Dagger Key and Other Stories

Who the McNabbs? Hear that, Clifton? Who the McNabbs? Wellsir, you stay on the island for a time and you goin to know the McNabbs. The worst of them, White Man McNabb, he in jail up in Alabama, but the ones that remain is bad enough. They own that big resort out toward the east end, Pirate Cove. But most of they money derived from smugglin. Ain’t an ounce of heroin or cocaine passes t’rough Roatan don’t bear they mark. They don’t appreciate people messin in their business, and when that Italian Yankee…Antonelli. That’s he name. When this Antonelli move down from New York and gets to messin, they send him that coffin and not long after, he back in New York.

So this box I’m tellin you about, I realize it ain’t no bigger than a hatbox when the man pick it up, and it can’t weigh much—he totin it with the one hand. He step to the port rail and fire two shots toward the launch. I can’t see where they strike. He beckon to me and t’ough I’m still scared I walk to him like he got me on a string. There’s only my daddy in the launch. He gots a hand on the tiller and the other hand in the air, and he gun lyin in the bilge. Ain’t no sign of Jerry Worthing—he the other man in our party. I’m guessin he gone under the water. The mon pass me the box and tell me to hold on tight with both hands. He lift me up and lower me into the launch, then scramble down after me. Then he gesture with he pistol and my daddy unhook us from the Santa Caterina and turn the launch toward shore. It look like he can’t get over bein surprised at what have happened.

My daddy were a talker. Always gots somet’ing to say about nothin. But he don’t say a word til after we home. Even then, he don’t say much. We had us a shotgun shack back from the water, with coco palms and bananas all around, and once de mon have settled us in the front room, he ask me if I good with knots. I say, I’m all right. So he tell me to lash my daddy to the chair. I goes to it, with him checkin the ropes now and again, and when I finish he pat me on the head. My daddy starin hateful at me, and I gots to admit I weren’t all that unhappy with him being tied up. What you goin to do with us? he ask, and the mon tell him he ain’t in no position to be askin nothin, considerin what he done.

The mon proceed to remove he hat and he coat, cause they wet t’rough. Shirt, shoes, and socks, too. He head shaved and he torso white as a fish belly, but he all muscle. Thick arms and chest. He take a chair, restin the pistol on his knee, and ask how old I am. I don’t exactly know, I tell him, and my daddy say, He bout ten. Bout ten? the mon say. This boy’s no more than eight! He actin’ horrified, like he t’ink the worst t’ing a man can not know about heself is how old he is. He tell my daddy to shut up, cause he must not be no kind of father and he don’t want to hear another peep out of him. I goes to fiddlin with the mon’s hat. It hard, you know. Like it made of horn. The mon tell me it’s a pith helmet and he would give it to me, cause I such a brave boy, but he need it to keep he head from burnin.

By the next morning, the storm have passed. Daddy’s asleep in the chair when I wakes and the mon sitting at the table, eating salt pork and bananas. He offer me some and I joins him at the table. When Daddy come round, the mon don’t offer him none, and that wake me to the fact that t’ings might not go good for us. See, I been t’inkin with a child’s mind. The mon peared to have taken a shine to me and that somet’ing my daddy never done. So him takin a shine to me outweigh the killin he done. But the cool style he had of doing it…a mon that good at killin weren’t nobody to trust.

After breakfast, he carry my daddy some water, then he gag him. He pick up that box and tell me to come with him, we goin for a walk. We head off into the hills, with him draggin me along. The box, I’m noticing, ain’t solid. It gots tiny holes drilled into the wood. Pinholes. Must be a thousand of them. I ask what he keepin inside it, but he don’t answer. That were his custom. Times he seem like an ordinary Yankee, but other times it like he in a trance and the most you goin to get out of him is dat dead mon’s smile.

Twenty minutes after we set out, we arrives at this glade. A real pretty place, roofed with banana fronds and wild hibiscus everywhere. The mon cast he eye up and around, and make a satisfied noise. Then he kneel down and open the box. Out come fluttering dozens of moths…least I t’ink they moths. Later, when he in a talking mood, he tells me they’s butterflies. Gray butterflies. And he a butterfly scientist. What you calls a lepidopterist.