Grinder (2 page)

I cleaned out the house in twenty minutes. I took the address book, money from the floorboards, and an old .38 to carry with the Glock I had on me. I unplugged everything and made a plan to mail post-dated cheques to the landscaper who cut the lawn in the summer and shovelled the driveway in the winter. He would also pick up any flyers left on the property. The rest of the junk mail would fall through the large slot in the door, leaving no evidence that the house was empty.

Before leaving the city, I stopped at a pay phone two blocks from Sully's Tavern. I called the bar and got an answer on the third ring.

“Sully's,” Steve's low, calm voice answered.

“How would you like to earn ten grand with a handkerchief?”

“I was worried. I thought you went down after that business with the restaurant.”

“You, worried?”

“You looked like shit the last time I saw you.”

I must have been circling the drain because Steve never said he worried; he usually said nothing at all. Before I could say anything else, he spoke again. “What's this about ten thousand dollars?”

“I need you to get into the office and wipe it down top to bottom. There's forty grand in the baseboard behind my desk and a CD taped to the underside of the window ledge. Grab both when you leave, and ten of the forty is yours.”

“You leaving?”

I ignored the question. “That business at the restaurant. Was it on the news?”

“Nah, just gossip.”

“My name get thrown around?”

“Nah, but who else is going to start trouble there?” Steve chuckled over the background of clinking glasses and bar conversation.

“I'm leaving for a while. I just need to make sure there are no loose ends at the office.”

“Why don't you burn it down?”

It was my turn to chuckle. I was amazed at how easily Steve's mind gravitated towards violence, as though it were the most logical answer and therefore the first suggestion. “There are already enough people involved. Fires bring firemen and cops; I just need to get rid of the prints and the money.”

“Guns?”

“They're in a compartment in the closet; they're as safe as they'll ever be, but they need to be wiped.” There was no immediate reply; I listened to the sounds of the bar for half a minute. “Steve?”

“I'll do it for free.”

“Steve!” I protested.

“I'll do it for free.”

I finished talking to Steve and told him I would leave the key in the change return of the phone I was on. I thanked my friend and hung up. By the time he got to the key, I would be in the car and out of the city.

I drove eight hours to Montreal. I found a cheap motel that took cash and slept without worry for the night. I woke at eight and used a washcloth to clean everything around the bandages. The pain in my left arm was unbelievable, but the pills the vet gave me would wear it down. I found the nearest post office and mailed twelve cheques and a note to the landscaper who took care of the house. The note told him I would be away on business often over the coming year. I made sure he understood that I would be coming back home every now and again to make sure that the landscaper would not think he could get away with neglecting the lawn. I also asked him to dispose of any flyers left on the driveway or grass. I wanted no sign that the house was unoccupied. After that, I ate a huge breakfast at a French-Canadian chain that was much like Denny's except for the fact that it offered baked beans with every meal.

Full and dulled from the painkillers, I drove twelve more hours to the only other place I had ever been — Prince Edward Island.

Mom and Dad took me to the island as a boy, and together we did everything that the small island offered. It was more than a vacation; it was my only solid memory of family. I could still close my eyes and smell the water, feel the breeze, and hear the sound of the red singing sand squeaking under my feet.

My return was greeted by a monument to technological advancement. Instead of a ferry crossing, there loomed a huge bridge joining the gap between New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. A small turn-off advertised the old ferry, but I chose the new bridge instead. I wanted to get to the island as fast as possible. The bandages on my arm were starting to feel moist under my shirt. I needed to find a place to stay so I could rest and heal.

The bridge led to Charlottetown — the capital city, as large as a small Ontario town. The roads introducing me to the island province were different than those before the bridge — their asphalt was tinged pink from the red island dirt used to build them. I pushed myself to drive the thirty minutes from the bridge to the city centre. I had no patience left in me to wait for sleep. As soon as traffic began to bunch at stoplights, I pulled into the first lobster-themed motel I saw. I paid for a week upfront in cash and walked straight towards the adjoining restaurant.

I was greeted inside the restaurant by the smell of frying seafood. The bubbling sound of the fryers muffled the eating noises of the four solitary patrons. I was too tired to attempt eating anything that would require two hands, so I ordered a bowl of fish chowder and an order of fish and chips. The chowder came fast and it was hot and creamy. I had to search for the advertised pieces of crab and lobster until I finally found a piece of each on the bottom of the bowl. The fish and chips arrived minutes later in a red plastic basket. The oily fish and fries lay atop a piece of waxed paper printed to look like old newsprint. The fish was good; it settled deep in my stomach and made me immediately bone weary. I dropped a twenty down and left the restaurant without waiting for the almost nine dollars in change I would have gotten back.

I went to my room without my bags and went to sleep on the bed. I woke fourteen hours later and spent the following week in a painkiller haze. After the seven days at the motel, I felt good enough to travel away from the city deeper into the heart of the island. An hour out of Charlottetown, I stopped at an Atlantic Superstore to look at the community bulletin board, and found a house for rent minutes away from the ocean. Nellie, the old woman renting the house, was pleasant and inquisitive. She gave me directions to the house and met me there in her apron. I put her in her sixties, but her hair still had much of its youthful red. Her face was worn but tight; she was a woman who would age well until she finally could no longer age at all. Nellie fought the urge to ask questions about my long stay for fifteen whole seconds. I told her that I just had to get away from the city, and she instantly understood me as though I had just spoken some immutable truth. She told me five minutes worth of big-city horror stories that I was sure she had never learned first hand before we agreed on the evils of big cities and a price for the house. I paid her up front for four months, in cash, and she left me alone in the house holding the keys.

I hadn't lied to Nellie. I did have to get away from the city. I had made enemies of both sides of the underworld — Italian and Russian — making my presence dangerous on a good day. Add to that the condition of my mangled left arm, and I wouldn't last a day in Hamilton. I needed to start over where no one could find me. I needed to rehab my body. Most of all I needed to find a new way of life; something different from my parents' way, and most important different from my uncle's way. I needed to find a life all my own and shape it myself.

I spent days walking the long road in front of the house to the local beaches and wharves. Each day I tried to swing my left arm more and more to bring back its range of motion. After a month of walking, I could swing my arm to shoulder height making my walks awkward to look at. Once I looked sufficiently stupid swinging my arms, I switched to running in the forests that surrounded the house. I used my arms to pull myself over fallen tress and up hills. I lost my grip often and fell at least ten times a day at first, but after another month I could run for hours unimpeded.

My left arm began feeling normal, but different angles brought with them immense pain. On one of my trips into town for food, I found a gym overtop of a local hockey arena. I ran in the mornings, using the forest to bring my arm back, and used the gym in the evenings. Slowly, I began to be able to move dumbbells off my chest. It took two more months before I felt in shape. I was better, but I wasn't what I was. I knew I didn't have to be like I was anymore, but I couldn't let the wound be what changed me. The wound was like the city holding on to me — letting me know I couldn't escape. I had to get its hand off me. I doubled the workouts and used the stairs at the house to do angled one-arm push-ups. At first, the strain on my joints caused me to scream, but I built up from less than one to sets of ten. By the summer, when my seventh month at the house ended, I could do fifteen one-arm push-ups reversed on the stairs with my feet elevated above me. I pounded out rep after rep, hardly feeling the strain on my joints. It was about this time that I went stir crazy.

The small town offered little in the way of entertainment. There was a grocery store and drug store that combined also covered the town's book, hardware, and appliance needs, and a theatre that played movies already released on DVD. The only real excitement was the fishing. I loved to watch the fishermen bring in their hauls at the end of the day.

I watched in awe as boat after boat pulled in with bluefin tuna that weighed hundreds of pounds. The biggest fish were dragged in behind the boats — the carcasses staying fresh in the briny water that had given them life minutes before. The fishermen took turns raising the giant fish onto the docks. Tour groups stood with the hanging catch for photo opportunities — the captains smiling biggest of all. They got the profit of the catch while the charter passengers got the cheap photo and the priceless story to go along with it.

Once the photos were taken, the largest tuna were taken apart on the dock with a chainsaw. In the same spot in which they had just been immortalized on film forever, they were dissected for the value of their parts and put on ice. The large tuna were soon riding the ocean once more, only it was in the belly of a boat bound for Japan.

I watched the haul every day I could before making the long walk back to the house in the woods. On my way home one night, I decided I would book a charter of my own.

On a cold Wednesday morning, I headed out fishing with a man named Jeff. His boat
Wendy
was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars making me think the giant fish must be worth their weight in cash.

“Good money in this?” I asked as we plowed through the water.

“Charters? Oh, sure, couple a fellas out on the water makes me a good bit for sure,” he said.

“Not the charters, the fishing. The boat doesn't look cheap.”

“Fishing is a funny thing. When it's good it pays the bills and more for sure, but when it's bad you can't even put fish on the table.” He laughed at his own joke for a second before going on. “Chartering is like the middle. It gives me some cash on a slow day, and if we catch something I get that too.”

“Win, win,” I said. Jeff smiled at me and looked out at the vast expanse of water ahead. The blowing sea air was clean; nothing polluted it with exhaust or pollen. I breathed deep as though for the first time and smiled. It wasn't the cold grin I learned from my uncle that usually came before violence — it was a genuine smile. I was happy on the water.

Once we came to a stop in the water, Jeff pulled a fish from a tub at the back of the boat; it wriggled alive in his hands.

“If this is your idea of fishing, I want my money back.”

“Get lost, boy. This is the bait. The fish love 'em. But first . . .” He put the fish down on a work table and pulled a knife from a magnetic strip that held it above the work surface. He cut the fish into chunks and threw the pieces into a stained bucket. He repeated the process, pulling more fish from the tub to chunk them on the table.

“Why not just do this ahead of time.”

“You gotta do it this way. The tuna like it fresh, and if the bait is too cold they'll spit it out before the hook gets in.”

“They can spit?” I said. My tone gave away the fact that I thought I was being fed a script meant to entice the tourists.

Jeff stopped his bloody work and looked me in the eye. He pointed at me with the knife, and his words had no humour in them. “You got to get your head around what you're dealing with here. These aren't goldfish you're hunting. These are monsters. Dangerous monsters who know what they like, and aren't afraid to tell you different.”

I nodded at the knife and realized Jeff didn't work from a script. “How do you know there are tuna here?” I asked.

“I work this water every day. I know where the monsters are, but you can check the fish finder if you don't believe me, city boy.”

I followed his directions up the stairs to the fish finder beside the wheel of the boat. The screen showed a scattering of yellow dots; below the yellow spatter were two large red dots. “What am I looking at?” I yelled back to Jeff.

“The yellow dots are a school of mackerel. Those fishes are running for their lives down there for sure.”

I walked back down the stairs to find Jeff looking over the side of the boat at the dark water. “Are the red dots tuna then?”

He smiled at me and put one gloved finger to his nose, closing a nostril. He pushed air hard through his nose, shooting snot over the side. “Those red dots, city boy, are giant bluefin tuna. Not your canned tuna. Big fuckin' monsters for those Japanese fellows to have with rice and sake. Godzillas with gills, for sure.”

“How big?”

“Anywhere between two hundred and a thousand pounds. I told you it's no goldfish; it's a bull. It runs fast and it doesn't get tired. This thing will fight you like nothing else.”

“How do we catch it?”

“You stand over there and you hold that rod tight. You paid for the experience so you can go mano-a-fisho for a little while. You can let it beat your ass until you're ready to hand it over.”

I put a hand on the pole and watched the water lap the boat while Jeff threw bait over the side. The chunks sank fast, leaving no trace they ever existed until Jeff threw more on top of them.