Lawrence Sanders - Tenth Commandment

I really sprouted. In the tenth grade alone I put on four inches and almost thirty pounds. After a while I was as tall as Godfrey, as strong, and I was faster. Also, I was getting wiser. I realized how he was using me. I still went along with him, but it bothered me. I didn't want to get caught helping him cheat. I didn't want to lie for him anymore. I didn't want to do his homework or lend him my notes or write his themes. I began to resent his demands.'

'Do you think … ' I said hesitantly, 'do you think that when you first came up here from the south, and he took you under his wing, as you said, do you think that right from the start, the both of you just kids, that he saw someone he could use? Maybe not right then, but in the future?'

Jesse Karp swung around to face me, to stare at me sombrely.

'You weren't raised to be an idiot, were you?' he said. 'I gave that question a lot of thought, and yes, I think he did 386

exactly that, He had a gift — if you can call it that — of selecting friends he could use. If not immediately, then in the future. He banked people. Just like a savings account that he could draw on when he was in need. It hurt me when I realized it. Now, after all these years, it still hurts. I thought he liked me. For myself, I mean.'

'He probably did,' I assured him. 'Probably in his own mind he doesn't know the difference. He only likes people he can use. The two are inseparable.'

'What you're saying is that he's not doing it deliberately? That he's not consciously plotting?'

'I think it's more like an instinct.'

'Maybe,' he said. 'Anyway, after I realized what he was doing, I decided against a sudden break. I didn't want to confront him or fight him or anything like that. But I gradually cooled it, gradually got out from under.'

'How did he take that?'

'Just fine. We stayed friends, I do assure you. But he got the message. Stopped asking me to do his themes and slip him the answers on exams. It didn't make any difference.

By that time he had a dozen other close friends, some boys but mostly girls, who were delighted to help him. He had so much charm. Even as a boy, he had so damned much charm, you wouldn't believe.'

'I'd believe,' I said. 'He's still got it.'

'Yes? Well, in our senior year, a couple of things happened that made me realize he was really bad news. He had a job for an hour after school every day working in a local drugstore. Jerking sodas and making deliveries — like that. He worked for maybe a month and then he was canned. There were rumours that he had been caught dipping into the till. That may or may not have been true.

Knowing Godfrey, I'd say it was probably true. Then, we were both on the high school football team. Competitors, you might say, because we both wanted to play quarterback, although sometimes the coach played us both at the 387

same time with one of us at halfback. But still, we both wanted to call the plays. Anyway, in our last season, three days before the big game with Edison High, someone pushed me down the cement steps to the locker room. I never saw who did it, so I can't swear to it, but I'll go to my grave believing it was Godfrey Knurr. All I got out of it, thank God, was a broken ankle.'

'But he played quarterback in the big game?'

'That's right.'

'Did McKinley High win?'

'No,' Jesse Karp said with grim satisfaction, 'we lost.'

'And who ended up first in the class? Scholastically?'

'I did,' he said. 'But I do assure you, if Godfrey Knurr had applied himself, had shown some discipline, there is no way I could have topped him. He was brilliant. No other word for it; he was just brilliant.'

'What does he want? ' I cried desperately. 'Why does he do these things? What's his motive?'

The Principal fiddled with an ebony letter opener on his desk, looking down at it, turning it this way and that.

'What does he want?' he said ruminatively. 'He wants money and beautiful women and the good things of this world. You and I probably want exactly the same, but Godfrey wants them the easy way. For him, that means a kind of animal force. Rob a drugstore cash register. Push a competitor down a flight of cement steps. Make love to innocent women so they'll do what you want. What you need. He goes bulling his way through life, all shoulders and elbows. And God help you if you get in his way. He has a short fuse — did you know that? A really violent temper. He learned to keep it under control, but I once saw what he did to a kid in scrimmage. This kid had made Godfrey look bad on a pass play. The next time we had a pileup, I saw Godfrey go after him. It was just naked violence; that's the only way I can describe it. Really vicious stuff. That kid was lucky to come out alive.'

I was silent, thinking of Solomon Kipper and Professor Yale Stonehouse. They hadn't come out of the pileup.

'What does he want?' Jesse Karp repeated reflectively.

'I'll tell you something odd. When Godfrey and I were kids, almost everyone collected baseball cards. You know — those pictures of players you got in a package of bubblegum. Godfrey never collected them. You know what he saved? He showed me his collection once. Models and movie stars. Yachts and mansions. Jewellery and antiques.

Paintings and sculpture. He wanted to own it all.'

'The American dream?' I asked.

' W e l l. . ' he said, 'maybe. But skewed. Gone bad. He wanted it all right now.'

'Why did he go into the ministry?' I asked.

He lifted his eyes to stare at me. 'Why do you think?'

'To avoid the draft?'

'That's my guess,' Jesse Karp said, shrugging. 'I could be wrong.'

'Was Knurr ever married?'

'Not to my knowledge,' he said too quickly.

'I understand there is a Reverend Stokes who helped him?'

'That's right. The Reverend Ludwig Stokes. He's retired now.'

'Goldie Knurr hinted that he's fuddled, that he drinks too much.'

'He's an old, old man,' Jesse Karp said stonily. 'He's entitled.'

'Could you tell me where I might find him?'

'The last I heard he was living in a white frame house two doors south of St Paul's on Versailles.'

He glanced obviously at his wristwatch and I rose immediately to my feet. I thanked him for his kind cooperation. He helped me on with my coat and walked me to the door.

'I'll let you know how it all comes out,' I told him.

'Don't bother,' he said coldly. 'I really don't want to know.'

I was saddened by the bitterness in his voice. It had all happened so many years ago, but he still carried the scars.

He had been duped and made a fool of. He had thought he had a friend who liked him for what he was. The friend had turned out to be just another white exploiter. I wondered how that discovery had changed Jesse Karp's life.

At the doorway, I thought of something else and turned to him.

'Do you remember a girl Knurr dated, probably in high school — a short, lovely girl with long blonde hair? She had a heavy metal brace on one leg. Maybe polio.'

He stared at me, through me, his high brow rippling.

'Yes,' he said slowly, 'I do remember. She limped badly.

Very slender.'

'Fragile looking,' I said. 'Wistful.'

'Yes, I remember. But I can't recall her name. Wait a minute.'

He went back to the glass-enclosed bookcase set against the far wall. He opened one of the shelf doors, searched, withdrew a volume bound in maroon. Plastic stamped to look like leather.

'Our yearbook,' he said, smiling shyly. 'The year Godfrey and I graduated. I still keep it.'

I liked him very much then.

I stood at his side as he balanced the wide volume atop the mess at his desk and flipped through the pages rapidly.

He found the section with small, individual photographs of graduating seniors, head-and-shoulder shots. Then Jesse Karp turned the pages slowly, a broad forefinger running down the columns of pictures, names, school biographies.