Russell Banks - Continental Drift

She is squinting into his face as if trying to understand a man speaking a language she’s never learned.

“I want that kid,” he says quietly, a child selecting a teddy bear from a shelf crowded with teddy bears.

“You crazy, Bob.”

“I want that kid. He wanted me dead. Now I want him dead. If not dead, then scared shitless and in jail.”

“Yeah, well, that guy in my car ain’t the kid you want. You crazy, is what I think. Now get outa here,” she says, and she brushes past him into the living room, crosses to the front door and opens it. “That guy in my car is husband to my cousin.”

“He’s a thief. Probably a killer.”

“The guys who robbed your store was from New York anyhow,” she says. “Read the papers. You know, when it comes right down to it, Bob, you just like every other white man.”

“Don’t give me that shit! Don’t! I know who the hell tried to rob me! I know who the hell tried to get me killed! And I know who I saw in your car. I saw him just a minute ago, too, at the bottom of your street, and I called to him, and he took off running. Naturally. He knows who the hell he is, and he knows who I am, too. It’s you who doesn’t know who’s who. Not me.”

“You just now called out to him?”

“Yeah, I followed him to the end of the block.”

“What’d you say to him?”

“Nuthin. I just hollered for him to come over to the car, and he saw me and recognized me and took off running. He ducked into a bar, and I ran in after him, but the guy in the bar covered for him, they all covered for him….”

“You hollered for him to come over to your car? What for? If you so sure he’s the one robbed your store, whyn’t you call a cop? Tell me that. Whyn’t you just ask me his name and then call the cops to come pick him up so you can identify him down to the police station?”

Bob looks stonily into Marguerite’s brown eyes for a few seconds. Then he sighs heavily, and as if he’s taken off a mask, his gaze softens. “Oh, God,” he says. “Oh, God damn everything. I fucked it up. I fucked it all up, didn’t I? Everything. Everything. All of it. Done.”

Marguerite is still standing firmly by the open door, like a guard. If she’s seen his face shift or heard his words, she shows no signs of it. “You looking like a crazy white man, you come down here, and you drive up and holler for a black man to come over to your car like that, and he takes a look at you and runs off, and you wonder why? You worse’n crazy. You dumb.”

“I fucked it all up.” He drops his weight onto the sofa, and leaning his head back, closes his eyes. “That’s it. Everything. Done.”

“What’d you plan on saying to him? That woulda been a real interesting conversation.”

“Nuthin.”

“So what’d you call out to him for, then?”

Slowly, Bob lifts his shirtfront, then drops it.

Marguerite’s face, at the sight of the gun in his belt, doesn’t so much drop as slide warily to the side. “Oh-h-h,” she moans, a sound signifying both pain and insight, as if the name for the mysterious cause of the pain came to her only at the moment of feeling it.

George enters the room from a back bedroom, and Marguerite rushes to him, leaving the front door open and unattended. “Daddy,” she says, “you get on back now. We almost finished, you gonna have your supper soon. Just you go on back and watch some more TV till we done.”

The old man peers across the room at Bob, then up into his daughter’s face. “Somethin’ wrong out here?” he asks in a firm voice. “I heard you gettin’ upset,” he says to Marguerite.

“Nothing, Daddy, nothing. Now go on back.”

George looks coldly at Bob. “I know you got yourself a gun there, Mistah Bob. You got it under your shirt there. I seen it. Seen it when you come in. I sure don’t want nobody gettin’ shot now, and I know you is a good man, and you don’t want nobody gettin’ shot neither, no matter how mad you gets at ’em at the moment. Come tomorrow, Mistah Bob, things’ll cool down some and you won’t be so mad. You don’t want to shoot no one, Mistah Bob. Marguerite, now, she makes her mistakes, sure, but she’s a good woman. And she loves you, Mistah Bob, really loves you. Tol’ me all about it. You don’t hafta worry none about that. I can tell you, she been good to you right from the beginnin’. Ain’t no one else come round here. She been good to you right from the start, so you got no call to get mad.”

“Bob,” Marguerite says coolly. “Go home, Bob. Just go home.”

Bob looks from the woman’s face to her father’s, then back again. “Don’t be afraid,” Bob tells them. “I’ll go.”

“We not afraid of you, Mistah Bob. We jus’ worried ’bout you, that’s all.”

“No, I’ll go. I’ll go.”

He stands, looks down in shame, and leaves.

Marguerite closes the door behind him, quickly locks it and does not look out the window after him. Instead, she walks immediately to the kitchen and commences preparing supper. She and her father never speak of the event again, not to each other and not to anyone else. There’s nothing to say about it to each other that is not already fully understood, so they remain silent about it, almost as if it never happened.

4

Bob lifts his shirtfront with one hand and pulls out the gun with the other, releases the loaded magazine and lays the gun and magazine down on the glass table in front of Eddie. Eddie looks at the gun, then up at his brother’s somber face, lowers his gaze to the gun again, then moves it back to the Wall Street Journal on his lap .

“You wanna drink, Bob?” he asks without looking up. He’s wearing salmon-pink trousers and a cranberry-red short-sleeved shirt and white Italian loafers, sockless. On the tile floor next to his chair is a ceramic pitcher half-filled with gin and tonic. “Sarah!” he barks. “Bring a glass!”

“No, forget it. No drink.” Bob lets himself down slowly into the redwood chair opposite Eddie, who continues to read his paper, or pretends to read it.

Sarah appears at the sliding glass doors of the living room, spots Bob, smiles and crosses the patio to him. “Bob! It’s wonderful about the baby! A boy! Congratulations!”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Great about the kid. Congratulations.” He looks pointedly at his watch.

“Thanks.”

“I was over at the hospital this afternoon,” Sarah reports, “to bring some presents and all, and I saw him, and he’s just adorable, Bob! Adorable. I’m glad it was a boy. After all the girls in this family.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“You want a drink, Bob? Let me bring a glass; Eddie’s got himself a pitcher of gin over there. His nightly dose. I’m sure he’ll share some with you.” She’s suddenly serious again, and she and Eddie exchange looks, quick, superficially wounding slashes, before she gushes on. “And Elaine, she just looks marvelous! Marvelous!”

“Sarah,” Eddie growls, “Bob don’t want a drink.”

Sarah glares at her husband, then, glancing over the low table in front of him, sees the handgun and magazine, and steps away. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, suddenly confused. She looks down at Bob. “Are you all right, Bob?”

“Yes, fine,” he says. Then, “No. No, I’m not fine, Sarah,” he says, staring straight ahead at his brother, who continues to look at the paper in his lap as if he were intently reading it.

“Sarah, leave us the fuck alone,” Eddie says.

Turning quickly, she strides from the patio and disappears into the house. Behind Eddie, the pool glimmers in the twilight, and a thatch of palmettos beyond the pool, in a parody of a postcard, raises a silhouette against an orange- and lavender-streaked sky. Folding the paper in half, Eddie slaps it onto the table next to the gun and says, “Too fuckin’ dark to read anyhow.”