Paul Theroux - The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

“Where’s the rest?” Chicky said.

Walter opened a flap of his knapsack and took out a box of bullets and slid the paper drawer open, showing us the fifty tightly packed bullets. I had a little envelope of bullets for my rifle, Chicky had the same. But this was ammo.

“Vinny sold them to me for a fin,” Walter said. “I want to find this guy and sneak up on him. And scare him like he scared me.”

“Like how?”

“I don't know.”

“Kill the bastard, maybe,” Chicky said.

“Maybe we should tell the cops,” I said, because whenever Chicky talked about killing someone it made me nervous. He had never done anything so violent, but it seemed that he was always trying to nerve himself for something that bad, and that one day he would succeed.

“Don't be such an asshole,” Chicky said.

His saying that worried me too, because not telling the police meant that you took illegal risks, and were somehow always on the other side, never trusting. Only suckers trusted the police.

“And they'd take our guns away,” Chicky said.

“The cops wouldn't even believe me.”

What kept us from asking any more questions was that we both knew that Walter was going to cry.

“I would have blubbered,” I said, because I could see his tears and embarrassment.

Hearing that must have made Walter feel better, because he sniffed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket and didn't look so tearful.

“I mean, especially if some old guy put his hands on me,” I said.

I thought it would help some more, but it made it worse, because when I mentioned the hands Walter got tearful again.

“I'd like to kill him,” he said in a fearful, helpless voice.

“Let's all kill him,” Chicky said, smiling wildly.

“I don't even care,” Walter said. “If he was standing right here I’d shoot him in the nuts.”

Chicky loved that and started to laugh, his face growing yellower at the thought of it. When Walter saw Chicky laugh, his anger left him, and he laughed too, but harder, angrier, his whole face brightening. But there were tears in his eyes and stains of tears on his cheeks — smears of wetness and dust. He wiped his face with his arm, smearing it more, looking miserable.

“I will,” he said. “In the nuts!”

But the day had gone cold, and dark had come down on us without our realizing it, a dampness rising with it from the dead leaves and rotten earth, and so we headed home with night pressing on our heads.

“There were three boys,” Father Staley was saying at the Scout meeting in the overbright church hall of St. Ray’s the following Wednesday. He was giving a sermon, one of his stories from the navy, about a captain who was trying to find the smartest boy to do a job. “Three boys” made me think of Walter, Chicky, and me, and as Father Staley spoke I saw each of us in the story.

“The captain gave each boy a keg of nails. ‘There are five thousand nails in each keg,’ the captain said. ‘There is also a gold nail in each keg. The first one to find the gold nail will get the job.’”

Father Staley paused and let us picture this, but the pause was too long, and when we began fidgeting after a little while Arthur Mutch, the scoutmaster, said, “I’m going to be handing out demerits!”

“What would you do if you were in those boys’ shoes?” Father Staley said.

“Find the freakin’ gold nail,” Chicky said, much too loud.

“DePalma — one demerit!”

Father Staley then explained that the first boy picked through the nails in his keg, pushing them aside, looking for the gold nail. While he was doing this, the second boy began removing one nail after another from his keg, trying to see which one was gold.

“The third boy asked the captain for a newspaper,” Father Staley said, and paused again to enjoy our puzzlement.

Chicky covered his mouth and muttered, ‘And he read the freakin’ newspaper while the other dinks found the gold nail.” When he looked up Arthur Mutch was staring at him.

“The boy spread the newspaper on the floor and dumped the whole keg of nails onto it, all five thousand of them,” Father Staley said. “He saw the gold nail at once. He picked it up and then funneled the nails back into the keg. And he got the job. What lesson does that teach us?”

We said nothing. We had no idea, though I saw the story clearly: the wooden kegs, the boys, the glittering gold nail in the pile of iron ones.

“Sometimes you have to take drastic action,” Father Staley said. “And sometimes, to save your soul…”

As soon as he uttered those words, save your soul, I stopped listening, and so did Chicky, because afterward, when we were in our circle of folding chairs, the patrol meeting, Chicky said, “What was the point of that freakin’ story?”

Arthur Mutch approached us and glared at Chicky and said, “Beaver Patrol, at ease.” Then, to me, “What merit badge are you going up for, Andy?”

“Camping,” I said.

“What have you done about it?”

“Took a hike last Saturday.”

“Name some of the essentials you had in your pack?”

Mossberg.22, twelve bullets, Hostess cream-filled cupcakes, bottle of tonic, stolen pack of Lucky Strikes, book of matches. But I said, “First aid kit. Flashlight. Canvas tarp. Some rope. Canteen. Pencil and paper. And some apples.”

“I think you forgot something.”

Since none of what I had told him was true, it was easy to remember the missing item required by the badge for a hike. “Um, compass.”

“Good,” Mr. Mutch said. “Engage in any activities?”

Killed a toad, chased a squirrel, spied on some women getting horny on horseback, listened to Walter Herkis's story of being molested by a man in a blue Studebaker. But I said, “Knot-tying. Cooking. Tracking.”

Tracking was not a lie: we had headed toward Doleful Pond with Walter before it got too dark to go farther.

“What did you cook?”

“Beans and franks. And afterward we doused the fire and made sure the coals were out.”

More lies, but once — months before — I had done just that, and I considered that it counted.

“What knots and what did you use them for?”

“Sheepshank for shortening the rope. Half hitch. Square knot. Propped up the tarp with them to make a shelter.”

“Know the bowline yet?” Mr. Mutch asked.

“I’m trying.”

Behind me, a voice — Father Staley’s — said, “I think I can help you with that, Andy.”

“Thank you, Father.”

Mr. Mutch, satisfied with me, turning to Chicky, said, “DePalma, what badge are you going out for?”

“Civics.” Chicky blinked, and as his yellow face grew pale his brown birthmark got darker.

“Civics? DePalma, tell me, what is a bicameral legislature?”

Chicky twisted his face, to show he was thinking hard, and said nothing. His fists were pressed in panic against his legs.

“You don’t know, do you?”

Chicky shook his head, his springy curls glistening with Wild-root. No, he didn’t know. Chicky could barely read.

“How many merit badges have you earned, DePalma?”

Chicky muttered something inaudible.

“Louder, please.”

“None,” Chicky said in a hoarse humiliated voice.

“You’re still a Tenderfoot after a year and a half in the Scouts,” Arthur Mutch said.

Father Staley said, “Try a little harder, son. Do some homework.”

“I could go out for car maintenance, Father, but do they have a badge for it? No.”

“Any other ideas?” Father Staley said.

“Maybe Indian Lore.” Chicky’s eyes were shining with shame and anger. “Maybe Camping.”

“What makes you think you can earn them?”