Free The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks

to half the people in town, and a promise to return by fall, which no one in town wanted him to keep.
    Anyhow, when I began trying to seduce Risa Walker, I found myself behaving like my father, which embarrassed me and made me feel incompetent as well. I felt his phony smile on my face, heard his glib words coming from my mouth, and it made me cringe. I’d be pumping gas into her Wagoneer and mouthing lines like Gee, Risa, you’re looking swell these days! Life must agree with you, or you must agree with life, or something like that anyhow I’d smile and smile and yammer on, playing a part. Then suddenly I’d switch roles. I’d have somehow become a member of the audience, and I’d hear myself yammering on, and it would be my father, and I’d see myself wink and grin and see my father, so I’d break off in the middle and freeze Risa out completely, leaving her somewhat confused, I’m sure.
    Other times I’d call her on the phone, and if Wendell answered, I’d gab about the Expos and the weather and local politics, like we were close buddies, which we were not; if Risa answered, I’d just ask for Wendell.
    Passing by the motel in my truck, if I happened to see her outside, I’d slow almost to a stop, wave like a long lost friend, and when she made a move toward me, I’d speed up and take off, as if I were heading to a fire.
    I have never been good with women, that is, skilled at the games that most men play flirting, cajoling, soliciting their attention and favors and until Risa, had never especially wanted to be. After all, I had always been able to count on Lydia. Who needed to flirt? Lydia and I in a sense spent our whole lives together: we were childhood friends and then high school sweethearts, and when I came back from Vietnam we discovered that we still loved each other, and so we got married.
    Technically, I was faithful to Lydia from beginning to end.
    There were a couple of occasions while we were married when, drunk or stoned or just inattentive, I slipped into what might be called compromising positions with a few local women, who shall remain name less, but I got out before any damage was done and was even able to come home feeling virtuous. And there were a few sexual encounters with bar girls and prostitutes when I was in the service, Stateside and in Vietnam and once in Honolulu. Sowing wild oats, as they say. But in fact, for my age, I was unusually inexperienced in sexual matters.
    The night Risa and I finally got together, it happened not because of anything I did but because Risa simply came up and put it to me at the bar at the Rendezvous, where I was sitting over a beer watching an N.B.A playoff on TV with three or four other men. She’d come through the door and stood there a minute as if looking for someone in particular.
    Then she walked straight to me, slipped her arm through mine and leaned in close and whispered in my ear, Listen, Billy, when you’re through here, why don’t you come over and visit me? Room 11, she added, and patted my forearm and departed. As simple as that.
    I left at halftime. Los Angeles was beating the hell out of Utah, and I just said I was going home. It was a cold, clear spring night with a sky full of stars, and my breath puffed out in front of me in little clouds as I walked past my pickup in the parking lot, crossed the road, and practically jogged the hundred or so yards along the road to the motel and went straight to Room 11.
    I don’t know how much in fact I had controlled or arranged it, how much I actually had seduced her with my awkward embarrassed onslaughts of alternating attention and withdrawal probably a lot (sometimes you act a part and don’t realize that the role is of a man who doesn’t know how to act). But that night it appeared to me that Risa alone had made it possible for me to be, once again, not my father but myself, the strong, silent type of man I admired and had grown used to being, and I was deeply relieved and immensely