Russell Banks - Affliction

As the snow fell, the men talked and sometimes called to one another across brooks and among the oak trees and brush. They laughed and smoked cigarettes and pipes while they walked in pairs along old railroad beds or, alone, set up hidden stands in fallen brush along ridges that gave a long clear view of a meadow and a copse of birch beyond or, ten feet up in an oak tree, perched in a Y in the branches, rubbed hands against the cold, poured coffee and brandy from a thermos into a plastic cup. It was as if, behind every tree, along every ridge, beside every stream, there was a man looking down the blue barrel of his gun, a chilled impatient man waiting for a deer to move into his sight. He saw it walk delicately, warily, through the curtain of falling snow. He saw it step from behind a fallen tree. He saw it emerge from a pile of dead brush into full view, where it posed for one second in the crosshairs, a full-grown massive male deer holding itself absolutely still, ears like dark velvety leaves, white flag of a tail switching, large liquid eyes brushed by long lashes and soaking in as much visual detail as can register in the animal’s brain, wet nose searching the breeze for scent that is not tree bark, pine needle, resin, leaf, water, snow, hoof, urine, fur or rut. Then, all across the hills and valleys, up and down the gullies and over the boulder-strewn ridges and cliffs, from up in trees, hillsides, overlooks, bridges, even from the backs of pickup trucks, out of brush piles, over stone walls, behind ancient elms — throughout the hundreds of square miles of New Hampshire hill-country woods — trigger fingers contract one eighth of an inch and squeeze. There is a roar of gunfire, a second, a third, then wave after wave of killing noise, over and over, sweeping across the valleys and up the hills. Slugs, pellets, balls made of aluminum, lead, steel, rip into the body of the deer, crash through bone, penetrate and smash organs, rend muscle and sinew. Blood splashes into the air, across tree bark, stone, onto smooth white blankets of snow, where scarlet fades swiftly to pink. Black tongue lolls over blooded teeth, as if the mouth were a carnivore’s; huge brown eyes roll back, glassed over, opaque and dry; blood trickles from carbon-black nostrils, shit spits steaming into the snow; urine, entrails, blood, mucus spill from the animal’s body: as heavy-booted hunters rush across the frozen snow-covered ground to claim the kill.

From all the corners and back roads of the district, huge lumbering pumpkin-orange school buses passed north and south through the town, then slowed at the town center, as if by prearrangement, blinked red warning lights and waited for Wade Whitehouse, standing in the middle of the road, to wave them one by one into the schoolyard.

Wade did not enjoy this part of his job — for one hour a day five days a week he was the crossing guard at the school — but it was required. Wade’s annual police pay, $1,500, one tenth of his total income, was a line item in the school budget that got authorized every March at town meeting. LaRiviere, who had been a selectman for over a decade, allowed Wade to come into work at eight-thirty, a half hour later than anyone else who worked for him, so that he could claim that he personally saved the school board the extra fifteen hundred dollars a year they would have to pay someone else to do the job if Wade had to be at work at eight o’clock. That way, the town was able to pay for its police officer from the moneys allotted to the school budget, and half those moneys came from the state and federal governments. Gordon LaRiviere was not selectman for nothing.

In the years when his daughter Jill was one of the children riding the bus to school, Wade had loved being the crossing guard. Especially after he and Lillian had got divorced and he moved out and he no longer saw Jill at the breakfast table. Every morning he waited out there in the middle of the road for her bus to round the downhill curve on Route 29, and when the bus finally reached him, he held the driver up for a long time and let all the buses coming the other way turn in first, giving Jill time to get to the window, so that she could see him and wave as, at last, he permitted her bus to pass into the schoolyard. Then he waved back and smiled and watched until the bus stopped by the main entrance and let the kids tumble out, kids alone, kids in pairs, little knots of friends, when a second time he got to see his daughter, with lunch box and book bag, silvery-blond hair freshly braided, clean clothes and shoes, red scarf swinging in the crisp morning air.

She always looked for him then too, and they smiled and waved their hands like banners at one another, and she ran with her friends around to the playground in back, happier with her day, he was sure, than if he had not been there to greet her. Just as, for Wade, those few golden moments every morning were the zenith of his day and colored his attitude toward everything that followed, all the way to the end of the night, and even his sleep was more peaceful because he and his daughter for a few seconds had seen each other’s faces and had smiled and waved at one another. Then something completely unexpected had happened: Lillian had sold the little yellow house in the birch grove and had moved down to Concord. And now the school buses only reminded Wade of his loss.

This morning, because of the snow, which had accumulated rapidly and was several inches deep and drifting already, the buses and the rest of the early morning traffic were moving with special care. Wade held them at the crossing longer than usual before letting them turn off the road into the schoolyard, giving the drivers extra time to see through the windblown snow and ease their precious cargoes, the children of the town, around each other and the occasional batches of kids who walked to school and crossed the road from the far side when Wade directed them to cross. Lined up behind the buses were cars and pickups with people hurrying to work and late-rising deer hunters. Their motors idled, windshield wipers clattered, and now and then, when a car passed him, the driver glowered at Wade, as if he had delayed them for no good reason.

He did not care. He was pissed this morning anyhow, and it almost improved his mood that people were mad at him. The faces of the children peering out the windows of the buses seemed to mock him, as if they were still wearing their Halloween masks — little demons, witches and ghosts. None of them was his child; none of them was Jill, eager to wave at him.

He made everyone wait, held long lines of buses, cars and trucks back, letting one child at a time cross the road as he or she arrived, instead of making a group of them gather there first. And he did not permit a single bus to enter the schoolyard until the bus ahead of it had unloaded all its passengers and had pulled out at the far end and was back on the road again, heading north to Littleton.

Now even the bus drivers, who normally acknowledged Wade not at all, as if the discipline it took to keep them from being rattled by the noise and play of their passengers kept them from perceiving Wade as anything but a traffic signal, were staring sullenly at him as they passed, a few shaking their heads with disgust. He did not care. I don’t give a rat’s ass you’re pissed, he thought. One driver, a flat-faced woman with red hair, slid her window open and hollered, “For Christ’s sake, Whitehouse, we ain’t got all day!” and the kids in the seats behind her laughed to hear it.

He heard the school bell ring and saw the kids come racing around from the schoolyard behind the low light-green cinder-block building to line up in messy formation, girls separated from boys, at the main entrance. The principal, Lugene Brooks, his buttoned sports jacket barely able to contain his round belly, his collar turned up, his thin gray hair fluttering in the wind, had come outside and was mouthing commands at the children, marching them inside like a drill sergeant. He glanced toward Wade, saw that there was still one more bus to turn off the road and unload, and he shouted, “Wade! Hurry up! They’ll be late!”