Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

Doreen was a Pomeroy from Lake Placid, a sweet little ding-a-ling of a girl, and she fell for Kyle and before she knew it was pregnant and situated in a trailer up on McNeil Road on a woodlot Kyle’s father had once owned, with Kyle coming home later and later every night from the Spread Eagle or the Rendez-Vous, drunk and feeling trapped by life and blaming her, no doubt, for that, and taking it out on her.

Now he was in his thirties and already gone to fat, and after half a dozen DWI convictions, permanently without a driver’s license, making it difficult for him to get off that hill and go to work, of course. What little money Kyle did earn housepainting, he spent most of it on booze at the Spread or the Rendez-Vous. Food stamps, welfare, and local and church charity kept them more or less fed, clothed, and sheltered, but the Lamstons were a family that, after a good start, had come to be characterized by permanent overall failure, and people generally shunned them for it. In return, they withheld themselves. It was their only point of pride, I suppose. Which is why the children behaved so sadly aloof, even to me. And who could begrudge them?

“Harold!” I said. “You hear me ask you a question?” I turned around and cut him a look.

“Leave us alone!” he said, coming right back at me with those cold blue eyes of his. His brother, Jesse, sat by the window, looking out as if he could see into the dark.

Harold was trying to wipe his baby sister’s red face with the end of his scarf. She had been crying in that silent way of a very sad and frightened person, and I suddenly felt terrible and wished I had kept my big mouth shut.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice, and turned back to my driving.

From the Lamstons’ stop at McNeil and Avalanche, the route ran west along the ridge into the dark, with the black heights of Big and Little Hawk on your right and the valley and town of Sam Dent on your left, out to the crest of the hill, where I picked up a kid I actually liked personally a whole lot and was always pleased to see. Bear Otto. He was an energetic, oversized, eleven-year-old Abenaki Indian boy adopted by Hartley and Wanda Otto. For years they had tried and failed to conceive a child of their own, until finally they gave up and somehow found Bear in an orphanage over in Vermont, and I guess because Hartley was quarter Indian himself, a Western-type Indian, Shawnee or Sioux or something, they were able to adopt him right off. Now, three years later — which is how it often happens, as if the arrival of an adopted child somehow loosens up the new parents — Wanda was suddenly pregnant.

Bear was ready and waiting for me, and the second I swung open the door he jumped straight into the bus from the ground, as if he had been planning it, and grinned in triumph and held out the flat of his hand for a high five, like a black kid from the city. I slapped it, and he said, “Yo, Dolores!” and bounced back down the aisle and sat in the middle of the last seat with his legs stretched out, raiding his lunchbox and waiting for the other boys. He had a round burnt-orange baby face with a perpetual peaceful smile on it, as if someone had just told him a terrific joke and he was telling it over again to himself. His hair, which was straight and coal black and long in back, hung in bangs across his broad forehead. Bear was supposed to be only eleven, but because of his size he looked thirteen or fourteen. A stocky boy, but not fat, he was built like one of those sumo wrestlers. Numerous times, in the quick bristly quarrels that boys like to get into, I had seen him play the calm, good-natured peacemaker, and I admired him and imagined that he would turn into a wonderful man. He was one of those rare children who bring out the best in people instead of the worst.

The Ottos were what you might call hippies, if you considered only their hair and clothing, mannerisms, politics, house, et cetera — their general life-style, let us say, which was extreme and somewhat innovative. But in fact they were model citizens. Regular at the town meetings, where they offered sound opinions in a respectful way, and members of the voluntary fire brigade. They even took the CPR training and the emergency first aid courses offered at the school, and they always helped out at the various fund-raising bazaars and carnivals in town, although they were not themselves churchgoers. They both were tall and thin and moved and talked slowly. Vegetarians, they were.

Hartley, who was a furniture-maker for a company up in Keeseville, had a thick, unkempt beard and wore his hair in a long ponytail, which to me was a little pathetic-looking, now that he was turning gray. Wanda, who made pots with sticks and straw stuck into holes in the clay and baskets with tubes of clay in the straw — very original items, which she sold at fairs around the state — wore old-fashioned spectacles and had hair like that woman Morticia, the mother on The Addams Family TV show. Their house was a dome, half buried in the side of Little Hawk. They had built it themselves, a peculiar-looking structure, although people who have been inside tell me it is quite large and comfortable, if dark. Like the inside of an army field tent, I’m told. The Ottos had a special interest in protecting the environment, as you might expect, and were from someplace downstate and I believe were college educated. There were persistent rumors that they grew and smoked marijuana, which, as far as I’m concerned, was their business, since nobody else got hurt by it.

I keep saying “was,” as if they are no longer with us, like the Lamstons, who have moved to Plattsburgh. But in fact the Ottos are still here in Sam Dent, living in their dome, Hartley making his Adirondack porch chairs up in Keeseville and Wanda her straw pots and clay baskets at home. She has delivered her baby safely, thank God, a healthy little boy (whose name I don’t know, since I don’t see them much anymore and don’t keep track of those things as much as I used to). But I’m telling about life in Sam Dent before the accident, and so much has changed since then that it’s difficult for me to describe people or things concerned with the accident, except in terms that put them into the past.

Beyond the Ottos’ and over the crest of Bartlett Hill, the road drops fairly fast, and I made three stops in short order, so I barely got the bus out of first gear before having to hit the brakes and pull over again. These were the Hamilton kids, the Prescotts, and the Walkers, seven in all, little kids, first, second, and third graders, mostly, the children of young couples living in small houses that they built piecemeal themselves on lots cut out of a tract of land that had once belonged to my father and grandfather.

The acreage, along with the old family house and barn, passed to me and Abbott when my dad died back in 1974 (my ma died early, when I was nineteen), and then in ‘84, when Abbott had his stroke, we sold off most of the uphill land that fronted on the road. Sold too cheaply, it turned out, as it was a few years too soon to take advantage of what they call the second-home land boom. But we needed the money right then and there, for Abbott’s hospital bills and so on, since his insurance had run out so fast, and those young couples needed land to build their homes to raise their children in.

I’ve never especially regretted it. I’d rather watch the little tatty Capes and ranches of local folks, people I’ve known since they were children themselves, going up on that land than the high-tech summer houses and A-frame ski lodges with decks and hot tubs and so on built by rich yuppies from New York City who don’t give a damn for this town or the people in it.

I’ve got nothing against outsiders per se, you understand. It’s just that you have to love a town before you can live in it right, and you have to live in it before you can love it right. Otherwise, you’re a parasite of sorts. I know that the tourists, the summer people, bring a load of seasonal cash to town, but as Abbott likes to say, “Short … term … profits … make … long … term … losses.” Which is true about a lot of things.