Ballistics (9 page)

What happened? he said.

There was a fight. Don’t know much else.

Is Jack hurt? he said. He looked worried.

I don’t know, Cecil.

Right, then.

I downed my drink and placed the glass on the counter and turned to follow Cecil out. Nora hadn’t moved, and my eyes caught hers.
Thanks
, I mouthed, and her fingers brushed my knuckles as I shifted past. Outside, Cecil climbed in his truck and motioned for me to do the same, but I didn’t head for passenger. He cracked his window.

Well?

I’ll take my truck, I said. Split up, check his hiding places.

Oh.

Take the park, check the playground. I’ll check the bridge.

Cecil lifted his ballcap straight up, mopped a hand through his hair. He’s more likely to be at the park.

That’s the point.

What the hell does that mean?

Better all round if you find him.

Don’t give me one of your lectures, Cecil said.

Trust me on this, I said.

He screwed his mouth into a cringe. This isn’t the time.

Playground, I told him again, and patted the side of his Dodge. With a curse he started her up and gunned down the street, and by the time he rounded the first bend he’d already torn a beer from the sixer under his seat. I let myself have one last look at my house, at the orange glow flickering from the kitchen and the small, frosted bathroom window. I’ll probably never know exactly what went down at that beach party, at that cursed fort, exactly what was done and said. But Jack sure made an impression on my daughter. He saved her, somehow.

DURING THE MONTHS
I’d been in Invermere, town council had erected a four-foot concrete barrier on each side of the road bridge, because of an oil tanker that careened off the edge when its clutch seized in third. People expected a bloody, fiery mess out of that one, but the driver crawled from the cab, doused in oil, while the engine hissed. He had to shower with dish detergent to wash himself clean. Traces of the spill remained on the tracks and the gravel—now stained gold—and the plant life, but the town couldn’t afford to mop it all up and didn’t really care to.

With their backs to the barrier, kids could dangle their legs over the lip and share liquor and stay out of traffic’s eye. Between the barrier and the edge of the bridge, you had about four feet—enough room to walk comfortably in a line or for a young, hormonal male to test his chivalry alongside the girl who’d caught his eye. The tracks were a forty-foot drop, where deer moved in small groups among the trees. A man could survive that distance if he landed right, or if he was stubborn enough. A stubborn enough man can survive anything.

I parked on the shoulder before the bridge and began to walk the length. On the wrong side of those barriers, on a dark night like that Halloween, you’d have to nearly trip on a person to find them. I didn’t want to run into Jack there, because that job belonged to Cecil. The old bastard liked to beat on his own chest, but he lost sleep over the raising of Jack. We may not go blow for blow when it comes to the details, but I’d be doing him a disservice if I said he didn’t try. It would’ve been nice if a daughter could’ve happened to him, but you know what they say about spilled milk. Cecil was the kind of man who planned against his mid-life crisis. He was the kind of man who you could trust with your house keys. If I had to face down the maw of Hell, I can think of only one person I’d rather have at my side.

I went the length of the bridge without encountering Jack, crossed the road at the far end, and started back toward my truck. I gave it eighty-twenty odds that Jack had gone to the park—too much likelihood he’d run into a guy he knew at the bridge; when a kid has been humiliated, the last thing he wants is to meet up with his friends. Cecil’d have his father-son chat, maybe get in a bonding moment. Someday he’d thank me for it.

Then, halfway to my truck, a figure materialized from the darkness in front of me—the shape of a boy, wiry, with one knee bent as a rest for his arm and the other draping over the edge. I jerked to a stop and my boots scraped the road and the kid bounded to his feet, way too fast to be a fourteen-year-old. He had his fists around his face, a boxer’s stance. I smelled beer, marijuana.

Who the fuck are you? the kid said.

I showed him my palms. Sorry.

He shrugged, and lowered his guard. I saw that he had a beer can in one fist. He raised it to his mouth and chugged the last, flipped the can off the edge of the bridge. I counted three seconds before it clanged against the ground. I couldn’t be sure, given our distance and given the darkness, but the kid looked to be smiling. Littering, he said. No greater crime in this country.

Where you from?

Oregon, he said, stepping closer. Buzz cut, field coat, army ranks stitched to the breast. I could put two and two together—this was the American, Crib. Linnea didn’t actually say he’d felt her up, but what
else
could set Jack off? He may not have been the most well-mannered boy, but he didn’t waltz around throwing punches.

You don’t sound Canadian, Crib said.

A lot of people tell me that.

Where you from, then?

Here.

Really! Crib said, and rested his hip against the barrier. He pursed his mouth. Not the nicest people in this town.

We do okay.

Look here, he said, and leaned in, head turned sideways, to show me a dark bruise on his cheekbone, right beside his nose. With his finger, he pulled his lip up over his teeth, wiggled a loose canine. Some idiot teenager almost knocked my tooth out.

Imagine that.

You don’t sound surprised.

Locals don’t take well to city boys.

The kid scratched his nose.

I’m not a city boy, he said. His face bent to a smile, but not the friendly kind—more like a baring of fangs. He pulled a brass cigarette case from his chest pocket and lit up without offering one over. Around his neck hung the iron crab brooch. He blew smoke up and over his shoulder. Name’s Crib.

Archer.

He pushed away from the barrier, just over an arm’s reach away, a jerky, hostile motion like a boxer dipping for an uppercut. Then he went bone-straight.

Now
that
is an interesting name, he said. He crossed one arm over his chest, brought the other up to his mouth, as if in contemplation. I can’t think of very many people named Archer. What’s your last name?

West.

His face had this ridiculous
who knew
look to it. He shrugged with his whole upper body, not just the shoulders. There’s a new one for the list, he said.

I put my weight on the barrier, my hands in my pockets. What brings you here?

Just looking for a place to drink some beer.

I mean to the town.

He winked. Business.

Had you pegged as a cadet.

Done officer training, he said, waving his cigarette around. Diplomacy, mostly. You don’t sound Canadian.

They teach you accent location in diplomacy class?

You might say I’ve got other training, too.

Ever do much hand-to-hand? I said, very slowly.

He ground the tip of his cigarette out on the concrete, flipped the butt off the ledge, and in a long breath let the last of the smoke go.

That sounded vaguely threatening, he said.

Then he shot forward, way faster than I’d expected. One strong fist latched onto the lapel of my shirt. He tugged, hard, and my head bobbed. I fumbled for the same grip, a fighting chance.

He flashed his teeth, white as gold. I don’t like being threatened, he said.

I squared my feet, grabbed
his
lapel, curled my wrist in to secure a grip on the field coat. My soldier’s grip, Cecil once called it. I could sense the strength in Crib’s arm, the patient, waiting muscles, the bicep seized like a windlass. He stunk of cigarettes and beer, and like a campfire, but I had no illusions—he wasn’t drunk.

No one’s going to care if they find a dead American on the tracks, I said.

Those a pair of dog tags around your neck?

You bet.

They look American made.

All tags are the same.

And here I had you pegged as a painter, he said, and, fast as before, his free hand shot into the folds of his coat, where you’d keep a pistol, and I made an awkward lunge for his elbow, wondered if anyone would hear the gun go off. He danced sideways, the two of us still attached fist-to-lapel, and then he drew a set of dog tags from some hidden, inside pocket.

I got a pair, too, he said, dangling them in front of his face. He released me. I did the same.

He sat down with his back to the barrier, draped one leg over the edge. From God knows where, and God knows when, he’d produced a hip flask. Well it sure was nice talking to you, he said, and took a big gulp. I’m gonna sit here and sober up.

I only lingered a moment, not sure what to think, wanting to pound that brat to a pulp, to grab his grinning face and smash it on the concrete until all that remained was a red, wrecked jaw. As I moved up the bridge toward my truck, he hollered: Don’t get lost in the shuffle, now.

CECIL’S TRUCK WASN’T
out front when I rolled up to my house, so I figured he’d found Jack and taken him home to get clean. Light shone through the living-room windows, which meant Linnea and Nora were probably watching TV. I killed the ignition and put the truck in gear—backward slope—and hauled the e-brake tight. Then I sat listening to the engine cool down. Probably, I should have thrown Crib off the bridge.

Nora scurried around the bend when I came through the door. She didn’t look happy; all the lines at the edges of her mouth, the ones that usually curled toward her eyes, were skewed down in a scowl that made her seem older than her years.

Cecil couldn’t find him, she said.

He just
gave up
? I said.

Gone home, to wait, in case Jack goes there.

Fuck sakes.

Archer, Nora said, and pulled a stray strand of red hair from her eyes.

How’s Linnea?

She’s fine. No … other bruising.

Did Cecil check the park like I told him?

Yeah, and he went back to the fort but the party was still on. Jack wouldn’t be there?

No, he won’t be, I said.

Should we call the police?

Not yet.

Is something wrong? she said, taking one hesitant step toward me, like a person might if their husband came through the door with a black eye. I waved her off and went out to my truck. Right then I wanted to give Cecil a backhand for good measure. About every part of me figured Jack had gone to the park—it had that loneliness a guy Jack’s age needed to get over a little humiliation. It’s where I’d have gone. My old man once found me cowering in the lining of a giant tractor tire, after my mom died young. He wasn’t exactly gentle in the extraction of boy from rubber, but I rode his shoulders all the way to the house.

I parked as near the playground as I could get without having to try my luck fording a ditch. Light from the streetlamps hit the jungle gym and the rope swing, and the shadows and lines made it seem like walking through a jail. On the far side of the playground was the spiral slide, and even at that distance I imagined its rank stench of piss and vomit. October wind blew over the field and into the playground and right through my vest. Elsewhere: revellers hooting, cop sirens wailing. Sand blanketed the base of the playground—a rudimentary form of cushioning—and in the darkness, with the wind, it looked like creatures snaking across the ground. With more light, I may have been able to search for footprints.

Jack? I called.

The playground looked like a place haunted. At its centre, where the rope swing—just a thick marine rope with knots every few feet—dangled, the shadows and lines fell in an almost-square, and in the low light it looked like a room unto itself. Standing there, I had the absurd sense of being in my living room, and it seemed fitting that I’d be searching for Jack there by myself. Sometimes, when Cecil swung by, he’d bring Jack along, and that was a dead giveaway that the old bastard had worries eating him. See, Jack would get Linnea out of the house, and Cecil’d have a moment to speak his mind, just me and him. Those days, he always packed a cut of elk meat with him, and as the kids headed up the dirt road to the gully he’d trade it for a few beer and a bit of my time. We always stayed in the kitchen; Jack was the only West to step foot in my living room, as if that place were reserved for matters unrelated to the heart.

Jack? I called again, and when he didn’t answer I swore and moved toward the red spiral slide. The slide had a twisting stairwell, contained inside a tin shell, that kids climbed to get to the top. To his credit, Cecil probably stuck his head in, did a quick one-two, and pulled out. Maybe that was enough given the circumstances; Jack could have been anywhere around town. But in the darkness you could miss a kid perched on the stairwell, and Cecil should have searched a little more thoroughly.