Russell Banks - A Permanent Member of the Family

I turn to the homeless guys, “Fuck him. He’s all yours.”

Then, for reasons I can’t know or name, I back my car off a short ways. I close the window, and everything comes to a halt, like I’m suddenly unplugged. No power. I just sit there behind the wheel and watch everything unfold like it’s happening in high def on a flat-screen with the sound off.

I can’t hear him, but I know from Allyn’s face and his bulging eyes that he’s gone back to yelling at the two homeless guys, and while he yells he dances a weird kind of jig, hopping from one foot to the other with his knees slightly bent. He’s flailing his arms and bobbing his head, almost like he’s having an epileptic seizure, except his movements are more or less coordinated and intentional. He’s gesturing with his hands for them to bring it on, c’mon, man, bring it on!

The Hispanic guy reaches into his front pocket and pulls out a small jackknife and opens the blade.

The Indian guy touches his friend on the arm and says something to him.

As if he hasn’t seen the Hispanic guy’s jackknife and doesn’t see the more serious hunting knife that the Indian has removed from a leather case strapped to his lower leg, Allyn keeps yelling and dancing a fat guy’s version of the Ali Shuffle.

The Hispanic guy reaches out with his pocketknife and slashes Allyn’s neck from below his right ear to his collarbone, and blood spurts from an artery. Allyn stumbles in his dance and takes one more hop, when the Indian punches his blade into Allyn’s belly and jerks it back. With his free hand the Indian pushes Allyn backward two steps. He falls onto the pavement. Blood pours from his mouth. He gurgles, goes silent, kicks both feet once and is still.

The two men wipe their blades on Allyn’s pant leg and put their knives away. Not once do they look my way. It’s like I’m not there, and in a way I’m not. They grab their grocery carts and disappear into the darkness. I drop my Corolla into gear and cross the parking lot to the exit, turn left onto Lucky Street and drive home.

I go to bed. I fall asleep quickly and sleep without dreams until nearly noon the next day.

A WEEK, maybe ten days later, I’m setting up the bar for the night, shining glasses with a towel, and Enrique strolls in and perches on his usual stool at the bar. Though he’s never done anything to make me personally dislike him, I can’t say I’m real happy to see him. He reminds me of shit I’d rather not think about.

I nod hello, and he says, “Vodka martini. Straight up. Ketel One. Extra dry. Three olives.” While I make his drink he eyes me, like he’s auditioning me for a job at a private club, and when I set it in front of him he says, “I appreciate how you make a martini, man.”

“Thanks,” I say.

When I start to move away, he says, “Kill anybody lately?”

“The fuck you going with that? Why’d you ask me that?”

“Hey, man, I’m sorry! I am really very sorry! Remember I told you sometimes I can’t help what I say out loud? It’s like I don’t even know I’m saying it and peoples can hear it, and then they get all weirded out and upset. I’m really sorry, man.”

“Forget it,” I say. “I guess we all say and do shit we don’t mean.”

I step away and go to work making his martini. I bring it to him and shake it down and pour.

“There’s some peoples who don’t say and do shit that they mean,” he says.

“Yeah? Like who?”

“Like that fucking cracker who was here last time, the dude in the bow tie who wanted to go to the Green Door. Remember him, man?”

“What did he not say?”

“That he was a fucking white racist, man. He didn’t say that, right? He didn’t have to.”

“What did he not do?”

“You know the answer to that, man.”

“I guess so. But tell me.”

“He wanted to fuck a fat Polynesian boy.”

“He coulda got what he wanted at the Green Door.”

“Nah. He passed out in his car in the parking lot. That dude, man, he never made it to the Green Door,” he says, laughing. He lifts his glass and takes the first sip. As the ice-cold vodka hits his brain, he cuts me a smile like he knows everything there is to know about me and says, “And you, you never killed nobody, man.”

RUSSELL BANKSis one of America’s most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.

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