Paul Theroux - The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

“They'll never catch us. They'll think it's some big murderer. They'll never think it was kids.”

“Let's shadow him first, and then see,” I said, dreading their conviction.

Walter said, “Chicky's right. Kill him.”

“We can track him. We’re good at that,” I said.

Lurking, hiding, hunting; scouring the earth for footprints, tire tracks, clues; the lore of Scouting was real and useful.

The sky had gone gray, some of the clouds as dense as iron, as black, with streaks of red and pink between them, like hot iron that had begun to cool. And not only that, but more because the evening sky was always a mass of unrelated marvels — above the iron were vast decaying faces, tufts of pink fluff in a soup of yellow. The light in the sky was all the light there was; the woods were dark, and so was the surface of the pond at this low angle, and not even the path was clear.

“We should head back,” I said, and started walking.

“I don't even freakin' care,” Walter said, but from the way he said it I knew he was glad to go, a bit wobbly and gagged from puking.

Chicky said, “We could wait till he parks his car, then cut a tree down. It falls across the road, he can't drive away, we nail him.”

“Or dig one of those big holes and put sticks across it, and leaves and stuff, so that it looks like the ground,” I said. “He walks right in. We could say it was an accident.”

“Or just shoot him in the nuts,” Walter said.

Talking this way in the darkness of the woods seemed unlucky and made me nervous about bumping into a stranger, maybe that very homo. The others might have felt that way too, for although they were talking big, they held tightly to their rifles, bumping shoulders and sometimes stumbling. When we heard some cars and saw the lights of South Border Road, we walked faster and were relieved to be out of the woods.

Chicky started across the Fellsway alone, walking stiffly to conceal his gun. He turned around and took out his comb. “Anyway, don't do anything I wouldn't do,” he said, tilting his head, raking his hair with his comb. “Or if you do, name him Chicky.”

Walter and I turned toward Foss Street. He was silent, except for his puffing — winded and sick from the experience of having seen the man — a big boy out of breath, his whole body straining as he plodded up the hill.

“We'll get the guy,” I said, to reassure him.

“Who cares?” His voice stayed in his mouth and sounded awful, as though he couldn't swallow. When we got to the Fulton Street fire station at the top of the hill he said, “My mother thinks I went to church.”

The special Saturday church of a Seventh-day Adventist made it sounded pagan and purposeless, just an empty ritual on the wrong day.

Looking miserable, saying nothing except “See ya,” he turned and headed down Ames Street toward his house. I walked off wondering and anxious, for so much had occurred during the day and I was still not sure what it meant; sometimes such events just happened and were never repeated, but other times there were consequences, and those I feared.

Entering my house, leaving my rifle behind the sofa on the piazza to hide later, I went into the kitchen, which was filled with light and warmth and the steamy odor of sweated meat.

“Where have you been?” my mother said. She was standing at the stove, poking at a pot roast in a kettle.

“Nowhere.”

“You smell of smoke.”

“I went for a hike. For a merit badge.”

“Have you been playing with fire?”

“There was a forest fire. I helped put it out.”

“Take your shoes off — you're tracking in mud. Wash your hands and face. You're filthy. And set the table.”

I did as I was told, but it was hard to do the right thing here at home, hard to know what to say. I felt uncomfortable and out of place in the house, in this world that was parallel to my outdoor life, as though I did not belong indoors, could not reveal anything of my real life. Only in the woods, with my gun, my wool hat pulled over my ears, did I feel free, “sure-footed,” “hawkeyed.”

The next Scout meeting was on the following Wednesday. We gathered at St. Ray's hall and were talking and fooling until Arthur Mutch yelled at us to pipe down and to line up in patrols.

“Close interval, dress right — dress!”

Each boy stuck his left elbow out, making a space, and because Chicky was on my right he jabbed me hard and laughed.

“Ten-shun!”

Mr. Mutch led us in the Scout oath while Father Staley stood at the side. After the oath, Scaly led us in a prayer, the same prayer as always: “Let us pray. Dear Lord, help us to be worthy of your love…”

“At ease,” Mr. Mutch said afterward. He lectured us a little on obedience and how we had a duty to behave with respect. Then he nodded to Father Staley, who held up one finger to get our attention and said, “This, too, is a house of God.” Then Mr. Mutch told us to meet in patrols and that he would be coming around to check on us.

The leader of the Beaver Patrol was an Eagle Scout named Corny Kelliher, a redheaded thirteen-year-old with freckles and spaces between his teeth. He hated camping but was good at arithmetic and hobbies: he had a ham radio and knew Morse code and raised tropical fish. He wore a sash stitched with merit badges, twenty or more. He had gone out west to the Jamboree by train and had showed us snapshots he had taken of Pikes Peak and Grand Coulee Dam.

Corny said, “So let’s talk about what Scouting activities we’ve been doing. How about you, Andy?”

“Learning about tracking,” I said.

“Can you identify any animal prints?”

“Yup. Bear. Deer. Muskrat.”

“How can you tell a muskrat track?”

“Drags its tail between its footprints and leaves a line.”

“How do you know if the prints are fresh?”

I didn’t know, so I said, “If they’re kind of wet?”

Corny said, “No. But if they have snow inside them, then you know that they’re not fresh, because it snowed after the animal left them.”

“What about in the summer when there’s no snow?”

I liked asking him outdoor questions because he was always indoors.

“The prints are soft,” he said. “What else did you do?”

Chased a squirrel. Saw a man with a fishhook in his thumb. Got yelled at by him. Found some dirty pictures and rubbers. Quarreled with some people. Found a buck and change. Tracked down a homo’s car.

But I said, “Hiked. Identified some plants. Skunk cabbage and stuff.”

Saturdays were for tracking. We went back again, we could only go that day, but we went with the same dedication. We were small, we were not strong, so we valued cunning and skill and made being small our asset. If we could not come face to face with the enemy, we would find him, shadow him, then make a move on him. We whispered, we tiptoed, we wore dark clothes, we avoided stepping on things that made noise, stayed off the path, moved from big tree to big tree keeping our rifles pointed down, used hand signals. We were trackers, we were stalkers, we were scarcely visible.

Our stakeout spot was a grassy overlook near the big smooth boulder above Doleful Pond, in a natural trench like a foxhole, sluiced by a gully wash. There we lay in the speckled leaf shadow and watched the bridle path where cars — lovers, fishermen, crazies with girlie magazines — sometimes parked. We got to know them, the ones who cuddled in the back seat and tossed rubbers out the window, the fishermen who stayed until dark, the loners who tore up the magazines.

“I’m cold. Let’s start a fire,” Chicky said one Saturday.

“No. They’ll see the smoke.”

“Who made you the chief?” Chicky said, and lit a cigarette, and warmed his hands with it. He was becoming an expert smoker and boasted of the nicotine stains on his fingers.