Hit Man - Lawrence Block [26]
“I took one of the framed photos home with me. I didn’t say anything to her, I didn’t show it to her, but I kept it around for a while. I found out the photo dated from World War Two. In other words, it couldn’t have been a picture of my father, because he would have been wearing a different uniform.
“By this time I think I already knew that the story she told me about my father was, well, a story. I don’t believe she knew who my father was. I think she got drunk and went with somebody, or maybe there were several different men. What difference does it make? She moved to another town, she told people she was married, that her husband was in the service or that he was dead, whatever she told them.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“How do I feel about it?” Keller shook his head. “If I slammed my hand in a cab door, you’d ask me how I felt about it.”
“And you’d be stuck for an answer,” Breen said. “Here’s a question for you. Who was your father?”
“I just told you—”
“But someone fathered you. Whether or not you knew him, whether or not your mother knew who he was, there was a particular man who planted the seed that grew into you. Unless you believe yourself to be the second coming of Christ.”
“No,” Keller said. “That’s one delusion I’ve been spared.”
“So tell me who he was, this man who spawned you. Not on the basis of what you were told or what you’ve managed to figure out. I’m not asking this question of the part of you that thinks and reasons. I’m asking that part of you that simply knows. Who was your father? What was your father?”
“He was a soldier,” Keller said.
Keller, walking uptown on Second Avenue, found himself standing in front of a pet shop, watching a couple of puppies cavorting in the window.
He went inside. One whole wall was given over to stacked cages of puppies and kittens. Keller felt his spirits sinking as he looked into the cages. Waves of sadness rocked him.
He turned away and looked at the other pets. Birds in cages, gerbils and snakes in dry aquariums, tanks of tropical fish. He was all right with them. It was the puppies that he couldn’t bear to look at.
He left the store. The next day he went to an animal shelter and walked past cages of dogs waiting to be adopted. This time the sadness was overwhelming, and he felt it physically as pressure against his chest. Something must have shown on his face, because the young woman in charge asked him if he was all right.
“Just a dizzy spell,” he said.
In the office she told him that they could probably accommodate him if he was especially interested in a particular breed. They could keep his name on file, and when a specimen of that breed became available—
“I don’t think I can have a pet,” he said. “I travel too much. I can’t handle the responsibility.” The woman didn’t respond, and Keller’s words echoed in her silence. “But I want to make a donation,” he said. “I want to support the work you do.”
He got out his wallet, pulled bills from it, handed them to her without counting them. “An anonymous donation,” he said. “I don’t want a receipt. I’m sorry for taking your time. I’m sorry I can’t adopt a dog. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
She was saying something, but he didn’t listen. He hurried out of there.
“ ‘I want to support the work you do.’ That’s what I told her, and then I rushed out of there because I didn’t want her thanking me. Or asking me questions.”
“What would she ask?”
“I don’t know,” Keller said. He rolled over on the couch, facing away from Breen, facing the wall. “ ‘I want to support your work.’ But I don’t even know what their work is. They find homes for some animals, and what do they do with the others? Put them to sleep?”
“Perhaps.”
“What do I want to support? The placement or the killing?”
“You tell me.”
“I tell you too much as it is,” Keller said.
“Or not enough.”
Keller didn’t say anything.
“Why did it sadden you to see the dogs in their cages?”
“I felt their sadness.”
“One feels only one’s own sadness. Why is it sad to you, a dog in a cage? Are you in a cage?