Russell Banks - Continental Drift

With the motor burbling and spitting behind the boat, Eddie looks back at Bob and asks if he’s ready. Sitting next to her father in the cockpit, Jessica, looking sadly like a plucked chicken in her purple tank suit, seems profoundly bored. Emma stares at the gauges on the glittering dashboard in front of her, while Ruthie examines the tow rope where it’s clipped to the swivel at the stern, follows its coiled, half-submerged length to the dock, fifteen feet away, where it’s attached to a short bar that her father, grim-faced, extends chest-high in front of him and clings to with both hands.

“Be careful, Daddy,” Ruthie says.

Eddie laughs and revs the motor. Emma delightedly follows the needle on the tachometer with her index finger, and Jessica peers off to her right, as if at a photographer specializing in preadolescent girls. She skied first, expertly circling the lake twice, then on the second pass letting go of the rope twenty or thirty feet from the landing dock and sinking slowly into the water, rising again and languidly floating the skis to shore ahead of her. She had looked good to Bob out there, swooping from one side of the wake to the other, riding over the waves and sending a high, white fantail behind her. It looked easy.

Eddie agreed. “But not as easy as it looks,” he warned. “Don’t get pissed if you fuck it up at first.” He offered some basic instruction, assured Bob that he’d start off slowly and told him to be sure to let go of the tow rope when he went down; he’d come back and pick him up right away.

“What do you mean, ‘when’? ‘If’ I go down is what,” Bob corrected him.

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie said, grinning.

The skis feel comfortable to him, like rubber slippers. He nods to Eddie that he’s ready and lifts the rope from the water, flicking it like reins on a horse.

Eddie guns the motor, the stern squats and the bow lifts, and the boat leaps forward, instantly straightening the rope, yanking Bob from the dock into the water. He sinks like a stone, then suddenly rises, standing, the skis rushing over the skin of the lake, and he’s doing it, he’s water-skiing! Eddie, glancing back, grins and raises his fist and cheers. Ruthie claps her hands with joy, and Emma follows, and even Jessica seems pleased.

As he whizzes away from shore, Bob lets go of the tow bar with one hand and waves triumphantly. He draws the rope to him, tests its tautness, then lets it back out, feels the water pounding against his feet, the wind in his face, and discovers that he can shift his weight on the skis and move himself to the left or right of the boat. On and on they go, straight out toward the middle of the lake, faster and still faster, and Bob feels wonderful. He decides to imitate his niece and cross the wake, and a second later the water is smacking loudly against the bottoms of the skis, but he holds on, keeps his legs bent slightly at the knees, his back straight, his arms outstretched, and he’s over, way out on the starboard side, almost parallel to the boat, as if he were racing with it. He knows he is grinning foolishly, but he doesn’t care. He’s happier at this moment than he has been in months, happier than he can remember having been for years, mindless and moving fast and barely in control, concentrating mightily on all the quickly shifting elements — water, boat, towline, skis, feet, legs, back and arms — creating and sustaining a balanced tension between them that surrounds him like an ether and brings him wholly to life.

Soon they have circled the lake and are making a pass by the dock. Bob can see Sarah, tall in her white jogging suit, standing on the dock, behind her Elaine, large and lumpy in pink maternity shorts and smock, seated at the picnic table. Eddie cuts back a bit and slows slightly, but Bob waves for him to go on, take another turn, so Eddie hits the throttle, and as they pass the dock, Bob leans to his right and skids over the waves to the left of the boat, swinging closer and closer to the dock. The skis bump over the water as if over rutted ice, pounding loudly against it, and Eddie, looking quickly over his shoulder, sees the danger and turns the boat slightly shoreward and increases speed to straighten the line and get Bob back behind the boat and away from the dock. But it’s too late. Bob’s headed straight for the dock now. Sarah sees what’s happening, knows what’s about to happen, and her hand goes to her mouth and she starts backing quickly off the dock toward the safety of the land. Elaine gets awkwardly but rapidly to her feet and rushes forward.

“Let go!” Eddie shouts. “Leggo the fuckin’ rope!”

Bob sees the collision that he cannot avoid. He sees his body, wet and nearly naked, smashed against the wooden dock, and suddenly his knees buckle, the skis dive nose-first into the water, and then his feet are free, he’s underwater, still holding to the rope, being ripped through the water and to the surface again, while Eddie screams back, “Leggo! Leggo! Leggo, you dumb asshole!”

The boat is roaring away from the dock now, hauling Bob behind it, banging his body against the rock-hard water. Eddie, with one hand on the wheel, has stood up and is gesturing wildly at Bob to let go of the rope. Bob can’t hear anything but the roar of the water and the boat, can’t feel anything except the pounding against his body, as if he were being kicked by a dozen boots at once. He rolls his body on its side, trying to escape the pounding. His hands seem frozen to the tow bar, and he can’t let go, he can’t pry his own fingers loose, until, at last, Eddie cuts the motor, and the boat slows and stops, the rope coils and sinks, and Bob releases the bar, rolls over onto his back and, arms loose, legs dangling, head lolling back, waves washing over his body, he floats like a dead fish, a large white carp.

Eddie turns the boat and slowly approaches him. “You stupid sonofabitch!” he screams. “Why the fuck didn’t you let go the rope? You coulda got killed!”

Bob grabs the gunwale and says nothing, just holds on.

“You all right?” Eddie asks. The children are gray-faced, and Ruthie has jammed her thumb into her mouth.

“Why … why the fuck … didn’t you kill … the motor?”

“I couldn’t, you asshole! You were s’posed to let go the rope, I kept waiting for you to let go, that’s why!”

“You … bastard. You … coulda killed me.”

“Me!” Eddie screams, his eyes bugging out. “Me? Me? I coulda killed you?”

“I forgot … I forgot to let go. I couldn’t think. It was the first time. You coulda killed me,” Bob says again. “Help me get into the boat,” he says grimly, raising a hand from the water. “You’re a real bastard, Eddie. No shit.”

Eddie turns away and tells Jessica to pull in the towline. She stands and draws the rope quickly in, dumping it in a snarl behind the seat. Reaching down, Eddie grabs a rust-colored seat cushion and tosses it into the water. “Here,” he says. “Ride that to shore, you stupid sonofabitch. I coulda killed you,” he sneers. “I shoulda just kept on going, till you finally figured out to let go the fucking rope. But I probably woulda run out of gas first, you stupid asshole. You can ride your goddamned cushion home.” He hits the throttle, and the boat churns the water, turns, and heads roaring toward shore.

Bob watches it get smaller, sees his daughters looking back in fearful confusion, and when the waves subside, he paddles to the bobbing cushion and grabs onto it. Then, shoving it out in front of him, he kicks his legs and starts moving slowly in the direction of the dock and picnic grounds and his family.

2

The night Elaine went into labor and had the baby, Bob was with Marguerite at the Hundred Lakes Motel. It was a Thursday, October 16, and the baby, a boy weighing six pounds fourteen ounces and named Robert Raymond Dubois, Jr., was born three weeks ahead of schedule and, despite Elaine’s rapid weight gain in the last few weeks, had shown no signs of arriving prematurely, and so Bob, as he had for months, treated the forthcoming birth of his third child as an event in the distant future, almost as if it were an event in someone else’s life.