Different Seasons(85)
He stuffed the spilled clothes back into the drawer and then rammed the drawer back into its oblong slot. It stuck again. Todd worked to free it, wiggling it back and forth, sweat running freely down his face. At last he was able to slam it shut. He got up with the box. How much time had passed now?
Dussander’s bed was the type with posts at the foot and Todd brought the lock side of the box down on one of these posts as hard as he could, grinning at the shock of pain that vibrated in his hands and travelled all the way up to his elbows. He looked at the lock. The lock looked a bit dented, but it was intact. He brought it down on the post again, even harder this time, heedless of the pain. This time a chunk of wood flew off the bedpost, but the lock still didn’t give. Todd uttered a little shriek of laughter and took the box to the other end of the bed. He raised it high over his head this time and brought it down with all his strength. This time the lock splintered.
As he flipped the lid up, headlights splashed across Dussander’s window.
He pawed wildly through the box. Postcards. A locket. A much-folded picture of a woman wearing frilly black garters and nothing else. An old billfold. Several sets of ID. An empty leather passport folder. At the bottom, letters.
The lights grew brighter, and now he heard the distinctive beat of the Porsche’s engine. It grew louder... and then cut off.
Todd grabbed three sheets of airmail-type stationery, closely written in German on both sides of each sheet, and ran out of the room again. He had almost gotten to the stairs when he realized he had left the forced box lying on Dussander’s bed. He ran back, grabbed it, and opened the third dresser drawer.
It stuck again, this time with a firm shriek of wood against wood.
Out front, he heard the ratchet of the Porsche’s emergency brake, the opening of the driver’s side door, the slam shut.
Faintly, Todd could hear himself moaning. He put the box in the askew drawer, stood up, and lashed out at it with his foot. The drawer closed neatly. He stood blinking at it for a moment and then fled back down the hall. He raced down the stairs. Halfway down them, he heard the rapid rattle of his father’s shoes on Dussander’s walk. Todd vaulted over the bannister, landed lightly, and ran into the kitchen, the airmail pages fluttering from his hand.
A hammering on the door. “Todd? Todd, it’s me!”
And he could hear an ambulance siren in the distance as well. Dussander had drifted away into semi-consciousness again.
“Coming, Dad!” Todd shouted.
He put the airmail pages on the table, fanning them a little as if they had been dropped in a hurry, and then he went back down the hall and let his father in.
“Where is he?” Dick Bowden asked, shouldering past Todd.
“In the kitchen.”
“You did everything just right, Todd,” his father said, and hugged him in a rough, embarrassed way.
“I just hope I remembered everything,” Todd said modestly, and then followed his father down the hall and into the kitchen.
In the rush to get Dussander out of the house, the letter was almost completely ignored. Todd’s father picked it up briefly, then put it down when the medics came in with the stretcher. Todd and his father followed the ambulance, and his explanation of what had happened was accepted without question by the doctor attending Dussander’s case. “Mr. Denker” was, after all, eighty years old, and his habits were not the best. The doctor also offered Todd a brusque commendation for his quick thinking and action. Todd thanked him wanly and then asked his father if they could go home.
As they rode back, Dick told him again how proud of him he was. Todd barely heard him. He was thinking about his .30-.30 again.
18
That was the same day Morris Heisel broke his back.
Morris had never intended to break his back; all he had intended to do was nail up the comer of the rain-gutter on the west side of his house. Breaking his back was the furthest thing from his mind, he had had enough grief in his life without that, thank you very much. His first wife had died at the age of twenty-five, and both of their daughters were also dead. His brother was dead, killed in a tragic car accident not far from Disneyland in 1971. Morris himself was nearing sixty, and had a case of arthritis that was worsening early and fast. He also had warts on both hands, warts that seemed to grow back as fast as the doctor could burn them off. He was also prone to migraine headaches, and in the last couple of years, that potzer Rogan next door had taken to calling him “Morris the Cat.” Morris had wondered aloud to Lydia, his second wife, how Rogan would like it if Morris took up calling him “Rogan the hemorrhoid.”
“Quit it, Morris,” Lydia said on these occasions. “You can’t take a joke, you never could take a joke, sometimes I wonder how I could marry a man with absolutely no sense of humor. We go to Las Vegas,” Lydia had said, addressing the empty kitchen as if an invisible horde of spectators which only she could see were standing there, “we see Buddy Hackett, and Morris doesn’t laugh once.”
Besides arthritis, warts, and migraines, Morris also had Lydia, who, God love her, had developed into something of a nag over the last five years or so ... ever since her hysterectomy. So he had plenty of sorrows and plenty of problems without adding a broken back.
“Morris!” Lydia cried, coming to the back door and wiping suds from her hands with a dishtowel. “Morris, you come down off that ladder right now!”