Ballistics (14 page)

Cecil saw the car too, and he and Jack pushed their way through the gathering crowd as I tried to bury myself in it. Too much coincidence, I figured—Crib
had
to be one of those guys sent to round up deserters. A brailer. I could almost see the trajectory, past and future, like a premonition: the cat-and-mouse he’d been playing at ever since he rolled into town (
sent
into town, likely); our first encounter on the bridge, how I’d blundered headlong into that and blown my cover; the inevitable fact of our meeting in a small town, orchestrated or not. Now there’d be a scuffle. He had no jurisdiction in Canada, so he couldn’t haul me away himself—especially there, at the gravel pits, among guys who’d go to bat for me—but he could get the two of us arrested, and then incite a military response. That, I guessed, would be his angle: goad me to fight, or come at me swinging. I had friends here, but a fair fight is a fair fight. Crib didn’t even have to
win
.

Cecil caught my arm, leaned in. You need to disappear for a bit, he said.

What’re you gonna do, old man?

These guys, they don’t know what’s up. If he shouts for you, they’ll stick you without knowing it.

Friendly fire.

Just like we always said.

Guys had started to notice the car, to drift toward it. That’s what Crib wanted: an audience.

We don’t know that he’s here for me, I said.

Cecil lifted his ballcap off his head and swiped a hand through his thinning hair. Part of me wished I could bear witness to whatever Cecil was about to do. I owe him for one or two other things, he said.

Nora? I said.

Yeah she’ll fucking kill us all, Cecil said. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder, looked down. Even you, Jack. But it’s the right thing to do.

The Canadian thing to do?

That’s what she’ll say.

Where to, then?

I figure Jack and you climb up the hill. Get a look at us.

I’m your backup, Jack said, almost a whisper.

Cecil squeezed his shoulder like a dad, like a good dad. Next time.

Don’t lie to me, West, I said. You just want to break Crib’s nose.

Violence isn’t always the answer to these things, he said—a true curveball that made me wonder if I didn’t give him enough credit. His face bent to a smile, but it was a smile like a man would give when he has received bad news at a good time—a lonely smile. And sometimes it really is, he added with a wink. He was a good friend, Cecil West, maybe even the best of friends—or at least the best kind of friend.

Then he pushed past us, toward the car, and Jack and me shared a nod. We slipped from the back of the crowd and darted for the hills that made a valley of the gravel pits. The snow lay loose on the surface but packed beneath, and powder and dirt kicked behind us as we climbed with our hands and feet down. Jack slipped once but I caught his wrist, and he tore away. I dug my boots in, palmed handfuls of crunched snow and did my best not to go pitching downhill in a tumble.

From on top the hill we watched the crowd. Crib’s car was visible through the impatient guys who wavered on their feet. It looked like Cecil had stepped into a ring of schoolboys. But he didn’t raise his fists, or tilt his chin, he didn’t bark a few sharp words of intimidation. No: he sat down on the hood with one shoulder turned away, his hands tucked in the gut pocket of his vest. His breath plumed in the air before him. In a ring around the fire, the ice and snow had melted and the ground turned mud. Crib stood a ways off, gesturing. They were maybe sixty yards downwind, just specks and shapes, like targets, beer cans. It was an absurd thought to have right then, but I remembered how Jack had shot me at a range of thirty yards, and Cecil claimed the boy had a surgeon’s eye, that it ran in the family, that it was carried in blood.

I hate him so much, Jack said, without moving.

Jack rocked back and forth on his heels—I won’t call it a warm night. Leave the grudges for us old guys, I said.

You don’t get it.

Maybe not, I said. Maybe I don’t get it.

He blew on his hands, rubbed his knuckles in their gloves. How can you look at him?

I took my eyes off the crowd. Jack had his chin wedged in the gap of his knees, his arms encircling. His upper body rocked side to side, only his shoulders, really—like keeping time with a quiet, impatient beat, and warding off the shivers. I don’t know what I was supposed to do or say on that hillside. It takes a lot of energy to hate somebody, to stay angry, I said.

Exactly, Jack said, fixed on the men below. Better to just deal with them.

He’ll get what’s coming for him, one of these days, I said.

Not today. It’s not today. See?

Crib had lowered himself to the hood, same as Cecil. They looked relaxed, they looked like anything except two men about to fight. Crib reached across and the two of them tapped bottles, a toast. We’d all overreacted. He was far too young to be a brailer, if such a thing actually existed. Suspicion runs deep, even among friends.

It’s gonna have to be you, Archer, there’s no one else, Jack said, and stood up and dusted his jeans and stared long at the crowd dispersing across the gravel pits. It never occurred to me that he could have meant Cecil in the same way he meant Crib. Jack knew things I didn’t, knew things none of us did. It was like he could do what he wanted; he saw the world in a different way. A berth of darkness separated us from the group, and in the glow of the campfire’s blaze, that darkness seemed to be on the approach, to be creeping up the hill toward us as slow as nightfall, as slow as liquid metal.

I STEPPED OUT
of the bushes that had loosely been designated for pissing in, zipping up my fly, and nearly collided with a young guy on his way in. It was Philippe, Harold’s Frenchman, but the recognition didn’t go both ways. Philippe grunted an
excuse
me
in his nasally Quebecois and slipped on by, and in a moment I heard his piss thump tree bark. Across the gravel pits, on the far end, beyond the pallet fire and the drunks shoving around it, beyond the crowds of tradesmen grouped by profession and the few couples necking in the orange light, beyond all that, Cecil and Jack sat on the tailgate of my old Dodge. Old Man West had talked Crib down. About everybody expected a fight—especially since most guys knew what Crib had done to Jack—but Cecil just sat on that car, patted it like you’d pat a good dog, and shared a drink. It was a genius move: an information grab, but also so uninteresting that the crowd dispersed and guys forgot Crib had ever arrived. And then Crib left in such a hurry that he left his trick lighter—the one emblazoned with the American eagle—on the roof of his car and it slid off, and Jack laid claim to it.

Now I got a rare look at Cecil and Jack as they were when nobody was watching, each of them in ballcaps and hunting vests, blue jeans, each of their faces loose and their elbows on their knees. A few bushels of snow had come loose from the nearby trees, dusted their heads salt-and-pepper grey. If they noticed—on themselves or on each other—they didn’t indicate. Occasionally one rubbed his shoulders or cinched his arms in against the cold, but it never lasted. Cecil leaned forward with his wrists on his thighs, held a bottle between his legs. Jack leaned back on his elbows. Their knees knocked, time to time. Their eyes said they were both having a blast. Their heads swung and bobbed at sights around the party: two dumb guys who’d smashed each other’s noses; an owl, in the branches of an old conifer, curious at the lot of us; a few women that might have been good looking.

Cecil’s lips moved and Jack’s cheeks puffed out in a guffaw. I would have liked to know what he said, but no way I could hear them over the cackling blaze and the gruff, chuckling din. Some guys hooted as one of them shotgunned cans of beer. A couple plumbers yelled for another guy to fuck right off. Some younger kids—thirteen, maybe—had brought a jerry can along and were whipping splashes of gasoline at the fire so flames licked out in streams. Men flicked cigarette butts and empties into the blaze and the residue suds hissed and sputtered and somebody hurled a full one that exploded with a boom and a
whoomp
of air, like a rifle blast.

Another kid shoved past me, younger than Philippe. He didn’t bother to offer an apology, but I didn’t care to pursue it. I wandered off, put the crowd some ways behind me, but I kept watching Jack and Cecil. The old bastard finished his beer, glanced from side to side like a boy and, with a shrug to his son, rolled the empty behind him, into the box of my truck. I felt myself snort, shook my head. Jack passed his dad another drink. They were as different as a father and a son could be, maybe, but it’s nice to think that blood runs deeper than that. Or such is the magic of alcohol. Cecil worried, all the time, that he wasn’t the kind of dad Jack wanted, so it was nice to see that he didn’t have to work so hard at it.

Then Cecil put Jack in a headlock, and Jack’s ballcap fell off. Combativeness: the absolute display of affection. Right then, I wished Linnea could have come along, that I could have been sitting on the tailgate of my truck with her, just shooting shit. But we expected trouble, and I didn’t care to have her see me get into trouble. Role models, as they say.

I sat down on an upturned log, almost beyond the fire’s glow. People milled about, doll-like silhouettes. Paintable, maybe—if I ever decided to go back to painting people. In my own defence, Linnea never expressed a desire to go, and I figured she’d rather spend the time with Nora, since she got along better with Nora than she ever had with her mom, though I hesitate to blame her mom for that, entirely. Like anyone, my ex has a past: a gun-toting Utah reverend as a father, a gun-toting Utah prohibition activist for a mother, and a church upbringing that made me uncomfortable, even though I went every Sunday before the military shipped me to Vietnam. A hard woman to get along with, even for me. She was part of the war protests, and fair enough. I was part of the war. There were occasions when it felt like she was protesting
me
. Sometimes, when she’d come outside and find me and Linnea playing catch or wrestling on the couch, she’d call her
daddy
’
s little soldier
.

I didn’t even notice Jack and Old Man West saunter over. Cecil put his shoulder into me and smirked.

Why so glum, Mr. Party Animal?

Just thinking, Old Man. You should try it sometime.

Oh fuck you.

I grinned. You shoulda brought Nora along.

With this lot? Really?

Make people respect you a bit more. Show them your pretty lady.

I’ll hit you, Cecil said, and I fully believed him. Jack’ll help me.

I gave Jack an eyebrow. He swayed a little, smiled the goofy smile of a young drunk.

Not too worried on that front, I said.

Cecil eyed his son sideways, then gave him a shove that nearly pitched Jack wrist-first to the ground. He sat down between me and the fire, and Jack scurried to join us. He slurped on a beer and I did too, and Jack looked around as if he had misplaced his, though in reality he’d simply had enough.

Crib ain’t here for you, Cecil said after a time.

No?

He’s running too.

Why should I believe that?

Because he’s dumb, Cecil said. And scared. You said he’s got dog tags so that makes him same as you, something worse than a draft dodger. Canada won’t give him amnesty if they find him.

You sound like Nora.

It’s what Nora’d say.

He was trying, Old Man West. I’ll give him that. I’m not sure Nora knows everything, I said.

I’m saying he isn’t a threat. Hell, he probably thinks
you’re
a threat.

I let that one percolate. So why the showboating?

Cecil lifted one palm in a
who-the-fuck-knows
way. He’s a teenager.

Fuck him, Jack said. Cecil and I swung our heads his way. Jack set his jaw, but he didn’t seem willing to offer any more. You can never know with the young. If I’m right about anything, I’m right about that.

Then a huge
ker-ack
split the air, loud as a rippling flag.

Cecil raised his shoulder. A fist of hot air
whump
ed against my cheeks and I lifted my head to stare through at the party. There, next to the bonfire, a kid writhed around on the cold earth bodywrapped in flame, wailing at me like memory. The sound came out in gurgles as he rolled over and over to extinguish himself—stop, drop, roll—and it hit my ears like the drone of wounded men in the aftermath of an airstrike. Other kids staggered nearby, dazed. If they clocked that burning boy they took no action. Someone called for water. Nobody dared get close. I bolted between Jack and Cecil and shrugged out of my jean jacket mid-stride so I could wrap him with it and put out those flames, same as I once did with my own combat vest, my own arm. I fell upon that boy and laid my coat atop him and gathered the flames to me. Gasoline, piss, the stink of fried morning sausage. My own hairless arm boiled in the heat, prickles of itch and recollection. I wrestled the kid still and he loosed a bleating mewl. I saw his eyes wet and bug-like, polished orbs in the firelight. Someone said, Jerry can. Someone else: Explosion.