Russell Banks - Affliction

They passed the school, and Wade said, “You know that guy Mel Gordon, Twombley’s son-in-law?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucker almost ran me over this morning. Passed a stopped school bus.”

“Big deal.”

“I’d say so. I plan to nail the bastard.”

LaRiviere shifted in his seat and studied Wade’s profile for a second, then went back to working on his thumbnail. “Forget Mel Gordon,” he said, reaching forward to open the ashtray. He slipped the sliver of fingernail in and closed it again, patting it once afterwards as if with approval.

“Like hell. I was standing there in front of the school, holding up traffic to let the buses in, you know, like I do, with kids crossing the road there and all, and this sonofabitch in his BMW gets impatient and cuts around the line and tear-asses right at me and then blows by like I’m not even there. Could’ve been a little kid crossing right then, for all he knew. Sonofabitch oughta lose his fucking license for something like that.”

“So what are you gonna do, give him a lecture?”

“Shit, no. Summons him. Summons the bastard for a moving violation. I’d sure as hell call that a moving violation, wouldn’t you?”

LaRiviere didn’t answer. They had turned off Route 29 onto Parker Mountain Road, which was still unplowed, and were following in the tracks left by the half-dozen or so vehicles that had preceded them. Wade threw the truck into four-wheel drive, and the truck adhered to the rutted surface of the road as if magnetized by it. Drooping snow-covered pine trees whipped past. The remnants of ancient stone walls smoothed and softened by the snow drifted alongside the truck like loaves of new bread as it wound its way toward Saddleback Ridge, then out along the ridge and back and forth along the switchbacking road to the top of the mountain itself.

Both men were silent now, deep in their thoughts. Wade was replaying Mel Gordon’s offense against his dignity and the law, but who knew what LaRiviere was thinking? When he is not fussing the world into neat little piles and squares and rows, you cannot know what is going through his mind. He is a man who plots and schemes, a secretive man with a bluff exterior who plans his moves way ahead of time and rarely makes one that he has not already made a hundred times in his imagination. He thinks of life more or less as a strict and, for the winners, highly rewarding contest. In LaRiviere’s world, you win and win big, or you lose and lose everything. Survival, mere survival, does not exist for him, except as a dismal loss, which is one of the several reasons he despised Wade. As far as LaRiviere was concerned, Wade merely survived, which meant that his life had no purpose other than to facilitate LaRiviere’s. Either you are able to use people or they use you. Nothing in between. People who think they are in between and believe they are safe there are laughable. Like Wade.

They saw it before they heard it — all at once it loomed up in front of them, a huge white emergency vehicle with red lights flashing, and Wade wrenched the wheel hard to the right and drove the truck off the road into the shallow ditch, up onto the bank, and into a stone wall, where the plow clanged against the rocks and the truck stalled.

The ambulance flashed past without slowing and was gone. Snow filtered down from the trees like flour onto the windshield and broad hood of the truck. Wade said, “Sorry,” and restarted the engine, shoved the truck into reverse and backed slowly onto the road.

“That must’ve been Twombley,” LaRiviere said in a low almost reverential voice, as if he were in church. “Jesus. I bet that was Twombley.” He sounded frightened and stared after the ambulance for a few seconds. “I hope you didn’t ding the fucking plow,” he said absently.

“You want me to follow them into Littleton, to the hospital?”

“No, not now. They probably won’t let us see him right off”

“Probably.”

“Let’s get to the top and talk to Jack first,” LaRiviere said, gathering himself together again. “Jack’ll know what happened,” he said. “He fucking better. Oh, if this could’ve been avoided, Wade, I’ll put that kid’s ass in a sling.”

Wade started driving again, more cautiously this time, as if he expected a second ambulance to charge out of the snow and appear suddenly in front of them. He was puzzled by LaRiviere: what was Twombley to him anyhow, except a now-and-then business buddy? Wade, like most people in town, knew that LaRiviere had been buying and occasionally selling patches of real estate for years, on his own or in partnership with others, and no doubt Twombley had been one of his sometime partners in the purchase of pieces of land, overgrown hilly farmland, mostly, some of it with enough timber to harvest, but most of it nearly useless and apparently unprofitable, except for where it adjoined a road, and a trailer park could be set up or a small house built on it and sold. Even so, despite any business connections they might have had, Twombley and LaRiviere were hardly what you would call asshole buddies. Besides, it was not like LaRiviere to show any feeling for another person, especially another man, unless it was anger or his usual impatience — except when he wanted something from the man, in which case he exuded charms more suited to a Moroccan rug bazaar than to the northern New Hampshire real estate market.

But this was not anger or impatience or phony affection he was expressing for Twombley; it was almost tenderness, protectiveness, concern. Wade liked it: he did not know why and maybe did not even know it was a fact, but he had loved crazy old Gordon LaRiviere since he was a kid, practically, when he first went to work for him right out of high school, and he always needed new reasons to explain his love of the man. LaRiviere’s love of someone else, even a man like Evan Twombley, might be one.

They were silent the rest of the way. By the time they arrived at the top, where there were two cruisers drawn in neatly at the right side of the road opposite Jack’s truck, it had stopped snowing altogether. Three troopers, one talking to Jack, a second with a German shepherd on a leash, the third with a Polaroid camera in his hand, stood at the front of Jack’s truck, and a fourth trooper walked through the snow toward them from LaRiviere’s cabin on the rise beyond.

To Wade, as he pulled in behind the cruisers, all the men looked oddly happy. They wore sly smiles on their faces, as if they had just won a bet with a fool. Jack had both fists placed against the hood of his truck and was shaking his head slowly back and forth, while two of the troopers, hands in pockets, watched and listened to the third talk to him. The talker glanced across the hood of the truck at Wade and LaRiviere as they came up to them, and went on talking.

"So I says to her, ’Lady, I don’t give a shit if you’re John F. Kennedy himself. I didn’t vote for him when he was alive and I ain’t voting for him now.’ “ The trooper was a tall wiry man in his late forties; his hair looked dyed with black shoe polish, and his high flat cheekbones gave his gray eyes a permanent squint. He had a low rumbling voice that stroked itself as he spoke. “Hello, Gordon,” he said to LaRiviere. “Wade.” Then he went on, “ ’I clocked you at a hundred and five between Lincoln and Woodstock,’ I says to her, and she reaches into this little leather bag she’s got on the seat there and pulls out this fucking hundred-dollar bill, so I says to her, ’Ma’am, unless you’re just trying to show me a picture of the late president, you better put that back, because up here bribing a police officer’s a criminal offense.’ “

Jack stood up straight and faced the man, smiling. “A hundred and five,” he said. “That’s wicked fast. What was she driving?” he asked. “Hey, Wade. Hello, Gordon,” he added, casting a quick look their way.