Russell Banks - Continental Drift

It was still possible at the time this story takes place, the late 1970s, to grow up in America without having known a single black person well enough to learn his or her name, without having seen a black person, except on television or from a great distance, even when that person happened to be standing right next to you in line at the bank or in a cafeteria or on a bus. Bob Dubois and his wife Elaine grew up that way. But now, suddenly, as they near Oleander Park, Florida, their new home, after having sold their house in New Hampshire, after Bob’s having quit his job, after having sold everything they could sell, even Bob’s beloved Boston whaler, after having said and waved goodbye forever to everything familiar, known, understood, they come up against and are forced to see many people of color, more of them, or so it seems, than there are white people. They see them working in gangs in the orange groves, riding in the backs of trucks, mowing lawns, striding along the highways and sidewalks, and though Bob and Elaine are safely removed from these people, protected from direct contact by their car and all their possessions and by each other, the people of color seem up close and inescapably real, as if they are suddenly banging on the windshield, yanking at the door handles, climbing over the roof and hood and shouting to one another, “Yo, man! Come on an’ check out the white folks!”

These black- and brown-skinned people, the American blacks in the department stores and supermarkets, the Jamaicans and Haitians in the fields, the Cubans in the filling stations — these working people, who got here first, belong here, not Bob and Elaine Dubois and their daughters Ruthie and Emma. It’s Bob and his family who are the newcomers at the Florida trough, and Bob is embarrassed by his lateness. He feels ugly in his winter-gray skin, ashamed of his wife’s plain looks and his children’s skinny arms and legs, he feels poor and ignorant in his noisy, dented station wagon and orange rented trailer with all their possessions jammed inside, the furniture and clothing they couldn’t or wouldn’t sell in their yard sale or through their classified ad in the Catamount Patriot . He feels embarrassed — that is, exposed, revealed to the world for what he is — and perhaps for the first time in his life, his entire body fills with fear.

Elaine looks quickly over at him and nervously, as if she has been reading his thoughts, says, “All those black people working in the fields and everything, they’re not really Americans, right?”

Bob says nothing, just keeps on driving.

She adds, “I’ve read they’re from Cuba and those kinds of places.”

For a moment they are silent. Then Bob says in a low voice, “Thank God for Eddie.”

“Yeah,” she says, reaching for the road map.

2

Elaine hates the way Eddie talks. “He has a foul mouth,” she says.

Bob, his head and both hands in the refrigerator reaching for more beer, turns and looks at her. Didn’t the man find them this trailer they bought on Lake Grassey, didn’t he give them an almost new Sony portable television as a house present, which the kids are happily watching in the back bedroom instead of hanging around in the kitchen and living room, whining and bothering the grownups, who want to talk business because tomorrow is Bob’s first day on the job, a job that his brother Eddie, for Christ’s sake, gave him? Is she unhappy here? They haven’t been in Florida a week, and already she wants to go home? This is home now.

“It’s just the way he talks, that’s all,” Bob explains. He whispers his words to her — Eddie and Sarah are sitting silently in the living room not ten feet away, smoking cigarettes and looking in opposite directions, Eddie at one end of the couch peering out the open screened door at the packed-dirt yard, the pink trailer across the lane, then the marsh and, beneath the soft purple shadows of dusk, the dark blue surface of Lake Grassey. Sarah, her long, thin legs crossed at the ankles, looks out the window beside her at the pale blue exterior of the trailer next door and examines it as if it were a picture of a trailer instead of the real thing.

“Eddie has a good heart,” Bob whispers. “It’s just he’s still a kid in some ways. He talks the way we did when we were kids—’fuckin’ this, ‘fuckin’ that’—that’s all. You know.” He holds three cans of Schlitz in one hand and swings the refrigerator door shut with the other.

“Yeah, I know, I know. I just don’t want the girls to have to hear it, that’s all….”

“ For Christ’s sake, Elaine !” he hisses, and he places the cans of beer on the counter, as if to free his hands. He stares at her, willing her to be silent, to be happy, to be proud of him, to love his brother and his brother’s wife and child. To be grateful. “We’ll talk later,” he says, and returns to the living room.

Elaine goes on peeling the potatoes. It’s nearly dark, and the kitchen, facing east, settles into shadow first. Crossing the room to the light switch by the door, she comes to stand at the threshold, where she watches and listens to the others, who are staring at an object placed in the middle of the coffee table. Surrounded by empty beer cans and ashtrays, cigarette packs and butane lighters, the Sunday newspaper and a copy of People , settled in the midst of the clutter but organizing and diminishing it, lies a large, dark blue pistol. Sarah, her legs still crossed, stares at the gun as if it were a small, dead, slightly repulsive animal. Eddie looks at it proudly, as if he has just killed it, and Bob looks at it with confusion, as if he has been asked to skin it.

Eddie reaches into the side pocket of his seersucker jacket and draws out a small green package of bullets and places the box on the table next to the pistol. “You’ll want these,” he says. Eddie, who people sometimes say resembles the actor Steve McQueen, snaps his curly blond head to attention and, with his lips pursed, studies his younger brother’s face for a second.

“Is it loaded?” Elaine asks from the doorway.

“Not now,” Eddie answers. “But it will be tomorrow.”

From the sofa, Sarah glances quickly up at Elaine, fails to catch her eye and goes back to the staring out the window at the side of the trailer next door. “I don’t know why you need a gun,” she says to the window.

“You mean you don’t know why Bob needs a gun,” Eddie says cheerfully. “Me you know.” He grins up at Elaine, still standing in the doorway, and pats his jacket under his left arm.

“Are you carrying a gun? Right now?” Elaine asks. “Here?”

“Sure.”

Bob reaches over and plucks the pistol off the table, turns it over in his hand and examines it carefully. He releases the magazine, slaps it back, hefts the gun in his right hand. He studies the hand with the gun in it, as if memorizing it.

“Why do you have to carry a gun?” Elaine asks.

In a swift, unbroken motion, a practiced move, Eddie lifts his butt from the couch, darts his right hand into his back trousers pocket, brings forth his wallet and flips it open, revealing an inch-thick stack of bills. “ That’s why, honey. I’m in business here, seven fucking days a week I’m in business, and a lot of what I do gets done in cash, or else I wouldn’t be in business very long. You understand,” he says, winking at Bob.

“I guess so,” Bob says. “You mean because of taxes and so on?”

“Yeah … yeah, that, sure. There’s a lot of stuff I have to keep off the books. Your fuckin’ salary, for instance. Which is all to your advantage, you understand; all it saves me is bookkeeping. But there’s a lot more things I gotta worry about that you don’t hafta even think about, like deliveries, for instance, and working with the fucking trade unions trying to get that new store over in Lakeland set up and built …” he says. “All you got to worry about for now is selling booze across the counter, keeping the shelves stocked, putting in your weekly orders and making your nightly deposits at the bank. I take care of the rest.”