Dussander stared at him, grey-faced. ‘I knew,’ he said, ‘that I would find the
extortion sooner or later.’
Today I want to hear about the gas ovens,’ Todd said. ‘How you baked the Jews.’
His smile beamed out, rich and radiant. ‘But put your teeth in before you start You
look better with your teeth in.’
Dussander did as he was told. He talked to Todd about the gas ovens until Todd had
to go home for lunch. Every time he tried to slip over into generalities, Todd would
frown severely and ask him specific questions to get him back on the track. Dussander
drank a great deal as he talked. He didn’t smite.
Todd smiled. Todd smiled enough for both of them.
2
August, 1974.
They sat on Dussander’s back porch under a cloudless, smiling sky. Todd was
wearing jeans, Keds, and his Little League shirt Dussander was wearing a baggy grey
shirt and shapeless khaki pants held up with suspenders – wino-pants, Todd thought with
private contempt; they looked like they had come straight from a box in the back of the
Salvation Army store downtown. He was really going to have to do something about the
way Dussander dressed when he was at home. It spoiled some of the fun.
The two of them were eating Big Macs that Todd had brought in his bike basket,
pedalling fast so they wouldn’t get cold. Todd was sipping a Coke through a plastic
straw. Dussander had a glass of bourbon.
His old man’s voice rose and fell, papery, hesitant, sometimes nearly inaudible. His
faded blue eyes, threaded with the usual snaps of red, were never still. An observer
might have thought them grandfather and grandson, the latter perhaps attending some
rite of passage, a handing down.
‘And that’s all I remember,’ Dussander finished presently, and took a large bite of his
sandwich. McDonald’s Secret Sauce dribbled down his chin.
‘You can do better than that,’ Todd said softly.
Dussander took a large swallow from his glass. “The uniforms were made of paper,’ he
said finally, almost snarling. ‘When one inmate died, the uniform was passed on if it
could still be worn. Sometimes one paper uniform could . dress as many as forty inmates.
I received high marks for my frugality.’
‘From Glucks?’
‘From Himmler.’
‘But there was a clothing factory in Patin. You told me that just last week. Why
didn’t you have the uniforms made there? The inmates themselves could have made
them.’
“The job of the factory in Patin was to make uniforms for German soldiers. And as for
us…’ Dussander’s voice faltered for a moment, and then he forced himself to go on. ‘We
were not in the business of rehabilitation,’ he finished.
Todd smiled his broad smile.
‘Enough for today? Please? My throat is sore.’
‘You shouldn’t smoke so much, then,’ Todd said, continuing to smile. ‘Tell me some
more about the uniforms.’
‘Which? Inmate or SS?’ Dussander’s voice was resigned.
Smiling, Todd said: ‘Both.’
3
September, 1974.
Todd was in the kitchen of his house, making himself a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich. You got to the kitchen by going up half a dozen redwood steps to a raised area
that gleamed with chrome and Formica. His mother’s electric typewriter had been going
steadily ever since Todd had gotten home from school. She was typing a master’s thesis
for a grad student. The grad student had short hair, wore thick glasses, and looked like a
creature from outer space, in Todd’s humble opinion. The thesis was on the effect of
fruitflies in the Salinas Valley after World War II, or some good shit like that. Now her
typewriter stopped and she came out of her office.
Todd-baby,’ she greeted him.
‘Monica-baby,’ he hailed back, amiably enough.
His mother wasn’t a bad-looking chick for thirty-six, Todd thought; blonde hair that
was streaked ash in a couple of places, tall, shapely, now dressed in dark red shorts and a
sheer blouse of a warm whiskey colour – the blouse was casually knotted below her
breasts, putting her flat, unlined midriff on show. A typewriter eraser was tucked into her
hair, which had been pinned carelessly back with a turquoise clip.
‘So how’s school?’ she asked him, coming up the steps into the kitchen. She brushed
his lips casually with hers and then slid onto one of the stools in front of the breakfast
counter.
‘School’s cool.’
‘Going to be on the honour roll again?’
‘Sure.’ Actually, he thought his grades might slip a notch this first quarter. He had been
spending a lot of time with Dussander, and when he wasn’t actually with the old Kraut, he
was thinking about the things Dussander had told him. Once or twice he had dreamed
about the things Dussander had told him. But it was nothing he couldn’t handle.
‘Apt pupil,’ she said, ruffling his shaggy blond hair. ‘How’s that sandwich?’
‘Good,’ he said.
‘Would you make me one and bring it into my office?”
‘Can’t,’ he said, getting up. ‘I promised Mr Denker I’d come over and read to him for an
hour or so.’
‘Are you still on Robinson Crusoe?’
‘Nope.’ He showed her the spine of a thick book he had bought in a junk shop for
twenty cents. ‘Tom Jones.’
‘Ye gods and little fishes! It’ll take you the whole school-year to get through that,
Todd-baby. Couldn’t you at least find an abridged edition, like with Crusoe?’
‘Probably, but he wanted to hear all of this one. He said so.’
‘Oh.’ She looked at him for a moment, then hugged him. It was rare for her to be so
demonstrative, and it made Todd a little uneasy. ‘You’re a peach to be taking so much of
your spare time to read to him. Your father and I think it’s just… just exceptional.’
Todd cast his eyes down modestly.
‘And to not want to tell anybody,’ she said. ‘Hiding your light under a bushel.’
‘Oh, the kids I hang around with – they’d probably think I was some kind of weirdo,’
Todd said, smiling modestly down at the floor. ‘All that good shit.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she admonished absently. Then: ‘Do you think Mr Denker would like
to come over and have dinner with us some night?’
‘Maybe,’ Todd said vaguely. ‘Listen, I gotta put an egg in my shoe and beat it.’
‘Okay. Supper at six-thirty. Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Your father’s got to work late so it’ll just be me and thee again, okay?’
‘Crazy, baby.’
She watched him go with a fond smile, hoping there was nothing in Tom Jones he
shouldn’t be reading; he was only thirteen. She didn’t suppose there was. He was growing
up in a society where magazines like Penthouse were available to anyone with a dollar
and a quarter, or to any kid who could reach up to the top shelf of the magazine rack and
grab a quick peek before the clerk could shout for him to put that up and get lost. In a
society that seemed to believe most of all in the creed of hump thy neighbour, she didn’t
think there could be much in a book two hundred years old to screw up Todd’s head —
although she supposed the old man might get off on it a little. And as Richard liked to
say, for a kid the whole world’s a laboratory. You have to let them poke around in it. And
if the kid in question has a healthy home life and loving parents, hell be all the stronger
for having knocked around a few strange corners.
And there went the healthiest kid she knew, pedalling up the street on his Schwinn. We did okay by the lad, she thought, turning to make her sandwich. Damned if we didn’t do okay.
4
October, 1974.
Dussander had lost weight. They sat in the kitchen, the shopworn copy of Tom Jones
between them on the oilcloth-covered table (Todd, who tried never to miss a trick, had
purchased the Cliffs Notes on the book with part of his allowance and had carefully read
the entire summary against the possibility that his mother or father might ask him
questions about the plot). Todd was eating a Ring-Ding he had bought at the market. He
had bought one for Dussander. but Dussander hadn’t touched it He only looked at it
morosely from time to time as he drank his bourbon. Todd hated to see anything as tasty
as Ring-Dings go to waste. If he didn’t eat it pretty quick, Todd was going to ask him if
he could have it
‘So how did the stuff get to Patin?’ he asked Dussander.
‘In railroad cars,’ Dussander said. ‘In railroad cars labelled MEDICAL SUPPLIES. It
came in long crates that looked like coffins. Fitting, I suppose. The inmates off-loaded
the crates and stacked them in the infirmary. Later, our own men stacked them in the
storage sheds. They did it at night. The storage sheds were behind the showers.’