Paul Theroux - The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

“Just don’t broadcast it,” I said.

They stopped walking and stared at me. We had come to the Forest Street rotary and were standing under a streetlight. Cars were rounding the rotary, going slowly, so we stood holding our rifles upright against our sides, the butt tucked under one arm like a crutch, while keeping the muzzle off the ground. By being silent, they were querying what I had said.

“Because we could get into trouble,” I said.

They saw that I was right. It was certain that if we had reported Father Staley to the police, he would win and we would have to answer all the hard questions: What were you doing in the woods? Why did you each have a.22 and a lot of live ammo on you? Were you lying when you said you were going on a cookout? Why were you fooling around near Doleful Pond with those dirty pictures? Staying out after dark, we were up to no good. We had no answers.

Father Staley would say Walter was lying: people would believe him, not us. And no matter what happened, we would be known forever as the boys involved in the Father Staley scandal, wicked little fairies and tattletales. We would never get a girlfriend. Other kids would tease us and pick fights. We would lose.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

We parted that night in the shadows of the street like conspirators, swearing that we would not say anything to anyone.

When I got home and my mother said “Where have you been?” and I said “Nowhere,” I did feel I had been nowhere. We had come close to almost killing a man. I would not have fired my gun, but Chicky and Walter would have. I would have been arrested with them. People would have pointed their finger at me and said, You’re just as guilty as they are.

I took my gun into the basement and stashed it behind a leaning stack of storm windows.

Upstairs, my mother said, “Is there anything wrong, Andy?”

“No,” I said, and felt sorry for her, because she didn’t know anything of what had happened, and there was so much to know. She did not know me, either. I was just a stranger in the house.

At the next Scout meeting, Chicky and I stuck together, not saying anything, but looking at Father Staley when his back was turned. He wore a black cassock with a hundred black buttons on the front, and the skirtlike lower edge of it touched the toes of his black shoes. Now the thing seemed like a dress to us.

When he looked at me, I felt he knew something — he smiled in a suspicious way, pinching his mustache. Being near him made me quiet and fluttery inside: I couldn’t think of anything to say.

But Chicky was more talkative than ever in a bold, mock-serious voice. Looking straight into Father Staley’s face, he said, “I’m going up for my First Aid merit badge, but I’m having some problems.”

“Maybe I can help,” Father Staley said.

“Father, hey, I’m not sure what you do if a snake bites you.”

“Get straight to the hospital, son. That’s what you should do.”

Chicky said, “Um, some people say you’re, um, supposed to suck out the poison.”

It was the thing we always joked about. What would you do if a snake bit a girl on her tits, or a boy on his pecker or his ass? Suck it out. Even the word “suck” sounded wicked to us.

“You only do that if you’re in the woods,” Father Staley said.

“But, hey, that’s where all the snakes are, Father,” Chicky said.

He was trying to get Father Staley to talk about sucking out the poison. Father Staley put his hand on my leg — his hand had never felt scalier — and said, “You’ve got a First Aid merit badge, Andy. What would you do in a situation like that?”

I hated being asked. “In a situation like that,” I said, and hesitated. Then, “You cut the wound with a sharp knife, making an X. And when it bleeds, you kind of, um, suck the poison out. And I forgot to say, maybe put a tourniquet on the person’s arm between the snakebite and his heart.”

“If he’s bitten on the arm,” Father Staley said, and his eyes glittered at me.

“Yes, Father.”

“Very good. So there’s your answer, DePalma,” he said, walking away.

I said to Chicky, “You’re such a pissah.”

Pleased with himself, Chicky said, “I just wanted to see what he’d say. I know Scaly’s a homo now. He was trying to feel you up.”

“Beaver Patrol,” Corny Kelliher said, calling the group together.

We scraped the wooden folding chairs into a circle and sat there, waiting for Corny to lead the patrol meeting.

“Let’s talk about tracking. Anyone?”

“We done some tracking the other day,” Chicky said. “Me and Andy.”

Father Staley crept over to listen.

“Want to tell us about it?”

“Oh, yeah. We were in the woods,” Chicky said. “We seen some tracks. We kind of followed them.”

Nothing about tracking down the pervert, nothing about our guns, nothing about Walter Herkis, nothing about our spying from the hill, nothing about Father Staley and his blue Studebaker — and who knew he had a Studebaker, since none of the priests even owned a car?

“Do any sketches of the tracks?”

“No. But I could draw a picture.” Chicky took a piece of paper and a pencil and sketched some circles and shaded them, while glancing from time to time at Father Staley. When he had finished, Chicky said, “Maybe a wolf.”

“Must have been a dog,” Corny said. “The prints are similar.”

“It was a wolf,” Chicky said.

“There are no wolves in Medford,” Father Staley said.

“Hey, have a seat,” Chicky said. His yellow Italian face made his friendliness seem sly. “Ever been up the Fells, Father?”

Father Staley just smiled at the direct question and said, “My hiking days are over, I’m afraid,” and joined our group, sitting himself on a folding chair, plucking his cassock at his knees, like a woman in a gown, except his fingers were scaly.

Sort of bowing to Father Staley, who was at the center of the Beaver Patrol — bowing was his way of treating Scaly as though he was holy — Arthur Mutch handed us each a sheet of paper, saying, “I just mimeographed these. I want each one of you to take it home and study it.”

The heading at the top of the smudged sheet was “Elements of Leadership,” with twenty numbered topics. The first was “Inspiring respect by setting an example.”

As he passed by, Mr. Mutch said to me, ‘Andy, you should be asking yourself why you’re not a patrol leader. You’ve got the ability. You just don’t use it.”

Hearing this, Father Staley said, “Mr. Mutch is right. You pick up the lame and the halt.”

I faced him, I couldn’t answer, I knew my face was getting red.

“People like that just drag you down.”

I wanted to say: What did you do to Walter Herkis? But I knew that if I did, I would have to pay a terrible price for talking back to a priest.

“You know what I think?” Father Staley said, because he still wasn’t through, and now he was so close I could smell the SenSen on his breath. I knew that smell: we sucked Sen-Sens to take away the stink of cigarettes when we were smoking. “I think you enjoy hiding your light under a bushel. That’s just plain lazy. It’s also a sin of pride.”

I wanted to shoot him in the face. Shoot him between the eyes, we always said. I located a spot between his eyebrows and stared at it with a wicked look. The other members of the Beaver Patrol were pretending to read “Elements of Leadership” but were really sneaking glances at the way Father Staley was scolding me. Buzzy Dwyer, John Brodie, Vinny Grasso. And Chicky’s yellow face was twisted sideways at me.

“Shall we talk about leadership and taking responsibility?” Father Staley said to the others when he was finished with me.