by Paul Theroux
I was looking at a naked kneeling woman on a magazine cover, her smooth shiny sticking-out bum like a prize pear.
“You’re basically ogling a nudie,” he said, before I could reply. “But get your last look—get your last look. Mother, people bury themselves in this trash and pretend nothing’s wrong. It makes me want to throw up. It runs me mad.”
Mother said, “I suppose you want them to ban it.”
“Not ban it. I believe in freedom of expression. But must we have it right here with the comics and the Tootsie Rolls? It offends me! Anyway, why not ban it or burn it? It’s junk, it belittles the human body, it portrays people as pieces of meat. Yes, get rid of it, and the comic books, too—it’s all harmful. How’s business?”
He was now at the check-out counter, speaking to the lady cashier.
“Just fine,” she said. “Can’t complain.”
“I’m not surprised,” Father said. “You must do a land-office business in pornography. They say the retail porn trade is the new growth industry—that, and crapsheets. Must be quite a satisfaction to rake in the bucks that way—”
“I just work here,” the lady said, and punched the cash register. “Sure you do,” Father said. “And why shouldn’t you sell it? It’s a free country. You don’t believe in censorship. You read a book once. It was green, right? Or was it blue?”
Hunted, that was how she looked. Like a nervous rabbit nibbling the smell of a gun barrel.
Father paid her for the first-aid equipment and said, “You forgot to say, ‘Have a nice day.’ ”
Outside, Mother said, “You never give up, do you?”
“Mother, this country’s gone to the dogs. No one cares, and that’s the worst of it. It’s the attitude of people. ‘I just work here’—did you hear her? Selling junk, buying junk, eating junk—”
“We want some ice cream,” Clover said.
“Hear that? Junk-hungry—our own kids. We’re to blame! All right, you kids come with me.”
He took us to the A & P supermarket, and just inside, at the fruit section, he picked up a bunch of bananas. “Two dollars!” he said. He did the same with a pair of grapefruits wrapped in cellophane. “Ninety-five cents!” And a pineapple. “Three dollars!” And some oranges. “Thirty-nine cents each!” He sounded like an auctioneer as he made his way down the fresh-fruit counter, yelling the prices.
“Aren’t we going to buy anything?” I said, as we left empty-handed.
“Nope. I just want you to remember those prices. Three dollars for a pineapple. I’d rather eat worms. You can eat earthworms, you know. They’re all protein.”
He got into the cab of the pickup with Mother, and we climbed into the back. I could hear his voice vibrating on the rear window as we drove through Springfield. He was still talking when we stopped on the road for gas. We were in sight of the river—it was full and swift, and budding trees overhung it. But it was as gray as bathwater, and rippling like waves in the factory suds were dead whitebellied fish.
The cab door slammed. “A buck ten a gallon,” Father was saying to the bewildered man at the pump. The man had a wet wasp in each nostril, and a tag on his shirt said Fred. “It’s doubled in price in a year. So that’s two-twenty next year and probably five the year after that—if we’re lucky. That’s beautiful. Know what a barrel of crude oil costs to produce? Fifteen dollars—that's all. How many gallons to a barrel? Thirty-five? Forty? You figure it out. Oh, I forgot, you just work here.”
“Don’t blame me—blame the president,” the man said, and went on jerking gas into our gas tank.
Father said, “Fred, I don’t blame the president. He’s doing the best he can. I blame the oil companies, the car industry, big business. Israelis. Palestinians—know what they really are? Philistines. Same word, look it up. And Fred, I blame myself for not devising a cheaper method of extracting oil from shale. We’ve got trillions of tons of shale deposits in this country.”
“No choice,” said Fred, and snorted the wasps into his nose. “We’ll just have to go on paying.”
“I’ve got a choice in the matter,” Father said. “I’m not going to pay anymore.”
Fred said, “That’ll be eight dollars and forty cents.”
For a moment, I thought Father was going to refuse to pay, but he took out his billfold and counted the money into Fred’s dirty hand, while we watched from the back of the pickup.
“No, sir, I am not going to pay anymore,” Father said. “Let me ask you a question. Do you ever wonder, seeing what things are like now, what’s going to happen later on?”
“Sometimes. Look, I’m pretty busy.” He squinted, hunched his shoulders, and backed away. Hunted.
“I ask myself that all the time. And I say to myself, ‘It can’t go on like this. A dollar’s worth twenty cents.’ ”
“It’s worse in New Jersey,” Fred said. “I’ve got a cousin down there. They’ve had rationing since January.”
“There’s a whole world out there!” Father cried, pointing with his cut-off finger.
The man stepped farther back, frightened by the finger.
“Part of the world is still empty,” Father said. “Most of it is still uninhabited. You eat asparagus?”
“Excuse me?”
“Know why asparagus is so expensive—all vegetables, for that matter? Because the farmers hoard their produce until the prices rise. Then they put it on the market. When they know they’ve got you, the consumer, over a barrel. They could sell it for half the price and still get rich. You didn't know that, did you? The guys who cut it get a dollar an hour, nonunion labor—just savages and spear chuckers who hoick it out of the ground. It’s no trouble to grow—God does most of the work. Next time you eat some asparagus, you remember what I just told you. Oil companies do the same thing—hoard their product until the price goes up. I don’t want any part of it. Wheat? Cereals? Grains? We give it away to the Russians to keep the domestic prices up, when we could just as easily be making it into moonshine or gasohol. In the meantime, pay, pay, and get the little Koreans to make us sleeping bags, and outfit the army with Chinese knapsacks—no one asks where—”
At the mention of Chinese knapsacks, Fred said, “Hey, I’ve got some customers waiting.”
“Don’t let me hold you up, Fred.” Father shook him by the hand. “Just remember what I told you.”
On the road, Father put his head out of the window and said, “Did I set him straight? You bet I did!”
There were buds on some trees and tiny pale leaves on others, and a sweet sigh of spring was in the air. Cows stood in some pastures as still as figurines, and sloping down to the road there were small rounded apple trees foaming with white blossoms. I could tell from the way Father was driving that he was still angry, but in all this prettiness—the delicate trees in the mild flower-scented air, and the sun on the meadows—I could not understand what was wrong, or why Father had been shouting. He cut down a back road just before we reached Northampton. Here were some clusters of yellow wildflowers and the bright blood-color of a cardinal, like a heart beating inside a bush’s ribs.
Jerry said, “When we go camping, I’ll have my own tent and you won’t be allowed in.”
“Dad didn’t buy any tents,” I said.
“I’ll make a lean-to,” he said. “I won’t let you in.”
Clover said, “I’m going camping, too.”
“You won’t like camping,” Jerry said. “You’ll cry. So will April.”
“I don’t think we’re going camping,” I said.
“Then what’s all this stuff for?” Jerry said. We were crouched in the back of the pickup with the paper bags and boxes. “Where are we going?”
“Just away from here.” After I said it I believed it.
April said, “I like it here. I don’t want to go away. The summer’s my favorite.”
“Charlie doesn’t know anything,” Jerry said. “He’s a thicko. That’s why he has poison ivy.”
Clover said, “I saw
him scratching it.”
“It’s like a disease,” April said. “Get away from me—I don’t want to catch your disease!”
I hated having to sit there with those silly ignorant children, and it seemed to me as if, with Father driving madly past these beautiful hills and fields and the orchards that were so new with blossoms they had not lost a single petal, we were going to smash into a brick wall. I expected something sudden and painful, because everything in these last few days had been unusual. The kids did not know that, but I had been with Father, and overheard him, and I had seen things that had not fitted with what I knew. Even familiar things, like that scarecrow—it had been upraised like a demon and struck terror into me.
I said, “Something is going to happen to us.”
“That makes me feel funny." Clover said.
I did not say what had occurred to me while Father was shopping in Springfield—Father was a disappointed man. He was angry and disgusted. But if he was aiming to do something drastic, he would take care of us. We were always part of his plans.
When we got to the town of Florence, he pulled to the side of the road and called out, “Charlie, you come with me. The rest of you stay put.”
We had been here a little over a month ago, buying seeds. Today we went back to the same seed store. It was dry and spidery in the store. It smelled of burlap bags. And the dust from the seeds and husks stung my rash and made it itch.
“You again.” It was a voice from behind a row of fat sacks. The man came out spanking dust from his apron. He had deep creases in his face, and his gaze went straight to my poison ivy.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Father said, handing the man a piece of paper, “I need fifty pounds each of these. Hybrids, the highest-yield varieties you have, and if they’re treated for mildew so much the better. I want them sealed in waterproof bags, the heavy-duty kind. I need them today. I mean, right now.”
“You’re all business, Mr. Fox.” The man took a pair of glasses out of his apron pocket, blew on the lenses, and, pulling them over his ears, examined the piece of paper. “I can manage this.” He looked over the tops of his lenses at Father. “But you and Polski have some work ahead of you if you’re planning to get all this seed in the ground. It’s a little late, ain’t it?”
Father said, “It’s winter in Australia. They’re harvesting pumpkins in Mozambique, and they’re raking leaves in Patagonia. In China, they’re just putting their pajamas on.”
“I didn’t realize Chinamen wore pajamas.”
“They don’t wear anything else,” Father said. “And in Honduras they’re still plowing.”
“What’s that?”
But Father ignored him. He was choosing envelopes from a rack of flower seeds that said BURPEE. “Morning-glories,” he said. “They love sunshine, and they’ll remind me of Dogtown.”
What with the sacks of seeds and the bags and boxes of camping equipment, there was not much room for us kids in the back of the pickup truck. I dreaded all the lugging we would have to do, but when we got home, Father said, “Leave everything just where it is. I’ll put a tarp over it in case it rains.”
“Dad, are we going somewhere?” Clover asked.
“We sure are, Muffin.”
“Camping?” Jerry asked.
“Sort of.”
“Then how come we aren’t packing our bags?” April asked. “Simply because you’re not packing your bags it doesn’t mean you’re not going anywhere. Ever hear of traveling light? Ever hear of dropping everything and clearing out?”
I was in the kitchen with Mother, listening to this. I said, “Ma, what’s he talking about? Where are we going?”
She came over to me and pressed my head against the bib of her apron. She said, “Poor Charlie. When you’ve got something on your mind, you look like a little old man. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right.”
“Where?” I asked again.
“Dad will tell us, when he’s ready,” she said.
She had no idea! She knew as little as we did. I felt very close to her at that moment, and there was a solution of love and sadness in my blood. But there was more, because she was perfectly calm. Her loyalty to Father gave me strength. Though it did not take away any of my sadness, her belief made me believe and helped me share her patience. And yet I pitied her, because I pitied myself for not knowing more than I did.
In the afternoon, Father seemed relaxed. He made no move to work. He spent two hours on the telephone, a very rare thing—not his heckling, but the amount of time. “I’m speaking from Hatfield, Massachusetts!” he said into the phone, as if he were calling for help. Normally, we would have been out in the truck, making the rounds of the farm, but this afternoon we were free. He told us to go play on our bicycles, and when he was finished on the phone (“We’re in luck!”) he went into his workshop and scooped up his tools, whistling the entire time.
Around four o’clock, he went into the house. He came out a little while later with an envelope in his hand. He was still whistling. He told me to take it over to Polski.
Polski, wearing rubber mitts, was hosing his Jeep when I arrived.
“Your vash is lookun better.” he said. “What have you got for me?”
I handed him the letter. He shut off the hose and said, “I was going to give you a quarter for doing the Jeep, but I couldn’t see hide nor hair of you this morning.” He ripped open the envelope and held the letter at arm’s length to read it. On it were the bold loops of Father’s beautiful handwriting—a short message. It hurt me that by not allowing me to go to school, Father was preventing me from learning to write like this. I knew that he had learned this elegant script at school, and seeing it made me feel weak and stupid.
Polski had started to spit and sigh. He said, “I’ll be goddamned” and “So that’s how it is, is it?”
His face was as gray as old meat. I wanted to go away, but he said, “Charlie, come on over here. I’ve got something to say to you. Want a cookie? How about a nice glass of milk?”
I said fine, though I would rather have had the quarter for washing the Jeep, or just permission to go away, because Polski’s friendliness, like Father’s, always included a little lecture. We went up to the piazza. He sat me down in the glider and said, “Be vight back.” I looked across the asparagus fields and saw in the goldy afternoon light the river and the trees. Our own house sat small and solemn on its rectangle of garden. It had a gold roof and its piazza roof was an eyebrow and its paint was as white as salt.
Polski came out with a glass of milk and a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. I drank some milk and took a cookie.
“Have another one,” he said. “Have as many as you like.”
Then I knew it was going to be a long lecture.
He watched me eat two cookies. He seemed to be smiling at the way I crunched them, and I sensed that the crunch noise was coming out of my ears.
He said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you sumthun, Charlie.” He stopped and sat closer to me on the glider—so close I had to put the glass of milk down. He said, “Your father thinks I’m a fool.”
I did not say anything. What he said was half true, and the whole truth was worse.
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 I say that his father was a bit touched in the head? Well, he was. Completely hoopy. Shell-shocked, people said. If you scream
ed 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.”
