Russell Banks - Continental Drift

Eddie’s store, located near where the old Seaboard Coastline Railroad tracks lean in and run alongside the highway for a few miles, is named Friendly Spirits Liquor Store, the words in gold gothic letters painted across the single plate-glass window in front. It’s a small white cinder-block building with a flat roof, which faces the highway and is hugged on three sides by citrus groves. Across the highway from the store squats a housing development for the families of enlisted men stationed at the air base, a gray, barracks-like complex of a dozen two-story buildings, parking lots and treeless, packed-dirt yards owned by the government and built by local contractors, one of whom happened to have been Eddie Dubois, who briefly established himself on paper as a painting contractor, then jobbed out the work to some students from the community college who’d advertised in the paper for house-painting work. Somewhere along the tangled line of contract negotiations and bidding for the construction of the housing project, Eddie came out with title to a house lot chopped out of the fields across the road, and with that in hand, he borrowed the money to build and stock his store, after which he absorbed his painting company into Friendly Spirits Enterprises, Inc.

Turning off Route 17, Bob notices, parked at the rear of the lot next to the Dempster-Dumpster, a red Plymouth Duster with a black woman and man sitting inside. Bob parks his car in front by the entrance, where Eddie instructed him always to park (so that he’d never seem to be without a customer), and sits at the wheel for a moment studying the couple in the Duster. On the seat next to him, inside a small canvas Barnett Bank money bag, is three hundred dollars in cash and rolled coins.

If they want the money, he decides, they can have it. All they’ve got to do is ask, and it’s theirs. He’s relieved that the gun is inside the store, on the shelf below the cash register. Defying Eddie’s instructions, Bob decided in the beginning not to carry the gun back and forth with him. Elaine pleaded with him to leave it at the store, made him picture Ruthie or Emma dead of accidentally inflicted gunshot wounds, and he said, “Okay, fine, you’re right. Just don’t mention it to Eddie, okay?” And then, having tucked it way in the back of the shelf beneath the counter, he forgot about the gun, until now, when he realizes that if he had the gun in his glove compartment, as Eddie expected him to, and if the black man and woman in the Plymouth got out of their car and strolled over to his car, he’d have to get out the gun, and when they yanked open his door and told him to give them the money bag or they’d blow his head off, he’d have to open fire, maybe hitting the man in the chest before the woman shot him in the face, killing him instantly. She’d take the money and drive away, leaving her partner lying on the parking lot, bleeding heavily and dying before the police got there to surmise that Bob got killed fending off an attempted robbery by a lone bandit.

Then he realizes that the Duster is parked next to the back door of the store. They must have broken in! There must be at least four of them, and waiting inside the store are three huge black guys, Jamaicans, probably, with machetes (he’s heard Jamaicans are particularly vicious, especially when they smoke that strong Jamaican ganja), and as soon as he unlocks the front door and shuts off the alarm, he’ll be a dead man, lying by the door in a pool of his own blood while the Jamaicans bring in the van they’ve rented for the occasion and empty the stockroom. Around ten, someone from the project across the highway will come in, a lonely housewife with three kids home from school with the chicken pox, and looking for a pint of vodka to get her through a lousy day, she’ll find instead the body of a white man hacked insanely to pieces.

Bob shudders. What the hell should he do? Make a dash for the front door, lock it behind him as soon as he’s inside, go for the gun under the counter and come out blasting? Or turn his car around and drive off, have a cup of coffee in town and check back later, after they’ve cleared out all the stock they can carry? Or pretend that nothing is wrong, as they clearly want him to do?

He decides to leave. Putting the key back into the ignition, he starts the engine as quietly as possible, but also does it casually, as if he has forgotten something at home and has to return for it. But when he pushes the gearshift from park to reverse gear, it stops, blocked, refusing to engage reverse — it’s happened before, twice last week, and to free the gear he has to step outside and climb onto the front bumper and rock the car violently while someone else jiggles the gearshift. He’s sweating, and casting a glance toward the Duster, he sees that the black man, dressed in a dark suit, has got out of the car and is coming toward him. Frantically now, Bob shoves at the gearshift, whispering, “Come on, you sonofabitch, come on, come on!” while the black man, like a dark cloud, draws closer to his car.

Suddenly he’s at the closed window on the passenger’s side, rapping on the glass, and Bob turns and sees the round, dark brown face of the stock clerk, George Dill, an intense, worried cast to his eyes, with new, deep lines crinkling his broad forehead.

Swinging open the door, the black man peers inside at Bob and utters a string of words. Bob, who can’t understand the words, stares wildly at the man, open-mouthed and sweating.

“I thought … I thought …” Bob says, and George interrupts, blurting out the same string of incomprehensible words.

“George, I … I didn’t recognize you …” Bob tells him. “The suit …”

Shutting off the engine, he pockets the key, picks up the money bag and steps from the car. He forces a smile onto his face and shows it, over the roof of the car, to George. “Whaddaya all dressed up for, George, a funeral?” He notices then that the woman in the Duster has got out of the car on the driver’s side and is walking quickly across the lot toward them. She’s a tall, slender woman, darker than George, wearing high heels and a long black chiffon dress, and on her head a broad-brimmed black hat. She’s attractively made up, with lipstick and bright red earrings and necklace, and she’s calling Bob’s name, “Mister Dubois,” in a friendly, familiar way, as if she knows him, though he is sure he’s never seen her before. He would have remembered, he knows, because she’s extremely pretty, with a wide, pleasant face and the kind of slender but sexy body, like Sarah’s, that he’s been thinking about a lot lately.

“Yes?” he says, smiling easily, as the woman comes around the front of his car and stands before him. She’s nearly as tall as he, he notices with pleasure, and she’s about his age, though he thought at first that she was younger, still a girl.

“Let me explain. Daddy’s all upset, Mister Dubois.”

Bob looks over at the old man and sees that the fellow is peering off toward the orange groves. The dark, pin-striped three-piece suit he’s wearing is way too large and hangs loosely around his bent body. He’s hatless, and Bob notices for the first time that, except for a thin belt of matted gray hair, George is completely bald. His shining brown head looks fragile, like a ripe plum.

“George,” Bob calls to him in a cheery voice. “Where’s your hat? I’ve never seen you without that Miami Dolphins cap of yours.”

The old man doesn’t respond.

“Mister Dubois,” the woman says in a low voice. “I’m his daughter, I’m Marguerite Dill. He lives with me.”

“Is he okay? Is something wrong?” Bob is serious now. He understands that he doesn’t understand, but he knows that no one will hurt him for it.

Carefully, in her soft, warm Southern voice, the woman explains to Bob that her father’s only brother died last night, and her father has taken the death badly. Except for her, the old man has no one else, not around here anyhow, because she brought him down here from Macon, Georgia, five years ago, when her mama died. “Since he was a young man,” she says, “he’s needed somebody to take care of him.” The brother, who lived in Macon, loved him, but he had his own family to take care of, so it was only right that her daddy come to Oleander Park to live with her. Now she is taking him back up to Macon for the funeral, which means that he won’t be able to come in to work for the rest of the week. She knew he’d understand, but her daddy insisted on coming over this morning to explain it to Bob himself. “He likes you very much, Mister Dubois, and he likes his job here. I told him I’d phone you and explain, but he insisted, he just kept on saying he wanted to face you himself, about his brother and all … but he’s in a kind of a shock, and he has trouble talking right normally, he gets all nervous and forgetful, you may have noticed that … but especially now, with his brother and all …”