Russell Banks - The Reserve

Kendall turned to his staff and ordered them to catch those damned dogs, and a pair of busboys and a waiter obeyed, jogging across the lawn and onto the golf course. Then, a moment later, Jordan’s sons came over the rise, each boy leading a dog by its collar, with the three club employees and the golfers’ caddies trooping along behind. The boys led the dogs to the car, opened the door on the far side and put them into it, and got in themselves.

Jordan, still standing a few feet from the manager, put a feeble smile on his face and tried to appear amused by the whole thing. But he was not amused. He was very angry. He could not quite say yet what had angered him, however. Not Vanessa, certainly. And not the dogs. And not even Kendall, who was only doing his job, enforcing the rules of the Reserve.

“If you don’t leave the grounds at once,” Kendall said to Jordan, “I’ll have you physically restrained. I’ll have you arrested.”

“For what? I’m not doing anything illegal.”

“For trespassing!”

Jordan leaned in on him. “I’m not sure you can have me physically restrained. Not you, certainly, and not these fellows here, whom I know. These men are friends of mine. But for the sake of argument, let’s say you somehow manage to have me restrained. Then you’d be holding me against my will, and I’d hardly be guilty of trespassing. No, I’ll leave in my own good time.”

Kendall turned to the waiters and the groundsman, who stood a few feet behind him, listening. They were unsure about what was expected of them. They were only waiters and a groundsman, after all, not security officers or bouncers. “Put him in his car,” Kendall ordered. “I’m going inside to call the sheriff.” He turned and stalked up the wide veranda steps and disappeared into the clubhouse, leaving four men and a teenage boy to face Jordan Groves, who gave no sign of moving.

The groundsman, Murray Bigelow, said, “Prob’ly oughta do like he says, Groves. We got nothing against you, but…” He shrugged helplessly and shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away, as if embarrassed. Bigelow was a ruddy, ex-lumberjack in his fifties who had worked all his life for the Brown Paper Company. Three years ago the company had sold most of its eastern Adirondack holdings to the Reserve, and Bigelow had come in from the woods and gone to work for the Club.

“When Kendall goes off like that, he makes it hell for the rest of us, Jordan,” a second man, Buddy Eastman, said. He was one of the waiters and had once been a plumber and five years ago had helped the artist put in his well. “Do us a favor and go home.”

“Fellows, there’s no way I’m going to let Kendall or anyone else talk to me that way.”

“That’s just how he is,” Eastman said. “He talks to everyone that way.”

“I doubt it,” the artist said. “Look, if out of ignorance I broke one of his Club rules by landing my plane on his goddamn lake water, or my dogs got loose and ran across his goddamn golf course, then I’ll say sorry and pay the fine or whatever. But that’s it. It doesn’t give him the right to talk to me like I’m a bum and put me off the place. You agree with that?”

“Yeah, I suppose I do. But, hell, Jordan, give us a break here,” Eastman said.

The artist leaned back against the fender of his car and folded his arms across his chest. A number of members and guests had gathered on the veranda to watch, and more were coming from the dining room and from the tennis courts as word of the quarrel spread.

Inside the car, Bear moved close to the open window and said, “Papa, can we go now?”

“In a few minutes. I’ve got to settle something first.”

“Please, Papa?”

“In a few minutes, I said.”

Kendall came back out of the clubhouse and stood glowering at the top of the steps. “You men!” he called to them. “I told you men to put him in his car!”

Murray Bigelow stepped close to the artist and in a lowered voice said, “Look, Groves, this is getting complicated. Make it easier on all of us by just letting it go. It ain’t worth it, fighting with Kendall. Let it go. Believe me, we know what he’s like when he’s crossed.”

“I’m not afraid of crossing him,” Jordan said.

“You don’t work for him,” the groundsman said.

“C’mon, Jordan,” Eastman said, and he took the artist’s arm. The artist shoved the man’s hand away and gave him a hard look. The others came forward then and surrounded Jordan Groves — Murray Bigelow and Rob Whitney, another of the waiters, a man Jordan’s age who had lost his dairy farm to the bank, and Carl James, a onetime traveling salesman, soft and pink and in his early sixties, and the teenage boy, Kenny Shay, the skinny blond son of the storekeeper Darby Shay. By their squared, open stance and their hands held loosely at their sides they made it clear that they weren’t physically threatening the artist so much as trying merely to herd him peacefully into his car.

Jordan Groves looked from one to the other and said, “Don’t do this, fellows.”

From the veranda Russell Kendall shouted, “I can’t reach the sheriff, so you’ll have to put him off the property!”

Carl James turned and said, “That’s not really our job, Mr. Kendall.”

“If you want a job, you’ll do what I tell you!”

“Be reasonable, Jordan,” Buddy Eastman said. “You ain’t helping anybody this way. We got no choice but to do what he says.”

The artist looked from one to the other — the three waiters, the groundsman, and the teenage boy — and slowly shook his head. “Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to do what he says. If you’re able.”

Buddy Eastman grabbed Jordan by his left wrist and pulled him forward and threw an arm around his neck, and Murray Bigelow and the others jumped in. They wrestled Jordan around to the front of the car, cursing at him, while he cursed back and struggled to get free. He managed a sharp head butt across Bigelow’s face, sending him staggering backward, blood spurting from his nostrils, and he disabled Rob Whitney by kneeing him hard in the groin. Whitney grabbed his crotch, let out a howl of pain, and sat on the ground like a sack of potatoes. The teenage boy, Kenny Shay, let go of Jordan and quickly danced away. Fighting with a very large, very angry grown man was not something the boy was ready for.

That left Buddy Eastman and the remaining waiter, Carl James, to handle Jordan Groves alone, and they were not up to it. The artist got one arm free of Carl James’s grip and shoved the man off him. He threw two quick punches that landed on James’s ear and throat, and the man, nearly falling, backed away, dropped his hands to his sides, and watched from a safe distance. Taller and heavier than his remaining opponent, the artist swung Buddy Eastman around and got his other arm free. He moved into a trained boxer’s stance and said, “I’ll take you apart, Buddy, if I have to!”

Eastman put up his fists for a second, glared at Jordan Groves, then lowered his hands and said, “Groves, for Christ’s sake, get some sense! Go home!”

Both men were panting and red faced. Slowly the artist brought his fists down. He walked around the front of his car and opened the driver’s door. For a few seconds he stood there and looked across the broad, mint green lawn to the clubhouse veranda, crowded now with gaping spectators, and he saw what a foolish, harmful thing he had done to these men, four men and a boy who were his neighbors and whom he regarded as friends. What kind of man was he? A common brawler? Fighting with men who were his friends and neighbors in front of his sons. It was a shameful thing to have done. He blamed the woman, Vanessa Von Heidenstamm, for it. It was her fault. He blamed what she had said to him and what she thought she knew about him. Most of all he blamed her because she had turned her back on him. That was what had made him act this way.