Once upon a time, in a land far far away (read United States of America); there lived an all-American kid named Todd Bowden, thirteen year old, five-feet-eight and a healthy one hundred and forty pounds, hair the color of ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, lightly tanned skin with not even the first shadow of adolescent acne. But, the story here is not about him. It is about is grandfather and of a time when Todd was not even born. The now old man then had a store and everyone called him Vic, the Grocer. He had a book where he kept the names of the people who owed him, and how much they owed. He called it the Left Hand Book. He said the right hand was business, but the right hand should never know what the left hand was doing. Because if the right hand knew; it would probably grab a meat-cleaver and chop the left hand right off.
Vic’s son, Jack (name changed to maintain demeanor) never liked Vic very much and he spend a lot of his childhood disliking him. He could never understand why he had to wear pants from the Goodwill Box while Mrs. Mazursky could get a ham on credit with the same old story about how her husband was going back to work next week. The only work that wino Bill Mazursky even had was holding onto a twelve-cent bottle of musky so it wouldn’t fly away.
Jack just wanted to get out of the neighborhood and away from Vic’s life. So he made grades and played sports he didn’t really like and got a scholarship at UCLA. Some years later, when Jack was married and had a three year old son, Vic finally got tired of fighting off the urban renewal guys and retired. A few months later, he had a minor stroke. He was in the hospital for ten days. And the people from the neighborhood, the guineas (Italian descents) and the krauts (German descent) and some other paid his bill. Every single cent! They kept the store open, too. Fiona Canstellano, a neighbor got four or five of her friends who where out of work to come in on shifts. When Vic got back, the books balanced out to the cent.
When Jack went to meet him, Vic told his son that he’d always been afraid of getting old - of being scared and hurting and all by himself. On having to go into the hospital and not being able to make ends meet anymore. Of dying! But after the stroke he wasn’t scared anymore and he thought he could die well. (Well that it does not mean die happy). He said that he thought no one could die happy, but one could sure die well.
In the last couple of years, Jack has been able to get some perspective on his old man. He started thinking that maybe the Left Hand Book wasn’t such a bad idea. That there was maybe something more to life than he being to buy Todd pants that don’t smell like the moth balls they used to put in the Goodwill Box.
The story is a re narration of a part of the story- Apt Pupil, Summer of Corruption from
Different Seasons, by Stephen King. The book is a collection or four short stories, namely Hope Springs Eternal (RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), Summer of Corruption (APT PUPIL), Fall of Innocence (THE BODY) and A Winter’s Tale (THE BREATHING METHOD).
