The Return Read Online Free PDF

cooking, and
although I’m no chef, the women praised the meals I prepared. I could have gone
on living like that for the rest of my life. But one day the dogs ran away and I
went out to look for them. I remember searching through a wood nearby, armed
only with a flashlight, and peering into the gardens of empty houses. I couldn’t
find them anywhere. When I got back to the house, the women looked at me as if I
was to blame for the dogs’ disappearance. Then they mentioned a name, the
killer’s name. They were the ones who’d been calling him the killer right from
the start. I was skeptical, but I listened to what they had to say. They talked
about high school romances, money trouble, grudges. I couldn’t get my head
around how both of them could have had relationships with the same guy in high
school, given the age difference between them. But they didn’t want to say any
more. That night, in spite of the reproaches, one of them came to my room. I
didn’t switch on the light, I was half asleep, and I never found out which one
it was. When I woke up, with the first light of dawn, I was alone. That day I
decided to go into town and pay a visit to the guy they were scared of. I asked
them for his address and told them to shut themselves in the house and not to
move until I got back. I drove down in the older woman’s pickup. Just before I
got to town, I saw the dogs in the yard of an old canning plant. They came over
to me looking abashed and wagging their tails. I put them in the cab of the
pickup and drove around the town for a while, laughing at how worried I’d been
the previous night. Predictably, I found myself approaching the address the
women had given me. Let’s say the guy was called Bedloe. He had a store in the
middle of town, a store for vacationers, where he sold everything from fishing
rods to checked shirts and chocolate bars. For a while I just browsed the
shelves. The man looked like a movie actor; he can’t have been more than
thirty-five. He was strongly built, had dark hair, and was reading a
newspaper spread out on the counter. He was wearing canvas pants and a tee
shirt. The store must have been doing good business; it was on one of the main
streets, which had trams running down it as well as cars. Bedloe’s stuff was
expensive. For a while I checked out the prices and the stock. As I was leaving,
for some reason I had the impression that the poor guy was lost. I hadn’t gone
more than ten yards when I realized that his dog was following me. I hadn’t even
seen it in the store: a big black dog, maybe a German Shepherd crossed with
something else. I’ve never owned a dog, I’ve got no idea what makes the damn
things tick, but for whatever reason, Bedloe’s dog followed me. I tried to get
it to go back to the store, of course, but it paid no attention. So I kept
walking toward the pickup, with the dog at my side, and then I heard the
whistle. The storekeeper was whistling his dog back. I didn’t turn around, but I
knew that he had come out looking for us. My reaction was automatic and
unthinking: I tried to make sure he didn’t see me, or didn’t see us. I remember
hiding behind a dark red tram, the color of dried blood, with the dog pressed
against my legs. Just when I was feeling safely hidden, the tram moved off and
the storekeeper saw me from the opposite sidewalk and moved his hands in a
gesture that could have meant Grab the dog or Hang the dog or Stay right there
till I come over. Which is exactly what I didn’t do; I turned around and
disappeared into the crowd, while he shouted something like Stop, my dog! Hey
buddy, my dog! Why did I behave like that? I don’t know. Anyway, the
storekeeper’s dog followed me submissively to where I’d parked the pickup and as
soon as I opened the door, before I had time to react, he jumped in and refused
to budge. When they saw me arrive with three dogs, the women said nothing and
started playing with all three. The storekeeper’s dog