Continental Drift

He decides to leave. Putting the key back into the ignition, he starts the engine as quietly as possible, but also does it casually, as if he has forgotten something at home and has to return for it. But when he pushes the gearshift from park to reverse gear, it stops, blocked, refusing to engage reverse — it’s happened before, twice last week, and to free the gear he has to step outside and climb onto the front bumper and rock the car violently while someone else jiggles the gearshift. He’s sweating, and casting a glance toward the Duster, he sees that the black man, dressed in a dark suit, has got out of the car and is coming toward him. Frantically now, Bob shoves at the gearshift, whispering, “Come on, you sonofabitch, come on, come on!” while the black man, like a dark cloud, draws closer to his car.

Suddenly he’s at the closed window on the passenger’s side, rapping on the glass, and Bob turns and sees the round, dark brown face of the stock clerk, George Dill, an intense, worried cast to his eyes, with new, deep lines crinkling his broad forehead.

Swinging open the door, the black man peers inside at Bob and utters a string of words. Bob, who can’t understand the words, stares wildly at the man, open-mouthed and sweating.

“I thought … I thought …” Bob says, and George interrupts, blurting out the same string of incomprehensible words.

“George, I … I didn’t recognize you …” Bob tells him. “The suit …”

Shutting off the engine, he pockets the key, picks up the money bag and steps from the car. He forces a smile onto his face and shows it, over the roof of the car, to George. “Whaddaya all dressed up for, George, a funeral?” He notices then that the woman in the Duster has got out of the car on the driver’s side and is walking quickly across the lot toward them. She’s a tall, slender woman, darker than George, wearing high heels and a long black chiffon dress, and on her head a broad-brimmed black hat. She’s attractively made up, with lipstick and bright red earrings and necklace, and she’s calling Bob’s name, “Mister Dubois,” in a friendly, familiar way, as if she knows him, though he is sure he’s never seen her before. He would have remembered, he knows, because she’s extremely pretty, with a wide, pleasant face and the kind of slender but sexy body, like Sarah’s, that he’s been thinking about a lot lately.

“Yes?” he says, smiling easily, as the woman comes around the front of his car and stands before him. She’s nearly as tall as he, he notices with pleasure, and she’s about his age, though he thought at first that she was younger, still a girl.

“Let me explain. Daddy’s all upset, Mister Dubois.”

Bob looks over at the old man and sees that the fellow is peering off toward the orange groves. The dark, pin-striped three-piece suit he’s wearing is way too large and hangs loosely around his bent body. He’s hatless, and Bob notices for the first time that, except for a thin belt of matted gray hair, George is completely bald. His shining brown head looks fragile, like a ripe plum.

“George,” Bob calls to him in a cheery voice. “Where’s your hat? I’ve never seen you without that Miami Dolphins cap of yours.”

The old man doesn’t respond.

“Mister Dubois,” the woman says in a low voice. “I’m his daughter, I’m Marguerite Dill. He lives with me.”

“Is he okay? Is something wrong?” Bob is serious now. He understands that he doesn’t understand, but he knows that no one will hurt him for it.

Carefully, in her soft, warm Southern voice, the woman explains to Bob that her father’s only brother died last night, and her father has taken the death badly. Except for her, the old man has no one else, not around here anyhow, because she brought him down here from Macon, Georgia, five years ago, when her mama died. “Since he was a young man,” she says, “he’s needed somebody to take care of him.” The brother, who lived in Macon, loved him, but he had his own family to take care of, so it was only right that her daddy come to Oleander Park to live with her. Now she is taking him back up to Macon for the funeral, which means that he won’t be able to come in to work for the rest of the week. She knew he’d understand, but her daddy insisted on coming over this morning to explain it to Bob himself. “He likes you very much, Mister Dubois, and he likes his job here. I told him I’d phone you and explain, but he insisted, he just kept on saying he wanted to face you himself, about his brother and all … but he’s in a kind of a shock, and he has trouble talking right normally, he gets all nervous and forgetful, you may have noticed that … but especially now, with his brother and all …”

“Oh, damn, I’m really sorry,” Bob says. “That’s okay, he can take all the time he needs. Tell him … Hey, George,” he calls, and he walks around the woman and comes up behind the old man, putting an arm around his sagging shoulders. “Hey, listen, George, I’m awful sorry about your brother.”

George turns his face up to Bob’s. “Thank you, Mistah Bob.”