| My tally of tricks grew at flank speed as the years passed. I distracted street vendors as older children lifted objects from their carts. My companions, who called me Yellow Mol, quickly discovered that pickings were better when I did the lifting -- my fingertips were tacky as flys' feet, my movements ocelot slick. On foggy nights I rowed alone in my pirogue to ships lying in the bay and, within a whisper of the watchman, spirited away any valuable that could be moved noiselessly. Always I avoided capture using my extraordinary gifts of night vision and speedy movement. |
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Mother caught scent of my ways, of course, and delighted at the signs of my exceptional talents -- but she feared I would run afoul of one of my victims. She had a friend, old Mr. Jebediah Birdsong, an educated Scotsman, once navigator to a rogue ship that had sailed and plundered everywhither, but gone stark blind from yellow cauls grown over his pupils. This reduced him to accepting the charity of old friends for his worldly upkeep -- and, for him, the worldly was all that mattered. Never have I known another with less hint of superstition. |
| He arrived at our door early on a cool evening, cane in hand, his green parrot perched atop his three cornered hat. Fine red veins traced a map on the tip of his bulbous nose, and bags hung beneath shaggy white brows and dead shark's eyes. His coat, intricately piped, but tattered with holes at the elbows, was still bright orange where the sun missed it; the rest had faded to straw; his breeches mached the coat in both color and wear. He went straight to his chair, which we never moved, as if he could see it. The coat hung to each side of his paunch, large brass buttons flashing as he walked, but he was yet more than an old fat man; his calfs still made great bulges in his stockings, with their broad blue stripes. |
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Copyright © Michael B.Stevens, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2005. All rights reserved. Format modified Aug. 2005