Russell Banks - Hamilton Stark

Alvin turned, releasing his mother’s shoulder, and caught the full force of his father’s rush. Falling backward, he broke his fall with one hand and tried to ward off his father’s punches with the other. The older man was swinging at him like a windmill gone berserk, hitting him on the head, face and shoulders, slamming him in the chest with his bony, naked knee, trying to keep him down on the floor while he beat him with his fists. Alvin reached behind him and knocked the cupboard door open, and with no conscious thought, or none that he would remember later, he reached into the cupboard, yanked out a large cast-iron skillet, and swung it at his father, hitting him squarely on the forehead. There was a thick, crunching sound, like that of an apple being broken in half by two strong hands, and the old man’s body went limp and collapsed on the floor.

Alvin, dazed, dropped the skillet, stood up, heard as if from a great distance his mother screaming, “Alvin! You’ve killed your father! You’ve killed him!” and he ran from the house, grabbing up his coat as he ran.

Outside, it was dark and snowing hard. The wind had dropped, and the snow was falling straight down, like a gauze curtain. For a few moments he ran, then walked — down the road to the town, then through the darkened town to the highway, where the first vehicle heading south, a truck, stopped and picked him up.

“Where you goin’?” the driver asked from behind the red glow of his cigarette. He was a fat man a few years older than Alvin.

“Boston. Tonight.”

“Okay by me. Your old lady kick you out or something?”

“Yeah,” Alvin said, instantly constructing a scene that would justify his words. “Yeah, I came home too late and too drunk once too often, I guess. And she flipped her fuckin’ lid. She’ll probably cool off in a few days if I leave her alone. You know.”

“Yeah, they always do,” the driver said cheerfully as the truck picked up speed, plowing heavily, powerfully, through the falling, drifting snow.

(Here ends the excerpt from the novel.)

AN ANONYMOUS CALL TO THE CHIEF of the two-man Barnstead Police Department, the large, barrel-chested, crew-cut man named Chub Blount, who happened to be Hamilton Stark’s brother-in-law, brought the chief, as he preferred to be called, out to Hamilton’s house early one morning in February. The call had come in to the chief’s home around one A.M., waking the burly man from his peaceful, nearly dreamless sleep. His wife Jody, Hamilton Stark’s sister, punched her husband’s side with one of her sharp elbows and woke him.

“Chub! Answer the phone!” she ordered crossly.

“Whut, whut, what?” His hand clumsily groped for the telephone in the darkness above his face. Then he realized that the instrument was beside him on the night table, and at last he stopped its shrill ringing by picking up the receiver. “Yeah?”

“Barnstead Police?” It was a man’s voice, hurried, thin, slightly overarticulated.

“Yeah. This’s the chief.”

“Good. There may have been a murder in your town. I thought you should know .”

“Whut the hell… Is this Howie? Who the hell is this?” The chief sat up in bed and looked into the mouthpiece in the dark, as if trying to see who was talking into it at the other end of the line.

“Who is it, Chub?” Jody impatiently snapped.

“Never mind who this is. I just thought you might like to know that Hamilton Stark may have been killed this afternoon. You ought to look into it, that’s all.”

“What kinda crap you handin’ me, pal? Hey, is this Howie? C’mon, Howie, is it you?”

“What on earth is going on, Chub? Is Howie drunk?”

“This is an anonymous phone call.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t believe you, pal. It’s Howie Leeke, I know your voice, Howie, and I don’t think it’s funny, I gotta get up in the fuckin’ morning and I don’t like getting pulled outa bed in the middle of the fuckin’ night to play games with a drunk.”

“No, seriously, this is an anonymous phone call.”

“Hang up, Chub.”

“Howie, look, whaddaya doin’, pullin’ my chain like this in the middle of the fuckin’ night?”

“You don’t seem to understand. I’m anonymous. I’m not Howie Leeke or anybody else, either. I’m anonymous.”

“Chub, hang up on him.”

“Bullshit you’re anonymous. It’s Howie.”

“No, really. I’m dead serious. I think Hamilton Stark has been murdered.”

“Chub, will you hang that thing up!”

“Hey, Howie, ol’ pal, where’re you calling from? You calling me from a bar? You over the Bonnie Aire?”

“Why? Why do you want to know that? I’m anonymous.”

“Jesus, Chub, it’s one in the morning!”

“Shaddup, Jody. Howie…”

“Seriously, why do you want to know where I am? Are you going to try to trace the call? Go ahead, I’m calling from a public booth. It’s only a waste of your time, though, because I’m calling to give you an important message about Howie, I mean Hamilton Stark…”

“Yeah, sure. Now listen up, Howie, whyn’t you tell me where’s that booth you’re callin’ from, you know, so’s I can come on over an’ have a drink with ya.” Covering the mouth-piece with his hand, he said to his wife, “I’ll get the bastard to tell me where he’s calling from, see, and I’ll send Calvin down there to pick him up for Drunk and Disorderly or Driving while Intoxicated. Teach that gabby bastard a lesson…”

“Listen here, now, this really is an important message. I think you ought to drive out to Hamilton Stork’s place and look for him.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s all I got to do is drive around lookin’ for that silly asshole. Now, c’mon, Howie, where ya callin’ from?

I’ll come on down an’ having a drink with ya. How’s that?”

“I’m not Howie Leeke. I’m trying to remain anonymous, and you’re not making it very easy for me, Mr. Blount.”

“Okay, Howie, ol’ pal, thanks for the tip about Ham,” he drawled, reluctantly giving up the attempt to entrap his friend. “But one of these fine nights I’m goin’ to catch you drivin’ drunk or D and D, ol’ buddy, and when I do, I’m goin’ to hang your fuckin’ ass from a fuckin’ tree.”

“No—”

The chief cut him off and hung up the phone. He flopped down into the warmth of his bed, bumping against his wife’s bony knees and elbow as he squirmed back into the gully he had been sleeping in earlier, and quickly, with no further words, the two of them fell asleep.

But the next morning after breakfast the chief remembered the call, and saying to himself, What the hell, I haven’t got anything better to do, he decided to drive out to his brother-in-law’s house. He hadn’t seen the man in several months, so they’d probably be able to think of things to say to each other, and what if the bastard had been murdered? It wouldn’t be a shock to anyone — there were plenty of people in the world, hell, in the whole state of New Hampshire, who would be happy to see Hamilton Stark dead. Hung up on a tree with flies clotted around his mouth and eyes. Down a well, green in three feet of water, his body swollen like a jelly doughnut and held there with concrete blocks. Tied to a tree, with KILL THE PIG carved into his chest, his boots filled and overflowing with the blood from the carving job they’d done on him.