Different Seasons(72)

Todd said nothing.

“So!” Dussander exclaimed, stepping back into the kitchen and closing the cellar door firmly behind him. “The old man wrote everything down, nicht wahr? From first word to last he wrote it down. When he was finally finished it was almost dawn and his hand was singing from the arthritis—the verdammt arthritis—but he felt good for the first times in weeks. He felt safe. He got back into his bed and slept until mid-afternoon. In fact, if he had slept any longer, he would have missed his favorite—General Hospital.”

He had regained his rocker now. He sat down, produced a worn jackknife with a yellow ivory handle, and began to cut painstakingly around the seal covering the top of the bourbon bottle.

“On the following day the old man dressed in his best suit and went down to the bank where he kept his little checking and savings accounts. He spoke to one of the bank officers, who was able to answer all the old man’s questions most satisfactorily. He rented a safety deposit box. The bank officer explained to the old man that he would have a key and the bank would have a key. To open the box, both keys would be needed. No one but the old man could use the old man’s key without a signed, notarized letter of permission from the old man himself. With one exception.”

Dussander smiled toothlessly into Todd Bowden’s white, set face.

“That exception is made in the event of the box-holder’s death,” he said. Still looking at Todd, still smiling, Dussander put his jackknife back into the pocket of his robe, unscrewed the cap of the bourbon bottle, and poured a fresh jolt into his cup.

“What happens then?” Todd asked hoarsely.

“Then the box is opened in the presence of a bank official and a representative of the Internal Revenue Service. The contents of the box are inventoried. In this case they will find only a twelve-page document. Non-taxable... but highly interesting.”

The fingers of Todd’s hands crept toward each other and locked tightly. “You can’t do that,” he said in a stunned and unbelieving voice. It was the voice of a person who observes another person walking on the ceiling. “You can’t... can’t do that.”

“My boy,” Dussander said kindly, “I have.”

“But . . . I ... you . . .” His voice suddenly rose to an agonized howl. “You’re old! Don’t you know that you’re old? You could die! You could die anytime!”

Dussander got up. He went to one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a small glass. This glass had once held jelly. Cartoon characters danced around the rim. Todd recognized them all—Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. He had grown up with them. He watched as Dussander wiped this jelly-glass almost ceremonially with a dishtowel. He watched as Dussander set it in front of him. He watched as Dussander poured a finger of bourbon into it.

“What’s that for?” Todd muttered. “I don’t drink. Drinking’s for cheap stewbums like you.”

“Lift your glass, boy. It is a special occasion. Today you drink.”

Todd looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the glass. Dussander clicked his cheap ceramic cup smartly against it.

“I make a toast, boy—long life! Long life to both of us! Prosit!” He tossed his bourbon off at a gulp and then began to laugh. He rocked back and forth, stockinged feet hitting the linoleum, laughing, and Todd thought he had never looked so much like a vulture, a vulture in a bathrobe, a noisome beast of carrion.

“I hate you,” he whispered, and then Dussander began to choke on his own laughter. His face turned a dull brick color; it sounded as if he were coughing, laughing, and strangling, all at the same time. Todd, scared, got up quickly and clapped him on the back until the coughing fit had passed.

“Danke schön,” he said. “Drink your drink. It will do you good.”

Todd drank it. It tasted like very bad cold-medicine and lit a fire in his gut.

“I can’t believe you drink this shit all day,” he said, putting the glass back on the table and shuddering. “You ought to quit it. Quit drinking and smoking.”

“Your concern for my health is touching,” Dussander said. He produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the same bathrobe pocket into which the jackknife had disappeared.

“And I am equally solicitous of your own welfare, boy. Almost every day I read in the paper where a cyclist has been killed at a busy intersection. You should give it up. You should walk. Or ride the bus, like me.”

“Why don’t you go f**k yourself?” Todd burst out.

“My boy,” Dussander said, pouring more bourbon and beginning to laugh again, “we are f**king each other—didn’t you know that?”

One day about a week later, Todd was sitting on a disused mail platform down in the old trainyard. He chucked cinders out across the rusty, weed-infested tracks one at a time.

Why shouldn’t I kill him anyway?

Because he was a logical boy, the logical answer came first. No reason at all. Sooner or later Dussander was going to die, and given Dussander’s habits, it would probably be sooner. Whether he killed the old man or whether Dussander died of a heart attack in his bathtub, it was all going to come out. At least he could have the pleasure of wringing the old vulture’s neck.

Sooner or later—that phrase defied logic.

Maybe it’ll be later, Todd thought. Cigarettes or not, booze or not, he’s a tough old bastard. He’s lasted this long, so ... so maybe it’ll be later.