Ballistics (8 page)

Me and Harold were outside a duplex in this subdivision near the highschool. The sun had all but sunk behind the Purcells and the northern lights flickered on the mountain peaks. We needed to disassemble the scaffolding piece by piece and toss it into the gear van, just me and him, because the younger guys had fucked off. Their excuse: one of them tripped on an extension cord and took a dive off the second-floor balcony. He got lucky, sort of—landed in a pile of fibreglass insulation bags, but cracked his head when he bounced off the big pink pillow. The guy was nineteen and a Frenchman, named Philippe, and Harold gave it eighty-twenty that the kid had done it to get off work early. Philippe, Harold told me, liked to dance after work at the City Saloon, and probably misjudged how much the insulation would pad his fall. When next I saw that Frenchman he’d have nothing to talk about except some Yankee soldier killing his chances at the bar, some
real dick American
who had his rank stitched to his field coat and who drove a car painted red, white, and blue.

Days are getting short, Harold said to my request. I got guys jumping off decks.

He wore a fisherman’s hat, splotched with latex paint, and an immaculate plaid coat that he didn’t risk ruining since it once belonged to his dad. He stood a head taller than me but a shoulder thinner, had a skinny face with a heavy forehead creased like a father’s. One of his canines had been knocked out in a bar fight—blindside highball glass to the gums. When deep in thought he’d pinch his tongue into that empty space.
Hal
, his buddies called him, but I never really got behind nicknames.

I’ll make it up to you, I said as he passed me scaffold pipes. Rust had nearly eaten through them and in the wet October day it slicked onto my palms, as if I had some kind of tan. Those pipes had been around longer than Linnea, from the days when Harold’s old man ran a framing company. I don’t know the whole story, but Harold didn’t like being called Hal because it sounded too much like his dad’s name.

I’m not that desperate yet, he said.

Wait until you’re my age, I told him, and bent down to heft one end of a platform. He grabbed the other end, and we heaved it into the back of his van, clattering over the pipes and bolts and empty metal paint cans. The inside of the van looked like a toolshed; Harold once had a system for storing all his material, but laziness and indolence had chipped his resolve. We called that van the Hog in Armour
—
or just the Hog—and the running joke was to flatten beer cans and screw them to the exterior with flashing bolts.

Fuck it, he said, and belted me. But if I need a guy through the holidays?

I’m sure as shit not going anywhere.

He hooked his thumbs in his pockets, had that tongue in the space where his canine should be. My old man used to say that:
sure as shit
. You’re the only other guy.

We’d have got on.

Harold snorted, and we heaved the last platform into his van. Then he tried to boot the door shut but the latch failed to catch, and the door bounced right back and nearly knocked him over.

SO I WAS OFF
atop a mountain, a day out of town and soaked through the gotch, when Jack spotted the American car. He says that as it snaked toward him his head played a game of paranoia. He’d registered Nora’s worry, her endless conversations over dinner, that same topic: the pretty girl and her ex-army dad who needed their protection. It was the right thing to do, Jack had been told, the Christian thing to do—but more than that, it was the
Canadian
thing to do. So, as he watched that invading car, maybe Jack felt patriotism’s first pang, or maybe his young mind mapped a long, complicated trajectory to Linnea’s heart. I’m inclined to believe one of those over the other. Jack didn’t give Nora the time of day at the dinner table—he’d be the first to admit that—unless her conversation slipped toward my daughter. If you ask me, this is why he noticed the American car; some part of him flagged it as a threat to Linnea. And even if he daydreamed through most things Nora had to say, he paid attention to his dad. Jack studied his old man, the way Cecil scraped a fork across his plate while trying to scoop peas, the way he sucked so prominently on meat stuck between his teeth while Nora rattled off stories and concerns about those two poor refugees.

So Jack watched that American car roll to a standstill opposite the school’s ringwire fence. His heart pounded out of control, which could have been the running, but with one final suck of breath he pushed himself upright and walked over, leaned into the chain-link. The Fairlane had murky windows and star-shaped stickers on the glass where normally you’d see the fifty states. Jack couldn’t make out the inside, save hints of motion, of rustling through luggage or blankets. Then the driver door clicked open and a guy stepped out—buzz cut, field coat flown open to show a dirty white T-shirt, camo-patterned pants, and a leather belt with a buckle the size of a deck of cards. In his hands: a dog-tag keychain that he whirled around and around his index finger.

Hey, the guy said.

Hey, Jack said.

The guy took a bronze cigarette case from his chest pocket. He offered a smoke over but Jack declined.

I’m Crib, the guy said. He had a square face with cheekbones that dropped off fast and a jaw that could have been on an action-movie poster. Older than Jack by half a dozen years—practically a man. Around his neck, instead of dog tags, he wore an iron crab brooch, like the astrological sign, as big as the lid of a tin can. He pulled his lighter from one of his chest pockets—a Zippo, Jack remembered, with an American eagle decaled on the flat side—and sparked a flame as long as a .308 round. Crib tweaked his eyebrows up as if surprised. Jack
grinned
.

Jack, he said. Jack West. Where you from?

The States, Crib said, and winked. He blew a line of smoke in the air. Trying to scrub up some action. You?

Running, Jack said.

Good habit.

It’s for hunting.

Crib puckered his lips around his cigarette, nodded as if considering what Jack had to say. Hunting—now there’s a pastime I enjoy.

Crib smoked. Jack watched.

Then Crib said: Know of any parties? and Jack told him about the only party he knew, at the derelict fort on Caribou Road, overlooking the water, where he’d been planning to creep off to himself, and Crib kept nodding, deep in thought as far as Jack could tell.

Waterfront. My kinda place, he said. You going?

I need to sneak out if I do.

So sneak out! Crib said, tossing his hands into the air. Then he touched his forehead in a salute and about-faced and marched to his car. Jack watched, near to mesmerized. As Crib started the engine he lowered the window and hollered: Don’t get lost in the shuffle, now.

I GOT TO INVERMERE
in the early evening on Halloween night, more than a day after Jack encountered the American car. The lights were off, the door unlocked and the heat raging, but I may have been so cold even an arctic wind would’ve made me toasty. I dug the sketchbook from my rucksack so the damp clothes wouldn’t ruin the paper. There was no sign of Linnea, but she rarely came straight home after school, and I’d grown used to her hanging out with Jack. On the kitchen table, where I’d left money so she could keep fed over the days I spent in the mountains, a note was pinned beneath the salt shaker. It said only
Back later Dad
, which wasn’t exactly like her—she’s the angry, silent type—but nothing terribly suspicious. I was too tired, maybe, too complacent. I wonder, sometimes, how much shit I could have prevented if I never let myself go complacent, if I never let my caution lapse. Christ, you can’t be complacent in a combat zone.

Looking back, the signs were right there for me to see, the irregularities. Small things set off my alerts—I can tell when things aren’t as I left them. It’s like looking over my own shoulder. I’ll notice a coat on a different hook, a chair tilted at a different angle from the table, the smell of cut grass even before I see an open kitchen window. That Halloween, Linnea had washed the dishes, made her bed, and hauled out the trash—had finished all the chores I’d be most likely to start expecting her home to do. She’d even spent a portion of the money on candy for the trick-or-treaters. Everything was in place, and I should have noticed that as being out of place. There was one other thing, too, which I still attribute to Jack West, because it is something like I’d do, something suitably boyish, suitably cunning. Of course I didn’t notice it in my fatigue. They counted on that.

I WAS ASLEEP
on the couch when Linnea barged through the door with enough noise to wake the unquiet dead. It was two-twenty-three, Halloween night. I’d passed out with a can of Kokanee on my chest, and it’d emptied to a dark V on my shirt, like a sweat stain. I sat up and rubbed my eyes with the heel of my palm.

Dad, Linnea croaked, a desperate little whisper of a sound, a sound no man wants to hear his daughter make, and like
that
I was awake and aware and my feet were carrying me at a half-bolt out the living room and into the hallway. I found her leaning on the wall. The cabbagy stink of dope hung around her. All the lights were off and I could only see her outline: shoulders hunched and arms crossed over her chest as though shivering. I fumbled toward her and got the lights turned on. She had her hair loose in front of her face, hiding it. With my nearest hand I reached out and tucked the hair behind her ear. She winced—at my touch, out of pain?

Who did this? I said, thinking, to my own shame: Jack West. Her cheek was turning blue at the edges of a circle—were those knuckle marks?—and she had finger-pad bruises up her neck, under her jaw, like she’d been groped, like some fuckhead had been feeling her up.

Jack hit him, she said, squeezing back tears. She balled her hand to a fist, made a punching motion, hazarded a smile that tested the tenderness of her cheek. Jack hit him real hard.

Who?

The American, she said. Crib.

What American? I said, and her eyes went wide—she’d kept something from me, and I’d caught her in the act. But it wasn’t the time or the place to give a lecture. Where’s Jack now?

Crib beat him up, Dad—Jack ran away.

Is he okay?

I don’t know.

I cupped her shoulders, lowered myself level with her. She didn’t want to look at me on account of her red eyes but I didn’t care if she’d been smoking a little dope—made me tolerant, that’s what Vietnam did. Are you hurt? I said, as gently as my idiot army voice could muster. Are you hurt … anywhere else?

She shook her head. We stared at each other and I felt so small.

You gotta go get Jack, she breathed.

I’m not leaving you here.

He
hit
him, Dad, she said, her voice breaking at last. He hit him for
me
.

I pulled her to me, then, let her cry against my chest. I never should’ve stayed gone so long out of town; should have come back down, should have expected a Halloween party. She was
that
age.

Linnea blubbered into my chest, told me I had to find Jack, that I had to, for her. If I loved her, she was saying, if I loved her I’d find Jack.

I led her into the kitchen and did the only thing I could think to: I picked up the phone to call Nora. But the phone was dead—no dial tone, just the white plastic silence and a squeak from Linnea in the background. I looked from the receiver to the room and then to my daughter, who had her eyes cast to the floor. Without a word, she pointed to the telephone jack, the cord unplugged from the wall. Just in case Cecil tried to call; and a gamble, a real gamble, that I wouldn’t think to call him.
Back later Dad
, the note said, so I wouldn’t phone to see if she was there.

Cecil, I said when he answered the phone, groggy. Put Nora on.

The hell’s happening, he said, but passed the phone without a second thought.

Archer? Nora said.

Nora, Linnea’s hurt over here, and Jack’s gone.

What do you mean
gone
?

No, I said instantly. Not like that. He ran off.

Where to?

I can find him, but I can’t leave Linnea here.

She breathed a slow breath, a calming breath. We’ll head over. Then, to Cecil: Get your fucking clothes on, man.

I set the phone into its holster and pressed my forehead to the wall. Linnea wanted to wash off and I wanted a drink. She slipped past me, favouring her right leg maybe, and I stared after her until she’d shut and locked the bathroom door. I poured myself whiskey and sat in the kitchen with only the draining, grease-caked bulb of my range hood to keep the place lit, and I listened to Linnea’s feet creak on the enamel tub. That’s how Nora and Cecil found me. She let herself right in. I had the whiskey under my nose, elbows on the table—portrait of a pensive man.

Cecil had his hunting vest pulled over a plaid shirt, wore his blue ballcap and patched woodsman pants as if ready to track a buck. With her red hair frizzy and unkempt around her shoulders, Nora looked like a mother. She had one hand on Cecil’s back, right between the shoulder blades. Linnea’s in the shower, I said. You ready, old man?