The Monkeyface Chronicles (38 page)

“Are you for fucking real?”

“Well then, option two seems to me like the most gentlemanly thing to do. So, let's go, then.”

“Tobias,” Carrie pleads, “you don't have to do this. Sam, I'll dance with you this one time, but you have to promise not to . . . ”

“I'm sure this won't take long,” I tell her. “I'll be right back.”

“Don't count on it,” Sam says to Carrie. Then he turns to me, smirking. “By the way, I was the enforcer for my junior hockey team.”

Sam's memory seems to be failing him. As I remember it, in our junior season
I
replaced Sam as the ceremonial enforcer of the Blue Flames when he jumped me during a practice skate, and I left him lying semi-conscious on the ice.

“You are so fuckin' dead, asshole,” Sam Simpson snarls.

So dead at recess, Monkeyface.

A few of the bar's patrons follow behind Sam and me, but Brandon Doggart stops them at the door and says, “Mind your own business. Turn around.” They do as they are told.

I've just stepped through the swinging doors when Sam Simpson kicks the back of one of my knees. I should have expected him to fight dirty. I stumble, but spring back up and spin around to face him. Amiya's conditioning exercises have made me nimble and strong. Sam grunts as he jabs at my face. I duck the punch. I've got to protect my face. He could knock loose my synthetic teeth, dislocate the rebuilt plastic bones. When I was Monkeyface, I never worried about my face in a fight.

“You must think you're something, eh?” he says. “Not for long.”

Watch you don't lose a finger or an eye, Monkeyface.

He swings at my face again. I block it with my forearms. He tries to kick me in the balls, but I catch his booted foot between my thighs. He stumbles backward, and I have to laugh.

“You like that, faggot?” he says. “You like it when a guy touches you there?”

Ass Fag. Faggot Monkeyface.

Nothing has changed. His punches are as predictable as ever. He swings and swings and swings, and I just keep blocking and dodging and deflecting until he's tired, just like the last time.

Swaying now, gasping for breath, Sam grunts, “What the fuck are you smiling about, you fuckin' fa . . . ?”

I pound him hard with my right fist. His face explodes, just like when I hit him in the face with the mud bomb in grade eight, but with blood this time. He stumbles backward, wobbling like a spinning top losing its inertia.

Siddown, Cecil, before I re-arrange your face!

My next punch folds his nose over sideways.

Hey, Adeline! Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, you ugly cow!

Right left. Bang bang. Both his eyes roll back, the lids drop.

I grab his shirt and throw him down on the parking lot gravel. It has ended the same way as when he jumped me at hockey practice years ago.

As I step over his fallen body, I say, “Déjà vu, Simpleton?”

When I burst out of the men's room after washing Sam Simpson's blood off my hands, my arteries are still crackling with adrenaline. Cecil and his band are tearing through a fast shuffle number, and the dance floor is alive with bodies. I push through the sweaty mass, but I can't find Carrie anywhere. I weave around the tables, scan the billiard area, and then I maneuver through the crowded room to the bar, where Anthony Caldwell-Wheelwright is still sitting.

“Hey!” I holler above the din of the throbbing music, “Did you see the girl I was dancing with a few minutes ago?”

He glances up from his reading. “Not sure,” he hollers back. “I think she may have left with her bimbo friend. Lara was pretty loaded.”

As I head for the exit, I notice that two skinny, scraggly-haired bums have cornered Bradley Miller at his pool table.

“Come on, Bradley, ol' bud!” the first bum wheezes. “We'll even give you a free cut of the shit. You could use another dime tonight, eh?”

“Yeah, man,” says the other ragged character. “Promise we'll pay ya back.”

“Promise?” Bradley says. Now that he's come down from his drug high, he looks like his eyes are about to be sucked into the shadows of his face.

“Promise,” the first bum says.

Bradley hands a fistful of cash to one of the two skinny hairballs, and they turn and scurry toward the exit, one of them braying, “Suck-AAAAAHHHH!”

The hairs on my forearms and the back of my neck stand on end.

The adrenaline already thundering through my veins surges, like floodwater blasting over a riverbank.

I'm shaking.

My face is burning.

My knuckles are burning.

My whole body is burning.

The two dirty, wild-haired bonesacks are Graham and Grant Brush.

From the Ashes

T
he harsh halogen glow of the parking lot light distorts their faces into grotesque baroque gargoyles. They are no longer identical; Graham's nose is bulbous and slightly crooked, and Grant flashes straight, white, artificial teeth. Their revised features were caused by my own fists. I've still got the scars on my knuckles.

They huddle together between two parked cars. Graham holds the joint between his yellowed thumb and finger, takes one last pull and then flicks the ember away. His eyes are glassy, his lips twisted into a lopsided smirk.

His brother Grant's eyes are like the slits of a serpent, his bottom lip curled up in his trademark predatory sneer, the same expression he wore when he knelt on my thighs on that cold playground in grade eight, slugging me in the stomach and hollering, “EIGHT! NINE! TEN!”

Outside the Incredible Blues Bar and Grille, my body trembles with adrenaline and hatred as I slide my hand into the front pocket of my jeans and take out my jackknife, flipping out the longest blade. I could rush out of the shadows right now, slash at Grant's face, send his lips, nose, ears flying from his face, plunge the blade into his heart, twist it, pull it out, chop his throat open, and then turn on Graham before Grant's body hits the gravel. I'd finish by booting both of them in the ribs.

A kick for when you're sick. A punch to eat your lunch.

Grum and Grunt giggle and wheeze as they weave through the parked cars and out onto Faireville Street. I wait until they are almost beyond the range of my night vision before I start after them. I want to take them by surprise. I want them to feel what Michael felt.

The bump and wail of Cecil's blues band recedes into the night. I'm expecting they will head for Jackie Snackie's, where the druggies traditionally hang out, so I am surprised when they turn at the former Tabernacle of God's Will and start climbing the hill.

No music ever poured through the doors of this windowless monolith. No light ever shone out from inside. Probably nobody ever even smiled in there. Only the shadows of the letters remain where the words have been pried from the concrete walls. The doorway has been double-padlocked from the outside, and the video camera removed from its bracket above. The parking lot is overgrown with weeds. The protest trailers have been towed away, replaced with small signs staked into the perimeter which read NO TRESPASSING — PRIVATE PROPERTY.

“Forgive us our trespasses,” I say.

The laneway up to the site of my former home is also overgrown with weeds. Spires no longer poke up above the trees at the top of the hill. The Jacob's Ladder accomplished what the torches of the Tabernacle interlopers could not.

All that remains of my former home are the stone exterior walls. The roof burned. The turrets collapsed. None of Landon's paintings survived the fire. His model airplanes burned to ashes. His brass telescopes and Ham radio melted in the inferno. Everything inside rose and fell again as ashes.

Graham and Grant pull back the sheet of plywood where the front door used to be, and I think of Michael lying on the ice, motionless, gushing blood. I see him in his wheelchair, bloated, immobile, no longer able to do any of the things that made him who he was.
Graham and Grant Brush, tonight is the
last night of the rest of your lives.

As I get ready to follow the smell of burning marijuana into the ruins of our little castle, my jackknife held out before me, the moonlight that illuminates the scorched stone walls casts another shadow. “Don't do it, Philip,” he says.

I tighten my grip around the handle of my jackknife, hide it behind my back.

“I think you've had too much wine, buddy,” I say.

“I know who you are, Philip.”

“Go home, pal. You're drunk.”

“I recognized the jackknife at Cecil's bar,” he says. “Come on, Philip. Give it up. I know it's you. You were my best friend.”

I'm stunned. I thought Anthony was merely indifferent to anyone he didn't outright despise. I never suspected that he thought of
anyone
as his “best friend.”

“The jackknife,” he says. “The one you're holding behind your back right now. You opened the wine with its corkscrew. You've been carrying that thing around for as long as I've known you. Listen, Philip,” he says, “I know you're angry. I know you think they've got it coming. But I want you to put the knife away and get out of here.”

The smell of marijuana smoke trickles out from behind the plywood door. I can hear Grum and Grunt giggling inside. The jackknife handle is pressed against my palm.

“You had better go now, Anthony.”

“Don't do it, Philip,” Anthony says. “Just move on. Look at Cecil! Brandon Doggart used to always make fun of him, and Cecil's hired him to be the cook and bouncer at his place. Just forgive and forget.”

“
Forgive and forget
? Graham and Grant didn't just
make
fun of me
, Anthony. They
crippled my brother
. They
paralyzed
him.
”

“Yes, they did. Those two morons wanted so badly to win a ten-dollar hockey trophy that they hit Michael to put him out of the game. I don't think they intended to hurt him as badly as they did.” Anthony eyes the knife in my hand. “But you
do
intend to hurt
them
, don't you, Philip?”

I say nothing.

“See, in the eyes of the law, killing someone with intent is bad. Very bad. But don't take my word for it — look it up.” He holds up his copy of
Martin's Annual Criminal Code
. “And killing
two
people with intent? Whew.”

“Are you going to call the police on me?”

“No,” he says.

“Then get lost.”

“I won't have to call the police. You think Graham and Grant are just going to stand quietly while you slice them up? No matter how stoned they are, they'll scream and yell and fight back. And all the other morons in this town will come running to watch. And then what are you going to do? Kill all the witnesses, too?”

“I'll run.”

“And you don't think anyone on the street will notice you? A guy running up Faireville Street with blood on his hands? Sure, no problem. That happens every day here.”

“Just go, Anthony.”

“Even if there are no witnesses, the police will find one of your hairs or something, and they'll match the DNA to you. Even the schlubs on the Faireville Police force can send evidence to a lab.”

“They got away with it, Anthony. Someone has to make them pay.”

“They
have
paid, Philip. They
continue
to pay. Everyone in the arena that day saw what they did, and everyone knows that their father made some kind of deal to protect them. His ass got ejected from the mayor's office so fast there was a vapour trail. The Brushes live in constant shame.”

“They don't deserve to live at all.”

“Graham and Grant are drug-addicted, slack-jawed losers, and their father is a distrusted, alcoholic snake. Don't let them out of their sentence early. Make them serve their time.”

I turn the jackknife handle over and over in my hand.

“Listen, Philip. I
hate
morons and bullies, and I
hate
the stupid, terrible things they do. I
hate
them. But, do you know what's better than getting
even
with them? Getting
ahead
.” He takes a step toward me. “Your grandfather likes quotes, right?
‘Live well. It is the greatest revenge.'
It's from
The Talmud
.”

“You've read
The Talmud
?”

“Philip, I'm in Pre-Law. They make us read
everything
.” Anthony is face-to-face with me now. “You've got a new face. Pretty good, by the way. You've got a new voice. And your
proNUNciAtion
is
imPECcable
. You can go anywhere from here. Don't make your next stop a prison cell, okay?”

You can go anywhere from here.
Dr. Rachel Rasfalian-Mapletree said the same words to me when I left the hospital. Adeline said them at the Eaton Centre.

“Don't get even,” Anthony says to me. “Get ahead.”