Affliction

by Russell Banks

“Yeah, sure. You can have the key, all right. It’s the key that’s kept me chained and locked to you all these years,” he said. “I give it back with pleasure!” He pulled his key ring from his pocket and worked one key free of it and dropped it into LaRiviere’s extended hand. “Now I’m free.” He stared into LaRiviere’s unblinking eyes and said, “See how easy it is, Jack? All you got to do is give back what the man gave you, and you’re free of him.”

  He turned, and Jack and Jimmy parted to let him pass. Elaine Bernier dodged to the side, and Wade walked through the outer office and was gone. Free.

  From LaRiviere’s, as far as we know, Wade drove straight home. It was midmorning by then, a sweetly bright day, warm enough to start the snow melting. Pop was out back, stacking firewood and splitting kindling for the stove, something he did almost every day at this hour, early enough for him to wield an ax with relative safety. He worked slowly, methodically, a brittle cautious man who seemed much older than he was, and he did not look up when Wade drove into the yard and parked Margie’s car by the porch.

  Margie was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading a week-old newspaper, and when Wade strode into the room, she folded the paper and looked up, ready now to talk with him about last night, about whatever it was that had happened in the back seat of the car: she did not know, really, what was going on between him and his father, but it was an ancient war, and she knew it was painful for Wade, and she was prepared to understand and sympathize. And as for the business of his being late, perhaps that could be explained: his car was obviously not here, so it must have broken down last night on the way home from work, too far from town to phone, and he had to walk all the way home in the snow, and somehow she had missed him on the road when she drove in to Wickham’s, had driven right past him, poor guy, so that he had to turn around and walk back into town and was unable to get there until nine. Something like that, she was sure, had happened, and then at the restaurant and later in the car, when Pop had started in with his wild drunk-talk, Wade was probably so angry and feeling so guilty, too, that he just lost control, and that was why he slapped the old man.

  But when she looked up from her newspaper and saw Wade, all these thoughts flew away, for she knew instantly that he was someone to be afraid of. His movements were abrupt and erratic, and his face was red and stiffly contorted, as if he were wearing a mask made from a badly photographed portrait of himself, and he was trembling: his hands shook; she could see the tremors from across the room as he pulled off his coat and draped it over a chair by the wall.

  “I’ve got to talk to my brother,” he announced. “Did you get my note? Yes, you did, I see it there. Listen, there’s lots going on right now, and I’ve got to talk to Rolfe about some things,” he said. “Everything okay? You got to go to work today, don’t you?”

  Margie nodded yes and watched him carefully, as Wade headed into the living room and grabbed up the telephone from the table next to the television set. “I’ll only be a few minutes!” he called.

  And that, of course, was when he telephoned me, at a time when I am not usually at home, but I happened on this occasion to have called in sick: it was a Friday, and I was suffering from some kind of mental exhaustion of my own, perhaps a delayed reaction to the funeral and my trip to Lawford, perhaps because of an obscure and complex and no doubt unconscious involvement with what Wade was going through—although at that time I was only marginally aware of what Wade was experiencing. At any rate, I had wakened that morning feeling unnaturally gloomy and peculiarly weak, unable to stand without my legs turning to water, so I had called the school and asked that a substitute take my classes for the day. Then, midmorning, the phone rang, and it was Wade.

  It was an unusually long conversation. Wade was garrulous and intense at first, rapidly filling me in on the events of the previous evening. He left out, of course, certain details that would have put him in an unfavorable light, such as the slapping incident in the car, details that I obtained months later from various sources—Margie, Nick Wickham, Jimmy Dame, the deer hunters from Lynn, Massachusetts. Then he told me the story, his version, of the bathtub incident, which I found somewhat disconcerting, since it was so far from my own version of that story and because it happened to be about me. And finally he got to the apparent point of his call, to tell me what he had learned at Alma Pittman’s this morning—he did not mention his being fired by Gordon LaRiviere—and to ask my advice on how to use this new information. “I know what it means,” he said. “I’m just running out of ways to use it.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘for what?’ To help Jack, of course, and to nail those sonsofbitches, the two Gordons, as old Alma calls them. Jesus Christ, Rolfe, whose side are you on in this?”

  “Yours, naturally,” I assured him. But his intensity and the ferocity of his feelings alarmed me. And his chaos and apparent lack of focus, in spite of his obsession with this case, were causing me to react carefully. He switched from topic to topic, tone to tone: one minute he would be railing against Mel Gordon, the next he would be complaining about his toothache, which had persisted for weeks now; he spoke with anxious sympathy about Jack Hewitt, seeming almost to identify with the man, and then rambled on at tedious length about his car’s being in the garage and having to borrow Margie’s car and being unable to leave Pop alone in the house for very long; he turned bitter for a few moments as he spoke about Lillian and his custody suit, as he referred to it, and then practically wept when he recounted how Lillian was keeping him from being a good father to his own daughter.

  It was an anxiety-producing conversation, to say the least, and I felt one of my old migraines coming on, as if a penlight inside my skull were being shined directly at my eyes from behind. I wanted to get away from him, so I took over the conversation and spoke with perhaps more authority than I normally would have. I do believe, however, that this was precisely what Wade wanted me to do and why he had called me in the first place. While he was talking, once it became evident to me that he had become hopelessly confused, I made notes on the yellow pad I keep by the phone, numbering his individual problems and putting them into relation to one another: this is, after all, one of the ways I solve my own problems, by naming them and by placing them in order, so that solving the least of my problems leads finally to the solution of the largest. Why not try to solve Wade’s problems the same way? Thus, when I decided to take over the conversation, I was able to speak with clarity and force. He listened and, for all I know, may have been taking notes himself, because as it turned out, he followed my advice to the letter. Which is why I feel today less than innocent, less than blameless for what eventually happened. Of course, I had no way of knowing how Wade would botch things, no way of predicting how simple circumstances would thwart him and no way of anticipating the forms he would eventually discover to express his increasingly violent feelings.

  Wade got off the phone with me and, as I had suggested, immediately called Merritt’s garage to arrange to pick up his car. It was Chick Ward who answered, and when Wade said he was calling about his car, Chick laughed, a sneering knowing laugh, and said, “Wade, old buddy, there’s good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  “Just give me the facts, Chick. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Okay, the good news, old buddy, is we haven’t got to your car yet. It only came in yesterday afternoon, you know. That’s the good news, you understand.” His voice was loud, as if he were talking for the benefit of an audience of listeners other than Wade.

  “What the hell are you up to?”

  “You want the bad news?” Wade could picture Chick grinning at the other end, standing in the garage and flashing a knowing wink at Chub Merritt and anyone else who happened to be there resuscitating LaRiviere’s drowned pickup truck.

  “Just tell me when you’ll have it fixed. It’s the starter motor, I’m pretty sure, it’s been giving me trouble—”

  “The bad news,” Chick said, interrupt
ing him, “is, the reason we ain’t got to your car yet is we got a problem here with a truck somebody drove through the ice last night. Figured you’d know something about that, Wade.”

  Wade was silent for a second. “Yeah,” he said. “I know about that.”

  “Yep. Figured. Chub also says to tell you that Gordon LaRiviere won’t let you bill your job back to him. You’ll have to pay for it yourself. Probably come to a couple hundred bucks, if it’s a starter motor, like you say.”

  Wade said nothing. Money … he had none. No job, no money, no car, nothing.

  “That okay with you, Wade?”

  “Yeah. That’s fine with me.”

  “Oh, I got some more of the bad news, Wade. You want to hear it?”

  “Not particularly, you sonofabitch.”

  “Hey, I’m just the messenger, you know. I just work here.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, Chub, he says you’re fired, Wade.”

  “Fired! He can’t! He can’t fire me! LaRiviere already did that this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah, Wade, he can. He’s one of the selectmen, and he said to tell you to turn your badge in and clean out your office down to the town hall and leave your office key with his wife there. She’ll be in the Board of Selectmen’s office all day. He says he’ll pull the CB and the police light off your car while he’s got it down here. I guess they’re town property, Wade.”

  “Let me talk to Chub,” Wade said. “There’s some things he ought to know. Put Chub on.”

  Chick muffled the phone for a few seconds, then came back on and said, “Chub says, he says to tell you he’s too busy drying out your ex-boss’s pickup truck to talk to you. Sorry.”

  “Look, you sonofabitch, put Chub on! I know a few things he ought to know, goddammit. Before he fires me, he should know what I know about a few people in this town. You put him on, you hear?”

  Again, Chick muffled the phone. A moment passed, and then Wade heard the receiver click, and a dial tone buzzed in his ear.

  Slowly, Wade laid the receiver back in its cradle. So Chub was in it too! Chub Merritt was working with them. He was probably taking a cut from Gordon LaRiviere and Mel Gordon, and as one of the selectmen, he had as much access to the tax records as LaRiviere did, so his job was to keep quiet about Northcountry Development Corporation and, among other things, help keep Wade out of the way.

  The throb in his jaw seemed to continue the buzz of the dial tone, distracting him abruptly from his mania—for by now it was that, a mania—and made him remember my second piece of advice, to call a dentist, for heaven’s sake, and get that tooth pulled. Take care of the little things first, the things that are distracting and handicapping you in your attempts to take care of the big things. Get your own car back, get your tooth pulled, let Pop take care of himself while you get your facts in order, and take your facts over the heads of the locals, whom you cannot trust, straight to the state police. Let the state police go to work on this. And then maybe try to get Jack Hewitt to turn himself in. But do it calmly, peacefully, rationally. Do not chase him around the countryside or go up against him in a bar or in LaRiviere’s shop, where there will be other people around. Talk to his girlfriend or his father, talk to somebody he trusts, and explain what is at stake for him here. Jack no longer trusts you, Wade, so you might have to let someone else convince him that he must confess his crime and incriminate the others. Save that young man, and break the others. And while you are doing that, instruct J. Battle Hand to pursue your case against Lillian. Now that you have given him information that not only tarnishes Lillian’s good-mother image but also implicates her own attorney, your Mr. Hand should be able to cut a deal that will force Lillian to give you back your rights as a father. In a few short weeks, before Christmas, maybe even before Thanksgiving, Wade, everything that now seems out of control and chaotic will be under control and orderly, and you and the fine woman who will soon be your wife and your lovely daughter Jill and your father will sit down to Thanksgiving dinner in the old family homestead together, and you will offer up a prayer to thank the Lord for all that He has given to you this year. And maybe I myself will join you at that table.

  With the phone book in his lap, Wade flipped through the yellow pages and checked the Littleton listings for dentists: there were four, and he called one after the other in alphabetical order, asking, and then begging and finally shouting, for an appointment that afternoon. All four refused to see him. Two of them—I later learned, having called them myself—remembered hanging up in the middle of his rant, convinced that he was either crazy or dangerous or both.

  Wade slammed down the phone, tossed the telephone book across the room, and when he stood up and turned around, he saw Margie standing by the door, watching him, mouth open, ashen-faced.

  “What?” he said.

  “What on earth is happening to you, Wade? Why are you acting this way?”

  “What do you mean? It’s my tooth! My fucking tooth! I can’t even think anymore because of it!”

  “Wade, I heard you talking. You got fired this morning, didn’t you?”

  “Look, that’s just temporary, believe me. There’s so much shit going to hit the fan in the next few days, my getting fired by LaRiviere and Chub Merritt won’t matter a bit. Those sonsofbitches are going to be out of business and doing time before I’m through.” He paced around the room while he talked, and clamped his hand against his throbbing jaw, as if making sure that it was still attached to him. Behind Margie, Pop came into the kitchen from outside with a half-dozen chunks of wood in his arms and dumped them noisily into the woodbox. “There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t told you or told anyone yet, but by God, I’m going to blow this town wide open now,” Wade said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get another job. I can find work doing lots of things around here. People are going to need me, anyhow. After this is over, and people see what’s been going on behind their backs, they’ll make me into a goddamned hero. You wait: when this blows, people will need me. Like the way Jill needs me, right? You’ll see, I’ll deliver. And I’ll be the best goddamned father for her who ever lived. You need me. Even Pop, for Christ’s sake, he needs me. So don’t worry, I’ll have a job, a good job, when this is over, and I’ll take care of this house, fix it up, make it nice for all of us. And this town needs me too. They don’t know it yet, but they do. The same as Jill and you and Pop. I’ll be the town cop again, don’t worry. Maybe now they think they can send me howling into a corner, like a kicked dog or some damned thing, some small irritating thing in the way, but by God, it’ll be different soon.”

  Slowly, as if being shoved back by the force of his words, Margie retreated from the room toward the kitchen, where she lifted her coat from the hook by the door and picked up her pocketbook, and while Wade paced and ranted on behind her, gesturing and explaining quite as if she were still standing at the living room door, she stepped outside.

  She hurried down the steps and got into her car, started the motor and backed out to the road, thinking, The man’s crazy. One’s a drunk, and the other’s crazy. What on earth am I doing here? She could leave, she thought: her furniture was still in her old place in town, and she had not yet written to her ex-husband’s parents in Florida to tell them that she had moved out. But all her clothes, her linens and personal belongings, photographs, papers, were in Wade’s house, which was how she thought of the house now. Somehow the place smelled like Wade and looked like him: once a fine piece of country workmanship, symmetrical, handsomely proportioned, attractively located, the house was now broken down, disheveled, barely functional.

  Wade was turning into his father, she suddenly realized. Wade, sober, sounded and acted the way his father did drunk. And his father was being eased out of existence altogether. She could see what was happening. She did not intend to turn into Wade’s mother. She would stay in the house one more night, she decided, and tomorrow, when Wade went down to Concord to see that lawyer of his, she would move out.

  The p
ain was worse than it had ever been: it had turned scarlet, had painted half of the inside of his face, was smeared from the point of his chin to his temple and was eating its way in toward the center. Wade’s vision was affected now, and he saw things in discontinuous flutters and flashes—Pop was in the kitchen shucking his jacket; the television set was turned on, the horizontal control out of whack, the picture flipping again and again; Pop was seated on the couch in front of the television; was in the kitchen; was adjusting the horizontal control. Noises were unnaturally loud, followed by strange bits of silence: the sound of Pop opening the kitchen cabinet, unscrewing the top of his bottle, pouring whiskey into a glass and drinking it down—Wade heard it all clearly and at high volume, as if Pop had a microphone attached to him; and then the television came on, loud at first, suddenly silent, loud again; and the sound of Pop dropping an armload of wood into the woodbox, like a rock slide, punctuated by a hollow silence.

  Pop was watching wrestling, his hands clapped onto his knees as if to hold them still, while Wade chased the pain in his face around the room, from window to window to door, as if his face were a dog in a pen looking for a way out. Pop said something about a dish antenna, he wished he had one of those dish antennas, they should buy one of those dish antennas, how much did a dish antenna cost, did Wade know how much people paid for those dish antennas you see all over town these days? Shut up! Wade shouted. Just shut the fuck up! The television audience was screaming, as a huge nearly naked man wearing a mask picked up another man and tossed him to the mat and leapt onto him, and the crowd shrieked with joy. Then the picture flipped again, and Pop got out of his seat and adjusted the knob and said he wished he had one of those dish antennas and sat back down, while the man with the mask flew through the air with his feet out and slammed the other man in the back, sending him staggering across the ring against the ropes, and the audience went crazy, booing, screaming, clapping hands, some even standing on their seats and shaking their fists. Then silence, as Wade stood by the window and looked out across the snow-covered backyard to the half-collapsed barn. A crow—in sharp black profile, like a silhouette, perched on a rafter—turned its head slowly, as if it knew it was being watched, until its beak was aimed at Wade like an accusing finger: You! Wade turned away, and the sound of the television bored into his head, the screams of the audience, the grunts and thuds of the wrestlers, the hearty voice of the announcer, strands of loud noise winding around one another and making a single shaft that drilled into his brain: Pop was out in the kitchen again; the television went silent; Wade heard the bottle being opened, the whiskey splashing into the glass, the sound of his father’s mouth, lips, tongue, throat, as he swallowed. Leave that fucking bottle out! Wade shouted, and he strode into the kitchen, passed Pop coming the other way, grabbed the bottle from the counter and hurried outdoors.