Continental Drift

He stands on the slippery sidewalk next to his station wagon, now a long white mound, and stares at the bar across the street, studies the small red neon sign flashing Irwin’s name at him like a beacon through the falling snow, then gazes up at the darkened blank windows of Doris’s apartment. His bear-like head droops, and glancing at the salt-covered pickup truck, cold and empty, still parked in front of his car, as if deserted in an old war, he looks down Depot Street toward the cannery and the river, and then back up Depot Street to Main. This is his whole world. He knows every square inch of its surface. For a second he studies the candy canes dangling from the lampposts, when all of a sudden, without a thought of it, he doubles up his right fist and holds it out in front of him, as if he were holding a hammer, or as if it were a hammer itself. His left hand remains in his jacket pocket, relaxed and warm, but his right hand is a fist raised against and extended toward the night, and he brings it heel-first swiftly down, smashing it against the windshield on the passenger’s side. The blow shatters the outer layer of glass and sends silvery cobwebs across the windshield, the force of the blow spraying the snow in fantails, clearing the windshield instantly. Again, he brings the heel of his fist down, and again, until he has filled the windshield entirely with spiderwebs of broken glass. Then he attacks the side windows, and the snow shudders and falls like a heavy curtain to the street. First he hits the front window on the passenger’s side, then the back, then the rear window, until he has worked his way around to the other side of the station wagon, where he makes his way forward to the driver’s window, pounding as he goes, as if trying to free a child trapped inside.

Across the street, Pearl, one forearm curled protectively over her large chest, has stepped outside to the sidewalk. “Bob?” she calls. “That you?” Her voice is uncharacteristically small and frightened. She keeps the door behind her open, one hand on it in case she has to retreat quickly.

Bob stops himself and peers through the falling snow to the woman across the street. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“You okay, Bob?” She lets go of the door and it closes slowly.

Bob sighs heavily and lets his hands fall to his sides. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“You want someone to drive you home, Bob? You had a few too many?”

“No, I’m okay. I’m not drunk,” he says. “Just pissed.”

Pearl watches him silently and carefully, as if he were a dangerous animal with a leg in a trap.

“Pissed!” he says with a laugh.

“What’re you doing?”

He laughs again, a hard, humorless laugh. “What am I doing? That’s a good question.” Then, suddenly serious, he says, “You don’t understand, Pearl. No one knows what I mean. About anything. No one.”

“You okay? You want me to get one of the boys inside to drive you home?”

Yes, yes, he’s okay, and no, he doesn’t need anyone to drive him home, he knows the way. He waves her off, as if she were foolish, and gets into the car and starts the motor. As soon as he turns the ignition key, the windshield wipers, still switched on, come to life and clatter bumpily across the shattered windshield glass. Ignoring the noise, Bob drops the car into gear, backs slowly uphill away from the pickup, then pulls out to the street and heads down the hill toward the river, where he turns left toward home.

Pearl shakes her head and walks back inside to the bar. She’s seen this kind of explosion a hundred times before, not usually this early on a Friday night, though, and never with Bob Dubois doing the exploding. But he wasn’t really exploding, she thinks, blowing out of control like some of those guys do when they’ve been drinking and talking mean for hours, suddenly getting physical and smashing everything in sight. No, the way he walked around his car, pounding and breaking the windows one after the other, was methodical and almost calm. He said he wasn’t drunk, and except for the fact that he was breaking the windows of his own car, he didn’t seem to be drunk. It was strange. It’s the quiet ones, she thinks. They’re the guys you have to watch. But she’s never thought of Bob Dubois as the quiet type. He’s a gregarious man, by and large, generally cheerful and talkative, a man with an eye for the women, she thinks, a man who can please women, too, because he talks one way, kind of reckless and sexy, and behaves another, polite and restrained, so that the woman is left free to get a little excited without being afraid of leading him on too fast, and that way, in the end, when she decides to invite him upstairs for a drink or whatever, she thinks that she has made the decision freely. She thinks it’s her decision, not his.