Ballistics (23 page)

The next day, Darby boarded the train in Edmonton and offloaded her own baggage in the same car as me. My age, short but tough-looking, in khakis and a T-shirt that hugged her triceps, hair braided through the clasp of an Eskimos ballcap, its tip thumping at her shoulder blades. She barrelled into a booth on the other side of the train, right in the union of window and chair, and kicked one foot up on the seat. She tapped a silver stud in her eyebrow, over and over with her fingernail, as if to a drumbeat. Above her toe, a very Canadian sign read:
If You Put Your Feet On the Seat, You May Be Asked to Remove Your Shoes
.

I did my best not to look at her but it wouldn’t have taken a spy to see my interest. The train eased out of Edmonton, onto the prairies. The long, flat haul—where you could watch your dog run away for two weeks. That’s an old line, but it still fits. The sky is different there, not just bigger but somehow deeper, as if it reaches closer to the ground, takes up more of the horizon. I looked for pillow clouds, signs of dangerous wind, but the plains rolled on, wheat fields as vast and flat as ocean.

It was Darby who broke the silence. When I think about it, that may have always been the case—Darby initiating, Darby taking that first, blind leap.

Feeling okay? she said to me, as the light started to turn char. She’d unloaded some of a large pack, had it strewn around her table: a doorstopper book about the Canadian West, an old, heavy thirty-five-millimetre camera, a deck of cards. She squinted an eye at me—that photographer’s habit, even then.

Yeah, I said.

You look glum.

No, I told her. Just wondering.

She seemed to get this. She nodded like someone listening. Then she grabbed her camera and snapped a picture.

The first photo of the journey—hope it’s a good one. I’m Darby.

Alan.

We shook hands—our first touch—and she motioned toward her table with her head.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, she said, and raised her eyebrow—the right eyebrow, something I’d not seen anyone else ever able to do—and drew me toward her with the curl of her trigger finger. I’ve got some contraband.

She drew a wine bottle from the pack. It had a printer-paper label, a picture of two wrestling kittens. Homebrew.

I grinned, and so did she, and I could see all her lower teeth when she did. She unscrewed the cap, swigged it, and wiped her mouth with her wrist, like some girl from the frontier, like somebody I wanted to know.

She took one big gulp. This wine is the kind of wine that comes up and firmly shakes your hand. Oaky, with a hint of burning grassland. Come here, let’s play cards.

I did, and we did, all through the evening until we had to procure some food, which I paid for with a twenty from Gramps’ wad of money. I figured he’d approve of that, figured it was part of his plan. She ordered some gin-and-tonics, and I paid for that too—it seemed fair, for the wine—and we went right back to the card games. A first date, almost, though we’d have many more dates after that, and when we both got too drunk to stay awake there was a moment when I felt her hesitate, as if deciding to move to another seat, to get more space. But she didn’t, and we pressed awkwardly together, not quite back to back but close, the train’s metallic wall cold against my skin and the heat of her cheek on my bony shoulder. Her knees came up, knobs that fit in the palm of my hand, and her hair smelled like charcoal and fruit and pepper—what I thought all girls must have smelled like. At some point in the night her free hand reached behind and laced her fingers with mine, looped my arm around her, and I came to wakefulness as surely as a jolt of fear—and of our first absurd night on a cross-country train, there isn’t a whole lot more to tell.

ON THE CLIFFSIDE
I sniffed the air, that riverbed scent. The sky lay abandoned of all colour save when the flares lit up behind that distant ridge.

Spinal cancer, Archer said, breaking the silence. He touched his lower back about level with his gut. I can walk, technically, but can’t feel my legs. Makes me clumsy as all hell, and I used to be a nimble bastard. There’s that
used to
again. One day you wake up and your whole life is past tense.

Sorry about that, I said.

You win some but you always lose in the end, he said, and swept his hands over his jeans so that his whole upper body moved with the action, his shoulders clunking around their sockets like those old machines that grind grain to dust. He looked himself over, turned his palms in the air like a baby would, like he was seeing them for the first time. Or, maybe, like he was sick of seeing them.

You can cheat death, but you can’t cheat getting old.

More of his wisdoms. I let him have them.

Then all of a sudden the clouds above the Purcells lit up with a flash of orange, bright enough to cast a glow on Archer’s face, and a great thunderous
ker-ACK
swooped over the valley to ruffle our hair and push wind in our eyes. Archer unslouched, and as he did another percussion pounded toward us. The sky throbbed as if in the grip of artillery fire. It came once more, methodical as construction work, the sound as big and hollow as a gong, and it seemed the valley below us—the very darkness, the very emptiness of it—seethed like a coal furnace. Warm air gusted over my cheeks, heavy with the stink of sulphur.

I hope we find Jack before we end up in the middle of that, Archer said.

As long as we find him.

You don’t sound worried.

I gave him the eyebrow. Neither do you.

I hate fire, he said. I fucking hate it.

Is that why you rub your arm?

He undid the buttons on his wrist. I couldn’t see well in the low light, but he turned his forearm to the distant glow and touched the skin there, and it didn’t look like skin so much as some kind of resin, like rubber pencil erasers stretched so thin they’ll rip. Napalm, he said. Deadly shit.

You are a grab-bag of misfortunes, I said. Put that thing away.

He shoved me, a full-palm-to-shoulder, and let a grin widen his face ear to ear. His heart was probably in the right place, once you got past all the bullshit and posturing. Before us, the distant fires surged again and again, unleashed more deep, rollicking growls, and the mountain ridge reddened like the molten rims of some mythical forge. Archer raised his chin to it.

It’s like staring into the maw of Hell, he said, and clapped me on the leg like a grandfather, and I felt the power that lingered in those hands—old-man strength, same as Gramps.

Then he let go of my leg and I hoisted him to his feet, and together we hobbled to the truck. There, Puck lay curled up tight, and he did not stir as we loaded ourselves in and buckled up and braced for whatever obstacle—otherworldly or otherwise—awaited us farther down the road in the dark.

WHEN WE FINALLY BROKE
onto the highway, Archer let me know that our destination was a trucker stop on the perimeter of town—a place called the Verge—where, luck willing, we would find my mother. It perched on the apex of a hill that sloped toward the town below. I pulled into the Verge’s parking lot, and as I did a pack of Harley-riding roughnecks swung out, their lone lamps like a swarm of glowflies. The last ground to a stop beside my window with his legs balanced akimbo, and he cupped a hand to his mouth to shout above the gurgle of his engine.

This ain’t the place to be, he called. He wore a sleeveless leather vest that showed a lifetime of stretchmarked tattoos and peppery arm hair. Something like a bandana covered his head and came to a knot at the base of his skull. Hang-nail beard, chops the King himself could abide—exactly who you’d expect.

There’s landslide, I hollered back, and he swooped his head from me to the road that lay before him. His lips puckered in what might have been a whistle—I couldn’t hear. We came through the logging roads, I added.

Can you manage them on a bike? The roads?

Depends on the biker.

That split him in a grin. His canines looked more fang than tooth. Don’t stay here long, he said, and torqued the throttle on his bike. It’s the end of the world out here.

Where you coming from?

West of it. Caribou Bridge—we’re all evacuating. Good luck.

You too, I told him, and he took off with a small spray of pebbles. I cranked my window up and put the truck back in first gear. Ahead, the Verge’s porch had a view of the mountains that stood as the last bastion for Owenswood. The town below was just an inky, light-spotted sea.

I rolled the Ranger between a pair of slanted yellow lines and killed the ignition, and the truck gave one last desperate heave. I waited in the lingering smell of exhaust and dog and my own sweat. Archer was convinced we’d find my mother inside. Her name: Linnea, after the flower. On the dashboard: that picture of her at seventeen with the dog who could have been Puck before the trap got him. I felt like I could have gone inside and pulled off something noir—glance at the photo and the waitress before me, maybe a slow dissolve between the two.

You should scope it out, Archer said to me. Let her know I’m here. I’ll keep Puck company.

Or you could come in with me.

He reached behind the seat, offered a hand to Puck, who lolled his sardine-tin tongue in the palm.

It’s been a long time since I saw her.

Few years?

Archer wiped drool on his jeans, three passes. More like twenty-nine.

Jesus.

He rubbed his bicep, that wretched arm. What if I don’t recognize her?

She’ll recognize you, I said.

I’ve gone a bit downhill.

Your smell will give you away.

People milled around inside the Verge. Shapes skirted past the windows or the glass front door. A kid wearing a hairnet and a maroon uniform appeared from the rear of the restaurant, half dragging and half humping a bag of garbage nearly as big as him.

We didn’t part ways on the best of terms, Archer said out the passenger window.

A shocking revelation, I said.

Fuck you, kid, he snapped.

Sorry, I said, and meant it. Poor timing.

Just do first contact. I need to gather my wits.

I’m not sure I can distract her that long.

He peered at me past the bulges where his eyebrows ought to have been, and I hopped down from the truck and ran my thumb along that sketch of my mother and thought about what kind of things I could possibly say.

The Verge smelled like a hockey arena—like ice skates and antiseptic and men breathing rust out their mouths. The scent of grilled eggs and grease wafted from the kitchen where a pair of boys, a fifth Archer’s age, stacked dishes and pushed each other with great friendly heaves. The place looked how a diner ought to—maroon booths and bubbly cushions and linoleum tiles and tables like stethoscopes turned upside-down. It was like I’d walked into a Tom Waits song.

Not many people out and about right now, a woman said.

Turning, I looked upon my mother—name tag as confirmation—dressed how I’d expected a waitress in a place like that to dress: a whitish apron with finger smears not quite bleached out; a maroon top, to match the decor; short brown hair highlighted with dishwater blond. She had wrinkles enough to show her age. Beside her nose: a small mole, and even in that first moment she reached up to scratch it—a habit, maybe. One eye focused a degree off-centre and she seemed in constant struggle with it. She leaned her head sideways and reached for a notebook in the pouch of her apron and I just fumbled the picture in my hands and looked at it and away from it and crumpled it more than I’d wished.

You okay, kid?

I wanted to say, I’m fine, thanks, or, Much better now, thanks, but something about her rooted me in place. Here was my mother. She drew her brow together in a look of lunatic amazement, one eyebrow cocking up—how often did she deal with guys either doped up or liquored to speechlessness?—so she resembled Archer in about every way a daughter can. I felt myself swallow. Those moments, that sensation of seeing my biological origin, of seeing where I began—I don’t even know why it stunned me as desperately as it did. It’s not as if I had lived my life in resentment or longing, not like I counted this as a major destination in my journey to find my dad. But it felt like all of a sudden looking in a mirror, seeing yourself for the first time, or from a new angle, a different light, in a different hat, with mustard on your chin. It felt like being told to stop staring.

Outside, the world burned, and beyond that, almost back in time, men I hardly knew wrestled with demons that never let them sleep.

I’m here to see Miss West, I managed.

She ran her tongue along her teeth, pinched it between her canines. Something like a smile?

Miss West, she said, and crossed her arms. You’re looking for Miss West.

I nodded.

And does Miss West have a first name?

Linnea.

I think you may have been misled, kid, she said. There’s no Linnea West here.

I nodded.

But I’m going to bet you’re looking for me.

Yes, I said. Probably so.

And that makes you my son.