Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

He talked funny, fast and like he had already thought out ahead of time what he wanted to say, the way city people or maybe just lawyers do, but I liked it, because once you trust a person like that, you can have a real good conversation with him. You can concentrate on what the words mean and not have to worry all the time about what the other person is thinking.

“Well, Nichole,” he began, “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time now, and not just because I’ve heard so many good things about you all over town, but because, as you know, I’m the guy representing you and your mom and dad and some other folks here in town,” he said, diving right in. “We’re trying to generate some compensation, however meager, for what you all have suffered and at the same time see that an accident like this one never happens again. And you, Nichole Burnell, you’re pretty near central to the case I’m trying to build,” he said. “But you would probably just as soon let the whole thing lie, I’ll bet, so you can get on with your life as quickly and smoothly as possible, right?”

I said yes, as a matter of fact I would. He waited for me to go on, so I did. I said that I didn’t like thinking about the accident, which I couldn’t remember anyhow, and I really hated talking with people about it, because I didn’t even know what the accident meant, and since it was obvious to me that anyone who wasn’t there couldn’t possibly know what it meant, why bother at all? Besides, I said, it just made people feel sorry for me, and I hated that.

From his perch by the door, Daddy said, “What she means, Mitch—” and Mr. Stephens shushed him with a wave of his hand.

“Why do you hate it when people feel sorry for you?” he asked me. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

Mom jumped up from the couch and said, “I’ll get an ashtray, Mr. Stephens. I’m sorry, we don’t smoke, and I just didn’t think—”

“Actually, I mind,” I said. If I wasn’t allowed to smoke in this Christian house, why should he? And it was me he had asked, not her.

“No problem,” Mr. Stephens said, and he smiled broadly at me, like he was a teacher and I’d just aced a test, and said to Mom, “Please, Mary, that’s fine. No ashtray. I can wait.” Then to me, “Go ahead, Nichole, tell me why you hate it when people feel sorry for you. Because they can’t help it, you know. They really can’t. When they see you in this wheelchair, especially if they know what your life was like just six months ago, people are going to feel sorry for you. No way around it. I’ll be honest: we just met, and already I admire you — who wouldn’t? You’re a brave tough smart kid, and that’s obvious right away. And I didn’t know you or know how exciting and promising your life was before the accident. But listen, even I feel sorry for you. Do you hate that?”

Yes, I said, certainly I did, because all it did was remind me that I wasn’t normal anymore. “You can feel lucky that you didn’t die for only so long,” I said. “And then you start to feel unlucky.”

“That you didn’t die, you mean. Like the other children.”

“Yes!” I said. “Like Bear and the Ansel twins and Sean and all the other kids on the bus who died out there that morning!”

“Nichole!” Mom said.

“It’s the truth !” I said.

“It is the truth,” Mr. Stephens said in a calm sure voice, like he was correcting her on what time it was, and I knew that he understood what I was feeling and Mom didn’t have the foggiest. I think Daddy understood, but he couldn’t say it, not to me. I wouldn’t let him.

“It would be strange,” Mr. Stephens said to me, “if you didn’t feel that way about the other kids.”

Then he got me talking about last year at school, how I had tried out for cheerleading in the seventh grade and had made the team easily, which is unusual for a seventh grader, and how last fall I was captain, and that’s a big deal in Sam Dent, because the boys’ football and basketball teams are so important to the town. I was Queen of the Harvest Ball too, and I went with Bucky Waters, the captain of the football team, even though he wasn’t my boyfriend.

I never actually had a boyfriend, no one steady, I told Mr. Stephens, but Bucky was okay to go to the dance with, because he was sort of famous at school as a playboy who wouldn’t go steady with anybody, and I was famous for being churchy and stuck-up, or so some kids thought. Bucky was chosen King of the Harvest Ball, naturally, and for a while everybody thought we were a couple, but we knew we weren’t. I didn’t say this to Mr. Stephens, but after the dance, Bucky tried really hard to make out with me at Jody Plante’s party, and I wouldn’t let him, so he got mad and went off with some of the other football players to drink beer in Gilbert Jacques’s older brother’s car, I heard later.

We stayed friends, though, Bucky and I, and let people think what they wanted. It suited him that kids thought I was his girlfriend, at least during football and basketball season, and it suited me too, because then no one else bothered me, since he was such a big shot and all. Boys are so immature, I said to Mr. Stephens. At least the boys in Sam Dent are.

“Have you seen Bucky since the accident?” Mr. Stephens asked. Mom was in the kitchen making tea, and Daddy had left the room to go to the bathroom, I think.

“No.”

“Not once?”

“Nope.”

“What about the other kids, your girlfriends?”

“I saw them some at the hospital. But not lately,” I said.

“No one?”

I knew I was going to cry and sound stupid if we didn’t change the subject, so I said, “Tell me what I have to do for the lawsuit.”

That got him talking about depositions and lawyers for the state and the town, and by the time Daddy came back from the bathroom and Mom came in with her tea and cookies, which I knew she’d already eaten a bunch of in the kitchen, Mr. Stephens was going on about how tough it would be for me to answer some of the questions those other lawyers would ask. “They work for the people we’re trying to sue, you understand, and their job is to try to minimize the damages. Our job, Nichole, is to try to maximize the damages,” he explained. “If you think of it that way, as people doing their jobs, no good guys and no bad guys, just our side and the other side, then it’ll go easier for you.”

No one was interested in the truth, was what he was saying. Because the truth was that it was an accident, that’s all, and no one was to blame. “I won’t lie,” I told him.

“Some of the questions will seem pretty personal to you, Nichole. I just want to warn you up front.”

“No matter what they ask me,” I said, “I’ll tell the truth,” and I looked straight at Daddy, who had taken a seat next to Mom on the sofa. He studied his tea when I said that, as if he had seen a fly in it. I knew what he was thinking, and he knew what I was thinking too.

“Fine, fine, I don’t want you to lie,” Mr. Stephens said. “I want you to be absolutely truthful. Absolutely. No matter what I or the other lawyers ask you. They’ll have a laundry list of questions, but I’ll be right there to advise and help you. And there’ll be a court stenographer there to make a record of it, and that’s what’ll go to the judge, before the trial is set. It’ll be the same for everybody. They’ll be deposing the Ottos and the Walkers, the bus driver, and even your mom and dad, but I’ll make sure you go last, Nichole, so you can keep on getting well before you have to go in and do this. It’ll all take place over the summer,” he said to Mom and Daddy. “And the trial will be set for sometime this fall, probably.”

“When do they award the damages?” Daddy asked, and he and Mom leaned forward for the answer.