Ballistics (32 page)

September rolled into October and the West household showed signs of tiredness. When I saw them, Cecil and Jack joked about me dodging a bullet. Outside, the autumn light cut swaths across the valley, great pale patches that made everything look like winter does in the movies. For the first time in months my thoughts turned toward my sketchbook. Ever since Cecil nearly pinned the affair on me, I hadn’t been able to summon the wherewithal to put charcoal to paper. It was as if all inspiration had burned up by the lie I fed him, as if I’d exceeded the limits of what I could and couldn’t use it for. On occasion, Nora fetched the charcoal to smear idle endless lines, but anybody could see that her heart wasn’t in it. Her heart wasn’t much into me anymore, either.

THEN ONE EVENING
the front doorbell rang and I knew with militaristic certainty that it was Nora come to put her foot down. She never rang the doorbell, just let herself in. And she never used the front door, either—which meant she’d come over not caring if somebody saw her.

Hi, Archer, she said, and picked lint off her sweater. She was dressed like a teacher, all proper and done up. Can I have a cup of coffee?

I’ll put on a pot.

Put a shot in it too, she said.

Yes ma’am, I said.

She came to the kitchen and sat down. The coffee dripped. We watched the pot fill to the rust-coloured line stained in the carafe’s centre—enough for two good mugs. I’m not sure I was even trying to think of what I could say to her. I believe in problem solving, but I also believe in the inevitable.

The whiskey might curdle the milk, I said.

No milk, thanks, she said.

We could’ve just had whiskey.

She smiled, but I could tell she was humouring me.

How’s the madhouse? I said.

Getting better, she said, and pressed her lips tight enough to show her dimples. You should visit more.

I feel out of place.

He’s your grandson too.

It’s hard for me to go over there, I said.

She thrummed her fingernails on the table. I swilled coffee around the mug, blew across it toward her, like a kiss. It made her lift an eyebrow and I thought maybe we’d sleep together one more time before she left me well and truly alone.

I don’t like it being awkward for you, she said.

It’s not.

He’s your grandson too, she said again.

It’s not you, I said.

I know, she said, and tapped her index along my knuckles—one, two, three, four. But you’re Cecil’s best friend. This isn’t right.

It’s not.

What’s not?

No—it’s not not right, I said.

She pushed her tongue against her cheek. I couldn’t look at her.

You’ve got a daughter to think about. I have a stepson.

How is Jack?

A new dad, that’s how he is.

He does okay?

He’s fucking terrible at everything, she said, grinning. Christ, I’m talking like you now.

Or Cecil.

Cecil doesn’t swear around me, she said. At least rarely. He’s a good man.

Better than me?

I’m not sure I can answer that, or even would. Why’s it always a competition?

Because of you, probably.

She sucked a breath through her teeth. I could all but hear her jaw clench. That’s as good a reason as any, she said.

It is?

I mean for this to stop. Us.

So you’re choosing him over me, I said. Would’ve been nice of you to tell me this would happen.

Archer, she snapped. The baby? Stop being so selfish.

I never get to be selfish, I said, and finished my coffee in a big gulp that dumped grinds over my teeth.

Now you’re pouting.

I’m just tired, or something.

Jack can pout, but you’re a few decades too old.

Sorry, I said, and spun the mug on the table so that it warbled like a guitar chord. I just don’t fucking know. There’s gotta be a way. You’re the last person I can talk to, Nora. Look at me. I wake up in the morning and don’t even know who I am. I’m sleeping with you but I know I can’t have you but I do it anyway—that’s not me, that’s too, that’s too typical. Christ, if I lose you I really will be alone.

You can’t analyze this, she said.

Yes I can.

Sometimes there are no answers, Archer. Is there even a question here? Cecil, Jack, me, and Linnea. Everybody likes you. I don’t know what you’re worried about.

There’s always an answer, I said.

God, that’s so military, she said. She brought her mug to her lips, inhaled the steam. It’s not just logistic, Archer. This isn’t what I wanted.

What did you want, Nora?

She laced her hands together on the table, straightened up. A strand of her red hair flopped against her eyebrow but she let it hang there, let it curl around her eye and frame it and make me look at her and realize that she was as good looking as the day we met, the day I first kissed her and slept with her and held her in my arms—god fucking damn it, there could not be a better woman on this living earth.

I wanted Cecil to be more like you, she breathed.

And now he is, I said, bitterly.

Then someone banged on the front door.

Archer? Jack called, and I yelled for him to come on in. He swung through dishevelled-looking, his hair askew and balloons under his eyes and his hands bunched to fists. He came to a hard stop when he saw us. Nora?

Just escaping the chaos for a moment, she said. You okay?

I can’t find Linnea, Jack said, and I felt the world widen, felt a great pressure in my throat, the lights flicker, lose brightness.

Is she here? Jack was saying. I can’t find her.

I FOUND HER
at the Greyhound station at the edge of town, near the base of a large slope where the road turned from asphalt to dirt to asphalt again in the span of a hundred yards. Across the street was a one-storey party shack with a yard that opened to a great, wide marsh. The lights in the shack were dim but music blared through its thin walls and teenagers staggered outside to vomit on the floodplain. The Sevenhead cut through town near the station, and whenever the party quieted I heard the river hushing.

Linnea had her hair tied in a bun and her backpack one-strapped on her shoulder. She looked older than nineteen, but that could have been the sodium streetlights that make everybody’s skin seem as washed-out and yellow. It was dark enough for her to not recognize my truck approaching, but she’d have known that I’d come looking. Both of her hands cupped her stomach, just above her pelvis. I don’t know what that meant, if anything. Somewhere along the line I’d made a grave error of judgment, but pinpointing that exact moment is a futile and pointless game. It doesn’t matter how something starts, or even how it progresses. What matters is how things end.

Linnea leaned on the station’s brick wall as I stepped down from the truck and scratched my neck and thought about what I could possibly say. I wished I’d brought Nora. For all my wisdom and prostrating, I am useless in the face of emotion. When it comes to tender hearts, I am about as useless as Cecil. He, at least, has felt real grief. He has watched his loved ones disappear around corners and over hills. He has known what it is like to lose.

What’re you doing here, Dad? she said.

I sat against the hood of my truck, crossed my arms. Could ask you the same.

I can’t stay.

Why?

You know.

No, I said. Tell me.

She pulled at a strand of her hair, like it was a habit, but I’d never seen her do it before.

You think Jack’ll make a good dad? she said. A good husband? He’s a boy.

I chewed on that one. Across the street, somebody banged through the front door of the party shack and the night got loud with the noise of music and young people hooting. Cars zoomed by, in and out of town, and I waited for the sound of their engines growing distant. Every set of headlights could have been a bus. All conversations have expiry dates, but you rarely think of them, and when you do—when at any moment your daughter could hike her pack and leave you, forever, there’s no time to manoeuvre. You just say what you have to say. Maybe it makes them truer.

I think he wants to be, I said.

I’m not staying here.

Okay, I said, almost whispering, afraid to let my voice crack. I wished I had my sketchbook, or a bottle of sherry. Problems are easier to solve when they are things.

Have you got money?

Some.

My eyes burned, like from staring into a fluorescent bulb. I pulled a wad of money from inside my coat.

Here, I said, and after a long second of me standing arm-outstretched, Linnea pushed off the wall. She came close, reluctant—my own daughter. Did she think I’d grab her? Hit her? Christ, what did people think of me?

You’re not going to try and get me to stay? she said.

I’m doing my best.

That made her wince back tears. Me, too. She stuffed the money in her jeans. Then she stepped forward and pressed against my chest, and I laid my chin on her skull, cupped her shoulders in my palms. She shuddered, a long breath, but no tears soaked my shirt. Daddy’s little soldier.

My door, I said, trying to say
is never closed
. But that was so obvious. I rubbed her arms, smelled the shampooey smell of her hair, like a teenager’s. You can’t keep a person where they don’t want to be—that’s what prison is for.

You gonna call me? I said.

Sure.

From where?

She rolled her shoulders, something like a shrug. I believed her.

When does your bus leave?

I’m not busing, she said, and pushed away, and I sensed the crossing of a boundary, I sensed the approach of something sinister in the darkness around that Greyhound station. I used to have a nightmare where the wall above my headboard would open into an abyss, black as the mouth of an old paint can, and from that abyss I would see a dot growing, growing, into the shape of a monster with crustacean eyes and a maw like an axe wound, and I would tug on my blankets, try to tug them over my head, but never be able to find the strength in my arms. Right then, I felt like that nightmare had never left me, like it was warm-up, an elaborate and long-winded warning. Of course she wasn’t busing. Of course somebody would be giving her a ride. And I knew who it was, who’d emerge from the darkness. We had one more confrontation brewing between us—there had to be.

He came to a stop with gravel churning under his tires, his headlights beaming on me and my daughter and my chest inflated with protectiveness. I stepped into the open, slow, calm—trying to look as menacing and in control of my rage as I could get. The lights flashed from high to low, high to low. Linnea leaned against the brick wall. The Fairlane’s driver door opened. A pair of army-issue boots crunched down on the gravel. It was too dark for me to see him clear, but I didn’t have to guess.

It’s not what you think, Dad, Linnea said, but I barely heard her, even though what she said was likely true. I don’t know what happened at that beach fort, so many years ago, only what Jack told me, the story Linnea never confirmed nor denied. I don’t know why Crib kept running into me, why he seemed to hound me, what could possibly have been gained. Nobody has ever made it clear.

I figured you’d be here, Crib said. He stepped around to the front of his car. The lights lit half of him. He had a cigarette pinched between his thumb and first finger, and he flicked it to the gravel, ground it under his boot. It was slow, methodical. I cracked my head over my shoulder.

I guess you’re here to do the alpha-male thing, I said.

Nup, Crib said, emphasizing the
p.
That’s your gig.

He shrugged out of his field coat, folded it in two, draped it on the hood of his star-spangled car. It blocked one of the lights. He wore a white muscle shirt that showed his iron crab brooch and a scar across the meat of his chest—a grizzly thing that zigzagged from his right collar and disappeared along the curve of his left pectoral. After a moment, he swiped the cadet hat off his head, placed it neatly in the bedding of his coat. He looked exactly as a military kid should.

I probably should have thrown you off that bridge, I said.

He flashed his teeth in what looked like a genuine smile. If I had a penny for the number of guys who’ve told me that, he said.

You’re not taking my daughter anywhere.

I know, old man, he said. I’m not taking her.

I squeezed my hands as hard as I could. A couple knuckles popped. Crib’s shoulders rose and fell, as if sighing, as if he hadn’t been after this the entire time he’d been in the valley.

Well, he said, came toward me. I suppose there’s no talking you down.

Nup, I said, emphasizing the
p
. This was one fight I couldn’t avoid and sure as shit didn’t want to.

CRIB GRABBED ME
by the lapels and shoved. I tried to react, flung a punch that sailed wide and comical in the air. I landed on my wrists in the wet gravel. The dampness budded through my jeans. Stupid of me to watch the hands, like an amateur, like some highschool kid scrapping. Crib assumed a linebacker’s hunch, arms bent at nineties like the idiots who watch karate flicks and think that’s how things get done. His fists curled and uncurled. I wanted so much to hit him, to bludgeon his face until all that remained was a swollen, bruise-battered hump of flesh and snot.