"Sometimes bad problems get by us. Home environment and drugs are the two most common. At least Todd isn't mixed up with speed or mescaline or PCP."
"God forbid."
"Sometimes," Rubber Ed went on, "there's simply nothing we can do. It's depressing, but it's a fact of life. Usually the ones that are first to get spit out of the machine we're running here are the class troublemakers, the sullen, uncommunicative kids, the ones who refuse to even try. They are simply warm bodies waiting for the system to buck them up through the grades or waiting to get old enough so they can quit without their parents' permission and join the Army or get a job at the Speedy-Boy Carwash or marry their boyfriends. You understand? I'm being blunt. Our system is, as they say, not all it's cracked up to be."
"I appreciate your frankness."
"But it hurts when you see the machine starting to mash up someone like Todd. He ran out a ninety-two average for last year's work, and that puts him in the ninety-fifth percentile. His English averages are even better. He shows a flair for writing, and that's something special in a generation of kids that think culture begins in front of the TV and ends in the neighborhood movie theater. I was talking to the woman who had Todd in Comp last year. She said Todd passed in the finest term-paper she'd seen in twenty years of teaching. It was on the German death-camps during World War Two. She gave him the only A-plus she's ever given a composition student."
"I have read it," Bowden said. "It is very fine."
"He has also demonstrated above-average ability in the life sciences and social sciences, and while he's not going to be one of the great math whizzes of the century, all the notes I have indicate that he's given it the good old college try ... until this year. Until this year. That's the whole story, in a nut-shell."
"Yes."
"I hate like hell to see Todd go down the tubes this way, Mr. Bowden. And summer school . . . well, I said I'd be frank. Summer school often does a boy like Todd more harm than good. Your usual junior high school summer session is a zoo. All the monkeys and the laughing hyenas are in attendance, plus a full complement of dodo birds. Bad company for a boy like Todd."
"Certainly."
"So let's get to the bottom line, shall we? I suggest a series of appointments for Mr. and Mrs. Bowden at the Counselling Center downtown. Everything in confidence, of course. The man in charge down there, Harry Ackerman, is a good friend of mine. And I don't think Todd should go to them with the idea; I think you should." Rubber Ed smiled widely. "Maybe we can get everybody back on track by June. It's not impossible."
But Bowden looked positively alarmed by this idea.
"I believe they might resent the boy if I took that proposal to them now," he said. "Things are very delicate. They could go either way. The boy has promised me he will work harder in his studies. He is very alarmed at this drop in his marks." He smiled thinly, a smile Ed French could not quite interpret. "More alarmed than you know."
"But--"
"And they would resent me," Bowden pressed on quickly. "God knows they would. Monica already regards me as something of a meddler. I try not to be, but you see the situation. I feel that things are best left alone . . . for now."
"I've had a great deal of experience in these matters," Rubber Ed told Bowden. He folded his hands on Todd's file and looked at the old man earnestly. "I really think counselling is in order here. You'll understand that my interest in the marital problems your son and daughter-in-law are having begins and ends with the effect they're having on Todd . . . and right now, they're having quite an effect."
"Let me make a counter-proposal," Bowden said. "You have, I believe, a system of warning parents of poor grades?"
"Yes," Rubber Ed agreed cautiously. "Interpretation of Progress cards--IOP cards. The kids, of course, call them Flunk Cards. They only get them if their grade in a given course falls below seventy-eight. In other words, we give out IOP cards to kids who are pulling a D or an F in a given course."
"Very good," Bowden said. "Then what I suggest is this: if the boy gets one of those cards . . . even one"--he held up one gnarled finger--"I will approach my son and his wife about your counselling. I will go further." He pronounced it furdah. "If the boy receives one of your Flunk Cards in April--"
"We give them out in May, actually."
"Yes? If he receives one then, I guarantee that they will accept the counselling proposal. They are worried about their son, Mr. French. But now they are so wrapped up in their own problem that . . ." He shrugged.
"I understand."
"So let us give them that long to solve their own problems. Pulling one's self up by one's own shoelaces . . . that is the American way, is it not?"
"Yes, I guess it is," Rubber Ed told him after a moment's thought . . . and after a quick glance at the clock, which told him he had another appointment in five minutes. "I'll accept that."
He stood, and Bowden stood with him. They shook hands again, Rubber Ed being carefully mindful of the old party's arthritis.
"But in all fairness, I ought to tell you that very few students can pull out of an eighteen-week tailspin in just four weeks of classes. There's a huge amount of ground to be made up--a huge amount. I suspect you'll have to come through on your guarantee, Mr. Bowden."
Bowden offered his thin, disconcerting smile again. "Do you?" was all he said.
Something had troubled Rubber Ed through the entire interview, and he put his finger on it during lunch in the cafeteria, more than an hour after "Lord Peter" had left, umbrella once again neatly tucked under his arm.
He and Todd's grandfather had talked for fifteen minutes at least, probably closer to twenty, and Ed didn't think the old man had once referred to his grandson by name.
Todd pedaled breathlessly up Dussander's walk and parked his bike on its kickstand. School had let out only fifteen minutes before. He took the front steps at one jump, used his doorkey, and hurried down the hall to the sunlit kitchen. His face was a mixture of hopeful sunshine and gloomy clouds. He stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment, his stomach and his vocal cords knotted, watching Dussander as he rocked with his cupful of bourbon in his lap. He was still dressed in his best, although he had pulled his tie down two inches and loosened the top button of his shirt. He looked at Todd expressionlessly, his lizardlike eyes at half-mast.
"Well?" Todd finally managed.
Dussander left him hanging a moment longer, a moment that seemed at least ten years long to Todd. Then, deliberately, Dussander set his cup on the table next to his bottle of Ancient Age and said:
"The fool believed everything."
Todd let out his pent-up breath in a whooping gust of relief.
Before he could draw another breath in, Dussander added: "He wanted your poor, troubled parents to attend counselling sessions downtown with a friend of his. He was really quite insistent."
"Jesus! Did you . . . what did you . . . how did you handle it?"
"I thought quickly," Dussander replied. "Like the little girl in the Saki story, invention on short notice is one of my strong points. I promised him your parents would go in for such counselling if you received even one Flunk Card when they are given in May."
The blood fell out of Todd's face.
"You did what?" he nearly screamed. "I've already flunked two algebra quizzes and a history test since the marking period started!" He advanced into the room, his pale face now growing shiny with breaking sweat. "There was a French quiz this afternoon and I flunked that, too ... I know I did. All I could think about was that goddamned Rubber Ed and whether or not you were taking care of him. You took care of him, all right," he finished bitterly. "Not get one Flunk Card? I'll probably get five or six."
"It was the best I could do without arousing suspicions," Dussander said. "This French, fool that he is, is only doing his job. Now you will do yours."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Todd's face was ugly and thunderous, his voice truculent.
"You will work. In the next four weeks you will w
ork harder than you have ever worked in your life. Furthermore, on Monday you will go to each of your instructors and apologize to them for your poor showing thus far. You will--"
"It's impossible," Todd said. "You don't get it, man. It's impossible. I'm at least five weeks behind in science and history. In algebra it's more like ten."
"Nevertheless," Dussander said. He poured more bourbon.
"You think you're pretty smart, don't you?" Todd shouted at him. "Well, I don't take orders from you. The days when you gave orders are long over. Do you get it?" He lowered his voice abruptly. "The most lethal thing you've got around the house these days is a Shell No-Pest Strip. You're nothing but a broken-down old man who farts rotten eggs if he eats a taco. I bet you even pee in your bed."
"Listen to me, snotnose," Dussander said quietly.
Todd's head jerked angrily around at that.
"Before today," Dussander said carefully, "it was possible, just barely possible, that you could have denounced me and come out clean yourself. I don't believe you would have been up to the job with your nerves in their present state, but never mind that. It would have been technically possible. But now things have changed. Today I impersonated your grandfather, one Victor Bowden. No one can have the slightest doubt that I did it with . . . how is the word? ... your connivance. If it comes out now, boy, you will look blacker than ever. And you will have no defense. I took care of that today."
"I wish--"
"You wish! You wish!" Dussander roared. "Never mind your wishes, your wishes make me sick, your wishes are no more than little piles of dogshit in the gutter! All I want from you is to know if you understand the situation we are in!"
"I understand it," Todd muttered. His fists had been tightly clenched while Dussander shouted at him--he was not used to being shouted at. Now he opened his hands and dully observed that he had dug bleeding half-moons into his palms. The cuts would have been worse, he supposed, but in the last four months or so he had taken up biting his nails.
"Good. Then you will make your sweet apologies, and you will study. In your free time at school you will study. During your lunch hours you will study. After school you will come here and study, and on your weekends you will come here and do more of the same."
"Not here," Todd said quickly. "At home."
"No. At home you will dawdle and daydream as you have all along. If you are here I can stand over you if I have to and watch you. I can protect my own interests in this matter. I can quiz you. I can listen to your lessons."
"If I don't want to come here, you can't make me." Dussander drank. "That is true. Things will then go on as they have. You will fail. This guidance person, French, will expect me to make good on my promise. When I don't, he will call your parents. They will find out that kindly Mr. Denker impersonated your grandfather at your request. They will find out about the altered grades. They--"
"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 defenseless 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 co-ordinates-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 four weeks until the end of the world.
On the comer 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 scrub, more likely playing pepper or three-flies-six-grounders or rolly-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 to his front tire, 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 that great aviary in the sky, but Todd kept going forwards and backwards 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
April, 1975.
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, or the smells of fur and urine, or 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 Saint Bernard. Now, in Santo 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 license. 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 program."
"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 abandoned 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."
"You shoot them."
"No, we give them gas. It's very humane. They don't feel a thing."
"No," Mr. Denker said. "I am sure they don't."