Affliction

by Russell Banks

  And at the burial, no one shed more than a few perfunctory tears. It was held at the Riverside Cemetery, high on the slope near the ridge, where Elbourne and Charlie, whose remains had been shipped back from Vietnam two decades earlier, were buried. At the head of each grave, a tiny VFW flag fluttered next to a small gray-blue granite stone with the boy’s name and birth and death date carved into it. Our mother’s open grave lay just beyond her firstborn son’s, shockingly dark and deep against the white blanket of snow, a quick entry to another world, where neither snow nor sunlight ever fell.

  At one point, after Reverend Doughty had said his final benign and appropriately ecumenical prayer and the coffin was at last ready for the descent, Wade crossed from where he had been standing with me and Margie and Pop to the opposite side of the grave, where Lillian and Jill and Bob Horner stood alongside most of the twelve or fifteen townspeople who had attended. As he passed one of the several floral arrangements provided by the funeral home, he plucked a long-stemmed white carnation, which he handed to Jill. Leaning down beside her, he whispered into her ear, and she stepped forward and laid the flower across the coffin.

  Then Wade returned to the bouquet and drew out four more flowers, which he presented in turn to Lena, me and Pop, keeping one for himself. He nodded to Lena, and she followed Jill’s example; as did I. Then Wade placed his own flower on the coffin.

  We all looked at Pop, who stood blinking in the sunlight, his flower held in front of him as if he were about to smell it. It was strange moment. We were suddenly and unexpectedly aware of our mother’s presence in a way that until this moment we had either denied or had been denied. Her sad battered life seemed to come clear to us, and for a few seconds we were unable to look away from her suffering. We had looked away, averted our gaze, for so many reasons, but mostly because we all three believed at bottom that we could have and should have saved her from our father’s terrible violence, the permanent wrath that he seemed unable to breathe without. But somehow, the sight of that shrunken old man holding the flower before him in trembling hands, unsure of what to do with it, made us briefly forgive ourselves, perhaps, and allowed us to see him as she must have seen him, which is to say, allowed us to love him, and to know that she loved him and that there was no way we could have saved her from him, not Lena, surely, and not I, and not Wade. And not even the old man himself could have saved her from the violence that he had inflicted on her and on us. If he had taken himself out behind the barn one morning during his life with her and shot himself in the head, inflicted on himself in one awful blow all the violence he had battered us with during the years we lived with him, it still would not have released us, for our mother loved him, and so did we, and that awful blow would have been inflicted on us as well. His violence and wrath were our violence and wrath: there had been no way out of it.

  As if she were sitting up in her coffin with her arms reaching toward her husband, our mother drew our father slowly forward. He tottered a bit, blinked away tears, and held out the carnation, a pathetic and vain plea for forgiveness impossible to give, and placed it over the others. Then he withdrew, and the young mortician flipped the lever, and the coffin slowly descended into the grave, and our mother was gone.

  One by one, the townspeople returned to their cars and pickup trucks parked below on the lane and drove off, until only we family members, including Lillian and Jill and Bob Horner and, of course, Margie Fogg, who had one large arm around Pop’s shoulders, remained at the gravesite.

  Wade looked down at Jill, smiled and then hugged her closely. She let herself be held for a few seconds and stepped away.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Wade said to her. “Can you stay for a while?” He looked at Lillian for an answer.

  She hesitated, as if she herself would like to stay on and were trying to think of a way to say it that would not mislead him. But then she shook her head no.

  Wade inhaled deeply and held his breath, making a hard bubble in his chest, and looked off toward the ridge. “You ever come to your father’s grave anymore?” he asked Lillian.

  She turned and followed his gaze up the slope. “No, not anymore. It’s too … it’s too far.”

  She was remembering what Wade wanted her to remember, those summer Sunday afternoons when they were teenagers newly in love and the future was endless and full of hope for them—together and alone. They were going to turn into a marvelous man and powerful woman and brilliant couple: they were going to become successful at everything, but especially at love. And here they were, and now Wade wanted her to know, in the same way he knew, what in the intervening years had been lost and, if possible, to grieve with him for a moment. This might be the last time they could share something as tender and powerful as grief over their broken dreams.

  But Lillian did not know that, because she did not know yet about Wade’s new lawyer, so she offered Wade only a quick pat on the shoulder and said, “Wade, I‘m sorry about your mother. I always liked her and felt sorry for her.” She glanced sharply over at our father; he had been turned by Margie; she was moving him with care down the slope toward Wade’s car.

  “Come on, honey,” Lillian said to Jill. “We‘ve got to get back by four for your ice-skating lesson.”

  “I’m taking ice-skating, Daddy!” Jill said, suddenly brightening.

  “Great. Figure skating, I suppose.” He wondered where in hell she could take figure-skating lessons up here. Nowhere, probably.

  “And ice ballet.”

  “Great.”

  She smiled warmly at him, and waved, and moved off with her mother and her stepfather, who, Wade realized, had a new Tyrolean hat, just like the other.

  For a few moments, Wade stood alone by our mother’s grave. I watched his dark slump-shouldered figure from the black Buick down below, with Pop sitting in silence beside me. Wade seemed terribly lonely to me then. He must still love that woman, I thought. How painful it must be for him, to have his mother buried and to stand and watch the woman he loves and his only child walk away from him. I was glad that I did not have to endure such pain.

  Not surprisingly, Lena and her family headed back down to Massachusetts right after the burial. I rode out to the house with Wade and Margie and Pop, however, because my car was parked out there, but also to talk over a few financial matters with Wade. It was clear that Wade now intended to take responsibility for the house and for Pop, but it was a little vague to me as to who would bear the costs for this. Far better, I felt, to discuss and clarify these changes now than to let debts, real or imagined, and resentments, just or unjust, accumulate.

  We left Margie with Pop in the kitchen and walked outside to the porch. It was midafternoon but already growing dark and, with the sunlight gone, getting cold fast. A pair of snow shovels leaned against the wall of the porch, and Wade grabbed one and handed me the other.

  “Let’s dig out Pop’s truck before the skin of the snow freezes up,” he said.

  I said okay and followed him around to the side of the house, where we commenced to break apart the drift that had nearly buried the vehicle. The snow had thickened during the day and was heavy, packed tightly by its own weight, and we were able to cut it into neat blocks that flew solidly through the air when we heaved them. It was pleasant warming work, and the talk came easily to us, perhaps because the tensions of the funeral were now behind us and we were able to mourn privately and alone.

  Wade seemed grateful for my interest in his plans. He would pay for all the funeral expenses with a small insurance policy that our mother had taken out years ago. He had checked the deed and other papers he had found in her dresser drawers and learned that there was no mortgage or lien on the house. He was not sure about the taxes but would stop by and ask Alma Pittman tomorrow, he assured me. Wade explained that he planned to live in the house and pay for any renovations or repairs himself, along with the taxes and insurance, and when Pop died, which he said could be tomorrow or twenty years from now, he would probably want to buy o
ut my and Lena’ two thirds, after having the place properly appraised, of course. I said that I was agreeable to the arrangement, and I was sure Lena would feel the same. Pop had hissocial security check, a bit more than five hundred dollars a month, which Wade said should more than cover his expenses for food and booze. It all sounded reasonable and even kind.

  “What about Margie?” I asked.

  “What about her?”

  We had ceased work for a minute, and we were leaning on our shovel handles, face to face. “Well, do you plan to get married?”

  “Yes,” he said, although they had not yet set a date for it. Meanwhile, she would be living with him. “She’ll probably quit her job and stay out here at the place with Pop,” he added. “We leave him alone here, he’ll set the damned place on fire. And of course Jill will be here a lot, so it’ll be good to have Margie around then. Things are going to change there, by the way,” he said, and he briefly updated me on his legal maneuvers. “I got an appointment Saturday in Concord with my lawyer, and after that all hell’s going to break loose for a while. And dammit, it’s worth it,” he said. But then he sighed, as if it were not worth it, and we went back to work.

  In a short while, we had the truck free of the snow and had driven it out to the cleared part of the driveway while we cleaned up the area. Then Wade suggested that we shovel out the driveway all the way to the barn, so he could put Pop’s truck inside and leave it till spring. “Or whenever. I don’t want the bastard driving drunk, and he’s always drunk now, so it’s best to put the damned thing out of the snow, in the barn. Empty the gas tank and hide the keys.”

  The barn was still more or less intact at the front, although open to the weather in back, where the roof had collapsed and where years ago Pop and Wade and Charlie had torn off most of the boards in Pop’s short-lived attempt to close up the building. When we had cleared the driveway from the front of the house around to the back, all the way to the large open door of the barn, Wade got in Pop’s truck and drove it inside. It was dark by now, and the truck headlights illuminated the skeletal interior of the structure. It looked like the backstage area of a long-unused opera house.

  I walked behind the truck, and when I entered the barn, with the light bouncing and sliding off the lofts and beams overhead, I was suddenly out of the winter wind and early darkness and found myself surprisingly comfortable there; I wanted to stay, to make my home in the wreckage and rot of the old building; I liked the barn, decrepit and falling down, better than the house.

  Wade kept the motor running for a few moments, as if he, too, were reluctant to break the spell cast by the lights and the strange interior space of the barn. He got out and stood beside me and, with me, looked up at the roof, at the old empty haylofts and through the exposed beams and timbers at the back at the dark sky beyond. There was a familial comfort to the place, and one could almost smell the cattle and other livestock that had once been housed here. But there was also a mystery to the place, as if an unpunished crime had been committed in this space.

  Pop’ shaky old red truck, a Ford stake-body rusted out at the fenders and the bottom of the cab, idled quietly, while Wade and I walked in careful silence through the splash of light, touching the splintery unpainted wood of the walls, as if looking for clues. Wade lit a cigarette and stopped walking and, with his back to me, stared out the open end of the barn at the brush-cluttered field behind it. The lights from the truck sent a wash of pale light over the snow to the far woods. Beyond the woods the land rose sharply on the left toward Parker Mountain and fell away on the right toward Saddleback Ridge. The old farm lay halfway between them and in years past, when the land was cleared of trees, must have offered lovely views out here. There were over a hundred acres of high sloping brushy fields and woodlands that had belonged once to Uncle Elbourne and then to Pop and now, in a way, to Wade. The dark hillside and woods stirred me profoundly in a way I could not name, and Wade must have felt as I did, for we continued to stare out from the wreck of the barn in silence.

  “Wade,” I said. “That was a nice gesture, with the flowers, at the cemetery.”

  “Yeah, well, it seemed like something was … needed. You know. For Ma.”

  “I was wondering, I wondered if maybe you felt the way I did, when we put the flowers on top of the coffin.”

  “How’ that?”

  “Well, sort of like she was there, for just a minute longer, giving us some kind of message. About Pop. About taking care of Pop, maybe.” This was not working: Wade and I are incapable of talking about the things that matter most to us. Still, it seemed important to try.

  “Taking care of Pop, eh? You want to take care of him? Be my guest. I suppose what I‘m doing for him is what Ma would have wanted, but if it was up to me alone, I‘d take the bastard out behind the barn and shoot him. I kid you not.”

  “Well, it was a nice gesture anyway, with the flowers.”

  “Thanks,” he said, his back still to me.

  We stood in silence for a moment longer, and then, finally, I turned toward the truck and suggested that we go back inside the house.

  “Not yet, not till I burn out the little gas that’ left in the tank. You go in if you want. I got to stay here until it stalls out, or the battery’ll run dead. I guess I ought to shut off the headlights, though,” he said, clearly not wanting to. “There’ a kerosene lantern I saw a minute ago over by the side of the door, where we came in. Whyn’t you light that?” he said.

  I did as he instructed, while he climbed into the cab and flicked off the headlights; and then we had a soft pale-yellow light filling the cavernous space. The truck motor chugged on, and I felt as if we were inside a ship at night, crossing a northern sea, looking out into darkness and cold with a steady wind in our faces.

  I do not know where the thought came from, but suddenly I remembered the shooting of Evan Twombley, and I asked Wade if he had heard anything new about it in the last few days.

  He said no and seemed oddly reluctant to talk about it, as if embarrassed by his earlier obsessive interest in the case. “I guess it was an accident, like everybody thinks.”

  “Like everybody wants to think, you mean,” I said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so. But don’t get me all started up on that again. It doesn’t go anywhere, and whenever I get to thinking on it, I get crazy, like a dog worrying at a flea it can’t scratch. It feels better if I just let it alone,” he said.

  “You want to know what I think happened?”

  Wade said no, then yes, and walked around to the passenger’ side of the truck and opened the door and groped in the dark through the glove compartment. I had taken up a position on the tailgate, and when he returned and sat down beside me, he was carrying a nearly full bottle of Canadian Club. “I‘ve been finding them all over the damned place,” he said, and heunscrewed the cap, sniffed the contents and took a slug from the bottle. “In the basement, in the attic, under the bathroom sink. I didn’t realize how bad he‘d got.” He started to pass the bottle to me, then withdrew it. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Wade, I think your first response to the Twombley shooting was the correct one.”

  “Which is?”

  “That it was not an accident.”

  “Then who shot him?”

  “Well, your friend, I think. Jack Hewitt.”

  “Motive, Rolfe. You got to have motive.”

  “For Jack? Money.”

  “Okay. Money. Jack always needs money, and he’ had big ideas about life ever since he got all that attention for being a ballplayer. But come on, who the hell would pay Jack that kind of money? Bonus-baby money.”

  “Easy. Who benefits if Twombley is suddenly dead?”

  “Oh, the mob, I suppose. The Mafia or the Cosa Nostra or whatever the hell they call them these days. But those guys, they don’t need to hire a hick from the sticks. They‘ve got their own talent, guys with lots of experience. Specialists.”

  “Right. They would not deal with a guy like Jack
. I know that. Who else benefits?”

  “I don’t know, Rolfe. You tell me.”

  “Okay, I will. It is likely that there are people running the union who do not want Twombley to testify in Washington about connections between the union and organized crime. Twombley was the president, but his son-in-law is the vice-president and treasurer, and he will probably be the next president. I saw that in the papers. What’ his name, Mel Gordon?”

  “Gordon, yeah. The guy with the BMW I told you about. I told you about him, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. So listen, here is my theory. It is quite possible, it is even likely, that Twombley was unaware of connections between the union and the mob, money-laundering operations, say, where cash skimmed from Las Vegas or from drugs gets into the pension fund and then in turn gets invested in real estate deals, for example, or, what the hell, mutual funds. Sound and very legal investments. That could happen without his knowing. Until, prompted by a federal inquiry, he starts nosing around himself.”

  Wade took another drink from the bottle and set it down next to him on the tailgate. He looked at me and said, “Toothache,” then lit a cigarette and stared out the open door at the backside of the house, where now and then we could see Margie pass by the kitchen window, walking from the sink to the stove.

  Wade said, “So you think Mel Gordon would want to get rid of him, but he wouldn’t want it to look like a hit, a professional killing. Because that would only confirm the Mafia connection and make people dig deeper.”

  “Right. But a hunting accident, now that would be perfect.”

  “Yep,” he said. “I guess it would. It’s true, y know. Show a kid like Jack enough money, and he just might do something like that. And it’ obviously the easiest way in the world to shoot somebody and get away with it. Shit, in this state, even if you admit that you shot somebody in the woods, so long as you say it was accidental, you might get fined fifty bucks and your hunting license gets pulled for the season. Jack, fucking Jack. He probably claimed the guy shot himself, instead of saying he shot him himself accidentally, because it was the first day of the season and Jack hadn’t got his own deer yet and didn’t want his license pulled.”