Duel

by Richard Matheson

  “Dad, shall we go on?”

  His father stiffened. “If you can spare the time,” he said with slow, indignant pride. “If you can spare the time.”

  Les looked at the test paper, his fingers gripping the stapled sheets rigidly. Psychological questions? No, he couldn’t ask them. How did you ask your eighty-year-old father his views on sex?—your flintsurfaced father to whom the most innocuous remark was “obscene.”

  “Well?” his father asked in a rising voice.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anymore,” Les said. “We’ve been at it almost four hours now.”

  “What about all those pages you just skipped?”

  “Most of those are for the … the physical, Dad.”

  He saw his father’s lips press together and was afraid Tom was going to say something about that again. But all his father said was, “A fine friend. Fine friend.”

  “Dad, you—”

  Les’s voice broke off. There was no point in talking about it anymore. Tom knew perfectly well that Doctor Trask couldn’t make out a bill of health for this test the way he’d done for the three tests previous.

  Les knew how frightened and insulted the old man was because he’d have to take off his clothes and be exposed to doctors who would probe and tap and ask offensive questions. He knew how afraid Tom was of the fact that when he re-dressed, he’d be watched from a peephole and someone would mark on a chart how well he dressed himself. He knew how it frightened his father to know that, when he ate in the government cafeteria at the midpoint of the day-long examination, eyes would be watching him again to see if he dropped a fork or a spoon or knocked over a glass of water or dribbled gravy on his shirt.

  “They’ll ask you to sign your name and address,” Les said, wanting his father to forget about the physical and knowing how proud Tom was of his handwriting.

  Pretending that he grudged it, the old man picked up the pencil and wrote. I’ll fool them, he thought as the pencil moved across the page with strong, sure motions.

  Mr. Thomas Parker, he wrote, 2719 Brighton Street, Blairtown, New York.

  “And the date,” Les said.

  The old man wrote, January 17, 2003, and something cold moved in the old man’s vitals.

  Tomorrow was the test.

  They lay beside each other, neither of them sleeping. They had barely spoken while undressing and when Les had leaned over to kiss her goodnight she’d murmured something he didn’t hear.

  Now he turned over on his side with a heavy sigh and faced her. In the darkness, she opened her eyes and looked over at him.

  “Asleep?” she asked softly.

  “No.”

  He said no more. He waited for her to start.

  But she didn’t start and, after a few moments, he said, “Well, I guess this is … it.” He finished weakly because he didn’t like the words; they sounded ridiculously melodramatic.

  Terry didn’t say anything right away. Then, as if thinking aloud, she said, “Do you think there’s any chance that—”

  Les tightened at the words because he knew what she was going to say.

  “No,” he said. “He’ll never pass.”

  He heard Terry swallowing. Don’t say it, he thought, pleadingly. Don’t tell me I’ve been saying the same thing for fifteen years. I know it. I said it because I thought it was true.

  Suddenly, he wished he’d signed the Request For Removal years before. They needed desperately to be free of Tom; for the good of their children and themselves. But how did you put that need into words without feeling like a murderer? You couldn’t say: I hope the old man fails, I hope they kill him. Yet anything else you said was only a hypocritical substitute for those words because that was exactly how you felt.

  Medical terms, he thought—charts about declining crops and lowered standard of living and hunger ratio and degrading health level—they’d used all those as arguments to support passage of the law. Well, they were lies—obvious, groundless lies. The law had been passed because people wanted to be left alone, because they wanted to live their own lives.

  “Les, what if he passes?” Terry said.

  He felt his hands tightening on the mattress.

  “Les?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” he said.

  Her voice was firm in the darkness. It was a voice at the end of patience. “You have to know,” it said.

  He moved his head restlessly on the pillow. “Honey, don’t push it,” he begged. “Please.”

  “Les, if he passes that test it means five more years. Five more years, Les. Have you thought what that means?”

  “Honey, he can’t pass that test.”

  “But, what if he does?”

  “Terry, he missed three-quarters of the questions I asked him tonight. His hearing is almost gone, his eyes are bad, his heart is weak, he has arthritis.” His fist beat down hopelessly on the bed. “He won’t even pass the physical,” he said, feeling himself tighten in self-hatred for assuring her that Tom was doomed.

  If only he could forget the past and take his father for what he was now—a helpless, mind-jading old man who was ruining their lives. But it was hard to forget how he’d loved and respected his father, hard to forget the hikes in the country, the fishing trips, the long talks at night and all the many things his father and he had shared together.

  That was why he’d never had the strength to sign the request. It was a simple form to fill out, much simpler than waiting for the fiveyear tests. But it had meant signing away the life of his father, requesting the government to dispose of him like some unwanted garbage. He could never do that.

  And yet, now his father was 80 and, in spite of moral upbringing, in spite of life-taught Christian principles, he and Terry were horribly afraid that old Tom might pass the test and live another five years with them—another five years of fumbling around the house, undoing instructions they gave to the boys, breaking things, wanting to help but only getting in the way and making life an agony of held-in nerves.

  “You’d better sleep,” Terry said to him.

  He tried to but he couldn’t. He lay staring at the dark ceiling and trying to find an answer but finding no answer.

  The alarm went off at six. Les didn’t have to get up until eight but he wanted to see his father off. He got out of bed and dressed quietly so he wouldn’t wake up Terry.

  She woke up anyway and looked up at him from her pillow. After a moment, she pushed up on one elbow and looked sleepily at him.

  “I’ll get up and make you some breakfast,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” Les said. “You stay in bed.”

  “Don’t you want me to get up?”

  “Don’t bother, honey,” he said. “I want you to rest.”

  She lay down again and turned away so Les wouldn’t see her face. She didn’t know why she began to cry soundlessly; whether it was because he didn’t want her to see his father or because of the test. But she couldn’t stop. All she could do was hold herself rigid until the bedroom door had closed.

  Then her shoulders trembled and a sob broke the barrier she had built in herself.

  The door to his father’s room was open as Les passed. He looked in and saw Tom sitting on the bed, leaning down and fastening his dark shoes. He saw the gnarled fingers shaking as they moved over the straps.

  “Everything all right, Dad?” Les asked.

  His father looked up in surprise. “What are you doing up this hour?” he asked.

  “Thought I’d have breakfast with you,” Les told him.

  For a moment they looked at each other in silence. Then his father leaned over the shoes again. “That’s not necessary,” he heard the old man’s voice telling him.

  “Well, I think I’ll have some breakfast anyway,” he said and turned away so his father wouldn’t argue.

  “Oh … Leslie.”

  Les turned.

  “I trust you didn’t forget to leave that watch out,” his father said. “I intend to take
it to the jeweler’s today and have a decent … decent crystal put on it, one that won’t break.”

  “Dad, it’s just an old watch,” Les said. “It’s not worth a nickel.”

  His father nodded slowly, one palm wavering before him as if to ward off argument. “Never-the-less,” he stated slowly, “I intend to—”

  “All right, Dad, all right. I’ll put it on the kitchen table.”

  His father broke off and looked at him blankly a moment. Then, as if it were impulse and not delayed will, he bent over his shoes again.

  Les stood for a moment looking down at his father’s gray hair, his gaunt, trembling fingers. Then he turned away.

  The watch was still on the dining room table. Les picked it up and took it in to the kitchen table. The old man must have been reminding himself about the watch all night, he thought. Otherwise he wouldn’t have managed to remember it.

  He put fresh water in the coffee globe and pushed the buttons for two servings of bacon and eggs. Then he poured two glasses of orange juice and sat down at the table.

  About fifteen minutes later, his father came down wearing his dark blue suit, his shoes carefully polished, his nails manicured, his hair slicked down and combed and brushed. He looked very neat and very old as he walked over to the coffee globe and looked in.

  “Sit down, Dad,” Les said. “I’ll get it for you.”

  “I’m not helpless,” his father said. “Stay where you are.”

  Les managed to smile. “I put some bacon and eggs on for us,” he said.

  “Not hungry,” his father replied.

  “You’ll need a good breakfast in you, Dad.”

  “Never did eat a big breakfast,” his father said, stiffly, still facing the stove. “Don’t believe in it. Not good for the stomach.”

  Les closed his eyes a moment and across his face moved an expression of hopeless despair. Why did I bother getting up? he asked himself defeatedly. All we do is argue.

  No. He felt himself stiffening. No, he’d be cheerful if it killed him.

  “Sleep all right, Dad?” he asked.

  “Course I slept all right,” his father answered. “Always sleep fine. Fine. Did you think I wouldn’t because of a—”

  He broke off suddenly and turned accusingly at Les. “Where’s that watch?” he demanded.

  Les exhaled wearily and held up the watch. His father moved jerkily across the linoleum, took it from him and looked at it a moment, his old lips pursed.

  “Shoddy workmanship,” he said. “Shoddy.” He put it carefully in his side coat pocket. “Get you a decent crystal,” he muttered. “One that won’t break.”

  Les nodded. “That’ll be swell, Dad.”

  The coffee was ready then and Tom poured them each a cup. Les got up and turned off the automatic griller. He didn’t feel like having bacon and eggs either now.

  He sat across the table from his stern-faced father and felt hot coffee trickling down his throat. It tasted terrible but he knew that nothing in the world would have tasted good to him that morning.

  “What time do you have to be there, Dad?” he asked to break the silence.

  “Nine o’clock,” Tom said.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to drive you there?”

  “Not at all, not at all,” his father said as though he were talking patiently to an irritably insistent child. “The tube is good enough. Get me there in plenty of time.”

  “All right, Dad,” Les said and sat there staring into his coffee. There must be something he could say, he thought, but he couldn’t think of anything. Silence hung over them for long minutes while Tom drank his black coffee in slow, methodical sips.

  Les licked his lips nervously, then hid the trembling of them behind his cup. Talking, he thought, talking and talking—of cars and tube conveyers and examination schedules—when all the time both of them knew that Tom might be sentenced to death that day.

  He was sorry he’d gotten up. It would have been better to wake up and just find his father gone. He wished it could happen that way—permanently. He wished he could wake up some morning and find his father’s room empty—the two suits gone, the dark shoes gone, the work clothes gone, the handkerchiefs, the socks, the garters, the braces, the shaving equipment—all those mute evidences of a life gone.

  But it wouldn’t be like that. After Tom failed the test, it would be several weeks before the letter of final appointment came and then another week or so before the appointment itself. It would be a hideously slow process of packing and disposing of and giving away of possessions, a process of meals and meals and meals together, of talking to each other, of a last dinner, of a long drive to the government center, of a ride up in a silent, humming elevator, of—

  Dear God!

  He found himself shivering helplessly and was afraid for a moment that he was going to cry.

  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 differen
t 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.