Read Online The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks - Free Book Online Page B

you told her she was down a quart, and that turned men on. Although it probably scared them too, because I don’t know of anyone who ever made a direct pass at Wanda, at least not when he was sober. They just talked about it with one another.
    Risa, by contrast, though she is an intense person and when present fills your entire screen, drawing all your attention, is unadorned, shy, and private. Her manner, until the accident, was upbeat and warm, but her smile was undercut by a look of permanent sadness that she seemed to be trying to hide, as if she were struggling to protect you from it. Everyone liked Risa, but when she pulled in with her Wagoneer, no one rushed out to fill her tank, and like most people, she often had to fill it herself. She is tall, broad shouldered, with ample breasts and a nice large female butt that she covers with somewhat mannish clothes, flannel shirts and loose jeans, that sort of thing. Typical for up here.
    She is the kind of woman who makes a man think of his favorite sister, if he has one, or his best friend’s sister, if he doesn’t. Not a likely candidate for erotic fantasy.
    But lying half drunk in the darkness in that king sized bed in my house on the hill, the twins sleeping soundly in their room at the end of the hall, I’d imagine Risa Walker naked and ecstatic, and it positively thrilled me. Took me straight out of the misery of my daily life and let my hormones run things for a while. Risa released me sexually when no other woman could. Women like Wanda Otto are already so close to naked and ecstatic in public, it’s not much of a thrill to take them one more step alone and in private. In fact, what you imagine is a woman you can’t satisfy an image that is well known for dousing the fire in a man. But picturing Risa calm, reticent, controlled, decent, and modest Risa Walker picturing her wild with passion, sweating and naked, long legs akimbo, hands digging into your back, mouth grunting and licking into your ear… well, that’s a picture a man can cook with.
    In time, the fantasies were insufficient. That’s how it is the more vivid the imagined sex, the less satisfying it is as sex. You have to keep upping the ante, just like they do in pornographic movies, until finally you have to either replace it with the real thing or else rent a different movie.
    I didn’t want a different movie; by then all I wanted was Risa Walker.
    Any other woman was a diminishment, and even a slight diminishment was a total loss. I wanted, I needed, Risa.
    The trouble was, Risa was thoroughly married to a friend of mine, and in all the years I had known her, she had not once shown the slightest interest in going to bed with anyone other than her husband.
    Especially not with me. To be fair, I had not given her much opportunity. I am known as a self contained man and am probably not very approachable, which has always been my choice of character anyhow, insofar as a person can choose his character.
    I like to be the strong, silent man in charge, the boss, the point man, the lieutenant, the head of the household, et cetera, a preference that may come from my having been the oldest of five children, with a more or less in competent mother and a father who took off for Alaska when I was twelve and was never heard from again.
    Looking back, it seems I spent most of my youth cleaning up my father’s mess and the rest of my life making sure that no one mistook me for him. He was an impractical man, not quite honest, a fellow of grand beginnings and no follow through, one of those men who present their children and wives with dreams instead of skills, charm in place of discipline, and constant seduction for love and loyalty. When he took off to make a fortune in the oil fields, he left behind a huge hole in the yard that was going to be a swimming pool, a pile of cinder blocks that was going to be a restaurant, a hundred old casement windows that were going to be a greenhouse, a stack of IOUs written