Russell Banks: Continental Drift

Though the land is flat, a mere three feet above sea level all the way in from the Keys to Miami, Bob feels, as he enters the gleaming city, that he’s descending from a high plateau. Along Brickell Boulevard, south of the Miami River and north of Coconut Grove, he passes between tall royal palms, and on either side, the pink mansions of deposed Latin American politicians and generals hide behind poinciana bushes and chain-link fences. Across the bay on his right is Key Biscayne. He passes terraced luxurious high-rise condominiums that house heroin and cocaine couriers from Colombia whose million-dollar cash deposits help keep Florida bankers happy, and then he drives between the banks themselves, clean white skyscrapers with window glass tinted like the sunglasses of a small-town sheriff.

When he crosses the Miami River in the center of the city, he’s downtown and can see Miami Beach across the bay, where people live in hotels and live off hotels, a city where there are no families. Then north along Biscayne Boulevard, past the grandstands from last month’s Orange Bowl parade, empty and half demolished and throwing skeletal shadows over the grass of Bay Front Park, until he passes out of downtown Miami and enters dimly lit neighborhoods where there are no more white people — no white people on the sidewalks, no white people in the stores or restaurants, no white people in the cars next to him at stoplights. This is where he wants to be. He knows, from what newspapers and boatmen on the Keys have told him, that he’s in Little Haiti now, a forty-block section of the city squeezed on the west by Liberty City, where impoverished American blacks boil in rage, and on the other three sides by neat neighborhoods of bungalows, where middle-class Cubans and whites deliver themselves and their children anxiously over to the ongoing history of the New World.

He parks the car on North Miami Avenue one block beyond Fifty-fourth Street, in front of a small grocery story open to the street and still doing business, despite the late hour. There are burlap sacks of what look like flour stacked on the sidewalk and crates of rough orange yams, plantains and red beans. Several women inside the store talk to one another, while a man with spectacles pushed up on his shiny, mahogany-brown forehead totals their purchases. Bob takes a step inside, listens to the swift, soft Creole the women are speaking, and when, at the sight of him, they go silent, he steps back to the street.

Farther down the block, he comes to a record shop, speakers over the door shouting music onto the street, and he opens the door and walks inside. Everyone in the shop — three teenaged boys, a pair of young women, a bearded man behind the counter — stops talking and proceeds to examine a product, records, needles, plastic disks for 45s, microphones, until Bob leaves, when they resume their loud, quick conversations, and the music plays raucously over and over.

He enters a restaurant on Fifty-fourth with closed Venetian blinds facing the street. A slender brown woman holding long, narrow menus greets him at the door and in French-accented English politely asks how many people are in his party. Bob peers across the room, sees large, beefy black men in three-piece suits, fashionably dressed women, a few children at table, and he says, “I’m … I’m looking for someone.” He pretends to search the room for a friend, then says, “No, sorry, he’s not here yet, thanks,” and ducks out.

In a bar, seated on a stool at the far end, Bob orders a Schlitz from a short, stocky, mustachioed man wearing a cream-colored silk vest buttoned tightly across his belly. There are a dozen or more booths and small tables behind him, where three or four women, young and pretty, wearing heavy makeup and miniskirts and glittery, low-cut blouses, sit alone, one woman to a table, drinking. At the bar, four or five young men, boys almost, who seem to know each other and the bartender as well, talk, drink, smoke cigarettes and snap fingers in time to the music blatting from the jukebox in the corner by the open door. It’s what brought Bob in from the street in the first place, the music, Haitian, loud, friendly, warm and available to anyone willing to listen.

The bartender brings the beer and glass and sets them down in front of Bob without once looking at him.

“How much?”

“One dollar fifty.”

Bob hands two ones over. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks,” the man says, and starts to move away.

“Quiet tonight.”

“Yes. Well, Wednesday, you know. It’s late.”

“Say, listen. Ah … I was wondering,” Bob says.

“Yes?”

“You’re Haitian, right? That’s a Haitian accent, right?”

The man examines Bob for a few seconds, this battered white man, large, unshaven, eyes in caves, clothes dirty and rumpled, and he says, “Yes, I am Haitian.”

“Cigarette?” Bob says, pushing his pack forward.

The man hesitates, then takes one. “Thanks.”

Bob lights his cigarette. “You probably know about those Haitians that drowned day before yesterday, right?”

The man steps back. “Well, yes. From the newspapers.” He eyes Bob warily.

“Me too. From the papers, I mean. Sad, isn’t it?”

“Ah, yes. But it happens. Such things happen.”

“But some get through anyhow, right? Some of them make it to shore. I read that.”

“I suppose so.” The man starts to leave. Farther down the bar, the young men have ceased talking and have taken up watching Bob and the bartender. There are four of them, two with bushy Afro haircuts and long sideburns, the other two, younger, with short haircuts. All four are dressed up for a night out, billowy nylon shirts cut and unbuttoned to expose their chests, tight, bell-bottomed slacks, slipon shoes with pointed toes. Two of them wear heavy gold chains around their necks and copper bracelets on their wrists. All four are faceless to Bob, kids out looking for some action. He supposes they have a car parked outside, a beat-up Olds or Pontiac with elaborate hub caps, the dash and rear deck covered with pile carpeting.

“Listen, friend, can I ask you something?”

The bartender returns, and Bob slides a ten-dollar bill across the bar. “I was wondering …” he says in a low, confidential voice, “if you could tell me something.”

The bartender palms the ten and pockets it without changing his expression of calm, mild curiosity.

“Those Haitians who drowned the other day. I wondered if there were any survivors. You know?”

“I think not. No survivors. The sea was rough. Why do you ask?”

“Well, see, I got a friend, Haitian guy who works for me, out on the Keys, and he’s looking for his people, his family, see, and he was wondering.”

“Why will he not come and ask himself, then? Why do you ask?”

“Yeah, I understand that, I realize how it looks, me doing the asking and all. But, y’ see, he’s got to be careful about that sort of thing. You know. Because of his papers not being so good. You understand.”

“Ah. Yes.” The man turns away again. “I am sorry, mister, I know nothing of the people from the boats.”

“Wait!” Bob says. Reaching into his pocket and drawing out the packet of money, he peels off a twenty and lays it on the bar.

The bartender stares for a second at the thick wad of bills in Bob’s hand, then at the twenty before him. “I know nothing of those people. You should drink your beer and go. We close soon,” he says, and walks slowly but emphatically away.

Bob picks up the twenty and wraps it around the others and shoves the money back into his pocket. Finishing off his beer in one long gulp, he slides off the stool and makes for the door. As he passes the young men at the bar, they turn and watch him.

“Hey, mister!” one calls. He’s tall and broad-shouldered and wears a thick denim cap nested in his huge, bulbous Afro.