Russell Banks - Affliction

“WADE COME IN HERE LOOKING STRANGE, sort of like he always does — you know, with that kind of distracted nervous face he wears all the time, only worse this time, like he was a little drunk, maybe. Which was not unusual, even though it was only a little after lunchtime. The place was still pretty busy, it being the next to last day of deer season and all these Massachusetts assholes who hadn’t got their deer yet up for one last crack at shooting a goddamned cow or a paperboy on a bike and hoping it was a deer — that happened, you know: couple years ago, some individual shot a kid on a bike delivering papers over near Catamount. Astounding.

“Anyhow, Wade was looking peculiar, you might say, like he hadn’t gotten any sleep for a few nights, big humongous circles under his eyes; only he was all dressed up, like he was going to a funeral, coat and tie and all; and he had his kid with him, this nice little kid, I seen her lots of times, what’s-her-name, Jillie: he goes, ‘Jillie, you want a cheese grilled sandwich? You want a cheese grilled sandwich?’ he says. He always says it that way, ‘cheese grilled sandwich,’ and normally I just leave the guy alone — what the hell, everybody talks funny sometimes. Only this time I have to correct him, I guess as a kind of joke. ‘It’s grilled cheese sandwich, you dub,’ I tell him, because I was pissed he made such a big deal out of my sign a few weeks before just when I was putting the damned thing up. The sonofabitch cost me a hundred and fifty bucks and it come out wrong and Wade seen it and pointed it out to me in what you might say was an aggressive way.

“So I go, ‘It’s grilled cheese sandwich, you dub,’ friendly, sort of, but like I said, pissed a little — probably mostly because we were busy as hell right then and Margie, as you know, had taken the day off at my suggestion for very good reasons, which you can use my story to illustrate the wisdom of my recommendation, because the sonofabitch reaches across the counter and grabs me by the shirtfront. He’s sitting there on a stool, you know, right where you are, or a few stools down — I don’t recall that exactly; and his kid is sitting next to him, looking bored like kids do — until this happens, of course, which is when all hell breaks loose. Wade looks up at me with his face suddenly gone red, and he just grabs my shirt, like this.”

And here Nick Wickham reached across the counter and grasped my shirtfront and yanked, hard. Slowly, he let go and went on. I sat back, my legs suddenly watery.

“Everybody in the place goes silent. What the hell, this is unusual, right? This is really un-usual. And the little kid — I mean, she’s just a kid, you know, a goddamned urchin, and she’s naturally terrified. Her face goes all white, and she starts to cry, so Wade lets go of me — and listen, I was plenty scared myself, not to mention ticked off. I figure, the place is full of guys, so Wade can’t do too much damage, but just the same, I’m a goddamned marshmallow; I don’t need that kind of stuff, especially not in my restaurant. Guys come in drunk and start trouble, I sweet-talk them right out the door: let them settle it in the parking lot. Wade, though, there was no sweet-talking that guy that day. It’s like he had this glaze over his eyes, like he couldn’t see out right, and you couldn’t see in at all; when the kid starts to cry, he looks over at her, surprised and puzzled, like he’s this gorilla, some kind of King Kong who hears a strange musical sound off to his side just as he’s about to bite off the head of some guy; he lets go of me, acts like he was only hanging up his coat or something instead of physically attacking a fellow human being. Very strange. Very strange and weird. Of course I knew already about LaRiviere firing him, and I knew about Jack replacing him as town cop and all — everybody knew about it by then — but just the same, it was very strange, the way he was acting.

“He makes like he’s comforting his kid: wipes her nose with a napkin, that sort of thing — like a regular loving father and nothing’s happened; and she says she wants to go home. He got up, stiff — like she slapped him and he’s holding back his impulse to slap her back because she’s a kid — and he goes, ‘Okay, let’s go home, then.’ Now this worries me more than a little, because I happen to know that Margie’s out there at the house this very minute packing up and moving the hell out, like I told her to do. I mean, I know the individuals we’re talking about here are your father and your brother, but — no offense — I was plenty worried about Margie living up there on the hill with those two acting the way they were. You can understand that. You would have done the same thing, probably: told her to move the hell out, I mean.

“So I say to him, ‘Wade, I got a message for you.’ He goes, ‘A message.’ Like it’s in a foreign language. I say, ‘Jack Hewitt, he’s looking for you. Wants you to clear your stuff out of his office down to the town hall.’ I do this real careful, standing back there, way the hell over by the coffee machine, so he can’t reach me. Like I say, I’m a real marshmallow, and this guy is a hand grenade with the goddamned pin pulled; but I figure Jack can handle him all right, and most importantly, I don’t want Wade to catch Margie moving out on him. She’s a hell of a sweet woman, as you no doubt know by now. Heart as big as a house. So I tell Wade about Jack wanting him to clear his stuff out — which happened to be true. Jack was in that morning early. He had his license back, and there was only one more day for him to get his deer, so he was heading out; and Jack, he says to me, ‘If you see Wade, tell him to get his shit out of my office,’ was how he put it. I put it to Wade somewhat more politely, let us say. Although I did make the mistake of calling it ‘his’ office. Jack’s.

“Wade picked right up on that. My mistake. I didn’t realize — or I might not have said it — but at that particular time he had not yet been informed about Jack being the new town cop: which of course was Gordon LaRiviere’s doing, him and Chub Merritt, the selectmen. Wade says to me, ‘His office. You mean my old office?’ And what can I say? I tell him what he surely does not want to hear. He looks at me for a second like his stack is going to blow, and then he grabs his kid’s hand and heads out the door — and I’m thinking, ‘Oh boy, more trouble.’ I didn’t have any idea how much more, of course. But that was the last time I saw Wade Whitehouse. Ever. And I can’t say I’ve missed him. No offense, him being your brother and all, but I expect you don’t particularly miss the individual, either.”

It was a question more than a statement, and I did not intend to answer it. Actually, I did not know how to answer it, without lying to the man. I switched off the tape recorder and reached for my check, which Nick had placed next to my coffee cup.

“Actually, yes, I did see him that day. Not to talk to. But I saw him from my driveway, as he passed by the house. I was filling the bird feeders in my front yard, and I looked up as he drove by, because of all the noise that old truck of his father’s made. He had my grandniece in the truck with him — Jill — so naturally I noticed. And I always thought well of Wade, in spite of everything. He suffered. He had a terrible time growing up. And I never thought that Lillian was particularly good for him, although I loved Lillian and still do. She’s my niece, after all. But that Saturday, when Wade and Jill drove past, there was nothing unusual — really, nothing worth commenting on.”

“Well, sure, I was scared of him. Of course I was scared of him. Who wouldn’t be? But it was like a long time ago, and I don’t remember a lot. I remember Daddy took me out of the restaurant there, and we went down to his office. Big deal. Well, I know, it was a big deal — that’s where he got the gun; he took his guns from his office. It used to be his office, I mean — which made him really mad. I didn’t say anything anymore — once we left the restaurant, I mean. I guess I was too scared.