Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

I sat at the kitchen table opposite him, while Dolores took what appeared to be her customary position behind his wheelchair, where she rubbed his shoulders affectionately and now and then stroked his hair back.

It was a brief interview, mainly because I did a lot more talking myself than I normally do. I was still distracted by the business with Zoe. Essentially, I repeated what I had told Dolores outside the church, but said it at least three times, with a slight variation each time, as if I was cross-examining myself. I felt slightly out of control.

Abbott mostly gargled and sputtered, interrupting me occasionally with stuff like “Blame … creates … gabble-gabble … ” and “Cluck-cluck-cluck … lives … longer … than … spe-lunk.” Which Dolores, with modest downcast eyes and a small knowing smile, translated as “Blame creates comprehension” and “A person’s name lives longer than her lifetime.”

Yeah, sure, Dolores. Whatever you say. I merely nodded and continued talking, as if he’d said something I totally agreed with or had asked me to repeat myself. Yackety-yak: out of sync, out of character. Finally, I reached the end of my spiel one more time, and because this time he said nothing, no mysterious oracular pronouncements, just a drooling silence, I was able to stop, and for a few seconds all three of us were silent and apparently thoughtful.

There was a crackling fire in the kitchen wood stove, but that was the only sound. The house was warm and weathertight and smelled good, like baked bread. Most of the furniture was either homemade or yard sale stuff, twenty and thirty years old, repaired over and over with string, wire, and glue, but still sturdy, still serviceable. I waited. I wanted a cigarette, but it didn’t look as if either of them smoked, especially him, so I just patted the pack in my shirt pocket for comfort.

Then Abbott spoke. He twisted his face around his mouth the best he could and pursed his lips on the left side as though he were sucking a straw and in a loud voice said something like “A down … gloobity-gear … and day old’ll … find you … innocent … if a brudder … lands … gloobity first….”

And so on and so forth. I was guessing, but it sounded like the old guy was ready for action. All I could read was his face, however, which was bright and open and smiling as he talked, not angry and vengeful, the way I like it. It was the longest speech he’d made so far, but to tell the truth, I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what words, or even what language, he’d used for making it. Serbo-Croatian, maybe.

Dolores knew, though. She smiled and said to me, “You heard what Abbott said?”

“Yes, I heard. Can you make it exact for me, though? I think I missed some of it. You know, a word or two.”

“Certainly. Glad to. What Abbott said was: The true jury of a person’s peers is the people of her town. Only they, the people who have known her all her life, and not twelve strangers, can decide her guilt or innocence. And if Dolores — meaning me, of course — if she has committed a crime, then it’s a crime against them, not the state, so they are the ones who must decide her punishment too. What Abbott is saying, Mr. Stephens, is forget the lawsuit. That’s what he’s saying.”

“He is?”

“Yep.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yep. I told you he was logical,” she declared. “He understands things better than most people. He understands me too.”

“That right?”

“Oh, yes. Abbott’s a genius.”

A genius, eh? A gibbering fool, is what I thought. From what I could see and hear, Dolores was the ventriloquist and Abbott was the dummy. And you can’t argue with the ventriloquist about what the dummy really said.

I got up from my chair, lit a cigarette, said my goodbyes, and I was gone. Not without a certain relief. It surprised me; I don’t usually give up that easily. I guess I had my reasons: the Driscolls were too weird to bring into a negligence suit, but they were also too weird to sue, which did not displease me.

The guy Abbott Driscoll, though, he gave me the creeps. Whatever his wife claimed he said or meant to say, I was sure he knew things that neither of us knew and was just playing cat-and-mouse with us, using his affliction to make us say and do things we might not otherwise say or do, so that we would end up showing him who we really were. Which might have been okay for her — presumably, she wanted him to know who she really was, but I didn’t. The guy would’ve made a hell of a lawyer if he could talk straight.

Well, you win some and you lose some, I said to myself. And this one was probably better off lost early than late. Down the hill and over to the west end of town I went, back to the Bide-a-Wile to pack. Halfway down the hill, I passed by the little handmade house in the pines where I’d been told Nichole Burnell lived with her mommy and daddy and two younger brothers and baby sister, and I thought for a second of stopping off there, just to put a scanner on the parents. But I was in a hurry to get back to the city now, and it was getting late in the day, so I let it go. I was sure I’d be back in a few days and could check them out then. The kid was going to be in the hospital for a long time anyhow. Apparently she was out of immediate danger, but they weren’t allowing her any visitors yet, so I wasn’t worried about the competition.

I pulled into the motel lot, and when I passed through the front office on my way to my room, Wendell stopped me.

“Phone message, Mitch,” he said, and he handed me a pink slip of paper. “Came in a few minutes ago.”

I remember it took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t reading my secretary’s name and number. It was Zoe, which Wendell had spelled Zooey, and there was a New York number, with the instruction to call back right away. Okay. Will do. I was on automatic pilot now. I knew she’d gone out and managed somehow to get high, swapping services for goods, no doubt, and, thus fortified, was ready to resume the enterprise she had begun earlier.

I went back to my room, sat down on the bed, and dialed. The phone rang only once, and she answered, apparently waiting beside it.

“H’lo?”

“Zoe? That you?”

“Oh, Dad, hi. Hey, listen, I’m sorry about this morning, I was really bumming, and this damn phone is all fucked up …,” blah blah blah, in a soft, accommodating voice that was all surface, a lid of sweetness and light over a caldron of rage and need.

I waited out the preliminaries, responding feebly but with caution, and in a few minutes we got around to the main event, as I knew we would, brought on by my asking a simple question, just as before. “Are you calling me for money, Zoe?” I asked.

She inhaled deeply, held her breath for a few seconds, then sighed. Real Sarah Bernhardt. “I’m calling,” she said, “because I have some news for you. Daddy, I’ve got some big news for you.”

“News,” I said, suddenly fatigued beyond belief.

“You don’t want to hear it?” I heard the lid on the pot start to wobble and jump.

“Yes, sure. Give me your news, Zoe.”

“You always think you know what I’m going to say, don’t you? You always think you’re two steps ahead of me. The lawyer.”

“No, Zoe, I don’t always think that.”

“Well, this time I’m two steps ahead of you!”

“Tell me your news, Zoe.”

“Okay. Okay, then. You won’t want to hear this, but I’m gonna say it anyhow. Dig it. I went to sell blood yesterday. That’s how it is. I’m in fucking New York City, where my father is a hot shit lawyer, and I’m selling my blood for thirty-five bucks.”

“This is not news, Zoe.”

“No, but this is. They wouldn’t take my blood.” Long pause. “I tested HIV positive.”