The Sweet Hereafter

by Russell Banks

  “Why? Why should I believe you?”

  “Listen to me, you poor woman. You didn’t do anything wrong that morning. It wasn’t your fault. I now know as much as anyone about what happened out there on the highway that morning, and believe me, it’s not you who are at fault.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Two or maybe three parties who were not there at the time,” I said, and I listed them for her. I told her my name and explained that I was representing the Ottos and the Walkers, people who liked and admired her and who believed, with me, that she was in many ways as much a victim of this tragedy as they were. I said that I would like to represent her too.

  “Me? Represent me? No,” she said. “You can’t. I only said I was doing fifty, fifty-five. To the police; to Captain Wyatt Pitney, from the state police. Because that’s how I remembered it. But the truth, mister, is that I might have been doing sixty miles an hour when the bus went over, or sixty-five. Not seventy, I’m sure. But sixty is possible. Sixty-five, even. And I would say that to a judge, if some smart lawyer like you, only working for the other side, took it into his head to ask it that way. And, mister,” she said in a low voice, “let’s face it, if I was over the limit, no matter how you tell it, I’m sure I’m to blame.”

  Yep. “But what if Billy Ansel insists that at the time of the alleged accident, you were going fifty-two miles an hour?”

  “He knows that? Billy?”

  “Yes. He does.”

  “Billy said that?”

  “If he does not volunteer to say so in court, I will subpoena him and oblige him to testify to that effect—if you’ll let me bring a suit in your name charging negligent infliction of emotional harm. It’s clear to me and many other people that you have suffered significantly from this event. And then, Dolores Driscoll, your name, your very good name, will be cleared once and for all in this town. Everyone will know then that you, too, have suffered enormously, we’ll have established it legally, and then you will not have to bear any of the blame.”

  “Well, I’m not to blame!” she said. “I’m not to blame.” Her large round face crinkled suddenly, and she began to weep. I placed both hands on her shoulders and drew her toward me, and in a few seconds she was blubbering against my chest. Peering over her head, I watched the caskets come out of the church, one after the other. The pallbearers—uncles and older brothers and cousins of the kids inside the boxes—shoved the caskets into the hearses, and the somber black-suited guys from the funeral homes slammed the doors shut on them.

  It was probably just as well that Dolores had her back to the scene. When the people coming out of the church saw us standing there, they stopped, many of them, and glared at us. And when they moved toward their cars and pickup trucks, they cut a wide swath around us, until finally we were standing there in the parking lot next to the church alone.

  “Come out to the house,” she said to me, wiping her red swollen face with her sleeve. “What I want, you can tell my husband, Abbott, what you’ve told me. Abbott’s logical. Like you. But he’s more interested than you in doing what’s right. You’ll see. If he says I should do this, go to court and all, like you say, so my name can be cleared and like that, then I will. But if he’s against it, then I’m against it.”

  I hadn’t planned on this, but I said fine, that made perfect sense to me, and agreed to follow her out to her house in my car. Yes, I suppose I had a few minor misgivings about having lied to her—I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get Billy Ansel to confirm that she had been driving under the speed limit. It was a gamble, a calculated risk, but the odds were maybe ten to one that no matter how fast they were going when the bus went over, Ansel, for several reasons, would say to a jury, just as she had told the cops, “Fifty, fifty-five.” You have to gamble like this now and then.

  ‘Would you say fifty-two miles per hour, Mr. Ansel?”

  “Yeah. Fifty-two, I’d say.”

  “Would you say fifty-three miles per hour, Mr. Ansel?”

  “Yeah. It might have been fifty-three. No more, though.”

  “At that time, Mr. Ansel, and under the weather conditions and road conditions that prevailed at that time, the time of the accident, and at that place on the road from Marlowe to the town of Sam Dent—a stretch of road that you, like Mrs. Driscoll, are extremely familiar with, are you not …?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would fifty-three miles per hour have been a safe speed to be operating a school bus?”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  “I withdraw the question. I have no further questions of the gentleman, Your Honor.”

  Piece of cake, on a plate.

  Dolores and her husband, Abbott, lived near the top of Bartlett Hill Road in a large foursquare white house with a wide porch in front and a big unpainted barn in back, with nothing but dense woodlands beyond. From the porch you had a great one-hundred-eighty-degree view that included The Range, as they call it, from Mount Marcy to Wolf Jaw. A million-dollar view. For the area, it was an old house, and it had fallen on bad times. In the late 1800s, Dolores’s grandfather had been a successful dairy farmer, she told me as we stood in the driveway before going inside. He’d built it himself from trees cleared off this land, and her father and then she herself had been raised in it. Back then, Dolores said, even in her father’s day, these forested mountains were alpine meadowlands. “It was like Switzerland,” she said, “although I can’t say what Switzerland’s like.” Now, for miles, straight to the horizon, you saw nothing but trees—hardwoods, mostly, and hemlock and pine—and if it weren’t for the occasional old stone wall sinking into the leafy ground, you’d think you were in the forest primeval.

  Abbott Driscoll was a shriveled guy in a wheelchair; he’d had a stroke a few years before, and his whole right side had blinked out. He had long thinning white hair, bright blue eyes, and soft pink skin, and he drooled a little and sat canted to one side, like a baby in a high chair.

  Although he seemed bright enough, his speech was seriously impaired, and I could make out only about half of what he said. Most of the other half Dolores translated, whether I wanted her to or not. He spoke in these odd cryptic sentences that didn’t really mean a whole lot to me but to Dolores were like Delphic pronouncements. I guess she loved the hell out of the guy and heard what she wanted to hear.

  I sat at the kitchen table opposite him, while Dolores took what appeared to be her customary position behind his wheelchair, where she rubbed his shoulders affectionately and now and then stroked his hair back.

  It was a brief interview, mainly because I did a lot more talking myself than I normally do. I was still distracted by the business with Zoe. Essentially, I repeated what I had told Dolores outside the church, but said it at least three times, with a slight variation each time, as if I was cross-examining myself. I felt slightly out of control.

  Abbott mostly gargled and sputtered, interrupting me occasionally with stuff like “Blame … creates … gabble-gabble … ” and “Cluck-cluck-cluck … lives … longer … than … spe-lunk.” Which Dolores, with modest downcast eyes and a small knowing smile, translated as “Blame creates comprehension” and “A person’s name lives longer than her lifetime.”

  Yeah, sure, Dolores. Whatever you say. I merely nodded and continued talking, as if he’d said something I totally agreed with or had asked me to repeat myself. Yackety-yak: out of sync, out of character. Finally, I reached the end of my spiel one more time, and because this time he said nothing, no mysterious oracular pronouncements, just a drooling silence, I was able to stop, and for a few seconds all three of us were silent and apparently thoughtful.

  There was a crackling fire in the kitchen wood stove, but that was the only sound. The house was warm and weathertight and smelled good, like baked bread. Most of the furniture was either homemade or yard sale stuff, twenty and thirty years old, repaired over and over with string, wire, and glue, but still sturdy, still serviceable. I waited. I w
anted a cigarette, but it didn’t look as if either of them smoked, especially him, so I just patted the pack in my shirt pocket for comfort.

  Then Abbott spoke. He twisted his face around his mouth the best he could and pursed his lips on the left side as though he were sucking a straw and in a loud voice said something like “A down … gloobity-gear … and day old’ll … find you … innocent … if a brudder … lands … gloobity first….”

  And so on and so forth. I was guessing, but it sounded like the old guy was ready for action. All I could read was his face, however, which was bright and open and smiling as he talked, not angry and vengeful, the way I like it. It was the longest speech he’d made so far, but to tell the truth, I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what words, or even what language, he’d used for making it. Serbo-Croatian, maybe.

  Dolores knew, though. She smiled and said to me, “You heard what Abbott said?”

  “Yes, I heard. Can you make it exact for me, though? I think I missed some of it. You know, a word or two.”

  “Certainly. Glad to. What Abbott said was: The true jury of a person’s peers is the people of her town. Only they, the people who have known her all her life, and not twelve strangers, can decide her guilt or innocence. And if Dolores—meaning me, of course—if she has committed a crime, then it’s a crime against them, not the state, so they are the ones who must decide her punishment too. What Abbott is saying, Mr. Stephens, is forget the lawsuit. That’s what he’s saying.”

  “He is?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yep. I told you he was logical,” she declared. “He understands things better than most people. He understands me too.”

  “That right?”

  “Oh, yes. Abbott’s a genius.”

  A genius, eh? A gibbering fool, is what I thought. From what I could see and hear, Dolores was the ventriloquist and Abbott was the dummy. And you can’t argue with the ventriloquist about what the dummy really said.

  I got up from my chair, lit a cigarette, said my goodbyes, and I was gone. Not without a certain relief. It surprised me; I don’t usually give up that easily. I guess I had my reasons: the Driscolls were too weird to bring into a negligence suit, but they were also too weird to sue, which did not displease me.

  The guy Abbott Driscoll, though, he gave me the creeps. Whatever his wife claimed he said or meant to say, I was sure he knew things that neither of us knew and was just playing cat-and-mouse with us, using his affliction to make us say and do things we might not otherwise say or do, so that we would end up showing him who we really were. Which might have been okay for her—presumably, she wanted him to know who she really was, but I didn’t. The guy would’ve made a hell of a lawyer if he could talk straight.

  Well, you win some and you lose some, I said to myself. And this one was probably better off lost early than late. Down the hill and over to the west end of town I went, back to the Bide-a-Wile to pack. Halfway down the hill, I passed by the little handmade house in the pines where I’d been told Nichole Burnell lived with her mommy and daddy and two younger brothers and baby sister, and I thought for a second of stopping off there, just to put a scanner on the parents. But I was in a hurry to get back to the city now, and it was getting late in the day, so I let it go. I was sure I’d be back in a few days and could check them out then. The kid was going to be in the hospital for a long time anyhow. Apparently she was out of immediate danger, but they weren’t allowing her any visitors yet, so I wasn’t worried about the competition.

  I pulled into the motel lot, and when I passed through the front office on my way to my room, Wendell stopped me.

  “Phone message, Mitch,” he said, and he handed me a pink slip of paper. “Came in a few minutes ago.”

  I remember it took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t reading my secretary’s name and number. It was Zoe, which Wendell had spelled Zooey, and there was a New York number, with the instruction to call back right away. Okay. Will do. I was on automatic pilot now. I knew she’d gone out and managed somehow to get high, swapping services for goods, no doubt, and, thus fortified, was ready to resume the enterprise she had begun earlier.

  I went back to my room, sat down on the bed, and dialed. The phone rang only once, and she answered, apparently waiting beside it.

  “H’lo?”

  “Zoe? That you?”

  “Oh, Dad, hi. Hey, listen, I’m sorry about this morning, I was really bumming, and this damn phone is all fucked up …,” blah blah blah, in a soft, accommodating voice that was all surface, a lid of sweetness and light over a caldron of rage and need.

  I waited out the preliminaries, responding feebly but with caution, and in a few minutes we got around to the main event, as I knew we would, brought on by my asking a simple question, just as before. “Are you calling me for money, Zoe?” I asked.

  She inhaled deeply, held her breath for a few seconds, then sighed. Real Sarah Bernhardt. “I’m calling,” she said, “because I have some news for you. Daddy, I’ve got some big news for you.”

  “News,” I said, suddenly fatigued beyond belief.

  “You don’t want to hear it?” I heard the lid on the pot start to wobble and jump.

  “Yes, sure. Give me your news, Zoe.”

  “You always think you know what I’m going to say, don’t you? You always think you’re two steps ahead of me. The lawyer.”

  “No, Zoe, I don’t always think that.”

  “Well, this time I’m two steps ahead of you!”

  “Tell me your news, Zoe.”

  “Okay. Okay, then. You won’t want to hear this, but I’m gonna say it anyhow. Dig it. I went to sell blood yesterday. That’s how it is. I’m in fucking New York City, where my father is a hot shit lawyer, and I’m selling my blood for thirty-five bucks.”

  “This is not news, Zoe.”

  “No, but this is. They wouldn’t take my blood.” Long pause. “I tested HIV positive.”

  I said nothing; the blood, hers, surged past my throat into my face. I could hear the heavy slam of my heart. I was swimming in blood.

  “You know what that means, Daddy? Do you? Does it register?”

  “Yes.”

  “AIDS, Daddy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Welcome to hard times, Daddy.”

  “Yes, that’s one way of saying it.”

  “Isn’t that a kick, Daddy?”

  “Oh, Lord,” I said. “What do you want me to do, Zoe?”

  “What do I want you to do?” She practically shrieked it. Then she laughed, a long high-pitched cackle, like an old madwoman, a witch on the heath.

  “I’ll do whatever you want, Zoe.”

  “Good. That’s really good of you. I was hoping you’d say that. I really was.” She laughed again, girlishly this time, a child who had tricked her grumpy old dad. “Money,” she said. “I want money.”

  “What for?”

  She laughed again. “You can’t ask me that. Not anymore. You asked me what I wanted. Not what I wanted it for. I want money.”

  Suddenly, I was the man I had been twenty years earlier with the knife hidden in my hand, my child in my lap. “All right,” I said. “Fine. I’ll give you money. For whatever purpose.” I was the calm easy daddy singing our favorite song. I’ve got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence, I’ve got sixpence, to last me all my life.

  “I’ll come back down to the city this afternoon,” I assured her, “and I’ll give you as much money as you need.”

  “Want!”

  “Yes, want.”

  We were both silent then.

  “I can hear you breathing, Daddy,” she said.

  “Yes. I can hear you breathing too.” I’ve got sixpence to spend, and sixpence to lend, and sixpence to take home to my wife, poor wife.

  “I’ll come to your apartment,” she said. “Tonight. What time will you be there?”

  “Oh, seven or eight, maybe sooner. It’s about six hours’ drive from here. I�
��ll leave here today, as soon as possible. How much … how much money do you want, Zoe?”

  “Oh, let’s see. Give me a thousand bucks. For now.”

  “For now.”

  “That’s all I’ve got, Daddy. All I’ve got is now. Remember? AIDS, Daddy.”

  “All right,” I said. I almost smiled agreeably into the phone. “I’ll meet you at my place, and we’ll talk, won’t we?”

  “Yes. We’ll talk. So long as you have the money. Otherwise, I’m out of there, Pops.”

  “Do you have the test? The blood test?”

  “You don’t believe me!” she shrieked. “I get it—you don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do believe you. I thought, maybe, I thought I could get you to take another test. With a regular doctor, in case the first one was wrong.”

  “You don’t believe me.” She laughed. “I like it even better that way. It’s better you don’t believe me but have to act like you do.”

  “I do believe you, Zoe. You say you have AIDS, goddammit! I know what that means. Let me, for Christ’s sake, be your father!”

  She began to cry then, which didn’t surprise me. And so did I. Or at least I sounded, to her and to me as well, as if I was crying. I was not, however; I was fingering the knife blade, testing its sharpness with my thumb.

  “I love you, Daddy. Oh, God, I’m scared,” she sobbed.

  “I love you too. I’ll be there soon, and I’ll take care of you, Zoe. No matter what happens, I’ll take care of you.”

  I felt incredibly powerful at that moment, as if I had been waiting for the moment for years.

  We finally hung up, and I quickly packed my bag and put my room in order. Zoe was right, of course. I did not believe her. I did not disbelieve her, either. In that way, this call was like a thousand others. There was one important difference, however. Until this moment, I had for years been tied to the ground, helpless and enraged by my own inability to choose between belief and disbelief. That first task, to eliminate one or the other—to free one limb so as to untie the other—had until now been denied me; because I loved her. Oh yes, I loved my daughter. And because I loved her, I could not know the truth and then act accordingly. Now, for the first time in all those years, I was in a position to know the truth—and then to act. Out of desperation, Zoe had freed me from love. Whether she had AIDS or was lying to me, I would soon know. Either way, I was free. She’d played her final card with me; she could no longer keep me from being who I am. Mitchell Stephens, Esquire.