yourself.”

Neither of them spoke for a bit, and then the warden said, “Remember those chains, nigger. They’re your friends. And know that I’m very much looking forward to our final dance. Ah,” he said, “what carnage we’ll achieve.”

And he turned and walked up the road toward his house.

THE MEN’S DORMITORY was abandoned. Not a soul inside the place. Teddy went up to his room and hung his slicker in the closet and looked for any evidence that Chuck had returned there, but there was none.

He thought of sitting on the bed, but he knew if he did, he’d pass out and probably not wake until morning, so he went down to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face and slicked back his crew cut with a wet comb. His bones felt scraped and his blood seemed thick as a malted, and his eyes were sunken and ringed red and his skin was gray. He splashed a few more handfuls of cold water up into his face and then dried off and went outside into the main compound.

No one.

The air was actually warming up, growing humid and sticky, and crickets and cicadas had begun to find their voices. Teddy walked the grounds, hoping that somehow Chuck had arrived ahead of him and was maybe doing the same thing, wandering around until he bumped into Teddy.