The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  I remember meeting a grunt in Vietnam, a very shy, religious guy who told me that during training he had given the matter a great deal of painful thought, and had decided that if he got in a firefight, he’d shoot over the heads of the enemy. He just believed it was morally wrong to kill another human being.

  Then, less than a week after he arrived in Nam, his platoon got caught in an ambush.

  “How long did it take you to change your mind?” I asked him. “Five minutes?”

  “About five seconds,” he said sadly.

  I grabbed up the phone after the first ring. I might have had my fingers crossed.

  “Samuel Todd,” I said.

  “This is Joan Powell,” Mary Thorndecker said faintly. “How are you, Mr. Todd?”

  “Very well, thanks. And you, Miss Powell?”

  “What? Oh yes. Fine. I’m going to church this morning. The Episcopal church. The noon service, and I was wondering if you were planning to attend?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. The noon service at the Episcopal church. Yes, I’ll be there.”

  “Then maybe I’ll see you.”

  “I certainly hope so. Thank you, Miss Powell.”

  I hung up slowly, and thought about it. I decided she was a brainy woman. A crowded church service would offer a good opportunity to talk. There’s always privacy in mobs. I glanced at my watch and figured I had about forty-five minutes to kill.

  I wandered out to the vacant streets of Coburn. A drizzle was beginning to slant down from a choked sky. I turned up my collar, turned down the hat brim. It seemed to me that my boots had been damp for a week, and soggy pant and sleeve cuffs rubbed rawly. I passed a few other Sunday morning pedestrians, hunched beneath black umbrellas. I didn’t see any cars moving. The deserted village.

  I walked over to River Street, stood at the spot where Ronnie Goodfellow and I had paused a week ago to watch the garbage-clogged water slide greasily by. Then I turned away and went prowling through the empty streets. There were some good storefronts beneath the grime. A few bore the date of construction: 1886, 1912, 1924.

  A paint job and clean-up drive would have done wonders for Coburn. Like putting cosmetics on a corpse. I had told Goodfellow that if history teaches anything, it teaches change. That people, cities, nations, civilizations are born, flourish, die. How fatuous can you get? That may be the way things are, but knowing it doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Especially when you’re a witness to the senescence of what had once been a vital, thriving organism.

  Coburn was dying. Unless I had misread the signs, Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker was dying. If he went, the village would surely go, for so much of the town’s hopes seemed built on his money, his energy, his dreams. They would vanish together, Thorndecker and his Troy.

  I shouldn’t have felt anything. This place meant nothing to me. It was just a mouldering crossroad on the way to Albany. But once, I suppose, it had been a busy, humming community with brawls and parades, good times, laughter, a sense of growth, and a belief it would last forever. We all think that. And here was Coburn now, the damp and the rot crumbling away brave storefronts and streaking dusty glass.

  If this necropolis and the sordid Thorndecker affair meant anything, they persuaded me to feel deeply, cherish more, smell the blooms, see the colors, love, laugh at pinpricks and shrug off the blows. What do the Hungarians say? “Before you have time to look around, the picnic is over.” The picnic was ending for Coburn. For Thorndecker. Nothing but litter left to the ants.

  I plodded back to the Coburn Inn. I had a sudden vision of this place in twenty years, or fifty. A lost town. No movement. No lights. No voices. Dried leaves and yellowed newspapers blowing down cracked pavements. Signs fading, names growing dim. Everyone moved away or dead. Nothing but the rain, wind, and maybe, by then, a blank and searing sun.

  You’re as old as you feel? Bullshit. You’re as old as you look. And you can’t fake youth, not really. The pain is in seeing it go, grabbing, trying to hold it back. No way. Therefore, do not send to ask for whom the ass sinks; it sinks for thee. Forgive me, Joan Powell. I cast you aside not from want of affection, but from fear. I thought by rejecting an older mate I might stay young forever: the Peter Pan of the Western World. Why do we think of the aged as lepers when we are all registered for that drear colony?

  So much for Sunday morning thoughts in Coburn, N.Y. Gloomsville-on-the-Hudson. But I met this emotional wrench with my usual courage and steadfastness. I rushed up to Room 3-F and had a stiff belt of vodka before setting out for the noon service at the Episcopal church.

  My nutty fantasy of the morning had been the right one: I should have stood in bed.

  I was a few minutes late getting to the church. But I wasn’t the only one; others were hurrying up the steps, collapsing their umbrellas, taking seats in the rear pews. I stood a moment at the back of the nave, trying to spot Mary Thorndecker. A robed choir was singing “My Faith Is a Mountain,” and not badly.

  I finally saw her, sitting about halfway down on the aisle. Next to her were Dr. Kenneth Draper, Edward Thorndecker, and Julie. Julie?! I couldn’t figure out what she was doing there, unless she was screwing the choir.

  I noticed Mary was turning her head occasionally, glancing toward the rear of the church, searching for me. I moved over to one side, and the next time she looked in my direction, I raised a hand and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. I thought she nodded slightly. I went back outside. I wasn’t about to sit through the service. If Mary could get out while it was going on, so much the better. If not, I’d wait outside until it was over.

  I stood on the pillared porch, protected from the rain. I lighted a cigarette. The Reverend Peter Koukla had practically said it was a sin to smoke on church grounds. But it wasn’t a 100 mm. cigarette, so it was really a small sin.

  I was leaning against a pillar watching the rain come down—almost as exciting as watching paint dry—when an old guy came around the corner of the church. Another of Coburn’s gnarled gaffers. He had to be 70, going on 80. Coburn, I decided, had to be the geriatric capital of the U.S.

  This ancient was wearing a black leather cap, rubberized poncho, and black rubber boots. He was carrying a rake and dragging a bushel basket at the end of a piece of soggy rope. He was raking up broken twigs, sodden leaves, refuse, and dumping all the slop in his basket.

  When he came close to me, I said pleasantly, “Working on Sunday?”

  “What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” he snarled.

  It was a stupid question I had asked, so I was willing to endure his ill-humor. I pulled out my pack of cigarettes and held it out to him. He shook his head, but he dropped rake and rope, and climbed the steps to join me on the porch. He fished under his poncho and brought out a blunt little pipe. The shank was wound with dirty adhesive tape. The pipe was already loaded. He lighted it with a wooden kitchen match and blew out an explosion of blue smoke. It smelled like he had filled it with a piece of the wet rope tied to his bushel basket.

  “No church service for you?” I said.

  “Naw,” he said. “I been. See one, you seen ’em all.”

  “You’re not a religious man?” I asked.

  “The hell I’m not,” he said. He cackled suddenly. “What the hell, it don’t cost nothing.”

  I looked at him with interest. All young people look different; all old people look alike. You see the bony nose, wrinkled lips, burst capillaries. The geezer sucked on his pipe with great enjoyment, looking out at the wet world.

  “How come you ain’t inside?” he asked.

  “Like you,” I said, “I been.”

  “I got no cause to go,” he said. “I’m too old to sin. You been sinning lately?”

  “Not as much as I want to.”

  He grunted, and I hoped it was with amusement. At that moment, a religious nut I didn’t need.

  “You the sexton?” I asked.

  “How?”

  “Sexton. Church handyman.”

 
; “Yeah,” he said, “I guess you could say that. Ben Faber.”

  “Samuel Todd,” I said.

  His hands were under his poncho. He didn’t offer to shake, so I lighted another cigarette and dug my chilled hands back into my trenchcoat pockets.

  “You don’t live hereabouts?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Just passing through?”

  “I hope so.”

  He grunted again, and then I was certain it was his way of expressing amusement.

  “Yeah,” he said, “it’s a pisser, ain’t it? Going down the drain, this town is. Well, I won’t be here to see it.”

  “You’re moving?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, astonished. “But I figure I’ll be six feet under before it goes. I’m eighty-four.”

  “You look younger,” I said dutifully.

  “Yeah,” he said, puffing away. “Eighty-two.”

  I was amazed at how this chance conversation was going, how it seemed a continuation of my melancholy musings of the morning.

  “It doesn’t scare you?” I asked him. “The idea of dying?”

  He took the pipe out of his mouth long enough to spit off the porch into a border of shrubs tied up in burlap sacks.

  “I’ll tell you, sonny,” he said, “when I was your age, it scared me plenty. But don’t worry it; as you get along in years, the idea of croaking gets easier to live with. You see so many people go. Family. Friends. It gets familiar-like. And then, so many of them are shitheads, you figure if they can do it, you can do it. Then too, you just get tired. Nothing new ever happens. You’ve seen it all before. Wars and accidents. Floods and fires. Marriages. Murders. People dying by the billions, and billions of babies getting born. Nothing new. So just slipping away seems like the most natural thing in the world. Naw, it don’t scare me. Pain, maybe. I don’t like that. Bad pain, I mean. But as for dying, it’s got to be done, don’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said faintly, “it surely does.”

  He knocked the dottle from his pipe against the heel of his rubber boot. It made a nice mess on the porch, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He took out an oilskin pouch, unrolled it, began to load the pipe again, poking the black, rough-cut tobacco into the bowl with a grimy forefinger.

  “Want some advice, sonny?” he said.

  “Well … yeah, sure.”

  “Do what you want to do,” he said between puffs, as he lighted his pipe. “That’s my advice to you.”

  I thought that over a moment, then shook my head, flummoxed.

  “I don’t get it,” I told him. “I always do what I want to do.”

  The grunts came again. But this time he showed me a mouthful of browned, stumpy teeth.

  “The hell you do,” he said. “Don’t tell me there ain’t been things you wanted to do, but then you got to thinking about it. What would this one say? What would that one say? What if this happened? What if that happened? So what you wanted to do in the first place never got done. Ain’t that right?”

  “Well … I guess so. There have been things I wanted to do, and never did for one reason or another.”

  “I’m telling you,” he said patiently. “I’m giving you the secret, and not charging for it neither. What it took me eighty-four years to learn. I ain’t got a single regret for what I done in this life. But I’ll go to my grave with a whole lot of regrets for things I wanted to do and never did. For one reason or another. Now you remember that, sonny.”

  “I surely will,” I said. “Tell me, Mr. Faber, how long do you figure this service will last?”

  “What time you got?”

  I glanced at my watch. “About ten to one.”

  “Should be breaking up any minute now. The Ladies’ Auxiliary, they’re serving coffee and doughnuts in the basement. Think I’ll get me some right now. You coming?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll stay here.”

  “Waiting for someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “A woman?”

  I nodded.

  He cackled again, then clumped down the steps to pick up his rake and rope tow to the wet bushel basket.

  “A woman,” he repeated. “I don’t have to fret about that no more. But you remember what I said: you want to do something, you just do it.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said. “Thanks again.”

  He grunted, and trudged away in the rain. I watched him go. I wasn’t sure what the hell he had been talking about, but somehow I felt better. He had found a kind of peace, and if that’s what age brought, it might be a little easier to endure varicose veins, dentures, and a truss.

  I moved back toward the doors and heard the swelling sonority of the church organ. A few people came out, buttoning up coats and opening umbrellas. I stood to one side and waited. In a few minutes Mary Thorndecker came flying out, face flushed. The long Persian lamb coat was flapping around her ankles. She was gripping a black umbrella. She grabbed my arm.

  “The others are having coffee,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t think they saw you. I only have a minute.”

  “All right,” I said, taking the umbrella from her and opening it. “Let’s go to my car.”

  “Oh no,” she cried. “They may come out and see us.”

  “This was your idea,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s walk across the street,” she said nervously. “Away from the church. Just a block or two. It won’t take long.”

  I took her arm. I held the big umbrella over both of us. We crossed the street and walked away from the church on the opposite sidewalk.

  “There are three guards,” she said rapidly. “The gate guard, one on duty in the nursing home, and a man with a dog who patrols outside. They come on at midnight. A day shift takes over at eight in the morning.”

  “No guard in the lab?”

  “No. Each building has its own power switches and alarm switches. In the basements of both buildings. The switch boxes are kept locked.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I beg your pardon.”

  “I can’t get Nurse Beecham’s keys,” she went on. “She hands them over to the night supervisor, a male nurse. He carries them around with him.”

  “Listen,” I said, “I’ve narrowed it down. There’s only one place I want to go, one thing I want to see. Your stepfather’s private office. On the second floor of the research laboratory.”

  “I can’t get the keys.”

  “Sure you can,” I said gently. “Dr. Draper has keys to the main lab building and to your stepfather’s private lab. Get the keys from Draper.”

  “But how?” she burst out desperately. “I can’t just ask him for them.”

  “Lie,” I told her. “Where does Draper live?”

  “In Crittenden Hall. He has a little apartment. Bedroom, sitting room, bathroom.”

  “Good,” I said. “Wake him up about two o’clock tomorrow morning. Tell him Thorndecker is working late in Crittenden Hall and wants his journal from the lab. Tell him anything. You’re a clever woman. Make up some excuse, but get the keys.”

  “He’ll want to get the journal himself.”

  “Not if you handle it right. Just get the keys. By fifteen minutes after two, I’ll be inside the fence. I’ll be waiting at the back entrance to the research lab. The door at the end of that covered walk that comes down the hill from the nursing home.”

  She didn’t say anything, but I felt her shiver under my hand. I thought I might have thrown it at her too fast, so I slowed down and went over it once again. Get the keys from Draper at 2:00 A.M. Let me into the lab at 2:15.

  “I’m not going to steal anything,” I told her. “You’ll be with me; you’ll see. I just want to look in Thorndecker’s journal.”

  “What for?”

  “To see what he’s been doing, and why. He said he keeps very precise, complete notes. It should all be there.”

  She was silent awhile, then …

  “Do I have to be with you?” she asked. “Can’t I just
give you the keys?”

  I stopped and turned her toward me. There we stood under that big, black umbrella, the rain sliding off it in a circular curtain. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “You don’t really want to know, do you?” I asked softly.

  She shook her head dumbly, teeth biting down into her lower lip.

  “Mary, I need you there. I need a witness. And maybe you can help me with the scientific stuff. You must know more of that than I do. Anyone would!”

  She smiled wanly.

  “And also,” I said, “I need you with me for a very selfish reason. If we’re caught, it’ll be impossible to charge me with breaking-and-entering if I’m with a member of the family.”

  She nodded, lifted her chin.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll get the keys. Somehow. I’ll let you in. I’ll go with you. We’ll read the journal together. I don’t care how awful it is. I do want to know.”

  I pressed her arm. We started walking back toward the church. Her stride seemed more confident now. She was leading the way. I had to hurry to keep up with her. We stopped across the street from the church. We faced each other again.

  “I know how to get the keys from Kenneth,” she said, looking into my eyes.

  “Good,” I said. “How?”

  “I’ll go to bed with him,” she said, plucked the umbrella from my hand, dashed across the street.

  I just stood there, hearing the faint hiss of rain, watching her run up the church steps and disappear. And I had thought her prissy.

  It was a few minutes before I could move. I felt the drops pelt my sodden tweed hat. I saw the rain run down my trenchcoat in wavery rivulets. I knew my boots were leaking and my feet were wet.

  Simple solution: “I’ll go to bed with him.” Just like that. Maybe old Ben Faber was right. You want to do something, then do it.

  I got back in my car, still in a state of bemused wonderment. I drove around awhile, trying to make sense of what was going on, of what people were doing, of what I was doing. What amazed me most was how Telford Gordon Thorndecker, unknowingly, was impinging on the lives of so many. Mary. Dr. Draper. Julie. Edward. Ronnie and Millie Goodfellow. The “best people” of Coburn. And me. Thorndecker was changing us. Nudging our lives, for better or for worse. None of us would ever be the same.