Cataract City (33 page)

I could hear Owe moving—had he stood up, was he stumbling around? I listened to the familiar squeak of the brace on his knee: an awkward contraption he never bothered to oil. Then came a crash, the squeak of shoe heels on linoleum and a tortured outrush of air.

“Jesus.” He hissed through his teeth. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

“You okay?”

“I’ll live. Unfamiliar surroundings.” His breathing calmed, then he said, “I didn’t see Frag go airborne. But when I close my eyes, Dunk, sometimes I do—Frag tumbling over and over in the air as if he’s rolling up an invisible hill before gravity inevitably takes hold. His legs tucked stiff to his body like he’s already dead, rigor mortis setting in. And y’know, I
hope
he was dead. I
hope
the impact knocked the life right out of him.

“The fuckhead’s truck smoked on down the sidewalk. To this day I have no idea if he even
knew
. Frag was slumped halfway under an ornamental shrub on somebody’s front lawn. His flesh was split right through his coat, man. Can you imagine the pressure?”

My eyes drifted to the house across the street. It’d been vacant a few months. The owners had defaulted on their mortgage—happened a lot, even in low-rent neighbourhoods—and the bank hadn’t resold it. It sagged into itself the way neglected homes tend to, as if, vacant of life, the wood and brick surrender their strength and the whole works sinks slowly like a mammoth into a tar pit. The windows were dark but I could see something moving behind the glass.

“Engine coolant had bled down the street,” Owe said. “I followed it. The truck was parked in an alleyway covered in a blue tarp, the kind you drape over cordwood to keep out the damp. The front headlight hung from its mount. Frag’s collar was meshed with the grille. That’s when I felt it, man. The
snap
. I’d heard that term around the precinct. The snap is that moment, that
sight
, that breaks a cop. One guy snapped when he found a baby stuffed into a vacuum cleaner bag by its drugged-out father. He unzipped the bag and saw an ash-grey little face clung with lint and cat hair and … For me, it was a dog collar stuck in the grille of a Dodge pickup.

“So fuckhead’s sitting on a lawn chair in the backyard, smoking
a Chesterfield with a freshly cracked beer. Bloodshot eyes, blood down his shirt: he’d busted his nose on the wheel. I showed him my badge. He goes:
I’ve got my rights, don’t I?
After the evidence crew showed, I wrapped Frag up and carried him home. I laid him on the kitchen table. Where else … where do you put a dead dog? You’d think that’d be the end of it, right?”

He lapsed into silence. I didn’t break it. He rustled around, stood up maybe. Next came the grating scrape of a lighter’s flywheel being flicked.

A trembling flame lit the bay window of the house across the street, illuminating a figure standing in the darkness.

I listened to a ragged inhale, a prolonged hack.

“You smoking?”

“I don’t, as a rule,” Owe said. “Only on stakeouts.”

My heart double-tapped—two solid mule kicks behind my rib cage.

“Big case, uh?”

“Not really, man. Penny-ante, to tell the truth. But guys get themselves shut away for nothing sometimes. But then it’s not my job—”

“To talk people out of being stupid?”

Silence again.

“Fuckhead’s lawyer got him house arrest. Ultimately he got two years for drunk driving. It was only a dead dog, right? He stood before the judge and was all,
I have a disease. Look into your heart
. Three priors—a pair of DUIs and another for driving with a suspended licence. Your garden-variety fuckhead driven by garden-variety demons. Anyway, here’s the part you need to know. The fuckhead who killed my dog went for a smoke every night. Right before bed. He turned in late—two in the morning. How did I know he smoked, Dunk?”

I didn’t say anything. The answer was obvious: because he’d watched him.

The line was so quiet I could hear the paper of his smoke crackle as it burned.

“Four nights I watched from my car in the alley. At one o’clock on the fifth night I got out with an iron pipe. Fuckhead smoked in the backyard, under the patio’s bare bulb. I crept into his yard, unscrewed the bulb so the contact points weren’t touching. Then … well. Next day Chief calls me into his office. Said nobody would be trying all that hard to find the guy who assaulted fuckhead, shattering his kneecap and crushing his orbital socket … but maybe police work wasn’t my bag.”

The ember brightened in the dark house across the road. Owe’s breath feathered the mouthpiece, gently rasping.

“And I’ll tell you, because why the hell not … there are moments you realize that when you carry through with a given plan of action, you’re gonna come out a changed man. Won’t be noticeable on the outside but you’ll never be the same behind the eyes. Standing in the dark in fuckhead’s yard, waiting, a small part of me kept yammering:
this isn’t you
. But who are any of us, really? We inhabit different states of being. Some are fleeting and some become permanent. Sometimes what we are, or who, or … it’s just a question of circumstance, y’know? How far would you go? How much does it mean to you? How much do you need it?”

Dolly whined thinly, then heaved herself up and padded into the kitchen. I listened to the dry click of nails on the linoleum, the dry crunch of kibble between her molars.

“Anyway, that’s Frag. I cremated him and scattered his ashes on his favourite walking trail … favourite,
I think
, because who can tell a dog’s mind? It’s hokey as hell, but whatever. I loved him, uh?”

“I know you did.”

“He was sorta stupid but I love stupid things. Like you, Dunk.”

“Awww, aren’t you a peach.”

“Don’t do it, man.”

I said, “Do what?” but the line was dead.

I sat watching the figure across the road. The figure watched me back.

At some point Ed returned from work.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing, beautiful. The stars.”

The next night I didn’t say goodbye to Ed, just slipped into my boots and left her sleeping. I flagged down a cab at the top of the street and told the driver to hit the casino. It rolled down Clifton Hill, the neon-lit marquees watery behind a curtain of rain. I bought a ticket for the casino shuttle. A couple of old warhorses in Sansabelt slacks stumbled on the bus, moaning about the rigged slots.

At the Rainbow Bridge a bored-looking border guard checked my passport. The shuttle headed east along the river and turned right at the aquarium before heading up Pine Street.

The driver stopped at the Piggly Wiggly. I stepped out, jacket pulled tight around my shoulders. The night seemed colder on this side of the river.

The bell chimed as I stepped inside the store. The clerk was eighteen, zitty, tending to the hot-dog rotisserie. I headed to the dairy case, grabbed a quart of full-fat milk. Moo juice, as my mom called it. The bell chimed. I turned to the pastries, craving something sweet and body-wrecking. A Hostess Choco-Bliss, maybe.

“Dunk?”

Owe stood behind the swinging glass of the soda cooler. He let it fall shut and squared his shoulders. His expression betrayed nothing.

“Hey, Owe.”

“Fancy seeing you here.”

“Yeah, fancy that.”

I picked up a cellophane-wrapped bearclaw and rubbed the serrated edge of the wrapper against my chin.

“What are you doing over here?” he said.

“Meeting somebody.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Don’t figure so. We met after you left town.”

“Where you going?”

I said, “What are you doing here?”

Owe smiled sheepishly. “Pizza and wings at Sammy’s.”

“By yourself?”

“Why—want to come with? I don’t like eating alone.”

“Sorry, but like I said. Plans. Another time.”

A car pulled into the lot. The horn honked.

“You can’t go halfway down the rabbit hole, Diggs,” Owe said before turning away.

I paid for my milk, walked across the lot and got into the grey Ford Taurus. Igor was squashed behind the wheel. He pulled out, driving with the squinty determination of the elderly.

A pit bull sat in the back seat. It was about the same size as Folchik, white with a black stripe across its eyes.

“That’s Bandit,” Igor said. “Don’t pet him.”

“Where’s Drinkwater?”

“Not coming,” Igor said. “Never does.”

“Just you and me?”

“On this side. Others, other side.”

“You got my money?”

Igor’s head swivelled slowly, as if his neck was operated by a balky crank. When he didn’t answer I glanced over my shoulder. Stuck
hadn’t followed. He couldn’t possibly know where we were going—even I didn’t know that.

Igor said, “What’s your problem?”

We hit the I-190 and out across the night river where it split at Navy Island. The street lights vanished as we drove through Buckthorn Island, then came back as we hit the Red Carpet Inn off Grand Inland Boulevard. The wheel looked as thin as copper wire in Igor’s meathooks. I felt the shape of the box-cutter in my pocket. I was ashamed to have brought it—a Dollar Store weapon, something a punk would carry.

We hit the West River Parkway and swung round the traffic ring into Beaver Island State Park. Light stanchions shone on an empty road glittering with frost. Igor tapped the brakes and eased onto an unlit corduroy road. Bushes whacked up under the car, rattling the coins in the cup holders. Igor pulled under some trees, cut the engine and unrolled the back window enough so Bandit could hop out.

“We walk from here.”

The long, open rush of the river and the dampness of the woods crawled up the back of my neck. We trudged through leaf mould that collapsed beneath our feet, boots sinking into the twisted roots that clawed up through the earth.

Igor moved slowly, tripping once and whistling air between his teeth. Trees with bladelike leaves, willows maybe, grew thickly along the bank. I pushed them clear with hands numb from the cold. The river opened before us.

It was black, as all night water was—as if the night dissolved directly into it, filling it with the same nothingness that must exist between stars.

“Those are them,” Igor said.

I peered at one puntboat, one swift-looking Zodiac. The puntboat was a wide-bottomed hulk topped with a tarpaulin. Under the
tarp sat cardboard boxes stacked high, flaps fastened with packing tape.

“You in this one.” Igor pointed to the punt. “I follow in the Zodiac.”

The cry came from somewhere behind the willows. Owe. I knew it instinctively, because although years had passed and we were now double the age we were back then, and Owe’s voice had changed and deepened, when we scream—any of us, when we are truly shocked and scared—we sound like boys. Owe screamed as he had when we were boys lost in the woods.

Instinctively I leapt from the puntboat and moved towards him—which was when Igor smashed a fist into the side of my head. The night swung out of balance, stars pinwheeling as I crashed on the rocks with Igor’s bulk following to crush the air from my lungs.

“Knew you were dirty …”

His hands clamped round my throat. My legs thrashed uselessly as Igor hipped himself up on my chest, bearing down with all his weight, shoulders torqueing forward, hands constricting to crush my windpipe.

Darkness hemmed my vision, a deeper and more profound darkness than night. I brought a fist up and cracked Igor in the mouth but my strength was fleeing, my reflexes too, and I don’t think he even registered it. I slid a hand between his thigh and my stomach, feeling for the box-cutter that lay trapped against the tight denim of my pocket. I clawed for it, my tongue thickening as the pressure of blood swelled behind my eyes.

My hand closed on the plastic shaft of the box-cutter and I thumbed the mechanism convulsively. I jerked my arm, the box-cutter slicing through my pocket as my hand came up under Igor’s thigh—there was a sensation of things coming apart, a terrifying new looseness—and next my hand was free and in it lay three inches of glinting razor.

Igor’s hands clenched my throat tighter. White balls burst in front of my eyes. Then warmth was spreading across my chest. Igor’s grip loosened. He stared down with a look of befuddlement. His jeans were dark, as was my shirt and jacket.

“Wha—?” he said.

He stood with difficulty. A clean, straight slit ran through his jeans, two inches to the left of his zipper. Blood ran along each edge. His hands trembled at the wound. He pushed as if he might somehow push the blood back inside. He staggered towards the water, still ten or twelve feet from the shore.

Igor got down carefully on his knees; blood splashed the stones, or was it the splash of water? Part of me wanted him to die, but that same part knew I was doomed if he did. That part also knew it was beyond my power to control now.

Igor crawled to the river. He was moaning somebody’s name, I believe, yet the sound came out as a hateful hiss. He fell face first into the water. I staggered to the waterline, rolled Igor over. His eyes were already glassy like a doll’s.

Run, said a rabbity voice inside my head.
It’s all you can do now. RUN
.

The Zodiac ignited with an easy rumble. I piloted it onto the river, skipping across lapping wavelets, swallowing compulsively because it was hard to breathe. Where was I going? I had no idea. My mind said,
Just go
.

The Zodiac’s motor stripped out across the water. I angled towards the Falls, charting the bend of the river by the solitary lights hovering above the scrim of the shore. Red and blue lights flashed in the low-lying blackness on the Canadian side, disappearing as the cruisers dipped down a hill and reappearing as they crested it.

A trap door opened in my stomach.
Edwina. Owe
.

I cycled the motor to surge upriver. There were the lights of Clifton Hill. The Falls were lit with red and green spotlights, and a white bowl of mist foamed up from the basin. The sound was loudest here: a pressurized thrum against my eardrums. I thought fleetingly:
You forget how powerful some things are. You take their beauty for granted
.