Different Seasons(60)
“No. I’ve always been near the top of my classes. Until now.”
“So what does he know about them?” Dussander said, looking dreamily into his cup, which was now nearly empty. “Oh, he knows about you. He no doubt has all the records on you that he can use. Back to the fights you had in the kindergarten play yard. But what does he know about them?”
Todd put his pen and the small bottle of ink eradicator away. “Well, he knows their names. Of course. And their ages. He knows we’re all Methodists. You don’t have to fill that line out, but my folks always do. We don’t go much, but he’d know that’s what we are. He must know what my dad does for a living; that’s on the forms, too. All that stuff they have to fill out every year. And I’m pretty sure that’s all.”
“Would he know if your parents were having troubles at home?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dussander tossed off the last of the bourbon in his cup. “Squabbles. Fights. Your father sleeping on the couch. Your mother drinking too much.” His eyes gleamed. “A divorce brewing.”
Indignantly, Todd said: “There’s nothing like that going on! No way!”
“I never said there was. But just think, boy. Suppose that things at your house were ‘going to hell in a streetcar,’ as the saying is.”
Todd only looked at him, frowning.
“You would be worried about them,” Dussander said.
“Very worried. You would lose your appetite. You would sleep poorly. Saddest of all, your schoolwork would suffer. True? Very sad for the children, when there are troubles in the home.”
Understanding dawned in the boy’s eyes—understanding and something like dumb gratitude. Dussander was gratified.
“Yes, it is an unhappy situation when a family totters on the edge of destruction,” Dussander said grandly, pouring more bourbon. He was getting quite drunk. “The daytime television dramas, they make this absolutely clear. There is acrimony. Backbiting and lies. Most of all, there is pain. Pain, my boy. You have no idea of the hell your parents are going through. They are so swallowed up by their own troubles that they have little time for the problems of their own son. His problems seem minor compared to theirs, hein? Someday, when the scars have begun to heal, they will no doubt take a fuller interest in him once again. But now the only concession they can make is to send the boy’s kindly grandfather to Mr. French.”
Todd’s eyes had been gradually brightening to a glow that was nearly fervid. “Might work,” he was muttering. “Might, yeah, might work, might—” He broke off suddenly. His eyes darkened again. “No, it won’t. You don’t look like me, not even a little bit. Rubber Ed will never believe it.”
“Himmel! Gott im Himmel!” Dussander cried, getting to his feet, crossing the kitchen (a bit unsteadily), opening the cellar door, and pulling out a fresh bottle of Ancient Age. He spun off the cap and poured liberally. “For a smart boy, you are such a Dummkopf. When do grandfathers ever look like their grandsons? Huh? I got white hair. Do you have white hair?”
Approaching the table again, he reached out with surprising quickness, snatched an abundant handful of Todd’s blonde hair, and pulled briskly.
“Cut it out!” Todd snapped, but he smiled a little.
“Besides,” Dussander said, settling back into his rocker,
“you have yellow hair and blue eyes. My eyes are blue, and before my hair turned white, it was yellow. You can tell me your whole family history. Your aunts and uncles. The people your father works with. Your mother’s little hobbies. I will remember. I will study and remember. Two days later it will all be forgotten again—these days my memory is like a cloth bag filled with water—but I will remember for long enough.” He smiled grimly. “In my time I have stayed ahead of Wiesenthal and pulled the wool over the eyes of Himmler himself. If I cannot fool one American public school teacher, I will pull my winding-shroud around me and crawl down into my grave.”
“Maybe,” Todd said slowly, and Dussander could see he had already accepted it. His eyes were luminous with relief.
“No—surely!” Dussander cried.
He began to cackle with laughter, the rocking chair squeaking back and forth. Todd looked at him, puzzled and a little frightened, but after a bit he began to laugh, too. In Dussander’s kitchen they laughed and laughed, Dussander by the open window where the warm California breeze wafted in, and Todd rocked back on the rear legs of his kitchen chair, so that its back rested against the oven door, the white enamel of which was crisscrossed by the dark, charred-looking streaks made by Dussander’s wooden matches as he struck them alight.
Rubber Ed French (his nickname, Todd had explained to Dussander, referred to the rubbers he always wore over his sneakers during wet weather) was a slight man who made an affectation of always wearing Keds to school. It was a touch of informality which he thought would endear him to the one hundred and six children between the ages of twelve and fourteen who made up his counselling load. He had five pairs of Keds, ranging in color from Fast Track Blue to Screaming Yellow Zonkers, totally unaware that behind his back he was known not only as Rubber Ed but as Sneaker Pete and The Ked Man, as in The Ked Man Cometh. He had been known as Pucker in college, and he would have been most humiliated of all to learn that even that shameful fact had somehow gotten out.