Russell Banks - Continental Drift

“More water?” he asks, his voice unnaturally high.

No one answers. They go on looking at him, their eyes large and dark brown, not curious or demanding, not hostile or friendly, either, just waiting.

“Water? Want more water?” he repeats. He picks up the bucket and turns it upside down, as if to demonstrate its emptiness.

A skinny teenaged boy squirms his way out of the clot of people and comes forward on his hands and knees and extends the metal dipper to Bob, then quickly retreats.

“Merci beaucoup,” Bob says. He stands up and takes the bucket back down to the galley, refills it and returns to the Haitians, sliding it over the deck toward them.

Again, it’s the boy who separates himself from the others by retrieving the bucket and dipper. Then, turning his narrow back to Bob, he proceeds to fill the dipper and hand it to the others, one by one — first the women, who let their children drink before they themselves drink, and then the old man and the other men — and finally he drinks. It’s hot under the tarp, but not uncomfortably so, for there’s a light breeze that sneaks across the rails at the sides. It’s dark, however, and despite the breeze, it’s close, moist with bodies crammed this tightly against one another, and Bob wonders if he should allow them to come out from under the tarp and stretch and walk about.

He calls up to Tyrone. “Whaddaya think, be okay to let them stretch their legs a bit? Seems kinda crowded and stuffy under there.”

The Jamaican looks down at the white man, shakes his head no and goes back to scanning the western horizon.

Bob is sitting flat on the deck now, his legs stretched out in front of him, his can of Schlitz in one hand, a lighted cigarette in the other. He’s got himself far enough under the tarp to be wholly in the shade, so he takes off his cap and drops it onto the deck next to him. The motion of the boat is choppier than it was, and Bob can tell from the sound of the engine that it’s working harder, lugging a little. There’s been an east wind behind them all morning, and now they’ve changed course a few degrees west-southwest, and consequently the wind is hitting them slightly to port. He knocks his pack of Marlboros against his knee, extending several cigarettes from the pack, and holds the pack out to the Haitians, who still have not taken their eyes off his face.

“Cigarette?”

The Haitians look from his face to the pack of cigarettes, back to his face again, their expressions unchanged.

Bob puts down his can of Schlitz and digs into his pocket for his butane lighter and again holds out the Marlboros. “C’mon, have a cigarette if you want.”

It’s the teenaged boy who finally comes forward and takes the cigarettes from Bob’s hand. Bob passes him the lighter, and the boy draws out a cigarette for himself and passes the package around among the others, several of whom take out a single cigarette and put it between their lips. The boy lights his up and one by one lights the others. Then he turns back to Bob, passes the lighter and what’s left of the Marlboros to him, and while they smoke, resumes watching him.

They aren’t afraid of me, Bob thinks. They can’t be — they must know I’m their friend. Quickly he corrects himself: No, I’m not their friend, and they’re not foolish enough to think it. But I’m not their boss, either, and I’m not their jailer. Who am I to these people, he wonders, and why are they treating me this way? What do they know about me that I don’t know myself?

The question, once he’s phrased it to himself, locks into his mind and puts every other question instantly into a dependent relation, like a primary gear that drives every other lever, wheel and gear in the machine. That must be their mystery, he thinks — they all know something about me, and it’s something I don’t know myself, something crucial, something that basically defines me. And they all know it, every one of them, young and old. It’s almost as if they were born knowing it. He stares back into the eyes of the Haitians, and he can see that it’s not just knowledge of white men, and it’s not just knowledge of Americans; it’s knowledge of him, Robert Raymond Dubois, of his very center, which he imagines as a ball of red-hot liquid, like the molten core of the earth.

For an instant, he breaks contact with the Haitians, and he thinks, This is crazy, they don’t know anything about me that isn’t obvious to anyone willing to take a quick look at me. He insists to himself that he’s making it all up. It’s only because they’re so black, so African-looking, and because they don’t speak English and he doesn’t speak Creole, that he’s attributing awesome and mysterious powers to them. It’s their silence and passivity that frighten him and seem to create a vacuum that he feels compelled to fill, and what he’s filling it with is his own confusion about who he is and why he’s here at all, here on this boat in the middle of the ocean, carting sixteen Haitians illegally to Florida, when he should by all rights be someone else someplace else, should be old Bob Dubois, say, of Catamount, New Hampshire, a nice, easygoing guy who fixes people’s broken oil burners, and on a late afternoon in winter like this, he should be heading back to the shop at Abenaki Oil Company to punch his time card, walk across the already dark parking lot, get into his cold car, listen to the motor labor against the cold and finally turn over and start, and drive down Main Street to Depot, turn left and park across from Irwin’s and go in for a couple of beers with the boys and maybe a flirt or at least a beer with his girlfriend Doris, before he gets back into his car and drives home to his wife and children and eats supper around a table with them in the warm kitchen, and later a little TV in the living room while the snow falls outside and the children sleep peacefully upstairs, until finally he and his wife grow weary of watching TV and climb the stairs to their own bedroom, where they quietly, sweetly, even, make love to one another and afterwards fall into a deep sleep.

But that’s all gone from him now, as far away as childhood. There’s a difference, though, for childhood was taken from him, simply ripped away and devoured by time, whereas the rest, the life he believes he should be living now, Bob has given away. And he didn’t give it away bit by bit; he gave it away in chunks. What’s worse, he gave away Elaine’s life too — or at least he believes he did. She might say it differently, for she is, after all, a kind woman who, despite everything, loves him. Regardless, Bob believes that he gave away everything in exchange for nothing, for a fantasy, a dream, a wish, that he allowed to get embellished and manipulated by his brother, by his friend, by magazine articles and advertisements, by rumor, by images of men with graying hair in red sports cars driving under moonlight to meet a beautiful woman.

He looks into the darkness at the Haitians again, and he smiles. It’s a light, sympathetic smile.

The teenaged boy smiles back, startling Bob.

“How’re ya doing, kid?”

The boy looks shyly down at his lap and remains silent, but to Bob, it’s an answer, a response, and suddenly, through this boy, at least, the vacuum that the Haitians created for Bob to fill has been broken into and filled by them, for to Bob, one of them is all of them.

Bob says, “ ’Nother cigarette?” and holds out the package.

The boy shakes his head no. He’s seated cross-legged next to a pretty young woman with a small child in her lap, both of whom, she and the child, continue to stare at Bob, as do all the other Haitians. But their stares no longer threaten him.

“You understand English, kid?” Bob asks. “Comprendez English?”