Continental Drift by Russell Banks

taboo nor circumstance prohibits him from satisfying an appetite and he does not satisfy that appetite or even attempt to do so, he does not know what to think of himself. He doesn’t know if he has been a good man or merely a stupid or scared man. Most people, like Bob, unchurched since childhood, now and then reach that point of not knowing whether they’ve been good, stupid or scared, and the anxiety it provokes obliges them to cease wondering as soon as possible and bury the question, as a dog buries a bone, marking it and promising to themselves that they will return to the bone later, when they have the time and energy to gnaw, a promise never kept, of course, and rarely meant to be kept. One of the more attractive aspects of Bob’s character, however, is his reluctance to bury these bones, his willingness to go on gnawing into the night, alone and silent, turning it over and upside down, persisting until finally it is white and dry and, in certain lights, a little ghastly. His memory is cluttered with these bones, like a medieval church basement, and it gives to his manner and bearing a kind of melancholy that attracts people who are more educated or refined than he is.
    Turning away from Sarah, Bob asks his brother, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this gun? I haven’t shot a handgun since the service.”
    Eddie laughs. “I don’t give a flying fuck what you do with it, so long’s you keep it with you when you’re at the store. The niggers know you got a gun in the store, believe me, they know, they get the word out. Leastways the niggers in this town do, because they all know each other. Then on a Friday night when they’re out looking for easy cash, they’ll keep on moving down the line. You’ll never have to use it. Just keep it with you when you go back and forth to the bank, and under the counter by the cash register the rest of the time,and if some nigger’s stupid enough to want to knock off the place, you blow the sonofabitch away. Like I said, I got a license.”
    “I don’t like it,” Elaine says. She walks abruptly back to the kitchen.
    “Who the hell does?” Eddie calls after her. “But what the Christ are you supposed to do? Some guy comes in, says, ‘If you have a minute, Mister White Motherfucker, give me what’s in the cash drawer, as I happen to have a chance for some excellent cocaine tonight and I’m a little low, and besides, I’m two payments behind on my BMW,’ so you say, ‘Certainly, sir, Mister Colored Gentleman, and would you like a case of cognac to go with that?’ Come on, Elaine. You blow the bastard away!”
    “What if he blows
you away
!” Elaine yells back.
    Eddie is silent for a minute.
    “Elaine,” Bob says. He keeps looking at the gun.
    “We’ve had this same damned argument a hundred times,” Sarah says in a weary voice. “He won’t listen. He thinks he’s God.”
    As if to himself, Bob says quietly, “I don’t want to shoot anybody. Christ, I don’t even like hunting.” He’s a fisherman, not a hunter. When they were boys, both he and Eddie tried to enjoy deer hunting with their father. Eddie, after a few years, gave it up, because of the scarcity of deer and the difficulty of killing one, but Bob continued to go out year after year with the old man and his cronies, although whenever one of them shot a deer and bloodied the snow with the carcass, he found himself slightly sickened. In New Hampshire, most men who hunt deer do it in groups of three and four, driving pickups and four-wheel-drive vehicles to the end of a dirt road and as far into the woods as the vehicle will go. Then they walk all day through the snowy woods in the cold, sipping at a bottle of Canadian Club every now and then, when finally one of them catches a glimpse of a terrified buck darting uphill through chokecherry and birch and starts blasting away, until it leaps, somersaults and collapses in a heap. Then the other hunters gather around and talk while the man