The Return: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gowanus Expressway. At a stretch of waste ground near the rail yards, he spotted a group of homeless men standing around a fire barrel. Dressed in the usual thick layers of clothing, red-eyed, their faces demonic in the lights of the low flames, they were passing around a bottle, laughing and joking. The fights and assaults had not yet started. Skelly always brought good times to these gatherings, and Marder thought it was fortunate that the evening was young and the crack pipes were not in evidence as far as he could observe. Skelly on crack was not amusing.
    He approached the group, waved a greeting, and sidled next to one of them, a small but powerfully built man with a shaved head partly covered by a filthy Red Sox baseball hat.
    “Hello, Skelly,” Marder said. “Are we having fun yet?”
    Skelly looked at him with a belligerent stare; his eyes were unfocused and he stank of peach schnapps. “Marder. If you’re here to join the party, have a drink. If not, fuck off!”
    “Let’s take a little walk, Skelly. I want to show you my new camper truck.”
    With the exaggerated diction of the very drunk, Skelly said, “Fuck you, Marder, and fuck the camper truck you rode in on. I’m having a little drink with some old army buddies. These are my good buddies here. Hinton, say hello to Marder. Marder isn’t an old army buddy. Marder was in the air force. He was rear-area motherfucker.”
    The men laughed at this, Skelly loudest of all. If this anniversary celebration went the way of all the others, Marder would receive a call from a pay phone at three A.M. a couple of nights from now and he would call a hire car and drive to where Skelly would be waiting at some all-night place, sans wallet, cowboy boots, watch, coat, and other items, plus any number of bruises and abrasions. Once or twice he’d been standing there in his T-shirt and shorts. Marder no longer had time for that.
    He tugged at Skelly’s coat. “Come on, man. I need to talk to you.”
    Skelly pulled away so hard he staggered. “I’m busy,” he said. “Get the fuck away from me!”
    The other men were observing this with interest. Marder started to feel crowded. Hinton, the buddy, a large person with a wild Afro escaping from his knitted hat, and eyes like spoiled eggs, growled, “Yeah, leave him alone. Skelly’s our friend. We having a good time here and we don’t need no rear-area motherfuckers, you know?”
    This remark was funny too. Marder addressed the big guy. “Yeah, I get that. Look, I need to talk to my friend here, and I’ll give you each fifty bucks to help me get him over to that camper there. What do you say?”
    Money changed hands. The men, ignoring Skelly’s protests, picked him up and stuffed him in the passenger seat of the Ford.
    “Nice camper,” said Skelly. “Now can I go?”
    “In a second. The thing is, I’m leaving, and I know you’d’ve had to call me later and I wouldn’t be here. I wanted to let you know.”
    “So? I could’ve called somebody else. I mean, fuck it, Marder, you’re not my mom .”
    “Somebody else? Like who? You mean I have a backup? I wish to Christ I would’ve known it sometime during the last—what is it?—forty years you’ve been pulling this shit. I would’ve told you, ‘Get fucked, Skelly. It’s three in the morning, call number two on the list.’”
    Skelly was silent for a moment, and then asked, “So what’s with the camper? You becoming a Good Sam?” In a familiar way, he seemed to have dumped his drunk by an act of will.
    “Yes. It’s always been my dream to tour America’s national parks and meet wonderful people along the way.”
    “That’s good, Marder, I like how you’re easing into being an old fart. You need to get you some of those pants with no belt and wear more bright colors. And a plastic hat. Of course, it shouldn’t be much of a change—you were sort of an old fart when you were young.”
    “I’m glad you approve. Should I drive you home or drop you