Read Online The Reserve by Russell Banks - Free Book Online

courts as word of the quarrel spread.
    Inside the car, Bear moved close to the open window and said, “Papa, can we go now?”
    “In a few minutes. I’ve got to settle something first.”
    “Please, Papa?”
    “In a few minutes, I said.”
    Kendall came back out of the clubhouse and stood glowering at the top of the steps. “You men!” he called to them. “I told you men to put him in his car!”
    Murray Bigelow stepped close to the artist and in a lowered voice said, “Look, Groves, this is getting complicated. Make it easier on all of us by just letting it go. It ain’t worth it, fighting with Kendall. Let it go. Believe me, we know what he’s like when he’s crossed.”
    “I’m not afraid of crossing him,” Jordan said.
    “You don’t work for him,” the groundsman said.
    “C’mon, Jordan,” Eastman said, and he took the artist’s arm.The artist shoved the man’s hand away and gave him a hard look. The others came forward then and surrounded Jordan Groves—Murray Bigelow and Rob Whitney, another of the waiters, a man Jordan’s age who had lost his dairy farm to the bank, and Carl James, a onetime traveling salesman, soft and pink and in his early sixties, and the teenage boy, Kenny Shay, the skinny blond son of the storekeeper Darby Shay. By their squared, open stance and their hands held loosely at their sides they made it clear that they weren’t physically threatening the artist so much as trying merely to herd him peacefully into his car.
    Jordan Groves looked from one to the other and said, “Don’t do this, fellows.”
    From the veranda Russell Kendall shouted, “I can’t reach the sheriff, so you’ll have to put him off the property!”
    Carl James turned and said, “That’s not really our job, Mr. Kendall.”
    “If you want a job, you’ll do what I tell you!”
    “Be reasonable, Jordan,” Buddy Eastman said. “You ain’t helping anybody this way. We got no choice but to do what he says.”
    The artist looked from one to the other—the three waiters, the groundsman, and the teenage boy—and slowly shook his head. “Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to do what he says. If you’re able.”
    Buddy Eastman grabbed Jordan by his left wrist and pulled him forward and threw an arm around his neck, and Murray Bigelow and the others jumped in. They wrestled Jordan around to the front of the car, cursing at him, while he cursed back and struggled to get free. He managed a sharp head butt across Bigelow’s face, sending him staggering backward, blood spurting from his nostrils, and he disabled Rob Whitney by kneeing him hard in the groin. Whitney grabbed his crotch, let out a howl of pain, andsat on the ground like a sack of potatoes. The teenage boy, Kenny Shay, let go of Jordan and quickly danced away. Fighting with a very large, very angry grown man was not something the boy was ready for.
    That left Buddy Eastman and the remaining waiter, Carl James, to handle Jordan Groves alone, and they were not up to it. The artist got one arm free of Carl James’s grip and shoved the man off him. He threw two quick punches that landed on James’s ear and throat, and the man, nearly falling, backed away, dropped his hands to his sides, and watched from a safe distance. Taller and heavier than his remaining opponent, the artist swung Buddy Eastman around and got his other arm free. He moved into a trained boxer’s stance and said, “I’ll take you apart, Buddy, if I have to!”
    Eastman put up his fists for a second, glared at Jordan Groves, then lowered his hands and said, “Groves, for Christ’s sake, get some sense! Go home!”
    Both men were panting and red faced. Slowly the artist brought his fists down. He walked around the front of his car and opened the driver’s door. For a few seconds he stood there and looked across the broad, mint green lawn to the clubhouse veranda, crowded now with gaping spectators, and he saw what a foolish, harmful thing he had done to these men,