Ballistics (41 page)

Cecil’s fists fell to his sides.

I’m not gonna fight you, Archer, he said, and knelt to scoop his cap. He brushed it off, two sweeps of his palm, though it wasn’t dirty. He placed it on his head, straightened it. Every time he moved I twitched, my heart thumped in my throat. I’d lost some kind of battle right then, but I don’t know what. I simply don’t know. The way he looked at me, looked down at me.

You think you’re so wise.

I don’t know what I think anymore.

He cradled Nora in his arms, murmured something to her that must have been comforting, because her fingers dug his forearm—something that hadn’t happened when I held her in the same way, carried her from the fire. I still don’t know what Cecil had that I didn’t.

He jerked his chin toward Jack.

The boy know?

Why would he? I said.

You’re all buddy-buddy, you two. I’ll ask you again, Archer: does Jack know?

We breathed at each other. There’d be no more lies between us.

Old man, I said, but he brushed past me. Jack opened the passenger door and Cecil stomped toward him, each step so heavy it left divots in the earth.

Cecil! I hollered, but he didn’t stop, just laid Nora in the passenger seat and did a first-class job of ignoring me. I watched him tuck her feet under his big coat, buckle her in. He skirted the truck’s hood and hauled open the driver door, and when Jack didn’t immediately get out he grabbed his son’s coat and dragged him down with way more force than a father should. Jack staggered, nearly lost his balance. He didn’t say a word. Then, with all the gentleness of a grandfather, Cecil lifted Alan under the arms—the boy giggling, happy to see Grandpa—and handed him to Jack.

JACK HADN’T BUDGED
from his yard when I stopped my truck in front of him. Alan wobbled on his feet and Jack held him still with one fatherly hand on the shoulder. The fire shuddered. More red-and-white lights whirred around the curve at the end of the road. Men Cecil must’ve known piled onto the street.

Get in, I said.

Where’s your shirt? Jack said.

On fire.

Jack lifted Alan through the passenger door and I took his small body under the arms, and he giggled. He’d been dressed in a red sweatshirt that said
Speed Demon
, had short, curled hair, eyebrows that I bet would one day lift incredulously at almost anything a person could say.

I’ll get you a shirt, Jack said, and jogged to the house. Across the street, everything I owned was getting consumed, but I didn’t care—maybe couldn’t care. Alan hopped on my knee, put his pudgy palms on the wheel and did his damnedest to turn it. I steadied him, kept my hand on his small back, spanned almost the whole of his shoulder blades, thumb to pinky.

Jack returned with a plain grey T-shirt footballed under his arm. He handed it off.

It’s mine, he said.

He climbed in and I passed Alan over to him, dropped the truck into gear and started our trek to the hospital. I know you set the fire, I said.

I know you know, I heard Jack say. He reached over, buckled Alan down in the middle seat as if that’d make any difference at all. The truck mounted the steep hill out of the subdivision. We passed the hostel full of dope smokers who gave us thousand-yard stares as we rolled on by. The streets were warped and shitty, like always. Everything made me think of Cecil.

Believe me—I had no idea you were in there, Jack said. And I’m really sorry for that.

But not for the fire itself?

He chewed on that one. Alan grabbed for the gearshift and I nudged his hands aside. Jack lowered his window, squinted at the sky, the horizons, the mountains. There was a cave on one of them, shaped like a bent tin can, and you could see it as we crested the hill. The mountains don’t change, much like that town. Jack leaned his elbow on the window frame, wiped a clear smudge on the dust of the mirror. Maybe people don’t change either, despite what the adage says. Maybe you just get better at seeing them.

No, Jack said, as we drove straight west toward the hospital. I’m not sorry for that.

At least you’re honest.

He looked down at Alan, poked his son in the shoulder, retracted before he got noticed. The boy grinned.

You believe in God, Archer?

Yes.

Then I’ll get what’s coming for me.

You won’t need God for that, kid. There’s Cecil.

He smiled the kind of smile you wear when remembering a better time. I could spot that a mile away. Well, he said, and left it at that.

I veered us into the hospital’s parking lot, killed the engine, and the three of us sat there like men soon to be hanged. Jack smacked himself in the thighs, drew breath. He undid Alan’s buckle and lifted him over to me.

You can stay with me a while, I said, not understanding why I’d say that, right then, to Jack West of all people. Wherever I end up. At least until you’re on your feet. If you need to.

Thanks but no thanks, Archer, he said. We looked at the emergency doors, sliding open and closed, like chewing. I’ll go on up. You don’t need to bear witness.

Your call, kid.

Why are you so okay with this? he said, and lifted his arms in a grand shrug.

I’m getting old, I said, as if that counted, and Jack clicked the door open and made his way high-headed through the hospital doors. Alan mashed on the truck’s horn and it gave a truncated bleat, but the mouth of those doors had already shut and Jack, even if he’d heard it, wouldn’t have had the chance to turn and look.

THEY CAME OUT
of the hospital together, Jack in the lead and Cecil mere steps behind—almost like a hostage situation. Jack had red eyes with baggy circles beneath. Old Man West kept his hands in his pockets, his chin to his chest, took shallow steps that scuffed along the asphalt. I positioned myself between them and Alan, as absurd as that was.

Jack tells me you’re taking him in, Cecil called, way earlier than was natural. Bit fucked up, I gotta say.

Won’t have to if you don’t give your own son the boot.

No son of mine, he said, and Jack squeezed his eyes shut.

He didn’t know we were in there, Cecil.

He knew you were a
we
.

That what this is about?

Smart guy like you can see how that might factor in.

Smart guy like me can see you’re about to lose the last person you’re close to.

Real close, Cecil said.

I didn’t want to hurt you, Dad, Jack said.

Well at least someone cares.

Nora didn’t either, I said.

Cecil showed his gum, made a
tsk
sound. He spat at my feet, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. How bloody noble, he said. Then he stepped forward past Jack, reached with two hands for Alan, and I slid sideways, hip-checked his arms aside.

Cecil straightened, raised himself to height, a twinkle in his eye: G
ive me a reason
.

Archer, I swear to God, he said, and reached again and I let him, and so did Jack. Cecil hefted Alan in one arm, faced us both. And that was probably it—the end of something.

How’s Nora? I said.

Miscarried, he said. Mary-Rose, we’d have called her. I understand that Rose was your idea.

I’m sorry, Cecil.

Oh I know, he said.

I took my keys from my pocket, flipped them to Jack. Go home, I told him. Cecil didn’t so much as blink; Cecil didn’t so much as try to stop him.

Nora’ll be coming your way when she’s cleared, Cecil said.

Jack did as I said, left me there with Old Man West. We squared off, us two, same as we did so long ago at his cabin. I won’t say we’d come full circle, because we never really started off as enemies, we started on misunderstanding. But there was none of that here, there was just us.

You want to put this behind us? he said, shifted Alan to his other arm. Me to tell you it’s okay, no problem, best of luck to ya?

He set Alan down; the boy latched on to his grandpa’s jeans. Cecil rubbed his jaw, stared beyond me at who knows what. I imagined the ruins of my house. Cecil put his hands back in his pockets, probably to stop himself, but Alan pulled away, as if to come to me, and Cecil’s palm shot to his shoulder.

If I ever see you again, Archer, I’ll kill you.

You don’t mean that.

You’ve taken enough from me, he said. Stay away from my grandson.

He’s my grandson too.

No, he’s not.

And if I don’t?

I’ll turn you over to the army.

You don’t mean that, I said, and his chest deflated. But I’ll stay away.

I heard his teeth click shut. You wrecked everything.

For what it’s worth, Cecil?

Fuck off, he told me, and shoved his hands in his pockets, squeezed his eyes to beads. And I mean that.

NORA AND I LEFT INVERMERE
. We’d see Jack again, briefly—a short stint with us at our new place before he left to seek greener fields. I’d offer him a wad of cash—not sure why. Some obscure sense of responsibility or duty, maybe. He wouldn’t take it, of course, and I probably saw that coming. He’d cross an ocean and more countries than I can name. He was ever a wanderer, not someone you can pin down in location or intention or, let it be said, stability. Poster boy for a prodigal son, Jack West.

The town felt like it had drifted from the mainland. Our roots weren’t deep enough; I’d shed no sweat in the sculpting of that place. Which is not to say that I made the decision with ease; there was blood of mine in Invermere’s soil, happy years and dry summers and long, good winters—memories that you can’t shake even after decades. If I didn’t owe Cecil so much, if I hadn’t ruined him like I did, no force could have driven me from my grandson. But I suppose we can’t control everything, and sometimes events don’t pan out. Nora held my hand when we last climbed into my truck, and I won’t pretend that I could have done it without her. We weren’t even sure where we’d end up, but if you don’t know where you’re going then all roads lead there.

Cecil didn’t come out of his house once, at least not so that I could see him, but he may have been keeping a low profile precisely for this reason. I can’t imagine how lonely his house must have been, the echo of every leaking tap, the noises of Alan’s toddling that would have cried out for a mother, or even a father—how depressing it must have been to round a corner to the kitchen with that subtle expectation for company, anticipation panging in him like a hunger. I took everything from Cecil West.

When we left, not even a truck full of things between us, it was early morning, so early I hoped Cecil would be asleep, though this strikes me as pure fantasy. We made one lap past the house—Nora asked for it—and as we crept along I listened to the road gristle under the treads. We lingered only a moment, Nora’s jaw set and her hair loose and at her shoulders, nudged by the warm air breathing from the radiator. It was like she had always known it would come to this. It was like I did, too. They say it is possible to love more than one person, and I believe that because I have to.

We drove out of town, onto the long, mesmerizing stretch of highway south, through forest that would one day be scorched to husks, around treacherous curves that would inherit names like Deadman’s Twist, over a bridge that a homemade biplane would demolish in what witnesses would say looked like the impact of artillery. I’ve kept track of that highway, of the things that happen to it, as if it’s an escape route, a slug trail I left behind on the slouch to Cranbrook—the long and only way home.

We drove. The Rockies kept pace, rigid and adolescent in the lifespan of geology, their peaks white-capped like the tips of a butane flame, like the pictures of mountains you draw when you’re a kid. The air smelled of forest. Trees were thick trunked and dense on the roadside, as green as health, and the sunlight glared off the rooftops and made me squint, made my eyes dry right out, made them water.

I have learned that the heart is a resilient thing. Regret, loss, grief, guilt—these are not pains the heart will suffer long, but they are pains that stay as deep as muscle memory, present in each heartbeat and pulse of blood, in every chest pang that jolts you awake, afraid. I’ve been on both the receiving and the giving end of these pains, so I can say this with some degree of authority: they never go away. You never forget them. You live among them as if they’re camouflaged, cusping the threshold of your awareness, until something catches the light: your wife towelling bathwater from her hair, like she must have done time and again with the friend you stole her from; a father and son kicking stones along the street, so content in one another’s company; even the landscape, the mere presence of it, as large as imagination and possibility, as large as forgiveness, that should—but doesn’t, truly doesn’t—make insignificance of the worries of men.

Eight