Once You Break a Knuckle (21 page)

Paul saw him as he approached. The drywallers made a final pass and his brother stepped from the doorway.

They hugged like men.

—Been a while, man, Paul said.

—How's it going anyway.

—Comme ci, comme ça.

—Don't talk crazy to me, Mitch said, and Paul grinned.

In the background, saws whirred and men barked orders. The air smelled like tools.

—You look like you're about to die, Paul said.

—Worked a couple double shifts is all. On my way there for a triple.

—Time for a coffee?

Mitch pretended to look at his watch. He was rolling overtime, didn't need to show up if he wanted a day off, wouldn't be missed. —Yeah.

They rode Paul's half-ton a few blocks to a little shop
called the Daily Grind, off the main street among a row of old houses with great, sagging power cables. It was run by an old Ukrainian couple with wide smiles who lived above the shop. Mitch ordered a jelly donut and an empty mug and Paul asked for the usual and shoved Mitch out of the way to toss around his money.

They parked themselves in a far corner. The place was shelved full of fresh bread and black-and-white pictures of the old Ukrainian guy in different places around the world. Paul flipped open two different cellphones and shut them both off and rattled them on the table. He had a gigantic foamy coffee with whipped cream the guys at the mill would call a faggaccino.

—Awful job. I don't know why I took it in the first place, Paul said.

—Money.

—The owner, Norm, leaves a trail of slime when he walks, Mitch. How many hours you putting in, anyway?

—Did eighty-four last week.

—Why?

Mitch bit his donut and looked anywhere but at Paul. In grade school he once won a jelly donut for a math test and all the filling burst onto his shirt on the first bite.

—What else am I gonna do?

—Sleep, maybe.

—Can't. No, can't do that.

Paul pushed his fingertips to his temples. —You alright? Paul said, and Mitch felt him searching. —I thought she forgave you. Last time we talked.

—I've been thinking about Hunter lately, Mitch said.

—Mitch.

—Hunter was some dog. I remember when Luke was a year old and we went to Mom's for Christmas. He latched onto Hunter's coat and Hunter pulled him around the living room.

—How is Luke? Paul said.

—Seventeen. That's how he is.

Mitch sipped coffee straight from his thermos and Paul stabbed the foam atop his drink with a bamboo stir stick. When they were children, he and Paul swore oaths to each other never to drink coffee, or alcohol, or smoke cigarettes.

Then Mitch's cellphone rang and Andie's number came up on the call display. He flashed the screen to his brother and mouthed
ball and chain
.

—Luke's here, Andie said.

—How is he?

—The same.

—I'll come home.

—He won't stay, Andie said. —Hurry.

Mitch set his phone beside his brother's two and exhaled a long breath. Maybe he'd get a day off, after all. —I'm so tired nowadays, he said, staring at the table.

—He just needs some time. He's seventeen.

—I don't even see how it has anything to do with him.

—Dad hauled you from the cop shop when you were his age, Paul said with a wink. He sipped his fancy coffee and Mitch gulped the tar-like crap from his thermos.

—It's Andie too, he said. —We've talked and moved on but I see it in her eyes.

Paul tapped his temple, shrugged like a man who'd given things up. —Me and Vic. Well.

Mitch scratched his chin and then both he and Paul leaned back in their chairs, hands hooked behind their heads. Identical like brothers. Paul pocketed his two phones, one in each chest pouch like weird, square breasts. There weren't, Mitch realized, many people left who he could have a conversation with.

MITCH KNEW AS SOON AS
he opened the door that Luke was gone. The house smelled like burning and he noticed the screen door open behind Andie, who sat at the kitchen table with her forehead against her wrist. Red, blobbed liquid seeped down the stove and pooled at its base. There was an upturned stainless steel pot on the floor and soup splatters on the cupboards and counters.

—I missed him, Mitch said.

—I spilled soup on the burner, Andie said, and cracked the knuckles in her fist. She stared at the kitchen table. Every sense in Mitch's body told him he was not welcome in that kitchen. —What took so long? she said.

—It's a bit of a drive.

—A bit of a drive.

Mitch eased a chair from under the table and its legs scraped the laminate floor. He abandoned that idea, put two hands on the back and stretched, as if aching.

—Andie? he said.

—I had time to make soup.

—That takes five minutes.

Dollops of soup had splashed onto the fridge and the microwave and if the situation were any different he'd have chuckled. Andie's eyes followed him around her kitchen. He snagged the paper towel roll from its holster under the cabinets and wiped the first gobs around the burner.

—Where were you? she said.

He tossed a sloppy wad in the garbage. —At the mill, he said, not understanding why he'd lie.

—Luke said –

—Couldn't you hear the saws?

—He quit his job.

Mitch shoved the garbage back under the sink and closed the door with his foot. It bounced back open and banged his shin. —Why'd he quit? Mitch said, and hunkered down on all fours to mop up the mess.

—I didn't ask. He wanted me to.

—Everything I do for him.

—He said he doesn't forgive you.

Mitch rocked onto his heels. He tossed another heap of soiled towels into the garbage. What the hell was he supposed to do about that? —For what? he said.

Andie had no response and wouldn't look at him when he tried to catch her eye.

—And why the
fuck
should that be any of his business?

Still, she would not look at him.

—He should get his own fucking life in line before he starts judging mine.

He heaved the garbage back under the sink and washed his hands.

—Andie, he said, looking out the window, and when she said nothing: —Andrea!

Her chair made a noise on the floor and he turned to find her staring at him. —I guess I'll go look for him, he managed. She nodded and he watched her, the way she ran her tongue along her teeth, the way she fiddled with her big toe when she was nervous. Of course he didn't deserve to be forgiven.

MITCH SEARCHED UNTIL
he grew tired of the hopelessness. He'd been raised in Invermere and he thought he knew the hangouts: the barely upright fort down Caribou Road where kids got shitfaced; the gelati café off main street that was opened by a guy just out of highschool, who was now the mayor; the bakery, where he himself used to hang, where he once had a reputation as a good man. But Luke had his own haunts or he was hiding, or both. So Mitch went home and spent the remaining hours avoiding his wife and unsure why, until he registered the sound of her feet on the stairs, the tired creak of their boxspring that, at one point or another, she'd probably asked him to replace. Still, he waited on the couch, awake and dressed like a workman, knowing full well that he didn't have to, that she probably didn't even want him to.

When at last he joined her, he found Andie cocooned beneath their duvet. Mitch slid in next to her, fully clothed. Her hair spilled around the pillows and from the
edge of the bed – where he slept now – he touched strands of it as though remembering. A breeze slipped through the open window and the temperature dropped, prickled his neck and the skin below his jaw. He felt his heat escaping, couldn't will himself to get up to close the window. Andie stirred, shifted toward him, and he slid his hand beneath her as she moved. She draped a wing of blanket over him. Her body was warm against his knuckles. She smelled like peach and orange, or something else fruity, a shampoo maybe. It smelled good.

The phone woke him. Andie rolled on top of him and blinked and for a moment there was space between those two rings, her palm flattened on his chest, him inhaling her breath, the way she prodded his feet with her toes. They were as close as they used to be, bodies curved, bodies enmeshed. Then a second ring shook through him and he fumbled over the night table. A pair of reading glasses hit the floor, some loose change rattled under his searching hand. His fingers found the receiver.

—Hello, he said.

—Mr. Cooper? a man said from the other end. The call display read BLOCKED ID.

—Yeah. Who's this?

—Constable Crease, Invermere RCMP. We've got your son in the drunk tank sobering up. He says you'll come get him.

The voice paused. Mitch listened to the silence. It'd been a long time since he talked to one of the Creases. Will, John, Ash – where did they even live? He'd gotten it
backward, completely backward: the world
didn't
change, at least not much, at least not over one lifetime. But
people
? Christ, all he had to do was look at himself, there in the dark – both unforgiven and unwilling to
be
forgiven. Maybe some mistakes could never be set right.

—If not, the officer continued, —he can stay with us and you can get him in the morning.

Mitch glanced at the clock: two fifty-three a.m. —Hold on, he said.

He told Andie in four words that the cops had Luke. She leaned her head against the drywall. In the glow of the alarm clock, her hair draped around her shoulders.

—Leave him in the tank, she said.

Mitch watched her. His wife. —I'll come get him, he said into the phone.

Andie put her head back on the pillow and Mitch rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm.

—It's cold, Andie said from the bed.

—I won't be long.

She poked her nose from beneath the covers. The skin on her arms glowed. There was nobody in the world more beautiful and he hated himself on such a fundamental level.

Mitch descended the stairs and threw on his jacket and his heavy boots and grabbed the remains of a six-pack from his fridge. Then he went out the door and climbed into his Ranger with its rusted door and missing tailpipe and tore a beer from its yoke. There were two ways to get to the detachment and he chose the longer one, past
the school where a group of kids stood in a tight circle, a periodic flame bobbing between them. He finished his beer and tossed the empty out the window. He hit two of the two red lights in town and told God to fuck right off.

The detachment was a solid red brick building. His son and Constable Crease waited inside under a wall-mounted buffalo head. The officer had dark glasses, was shorter than him, seemed to tighten his jaw in that way a man does to shrug off bitter memories; they used to be best friends. Luke slouched in a chair.

—Hey Will, he said to the officer.

—Hey, Mitch, the officer said.

Luke didn't look half bad: red around the eyes, a little dirty. What Mitch expected from a kid out partying. —May as well get out of here, he said, and led the way to the truck, where he cranked the heat because it seemed so unnaturally cold for August. Luke hucked his pack in the box and hopped in the passenger side and stared out the window at nothing. After a bunch of random tuning Mitch got the classic rock station to play without static. They drove.

—You don't need to be embarrassed, Mitch said.

Luke shrugged.

—I don't care that you're a little drunk or stoned or whatever.

Luke placed his forehead on the window. His breath clouded the glass and he drew on the fog with his finger. —This isn't the way home, he said.

—That okay?

—I guess so.

—You know you can always call me. If you need a ride. Anytime. I don't mind.

—Okay.

They drove. Mitch fumbled with the radio when it went to shit and static blasted out the speakers. Luke didn't react to his fumbling or his discomfort and only shifted when a pothole bounced his head against the window. Mitch had to give up on the radio; he had to watch the road. Could nothing go right?

—I wish you'd have stuck around earlier. I just wanted to talk.

Luke half shook his head. —You're talking now.

—I guess I am.

They passed the school. The kids were gone. His beer can lolled in the wind at the edge of the road, near the ditch. He had two left. He could offer one to Luke.

—I don't know why you're mad at me.

—Yes you do.

—I just wish you didn't hate me.

—You don't get it, Luke said, his voice heavy with the drawl of marijuana. —I don't hate you. I'm disappointed in you.

His house appeared in the edges of his headlights. He'd built it himself, how many years ago, concrete through to shingles, and now it needed repair. Same as his family, maybe – something else he'd built that needed repair. Except Mitch knew he could fix the house, he loved fixing things, was good at fixing things, and he knew he could
never cause enough damage to bring it all down atop him. —I'm disappointed in me too, he wanted to say.

The engine idled in the driveway and the headlights illuminated the flaking paint on the garage door. He needed to paint that, vaguely recalled Andie asking him to do it. Luke stepped out, swung his pack on his shoulder, and disappeared inside. Mitch killed the ignition and the headlights and pulled the e-brake, and then shifted the truck to first gear because the e-brake felt too loose to hold. He rested his hands on the steering wheel and stretched his fingers. The light in Luke's room flickered on and his son's head bobbed inside the window. One window over was the master bedroom, where Andie slept. In a few hours it'd be morning and Mitch would haul himself from bed, shove lumber until his muscles trembled and all that kept him from shutdown was some primal drive to work his way to redemption.