Lawrence Sanders - Tenth Commandment

'Here I am,' he said laughing. 'God, what a beast!'

I leaned to look: Jesse Karp, not a beast, but an earnest, 390

self-conscious kid in a stiff white collar and a tie in a horrendous pattern. Most of the other boys were wearing suit jackets, but Karp wasn't. I didn't remark on it.

'Not so bad,' I said, looking at the features not yet pulled with age. 'You look like it was the most solemn moment of your life.'

'It was,' he said, staring down at the book. 'I was the first of my family to be graduated from high school. It was something. And here's Godfrey.'

Directly below Karp's photograph was that of Knurr, wearing a sharply patterned sport jacket. He was smiling at the camera, his chin lifted. Handsome, strong, arrogant. A Golden Boy. He had written an inscription in the yearbook directly below Karp's biography: 'To Jesse, my very best friend ever. Godfrey Knurr.' I guessed he had written that same sentiment in many McKinley High yearbooks.

Each student had a pithy motto or prediction printed in italic type below his biography. Jesse Karp's said: A slow but sure winner.

Godfrey Knurr's was: We'll be hearing of him for many years to come.

The Principal continued flipping through the pages of stamp-sized portraits. Finally his finger stopped.

'This one?' he said, looking at me.

I glanced down. It was the same girl I had seen in Goldie Knurr's photo album. The same pale gold beauty, the same soft vulnerability.

'Yes,' I said, reading her name. 'Sylvia Wiesenfeld. Do you know anything about her?'

He closed the yearbook with his two hands, slapping the volume with what I thought was unusual vehemence. He went back to the bookcase to restore the book to its place and close the glass door.

'Why are you asking about her?' he demanded, his back to me. I thought something new had come into his voice: a note of hostility.

'Just curious,' I said. 'She's so beautiful.'

'Her father owned a drugstore,' he said grudgingly.

'He's dead now — the father. I don't know what happened to her.'

'Was this the drugstore where Godfrey Knurr worked after school?'

'Yes,' he said shortly.

He insisted on personally accompanying me through the outer offices, down the hallways and staircases to the front entrance of McKinley High School. I didn't know if he was being polite or wanted to make certain I didn't loiter about the premises.

I thanked him again for his kindness and he sent me on my way. He didn't exactly push me out of the door, but he made certain I exited. I didn't think he regretted what he had told me about Godfrey Knurr. I thought he was ashamed and angry at what he had revealed about himself.

I had set the old wounds throbbing.

On the sidewalk, I turned and looked back at the high school, a pile of red brick so ugly it was impressive. I had brief and sententious thoughts of the thousands — maybe millions! — of young students who had walked those gloomy corridors, sat at those worn desks, who had laughed, wept, frolicked, and discovered despair.

I found the white frame house two doors south of St Paul's on Versailles Street. Perhaps it had once been white, but now it was a powdery grey, lashed by rain and wind, scoured by the sun. It looked at the world with blind eyes: uncurtained windows with torn green shades drawn at various levels. The cast-iron fence was rusted, the tiny front yard scabby with refuse. It was a sad, sad habitation for a retired preacher, and I could only wonder how his parishioners could allow their former pastor's home to fall into such decrepitude.

I went cautiously up the front steps and searched for a bell. There was none, although I discovered four stained 392

screwholes in the doorjamb, a larger drilled hole in the middle, and the faint scarred mark of a square enclosing them all. Apparently a bell had once existed but had been removed.

I rapped sharply on the peeling door and waited. No answer. I knocked again. Still no reply.

'Keep trying,' someone called in a cackling voice. 'He's in there all right.'

I turned. On the sidewalk was an ancient black man wearing a holey wool cap and fingerless gloves. He seemed inordinately swollen until I realized he was wearing at least three coats and what appeared to be several sweaters and pairs of trousers. He was pushing a splintered baby carriage filled with newspapers and bottles, cans, an old coffee percolator, tattered magazines, two bent umbrellas, and other things.

'Is this the home of the Reverend Stokes?' I asked him.

'Yeah, yeah, that's it,' he said, nodding vigorously and showing a mouthful of yellow stumps. 'What you do is you keep pounding. He's in there all right. He don't never go out now. Just keep pounding and pounding. He'll come to the door by and by.'

'Thank you,' I called, but he was already shuffling down the street, a strange apparition.

So I pounded and pounded on that weathered door. It seemed at least five minutes before I heard a quavery voice from inside: 'Who is there?'

'Reverend Stokes?' I shouted. 'Could I speak to you for a moment, sir? Please?'

There was a long pause and I thought I had lost him. But then I heard the sounds of a bolt being drawn, the door unlocked. It swung open.

I was confronted by a wild bird of a man. In his late seventies, I guessed. He was actually a few inches taller than I, but his clothes seemed too big for him so he 393

appeared to have shrunk, in weight and height, to a frail diminutiveness.

His hair was an uncombed mess of grey feathers, and on his hollow cheeks was at least three days' growth of beard: a whitish plush. His temples were sunken, the skin on his brow so thin and transparent that I could see the course of blood vessels. Rheumy eyes tried to stare at me, but the focus wavered. The nose was a bone.

He was wearing what had once been a stylish velvet smoking jacket, but now the nap was worn down to the backing, and the elbows shone greasily. Beneath the unbuttoned jacket was a soiled blue workman's shirt, tieless, the collar open to reveal a scrawny chicken neck. His creaseless trousers were some black, glistening stuff, with darker stains and a tear in one knee. His fly was open. He was wearing threadbare carpet slippers, the heels broken and folded under. His bare ankles were not clean.

I was standing outside on the porch, he inside the house.

Yet even at that distance I caught the odour: of him, his home, or both. It was the sour smell of unwashed age, of mustiness, spilled liquor, unmade beds and unaired linen, and a whiff of incense as rancid as all the rest.

'Reverend Stokes?' I asked.

The bird head nodded, pecking forward.

'My name is Joshua Bigg,' I said briskly. 'I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'd just like to talk to you for a few minutes, sir.'

'About what?' he asked. The voice was a creak.

'About a former parishioner of yours, now an ordained minister himself. Godfrey Knurr.'

What occurred next was totally unexpected and unnerving.

'Nothing happened!' he screamed at me and reached to slam the door in my face. But a greenish pallor suffused his face, his hand slipped down the edge of the door, and he began to fall, to sag slowly downwards, his bony knees 394

buckling, shoulders slumping, the old body folding like a melted candle.

I sprang forward and caught him under the arms. He weighed no more than a child, and I was able to support him while I kicked the door shut with my heel. Then I half-carried, half-dragged him back into that dim, malodorous house.

I pulled him into a room that had obviously once been an attractive parlour. I put him down on a worn chesterfield, the brown leather now cracked and split. I propped his head on one of the armrests and lifted his legs and feet so he lay flat.

I straightened up, breathing through my mouth so I didn't have to smell him or the house. I stared down at him, hands on my hips, puzzling frantically what to do.