540
RUSSELL BANKS
on a fishing boat off the Grand Banks or else assigned as chief petty
officer to a Navy training ship based in Portsmouth and on winter
maneuvers somewhere east of Norfolk. That was my plan. I would
talk to her with sympathy and intelligence, buying her drinks, and
when the bar closed at one
A.M.,
we'd stroll down the street, arm
in arm, like the good friends that we would have become by then,
to her smail, cozy apartment, where, before we went to bed, she'd
make me a cup of tea. We would talk quietly for a few minutes
longer. Then we'd make love, and it would be gently exhilarating
to both of us, and afterwards we'd fall into a peaceful sleep. In the
morning I would decide what I was going to do with the wreckage
of my life. I would talk about it with her, and she would give me
sound advice.
I had not anticipated the blizzard, however. For that's what it
had become, a true blizzard.
It
was
still
November, the winter's first
snowfall- usually amounting to little more than an inch or two of
light powder that melts the next day - but by the time I got to the
Holiday Inn outside Portsmouth, after a harrowing forty mile drive,
over a foot of snow had accumulated, and it was beginning to come
down in large, wet blossoms. I must have ignored these facts and
their implications, because when I came out of the motel room and
got into the car again, I was astonished to see that the windshield
was completely covered with snow, even though the motor (and the
windshield wipers) had been shut off for not more than three or four
minutes - just long enough for me to go into the room, close the
door behind me, cross to the telephone table between the beds, and
dialing the number of my home telephone, say to my wife,
This
is
to tell you that I'm not coming home tonight, so don't wait up
for me.
What? When
are
you coming home, then? Her voice was
small
and sounded very far away.
I can't hear you, I said.
I said when
are
you coming home, then?
Well, I guess I won't be coming home as long
as
you're there.
Do you mean that?
Yes.
I
do.
All right. Then she hung up the phone.
.
I
(
"
..
