Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

He nodded at my silence, taking it for a yes, and fixed his mouth in a smile-like shape of warning and said, "Long before you were born, they used to hang convicted murderers in Massachusetts. It sounds horrible, but most of them deserved it. There was a man around here, name of Mooney — Spider Mooney, they called him, and I suppose you can guess why—"

I could not imagine why, though the picture I now had in my mind was a hairy man on all fours, with black popping eyes. Polski was still talking.

"— lived with his father. Never went to school. Wasn't much older than you when he started stealun, first little things at the five-and-dime, then bigger things. He made a habit of it. Turned into a vobber. Did 1 say that his father was a bit touched in the head? Well, he was. Completely hoopy. Shell-shocked, people said. If you screamed at him, or made a loud noise, he fell down. Just dropped like a brick. And he was full of crazy ideas. Some father, eh? When Spider Mooney was about twenty years old, he killed a man. Not just killed, but cut his throat with a straight vazor. Nearly took the fella's head off — colored fella — and it was only hangun by a little flap of skin. The police caught him easy — they knew where to go. His father's house, where else? Mooney was condemned to die. By hangun."

Polski suddenly looked up and said, "That might be some vain headun our way."

He was perfectly still, looking into space for a whole minute, before he picked up the story. Now he was staring at our house, and the house seemed to stare right back at him.

"On the day of the hangun, they tied Mooney's hands and led him out to the prison yard. This was the old Charles Street Prison in Boston. It was six o'clock in the mornun. You know how vuined you feel at six A.M.? Well, that's how Mooney felt, and it was worse because he knew that in a few minutes he was going to be swingun on the vope. They marched him across to the gallows. He stopped at the bottom on the stairs and said, 'I want to say sumthun to my father.'"

"His father was there?"

"Yes, sir." Polski turned his periwinkle eyes on me. "His father was watchun the whole business. He was sort of a witness — next of kin, see. Mooney says, 'Bring him over here — I want to say sumthun to him.' And they had to grant him his last vequest. No matter what a condemned man asked, they had to grant it. If he asked for vaspberry pie and it was January, they had to find him a slice, even if it meant sendun it up from Florida. Mooney asked for his father. The father came over. Mooney looked at him. He says, 'Come a little closer.'

"The father came a few steps closer.

"'I want to whisper sumthun in your ear,' Mooney says.

"The father came vight up to him, and Mooney leaned over and put his head close to his father's, the way you do when you whisper in somebody's ear. Then, all at once, the father let out a scream that'd wake the dead, and staggered back, holdun his head and still yellun."

Polski let this sink in, though I had braced myself for Polski screaming to let me hear what it had sounded like.

I said, "What did the son say to him?"

"Nuthun."

"But why did the father scream?"

Polski worked his tongue over his teeth.

He said, "Because Mooney had bitten his father's ear off! He still had it in his mouth. He spit it out, and then he says, 'That's for makun me what I am.'"

I saw Spider Mooney's wet lips, the blood on his chin, the little wrinkled ear on the ground.

"Bit the old man's ear off," Polski said.

He stood up.

"'That's for makun me what I am.'"

I stayed on the shaking glider. Polski was done, but I wanted to hear more. I wanted a conclusion. But there was no more to the story. I was left with the image of the old man clutching his head and keeling over, and Mooney pausing at the gallows stairs, and the gray ear on the ground like a leaf of withered gristle.

"Your father's the most obnoxious man I've ever met," Polski said. "He is the worst kind of pain in the neck — a know-it-all who's sometimes vight."

Then, with all the sawdust in him stirring, he added, "I've come to see he's dangerous. You tell him that, Charlie. Tell him he's a dangerous man, and one of these days he's going to get you all killed. Tell him I said so. Now finish that milk and off you go!"

Father was sitting in his hydraulic chair when I got back to the house. He was puffing a cigar. A cloud of smoke, like satisfaction, hung over his smiling face. He paddled the smoke with his hand.

"What did he say?"

"Nothing."

Father was still smiling. He shook his head.

"Honest," I said.

"You're lying," he said softly. "That's all right. But who are you trying to protect — him or me?"

My face was hot. I stared at the floor.

Father said, "In twenty-four hours none of this will matter."

THE LAST THING I saw as we drove away from home was a mass of red ribbons tied to the lower branches of our trees and hanging limp in the morning dew. It was the hour after dawn. Everything was furry gray in the warm dim light, except those bright ribbons. They were knotted there the night before by the savages.

We had been at the supper table and had heard voices and the whisking of feet in the tall grass. Father said "Hello" and went to the door. When he switched on the outside light, I saw more than a dozen dark faces gathered at the stoop. I thought: They've come for him — they're going to drag him off.

"It's the men, Mother." He did not say savages.

She said, "They picked a fine time."

Father faced them and waved them in.

The first one, who was tall and turned out to be the blackest of them, slouched in grinning and carrying a machete. I thought: Oh, Gaw. He carried it casually, like a monkey wrench, and he could have simply raised it and dinged Father into two halves if he had wanted to. The rest followed him, slipping catfooted though their shoes were enormous. They wore white shirts, with whiter patches stitched on, but very clean and starched. They mumbled and laughed and filled the room with what I knew was the dog smell of their own house, sweat and mouse droppings, and fuel oil. The twins and Jerry goggled at them — they were frightened, and Jerry almost guffed his supper from the smell.

But the men, even the one with the machete, looked a little frightened, too. Their faces were bruise-scraped crooked masks, and their hair as greasy-black as a muskrat's tail, or in bunches of tight curls like stuffing from a burst chair cushion. Most of them were dark and hawk-nosed Indians, and the rest were blacks, or near enough, with long loose hands. Some had faces so black I could not make out their noses or cheeks. They looked at us and around the room as if they had never stood in a proper house before and were trying to decide whether to tear it apart or else kneel down and bawl Their silence, this confusion, steamed like fury in the room.

Father clumped the big man on the shoulder and said, "What do you troublemakers want?"

The men laughed like children, and now I saw that they were looking upon Father obediently. Their faces were shining with admiration and gratitude. When I realized we were safe, the men appeared less ugly and foul-seeming.

"This is Mr. Semper," Father said. He used his handshake to tug the big man forward. "He speaks English perfectly, don't you, Mr. Semper?"

Mr. Semper said "No," and whinnied and looked hopelessly at Mother.

I knew this man Semper. His was the face I had seen crossing the fields at midnight. He had been carrying the scarecrow's corpse in his arms. Now I noticed he had the scribble of a pale scar, like a signature, near his mouth. I was glad I had not seen the scar that night.

"See if you can find some beer, Mother. These gentlemen are thirsty."