Russell Banks - Affliction

And although Lillian felt a slight chill go down her back when Wade talked that way about his one sexual liaison during their two years apart, the only other woman he had dealt with intimately, she was nonetheless relieved: the Korean woman was different from her in a way that made the woman less than she. Just as Wade believed that Lugene Brooks and Nick Wickham were different from him in ways that made them less than he. Their bargain struck, Wade and Lillian had resumed sleeping together, and a month later, they were remarried and Wade was working for Gordon LaRiviere again and arranging to buy from him a three-acre plot of land out on Lebanon Road to build a house on. Lillian quit waitressing at Toby’s, used her new secretarial skills as a part-time assistant clerk at the town hall, and stopped taking birth control pills. They tried for a long time to get Lillian pregnant, but it was not until after several miscarriages and the passage of eight years that Jill was born, to Wade’s great relief, for he had long believed that his capacity to father a child had been damaged by his having briefly loved a Korean woman. And after Jill was born, Wade almost never thought of the woman again and was sure that he could not even remember her name. Kim Chul Hee.

“Wade Whitehouse. You look like shit. What happened to your mouth — somebody clip you?” Asa Brown smiled, as if amused. He swung his feet up onto his desk and lolled back in his chair and studied Wade for a moment, as if the disheveled man with the shifting eyes and swollen jaw were an odd museum exhibit, then waved with one hand to the chair beside the desk and said, “Sit. Take a load off.”

The room was brightly lit by a bank of overhead fluorescent lights. There were several other desks, but Brown and Wade were alone in the office, which eased Wade somewhat, for he preferred to say what he had to say to Brown alone and not have to endure Brown’s tendency to play Wade against an audience.

“I’ve got some information. I’ve got something you ought to know.” Wade took his hat off and sat down and placed it in his lap. He felt like a schoolboy going to the principal’s office for questioning. He was hot inside the office with his coat still on, and he began to sweat. He fumbled with the zipper of his coat but it jammed, and he finally gave it up and twirled his trooper cap on his finger, trying to look at ease and comfortable here in Asa Brown’s territory, trying not to look the way he felt — trapped, hot, guilty, angry. This was Rolfe’s idea, he probably thought. That goddamned smartass little brother of mine who believes that all you have to do when somebody does something wrong is tell it to the cops.

“The fuck happened to your mouth, Wade? Tell me that. What’s the other guy look like? Not as bad as you, I hope. Somebody did that to me, I’d want him to look a hell of a lot worse than me.” Brown straightened one crease on his trousers with his thumb and forefinger, yanked it taut and performed the same act on the other, then gazed at both creases with admiration.

Wade shifted uncomfortably in his chair and pulled a cigarette from a crumpled pack and with trembling hands lit it. Brown shoved an ashtray across the desk to him and smiled, waiting. Months later, on a bright spring morning, when I sat in the same chair as Wade, and Captain Asa Brown sat across from me with his feet up on his desk, he told me that Wade had looked like a man about to break down and confess a crime. Wade’s shoulders were slumped, his feet drawn up under the chair, knees together, his hands fidgeting with the cigarette and lighter, while he looked off slightly to the right of Brown, refusing eye contact — like a guilt-driven man who had found the burden too great to bear and had finally decided to reveal the nature of his crime and accept his punishment. Not a man come to accuse others.

Wade suddenly sat up straight in his chair, looked at Brown and said, “What I was wondering is about taking the state trooper’s test, maybe. I was wondering if I was too old for that. You know, to join the state police.”

Brown said, “You kidding me, Wade? You want to be a trooper?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I was thinking about it. I was just wondering about the test, if I was too old or something.”

Brown looked at him thoughtfully, as if considering how Wade, in his present state, would look in a trooper’s uniform. Like a man impersonating a cop, he thought, a man in costume, a drunk masquerading in a stolen uniform. “Well, Wade, I’d have to look into that for you. I think there is an age limit, but I’d have to check. What’re you, forty-something?”

“Forty-one.” Wade stood up and jammed his cap back on and put out his cigarette. “I was only wondering.”

“Well, I’ll check on that, okay? You give me a call in a day or two, Wade, and I’ll let you know.”

Wade mumbled thanks and backed toward the door. “Yeah, I’ll call you,” he said, and he turned and went out, walked quickly down the long hallway to the exit and was gone, leaving Brown at his desk, smiling and shaking his head. What an asshole, that guy. Drunk, probably, and pissed off at somebody he got in a fight with. And now he’s got it into his head that he can be a state trooper so he can bust the guy who whacked him on the jaw. He used to be a decent town cop, Brown thought, but it looks like the booze has got to him. Young for that. Too bad.

Some time later, Wade pulled off the road in front of Golden’s store. He put gas into the truck from the pump out front, went into the store and paid Buddy Golden at the register. Buddy, a thin sallow-faced man with a permanently soured expression on his face, said, “Wade,” and handed him his change.

Wade said nothing, turned and left the store.

“Friendly,” Buddy said. “Real friendly.” He stood by the register and watched Wade out the window and saw him walk around to the side of the store and heard him clump up the wooden stairs there to the landing that led to the pair of small apartments upstairs. Buddy heard Wade knock on one of the doors and heard it open, which meant that it was Hettie Rodgers’s apartment, since the other was rented by Frankie LaCoy, who Buddy knew was up in Littleton, probably buying more marijuana to sell here in town. He did not care how the goddamned LaCoy kid made his living, so long as he paid his rent on time and did not trash the apartment.

Buddy finished closing the store, flicked off the lights, locked up and went out, passing the old red truck as he walked around back toward his own car. As he strolled under the landing, he looked up and saw that, yep, he was right: no lights on in Frankie LaCoy’s apartment and several lights burning in Hettie’s. That goddamned Wade Whitehouse, he better be careful, coming around to visit Jack Hewitt’s girlfriend. If Jack catches him, Wade will have some serious explaining to do.

None of my business, he thought, just so long as they don’t trash the apartment. I’ve got to stop renting these places to kids, he decided, walking on. It was nothing but trouble. Of course, there was no one else in town to rent to, except single kids who could not afford a trailer or a house of their own and did not want to live with their parents anymore because they needed to screw each other and drink and smoke marijuana and God knows what else, and newlyweds, who never stayed long.

Hettie was surprised to see Wade. She invited him in and waited for him to tell her why he had come knocking on her door. He peered slowly around the small crowded room and tiny kitchen by the door and said nothing.

She fluffed her new short haircut at the nape of her neck and said, “What do you think, Wade? You like it short?” She spun around to show him all sides. She was wearing an aqua V-neck tee shirt and tight jeans with zippers at the ankles and rubber thongs on her feet. Just home from work, she explained, and out of that uniform they made her wear at Ken’s Kutters in Littleton. “It’s like a damned nurse’s uniform or something they make you wear,” she said. “Ridiculous. They want, like, to call you a beautician, right? So I guess they figure you have to look like you work in a hospital. It’s nice, though.” She sighed. “The job, I mean.” She chattered on nervously, feigning good cheer, while Wade prowled in silence through the apartment, looking out the window in the living room to the road below, where Pop’s truck was parked beside the gas pump.