of substantial import. So he asked Skelly about his own background, and Skelly answered with the question: “Did you ever read a book called The Catcher in the Rye ?”
“Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact. I got it on Fourth Avenue. It was something my mom and I used to do. There’re all these used bookstores on lower Fourth, and we used to take the subway up from Brooklyn. Starting when I was about six and up ’til, I don’t know, ’til I was too old to go out shopping with my mother, I guess. I picked it up, the paperback, because of the red cover and the title.”
“What did you think of it?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t figure out what the guy’s problem was. I mean, he went to prep school, so he must’ve been loaded, or his folks were, so what did he have to complain about? But the whole book is one long bitch about how phony everything is, how everything isn’t just right for wonderful what’s-his-name, Canfield—”
“Caulfield. Holden Caulfield.”
“Right. Why did you ask?”
“Because I’m what Holden Caulfield turned into.” He laughed then and shook his head. “You know, Marder, we’re probably the only two people in northern Laos capable of discussing The Catcher in the Rye. I might have to keep you alive after all.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. So you got kicked out of prep school?”
“Yep. I thought they were all phonies. You never thought your parents were fucked up?”
“No, I thought they were decent, honest people. I told you, my father’s a union guy, a printer. He’s proud of what he does; he thinks he’s preserving the printed word, the backbone of civilization, and then he always said the printers were the aristocrats of the labor movement, the vanguard. And my mom—I’d come home from school and there’d be this stranger, some old bum off the street, and she’d be feeding him soup. Ladies would come up to me at the grocery store, or wherever, and say, ‘Oh, your mother’s a saint.’ I didn’t think anything of it. And she was a reader too; she read to me for as long as I can remember, and she made sure the nuns didn’t mess with me. In our neighborhood, I’d walk down the street with the two of them, I’d be smiling, I was so glad they were my folks. So, no. The army is fucked up, the world may be fucked up, but not the Marders. Why did they kick you out?”
“I got liquored up and took a big crap on the school seal. They had it inlaid in marble in Byron Hall, the main building there at Vaughan Preparatory Academy. Then my father sent me to the Christian Brothers, where he’d gone to school, to see if they could, as he put it, beat some sense into me.” Skelly lit another cigarette and gazed upward at the smoke rising through the thatch, weaving like a serpent around the thin shafts of light that descended from above.
“And did they?”
“Well, they sure beat me, I’ll give them that. I didn’t think they were phony. They were extremely sincere about whipping boys. I thought they were nuts, all that God bullshit, and I wouldn’t do it—I mean pray or pretend to believe in it—and I got beat, and I still wouldn’t, and basically I lasted about a month and I just took off. I broke into the school office and stole all the cash that the students had on deposit for pocket money and like that, a couple of hundred bucks, I guess, and then I hitched south. I got to Florida, got a job in a restaurant in Orlando, slept in a crash pad with a bunch of other runaways. It was a nice time, really, and then I got picked up and the cops sent me back to Dad.”
“He must’ve been pissed.”
“Not really. He’d sort of written me off. He delegated his executive secretary to deal with me, Mrs. Tatum. Actually, she was the only person I can recall who took me seriously when I was a kid, I mean as someone who had a mind of his own.”
“What about your mom?”
“Oh, the lovely Clarissa? After I ruined her figure, the lovely Clarissa took off and married an
“Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact. I got it on Fourth Avenue. It was something my mom and I used to do. There’re all these used bookstores on lower Fourth, and we used to take the subway up from Brooklyn. Starting when I was about six and up ’til, I don’t know, ’til I was too old to go out shopping with my mother, I guess. I picked it up, the paperback, because of the red cover and the title.”
“What did you think of it?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t figure out what the guy’s problem was. I mean, he went to prep school, so he must’ve been loaded, or his folks were, so what did he have to complain about? But the whole book is one long bitch about how phony everything is, how everything isn’t just right for wonderful what’s-his-name, Canfield—”
“Caulfield. Holden Caulfield.”
“Right. Why did you ask?”
“Because I’m what Holden Caulfield turned into.” He laughed then and shook his head. “You know, Marder, we’re probably the only two people in northern Laos capable of discussing The Catcher in the Rye. I might have to keep you alive after all.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. So you got kicked out of prep school?”
“Yep. I thought they were all phonies. You never thought your parents were fucked up?”
“No, I thought they were decent, honest people. I told you, my father’s a union guy, a printer. He’s proud of what he does; he thinks he’s preserving the printed word, the backbone of civilization, and then he always said the printers were the aristocrats of the labor movement, the vanguard. And my mom—I’d come home from school and there’d be this stranger, some old bum off the street, and she’d be feeding him soup. Ladies would come up to me at the grocery store, or wherever, and say, ‘Oh, your mother’s a saint.’ I didn’t think anything of it. And she was a reader too; she read to me for as long as I can remember, and she made sure the nuns didn’t mess with me. In our neighborhood, I’d walk down the street with the two of them, I’d be smiling, I was so glad they were my folks. So, no. The army is fucked up, the world may be fucked up, but not the Marders. Why did they kick you out?”
“I got liquored up and took a big crap on the school seal. They had it inlaid in marble in Byron Hall, the main building there at Vaughan Preparatory Academy. Then my father sent me to the Christian Brothers, where he’d gone to school, to see if they could, as he put it, beat some sense into me.” Skelly lit another cigarette and gazed upward at the smoke rising through the thatch, weaving like a serpent around the thin shafts of light that descended from above.
“And did they?”
“Well, they sure beat me, I’ll give them that. I didn’t think they were phony. They were extremely sincere about whipping boys. I thought they were nuts, all that God bullshit, and I wouldn’t do it—I mean pray or pretend to believe in it—and I got beat, and I still wouldn’t, and basically I lasted about a month and I just took off. I broke into the school office and stole all the cash that the students had on deposit for pocket money and like that, a couple of hundred bucks, I guess, and then I hitched south. I got to Florida, got a job in a restaurant in Orlando, slept in a crash pad with a bunch of other runaways. It was a nice time, really, and then I got picked up and the cops sent me back to Dad.”
“He must’ve been pissed.”
“Not really. He’d sort of written me off. He delegated his executive secretary to deal with me, Mrs. Tatum. Actually, she was the only person I can recall who took me seriously when I was a kid, I mean as someone who had a mind of his own.”
“What about your mom?”
“Oh, the lovely Clarissa? After I ruined her figure, the lovely Clarissa took off and married an
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