Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy Character Analysis

Roy gasped.

“Whassamatter, cowgirl? Had enough?”

This was Dana, hissing in Roy’s right ear. Being the new kid on the bus, Roy didn’t expect any help from the others. The “cowgirl” remark was so lame, it wasn’t worth getting mad about. Dana was a well-known idiot, on top of which he outweighed Roy by at least fifty pounds. Fighting back would have been a complete waste of energy.

Normally an officer of his rank wouldn’t get involved in such a silly case, but the company building the pancake franchise had some clout with local politicians. One of Mother Paula’s big shots had called Councilman Grandy, who immediately chewed out the police chief, who quickly sent word down the ranks to the captain, who swiftly called for the sergeant, who instantly summoned (last and least) Officer Delinko.

Beatrice Leep had laughed. “No, he’s not an Indian! I call him Mullet Fingers ’cause he can catch mullet with his bare hands. You know how hard that is?”

A mullet was a slippery, free-jumping baitfish that traveled in schools of hundreds. The bay near Coconut Cove was full of them in the spring. Throwing a cast net was the customary method of capture.

“Why doesn’t he live at home?” Roy had asked Beatrice.

“Long story. Plus, none of your business.”

“What about school?”

“My brother got shipped off to a ‘special’ school. He lasted two whole days before he ran away. Then he hitchhiked back, all the way from Mobile, Alabama.”

“What about your parents?”

“They don’t know he’s here, and I’m not gonna tell ’em. Nobody is gonna tell. You understand?”

“Them cottonmouths can kill a person,” Curly said.

“Really. Can they kill a bulldozer, too?”

“Well... probably not.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Curly sighed. “Yes, sir. First thing Monday morning.”

“Music to my ears,” Chuck Muckle said.

Roy trailed him back to the bulldozer, where Beatrice remained perched on the blade, cleaning her eyeglasses.

[...]

Mullet Fingers tapped him on the arm. “Listen.”

Roy heard a short high-pitched coo-coo. Then, from across the open lot, came another. Beatrice’s stepbrother rose stealthily, tugged off his new sneakers, and crept forward. Roy followed closely.

The boy was grinning through his fever when he signaled for them to stop. “Look!”

“Wow,” Roy said, under his breath.

There, standing by the hole and peering curiously at one of the meatballs, was the smallest owl that he had ever seen.

Mullet Fingers chucked him gently on the shoulder. “Okay—now do you get it?”

“Yeah,” said Roy. “I get it.”

Roy stood rooted in the center of the road. He had an important decision to make, and quickly. From one direction came the police car; running in the other direction were his two friends...

Well, the closest things to friends that he had in Coconut Cove.

Roy drew a deep breath and dashed after them. He heard a honk, but he kept going, hoping that the police officer wouldn’t jump out and chase him on foot. Roy didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, but he wondered if he could get in trouble for helping Mullet Fingers, a fugitive from the school system.

The kid was only trying to take care of some owls—how could that possibly be a crime? Roy thought.

“They’ve probably got all the necessary paperwork and permits.”

“They’ve got permits to bury owls?” Roy asked in disbelief.

“The owls will fly away. They’ll find new dens somewhere else.”

“What if they’ve got babies? How will the baby birds fly away?” Roy shot back angrily. “How, Dad?”

“I don’t know,” his father admitted.

“How would you and Mom like it,” Roy pressed on, “if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was ‘Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it’s no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.’ How would you feel about that?”

“They were asking him all kinds of nosy questions, Mom, and meanwhile he’s about to keel over from the fever,” Roy said. “Maybe what I did was wrong, but I’d do it all over again if I had to. I mean it.”

Roy expected a mild rebuke, but his mother only smiled. Smoothing the blanket with both hands, she said, “Honey, sometimes you’re going to be faced with situations where the line isn’t clear between what’s right and what’s wrong. Your heart will tell you to do one thing, and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that’s left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment.”

Well, Roy thought, that’s sort of what I did.

“Ever since I was little,” Mullet Fingers said, “I’ve been watchin’ this place disappear—the piney woods, the scrub, the creeks, the glades. Even the beaches, man—they put up all those giant hotels and only goober tourists are allowed. It really sucks.”

Roy said, “Same thing happens everywhere.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t fight back.”

Roy was dazzled by the wondrous quiet, the bush old mangroves sealing off the place from the honking and hammering of civilization. Beatrice’s stepbrother closed his eyes and gustily inhaled the salty breeze.

A lone osprey hovered overhead, attracted by a glimmer of baitfish in the shallows. Upstream a school of baby tarpon rolled, also with lunch on their minds. Nearby a white heron posed regally on one leg, in the same tree where the boys had hung their shoes before swimming to the derelict boat.

[...]

The creek was incredibly beautiful and wild; a hidden sanctuary, only twenty minutes from his own backyard.

I might have found this place all by myself, Roy thought, if I hadn’t spent so much time moping around being homesick for Montana.

In addition to a fear of getting caught, Roy had serious qualms about trying anything illegal—and there was no dodging the fact that vandalism was a crime, however noble the cause.

Yet he couldn’t stop thinking ahead to the day when the owl dens would be destroyed by bulldozers. He could picture the mother owls and father owls, helplessly flying in circles while their babies were being smothered under tons of dirt.

It made Roy sad and angry. So what if Mother Paula’s had all the proper permits? Just because something was legal didn’t automatically make it right.

The driver’s seat was gone!

Dropping the rock that he’d been carrying for protection, Curly dashed to the next machine in line, a backhoe. Its seat had disappeared, too.

In a snit, Curly stomped toward the third and last piece of equipment, a grader. Again, no driver’s seat.

Curly spat out a cuss word. Without seats, the earthmoving machines were basically useless. The operators had to sit down in order to work the foot pedals and steer at the same time.

Again Roy was astounded by the immense flatness of the terrain, the lush horizons, and the exotic abundance of life. Once you got away from all the jillions of people, Florida was just as wild as Montana.

That night, lying in bed, Roy felt a stronger connection to Mullet Fingers, and a better understanding of the boy’s private crusade against the pancake house. It wasn’t just about the owls, it was about everything—all the birds and animals, all the wild places that were in danger of being wiped out. No wonder the kid was mad, Roy thought, and no wonder he was so determined.

“We need a warm body, and the only one we’ve got is sitting in juvenile detention. So officially he’s our perpetrator, understand?”

Officer Delinko and his sergeant agreed in unison.

“I’m going out on a limb here, so you know what that means,” the captain said. “If another crime happens on that property, I’ll look like a complete bozo. And if I end up looking like a bozo, certain people around here are going to spend the rest of their careers cleaning dimes out of parking meters. Am I making myself clear?”

Again Officer Delinko and his sergeant said yes.

Officer Delinko had clonked directly into one of Curly’s earthmoving machines. He glared up at the steel hulk, rubbing his bruised shoulder. He didn’t notice that the seat was gone, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have given it a worry.

The policeman was grimly preoccupied with another concern. His gaze shifted from the massive bulldozer to the bird burrow, then back again.

Until that moment, Officer David Delinko had been so worried about solving the Mother Paula’s case and saving his own career that he hadn’t thought much about anything else.

Now he understood what was going to happen to the little owls if he did his job properly, and it weighted him with an aching and unshakeable sorrow.

“Dad wants my brother to come back and live with us again, but Lonna says no way, José, he’s a bad seed. What the heck does that mean, Tex? ‘Bad seed.’ Anyway, they’re still not speakin’ to each other, Lonna and my dad. The whole house feels like it’s about to explode.”

To Roy, Beatrice’s situation sounded like a living nightmare. “Need a place to hide out?” he asked.

“That’s okay. Dad says he feels better when I’m around.”

“Honest,” Roy said. “I looked it up on the Internet. Those owls are protected—it’s totally against the law to mess with the burrows unless you’ve got a special permit, and Mother Paula’s permit file is missing from City Hall. What does that tell you?”

Mullet Fingers fingered the camera skeptically. “Pretty fancy,” he said, “but it’s too late for fancy, Tex. Now it’s time for hardball.”

“No, wait. If we give them proof, then they’ve got to shut down the project,” Roy persisted. “All we need is one lousy picture of one little owl—”

“Look,” said Roy, “every day we’ve been reading about regular people, ordinary Americans who made history ’cause they got up and fought for something they believed in. Okay, I know we’re just talking about a few puny little owls, and I know everybody is crazy about Mother Paula’s pancakes, but what’s happening out there is just plain wrong. So wrong.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m making a whole scrapbook, honey, something to show your children and grandchildren.”

I’d rather show them the owls, Roy thought, if there are any left by then.

Roy gasped.

“Whassamatter, cowgirl? Had enough?”

This was Dana, hissing in Roy’s right ear. Being the new kid on the bus, Roy didn’t expect any help from the others. The “cowgirl” remark was so lame, it wasn’t worth getting mad about. Dana was a well-known idiot, on top of which he outweighed Roy by at least fifty pounds. Fighting back would have been a complete waste of energy.

Normally an officer of his rank wouldn’t get involved in such a silly case, but the company building the pancake franchise had some clout with local politicians. One of Mother Paula’s big shots had called Councilman Grandy, who immediately chewed out the police chief, who quickly sent word down the ranks to the captain, who swiftly called for the sergeant, who instantly summoned (last and least) Officer Delinko.

Beatrice Leep had laughed. “No, he’s not an Indian! I call him Mullet Fingers ’cause he can catch mullet with his bare hands. You know how hard that is?”

A mullet was a slippery, free-jumping baitfish that traveled in schools of hundreds. The bay near Coconut Cove was full of them in the spring. Throwing a cast net was the customary method of capture.

“Why doesn’t he live at home?” Roy had asked Beatrice.

“Long story. Plus, none of your business.”

“What about school?”

“My brother got shipped off to a ‘special’ school. He lasted two whole days before he ran away. Then he hitchhiked back, all the way from Mobile, Alabama.”

“What about your parents?”

“They don’t know he’s here, and I’m not gonna tell ’em. Nobody is gonna tell. You understand?”

“Them cottonmouths can kill a person,” Curly said.

“Really. Can they kill a bulldozer, too?”

“Well... probably not.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Curly sighed. “Yes, sir. First thing Monday morning.”

“Music to my ears,” Chuck Muckle said.

Roy trailed him back to the bulldozer, where Beatrice remained perched on the blade, cleaning her eyeglasses.

[...]

Mullet Fingers tapped him on the arm. “Listen.”

Roy heard a short high-pitched coo-coo. Then, from across the open lot, came another. Beatrice’s stepbrother rose stealthily, tugged off his new sneakers, and crept forward. Roy followed closely.

The boy was grinning through his fever when he signaled for them to stop. “Look!”

“Wow,” Roy said, under his breath.

There, standing by the hole and peering curiously at one of the meatballs, was the smallest owl that he had ever seen.

Mullet Fingers chucked him gently on the shoulder. “Okay—now do you get it?”

“Yeah,” said Roy. “I get it.”

Roy stood rooted in the center of the road. He had an important decision to make, and quickly. From one direction came the police car; running in the other direction were his two friends...

Well, the closest things to friends that he had in Coconut Cove.

Roy drew a deep breath and dashed after them. He heard a honk, but he kept going, hoping that the police officer wouldn’t jump out and chase him on foot. Roy didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, but he wondered if he could get in trouble for helping Mullet Fingers, a fugitive from the school system.

The kid was only trying to take care of some owls—how could that possibly be a crime? Roy thought.

“They’ve probably got all the necessary paperwork and permits.”

“They’ve got permits to bury owls?” Roy asked in disbelief.

“The owls will fly away. They’ll find new dens somewhere else.”

“What if they’ve got babies? How will the baby birds fly away?” Roy shot back angrily. “How, Dad?”

“I don’t know,” his father admitted.

“How would you and Mom like it,” Roy pressed on, “if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was ‘Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it’s no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.’ How would you feel about that?”

“They were asking him all kinds of nosy questions, Mom, and meanwhile he’s about to keel over from the fever,” Roy said. “Maybe what I did was wrong, but I’d do it all over again if I had to. I mean it.”

Roy expected a mild rebuke, but his mother only smiled. Smoothing the blanket with both hands, she said, “Honey, sometimes you’re going to be faced with situations where the line isn’t clear between what’s right and what’s wrong. Your heart will tell you to do one thing, and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that’s left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment.”

Well, Roy thought, that’s sort of what I did.

“Ever since I was little,” Mullet Fingers said, “I’ve been watchin’ this place disappear—the piney woods, the scrub, the creeks, the glades. Even the beaches, man—they put up all those giant hotels and only goober tourists are allowed. It really sucks.”

Roy said, “Same thing happens everywhere.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t fight back.”

Roy was dazzled by the wondrous quiet, the bush old mangroves sealing off the place from the honking and hammering of civilization. Beatrice’s stepbrother closed his eyes and gustily inhaled the salty breeze.

A lone osprey hovered overhead, attracted by a glimmer of baitfish in the shallows. Upstream a school of baby tarpon rolled, also with lunch on their minds. Nearby a white heron posed regally on one leg, in the same tree where the boys had hung their shoes before swimming to the derelict boat.

[...]

The creek was incredibly beautiful and wild; a hidden sanctuary, only twenty minutes from his own backyard.

I might have found this place all by myself, Roy thought, if I hadn’t spent so much time moping around being homesick for Montana.

In addition to a fear of getting caught, Roy had serious qualms about trying anything illegal—and there was no dodging the fact that vandalism was a crime, however noble the cause.

Yet he couldn’t stop thinking ahead to the day when the owl dens would be destroyed by bulldozers. He could picture the mother owls and father owls, helplessly flying in circles while their babies were being smothered under tons of dirt.

It made Roy sad and angry. So what if Mother Paula’s had all the proper permits? Just because something was legal didn’t automatically make it right.

The driver’s seat was gone!

Dropping the rock that he’d been carrying for protection, Curly dashed to the next machine in line, a backhoe. Its seat had disappeared, too.

In a snit, Curly stomped toward the third and last piece of equipment, a grader. Again, no driver’s seat.

Curly spat out a cuss word. Without seats, the earthmoving machines were basically useless. The operators had to sit down in order to work the foot pedals and steer at the same time.

Again Roy was astounded by the immense flatness of the terrain, the lush horizons, and the exotic abundance of life. Once you got away from all the jillions of people, Florida was just as wild as Montana.

That night, lying in bed, Roy felt a stronger connection to Mullet Fingers, and a better understanding of the boy’s private crusade against the pancake house. It wasn’t just about the owls, it was about everything—all the birds and animals, all the wild places that were in danger of being wiped out. No wonder the kid was mad, Roy thought, and no wonder he was so determined.

“We need a warm body, and the only one we’ve got is sitting in juvenile detention. So officially he’s our perpetrator, understand?”

Officer Delinko and his sergeant agreed in unison.

“I’m going out on a limb here, so you know what that means,” the captain said. “If another crime happens on that property, I’ll look like a complete bozo. And if I end up looking like a bozo, certain people around here are going to spend the rest of their careers cleaning dimes out of parking meters. Am I making myself clear?”

Again Officer Delinko and his sergeant said yes.

Officer Delinko had clonked directly into one of Curly’s earthmoving machines. He glared up at the steel hulk, rubbing his bruised shoulder. He didn’t notice that the seat was gone, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have given it a worry.

The policeman was grimly preoccupied with another concern. His gaze shifted from the massive bulldozer to the bird burrow, then back again.

Until that moment, Officer David Delinko had been so worried about solving the Mother Paula’s case and saving his own career that he hadn’t thought much about anything else.

Now he understood what was going to happen to the little owls if he did his job properly, and it weighted him with an aching and unshakeable sorrow.

“Dad wants my brother to come back and live with us again, but Lonna says no way, José, he’s a bad seed. What the heck does that mean, Tex? ‘Bad seed.’ Anyway, they’re still not speakin’ to each other, Lonna and my dad. The whole house feels like it’s about to explode.”

To Roy, Beatrice’s situation sounded like a living nightmare. “Need a place to hide out?” he asked.

“That’s okay. Dad says he feels better when I’m around.”

“Honest,” Roy said. “I looked it up on the Internet. Those owls are protected—it’s totally against the law to mess with the burrows unless you’ve got a special permit, and Mother Paula’s permit file is missing from City Hall. What does that tell you?”

Mullet Fingers fingered the camera skeptically. “Pretty fancy,” he said, “but it’s too late for fancy, Tex. Now it’s time for hardball.”

“No, wait. If we give them proof, then they’ve got to shut down the project,” Roy persisted. “All we need is one lousy picture of one little owl—”

“Look,” said Roy, “every day we’ve been reading about regular people, ordinary Americans who made history ’cause they got up and fought for something they believed in. Okay, I know we’re just talking about a few puny little owls, and I know everybody is crazy about Mother Paula’s pancakes, but what’s happening out there is just plain wrong. So wrong.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m making a whole scrapbook, honey, something to show your children and grandchildren.”

I’d rather show them the owls, Roy thought, if there are any left by then.