closing. It was trying vainly to get onto its birdy-feet and hop away. One of its wings had
been crushed, and Todd supposed a passing car had hit it and flipped it up onto the
sidewalk like a tiddlywink. One of its beady eyes stared up at him.
Todd looked at it for a long time, holding the grips of his bike’s apehanger handlebars
lightly. Some of the warmth had gone out of the day and the air felt almost chilly. He
supposed his friends had spent the afternoon goofing off down at the Babe Ruth diamond
on Walnut Street, maybe playing a little one-on-one, more likely playing pepper or three-
flies-six-grounders or roily-bat. It was the time of year when you started working your
way up to baseball. There was some talk about getting up their own sandlot team this year
to compete in the informal city league; there were dads enough willing to shlepp them
around to games. Todd, of course, would pitch. He had been a Little League pitching star
until he had grown out of the Senior Little League division last year. Would have pitched.
So what? He’d just have to tell them no. He’d just have to tell them: Guys, I got mixed
up with this war criminal. I got him right by the balls, and then – ha-ha, this’ll killya, guys
-then I found out he was holding my balls as tight as I was holding his. I started having
funny dreams and the cold sweats. My grades went to hell and I changed them on my
report card so my folks wouldn’t find out and now I’ve got to hit the books really hard for
the first time in my life. I’m not afraid of getting grounded, though. I’m afraid of going to the reformatory. And that’s why I can’t play any sandlot with you guys this year. You see
how it is, guys.
A thin smile, much like Dussander’s and not at all like his former broad grin, touched
his lips. There was no sunshine in it; it was a shady smile. There was no fun in it; no
confidence. It merely said, You see how it is, guys.
He rolled his bike forward over the jay with exquisite slowness, hearing the newspaper
crackle of its feathers and the crunch of its small hollow bones as they fractured inside it.
He reversed, rolling over it again. It was still twitching. He rolled over it again, a single
bloody feather stuck in his front tyre, revolving up and down, up and down. By then the
bird had stopped moving, the bird had kicked the bucket, the bird had punched out, the
bird had gone to the great aviary in the sky, but Todd kept going forward and backward
across its mashed body just the same. He did it for almost five minutes, and that thin
smile never left his face. You see how it is, guys.
10
April, 1975.
The old man stood halfway down the compound’s aisle, smiling broadly, as Dave
Klingerman walked up to meet him. The frenzied barking that filled the air didn’t seem to
bother him in the slightest, nor the smells of fur and urine, nor the hundred different
strays yapping and howling in their cages, dashing back and forth, leaping against the
mesh. Klingerman pegged the old guy as a dog-lover right off the bat. His smile was
sweet and pleasant. He offered Dave a swollen, arthritis-bunched hand carefully, and
Klingerman shook it in the same spirit.
‘Hello, sir!’ he said, speaking up. ‘Noisy as hell, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t mind,’ the old man said. ‘Not at all. My name is Arthur Denker.’
‘Klingerman. Dave Klingerman.’
‘I am pleased to meet you, sir. I read in the paper -I could not believe it — that you give
dogs away here. Perhaps I misunderstood. In fact I think I must have misunderstood.’
‘No, we give ’em away, all right,’ Dave said. ‘If we can’t we have to destroy ’em. Sixty
days, that’s what the state gives us. Shame. Come on in the office here. Quieter. Smells
better, too.’
In the office, Dave heard a story that was familiar (but nonetheless affecting): Arthur
Denker was in his seventies. He had come to California when his wife died. He was not
rich, but he tended what he did have with great care. He was lonely. His only friend was
the boy who sometimes came to his house and read to him. In Germany he had owned a
beautiful St Bernard. Now, in Santa Donato, he had a house with a good-sized back yard.
The yard was fenced. And he had read in the paper … would it be possible that he could …
‘Well, we don’t have any Bernards,’ Dave said. ‘They go fast because they’re so good
with kids -‘
‘Oh, I understand. I didn’t mean that-‘
‘— but I do have a half-grown Shepherd pup. How would that be?’
Mr Denker’s eyes grew bright, as if he might be on the verge of tears. ‘Perfect,’ he said.
‘That would be perfect.’
The dog itself is free, but there are a few other charges. Distemper and rabies shots. A
city dog licence. All of it goes about twenty-five bucks for most people, but the state pays
half if you’re over sixty-five — part of the California Golden Ager programme.’
‘Golden Ager … is that what I am?’ Mr Denker said, and laughed. For just a moment –
it was silly – Dave felt a kind of chill.
‘Uh … I guess so, sir.’
‘It is very reasonable.’
‘Sure, we think so. The same dog would cost you a hundred and twenty-five dollars in
a pet shop. But people go to those places instead of here. They are paying for a set of
papers, of course, not the dog.’ Dave shook his head. ‘If they only understood how many
fine animals are abandonee every year.’
‘And if you can’t find a suitable home for them within sixty days, they are destroyed?’
‘We put them to sleep, yes.’
‘Put them to… ? I’m sorry, my English -‘
‘It’s a city ordinance,’ Dave said. ‘Can’t have dog-packs running the streets.’
‘You shoot them.’
‘No, we give them gas. It’s very humane. They don’t feel a thing.’
‘No,’ Mr Denker said. ‘I am sure they don’t’
Todd’s seat in Introduction to Algebra was four desks down in the second row. He sat
there, trying to keep his face expressionless, as Mr Storrman passed back the exams. But
his ragged fingernails were digging into his palms again, and his entire body seemed to
be running with a slow and caustic sweat.
Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t be such a goddam chump. There’s no way you could
have passed. You know you didn’t pass.
Nevertheless, he could not completely squash the foolish hope. It had been the first
algebra exam in weeks that looked as if it had been written in something other than
Greek. He was sure that in his nervousness (nervousness? no, call it what it had really
been: outright terror) he had not done that well, but maybe … well, if it had been anyone
else but Storrman, who had a Yale padlock for a heart…
STOP IT! he commanded himself, and for a moment, a coldly horrible moment, he
was positive he had screamed those two words aloud in the classroom. You flunked, you
know you did, not a thing in the world is going to change it.
Storrman handed him his paper expressionlessly and moved on. Todd laid it face-
down on his initial-scarred desk. For a moment he didn’t think he possessed sufficient
will to even turn it over and know. At last he flipped it with such convulsive suddenness
that the exam sheet tore. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he stared at it. His
heart seemed to stop for a moment.
The number 83 was written in a circle at the top of the sheet. Below it was a letter-
grade: C Plus. Below the letter grade was a brief notation: Good improvement! I think I’m
twice as relieved as you should be. Check errors carefully. At least three of them are
arithmetical rather than conceptual.
His heartbeat began again, at triple-time. Relief washed over him, but it was not cool –
it was hot and complicated and strange. He closed his eyes, not hearing the class as it
buzzed over the exam and began the pre-ordained fight for an extra point here or there.
Todd saw redness behind his eyes. It pulsed like flowing blood with the rhythm of his
heartbeat. In that instant he hated Dussander more than he ever had before. His hands
snapped shut into fists and he only wished, wished, wished, that Dussander’s scrawny
chicken neck could have been between them.
Dick and Monica Bowden had twin beds, separated by a nightstand with a pretty
imitation Tiffany lamp standing on it. Their room was done in genuine redwood, and the