Read Online Such Men Are Dangerous by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online

store, and carrying it to the boat, and having it take up so much space in the boat, and carrying it ashore and putting it away again. The less often I have to do this, not just with twine but with everything else—”
    “I get the point.”
    “Do you? I don’t mean the twine, I mean the real point. That there’s a reason for everything I do. That I have worlds of time out here with nobody in my way. That I’ve gradually worked things out so that my life runs exactly the way I want it to. Whenever I find that I’ve got something in the shack that’s useless, I get rid of it. I use books I’m finished with to start fires. I used to have a fork and a spoon, small ones for eating, and one day I realized that I was eating all my meals with my fingers anyway, or else eating with the cooking fork. So I dug a hole and buried the tableware. I don’t want anything extra around. I don’t want anything to get in my way.”
    “It’s an unusual attitude.”
    “It works for me.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    I left to take a leak, and that reminded him that he had a similar function to perform. I told him where to go, and to kick sand over it when he was done. On the way back he said, “Paul? There’s something you might want to hear, but it refers to something you said not to mention.”
    “Huh?”
    “It refers to, uh, the list.”
    “Oh, go ahead.”
    He chose his words carefully. “One item there, one of the maxims, was about not talking to anyone. Unnecessarily, that is.”
    “So?”
    “Well, if you think back over the past few minutes. When you started explaining about the twine, and your views on garbage, uh, and getting rid of useless articles. You didn’t have to bother explaining all of that to me. That was what I suppose would come under the heading of unnecessary talk. Until then you hardly talked at all, but now it’s as if you want to talk, to have a conversation.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “I’m not making any point. I just thought it was something you might like to hear about.”
    I didn’t answer him, and he let it lie there. After a while I said that it was getting dark and suggested we move closer to the fire. We did. I asked him if he wanted coffee.
    “If you’re having some,” he said.
    I poured fresh water into my cast-iron kettle and put it on the fire. When it boiled I added powdered coffee, stirred it, scooped out two cans and gave him one.
    “Thanks.” he said.
    “I don’t have sugar or cream.”
    “This is fine.”
    “If you want to get those cigarettes out of your jacket, you can probably dry them out.”
    “And they’ll be smokable?”
    “If they don’t rip, and if you don’t scorch them.”
    He got the pack and opened it. There were seven cigarettes, and two had already come apart. I spread out four alongside of the fire. The last one I kept. I found a piece of firewood that was just burning at one end, and I fished it out and toasted the cigarette with it. The paper got brown in spots but stayed intact. I gave it to Dattner and held the flame while he lit up.
    I asked him if it was all right, and he said he couldn’t remember one ever tasting better.
    I sat back and watched the fire and drank my coffee. I thought suddenly of the paperback dictionary and the possible reasons why I might want one. A dictionary is a book full of words. Words are talk, talk is communicating with other people.
    If Dartner hadn’t told me that I was breaking one of my rules, I would have gone on to tell him that my major preoccupation was with water. I went through three to four gallons of bottled water a week. I needed it for drinking, for washing, for cooking, for coffee. If there was only a way to have a fresh-water source on the island—
    Don’t talk to anyone.
    And that had been such an easy rule, and for such a long time. Something I might like to hear about, he had said. Something I might like to think about, he had meant. Something he might like me to think about.
    He said, “Maybe I