APT Pupil - By Stephen King Page 0,36
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.
Chapter 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