His Illegal Self by Peter Carey Page B

He punched him in his hard hairless stomach and between the legs.
    Che! she screamed at him, but Trevor had lifted him up and away and he was still hitting and scratching in the air.
    When he was still, Trevor put him back on the ground and the boy looked hatefully at Dial, waiting for her to do something. When he understood she would do nothing, he slashed at the coffee bush and tore a handful of leaves and then he ran through the long dewy grass, leaping with fright at something on the way, continuing through the dense tangle of lantana which would doubtless rip his skin.
    I’m sorry, she said to Trevor, but she was frightened now, of everything she’d done. I better go and talk to him, she said.
    No, said Trevor, he’ll be fine. You have to talk to me.
    And she obeyed. She walked with them up the traitor’s path, thinking of the boy, knowing exactly where he was, what he felt, inside the empty shed with the pickle bottle, curled up on the filthy floor, growing cooler, slowly more ashamed.

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    Was she really going to buy these mad vines and raging wild lantana, palm trees, chaos, coffee. She might as well have bought an elephant—but you could not hide inside an elephant and you could certainly hide here. That was its single virtue, to place her up a dirt track at the asshole of the earth.
    The boy did not like it here, but he could not decide his fate. She was the adult. She followed the two men inside the hut, completely unclear about everything, whether she should buy or walk away, whether they were here to rob or help her. Surely she could defeat them if she had to—one man who could not see and a second man who could not read.
    She sat cross-legged in the hut and watched, through a lead-light window, a tiny yellow bird, hovering. It was exquisite, beyond use or understanding.
    Adam “located” the tea and “organized” the kettle and Trevor rubbed papaya salve onto the long thin cut that the boy’s toenail had made on his hairless barrel chest. He was a mole, vole, pit bull, otter, seal, just not her type, although he didn’t understand that yet. They all sat on the cushions and Adam poured the tea, smiling at some out-of-focus fact that was his alone to know. He was emaciated as an Indian ascetic, as unrelated to any life she knew as the yellow hummingbird outside the window.
    So! she said. Because she wished to appear definite.
    So? said Trevor. Was he mocking her?
    So, we’re here to talk business, I assume. She was a child playing with money, not her money, but thousands, almost countless.
    So, you want to live an
Alternative Lifestyle,
said Trevor.
    He
was
mocking her, but she was way tougher than he was. Another thing he did not understand.
    So, Dial, you know there are problems.
    She heard him say
vere
for there and
pwblems
for problems. She had a degree from Harvard. He couldn’t speak or spell. She raised an eyebrow.
    You pay Adam foreign money, what can he do with it?
    You quite like my foreign money. I see you everywhere these days.
    Trevor exhaled, as if offended. But of course he was a criminal, one of the shifty classes her younger brother found so admirable.
    All right, he said, now listen.
    I’m listening.
    No, you are being twitchy and sarcastic. You don’t know who I am. You think I am a creep. You don’t understand what I have given up to come here.
    What have you given up?
    There you go, he said, that’s what I mean. I was in the middle of building a new gate.
    Well she had been about to take a job at Vassar. A gate, she said. Mocking him.
    A stockade, said Adam, sucking up. A bloody stockade, Dial, he pleaded.
    There was some weird unworldly singsong in their voices, like elves, she thought.
    I had six strong men all lined up to work with me, said Trevor, and now they’ve gone away. Thank you, Trevor, he said. That was nice of you, Trevor.
    Meanwhile the disgusting little flies crawled across the surface of the table. She covered her skin with her dress and she could feel the