Ballistics (33 page)

I pressed my tongue against my teeth until I tasted blood, got to my feet, whipped wet dirt off my fingertips.

Do you even talk to your daughter? Crib said.

I stepped through Crib’s haymaker and hammered my knuckles into the plush spot at the cusp of his nose, put my weight behind it, curled the wrist in a half-rotation so the impact crunched the cartilage like an egg. His head whiplashed back and his hand went to his face, and I growled a follow-up to his solar plexus, his winding point, close enough to his scar that I felt the shingly skin on the retract. His breath wheezed against my ear, so gentle as to be intimate, disarming. I talked to Linnea all the time, had always talked to her. Who the fuck did Crib think he was?

Dad, Linnea hollered, like she was in trouble, and I turned on instinct, and Crib latched his hand on my face, fingers gouging my eyes and cheekbones so my head bent back. His knee dug into my ribs. I flexed my gut against the impact of his knuckles, but he couldn’t get the distance he needed to make it count. We staggered apart, breathing like athletes.

Stop, Linnea said. She stepped away from the wall, had what looked like a club in her hand. This is stupid.

You can’t leave with him, I said. After all he’s done?

What’s he done?

Alan. What about your son?

Who’s dad
are
you? she said.

Crib sniffled, wiped a sleeve over his bloodied nose. Juice squeezed out his left eye and his face looked like a mastiff’s. His chest rose and fell with enough force to lift his shoulders. He spat, red. His tongue tested the solidity of his teeth. I felt gouges on my cheeks, from his fingernails. A slight burn, as if spending too much time in the sun.

I went at him. It wasn’t even fair, not anymore. I had the hand-to-hand; he had talk, he had attitude. I scraped my knuckles along his ear. I clipped one downward across his forehead, eyebrow to chin. The nail of my thumb tore his lip and made him drool blood and mucus. Crib’s left eye swelled shut and I’d been trained to exploit that, a blind spot, a free-hit zone. We meshed together, held each other like wounded men. He smelled like bile and limestone, like the dirty diesel engines of logging trucks. My fists clenched. I grit my teeth, felt the bloodlust and the high a man gets when he causes another’s pain. And then the world sucked me backward and down, down, down, legs gone jelly and my head lolled sideways and the night kaleidoscoping, smashed up like fireworks and engine brakes and then: darkness.

WHEN I CAME TO
, I was looking at my own boots in the gravel, at the hem of my jeans darkened with water stains and soaked through, and for a moment I forgot where I was. The Sevenhead hushed in the distance, and at the base of the Ford Fairlane Crib slumped between the headlamps. Linnea helped him up, her backpack discarded and her hair whipping around in the wind. His face was double-eyed and smeared with cartilage and snot, and the corners of his lips were torn into a raw Cheshire grin. My own face ached. The cheek below my ocular throbbed from haymakers and jabs not quite grazed. The back of my skull was warm, heavy. Liquid leaked over my neck and down my back, and I knew without touching it that I’d been struck upside the head. I dabbed my lips together and felt a pulse of blood, couldn’t recall the last time I’d split my lip on my own teeth or someone else’s bone.

I pushed onto my elbows. Beside me, the upper half of a wine bottle lay in the gravel, the glass as rigid as a shank. Only one person could have wielded that bottle, and the realization hurt me more than the headache behind my eyes or the bruises welting my cheeks or Crib’s headlights like pinpricks. Linnea had actually struck me down. After everything I’d done, the sacrifices I’d made, all those years trying my goddamned best, she’d chosen Crib not only as her mate but also as her protector. Crib, the man who’d haunted my waking hours for the last years. Crib, who’d beaten Jack West bad enough that his confidence had never recovered. Who would soon make a getaway with my daughter.

And that was not something I could face without resistance.

I got to my knees, ignored the gravel that jutted into my shins. Crib leaned on his hood, on his coat, and his unsteady movements sent bars of headlight streaming into the darkness. I wrapped my groggy fingers around the neck of the wine bottle, dragged it toward me. I’d already missed one opportunity to deal with Crib. Cecil would never have let it come to this. Cecil would have handled the problem, would have faced it down—but me, I just hid. Wars are not won by hiding.

I stood up. Force of personality. Old-man strength. Across the road, teenagers had taken note of our fight, had poured out of the party shack to point and sip beers and wonder. There were a whole lot of witnesses now. The glass was slick against my palm, but also sticky—residual wine, dirty groundwater, blood turned muck. I should have thrown Crib off a bridge. Linnea had pulled him to his feet, and he maintained his own balance now, almost as shaky as me. The adrenaline had left me, but I slogged forward, tried to strain my grip on the bottleneck and grit my teeth, to will myself to anger. Crib didn’t even budge. He just waited. He palmed a lighter from inside his coat and struck a brief flame that I watched and wondered at with every single step. It was like he’d let me gore him, spill his guts, save my daughter—that easily.

What’re you doing, Archer? Linnea said, and I nearly collapsed all over again. I let the bottle drop, let my shoulders sag. Is there anything more humiliating than having your child chastise you on a first-name basis? Yes: there is the humiliation of becoming something you have taught yourself to hate.

I don’t want you to leave, I said, and as the words left my lips the world rose up, spun, and I felt gravel on my ass.

Dad, Linnea said.

I steadied myself, palm to wet earth. No more cards to play.

What else have I got?

Jack. Nora.

I wish I’d told her that I hoped, more than anything else right then, that she’d be happy wherever she ended up. Instead, I said nothing, sat in a heap on the ground while the Sevenhead rushed and the partygoers trickled back inside and the dampness in my jeans spread to my ass and crotch. Linnea came toward me, toed the broken bottle away, leaned down and pressed her warm lips to my forehead. I felt her inhale the smell of me. And for a brief, absurd moment, I wished that I had showered more recently, I wished that she would remember the smell of me at a better time. I have been told that scent revives memory more vividly than any other sense.

She left without a word, climbed into the driver’s side of the car. I don’t know who’d ever taught her to drive. Crib balanced himself on his open door, and I forced myself to look at him, to let my nostrils bulge and shrink with the effort of breathing. He’d won, but I would not go gently.

Don’t get lost in the shuffle now, old man, Crib said, and gave me a salute. Then he ducked into his star-spangled car, and I watched them round the corner out of the Greyhound station, just taillights now, and then I watched them disappear over the crest of the hill that led away from Invermere, away from all the horrible boredom of that small town, away from Jack, and Cecil, and Alan, and away from me.

I HAD NOWHERE ELSE
to go. I went to the Wests’. I went to Nora.

The walk—couldn’t have drove, and not just because I’d had my bell rung—seemed like it should have been one of those times when a guy gets a chance to clear his head, like it was time to wind things up, take stock, cut losses and move on. In a movie there’d have been a sad orchestra at work. I crossed the road bridge, where a few of the concrete barrier blocks had been dislodged. Highschool kids had spray-painted a penis on one of them, in yellow. Cars whirred by me and a couple times I trudged off the shoulder for fear of veering headlamps. I’d have liked to skirt the lake, to smell the cadaverous stink of it, to let the air—colder there—ease the burning scratches on my face, the dull throb at the crest of my skull. Whenever the wind changed, I caught a whiff of myself, like breath and body odour and vinegar, though the last had to be my imagination.

Invermere’s main haul was empty and lit only by the spill from over-shop households, and if I looked directly at them even those dull lights flashed to sparks and lens flare, to beads like a welder’s torch. Cars snailed through town, all their tumbling metal and muscle like an athlete, and as they passed I glimpsed faces and bodies, heard snippets of conversation. The sounds dopplered away, seemed to gather and hang between the buildings like an echo, like being underwater, or in a fishbowl, or not knowing which way was up. Sometimes when I passed under a streetlight it’d flicker and go out, as if I contained a charge or was one of those people who stop watches, as if something was trying to keep me hidden, or keep the path ahead of me hidden—some power beyond science that knew things I did not. Fate, karma having a go, unnamed gods of flame and darkness.

I knocked on the Wests’ door. A baby cried, and I heard shuffling, worried murmurs about the time of night. Then the latch turned and Nora opened the door, and it was like a blast of warmth hit me, the relief at seeing her. She had men’s pyjamas on. Her red hair sprawled at her shoulders. Her expression said I looked a whole lot worse than she did.

Jesus, Archer, she said. Behind her, Cecil lurched out of the bedroom, topless. His old, muscular chest was paler than a glass of milk, and I’d have liked to crack a joke but I couldn’t get my tongue moving like I wanted it to. Jack poked his head around the corner. He was holding the baby—Alan—like you would hold a cat.

Feel a tad lightheaded, I said, and slouched forward. Nora caught me, or mostly, and Cecil got his shoulder under my arm, kick-boxer fast. He gave Nora a nod and she slid away, and by himself he half carried, half hugged me to the blinking white kitchen, and when he saw me squinting at the light he rolled the dimmer low.

Nora’s hands touched my face, an ice cube on rug-burned skin. She tugged my hair up and strands of it caked together, caked to my forehead.

Look at this, she said, and prodded my skull where the wine bottle had hit. Her finger came back juicy and red and she sniffed it, then wiped it on my coat. What happened to you?

Too much wine, I said, and I imagined Cecil’s face as he stood in the doorway, arms crossed, as stern as a father. He’d have grinned. He’d have chanced a grin at that.

Think he needs a hospital? Nora said.

Dunno, Cecil told her. He hates hospitals.

He does?

Well, I figured so.

You figured so?

Yes
ma’am,
he said. Let’s get him out of the jacket.

They lifted my arms, four hands, and got me out of the coat. Nora
tsk
ed. He’s soaked, she said.

Cecil brushed hair away from my eye, far more tender than I’d have thought he could—or would—be.

Looks like he’s been in a fight, he said, and loosed a guffaw. I tested my aching face with a smile.

Don’t encourage him, she told me.

Cecil grabbed aspirin from the cupboard, ran a glass of water. He held the two tablets in front of me, as if uncertain, until I plucked the pills and dropped them in my mouth. I tried to swallow them straight but the angle was all wrong. The bitterness made me think clearer—I’m sure of it.

The two of them hauled me to the shower and Cecil cracked a joke about having to undress me and liking it too much. Their bathroom’s wallpaper showed outlines of dogs—bulldogs, mostly, but a couple others, like a greyhound—and on the floor, in front of the tub, there was a welcome mat like you’d put on the front steps of your house. It was a Cheshire cat, grinning, and the caption under it said
Beware of Dog, but the Cat Should Not Be Trusted, Either
.

They cleared out. The whole time, Nora had kept medical distance and let Cecil do the heavy lifting, and I wondered at the irony of him hobbling me around like a son, or a brother, while I thought of nothing but his fiancée. That has a weirdness to it I can’t quite give the finger to. Somewhere during the night, Cecil’d found the good taste to don a flannel shirt. That made it easier for me to not think about him as him, made it easier to cope with betraying him so bad.

Then the door opened again, and Cecil entered with a set of his clothes bundled in his arms. I cranked the hot water and sat on the toilet lid listening to the pipes whinny and feeling the room grow breathy with steam. Cecil barely moved, standing there above me. He set the clothes on the vanity and propped himself against its rim, banged a hairbrush aside and cursed when something
ping
ed toward the drain. My shoulders ached, my back, face. I tasted vinegar, sweat.

You okay? he said eventually. I could barely see him through the steam, the low lights.

No.

At least you’re honest.

I don’t want to talk.

I know, he said.

To see him, I had to move my head in a slow arc or risk the room dissolving to swirls.

So why’re you still here?

Learned a thing or two from you, maybe, he said. Or I’m trying to piss you off, snap you out of it.

Learned that too, I take it.

Something of the sort, yeah.

What’re you gonna tell Jack?

Dunno. Not really my expertise.

You’ve lost people.