‘Aboutface!’
Dussander pivoted neatly, the bourbon forgotten, the torment of the last three months forgotten. He heard his heels click together again as he faced the grease-splattered stove. Beyond it, he could see the dusty parade ground of the military academy where he had learned his soldier’s trade.
‘About face!’
He whirled again, this time not executing the order as well, losing his balance a little. Once it would have been ten demerits and the butt of a swagger-stick in his belly, sending his breath out in a hot and agonized gust. Inwardly he smiled a little. The boy didn’t know all the tricks. No indeed.
‘Now march? Todd cried. His eyes were hot, glowing.
The iron went out of Dussander’s shoulders; he slumped forward again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Please—’
‘March! March! March, I said!’
With a strangled sound, Dussander began to goose-step across the faded linoleum of his kitchen floor. He right-faced to avoid the table; right-faced again as he approached the wall. His face was uptilted slightly, expressionless. His legs rammed out before him, then crashed down, making the cheap china rattle in the cabinet over the sink. His arms moved in short arcs.
The image of the walking brooms recurred to Todd, and his fright recurred with it. It suddenly struck him that he didn’t want Dussander to be enjoying any part of this, and that perhaps — just perhaps — he had wanted to make Dussander appear ludicrous even more than he had wanted to make him appear authentic. But somehow, despite the man’s age and the cheap dime-store furnishings of the kitchen, he didn’t look ludicrous in the least. He looked frightening. For the first time the corpses in the ditches and the crematoriums seemed to take on their own reality for Todd. The photographs of the tangled arms and legs and torsos, fishbelly white in the cold spring rains of Germany, were not something staged like a scene in a horror film — a pile of bodies created from department store dummies, say, to be picked up by the grips and propmen when the scene was done — but simply a real fact, stupendous and inexplicable and evil. For a moment it seemed to him that he could smell the bland and slightly smoky odour of decomposition.
Terror gathered him in.
‘Stop!’ he shouted.
Dussander continued to goose-step, his eyes blank and far away. His head had come up even more, pulling the scrawny chicken-tendons of his throat tight, tilting his chin at an arrogant angle. His nose, blade-thin, jutted obscenely.
Todd felt sweat in his armpits. ‘Halt!’ he cried out.
Dussander halted, right foot forward, left coming up and then down beside the right with a single pistonlike stamp. For a moment the cold lack of expression held on his face -robotic, mindless — and then it was replaced by confusion. Confusion was followed by defeat. He slumped.
Todd let out a silent breath of relief and for a moment he was furious with himself. Who’s in charge here, anyway’: Then his self-confidence flooded back in. / am, that’s who. And he better not forget it.
He began to smile again. ‘Pretty good. But with a little practice, I think you’ll be a lot better.’
Dussander stood mute, his head hanging.
‘You can take it off now,’ Todd added generously… and couldn’t help wondering if he really wanted Dussander to put it on again. For a few seconds there…..
7
January, 1975.
Todd left school by himself after the last bell, got his bike, and pedalled down to the park. He found a deserted bench, set his Schwinn up on its kickstand, and took his report card out of his hip pocket. He took a look around to see if there was anyone in the area he knew, but the only other people in sight were two high school kids making out by the pond and a pair of gross-looking winos passing a paper bag back and forth. Dirty fucking winos, he thought, but it wasn’t the winos that had upset him. He opened his card.
English: C. American History: C. Earth Science: D. Your Community and You: B. Primary French: F. Beginning Algebra: F.