Once You Break a Knuckle (3 page)

He walked under a panelboard sign that read
Welcome to Windermere
. The only way to fix himself, here in this place, was with his old friend Mudflap. Mud had worked with him for five years, started as a dumb apprentice and became the guy who ran Ray's company in his absence. Ray taught him everything he knew, and in return Mud kept him living vicariously. He was the kind of guy who planned his mid-life crisis, whose central philosophy was
persistence beats resistance
. He was also one of the few people Ray had parted with on speaking terms.

Ray found the place after a short walk. Log house, landscaped yard, a couple trucks and a minivan. He was too cold to wait for signs of people awake so he climbed two steps onto the porch and stepped in a pet's dish and something like the haze he'd lived through took hold of him, and he wanted to bootfuck that bowl across the
lawn. He'd have to watch himself, avoid people. Mud could help with that.

He knocked on the door and stood straight. People moved about inside. Someone swore and was hushed. A baby cooed.

—I swear to God if it's your dad again I'll kick him in the fucking teeth.

Mud opened the door wearing jeans and a clean T-shirt, a ballcap that said
Olympus Electric
. He had a dad's face now, not age-creased but with skin drawn tight around the bones of his ocular and jaw. His blond wife, Alex, leaned on the wall in a bathrobe, arms crossed and foot tapping. She'd always been a good-looking woman.

It only took Mud a second.

—Ray?

—Hey, Mud.

—Jesus, come on in. You want a coffee?

Ray stomped the snow from his boots. His steeltoes were so damned cold he expected to hear them ring as he set them side by side. Inside Mud's house, he noticed the designer lighting but couldn't say it surprised him – Mud was an electrician, after all. Years ago, Ray worked in a house where the owner, a plumber, had plumbed beer to every sink. Once, he and his crew puzzled over how to wire a swivelling wall in a framer's rec room.

He sat at the table and Alex shuffled to the kitchen to make coffee. Mud intercepted her, caught her forearm, and whispered in her ear. She took the baby and left the room. Mud ground coffee beans and heaped three spoonfuls
into the filter and Ray watched his hands. They were the hands of a guy who no longer worked like he used to – not nicked and burred from splinters and construction yards, but still callused. A man never loses his calluses. Well, a working man never loses his calluses. Ray used to tell his guys to find a girl who didn't mind rough hands, and that advice had come to bite him in the ass.

The coffee brewed behind Mud. Ray had taken to drinking espresso because the drip of normal coffee made him lonely.

—This isn't easy for me.

—I know.

—I've got nowhere else to go.

Mud filled two cups.

—Like I told you when you left, Ray. My door is never closed.

Ray wrapped his hands around the mug and felt its warmth. He drank his coffee black, always had. He didn't consume it for fun or flavour, only as a means to keep grinding on.

—I need a job.

—I've got work.

Fucking Mudflap. Fucking reliable Mudflap.

—I need a place.

Mud raised the mug to his lips and held it there. It had a picture of two guys in overalls dancing and a caption that said,
You and Me Soul-Brother
.

—My suite isn't finished.

—You're getting lazy.

—No one to boss me around. Well, someone.

He looked down the hallway toward the door Alex had disappeared through. Christ, she was a good-looking woman.

—A couple days, Mud?

—You got money?

—Do I look like I've got money?

—I see you're bitchy as ever.

—Just old.

Mud pulled his ballcap off and spun it on his finger.

—My suite needs work. You wanna work on it?

—I'd need a place to stay.

—There's light and power and I think I even put up a piece of drywall.

—Are you serious?

—Just lazy.

He'd hoped for a day or two on the couch, enough to get his bearings and find a place with some snowboarder come to work at the ski hill for the winter, a place where he could get jealous of the twenty-something getting laid every night in the next bedroom. A place to make him feel his age.

—When can you start work?

Ray kicked his pack.

—Got my tools with me.

IT TURNED OUT
he didn't have all the tools needed, but Mud gave him the things he lacked and a threat that if he lost them, he'd buy new ones. Olympus Electric employed
two other journeymen and three apprentices. Mud took one apprentice and gave the rest of the team instructions for the week; they wouldn't be seen except for material runs or if it all went south.

Mud leaned close and spoke in a low voice. —One of them's a woman.

—So?

—I'm just saying.

—Saying what?

—If you want on that crew you just let me know.

Mud winked.

Ray's apprentice, a kid named Paul, sat in his truck in the driveway, asleep against his own chest. He drove a '92 Ranger with green paint peeling to black. There was something sickly frozen in clumps onto the driver's door.

—Is that egg?

—From last Halloween. Fucker's too lazy to clean it.

Mud knocked on the window and Paul jolted awake.

—You didn't load the Bullet?

—I didn't know what we needed.

—Goddamn it.

Paul climbed out of the truck and pulled his tuque over his ears. He was a spindly kid with curly hair and bony cheeks, long arms that could probably haul more weight than a pair twice as thick. He moved with a long, awkward gait; his boots slapped the driveway every time he stepped, as though he hadn't adjusted to the weight of his steeltoes. Mud pointed at the things they'd need for the day and Paul packed them in the work truck, a
'79 Dodge with a metal material box bolted to the frame, aptly named the Silver Bullet. Mud's father-in-law built it for him during his apprenticeship, and as much as Ray made fun of the beast, it held as much gear as a van and burned twice as much gas. It looked like a shed on wheels, and the running gag was to screw crushed beer cans to it, because Mud never removed them.

Ray offered to help load. Mud shook his head.

—It's like obedience training. The kid's got one hell of a lip so I'm trying to breed it out.

—Does he know?

—That, or it's starting to work.

So his days went. In the mornings he'd wake and brew a pot of coffee and make two peanut butter sandwiches, grab his tools, and head out to the Silver Bullet. He'd start the thing so it was warm by the time Paul arrived, always on time. He'd sit in the driver's seat and drink his coffee and smoke while Paul loaded the things they needed for the day.

Mud put him and the kid in charge of wiring a fourplex condo unit. The entire thing was built on two lots, with room on each side; they were tiny, and constructed with each cost cut as low as anyone could get away with. The studs twisted near the tops – culled lumber bought at a fraction of regular price. The place smelled like snow and sawdust and as though someone had pissed in the corner, and someone probably had. He marked the locations for plugs and lights and Paul scurried behind him with one end of a wire spool in his fist.

In the evenings Ray worked on the suite. Mud gave him free rein over the design, access to his supplier for any materials needed, and a budget. Ray added recessed lights over the dining area, a track in what would be a small kitchen after he pulled in the stove. He worked two hours every day. It gave him something to do. He only went out to get groceries, and occasionally with Mud for beers at the City Saloon. He had friends in town, still, and they called him one by one. They wanted to know how he was doing, if he needed anything, if he'd heard any news about Tracey, about her painting company. He'd tell them they'd drink beers and they'd be satisfied, and he'd hang up and press his forehead to the raw drywall and think about how far he'd come, and how far he had yet to go.

HE CAME OUT THE
door on a day in mid-December and found most of Olympus Electric's crew gathered outside the shed. They were two journeymen and an apprentice, named Philippe, Clay, and Greg. Philippe was in charge; he was a stubby Frenchman with a white cowboy hat who slurred his
e
's.

—How's the dumb apprentice?

—He works hard.

Philippe fished into his pocket and snatched a pair of pliers. He started clipping his fingernails.

—You used to be Mudflap's boss?

—Yes.

—And now he is the boss.

He'd been warned about Philippe, the way he'd look down his nose even though the top of his head barely measured to Ray's chin. He had eyes like a pair of gun barrels and he sniffled each time he clipped a piece of fingernail.

Ray lit a cigarette.

—I'm just here to help out.

Philippe stopped with the pliers held level with his chin, his hand half a foot from his face.

—It is good for you then. We are glad to have you.

—Where's Mud?

—In the shed with Kelly. She is angered with me because I try to make her work and she does not. I tell her to bring the things, she does not.

—You make her haul everything?

—She is the greeny. She must do these things.

Mud came out of the shed with Kelly behind him. She had high cheekbones and tight lips bent into a scowl. Her brown hair hung to her shoulders beneath a grey ballcap. She was taller and she wore a denim jacket over a grey vest, and an Usher T-shirt beneath that. She must have been at least Mud's age. Mid-late thirties, maybe.

Mud took his ballcap off and ran a hand through his hair.

—Ray, you have enough work for one more?

—Sure, but no room in the Bullet.

Mud nodded and secured his cap on his head. He strode to Paul's window and Paul started unrolling it, frantically.

—You're driving your own truck today. Bill me for gas.

Ray climbed in the Bullet and leaned over to unlock the door for Kelly. She got in and chucked her tools on the seat between them. He snuck glances at her as the Bullet trundled down the highway. She shifted and eyed him, patted the unoccupied middle seat. A curl of dust drifted from the fibres.

—There's room in here for Paul.

—I don't like rubbing up to that kid. He enjoys it too much.

He saw her relax. She put her seatbelt on.

—What do you think of Phil?

Ray wrung his hands on the steering wheel. The windshield started to fog so he cracked his window, thought about lighting a smoke but didn't know if she smoked.

—I think he's a twat.

—He is. Mud's good shit.

—Mud's good shit.

In his twenties he used to cruise around in a shittier truck than the Bullet, Tracey lodged beside him as he tried to shift gears. She'd wear tight jeans, faded on the ass, tomboy. He'd spill his beer and swear and she'd drawl a “whatever” between tokes. She never had trouble fitting in with the guys at work. She was smart, good with her hands, but he couldn't convince her to start pulling wire. She said it'd be too cutesy if they worked together.

—What year you in?

—Just my first. It sucks.

—We were all first-years.

—Not at my age.

—Better than being something lame all your life.

—Like a painter.

Ray startled. He didn't think she meant anything by it, though she probably knew his history. Everybody knew his fucking history. Kelly picked sawdust off her shoulders and arms. She was a good-looking woman, but not in that fire-blooded way Alex was. She didn't make him feel his heart in his chest, didn't make his ears go red. It was different, more subdued.

—Yeah. High from the fumes or the dope in the morning.

It felt good to have a team again. Three guys, a small job. Ray marked instructions on the studs with a fat pen. Paul drilled holes and pulled wire to the breaker panel; he stopped wearing a tool pouch and instead packed his pockets with staples. Ray told him it wasn't a good idea, because those staples would go right into his balls if he fell off the ladder, and Paul started wearing his pouch again. He taught Kelly the basics of circuit wiring and let her finish some that he started. Philippe only had her haul things and dig ditches, the kinds of jobs reserved for highschool kids and idiots who couldn't tell an auger bit from a spade. Paul lingered in the rooms while Ray gave advice, until Ray eventually promised to teach him, too, after they finished the fourplex. Kelly learned fast. She'd be going to school in May, and after she got her ticket, would move to Fort McMurray for a year and work seventy hours a week, leave with a hundred and twenty grand. He'd heard the same thing from hundreds of others, young guys who could afford to work themselves like slaves, old
guys who figured they'd last a month, maybe, or land a cushy job as a foreman.

He found himself often in the same room as her. She couldn't keep up to him, but he always managed to find something that had to be finished. A wire too close to the surface needed a nail guard, a light was a couple inches off centre, a few plugs looked too low to the ground so he would have to measure them against his hammer.

At the end of the day she asked if he wanted to come for beers. Ray slung his belt into the Bullet. The first condo had already been drywalled.

—I gotta work on the suite. I took the day off yesterday.

—It's only a couple beers.

—Next time.

Paul looked up and for the first time actually held Ray's gaze.

—You sure you don't want to come?

—I said next time.

The kid knocked on the window of his own truck and Kelly opened it from inside. Dumb bastard only locked the driver's door. Ray got into the Bullet and lowered the window so he could smoke. The Bullet couldn't play music. Mud used to haul ass from site to site with a portable stereo plugged into the lighter and bang his head to tinny rock and roll.