Different Seasons(94)

Brodin has his mother’s wedding ring taped below his scrotum!

(“you must sit down”)

Laslo and Herman Dorksy have talked about rushing guard tower number three!

(“and tell us everything!”)

Rachel Tannenbaum’s husband has tobacco, he gave the guard who comes on after Zeickert, the one they call Booger-Eater because he is always picking his nose and then putting his fingers in his mouth. Tannenbaum, some of it to Booger-Eater so he wouldn’t take his wife’s pearl earrings!

(“oh that makes no sense no sense at all you’ve mixed up two different stories I think but that’s all right quite all right we’d rather have you mix up two stories than omit one completely you must omit NOTHING!”)

There is a man who has been calling out his dead son’s name in order to get double rations!

(“tell us his name”)

I don’t know it but I can point him out to you please yes I can show him to you I will I will I will I

(“tell us everything you know”)

will I will I will I will I will I will I will I

Until he swam up into consciousness with a scream in his throat like fire.

Trembling uncontrollably, he looked at the sleeping form in the other bed. He found himself staring particularly at the wrinkled, caved-in mouth. Old tiger with no teeth. Ancient and vicious rogue elephant with one tusk gone and the other rotted loose in its socket. Senile monster.

“Oh my God,” Morris Heisel whispered. His voice was high and faint, inaudible to anyone but himself. Tears trickled down his cheeks toward his ears. “Oh dear God, the man who murdered my wife and my daughters is sleeping in the same room with me, my God, oh dear dear God, he is here with me now in this room.”

The tears began to flow faster now—tears of rage and horror, hot, scalding.

He trembled and waited for morning, and morning did not come for an age.

21

The next day, Monday, Todd was up at six o’clock in the morning and poking listlessly at a scrambled egg he had fixed for himself when his father came down still dressed in his monogrammed bathrobe and slippers.

“Mumph,” he said to Todd, going past him to the refrigerator for orange juice.

Todd grunted back without looking up from his book, one of the 87th Squad mysteries. He had been lucky enough to land a summer job with a landscaping outfit that operated out of Pasadena. That would have been much too far to commute ordinarily, even if one of his parents had been willing to loan him a car for the summer (neither was), but his father was working on-site not far from there, and he was able to drop Todd off at a bus stop on his way and pick him up at the same place on his way back. Todd was less than wild about the arrangement; he didn’t like riding home from work with his father and absolutely detested riding to work with him in the morning. It was in the mornings that he felt the most naked, when the wall between what he was and what he might be seemed the thinnest. It was worse after a night of bad dreams, but even if no dreams had come in the night, it was bad. One morning he realized with a fright so suddenly it was almost terror that he had been seriously considering reaching across his father’s briefcase, grabbing the wheel of the Porsche, and sending them corkscrewing into the two express lanes, cutting a swath of destruction through the morning commuters.

“You want another egg, Todd-O?”

“No thanks, Dad.” Dick Bowden ate them fried. How could anyone stand to eat a fried egg? On the grill of the Jenn-Air for two minutes, then over easy. What you got on your plate at the end looked like a giant dead eye with a cataract over it, an eye that would bleed orange when you poked it with your fork.

He pushed his scrambled egg away. He had barely touched it.

Outside, the morning paper slapped the step.

His father finished cooking, turned off the grill, and came to the table. “Not hungry this morning, Todd-O?”

You call me that one more time and I’m going to stick my knife right up your f**king nose . . . Dad-O.

“Not much appetite, I guess.”

Dick grinned affectionately at his son; there was still a tiny dab of shaving cream on the boy’s right ear. “Betty Trask stole your appetite. That’s my guess.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it.” He offered a wan smile that vanished as soon as his father went down the stairs from the breakfast nook to get the paper. Would it wake you up if I told you what a cunt she is, Dad-O? How about if I said, “Oh, by the way, did you know your good friend Ray Trask’s daughter is one of the biggest sluts in Santo Donato? She’d kiss her own twat if she was double-jointed, Dad-O. That’s how much she thinks of it. Just a stinking little slut. Two lines of coke and she’s yours for the night. And if you don’t happen to have any coke, she’s still yours for the night. She’d f**k a dog if she couldn’t get a man.” Think that’d wake you up, Dad-O? Get you a flying start on the day?

He pushed the thoughts back away viciously, knowing they wouldn’t stay gone.

His father came back with the paper. Todd glimpsed the headline: SPACE SHUTTLE WON’T FLY, EXPERT SAYS.

Dick sat down. “Betty’s a fine-looking girl,” he said. “She reminds me of your mother when I first met her.”

“Is that so?”

“Pretty ... young ... fresh ...” Dick Bowden’s eyes had gone vague. Now they came back, focusing almost anxiously on his son. “Not that your mother isn’t still a fine-looking woman. But at that age a girl has a certain ... glow, I guess you’d say. It’s there for awhile, and then it’s gone.” He shrugged and opened the paper. “C’est la vie, I guess.”