Continental Drift

“Jesus.” Bob feels himself falling backwards and down, as if down a well. In front of him and inside a small circle of blue light is Avery Boone’s back, getting smaller and more distant, while he himself descends faster and faster and waits for the crash when he hits the bottom, for that’s all that’s left to him now, a backwards plummet and then a crash, and then nothing. It’s over. He’s ruined everything, he’s lost everything, he’s given away everything. There was the house in Catamount and the Boston whaler, their furniture, shabby and mostly secondhand, but theirs, and his job at Abenaki Oil and promises of an eventual office job there — there was a life, and because it was under his control, it was his life; and then he traded a big part of that life for one with more promises and less control, but even so, it felt much of the time like his life, for there was still a part of it that he controlled; and then he made another trade, giving away control for promises again, property for dreams, each step of the way, until he’s ended up tonight with nothing but promises, dreams and fantasies left to trade with. And no takers.

He’s run his life backwards, from what should have been the end to what should have been the beginning. He’s reached the end too soon, at thirty-one, and has nowhere else to go. You could say he shouldn’t have listened to Eddie, he shouldn’t have listened to Avery Boone, he shouldn’t have trusted these men, his brother and his best friend, men whose lives, though slightly more complicated than Bob’s, were no more in control than his, and you’d be right. You wouldn’t get any argument from Bob Dubois, not now, not tonight aboard the Angel Blue in Moray Key. He knows, however, that even if he hadn’t followed his older brother to Oleander Park and hadn’t followed Ave on down to the Keys, if instead he’d struck out for Arizona or California, where he knew no one, a stranger in a new world, he’d still end up one night just as he is now, his life a useless, valueless jumble of broken plans, frustrated ambitions, empty dreams. He’d end up with nothing to trade on.

It’s not bad luck, Bob knows, life’s not that irrational an arrangement of forces; and though he’s no genius, it’s not plain stupidity, either, for too many stupid people get on in the world. It’s dreams. And especially the dream of the new life, the dream of starting over. The more a man trades off his known life, the one in front of him that came to him by birth and the accidents and happenstance of youth, the more of that he trades for dreams of a new life, the less power he has. Bob Dubois believes this now. But he’s fallen to a dark, cold place where the walls are sheer and slick, and all the exits have been sealed. He’s alone. He’s going to have to live here, if he’s going to live at all. This is how a good man loses his goodness.

Ave turns and faces him. Someone aboard a ketch a few slips down is running a blender, making margaritas. “I can get you some quick money,” he says. “Not a shitload, but enough. Enough to pay for Ruthie’s shrink or whatever.”

Bob speaks in a low, thick voice. “Not drugs. No. I still got kids. I can’t afford to lose. Like you can.”

“Who can afford to lose? Nobody can. Anyhow, no, not dope. Haitians.”

“Haitians?”

“From the Bahamas. Five, six hundred a head, whatever the market bears. It’s easy. You just drop them off along the beach someplace — Key Largo, North Miami, they don’t give a shit. You can load up with ten or twenty of them over at New Providence, drop them off before daylight and be home by breakfast. Tyrone knows the lingo. He can set it up for you. All you do is drive the boat. And what you make is yours, less the twenty-five percent or whatever you work out with Tyrone. Look, I owe you, Bob.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you do. A lotta people owe me. I’m starting to see that.”

“You can always do dope, you know. The money’s bigger, and the work’s steadier. I mean, you run outa Haitians after a couple trips and have to wait till some more come over or save up the money for the ticket. Same with the Cubans from Mariel. But there’s always a market for coke and grass, and there’s always somebody looking for a boat to take it to the marketplace. It’s riskier, of course. They got a lot more guys out there from Customs than they do from Immigration.”

Bob cracks open his can of Schlitz and takes a long swallow from it. “I dunno, it’s not the risk. Though that’s part of it. I just don’t like dealing with drugs somehow. I’m still a country boy at heart, I guess.”

Ave steps forward and slaps his old friend on the shoulder and grins. “You sure are, you ol’ sonofabitch. A goddamn New Hampshire country boy!” Then he starts to laugh, and Bob joins him, lightly at first, then merely smiling, as if Ave has told a filthy joke he doesn’t quite get.

After a few seconds, Ave stops laughing and takes a swig from his beer, wipes his chin with the back of his hand and says, “Whew! It really is funny, though, when you think about it.”