Paul Theroux - The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

“I’m telling the cops,” Chicky said.

The man said to me, perhaps because I had said nothing at all, “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

The woman, who was pretty, a college girl — wearing a skirt, thick white socks, a tweed jacket — said to the man, “Let’s go. These kids could get us into trouble,” and before she finished speaking she screamed.

Walter was pushing the bolt action into his gun, which he had picked up from where he had hidden it, behind the stone fireplace.

“What are you doing with that thing?” the taller man said, trying to be calm.

The woman looked too terrified to speak. The smaller man in the windbreaker said, “You're not supposed to play with guns.”

“I'm not playing,” Walter said.

Without their having noticed him, Chicky had crept to his feet and found his rifle behind the fireplace. When the three people turned he put a handful of bullets into his mouth and began spitting them into the tube under the muzzle, loading it.

“You crazy? What do you want?” the taller man said, looking panicky and taking the woman’s arm, shoving her behind him.

“What do I want? I want you to pound sand up your ass and give your crabs a beach,” Chicky said. “Say you’re sorry.”

“I already said it.” The man was angry but he was also afraid. In an abject voice he said, “Okay, kid, I'm sorry. Put that gun down.”

“Fungoo to you,” Chicky said in defiance. He slid the handle on the pump action of his Winchester, putting a bullet into the chamber.

The three people, perhaps without realizing it, had begun to raise their hands, and held them chest high, as though being robbed. They backed away, the taller man saying, “Look, we're going — we don’t want any trouble.” And then they were running across the meadow and toward an opening in the trees, where the road led to the parking lot.

“You hear what I said? Pound sand!” Chicky said. He was excited, jabbering crazily. “He hurt my friggin’ arm!”

Walter said, “Why didn’t you get your gun, Andy?”

“Didn’t have time,” I said, but the fact was that I was afraid — fearful of being caught with it, fearful that it might go off, fearful of something awful happening, hating the recklessness of Chicky and Walter, wishing that we had not brought the guns.

“We better get out of here,” I said. “They might see that cop and tell him.”

That was a danger. We put out the fire by dumping dirt on it, and flung away the burned sausages and hot dogs.

“Let’s make sure they didn’t tell the cop,” I said, because I was still concerned.

We went through the woods to the parking lot, just in time to see the car — three people in it — speeding down the road. We looked at the lot, the space where they had parked, and saw a dollar bill and some change.

“He must have been pulling the keys out of his pocket,” I said, “and this fell out.”

“So it’s mine, because I scared him,” Chicky said, and picked it up. ‘A buck thirty.”

Back in the woods, heading home the long way, over the hill, off the path, we saw a squirrel, and chased it, throwing stones at it because a gunshot would be heard clearly so close to the road. And chasing it, the squirrel leaping from bough to bough, pushing the branches down each time he jumped, we came again to the margin of Doleful Pond, without realizing how we had got there, and losing the squirrel in the darkness.

That was when we saw the headlights, so bright the glare of them obscured the shape and color of the car.

“That’s him,” Walter said.

“Bull,” Chicky said, because it was just a pair of yellow lights.

We crouched down and watched the car reverse, moving slowly, and where the road was wider, the car stopped and made a three-point turn, lighting the bushes, illuminating itself, a small blue car sitting high on its wheels, a Studebaker.

So Walter Herkis, who sometimes fibbed, was telling the truth after all. He did not gloat about being right — he didn’t even seem glad that now he had us as witnesses to the blue Studebaker, the man inside. He even seemed a bit sorry and looked as though he had eaten something bad and wanted to throw up. He looked more worried than ever, even sick, which seemed like more proof that he had not been lying. And maybe the truth was even worse than he had admitted. Certainly he had been very upset and we were not quite sure what had really happened, what the man in the blue Studebaker had done to him at Doleful Pond. We asked again but this time Walter did not want to talk about it, only made the swollen pukey face again. That meant that something serious had happened.

The man had driven past us. He was not a blurry villain anymore, but a real man in a shiny car and looked strong. We had not seen his face — we were on the wrong side of the car, hiding against the pond embankment. He had driven fast, in the decisive way of a person who had finished something and wanted to get away; not on the lookout for anyone, not noticing anything, like a man in a hurry to go home, someone late.

The way the man was leaving fast seemed to make Walter angry, and he watched, growing helpless, like the man was escaping from him. Walter’s eyes were glistening. He held his gun in his arms tightly as though he was cold. But he was clutching his stomach and retched, started to spew, a moment later bent over and puked into the bushes, and paused, labored a little, and splashed some more, coating the leaves with yellow slime and mucus and chewed puke.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “I’d like to kill the bastard.”

“Yeah,” Chicky said. “Let’s kill him.”

I did not say anything. I was retching myself, my mouth full of saliva from having watched Walter. I was also afraid of the word; and they knew it, they noticed my silence.

“Andy’s chickenshit.”

“Yah. Let’s get him,” I said. I could not say the word “kill” without feeling unsafe. “You all right, Herkis?”

Walter nodded. He was not all right. He was pale and pukey-looking. But he was angrier than ever, and his anger excited Chicky and touched me too. The anger gave us a purpose that was better than going out for merit badges but involved the same concentration. We had found the car, we had glimpsed the man, we had to find him again and do something. We were not Scouts, we were soldiers, we were Indians, we were men, defending ourselves.

“Kill him” was just an expression, but one that frightened me. Walter and Chicky were not so frightened of it — Walter was angry, Chicky was excited. We did not explain what killing meant, but I wanted to think it was stalking him, trapping him, not firing bullets into him.

“We’ll put him out of commission,” I said, so that they would see I was on their side, because they thought of me as the sensible one, the cautious one, the chicken.

“Even if we really do kill him, no one will know,” Chicky said.

That was the way we reasoned in the woods — getting away with something made it all right. If we killed a squirrel, or started a fire, or shot bullets into a sign and no one caught us, we felt we had done nothing wrong: nothing to explain. If we found money, we kept it. “What if we discovered a dead body in the woods?” Walter had asked once, and Chicky had said, “What if it was a woman and she was bollocky!” In the woods we were conscienceless creatures, like the other live things that lurked among the trees. Even so, Chicky’s excitement disturbed me — he was jabbering to Walter now — because talk of killing, even in a reckless jokey way, made me uneasy. My hesitation was not guilt, not even conscience — I was afraid of getting caught and having to face my parents' fury and shame.