Once You Break a Knuckle (17 page)

—Shut yer mouth, Winch said.

—What're ya goin on about?

Winch sipped the coffee. It burned the roof of his mouth. —Ya don't know me. Ya never even knew me.

—Awright?

—Whatcha want me to say? Winch said.

—I'm a shitty dad, awright?

—Yeah, awright.

—Yeah? his dad said.

—You ain't even said yer sorry.

—Fer what?

—For leavin us, Winch said. He took another sip. —Chrissakes.

His dad put an elbow on the table. He made a fist, and the knuckles cracked like a ratchet.

—This ent how I thought it'd go.

—How'd ya think, then? Winch said.

His dad just shook his head. —I dunno, Winchy. Like when I got back ya'd be happy to see me or sompthen. That's how et's spose to go. Yer my son, fer fucker's sake. I done muh best.

Winch felt a whole lot bigger all of a sudden. —I dunno, dad, he said.

His dad's face scrunched up, went old, worn out. —I'mma sell this house.

—And where're we goin then? Winch said, but he knew the answer, had known the answer for a long time by now.

—Dunno where yer goin, Winch, his dad said.

—That's why ya came back, then.

—Need to get out.

—Yer my dad.

—Nah Winchy, his dad said, down toward the coffee and the four-fingered hand that gripped it. —Muh dad
was yer dad, I didn't do good as him. He got it right or sompthen.

In one of Winch's better memories, he and his dad crouched before a bonfire and tried in vain to make s'mores. They'd just hung the tree fort, and his dad smelled as if he'd been tending a blaze all day. He had a moustache, dark hair that only barely receded past his forehead. Winch was six and his dad seemed noble then, like a man from the nineteen-thirties. They slurped tap water from a steel canteen. They wrestled on the grass, wrapped roasted hotdogs in white bread. And that night they bunked in the tree fort until darkness had settled around them and Winch had drifted asleep with his dad's arm draped over him like a blanket.

His dad pressed a knuckle to his forehead.
Please dad
, Winch wanted to say.

—I'm real sorry, his dad said, and rubbed both eyes with the heels of his palms, and Winch wondered if the good memories would remain, or if they'd all rust down to this dim kitchen, that broken rifle, his weeping dad. The coffee cooled and thickened but when Winch raised it to his lips he still blew across it – an act of denial, because if it was hot, and if it stayed hot, he had reason not to leave the table, and he and his dad could persist as father and son at least a few breaths longer.

WINCH SPENT A GOOD
long time with the rifle parts, this time in the dark, while upstairs his dad ruffled through sock drawers and medicine cabinets and the dusty
underside of beds in search of who knows what. Winch couldn't fix the rifle – probably never would – but he still liked the weight of the pieces, still liked the way their metal smell chafed onto his calluses and the outside of his hands. So he rolled them around his fingertips, let miscellaneous chunks clack and tick together, let them knock the wood with their hollow baritone sounds. Sometimes he smelled sulphur, or guncotton. Sometimes he heard his dad intake a breath, creak on a floor joist, shut bedroom doors more forcefully than they needed to be shut. The house stayed dark, and Winch stayed still. The fridge hummed, cars trundled by on Invermere's broken streets. Hours later, getting hungry, he rose and moved blindly upstairs to his gramps's bedroom where he found his dad on the bed with a razor and a rail of cocaine laid out on a baking pan.

—So this is it, he said.

—I done muh best, his dad said.

Winch flipped his keys, tried to look anywhere. —I'm goin for a drive.

His dad wiped a sleeve under his nose, sniffled. The room smelled like musk, and semen.

—That's muh truck, Winchy.

—I'm takin a drive.

His dad set the baking pan down, touched his toes to the floor. —I said et's muh truck.

Winch had his wallet and his own set of keys, one of which could operate his dad's truck. He just needed to get there first. —Awright, he said.

—Yer lyin to me, his dad said.

—Am not.

—Winchy, that's
my
truck.

Winch bolted, dragged the door closed behind him and skipped down the stairs in threes. His dad gave chase, clambered out the door and craned heavily into the banister. Winch hit the front door in all-out sprint. —I fucken swear to God, his dad called, but he tripped somewhere in the house and Winch heard the clatter of things knocked askew.

He hauled ass down the driveway. The truck's passenger door was unlocked and he jumped inside and dropped it in reverse. His dad flew out the entryway and lurched a couple steps before he heaved his hands to his thighs and huffed like a man exhausted, and Winch peeled out and felt his dad's eyes trace him all the way around the curve.

He ended up at Miss Hawk's house. His headlights beamed through her front window and movement skipped past the slatted curtains. When she came onto the porch she wore an unflattering dress that hung straight from her shoulders down, men's white socks. Her hair had grown out to its dusty blond, and at a distance, in the low light, she looked like she had the skin of a teenager. Winch dropped from the driver's seat to the ground, her paved driveway. He only knew where she lived because she'd taken her whole tech class, years ago, for a field trip.

—Have you been eating? she said.

—I need to shower or somethin.

—You can come in.

—I'm dirty as all hell.

—Winch, Miss Hawk said, and combed a hand through her hair.

—Muh gramps passed.

—I heard.

—Muh dad just showed up, he's selling the house.

—Why don't you come inside, she said, and pushed the door open a sliver.

Miss Hawk's house was more cluttered than his but it smelled sweeter. A fire burned in her living room. The boot closet brimmed with steeltoes and hikers and a bunched-up pair of Carhartts. Golden Earring's “Radar Love” hummed from a radio in the living room by a butter-coloured couch.

—Bathroom's down the hall, she said. —I was making a grilled cheese. I'll make you one.

He realized he had no toiletries, but it'd been days and he wanted, if nothing else, to
feel
clean in Miss Hawk's house. The bathroom was a tight, storage-sized room with a standing shower and iron decorations. He torqued the hot water crank until steam filled the stall like fog, and fit himself under the tap and let the streams rivet down his chest. The water pounded his skull and he thought about things like money and Chris and if his dad had reported the truck as stolen. Then he heard a thud and the walls shook, and a woman's voice shrilled through the house. He shut the water off. His dad's Sweptline in the driveway, like a trail of goddamned bread crumbs.

—Where is he! Whore, the truck's out front, where is he!

—Get out, Miss Hawk said.

—Millie, his dad growled. —I don't wanna hurchya.

He pictured his dad's lined face, the grey hair and the eyes bloodshot and high. All those years at the barium mine, the hard work, the good example – and now a cokehead like his mother. He wanted to grab his dad's hair and smash that face into a tabletop, until the wood was dented with his dad's front teeth and all that remained in his fist was a bloody husk of hair and sinew.

Winch didn't bother to put on clothes. The adrenalin was in him like an awakening. He stormed out the bathroom and his dad wheeled and said, —There's the pussy.

Winch couldn't have stopped if he wanted to. A great pressure moved him forward. His dad wore a thin grey T-shirt ripped at the collar, blue jeans stained like a drunk's. His eyes were red and wild and open. Winch took long strides, booted a stack of books aside, and with all the upward momentum he could muster he lunged and hooked his dad by the neck, heaved him against drywall. His naked, beaded arm tensed, the muscle strained. His dad latched his fingers, clawed at the grip. It was like the day he watched his dad and mom fight, how his pupils narrowed and his actions went frantic.

Winch backhanded him, hard enough to split his knuckles on his dad's gums.

—Take yer truck an' get out, Winch said through his teeth.

His dad grunted and cold air breezed over Winch's legs, his abs, up his exposed ribs. Miss Hawk stood in the doorway to her kitchen, lit, angel-like, and moved her head once sideways,
no
.

—Get out, Winch said, and let his dad drop to his knees.

—Don't want no boy anyway, his dad coughed, upward.

When he'd gone and Winch had reclaimed his clothes, Miss Hawk dabbed his knuckles with a lukewarm cloth. He'd never had her skin this close to him. Sometimes she moved her hands aside to see him, but he pretended to examine the decor. Her cabinets were deep maroon and she said she painted them herself. A Coke bottle, wrapped in masking tape, centred on the tabletop, plugged with a thin, unused candle. Winch's gramps kept a syrup container covered in glued-on beans as the centrepiece of his table – an art project from his dad's youth.

He didn't realize he was crying until Miss Hawk set the cloth aside and laid her delicate, callused palms on his cheeks.

She locked the door behind them. His cheeks burned as she cinched his shirt in her fist and drew him close. She smelled like she'd been in the shop all day. He clasped her at the waist, unpinned her buttons. She pried his shirt, notched his jeans, and he tightened against the denim. She was square, almost boyish beneath her clothes, stronger than him, and when she clapped her palms on his deltoids his whole body startled at the impact. He trolleyed his lips along her stomach, across her belly button, to the rigid hairs at the fulcrum of her pelvis.
She rocked and shuddered like a truck. When he wedged himself into place a breath trilled through her teeth. Their thighs skidded together. She shifted him, adjusted angles, linked her fingers through his hair. Her nails raked over his ribs. He tended to lower his chin to his chest, stare at her breasts, but she leveraged his head upward with two fingers under his jaw.

Afterward, Winch tucked the sheet under his chin. A horseshoe moon slipped behind clouds. Cars zoomed the Friday streets and their headlamps swivelled through the window like searchlights and Winch pressed his face in the pillow that smelled like Miss Hawk. A tow truck approached from the distance with the distinctive gurgle of diesel and power. Winch waited for it to Doppler. Miss Hawk's pale back faced him and as the tow truck ambled past the window its amber hazards lit her skin like honey. She sniffled, and Winch realized she was weeping. A mole perched on the cusp of one of her vertebrae, another behind her ear. She made a noise, almost like a horse's whinny, and he reached out with tenderness and brushed his knuckles along her spine, but she shimmied forward against her knees and left his hand, cold, in the space between them.

IN A WEEK HE'D
have no money, but Miss Hawk would forward his name to a goateed mechanic everyone called Shank, and Winch would receive a phone call, drop from highschool two months before graduation, and start his apprenticeship. While finishing his first year at a
community college in Nelson, he'd find out Emily Hawk was knocked up, and he'd count the months backward on his fingers with dread.

But that night he lay awake, naked and spent, and waited, hoping she would circle her tough arms around him. He wanted to feel the taut muscles in her stomach, the swell of her breasts, her nose. As he drifted to sleep he dreamed a future where Miss Hawk birthed a daughter he nicknamed Caboose, where his dad became her gramps, where he built a hangar in his backyard with a concrete floor and a tar-sealed dome in which he undertook a lifelong project to construct a yellow biplane. He would tailor it with two sets of wings and a propeller bolted to the nose, a rudder Miss Hawk would swear he salvaged from weathervane parts. And in that dream he sparked the engine and the plane sputtered and he snugged a pair of aviators over his eyes, and while his daughter and Miss Hawk watched and his dad manned the gunner's seat, those ever-pink fingers strong and patient as a father's, Winch took off in a contraption he'd hand-built to carry him from the earth.

ACCELERANT

A long time ago I shot Mike Twigg in the back with a potato cannon. We were getting shitfaced on flats of Kokanee at the marsh behind my buddy's house. Twiggy dove sideways even as I grabbed for the cannon, but only his head and shoulders had cover behind the upturned lawn table when my thumb found the igniter. The potato
thoowunk
ed from the barrel and a husk of pool noodle floundered behind it – we used it as stock – and I watched the projectile beeline for the bastard's kidney. It cracked him pretty good and he spewed curses like a foreman, but I just disengaged the chamber and sniffed the residue accelerant. —You deserve every goddamned shot, I yelled.

Twiggy had violated the Code. Nowadays he pawns it off as a mere cock-block but it was more than that. Twigg, with his screwdriver-blade eyes and that smile like a bullmastiff, kiboshed my first real chance at losing the V-card, and to Ash Cooper of all people; I can still see those red bangs and the ponytail as it bobbed up and down the soccer field. Twiggy tells me to shut my yap because it's not
his fault I couldn't wrangle another girl before college, but let me just say that the school of freshwater fish is pretty limited in Invermere, B.C.

Twiggy trench-crawled on the dirt as I breeched another round into the cannon. I hear stories about guys who fashion “spud guns” that shoot thumb-sized morsels with compressed air. We dubbed ours a
cannon
because we'd constructed an ABS beast that launched whole potatoes with the power of propane combustion. I locked the chamber into place, injected a few hisses, and hefted the cannon onto my shoulder.