Russell Banks - Outer Banks

Event #1: UPON arriving at my home in Northwood, I built a fire in the library and was about to fix myself a cognac and soda when the phone rang. It was A. His voice was sharp, harsh, annoyed with me, as if he had been trying to reach me for several hours.

I tried to explain that I had spent most of the day photographing jays and chickadees in the snow and had stopped by his house on the way home, but he interrupted me, barking that he didn’t give a damn where I’d been; he’d been arrested by his own brother-in-law, Chub Blount, and had been charged with the murder of Dora, his fifth wife. He told me that he’d been permitted one call, and he’d called me, and then, when I hadn’t answered the phone, he’d decided I was probably in on the arrest somehow, so now he was calling to let me know what he thought of that kind of betrayal.

I was shocked. I assured him that I was shocked. “I didn’t even know Dora was dead, for God’s sake! And you know what I think of your brother-in-law,” I reminded him. “If I had known that Dora was dead, murdered, I mean, and if for whatever reason I had thought you were responsible, you know I’d never have called Chub in. I probably would have called the state police, not that idiot,” I reassured him. “Assuming, of course, that I would’ve called anyone. I mean, what the hell, A., you know what I thought of Dora,” I said.

Apparently my words soothed him, as good sense inevitably did. Above all else, even in distress, A. was a reasonable man. In a calm voice now, he said that he wanted me to hire a lawyer for him.

“Did you do it? I mean, you know, kill her?” I asked. Perhaps he’d shot her with his 30.06 while she was sitting in his car — though I could not imagine any circumstance under which Dora might have ended up sitting in the driver’s seat of A.’s Chrysler while he stood outside with his rifle. But I did want those bullet holes explained.

For several uncomfortable seconds A. snarled at me, literally snarled, like a bobcat or cougar interrupted at a meal. Then he shouted that he hadn’t called me so he could confess to me, and he hadn’t called to protest innocently that he was being framed by his brother-in-law. He’d called, first, to tell me what he thought of me if I had been a party to his arrest, and then to instruct me to hire a lawyer for him. Not a shyster, a lawyer, he bellowed. He figured it was a job that fitted my natural and acquired skills rather well. (A.’s sarcasm rarely failed to make a point, though often an obscure one.) As to whether or not he had in fact murdered his ex-wife, A. told me that if the lawyer I hired was able to convince a jury that he didn’t do it, that would be the truth. If he failed, that would be the truth too, A. explained. That was why he wanted the best lawyer in the state of New Hampshire, he shouted. Did I understand?

“Yes, I understand. How do you think it happened, though? I mean, how do you think Dora was killed? How does Chub, the police, explain those bullet holes in the Chrysler?”

A. uttered a low, sneaky-sounding giggle, almost a cackle, except that he was genuinely amused. He was intrigued, he said, by my knowledge of those holes. Until now, until I had asked about them, he himself had wondered who killed Dora. But now … and his voice drifted back into that low, sneaky giggle.

“Now, look, A., you don’t think that I …”

He assured me that he thought nothing of the kind. Besides, he pointed out, it didn’t matter what he thought, who he thought had killed her. All that mattered to him was getting his case presented to a jury by the best damned lawyer in New Hampshire, and if I could find him the best damned lawyer in New Hampshire, he’d forget all about my knowledge of the three bullet holes in the Chrysler.

I agreed to the terms. I had no choice. But who could such a marvelous attorney be? I wondered. In a backward state like New Hampshire, how could there be a barrister sufficiently gifted to create the kind of awful truth A. had defined? The task of locating and hiring such a person frightened me. I am an ordinary man. I felt alone, young, inadequate.

Event #2: I departed from A.’s house, driving carefully along the rutted, rock-snared path to the main road, where I turned left, and in a moment I was beyond A.’s property and was passing the battered house trailers, tarpaper-covered shanties, and those all but deserted farmhouses. Then there was a stretch of road where for about a half-mile there were no dwellings and the dark spruce and Scotch pine woods came scruffily up to the edge of the road, darkening it, creating the effect of a shaggy tunnel or a narrow pass through a range of craggy mountains. As I entered this stretch of road, I saw a young woman standing by the side and was about to pass her when I realized who she was and what she was carrying in her arms.

It was Rochelle, A.’s twenty-six-year-old daughter, his only child and at that the child of his own late childhood. A lovely red-haired girl with long thin arms and legs, dressed in a forest green wool parka, hatless, with the hood laid back beneath her dark, tumbling, red river of hair — she was a startling figure to behold, especially when she was the last person in the world one expected to see out here, and even more especially when one realized that she was carrying a rifle, which, because of the telescopic sight attached to it, I instantly recognized as A.’s own Winchester 30.06. She had the rifle cradled under her right arm and across the front of her flat belly, with her left hand gripping the bolt as if she had just fired off a round, or was about to. She seemed distraught, shaking, green eyes darting wildly, roughly, and in the direction of the woods on the left side of the road. She did not seem to notice my car as I slowed, crossed over, and stopped beside her.

Leaning out the open window so she could recognize me, I cried, “ Rochelle! What’s the matter? What are you doing out here?”

“I’ll kill him!” she screamed into the woods, as if I were located in that darkness rather than behind her in my car. “I’ll kill the bastard! I’ll kill him!”

“Where is he?”

“In there someplace,” she said in a hoarse voice, as if she had been screaming for hours and had exhausted all her vocal resources but the roar. All she had left was her maximum effort; anything less collapsed of its own weight. “I know he’s in there,” she croaked, motioning toward the woods with the tip of the barrel. “I think I hit him once, maybe twice, at the house when he drove up. When I chased him down here, I could see he was bleeding, his face was bleeding, all over his lousy face, the bastard!”

Her own face was gathered up like a fist, her green eyes agate-hard. Her fine, even teeth were clenched, and the muscles of her long jaw worked ferociously in and out. Her delicately freckled hands had turned chalk white from the force of her grip on the rifle.

Though she had acknowledged my question by shouting her answer into the woods, she had not acknowledged my presence yet and continued to stare searchingly into the tangled darkness. With extreme care, moving slowly yet smoothly and, I hoped, gently, I got out of my car. She seemed not to notice so I took a single step toward her; then she wheeled about on her heels and swung the gun up, slapped the butt against her right shoulder, and pointed the tip at my heart. She sighted down the barrel with care, focusing the telescope with her left hand as if she were tuning in a distant radio station.

“ Don’t! ” she ordered.

I froze, one foot held delicately off the ground, both hands palm down and off to my sides, as if quieting an orchestra. “Rochelle,” I said in a calm voice, “give me the gun. C’mon, honey, let me have the gun now, you don’t want to kill your dad. I know you’re mad at him, I know he’s upset you, but you don’t want to kill him for it, now do you, honey? C’mon, honey, let your ol’ buddy have the gun, then we can sit down and talk about it.” I had slowly let my foot descend to the ground and had taken a second step.