The stewbum threw his head back and tried to scream. Nothing came out but a hideous whistling sound. His eyes widened, widened… and then his head thumped soggily onto the red and white oilcloth check that covered Dussander’s kitchen table. The stewbum’s upper plate slithered halfway out of his mouth like a semi-detachable grin.
Dussander yanked the knife free — he had to use both hands to do it — and crossed to the kitchen sink. It was filled with hot water, Lemon Fresh Joy, the dirty supper dishes. The knife disappeared into a billow of citrus-smelling suds like a very small fighter plane diving into a cloud.
He crossed to the table again and paused there, resting one hand on the dead stewbum’s shoulder while a spasm of coughing rattled through him. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and spat yellowish-brown phlegm into it. He had been smoking too much lately. He always did when he was making up his mind to do another one. But this one had gone smoothly; really very smoothly. He had been afraid after the mess he had made with the last one that he might be tempting fate sorely to try it again.
Now, if he hurried, he would still be able to watch the second half of Lawrence Welk.
He bustled across the kitchen, opened the cellar door, and turned on the light switch. He went back to the sink and got the package of green plastic garbage bags from the cupboard beneath. He shook one out as he walked back to the slumped wino. Blood had run across the table cloth in all directions. It had puddled in the wino’s lap and on the hilly, faded linoleum. It would be on the chair, too, but all of those things would clean up.
Oussander grabbed the stewbum by the hair and yanked his head up. It came with boneless ease, and a moment later the wino was lolling backwards, like a man about to get a pre-haircut shampoo. Dussander pulled the garbage bag down over the wino’s head, over his shoulders, and down his arms to the elbows. That was as far as it would go. He unbuckled his late guest’s belt and pulled it free of the fraying belt-loops. He wrapped the belt around the garbage bag two or three inches above the elbows and buckled it tight. Plastic rustled. Dussander began to hum ‘Lift Marlene’ under his breath.
The wino’s feet were clad in scuffed and dirty Hush Puppies. They made a limp V on the floor as Dussander seized the belt and dragged the corpse towards the cellar door. Something white tumbled out of the plastic bag and clicked on the floor. It was the stewbum’s upper plate, Dussander saw. He picked it up and stuffed it into one of the wino’s front pockets.
He laid the wino down in the cellar doorway with his head now lolling backwards onto the second stair-level. Dussander climbed around the body and gave it three healthy kicks. The body moved slightly on the first two, and the third sent it slithering bonelessly down the stairs. Halfway down the feet flew up over the head and the body executed an acrobatic roll. It belly-whopped onto the packed dirt of the cellar floor with a solid thud. One Hush Puppy flew off, and Dussander made a mental note to pick it up.
He went down the stairs, skirted the body, and approached his toolbench. To the left of the bench a spade, a rake, and a hoe leaned against the wall in a neat rank. Dussander selected the spade. A little exercise was good for an old man. A little exercise could make you feel young.
The smell down here was not good, but it didn’t bother him much. He limed the place once a month (once every three days after he had ‘done’ one of his winos) and he had gotten a fan which he ran upstairs to keep the smell from permeating the house on very warm still days. Josef Kramer, he remembered, had been fond of saying that the dead speak, but we hear them with our noses.
Dussander picked a spot in the cellar’s north corner and went to work. The dimensions of the grave were two and half feet by six feet. He had gotten to a depth of two feet, half deep enough, when the first paralyzing pain struck him in the chest like a shotgun blast He straightened up, eyes flaring wide. Then the pain rolled down his arm… unbelievable pain, as if an invisible hand had seized all the blood-vessels in there and was now pulling them. He watched the spade tumble sideways and felt his knees buckle. For one horrible moment he felt sure that he was going to fall into the grave himself.
Somehow he staggered backwards three paces and sat down on his workbench with a plop. There was an expression of stupid surprise on his face — he could feel it — and he thought he must look like one of those silent movie comedians after he’s been hit by the swinging door or stepped in the cow patty. He put his head down between his knees and gasped.
Fifteen minutes crawled by. The pain had begun to abate somewhat, but he did not believe he would be able to stand. For the first time he understood all the truths of old age which he had been spared until now. He was terrified almost to the point of whimpering. Death had brushed by him in this dank smelly cellar; it had touched Dussander with the hem of its robe. It might be back for him yet But he would not die down here; not if he could help it.
He got up, hands still crossed on his chest, as if to hold the fragile machinery together. He staggered across the open space between the workbench and the stairs. His left foot tripped over the dead wino’s outstretched leg and he went to his knees with a small cry. There was a sullen flare of pain in his chest. He looked up the stairs — the steep, steep stairs. Twelve of them. The square of light at the top was mockingly distant.
"Ein,’ Kurt Dussander said, and pulled himself grimly up onto the first stair-level. ‘Zwei.Drei. Vier.’
It took him twenty minutes to reach the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Twice, on the stairs, the pain had threatened to come back, and both times Dussander had waited with his eyes closed to see what would happen, perfectly aware that if it came back as strongly as it had come upon him down there, he would probably die. Both times the pain had faded away again.
He crawled across the kitchen floor to the table, avoiding the pools and streaks of blood, which were now congealing. He got the bottle of Ancient Age, took a swallow, and closed his eyes. Something that had been cinched tight in his chest seemed to loosen a little. The pain faded a bit more. After another five minutes he began to work his way slowly down the hall. His telephone sat on a small table halfway down.
It was quarter past nine when the phone rang in the Bowden house. Todd was sitting cross-legged on the couch, going over his notes for the trig final. Trig was a bitch for him, as all maths were and probably always would be. His father was seated across the room, going through the chequebook stubs with a portable calculator on his lap and a mildly disbelieving expression on his face. Monica, closest to the phone, was watching the James Bond movie Todd had taped off HBC two evenings before.
‘Hello?’ She listened. A faint frown touched her face and she held the handset out to Todd. ‘It’s Mr Denker. He sounds excited about something. Or upset.’
Todd’s heart leaped into his throat, but his expression hardly changed. ‘Really?’ He went to the phone and took it from her. ‘Hi, Mr Denker.’
Dussander’s voice was hoarse and short ‘Come over right away, boy. I’ve had a heart attack. Quite a bad one, I think.’
‘Gee,’ Todd said, trying to collect his flying thoughts, to see around the fear that now bulked huge in his own mind. That’s interesting, all right, but it’s pretty late and I was studying—’
‘I understand that you cannot talk,’ Dussander said in that harsh, almost barking voice. ‘But you can listen. I cannot call ib ambulance or dial 222, boy… at least not yet. There is a mess here. I need help… and that means you need help.’
‘Well… if you put it that way…’ Todd’s heartbeat had -reached a hundred and twenty beats a minute, but his face was calm, almost serene. Hadn’t he known all along that a night like this would come? Yes, of course he had.