Once You Break a Knuckle (15 page)

—The street salt, he said.

—One spin won't corrode it.

He scraped his thumb along a patch of grease on his overalls. They were perpetually damp at the thighs where he wiped his hands and he couldn't drink Coke because the smell reminded him of all that oil.

—Well, Miss Hawk said, and stretched her arms so Winch had to look aside. She dangled two copper-coloured keys from her fingertips. —Come here.

Then he was out of his overalls, in jeans and a sweatshirt with the school's name –
BTSS
– printed across the chest. He folded into the Rocket's driver seat and Miss Hawk swung in beside him like a girlfriend. Winch strapped himself into the seatbelts that fastened in an X at his sternum. He fit the key in the ignition and leaned on the clutch and the Rocket murmured. Miss Hawk fiddled with the radio for a moment and Steve Miller's “The Joker” hummed from the speaker. He rubbed the stick shift on his palm and then clocked it to reverse, out Miss Hawk's shop and onto Invermere's streets.

He wound around the road by the lake. Snow crunched beneath the tires and air hushed through the trees. Miss Hawk opened her window a finger's width and Winch realized his hands were sweating enough to slicken the wheel. At the beach a huddle of kids passed a spark around. Miss Hawk
tsk
ed and then snaked him a sideways smile. A lone street lamp lit the beach because the frozen lake counted as an actual highway, even if the cops couldn't patrol it.

—Use the lake, Miss Hawk said.

—There's ridges.

—Get you home faster.

Two shallow trenches led over the frozen sand onto the ice. Winch flicked on his highbeams and Miss Hawk reached over and with her thick fingers unclipped his
X-buckle. His cock went instantly hard. —Just in case, she said.

The town lights fell away until his whole world was the space ten feet in front of the car. Miss Hawk's face was lit by reflection off the ice. He pressed his foot onto the gas and the car drew forward, snugged him against the seat. Miss Hawk sucked air through her teeth and braced one hand on the dashboard.

—Faster.

He shifted to fourth in a quick, jerky motion he'd seen men do on television. The car hummed and bucked and the wind from the open windows huffed across his cheek. Miss Hawk flattened her palm against the ceiling and her breasts rose with a held breath and Winch dropped the car to the final gear and laid on the gas and his eyes flickered along the juts and rivets marring the ice's surface.

Lights blinked into view and Winch let off. Sweat pooled in the bowl of his collar. His shirt clung to his back like a tongue. He geared down. Miss Hawk hooked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. They'd drifted from the beaten highway, but the shore in the distance was marked.

—Goes good, Winch said, and Miss Hawk eyed him.

He pulled the Rocket into his gramps's driveway and killed the ignition, and they lingered in the darkness listening to the engine hiss. It was ten o'clock, no later. In the living room blue light danced on a wall, and then a shape rose from the couch and stood at the window – his dad, awake and watching anything so he could see Winch to bed.

—Thanks, Miss Hawk.

She shook her head. —It was all you, Winch.

He climbed from the car as the front door lurched open. His dad stepped out. He wore a pair of jeans and a grey Nike T-shirt. His dad never wore jeans after work, unless he was expecting someone, because he preferred a ratty pair of sweatpants he could lie around in. Miss Hawk's door clunked and she stepped out into the cool air.

—Millie? his dad said.

—Conner? Miss Hawk said.

Winch's dad patted his own head. He scrunched his eyebrows. —What're you doin here?

Miss Hawk circled halfway around the Rocket's grille. She laid one wrist on the hood as if balancing herself.

—Why ya got muh boy with ya? Why're ya – why're ya here?

—Your boy? she said, and then she eyed Winch, lower lip curled over her teeth. She shook her head and puffed air out her lips. —It was a school project.

—Fer what?

—Tech, Winch said.

His dad came down the steps. He tripped and Winch wondered how much he'd had to drink, or worse. —So yer not, his dad said, and reached a hand toward Miss Hawk. —So yer not comin by?

Miss Hawk drummed her heels on the Rocket's bumper. She was sitting on the hood by now. —Fifteen years later, Conner. A change of heart?

His dad's hand swung sideways onto Winch's shoulder.
Those barium-pink fingers dug muscle. —Just when I seen ya here, thought ya were comin by.

—Sorry, Miss Hawk said.

His dad kicked clods of snow free from the driveway.

—Muh boy got what it takes?

—Dad, Winch said.

—Shut it. You're a young buck. More kick 'en yer old man, his dad said, and then spat. —Give 'er a good ride, Winch?

—Conner, Miss Hawk said.

—She tell ya the truth of it? Old Jack, he was gettin nicer tail.

His dad's fingers worked at Winch's shoulder but his eyes were keen on Miss Hawk. She pinned her chin to her chest, clutched a set of keys. She yanked the car door and slipped inside. Winch's dad stepped past him and railed a closed fist on the hood.

—No-good whore, he said, and Winch felt a lump in his throat he couldn't swallow, and he watched his own fist smack his dad in the jaw, an earthy sound, like someone tapping a piece of chalk to slate.

For a moment his dad didn't react. He touched his chin. He glanced from car to woman to boy and then back at the house, his head tilted to the ground and his left eye squinting as though puzzled. Then he shot forward and those two massive pink hands hoisted Winch from the ground.

He landed hip-first, sideways. The impact spiked down his leg. His dad fell upon him, limbs methodical. Winch
batted an arm aside, absorbed a half blow with his ribs, snugged his elbow over it. He smelled beer and deodorant and cigarettes, and Winch had never known his dad to smoke.

Then he was rushing upward and the ground left his feet and then he was pinned to a tree. His dad stood below him, nostrils raging. Miss Hawk hollered from the Rocket. His gramps appeared at the front porch, barked:
put him down
. Winch stared at his dad whose fist gyrated in the air and whose forearm pinned him against the tree.

—Nup, his dad said, and lowered him. The fist relaxed, unfurled. He brushed Winch's shoulder, as if to remove dirt. —I won't be that guy.

He faced Miss Hawk. She'd started the Rocket and pulled around to leave. Winch leaned on the tree, a wide trunk, but not the one they built the tree fort on – too old, unsure roots, too much risk. His dad, facing the Rocket, turned his hands out as if to say,
who could've known?

IN THE MORNING
, Winch found his dad hunched at the kitchen table and his gramps pressed into the wedge where counters intersected, arms across his chest. It smelled like charred toast and burned eggs left to soak in the pan. Outside, what little snow they'd had was melted to a great bowel of mud and salt. Condensation pooled on the windowsills and the weak sun beat his dad's shoulders. His gramps plucked the glass eye from its socket and set it on the countertop. It lolled on its side.

—Winch, I didn't mean to scare ya, didn't mean to hurt ya, his dad said. He stared straight ahead and set both his hands on their ridge, fingers stacked upright. —Got some things comin back to me is all.

—Happens, Winch said.

—Might be I need a break, ya know?

His gramps cleared his throat and the phlegm caught like a stalled engine. The glass eye
tink
ed against a ceramic mug. He drew his thumbnail down the scar bisecting his socket.

—Sure, Winch said.

—Didn't know Millie was yer teacher, is all.

—You had a thing?

—Were bad times.

His dad looked anywhere but at him.

—Where ya gonna go? Winch said.

—Won't be away a long time.

—How we gonna get money?

His dad clicked his teeth and his hands rose level with his nose. He pressed them together. —Left yer gramps a stack of cash, sompthen I been savin, just in case.

Winch noticed the hiking pack on an adjacent chair and the puffy balloons of skin hanging over his dad's cheekbones. His hair was greasy and it matted his ears, greyer than Winch could remember, but also thinner, like he'd been tugging at it. His beard had grown and the whiskery hair stained his face like soot.

—I didn't mean to hurchya, Winch.

—Boy knows that Conner, his gramps said.

—I gotta make sure he does.

—He does.

—I'm not leavin fer good, his dad said. He twisted in his chair to face the older man.

His gramps reached for the glass eye, rinsed it under the tap, and popped it in. His eyelid fluttered for a moment and the orb spun. —Winch dodn't know that.

—I just told 'im I'm not.

—Awright.

—I just told 'im! his dad said, and slammed his palm on the table.

Winch put his shoulder in the door frame. —Where're ya goin? he said.

His dad slung the pack over his shoulder. It jingled and tinked with items that didn't sound like food and clothes. —Might be I just need a break, his dad said.

After he was gone, Winch stayed in the dark kitchen with his gramps cross-armed at the counter. The old guy watched the floor, chin to chest. Then he plopped the glass eye into his palm and reached for a wallet-sized bottle by the sink and squirted a line of saline solution in the socket. His gramps blinked and wiped a channel of liquid at the corner and said, —Fucken shit always makes my eyes water.

At school Miss Hawk wouldn't look at him. She was in her jeans and roughing shirts, but as he worked wood under a lathe or fit elbows and scored razor edges, Winch pictured her in that yellow dress, the way her face glowed from the ice reflection. —Millie, he mouthed to his metal.
—Millie. He tried staying late, but she told him he had a key now, he could lock, and he spent four hours alone in the garage.

He took up shooting again. Him and his gramps played Donkey, like the basketball game but with rifles. They took turns propping empty Kokanee cans in obscure places on the shooting range: peeking over the lip of the Studebaker's box; half-visible among the branches of a willow tree; suspended on chicken wire so it swayed in the wind like an arm. Winch figured the lone eye gave his gramps an advantage, because the old bastard iron-sighted shots Winch couldn't gamble with a scope. They stocked ammo in a tin cigar case and after their games his gramps rattled the dwindling contents and looked up the road.

Each day he checked the entryway for his dad's steeltoes.

At school, Winch kept with tweak-work on the Rocket, but the spring semester meant new electives he hated but needed to graduate, like art, and biology, and a course called Communication for kids too dumb for real English. The art teacher was a stout woman named Miss Mary Mason who wore a cooking apron and gave the best marks to clever pieces. A deathly skinny kid made a door out of jars and called it
The Door is Ajar
. The preacher's son dismembered plastic dolls and fashioned himself an
Armchair
. Winch couldn't draw and he couldn't paint and he wasted the hour flipping through
Layman's Machinist
, desperate for an idea. He read the article on the home-built biplane. It included a sketch of the product, so he
hit Miss Hawk's shop and tried his luck with a miniature. He bolted it together with nail guards, drywall anchors, and an EMT union so it could swivel at the base. Mason graded it a B, said it wasn't art, but good craft. He pawned it to his gramps, who set it on his windowsill beside a banana-sized cactus and a set of dog tags.

His gramps started telling him to make sure the lights were off, his heat dialed down. He started coughing too, at night and in the morning – low, sledge-like sounds while he mulled his coffee.

A girl named Chris with hair the colour of motor oil asked Winch if he'd like to go to a movie. She had compact lips and a dimple more prominent on one side than the other. She said she liked the way he handled things. She said she liked his little biplane. Winch mumbled an acceptance and paid their way to the Toby Theatre on money his gramps thrust into his palm with a wink. The Toby's seatbacks were padded with maroon shag carpet, and overhead, models of World War Two fighters swung from long threads. They pressed hip to hip in a two-person seat and Winch supplied the popcorn and halfway through
Blazing Saddles
they were tongue deep. She tasted like butter and she grabbed incessantly for his hands, and he didn't know why.

IN EARLY SPRING
, Chris suggested they sneak to the natural hot springs at the Fairmont resort. One of her brother's friends, a kid they called Squints, tagged along. Squints had curly, pubic-like hair and glasses as thick as
a finger. Winch had ideas about the guy, but didn't voice them, swiped his gramps's only bush-lamp, a million-candle beast. When his gramps saw it tucked under his arm, he leaned forward on the couch, where he spent more and more time.

—Ya gonna do sompthen stupid?

—Prolly.

His gramps coughed phlegm and with an apologetic look hawked into a ceramic mug with a picture of two old guys tending a bonfire. He was chalk-white. —I don't wanna waste gas pickin y'up from jail.

—I can hiket.

—Worried about bears?

—Nup.

His gramps lurched upright, hands gripped on his thighs. —Winchester won't stop a bear, anyway, he said, and fingered an empty .308 cartridge centred in a placemat on the table. He tapped his forehead where hair met skull. —Skulls so thick they ricochet bullets an' whatever else.

—Gotta catch 'em in the neck, Winch said.

His gramps shook his head, opened his mouth. —Gums.

Chris drove her dad's Suburban. The journey would take forty minutes, another ten to zigzag to a point where they could hike for the springs. Winch inspected Chris's tires before they hit the road. He remarked that they looked bald as all hell and she flashed him her dad's BCAA card and told him to get in the fucken truck.