Ballistics (39 page)

Well, mostly you.

Cecil.

He sighed, actually sighed.

This is your thing, Archer. Talking to people. I’m not gentle enough.

He’s your son.

I’m asking you for a favour. It’s what you do.

I took the beer from the table. And what do you do, old man?

I go around looking handsome.

Do a damn shitty job of it, too, let that be said.

IT TOOK SOME TIME
for me to start the conversation with Jack. I have a number of excuses for that, but foremost among them was the fear that it would break his heart all over again; he was on the mend, but I know first-hand how long it can take and how quickly that mending can unravel. So I logged endless looping hours hauling lumber and pulled out of the Wests’ lives for worry that I’d bring things down around me. Cecil swung by on occasional evenings to drink beer and shoot tin cans with the same rifle Jack had long ago used to put a bullet in my calf. Nora and I waved; our interactions outside the bedroom were impersonal and strained. Things had changed, I can’t say what. Our affair felt dutiful now, rote. I’m not even sure her skin warmed when pressed against mine, if our breath would have been visible in cold air.

Jack had gone to work on upgrading Cecil’s firepit with stones he hijacked from distant areas of the gravel pits—chunks as large as car tires he had to split with a sledge. Most evenings I could hear him behind their house, the hammer’s beat methodical, and I can imagine his breath between each heave—a gasp, really—and every swing backed by the full of his strength, all his body could muster. He was beating out his frustration. He even kept on as the weather froze over, scored a pickaxe to break the hardening earth. He dug holes to level depths and plugged them with stone, chipped them flat if need be, until he’d built a spiral pattern in the dirt, a solid floor around his cinderblock pit. Cecil said Jack would sometimes light that blaze and sit there on a chunk of firewood and stare at the flames until they settled down to coals. Cecil said he let it happen—the whole project—and didn’t help unless the boy asked, and then the two of them would cart boulders around by their bottoms, knees deep and knuckles damned near dragging on the ground like gorillas. They drank beer and sat close together to make small comments.

It was Nora who sent me to him, one afternoon while we huddled beneath blankets, close enough and content enough for me to call it a rarity. The winter would soon be coming to a close, maybe that had something to do with it—high spirits for once again surviving the killing months. Jack’s mindless work clanged through the bedroom window and Nora shifted against me, prodded at my feet with her toes. She stretched, pushed on my face when she caught me looking.

Go talk to him, she said.

Been putting it off.

We know, she said. It was unusual for her to mention Cecil, even in passing.

I sat up and Nora fished around under the covers for her bra. She snapped it on while my back was turned, while I dragged my jeans over the floor.

Archer, she said, and I felt the wind of her breath on my back, twigged on a note of severity, and as I turned to her she looked tireder than I’d ever seen her. I’m pregnant, she said.

The news didn’t even shock me, not then. But it certainly explained things.

Does Cecil know?

Of course Cecil knows.

I didn’t know what to say to that. Her shoulders slouched, forearms across her thighs, sitting like a boy. That old house of mine had patches of cold in it—places where the insulation had probably gone moist or places that were renovated and some that weren’t. We never lit a fire in the wood stove for fear that the chimney smoke would raise alarms. Water pooled on the windowsill and if I squinted I thought I could glimpse my breath in clouds. My crotch ached—a sudden pang.

Who? I tried to say, but she just pressed her cheek to my chest and we settled right back into the bed and Jack hammered at his firepit—
clang, clang, clang
.

NORA COUGHS
, high and wheezy. When I press my ear to her chest her heart races like an athlete’s, and I fight to remember the things Old Man West has told me about smoke inhalation and skin flaking like paper, airways and scar tissue and the human weakness to fire—all his stories over all those years. The house stinks. Trails of smoke sneak around the poorly framed basement door. The air feels orange, as if from a Polaroid photo. There’s the taste of sulphur, guncotton, campfires. I gather Nora in my arms and slink for the exit and try not to think about what Cecil will do. In the distance: sirens, the pop of lumber. Nora’s clothes lay heaped on the couch and for a moment I consider dressing her. Then I reach the back door and move to open it but the key is not in the lock. And the key is not in my pockets, or on the windowsill, or among the shoes and debris at the door’s base. I’ve got no way to open it—I’m trapped. And I all but hear Old Man West giving me shit for that door.

There’s a single window I could have smashed and climbed through, but no way could I take Nora with me. Smoke twists across the ceiling, blue and heavy, bar-like. Nora’s skin has gone clammy and I try gently to wake her but she coos, she moans. I kiss her forehead. Where, I remember thinking, was Cecil?

I lower Nora to the floor and reach for the knob and it damn near sears my palm. Heat pulses through that wood, tightens my cheeks the way shower steam does. My arm and the ruined skin on the bicep light up like it’s ’62 all over again, and I smell gasoline and the stink of rubber cement and hair burning like tar and it’s all I can do to swallow my gag reflex. Then I’m in the jungle, that quick, on my knees with my sleeve in dark tatters, skin and muscles pus-white and the whole world cackling like death. A radio sizzles nearby, a black hand, boots and pieces of people and the air shimmers like a highway. It tastes like engine grease, the air—makes your tongue feel fat, coated. Friendly fire, someone screamed, right before whatever hit us hit us. Friendly fucking fire.

Nora moans from the other room, but it sounds weak, somewhere else—like hearing her through the ringing in my ears, or not even hearing her at all, same as when that bomb hit us, the disorientation. And I can’t move to her, I can’t pull out of those sounds, those smells. It’s all the things that’d gone wrong come to life, there in the basement, there before me in the orange glow: the war and my breakup and Crib and the kid we couldn’t save from the fireball. It’s Linnea leaving and Jack’s broken heart. It’s Cecil hauling ass across the street to rescue me and his fiancée from the fire.

JACK GREW UP
pretty fast that winter. He had his coat flown open when I rounded the corner, the pickaxe on his shoulder and a dotted line of sweat on his forehead—no gloves, no tuque. The fire cackled, lit the spiral of rockwork at my feet. He didn’t look much like a boy anymore: the shadow of facial hair grazed his cheeks, his lip, and he’d let his hair grow out long enough that he’d soon be wearing a tie-dyed shirt. He was damn near as tall as me too, and not the scrawny, big-eyed boy I’d grown used to and somehow not come to miss. When he saw me, he lifted a boot onto a piece of firewood and buried the pickaxe to its T in the earth, swiped his hands over his jeans.

Hey, he said.

Hey, Jack.

Sit down, he said, and gave a slow point to one of the chop-logs that rimmed the pit. I did so, eased myself down onto it, spread my palms toward the blaze and felt my bicep give an itch, a pang. Never liked fire, even if it kept you warm and moving. Want a beer or anything?

I’m good, thanks.

Where’s Nora? he said.

What? I said, snapped my eyes to him.

He motioned past me with his chin, toward the house; the lights had gone on. There she is, he said.

He twirled his finger in a spiral, traced an invisible arc around the rocks he’d embedded in the ground. If you like what you see here, I could do the same for you.

I followed the path—for that’s almost what it was, a path you could walk, stone to stone to stone—with my eyes; it filled the whole circle of light that the fire cast. Between each rock was brown earth, packed to level; in the summer he’d seed it and grow grass and it’d be a decent stand-in for a patio—it’d be the kind of place you could host a good barbecue, the kind of place other people eyed with jealousy. I can’t say for certain where he’d learned to work, but it sure paid off. Inherited it from birth.

Hell, I might take you up on that, I said.

You look tired, he said.

I don’t sleep much, yeah.

He nodded, a single quick jerk of his head. I hear ya, Archer.

I know you do.

They send you this way to give me a pep talk?

That transparent?

You and my dad, man. Not exactly masters of subterfuge.

Where’s the old bastard, anyway?

At the fire hall not working.

Or working hard.

He’s got you fooled, then.

It’s mutual, I said, raised an eyebrow that made Jack shake his head. The kid?

He pointed at a window, cocked open an inch.

If he wakes, I’ll hear him.

What’re you gonna tell him, when he’s old enough to ask?

Jack prodded at the fire, gave the flames some breath.

The truth, I guess? Or maybe I’ll be married again by then, can keep it all a deep dark secret.

Or maybe Linnea’ll come back, I said, and Jack’s lips inched to a smile. He poked the fire again, sat down on one of the chop-blocks, knees bowed out and elbows on his thighs. He hung his head. Smoke whirled clockwise around the fire, almost in a spiral, too, and when it enveloped Jack he muttered something, some superstition to ward the billow away.

That would have been the time to say something. But maybe it feels better not to. Jack and me sat that comfortable distance and let the smoke dance circles. It was the kind of night when you might expect to see the northern lights, though they’re rare enough in the valley. Jack drew a Zippo from his pocket and sparked a flame—three inches, like a carnival trick. It was the lighter he took from Crib, that time Cecil chased Crib away, and I guess Jack kept it as a trophy or maybe a reminder of what he’d lost. To be honest, I’m not sure which is more likely to be the Wests’ way of doing things.

And then I noticed that Jack’s rock work not only filled the firelight but snaked beyond, stretched outward and got wider and spread into the darkness—he’d laid stone over most of the whole goddamned yard. It looked meticulous as all hell—evenly spaced and levelled and I can’t imagine when he’d have had time to do anything else—for instance, to be a father.

Jack stood up when he saw me notice, moved to the pickaxe and hefted it off the dirt, its head cradled in the palm of his hand, the whole thing held horizontal at his hip. His shoulders rocked back with inhalation, came forward with the weight of the axe. It’s how you’d breathe if you were really tired, or really angry, or if you had something to say you’d not wanted to say for a long, long time.

I know you’re fucking Nora, he said.

He moved the pickaxe to his shoulder, like I’d seen Cecil do—a stance that meant
I can’t wait to see what you’ve got to say.

That’s a bold claim.

I haven’t told my dad.

Why not?

Linnea asked me not to.

You talk to Linnea? I said.

He grimaced. She’s the one who told me.

She told you?

Said someone besides her needed to know, just in case.

In case what?

His hand torqued the pickaxe in the air; it slid down and caught at his shoulder. Then he shrugged his dumb-boy shrug and gave me an ear-to-ear grin, as if to say,
She played you like a fool, old man
.

I knew she was leaving, months before she left, I told him.

His big smile wiped in a second, less. Why didn’t you tell me? he said, and he squinted now—smoke in the eyes.

She didn’t want me to.

I could have changed her mind.

She said she didn’t think you’d make a good dad.

He made a sucking noise; wind passed over his teeth. It looked like he had something to say. Instead he pinched his eyes shut, strode out into the darkness where my eyes lost sight of him. I squinted and searched but they wouldn’t adjust. The firelight heaved, glinted off the rocks as if they had a sheen on them. It was cold, but not damningly so; my breath made fog. Jack scuffled around beyond the reach of my vision. He snorted, suppressed sobs. I don’t exactly feel proud about the way that transpired, let me say that.

Get back here, I called. Not like it’s the first time I’ve heard you cry.

Then he went dead quiet, and I imagined him out there glaring in, me just this hunched old man in a sphere of light. It was the same damn thing, maybe, as all those years ago. I got lazy; I didn’t scope the yard or the layout and, hell, I didn’t do a very good read on Jack West.

He appeared beside me, to my blindside, and levelled a punch like I can guess Cecil had been teaching him to do for years. Right at the temple, right at the ear—that’s where he hit me, and I went down with a ring in my head as if someone had fired a shotgun. I hit the rock wrist-first and Jack grabbed my coat and fell upon me. He hauled me over onto my back and I felt older than ever before. He booted a wood-chop stool aside and hauled me across the buried stone. There he was: Jack West, red and orange and uplit like something risen from the fiery earth.