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Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
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Then he looked up with a shocked expression as his father stood.
“I'll be going now,” Tom said.
Les's eyes fled to the wall clock. “But it's only a quarter to seven,” he said tensely. “It doesn't take that long to—”
“Like to be in plenty of time,” his father said firmly. “Never like to be late.”
“But my God, Dad, it only takes an hour at the most to get to the city,” he said, feeling a terrible sinking in his stomach.
His father shook his head and Les knew he hadn't heard. “It's early, Dad,” he said, loudly, his voice shaking a little.
“Never-the-less,” his father said.
“But you haven't
eaten
anything.”
“Never did eat a big breakfast,” Tom started. “Not good for the—”
Les didn't hear the rest of it—the words about lifetime habit and not good for the digestion and everything else his father said. He felt waves of merciless horror breaking over him and he wanted to jump and throw his arms around the old man and tell him not to worry about the test because it didn't matter, because they loved him and would take care of him.
But he couldn't. He sat rigid with sick fright, looking up at his father. He couldn't even speak when his father turned at the kitchen door and said in a voice that was calmly dispassionate because it took every bit of strength the old man had to make it so, “I'll see you tonight, Leslie.”
The door swung shut and the breeze that ruffled across Les's cheeks chilled him to the heart.
Suddenly, he jumped up with a startled grunt and rushed across the linoleum. As he pushed through the doorway he saw his father almost to the front door.
“Dad!”
Tom stopped and looked back in surprise as Les walked across the dining room, hearing the steps counted in his mind—
one, two, three, four, five.
He stopped before his father and forced a faltering smile to his lips.
“Good luck, Dad,” he said. “I'll … see you tonight.” He had been about to say, “I'll be rooting for you”; but he couldn't.
His father nodded once, just once, a curt nod as of one gentleman acknowledging another.
“Thank you,” his father said and turned away.
When the door shut, it seemed as if, suddenly, it had become an impenetrable wall through which his father could never pass again.
Les moved to the window and watched the old man walk slowly down the path and turn left onto the sidewalk. He watched his father
start up the street, then straighten himself, throw back his lean shoulders and walk erect and briskly into the gray of morning.
At first Les thought it was raining. But then he saw that the shimmering moistness wasn't on the window at all.
 
He couldn't go to work. He phoned in sick and stayed home. Terry got the boys off to school and, after they'd eaten breakfast, Les helped her clear away the morning dishes and put them in the washer. Terry didn't say anything about his staying home. She acted as if it were normal for him to be home on a weekday.
He spent the morning and afternoon puttering in the garage shop, starting seven different projects and losing interest in them.
Around five, he went into the kitchen and had a can of beer while Terry made supper. He didn't say anything to her. He kept pacing around the living room, staring out the window at the overcast sky, then pacing again.
“I wonder where he is,” he finally said, back in the kitchen again.
“He'll be back,” she said and he stiffened a moment, thinking he heard disgust in her voice. Then he relaxed, knowing it was only his imagination.
When he dressed after taking a shower, it was five-forty. The boys were home from playing and they all sat down to supper. Les noticed a place set for his father and wondered if Terry had set it there for his benefit.
He couldn't eat anything. He kept cutting the meat into smaller and smaller pieces and mashing butter into his baked potato without tasting any of it.
“What is it?” he asked as Jim spoke to him.
“Dad, if Grandpa don't pass the test, he gets a month, don't he?”
Les felt his stomach muscles tightening as he stared at his older son.
Gets a month, don't he?
—the last of Jim's question muttered on in his brain.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“My Civics book says old people get a month to live after they don't pass their test. That's right, isn't it?”
“No, it
isn't
,” Tommy broke in. “Harry Senker's grandma got her letter after only two weeks.”
“How do
you
know?” Jim asked his nine-year-old brother, “Did you see it?”
“That's enough,” Les said.
“Don't
have
t'see it!” Tommy argued. “Harry told me that—”
“That's
enough!
”
The two boys looked suddenly at their white-faced father.
“We won't talk about it,” he said.
“But what—”
“Jimmy,”
Terry said, warningly.
Jimmy looked at his mother, then, after a moment, went back to his food and they all ate in silence.
The death of their grandfather means nothing to them, Les thought bitterly—nothing at all. He swallowed and tried to relax the tightness in his body. Well, why
should
it mean anything to them? he told himself ; it's not their time to worry yet. Why force it on them now? They'll have it soon enough.
When the front door opened and shut at 6:10, Les stood up so quickly, he knocked over an empty glass.
“Les,
don't,
” Terry said suddenly and he knew, immediately, that she was right. His father wouldn't like him to come rushing from the kitchen with questions.
He slumped down on the chair again and stared at his barely touched food, his heart throbbing. As he picked up his fork with tight fingers, he heard the old man cross the dining room rug and start up the stairs. He glanced at Terry and her throat moved.
He couldn't eat. He sat there breathing heavily, and picking at the food. Upstairs, he heard the door to his father's room close.
It was when Terry was putting the pie on the table that Les excused himself quickly and got up.
He was at the foot of the stairs when the kitchen door was pushed open. “Les,” he heard her say, urgently.
He stood there silently as she came up to him.
“Isn't it better we leave him alone?” she asked.
“But, honey, I—”
“Les, if he'd passed the test, he would have come into the kitchen and told us.”
“Honey, he wouldn't know if—”
“He'd know if he passed, you know that. He told us about it the last two times. If he'd passed, he'd have—”
Her voice broke off and she shuddered at the way he was looking at her. In the heavy silence, she heard a sudden splattering of rain on the windows.
They looked at each other a long moment. Then Les said, “I'm going up.”
“Les,” she murmured.
“I won't say anything to upset him,” he said. “I'll …”
A moment longer they stared at each other. Then he turned away and trudged up the steps. Terry watched him go with a bleak, hopeless look on her face.
Les stood before the closed door a minute, bracing himself. I won't upset him, he told himself; I
won't.
He knocked softly, wondering, in that second, if he were making a mistake. Maybe he should have left the old man alone, he thought unhappily.
In the bedroom, he heard a rustling movement on the bed, then the sound of his father's feet touching the floor.
“Who is it?” he heard Tom ask.
Les caught his breath. “It's me, Dad,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“May I see you?”
Silence inside. “Well …” he heard his father say then and his voice stopped. Les heard him get up and heard the sound of his footsteps on
the floor. Then there was the sound of paper rattling and a bureau drawer being carefully shut.
Finally the door opened.
Tom was wearing his old red bathrobe over his clothes and he'd taken off his shoes and put his slippers on.
“May I come in, Dad?” Les asked quietly.
His father hesitated a moment. Then he said, “Come in,” but it wasn't an invitation. It was more as if he'd said, This is your house, I can't keep you from this room.
Les was going to tell his father that he didn't want to disturb him but he couldn't. He went in and stood in the middle of the throw rug, waiting.
“Sit down,” his father said and Les sat down on the upright chair that Tom hung his clothes on at night. His father waited until Les was seated and then sank down on the bed with a grunt.
For a long time they looked at each other without speaking, like total strangers, each waiting for the other one to speak. How did the test go? Les heard the words repeated in his mind. How did the test go, how did the test go? He couldn't speak the words. How did the—
“I suppose you want to know what … happened,” his father said then, controlling himself visibly.
“Yes,” Les said. “I …” He caught himself. “Yes,” he repeated and waited.
Old Tom looked down at the floor for a moment. Then, suddenly, he raised his head and looked defiantly at his son.
“I didn't go,”
he said.
Les felt as if all his strength had suddenly been sucked into the floor. He sat there, motionless, staring at his father.
“Had no intention of going,” his father hurried on. “No intention of going through all that foolishness. Physical tests, m-mental tests, putting b-b
-blocks
in a board and … Lord knows what all! Had no intention of going.”
He stopped and stared at his son with angry eyes as if he were daring Les to say he had done wrong.
But Les couldn't say anything.
A long time passed. Les swallowed and managed to summon the words. “What are you … going to do?”
“Never mind that, never mind,” his father said, almost as if he were grateful for the question. “Don't you worry about your Dad. Your Dad knows how to take care of himself.”
And suddenly Les heard the bureau drawer shutting again, the rustling of a paper bag. He almost looked around at the bureau to see if the bag were still there. His head twitched as he fought down the impulse.
“W-ell,” he faltered, not realizing how stricken and lost his expres-sion was.
“Just never mind now,” his father said again, quietly, almost gently. “It's not your problem to worry about. Not your problem at all.”
But it is! Les heard the words cried out in his mind. But he didn't speak them. Something in the old man stopped him; a sort of fierce strength, a taut dignity he knew he mustn't touch.
“I'd like to rest now,” he heard Tom say then and he felt as if he'd been struck violently in the stomach. I'd like to rest now, to rest now—the words echoed down long tunnels of the mind as he stood. Rest now, rest now …
He found himself being ushered to the door where he turned and looked at his father.
Good-bye.
The word stuck in him.
Then his father smiled and said, “Good night, Leslie.”
“
Dad
.”
He felt the old man's hand in his own, stronger than his, more steady; calming him, reassuring him. He felt his father's left hand grip his shoulder.
“Good night, son,” his father said and, in the moment they stood close together Les saw, over the old man's shoulder, the crumpled
drugstore bag lying in the corner of the room as though it had been thrown there so as not to be seen.
Then he was standing in wordless terror in the hall, listening to the latch clicking shut and knowing that, although his father wasn't locking the door, he couldn't go into his father's room.
For a long time he stood staring at the closed door, shivering without control. Then he turned away.
Terry was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, her face drained of color. She asked the question with her eyes as he came down to her.
“He … didn't go,” was all he said.
She made a tiny, startled sound in her throat. “But—”
“He's been to the drugstore,” Les said. “I … saw the bag in the corner of the room. He threw it away so I wouldn't see it but I … saw it.”

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