Russell Banks - Continental Drift

“No, Eddie. No big meetings in Miami. I’m telling you the truth. No bullshit, I’m really broke. Busted. Flat. You don’t understand that; you never did understand that. I’ll do anything I can to help you, you’re my brother, for Christ’s sake, but I’m fucking broke!” he shouts.

“Yeah. Sure. I hear you.”

“No. No, you don’t, you bastard. You never did hear me. You don’t hear me now, and you never heard me in your life.”

Eddie is silent a second, then, in a hoarse voice, “I heard you a lot more’n you got any idea. Maybe I didn’t show it much, but I heard you. I know it’s been tough on you, but it’s tough for me. I got real problems, Bob. Even my epilepsy, it’s been coming back lately, like when I was a kid.”

“Jesus, Eddie. You see a doctor?”

“Yeah, sure. He give me some fucking pills and said go take a vacation. But that’s not important, the epilepsy. Not compared to the other stuff.” He is silent for a second. Then, “For Christ’s sake, Bob, I’m asking. You got that? I’m asking. ”

“Eddie, goddammit, you’re always asking. You’ve been asking since the beginning. You make it look like you’re giving, but all you’re doing is asking. I’m sorry about the epilepsy and all your problems. But I got lots of problems too, and you’re one of the fucking reasons why. You say you’re giving me a big job, a chance of a lifetime, you say you’re gonna make me rich, but really all you’re doing is asking, you’re using me to work for nothing, to be your loyal clerk, your fucking nigger, while you add up all the profits and take ’em home to buy another fucking boat with. Listen, man, I learned something that year up in Oleander Park. I’m a little slow, I know, but eventually I learn, and I learned not to listen to you when you say you’re giving. I tune out now when you start saying you got just what I need, because it’s going to turn out instead to be just what you need .”

“Bob, listen. For Christ’s sake, Bob. You got burnt, I know, and I’m sorry. I … I thought things would be better for you. And that stupid stuff about the gun and all, I didn’t understand that stuff, I admit it. Shit, I still don’t understand. But it don’t matter. Things like that don’t matter anymore.”

“Fuck they don’t matter. They mattered then, they matter now. You think I’m a bozo.”

“No, Bob. Aw, shit … listen … I’m …” he stammers, and then his voice breaks, and he’s weeping. “I … I’m really gone now, Bob. This is no shit, this is how it comes out. Lemme give it to you straight, okay?” He stops weeping and gathers himself together. “Sarah and Jessie … she left me, just took the kid and left. She went back up north to her parents in Connecticut. It’s all gone now, Bob. All of it. The boat, that’s a fucking laugh! Gone. The store, the new store over in Lakeland? Forget it. All I got is what I got in my pockets, Bob. And the house. But I only got that for a few more days is all. Then it’s gone too. And then I’m gone, right along behind. You understand me? If I can’t come up with the money, I’ll be gone too. Repossessed, just like the fucking house and the boat and the store and everything. You didn’t know that, probably. There’s people can repossess people.”

Bob hears the man, he understands what he’s saying and feels a great wave of pity and fear for him, but he also feels a counterwave of anger that keeps on sweeping in from the opposite side, neutralizing his pity and fear, making him cold, quiet, withdrawn, as if he were idly watching a TV soap opera. “How much money you talking about?”

“A lot. A fucking lot.”

“How much?”

“I thought you said you was broke.”

“I did, I am. Dead stone broke. How much?”

“Hundred and thirty thousand.”

“A hundred and thirty thousand bucks you need! And you think maybe I can help you out!”

“I hoped, that’s all. I just figured you and Ave were into some big bucks now, with the boat and all. I hear things. I figured you’d be able to put a hand on some large cash, that’s all. You know?”

Bob is laughing, a high-pitched, rolling, derisive laugh that goes on and on, like a train whistle.

Then Eddie clicks off, and all Bob hears now is the dial tone and his own subsiding laughter.

Elaine watches him from the sofa bed, her upper body propped on one elbow. She’s been watching him throughout. When Bob sees her, he stops laughing altogether and realizes that he’s naked, standing at the kitchen counter with the telephone receiver in his hand.

“What’s happened?” she asks calmly.

Bob scratches his head and puts the receiver back on the hook. “I guess … well, I guess the bottom’s dropped out. For Eddie.”

“He thinks you can help him?”

“He thinks I’m smuggling dope.”

“Ave is. Why not you?”

“You want me to? That what you’re telling me now?”

“No. I mean, why shouldn’t Eddie think you’re doing it too? He’s right to think Ave’s doing it. That’s all,” she says in a thin, watery voice, as if deeply tired and a little bored, and she lays her head on the pillow, rolls over and leaves her back to him. “Shut off the light soon,” she says, “I have to get up early in the morning. You obviously don’t.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He reaches over and flicks off the light. But he doesn’t come to bed. He stands at the counter as before, thinking about his brother Eddie. His anger has left him now, like a storm blown out to sea. The horizon is dark and turbulent, but here, directly overhead, it’s clear skies and sweet breezes.

“He’s alone now,” Bob says in a quiet voice, almost a whisper. “Sarah and Jessica left him. And he’s got the epilepsy again.” He reaches over in the dark and grabs Elaine’s foot and shakes it. “It’s really bad for him, Elaine. He’s scared.”

“Talk about this tomorrow. I’m exhausted. Now let me sleep. This has not been an easy night for me, you know.”

He lets go of her foot and walks over to the chair next to the TV and sits down, the plastic netting cold against his naked buttocks and back. Eddie the man deserves everything he gets, Bob thinks, but Eddie the boy, the boy that’s still in him, doesn’t deserve to be alone, to lose everything he ever wanted and worked for, to be deserted by his only brother. It’s hard for Bob, though, to see the boy in his older brother; he has to struggle to see him. He knows he’s there, but Bob has to will himself to remember Eddie as a boy and to look back and down on him from where he stands now, a grown man looking down on a nervous, wildly energetic, towheaded boy, and ruffling the kid’s hair, give him an easy pat on the shoulder and say, “Go on, kid, try it anyhow. If you screw it up, you can always try again, until you finally get it. Don’t worry, kid, you got all the time in the world.”

Elaine doesn’t understand that. All she can see is Eddie the man, and the man she sees is childish, selfish, cruel, manipulative and shallow, a man who mistreats his wife and daughter and doesn’t deserve their love, a man who manipulated and deceived his younger brother and therefore doesn’t deserve his loyalty and support now, a man who made big money fast and easy and shouldn’t complain when he loses it just as fast and just as easy.

Bob gets up from the chair, and his back sticks to it as he rises.

He reaches out in the dark for the phone, realizes he can’t see to dial, and switches on the kitchen light, then dials his brother’s number. He lets it ring a half-dozen times, ten, twelve. No answer.

8

It’s raining when Bob arrives in Oleander Park, a steady, heavy rain from low clouds, and it’s cold. He’s got the heater of the old Chevy on, and the dry smell of it reminds him of driving in New Hampshire on cold, wet spring mornings along slick highways, stomach growling from too many cigarettes, too much Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in paper cups, heading out from Catamount alone like this, early in the morning like this, to fix somebody’s oil burner. In those days, he knows now, he was constantly depressed and, to avoid the fact, had gone to some secret place deep inside himself, where he went over again and again the trivial details of his life, as if fingering the beads on a rosary, rehearsing, always rehearsing, how he’ll fix the porch steps, how he’ll clean out the cellar this weekend, how he’ll stop tonight on the way home for a few beers at Irwin’s, how he’ll clean his fishing gear this week so he can go out the first day of trout season — filling his mind with scrupulous visions of the actions that most people do automatically and without anticipation, living his life as a constant, slow-motion preview of coming attractions in which the boring, linking, low points are in fact the crucial scenes of the movie.