The Drop by Dennis Lehane Read Free Book Online Page B

when little Marv was in them, even in their basements, he felt closer to the sky. Closer to Heaven, closer to God or any of the angels or other spirits that floated along the fringes of old paintings. Marv remembered having his first adult suspicion as a choirboy—that feeling closer to God had something to do with feeling closer to knowledge.
    And then they kicked him out of the choir.
    Another boy, Chad Benson—Marv would never forget that fucking name, either—claimed he saw Marv steal a Baby Ruth from Donald Samuel’s schoolbag in the coat closet. Claimed it in front of the rest of the choir while the choirmaster and the instructors were all taking a piss break downstairs. Chad said they all knew Marv was poor but next time he wanted to eat just ask them and they’d give him charity. Marv told Chad Benson he was full of shit. Chad mocked Marv for sputtering and turning red. Then Chad called Marv a welfare case, asked if he’d got his clothes at the Bargain Basement in Quincy, and whether his whole family shopped there or just Marv and his mother. Marv punched Chad Benson in the face so hard the crack of it echoed through the sanctuary. When Chad hit the floor, Marv climbed on top of him, grabbed a hunk of his hair, and punched him twice more. It was the third punch that detached Chad’s retina. Not that the injury, serious as it was, mattered in the grand scheme of things—Marv was done the moment he took his first swing at the prick. The Chad Bensons of the world, he learned that day, were never to be hit. They weren’t even to be questioned. Not by the Marvin Stiplers of this life anyway.
    In the process of kicking him out, Ted Bing, the choirmaster, delivered a further blow when he told Marv that according to his expert ear, Marv’s voice would peak at the age of nine.
    Marv was eight.
    They didn’t even let him take the bus home with the rest of the choir. Just gave him carfare, and he hopped the Red Line down under the city and back to East Buckingham. He waited until he was walking from the station back to his house before he ate Donald Samuel’s Baby Ruth bar. It was the best meal, before or since, he’d ever tasted. It wasn’t just the chocolate, slightly melted, but the rich buttery tang of self-pity that engaged every one of his taste buds and caressed his heart. To feel righteously enraged and tragically victimized at the same time was, Marv would very rarely admit to himself, better than any orgasm in the history of fucking.
    Happiness made Marv anxious because he knew it didn’t last. But happiness destroyed was worth wrapping your arms around because it always hugged you back.
    His voice cracked at nine just as Ted Fucking Bing had said it would. No more singing in choirs for Marv. For the rest of his life Marv avoided downtown whenever possible. Those old buildings, once his gods, became heartless mirrors. He could see, reflected in them, all the versions of himself he’d never become.
    After Chovka visited with his Gitmo-on-Wheels and his prick eyes and prick attitude, Marv had shoveled up the rest of the walk, bad knee and all, Bob just fucking watching the whole time, probably daydreaming about that dog he’d become so obsessed with you could barely talk to him anymore. They’d gone inside and, sure enough, Bob had started babbling about the dog again. Marv hadn’t let on how boring it was because, truth be told, it was good to see Bob get excited about anything.
    Bob’s short stick in life wasn’t just that he was raised by two old, homely parents with few friends and no connections. His true short stick was that those parents had babied him, smothered him so completely in a desperate love (connected, Marv suspected, to their own imminent passage from the land of the living), that Bob never learned how to fully survive in a man’s world. Bob, it would surprise many who knew him now, could be pretty fearsome if you tripped the wrong switch in that slow brain of his, but there was