American Spirits by Russell Banks

Author:Russell Banks [Banks, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

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For the next month there was no sight of the Weber family on High Street, except when Barbara and Kenneth twice happened to see the SUV with the family aboard, Judith driving, departing early and returning late, evidently on a family outing or field trip. At the time, the Odells thought nothing of their neighbors’ comings and goings, but folks later learned that credit card receipts placed the Webers on both occasions at the Ausable Chasm, where they had purchased four adult tickets at $32.95 each and two at $22.95 for children under twelve. So they were familiar with the place.

Ausable Chasm is called the Grand Canyon of the East, which is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is a spectacular, two-mile-long gorge hundreds of feet deep. The Ausable River roars between high, vertical, sedimented cliffs with narrow catwalks strung from the cliff walls overlooking the rushing, ice-cold water below. On his way to work and back Kenneth crossed the gorge daily on the two-lane Route 9 bridge and often glanced over the rail and down at the river hundreds of feet below, and he promised himself to take the family there in the spring.

Then, late one night in early November, weeks after the leaves had shed their autumn colors and had fallen to the ground and the bare trees were left behind like skeletons with blackened arms and fingers bent by the winds out of Canada, there came another soft knock at the kitchen porch door of the Odell house.

It was dark and overcast, no stars or moon. All the lights on the first floor of the house had been switched off. The children, Rita, Sam, and Delia, had long since gone to bed, and Barbara and Kenneth were in their bedroom upstairs reading, Barbara in bed and Kenneth stretched out on the chaise by the window. She was in her flannel nightgown, but Kenneth was still dressed. He asked if she’d heard a knock on the door downstairs, and she said it was probably a branch of a tree falling against the house. Then they heard it again. It was well past eleven o’clock. Someone was outside in the dark knocking quietly at their kitchen porch door.

Kenneth stood, walked to his side of the bed, opened the drawer of the bedside table, and took out his pistol. He released the trigger lock and snapped a fifteen-bullet magazine into the grip. It was a Glock 9mm, and he hadn’t fired it since completing the New York Corrections Department training class in Utica a year ago.

Barbara said, “Kenneth, don’t be ridiculous.”

He ignored her and left the bedroom.

He walked through the darkened rooms downstairs without turning on any lights. In the kitchen, he stood with his back against the wall and reached over to the switch and flipped on the porch light. He looked out the window and saw no one on the porch or standing nearby. He swung open the door and moved into a firing position

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