‘Oh, shut up. I’ll come.’
‘You’re already here. Begin with algebra.’
‘No way! It’s Friday afternoon!’
‘You study every afternoon now,’ Dussander said softly. ‘Begin with algebra.’
Todd stared at him — only for a moment before dropping his eyes and fumbling his algebra text out of his bookbag -and Dussander saw murder in the boy’s eyes. Not figurative murder; literal murder. It had been years since he had seen that dark, burning, speculative glance, but one never forgot it. He supposed he would have seen it in his own eyes if there had been a mirror at hand on the day he had looked at the white and defenceless nape of the boy’s neck.
I must protect myself, he thought with some amazement. One underestimates at one’s own risk.
He drank his bourbon and rocked and watched the boy study.
It was nearly five o’clock when Todd biked home. He felt washed out, hot-eyed, drained, impotently angry. Every time his eyes had wandered from the printed page — from the maddening, incomprehensible, fucking stupid world of sets, subsets, ordered pairs, and Cartesian coordinates -Dussander’s sharp old man’s voice had spoken. Otherwise he had remained completely silent… except for the maddening bump of his slippers on the floor and the squeak of the rocker. He sat there like a vulture waiting for its prey to expire. Why had he ever gotten into this? How had he gotten into it? This was a mess, a terrible mess. He had picked up some ground this afternoon — some of the set theory that had stumped him so badly just before the Christmas break had fallen into place with an almost audible click — but it was impossible to think he could pick up enough to scrape through next week’s algebra test with even a D.
It was five weeks until the end of the world.
On the corner he saw a bluejay lying on the sidewalk, its beak slowly opening and closing. It was trying vainly to get onto its birdy-feet and hop away. One of its wings had been crushed, and Todd supposed a passing car had hit it and flipped it up onto the sidewalk like a tiddlywink. One of its beady eyes stared up at him.
Todd looked at it for a long time, holding the grips of his bike’s apehanger handlebars lightly. Some of the warmth had gone out of the day and the air felt almost chilly. He supposed his friends had spent the afternoon goofing off down at the Babe Ruth diamond on Walnut Street, maybe playing a little one-on-one, more likely playing pepper or three-flies-six-grounders or roily-bat. It was the time of year when you started working your way up to baseball. There was some talk about getting up their own sandlot team this year to compete in the informal city league; there were dads enough willing to shlepp them around to games. Todd, of course, would pitch. He had been a Little League pitching star until he had grown out of the Senior Little League division last year. Would have pitched.
So what? He’d just have to tell them no. He’d just have to tell them: Guys, I got mixed up with this war criminal. I got him right by the balls, and then — ha-ha, this’ll killya, guys — then I found out he was holding my balls as tight as I was holding his. I started having funny dreams and the cold sweats. My grades went to hell and I changed them on my report card so my folks wouldn’t find out and now I’ve got to hit the books really hard for the first time in my life. I’m not afraid of getting grounded, though. I’m afraid of going to the reformatory. And that’s why I can’t play any sandlot with you guys this year. You see how it is, guys.
A thin smile, much like Dussander’s and not at all like his former broad grin, touched his lips. There was no sunshine in it; it was a shady smile. There was no fun in it; no confidence. It merely said, You see how it is, guys.
He rolled his bike forward over the jay with exquisite slowness, hearing the newspaper crackle of its feathers and the crunch of its small hollow bones as they fractured inside it. He reversed, rolling over it again. It was still twitching. He rolled over it again, a single bloody feather stuck in his front tyre, revolving up and down, up and down. By then the bird had stopped moving, the bird had kicked the bucket, the bird had punched out, the bird had gone to the great aviary in the sky, but Todd kept going forward and backward across its mashed body just the same. He did it for almost five minutes, and that thin smile never left his face. You see how it is, guys.
10
The old man stood halfway down the compound’s aisle, smiling broadly, as Dave Klingerman walked up to meet him. The frenzied barking that filled the air didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, nor the smells of fur and urine, nor the hundred different strays yapping and howling in their cages, dashing back and forth, leaping against the mesh. Klingerman pegged the old guy as a dog-lover right off the bat. His smile was sweet and pleasant. He offered Dave a swollen, arthritis-bunched hand carefully, and Klingerman shook it in the same spirit.
‘Hello, sir!’ he said, speaking up. ‘Noisy as hell, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t mind,’ the old man said. ‘Not at all. My name is Arthur Denker.’
‘Klingerman. Dave Klingerman.’
‘I am pleased to meet you, sir. I read in the paper -I could not believe it — that you give dogs away here. Perhaps I misunderstood. In fact I think I must have misunderstood.’
‘No, we give ‘em away, all right,’ Dave said. ‘If we can’t we have to destroy ‘em. Sixty days, that’s what the state gives us. Shame. Come on in the office here. Quieter. Smells better, too.’
In the office, Dave heard a story that was familiar (but nonetheless affecting): Arthur Denker was in his seventies. He had come to California when his wife died. He was not rich, but he tended what he did have with great care. He was lonely. His only friend was the boy who sometimes came to his house and read to him. In Germany he had owned a beautiful St Bernard. Now, in Santa Donato, he had a house with a good-sized back yard. The yard was fenced. And he had read in the paper… would it be possible that he could…
‘Well, we don’t have any Bernards,’ Dave said. ‘They go fast because they’re so good with kids—’
‘Oh, I understand. I didn’t mean that—’
‘—but I do have a half-grown Shepherd pup. How would that be?’
Mr Denker’s eyes grew bright, as if he might be on the verge of tears. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘That would be perfect.’
The dog itself is free, but there are a few other charges. Distemper and rabies shots. A city dog licence. All of it goes about twenty-five bucks for most people, but the state pays half if you’re over sixty-five — part of the California Golden Ager programme.’
‘Golden Ager… is that what I am?’ Mr Denker said, and laughed. For just a moment — it was silly — Dave felt a kind of chill.
‘Uh… I guess so, sir.’
‘It is very reasonable.’
‘Sure, we think so. The same dog would cost you a hundred and twenty-five dollars in a pet shop. But people go to those places instead of here. They are paying for a set of papers, of course, not the dog.’ Dave shook his head. ‘If they only understood how many fine animals are abandonee every year.’
‘And if you can’t find a suitable home for them within sixty days, they are destroyed?’
‘We put them to sleep, yes.’
‘Put them to… ? I’m sorry, my English—’
‘It’s a city ordinance,’ Dave said. ‘Can’t have dog-packs running the streets.’