A Permanent Member of the Family by Russell Banks Read Free Book Online Page B

to the headboard. He didn’t seem at all interested in the man staring down at him. Harold had never seen an African baby before except on television. Sheila was right, her new baby was very handsome. Harold reached down and slid his hands under the baby’s body and lifted him gently from the crib.
    The Luderoski girl said, “Better not do that, Mr. Bilodeau.” She put her book on the side table and stood up and walked toward him, her hands extended to take the baby from him. “Mrs. Lincoln wants him to sleep. He has trouble falling asleep.”
    They were singing Christmas carols in the living room now. He could hear the slow, muted strains of thirty or forty adults singing “Little Town of Bethlehem.” Holding the baby close to his chest, he turned away from the girl and moved toward the glass door. “What’s his name?”
    â€œThey’re calling him Menelik. The name he had in the orphanage. In Ethiopia,” she said. “Better give him to me now, Mr. Bilodeau.”
    Harold held the baby in the crook of his right arm. With his free hand he grabbed the blanket from the end of the crib. He carefully wrapped it around the baby, leaving only his shining face exposed. As if he were used to being held by strangers, the baby stared up at the man, unafraid and incurious.
    â€œHello, Menelik,” the man said.
    From behind him, her voice rising in fear, the girl said, “He needs to go back in his crib.”
    Harold slid the outer door open, and cold air and darkness rushed into the room.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” the girl said. Moving quickly, she placed herself between Harold and the open door and grabbed the baby away from him. “You better go back outside,” she said. She stood facing him with the baby in her arms, and he stepped around her onto the deck, and she drew the door shut behind him. He heard the click of the lock.
    He walked slowly around to the front of the house, opened the door there, and entered the living room as if he had never left it. No one seemed to notice his return any more than they had noticed his departure. They were all standing around the beautifully decorated Christmas tree singing “Silent Night.”
    He walked over to the bar and asked the girl with the tattoo for another beer. She flashed him a smile and fished a can of Pabst from the cooler and passed it to him. She wished him a merry Christmas.
    He said, “Same to you.” He took a slow sip of the cold beer. “I forgot to bring something for the tree.”
    She said, “That’s okay. They got more than enough.”
    â€œTell me your name,” Harold said. “I know it, but I forgot.”

TRANSPLANT
    The crushed gravel footpath wound uphill from the parking lot through a grove of poplar trees. From the passenger’s seat of the van, Howard spotted the monument at the top of the hill—a head-high granite pylon that marked the site of a Puritan massacre of a band of Narragansett Indians. He made out the slender figure of a woman standing next to the pylon. She wore jeans and a bright yellow nylon poncho with the hood up. He turned to the woman in the driver’s seat and said, “I don’t know, Betty. It’s farther than I usually walk, you know.”
    â€œCan’t turn back now,” she said. She reached across him and opened his door and handed his cane to him. “It’s not so far. She’s waiting for you.”
    â€œMaybe you could go up and bring her down here instead.”
    â€œMaybe you could pretend she doesn’t exist and go sit on the porch at the house like an invalid and watch the sun set over the harbor. You need the exercise, Howard. Besides, you set this up. This is your deal.”
    â€œNo, it’s Dr. Horowitz’s deal,” he said. He grabbed his cane and eased himself from the van. The whole thing is crazy, he thought. I am an invalid. I need to be left alone. This woman