From beneath him came a fuzzy snort.
Todd jumped to his feet, dropping the handful of cinders he had been holding. That snorting sound came again.
He paused, on the verge of running, but the snort didn’t recur. Nine hundred yards away, an eight-lane freeway swept across the horizon above this weed- and junk-strewn cul-de-sac with its deserted buildings, rusty cyclone fences, and splintery, warped platforms. The cars up on the freeway glistened in the sun like exotic hard- shelled beetles. Eight lanes of traffic up there, nothing down here but Todd, a few birds… and whatever had snorted.
Cautiously, he bent down with his hands on his knees and peered under the mail platform. There was a wino lying up in there among the yellow weeds and empty cans and dusty old bottles. It was impossible to tell his age; Todd put him at somewhere between thirty and four hundred. He was wearing a strappy tee-shirt that was caked with dried vomit, green pants that were far too big for him, and grey leather workshoes cracked in a hundred places. The cracks gaped like agonized mouths. Todd thought he smelled like Dussander’s cellar.
The wino’s red-laced eyes opened slowly and stared at Todd with a bleary lack of wonder. As they did, Todd thought of the Swiss Army knife in his pocket, the Angler model. He had purchased it at a sporting goods store in Redondo Beach almost a year ago. He could hear the clerk that had waited on him in his mind: You couldn’t pick a better knife than that one, son — a knife like that could save your life someday. We sell fifteen hundred Swiss knives every damn year.
Fifteen hundred a year.
He put his hand in his pocket and gripped the knife. In his mind’s eye he saw Dussander’s jackknife working slowly around the neck of the bourbon bottle, slitting the seal. A moment later he became aware that he had an erection.
Cold terror stole into him.
The wino swiped a hand over his cracked lips and then ticked them with a tongue which nicotine had turned a permanent dismal yellow. ‘Got a dime, kid?’
Todd looked at him expressionlessly.
‘Gotta get to LA. Need another dime for the bus. I got a pointment, me. Got a job offertunity. Nice kid like you must have a dime. Maybe you got a quarter.’
Yessir, you could clean out a damn bluegill with a knife like that… hell, you could clean out a damn marlin with it if you had to. We sell fifteen hundred of those a year. Every sporting goods store and Army-Navy Surplus in America sells them, and (f you decided to use this one to clean out some dirty, shitty old wino, nobody could trace it back to you, absolutely NOBODY.
The wino’s voice dropped; it became a confidential, tenebrous whisper. ‘For a buck I’d do you a blowjob, you never had a better. You’d come your brains out, kid, you’d—’
Todd pulled his hand out of his pocket. He wasn’t sure hit was in it until he opened it. Two quarters. Two nickels. — dime. Some pennies. He threw them at the wino and fled.
12
Todd Bowden, now fourteen, came biking up Dussander’s walk and parked his bike on the kickstand. The LA Times was on the bottom step; he picked it up. He looked at the bell, below which the neat legends ARTHUR DENKER and NO SOLICITORS, NO PEDDLERS, NO SALESMEN still kept their places. He didn’t bother with the bell now, of course; he had his key.
Somewhere close by was the popping, burping sound of a Lawn Boy. He looked at Dussander’s grass and saw it could use a cutting; he would have to tell the old man to find a boy with a mower. Dussander forgot little things like that more often now. Maybe it was senility; maybe it was just the pickling influence of Ancient Age on his brains. That was an adult thought for a boy of fourteen to have, but such thoughts no longer struck Todd as singular. He had many adult thoughts these days. Most of them were not so great.
He let himself in.
He had his usual instant of cold terror as he entered the kitchen and saw Dussander slumped slightly sideways in his rocker, the cup on the table, a half-empty bottle of bourbon beside it. A cigarette had burned its entire length down to lacy grey ash in a mayonnaise cover where several other butts had been mashed out. Dussander’s mouth hung open. His face was yellow. His big hands dangled limply over the rocker’s arms. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
‘Dussander,’ he said, a little too harshly. ‘Rise and shine, Dussander.’
He felt a wave of relief as the old man twitched, blinked, and finally sat up.
‘Is it you? And so early?’
They let us out early on the last day of school,’ Todd said. He pointed to the remains of the cigarette in the mayonnaise cover. ‘Someday you’ll burn down the house doing that.’
‘Maybe,’ Dussander said indifferently. He fumbled out his cigarettes, shot one from the pack (it almost rolled off the edge of the table before Dussander was able to catch it), and at last got it going. A protracted fit of coughing followed, and Todd winced in disgust. When the old man really got going, Todd half-expected him to start spitting out greyish-black chunks of lung-tissue onto the table… and he’d probably grin as he did it.
At last the coughing eased enough for Dussander to say, ‘What have you got there?’
‘Report-card.’
Dussander took it, opened it, and held it away from him at arm’s length so he could read it. ‘English… A. American History… A. Earth Science… B Plus. Your Community and You… A. Primary French… B Minus. Beginning Algebra… B.’ He put it down. ‘Very good. What is the slang? We have saved your bacon, boy. Will you have to change any of these averages in the last column?’
‘French and Algebra, but no more than eight or nine points in all. I don’t think any of this is ever going to come out. And I guess I owe that to you. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth. So, thanks.’
‘What a touching speech,’ Dussander said, and began to cough again.
‘I guess I won’t be seeing you around too much from now on,’ Todd said, and Dussander abruptly stopped coughing.
‘No?’ he said, politely enough.
‘No,’ Todd said. ‘We’re going to Hawaii for a month starting on 25 June. In September I’ll be going to school across town. It’s this bussing thing.’
‘Oh yes, the Schwarzen,’ Dussander said, idly watching a by as it trundled across the red and white check of the tablecloth. ‘For twenty years this country has worried and whined about the Schwarzen. But we know the solution… don’t we, boy?’ He smiled toothlessly at Todd and Todd looked down, feeling the old sickening lift and drop of his stomach. Terror, hate, and a desire to do something so awful : could only be fully contemplated in his dreams.
‘Look, I plan to go to college, in case you didn’t know,’ Todd said. ‘I know that’s a long time off, but I think about it. I even know what I want to major in. History.’
‘Admirable. He who will not learn from the past is—’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Todd said.
Dussander did so, amiably enough. He knew the boy wasn’t done… not yet. He sat with his hands folded, watching him.
‘I could get my letter back from my friend,’ Todd suddenly blurted. ‘You know that? I could let you read it, and then you could watch me burn it. If—’
‘—if I would remove a certain document from my safety deposit box.’
‘Well… yeah.’
Dussander uttered a long, windy, rueful sigh. ‘My boy,’ he said. ‘Still you do not understand the situation. You never have, right from the beginning. Partly because you are only a boy, but not entirely… even then, even in the beginning, you were a very old boy. No, the real villain was and is your absurd American self-confidence that never allowed you to consider the possible consequences of what you were doing… which does not allow it even
