Ballistics (40 page)

This won’t make you feel better, I said, but he didn’t hear me, not then, not through the adrenaline and rage and the fire and me scratching over rock and dirt.

He advanced. I booted him in the shin, scrambled backward. Cold spiked up my wrist. He retaliated, drove a steeltoe to my thigh so hard the whole leg went numb. Christ, he was going to kill me—I was sure of it. That may be the closest I’ve ever come to dying; not any of my time in Vietnam under attack, or at the hours in a military hospital with my arm flaking like braised meat, the mutters of may-or-may-not. I should’ve known better than to visit Jack while he tended a fire. I never,
ever
have good luck around fire.

His boot kicked out again but I caught the leg against my chest, a textbook trap.

What’re you gonna tell Alan? I said. That you killed his grandpa?

He dropped his knee to my chest and we were grappling, my hands on his coat and neck and his palm in my face. I dug for the soft part at the base of the throat. He wedged an elbow inside my arms, brought his other leg in to pin my bicep and we hung like that a moment, muscles cinched and teeth clenched and our throats throttling deep, low-key growls. And I realized I didn’t even want to fight him, or that I couldn’t bring myself to keep fighting him—this, the son of Cecil West—or that maybe, simply, it wasn’t right. So I let go. I let him have it. And I remember his fist at his ear, the colour of the knuckles like plywood, stove elements, rust, and not much else until Nora’s voice from the rear step.

Jack! she called, and I blinked through tears and blood to look at her—dressed in one of Cecil’s work coats so it sagged on her shoulders. She crossed her arms, hugged the flannel tight. Really, Jack?

He breathed horse-like above me, great snorts of fog that clouded out his nostrils. His fist was still at his ear, red and wrecked with blood, and he had a handful of the front of my shirt, had it twisted for a tight grip that curled me forward off the ground. My head hung half-loose. I choked up blood, spat sideways, tasted snot, sweat, metal. Tears stung my eyes—nose shots, blinding shots—and I pinched them shut one after the other.

You don’t know what he said, Jack yelled to her.

I don’t think I care.

You’re not my mother.

You don’t have a mother.

Fuck you.

Get off him, Nora said. She sounded like Cecil, that mix of exasperation and authority.

You’re fucking him, Jack said. He hadn’t relaxed his grip.

Yes, Nora said, and Jack’s eyes shut and his neck craned sideways and I don’t know, I don’t know. The poor kid. And you can tell Cecil if you want.

No I can’t, he growled. Why did you?

Sorry, kid, I started to say, but he shoved me down.

Not you. I’m not surprised by you. You just take, that’s all you do.

Mistakes happen, Nora said. We’re good people.

He was looking at her now. He let go of my shirt and I rested my head, rested the muscles in my neck.

My dad’s a good person. This’ll kill him.

Then don’t let him find out.

That’s what I’ve been doing, he said. And how can you ask that? That I lie to him while you go on—go on fucking?

It’s your call, kid, I said.

Fuck you, Archer, shut the fuck up.

I’m sorry about Linnea, Nora said.

This isn’t about Linnea, Jack yelled. He gestured at me, a dismissive wave of his hand. This is about you, Nora. What do you even see in him?

Jack—

Well? This nobody? This—this thief?

Nora’s eyes fell to me then, and I sensed myself being appraised in a way I never had been before. It’s like you need a certain kind of light to really see people, like you need to be made to evaluate and judge. We are excellent at not seeing what is motionless right there in front of us.

I see the man I once wanted your dad to be, Nora said.

Jack held me a moment longer, poised still to strike me, and then he shoved off and left me there on the stone and stormed over to Nora, fists clutched on the hem of his shirt like when he was a kid. Nora stood her ground—of course she stood her ground—until he towered above her, somehow small beneath her gaze. I didn’t know what could happen, what could’ve happened. Neither of them moved, the firelight seemed to dim, I struggled to a sit and wiped a sleeve over my gums. Maybe that was a last chance, that evening—maybe one of us really needed to tell Jack it’d all be okay, or maybe he should have beat me to death. I can’t say.

Then he pushed past her, shoulder clipped shoulder, and a minute later his shadow appeared in Alan’s room and the window snapped shut. Nora leaned on the side of the house, closed her eyes, shook her head—so disappointed. I touched the shape of my nose, the state of my face, didn’t immediately bring myself to look at her.

Well, I croaked.

Don’t you dare crack a joke, she said. Her voice sounded like a mother’s, a schoolteacher’s. I had never seen her cry, never seen her weaken. She put us all to shame, every last one of us. Any woman like that deserves better than me—don’t think I don’t know it.

Is it even worth apologizing?

Yes, Archer. Holy fuck.

Well then, I said. I’m sorry.

She dragged hair behind her ear, first one side of her face and then the other. She looked so damn good there on the concrete step.

Don’t you think you say that a bit too often? she said, and went inside and killed the light and I stayed on the stone, beaten and tired, and let myself grow cold as the coals dimmed down.

THE FIRE MADE
a noise, a great ghostlike
oooh
, and something inside snapped me back into the world. I kicked the stairwell door, blind with panic. Smoke puffed between its seams and it looked as if the door was bulging, and some primal part of me knew well enough that I had to get away. By then I had to slouch-walk under the veil of smoke, and even the air below was turning to fog that parched my throat and nostrils. I went back to Nora, to our only possible exit, and I booted that door as hard as I could, and it didn’t so much as budge—it was designed with a deadbolt to keep people out. A better man could have kicked it off its hinges, I believe that.

Then the door shook again, from the outside.

Archer? Cecil called.

Thank fuck, I said.

Get this door open, get the fuck out.

I don’t have my key.

Then use the window.

I can’t.

He paused—
why not?

I fucking told you, he said. Then: I’ll get my axe.

I didn’t hear him depart, not over the crackle. Nora wheezed and her eyes fluttered open and I looked down at her: watery, but of course they were—she’d taken a blast of smoke to the face. I wanted so much to tell her everything’d be alright, even if I couldn’t know whether or not it would. So I squeezed her close and thought about the things I’d say to her fiancé when he came bashing through that door. There, in that burning house, I could count the minutes that remained of my happy time in Invermere, B.C. Even friendship has an expiry date.

Wood creaked overhead and I had a sudden, terrifying fear that the floor above me would cave. Then Cecil axed the door at the latch, splintered a hole, and as the first light blazed through the split in the wood I felt the fire upstairs draw breath, felt the heat rescind like waiting lungs. I cushioned Nora’s head against my bicep, adjusted her weight in my arms. Her muscles tensed, arm and collar and neck, all the way to her jaw. My other arm, cradling her legs, was soupy with blood. I wish I had been nearer her—that I’d opened the door into that first blast of smoke, that I’d been quicker, had caught her before her head bounced on the concrete. The way she went down—Christ, just like she’d taken a bullet. The house smelled like charcoal, and so did she, so would the outside world, my clothes, Cecil. The heat warmed my neck and I hazarded a look behind me, to the dark hallways and the ochre glow spilling like sunset beneath the stairway door.

Then Cecil bellowed for me to back up, and he booted that door open with a flat-footed kick, and there he was, Cecil West, some maniac Canadian, haloed by the whiteout that glowed behind him. I can still remember it—his initial, wry smile (
Warned you about that door
, I bet he was ready to say) bent toward the brim of his half-cocked ballcap, his action-movie posture, elbows flung wide, axe handle draped over his shoulder like some lumberjack supreme. Jeans: soot-stained and grime-smeared, handprints in streaks. Shirt: wet in a dark V, framed by a checkered coat. And I remember how quickly his expression changed, how it hung first in a moment of not-understanding—a temporary disconnect, a gap between expected and actual—at seeing Nora in my arms, Nora, who should have been in Cranbrook. Fiancée, best friend, fire—then he went neutral. No anger, pure neutrality. Almost as if he’d suspected it—but of course he’d suspected it. We are, if nothing else, jealous and suspicious men.

He stepped aside so I could get out, and we jogged across the street while the fire consumed my home. I laid Nora on the grass beneath her crabapple tree, saw the blood on my forearm with dread, as if she’d taken a wound. Cecil’s jaw clacked in circles, like chewing cud. He crossed his arms and gripped big handfuls of his denim coat. Jack, on the driveway, watched us and the fire and us again. Beside him: Alan, held stiff beneath a firm hand.

Start the fucking truck, Cecil yelled to his son.

Nora was breathing, coughing. I knelt beside her but Cecil hip-checked me aside and, in the same action, draped his coat over her. He put his ear to her mouth, he brushed hair off her face, tugged a strand from the corner of her lips. Her skin looked clammy and wrinkled, like she’d been in a lake, like she’d almost drowned.

What happened? Cecil said.

Smoke inhalation, banged her head, I said.

Didn’t catch her?

I wasn’t nearby.

Fancy that.

He let his wrist hang off his knee, put his other hand to his chin—pensive.

Why’s she bleeding? he said, but I could barely hear him.

Old man—

That’s not my name.

He turned his head to profile, enough that I could see the scrunch of his nose and lip and I thought he must’ve got some smoke in his eyes, too. Cecil emptied his lungs and at least some of his stomach. His hands had squeezed to fists. He was going to beat the living shit out of me—anyone could see it.

I guess I don’t have to ask what you were doing, he said. He flicked his hand at me. I hung at a distance. Jack got into the truck, Alan on his lap. They rolled down the driveway.

This how you do things? Cecil said. He pivoted so he could see my house go up in flames behind me. A guy gives you all this and you shoot him in the back. That your thing, Archer?

Say whatever you want.

He drew from his pocket a Zippo lighter, adorned with the American flag. He hefted it, didn’t stand.

Found this outside your house, he said, and tossed it to me.

It had a smudgy fingerprint on it. I turned it over in my hand.

A paper burn pile, near your deck, Cecil said. Untraceable. Only a fireman’s kid would know that.

Jack rolled up behind me, in the truck. He looked about as pale as the dead.

What are you going to do? I said, to Cecil.

What would you do, Captain Forgiveness.

I don’t know.

You forgive Linnea yet, for leaving you here?

She didn’t leave me.

Right, he said, and cupped his hands on his chest. Crib
took her
. Or maybe Crib
saved
her.

Fuck you, Cecil.

You don’t see it, you blind fuck. The way people look at you. Nobody is close to you.

Your fiancée is.

He showed his gums, still didn’t stand up, just knelt beside Nora, there on the cool grass.

And it turned out about as well for her as it did for your daughter.

Go fuck yourself.

Finally, he stood up. Ballcap, wrinkled jaw, eyes squinched to pearls. An enemy now—and bigger than I thought, or had noticed. Maybe you don’t see your friends for what they are. Or maybe you do, and Cecil had seen me for what I was all along. He took his ballcap off and set it on the ground beside Nora, probably so it wouldn’t obscure his view, so he could pin his chin to his chest and graze my haymakers off his forehead, get inside my guard.

Not so wise now, he said. No wise-man saying to tell me how to raise my son? You sure done well with your daughter.

My fists curled, almost against my will, that pulse of adrenaline in your spit glands that makes you want to chew your tongue. Cecil brought his guard up, right arm forward—a southpaw when it came to haymakers. He hadn’t been in a fight since I showed up in the valley. His army training was limited. His age was a disadvantage. He still had no real scars on his wrinkly face except those burn marks on his chin, little dents lining the ridge of his jaw like a set of leftover stitches. He looked like an army vet now. I wondered how long this had been coming, if one or both of us had known all along that we would part ways on blows.