Apt Pupil by Stephen King

This novella was published in the Different Seasons collection back in 1982. I picked it up from the Book Escape on Calvert Street. I initially got it because I’ve always wanted to read The Body. The movie version, Stand By Me, is one of my all time favorite movies and an inspiration for me as a writer. Anyway, after I finished reading The Body, I started reading Apt Pupil. My mother, who is the biggest Stephen King fan you’d ever want to meet, told me that Apt Pupil was a great story. And I must say that she is right. I love the story. The writing is wonderful. The way he describes characters, the weather, sounds, the feel of things, pain, fear, happiness, sadness, madness, guilt is positively marvelous. Although, I have to admit that I wonder about Stephen King sometimes. His stories, like this one, will have you saying to yourself, I’m not reading another word, but then find that you can’t put the book down. So maybe I should worry about myself. Huh? Naw! I’m cool. Right?

Before I start, I want to warn you, if you haven’t read the book, you’re gonna be mad, because my review is basically a summary of what’s going on. So this contains some serious spoilers.

Apt Pupil takes place in 1974. It is about a 13-year-old boy named Todd Bowden who discovers that a former Nazi, Kurt Dussander, is living in his neighborhood. Rather than turn him in, Todd, who has a morbid fascination/”GREAT INTEREST” with the concentration camps, the crematoriums, the SS uniforms, the mass graves, the 6,000,000 people, blackmails Dussander. He makes the former Nazi tell him all about the horrors. “The firing squads. The gas chambers. The ovens. The guys who had to dig their own graves and then stand on the ends so they’d fall into them.” With the threat of exposing him, Todd forces Dussander to become his walking, talking, living, breathing history book.

I know. You’re thinking what I thought. Why doesn’t Dussander just bump Todd off and be done with it. Well, mind you, Dussander is an old man. He’s “seventy-six if the articles Todd had read at the library had his birth-date right.” He’s also in poor health. He drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney. But the real reason he doesn’t just do old Todd in is because Todd told him that he had written a letter about Dussander and given it to a friend, so if anything happened to him. . . So you can see Dussander’s dilemma.

The weird thing about this book is that Todd is not a very likeable character. For a minute, you actually feel sorry for Dussander , because you’re thinking that maybe dude was really a good guy. Maybe he was like the guy from Schindler’s List. Like he was trying to save people. You know, like if this were a Hallmark movies or something. But this is Stephen King, and he doesn’t do nice and easy and sweet stories. He gives it to us in that ugly way that life sometimes is. You find this out when Todd buys a cheap SS Uniform and makes Dussander goose-step around his kitchen. Todd is yelling out orders. “Achtung!” “About Face!” “About Face!” “March! March! March!” I mean, Todd starts trippin’. He’s all amazed and excited, like he’s living out his fantasies. But that’s when things take a turn and you immediately stop feeling any kind of sympathy for Dussander and see him for what he still is, because dude gets to really marchin’, like he’s back in that time and likes it back there. Todd even starts to get scared. It’s like, dude ain’t all here, and he’s liable to throw Todd in the oven. Todd yells for Dussander to “stop!” But dude keeps on marchin’, like, You told me to march, so I’m marchin’. Look at me march. Look at me.

I was like, Dude, you better get out of that house before you end up in that oven and worry about splainin’ later, Lucy. Finally, Todd yells, “Halt,” and Dussander stops. But in his mind, you know dude is still marchin’.
Anyway, they go on like that for a few months. Except Dussander starts wearing that SS uniform to bed, like a pair of “pajamas.” Creepy, right?

The next thing you know, Todd and Dussander both start trippin’. Todd starts failing in school and changing his grades so he’s parents don’t know. Dussander cooks a cat in his oven. Todd’s grades get so bad that the guidance counselor wants to meet with his parents. Dussander meets with him instead and tells him that Todd’s mother is hittin’ the bottle, his father is married to his job, and the boy is doin’ the best he can. Dussander convinces the counselor to let Todd pull up his grades before meeting with his parents. So every day, Dussander makes Todd study. By May, Todd is passing again.

Now, in my mind, I’m thinkin’, everything’s cool now. Todd, keep your stupid behind away from Dussander. But no. That’s not what Todd is thinking. Todd, the great, nutty genius that he is, decides he has to bump the old man off in order to get back to himself. He goes over to Dussander and plans to push him down his basement stairs. When Dussander is standing at the top of the basement stairs, Todd gets up and is about to do the old dude in when Dussander tells him that he too has written a letter and put it in a safety deposit box that will be opened upon his death. Ahh, sukie, sukie now! Dussander also tells him that he heard him get up from the chair. Todd standin’ there like, I wasn’t gonna do nothin’. Dussander also tells Todd that he knows that he didn’t give a friend a letter. Todd stands there like, Yes I did.
I was like, Give it up, Todd. He knows you’re crazy but as dumb as a doorknob.

Todd starts fussin’, and rightly so. He’s like, You’re old. You can die any time and my life will be over. Dussander is like, Yeah, Que Sera, Sera. Whatever will be will be.

This is when the two of them go to town killin’ up winos. Poor dudes. Todd is sitting by the expressway with his Winchester .30-.30 that his stupid father gave him for Christmas. Didn’t he pay attention to the mother in Christmas Story? You’ll shoot your eye out. But Todd’s planning to shoot people driving on the freeway. I’m like, I’m puttin’ this book down and I’m not picking it up again. Then I curled up in bed with the book.

Well, one night, Dussander decides he’s gonna kill another homeless dude. He doesn’t, stabs him while they’re sitting at his kitchen table. He drags him down the basement and starts diggin’ the grave, but then the nut has a heart attack. And you know who he’s gotta call. Todd. Todd comes over there, and he’s all pissed off like, What you doin’, you old fool. You know you’re too old to be tryin’ to kill people. Now look at all this mess. I’ve gotta finish diggin’ the grave, throw the dude in it, cover it up. Clean up all the blood. Todd finds the knife Dussander used to kill the wino in the sink. He picks it up and he’s like, I should cut you up. Dussander tells him, Yeah, yeah. Yell later. Finish cleanin’ up so I can get to a hospital, because he doesn’t wanna die. Isn’t that the way it is. Here, he’s just killed a dude, but he’s like, get my old behind to a hospital.

That’s it for today. Like I said. It’s a great story. It’s intense. It’s weird. It’s horrifying. It’s sad. It keeps you reading despite yourself. I’ll let you know what happens when I finish.
Later.