Down with the Underdogs

by Ian Truman

  “Still want a job?” I asked him.

  “If you’re offering.”

  I considered it for a second. Vaguely. Then again, my guys were already a handful as it was. Phil was back on his phone like a freaking teenager. Karl was pissed as usual, and Ryan was just Ryan.

  “Sorry, man,” I told Spud. “I got enough dumbasses riding along as it is.”

  Chapter 15

  The investigation was inching forward on one front, and the home life felt like it was finally going somewhere. That may have been an overstatement, but the money was steady at least. No matter how many condos they built and how many young professionals moved into the neighbourhood, a small stroll down Grand Trunk with the wife and kid was reminder enough of the reasons I was fighting so hard to stick around.

  It had been weeks since I had really been home. I was home for sure, but walking in late for dinner and bailing out right after breakfast didn’t amount for much. I wanted to be there more, but the money was so good and I couldn’t lie. I liked the work, too. Even at the warehouse. Even my “front.” The daily grind of it was just fine with me, and when things got boring I could always find a good reason to run around the city busting heads and taking names. If that wasn’t the good life, I didn’t know what was.

  The piece-of-shit building we had inherited from our grandparents was now in prime real estate territory, and I was staying afloat while the waves drowned so many others around. My ma was still living upstairs, but I was optimistic about finding her a place soon and we could have a small townhouse in a large metropolitan city.

  “Jesus Christ.” I smiled. I looked at the buildings, checked out my wife’s ass, and then looked at her and the kid. I had a job and money and pride, and I was coming home to my kid and my hot fucking wife who had a big ass and an amazing smile. Entire generations of Irish men have lost their minds over trying to get half these things, and I was getting all of them.

  I did feel like an asshole for a moment. But just a little. I also felt, with my very dark sense of humour, like “all it took” was my grandfather’s blood and work, my dad bailing out to be a rig pig in Alberta, and my brother dying before he could claim half the inheritance. Small price to pay, right? I thought. Goddamn, the self-made man was a fucking myth.

  I took a breath.

  I could be fine with being an asshole every now and then. So long as the kid was fine, I could be the biggest asshole in the universe. “You can do the worst thing in the world,” my dad had told me. “And people will let you get away with it if you had a good reason.”

  That was terrible advice for the rest of society. It was wonderful advice for guys like me. I looked at Liam in his little onesie, trying to catch some toys dangling in front of his face. That kid was going to have a fucking trust fund and a college fund and a car at sixteen and not some piece of shit car, either.

  He was going to go to Concordia or McGill and only remember his broke-ass Irish roots for ten minutes on St-Patrick’s Day, and he was going to see the world and fuck around and never ask about the shit I had to do to get him there.

  The murder of Michael Cook and the jobs I was on these days…on my fucking deathbed, I’d swear to God, he wasn’t gonna know a damn thing about any of it.

  Pat and I were still on the fence as to whether we should send Liam to French or English school, and that was a debate for the ages in Quebec.

  She cared about French; I didn’t really have an opinion about it. Both systems were fucked, especially in the South-West districts. But the French school really did look like a juvy prison.

  It was the second building on our way to the park. Tall, narrow windows resting a good twelve inches inside concrete slabs covered in corrugated metal sheeting, the kind of thing you see on freight containers. There was a concrete ditch outside, and the building looked like it was designed to keep people in rather than out. With all the grids in the windows and the graffiti covering the lower wall, it looked like a fucking compound rather than a school.

  All the little mermaid drawings in the world weren’t gonna be enough to change that. They had cut Mullins Street in half, placing cement roadblocks at both ends and a fence about ten feet inside the corner. They were trying to make half a school yard with it and a park on the other side of the street.

  It did give the kids something to play on, but you always wanted more for your children. English school meant Saint-Gabriel out on Dublin Street, which was hardly better than this, and then James Lyng afterwards, in the nook of the massive Turcot interchange. French school mean this piece of military compound here and then St-Henri High with the single moms and the semi-permanent dropouts.

  I didn’t know what to think anymore. The neighbourhood was changing too fast for any of this to still be true in fifteen years. Some of the parents were dropping off their kids in old, beat-up Toyotas, the others in Audis and BMWs. And still so many kids were just walking to school at age seven, their parents too fucked up, broke, drunk or stupid to give a shit.

  If I was having a hard time keeping my block to myself from the realtors and the developers, how fucking bad could it be for those guys? It was hard to figure out.

  Then I looked down the street. Looked at a distance for buildings I knew too well: the signature red bricks of the borough with the handful of project blocks sparkled here and there, the pinkish purple one where some guy named Carey Gillette used to sell cigarettes out of Ziploc bags he’d buy from the Mohawks across the Mercier Bridge.

  I remembered the sports centre across from his place, out on Hibernia, where Cillian knocked the teeth out of an unsuspecting Étienne Gallarneau on a questionable cross-check one day. It was questionable not only because a cross-check is a generally shitty move It was questionable because Gallarneau was working there on minimum wage, overseeing a free skate session, and no one was supposed to have hockey gear on.

  I could picture it still. “Hello, children, here’s a chair with tennis balls under the legs to help you skate,” and BAM! Cillian Kennedy coming in at full speed with yellowed, stained CCM pads, bending his aluminum stick against the poor sucker’s back.

  That was the kind of stunt you’d expect from Cillian. In fact, that was the kind of stunt you’d expect from many guys around back in the days. They’d end up in a friendly random brawl in the neighbourhood or at some bar and then take it out on the ice whenever they had a chance. Sure, we’d keep getting shit from the social workers over at Saint-Columba, but when you really thought about it, this kind of behaviour was so Canadian it almost made us the gentlemen we were today.

  That one particular time, Cillian was pissed at Gallarneau for hitting on Cynthia Lacombe, the hot lifeguard in the pool across the centre.

  Cynthia never made a move on Cillian, and I knew for a fact Cillian was way too shy to hit on her. The big, tough dummy was such a romantic he’d barely dare to speak to a girl. If it didn’t mean a thing, he’d flirt with anyone, but if he liked the girl, that was another story.

  And he liked that Lacombe chick very much. So when Gallarneau made a move for her, he was ready to bring it on the ice.

  I liked that about Cillian. The kid didn’t give a shit about the rest of the world in spite of his own unique sense of honour. Nothing said I love you like I just cross-checked a motherfucker for you.

  That kind of fuck-you attitude is probably what got him killed, but for a moment his fucking character made me smile. “P’tit criss,” as the Québécois would say. Little Christ, but that barely translated the feeling properly.

  Life had been hard in the Pointe, but it wasn’t so shitty anymore. It took days like this one to remind myself of it. It also took a day like today to ask: Would I let myself enjoy the new things coming into the neighbourhood? Could I sit in the freshly renovated library with my kid, play in the brand-new park I didn’t have as a kid? Let Liam be from the Pointe without having to live it the way me and Cillian had lived it?

  Conflicts between the Francos and t
he Anglos were over. Liam was both of these things. If there was such a thing as a Franglais school, I’d send him there. But there wasn’t, and that was going to be a discussion for the ages.

  I didn’t want him to end up in a fight. I certainly didn’t want him to end up in a warehouse. I wanted a small room for him to play whatever video games he’d be into in a few years. I wanted to keep my small yard for him to play in as a kid, have a beer in as a teen, and smoke a joint in when he’d get to college.

  Patricia crossed the street, and I caught up behind her. Was I in my head too much? It was hard to tell.

  I wanted to catch up and slide a hand down her back and across her waist. She let me have it, but five seconds later she slid out of my reach and into the park. I fucking hated that. What was happening to me, or her, or us or this goddamn place?

  Was I stuck in the past? Was I fucking up my life? I still didn’t know what to do with the kid. I didn’t know how to act at the park. It was weird, but it was true. It was just a fucking playground. Should have been simple, right? Yet it felt like the most impossible thing in the goddamn world.

  She walked into the toddler’s park and took Liam out of the stroller. I didn’t know anyone there at all. Most of them, all of them, looked like rich, young moms. Professional. The clothes were too expensive. The strollers were deluxe. I wanted to relate to the one white-trash mom by the swings with the old strained blue jeans with the glitters on the side.

  I didn’t know how to be with the rich ones. Patricia said “Hi” to a few of them and sat on the edge of the sand box and tried to keep Liam up straight as he dug his minuscule fingers into the sand. I just stayed by the fence, leaning against it and looking like a bouncer at a bar.

  Out of place and out of step. The world really was leaving me behind.

  I wished I could just sit there next to her. I wished I could get my body to move, but nothing was doing it. I was cold and distant, looking at the whole picture like it was happening to someone else and I couldn’t remember a damn day when that had happened to me before.

  How fucked up was I not to be able to sit in the sand with my wife and kid? It was hard to explain. I leaned against the fence by the entrance and watched from a distance.

  I couldn’t remember going to the kids’ park. I couldn’t find that picture in my head when my parents would take me there and play with me, not with my father at least. It wasn’t something men did back in the days. In the Pointe least of all. You met your dad when you turned twelve and he could ram you into a plywood board on the edge of the ice.

  I hated feeling like this, but it’s what I had.

  Patricia glanced my way from the edge of the sandbox. Six feet was all the distance between us. The Grand Canyon would have felt the same. I could feel how pissed she was the way she moved her head back and the hair flew over her shoulder.

  I wanted to say “I’m sorry.” I wanted her to say “I get it, don’t worry.” I wanted her to give me some room I didn’t deserve on that one. She wasn’t in that mood, and I couldn’t fucking blame her.

  “Why don’t you go home if you don’t want to be here?” she said.

  “I want to be here,” I said, but no way was that true anymore. I wanted to be in some basement compound beating the truth out of some guy for the small sum of nine thousand dollars. I wanted to be in a car with my three best friends on our way to meet Sean Cullens to shake down some idiots with too much money.

  “I’ll take care of Liam. It’s fine,” she replied.

  “But…”

  “You’re here, but you’re not here, all right. It’s the same at home. You’re there, but you’re not there. You’re on the couch but you’re not there. I get it. It’s fine. Just go home, all right? J’men occupe.”

  Ten minutes earlier the borough had felt like some place I would spend my life. Felt like I had won the lottery staying in one place so long that it became nice again. That was ten minutes earlier, before the kid needed to play and I couldn’t bring myself to kneel in the fucking sand with him.

  Ten fucking minutes, and just like that, my marriage was off the rails.

  Chapter 16

  The fight at the park really got to me. I just went home and decided it was about damn time I tried to fix the fucking door to the small alley out of my block. The damn thing had been broken for years and now, just now, right now, seemed like the right time to fix it. I snatched my tool kit from the shed and walked towards the door with purpose and fury.

  My ma was watching me from her balcony, smoking a cigarette and saying, “Oh, boy! What’s going on with this one?”

  I didn’t answer. My ma still had the right to end my life if I so much as talked back to her.

  So I got to work instead, but it wasn’t gonna work. The wood was too old, the hinges were fucked. The old paint was peeling off, and I got pissed off at the little fucking screw for not getting into the hole properly, and it took no more than ten seconds for me to smash it with the butt of the screwdriver. The little screw flew away, and I smashed the damn door with my fist and then my feet, and it was so messed up already that I barely caused any damage. That probably made the frustration worse.

  The door swung loosely back at me, taunting me with my fucked-up life and the mess I had put myself in and why the fuck did I have a kid a year after killing a man?

  I heard my ma say, “Better not get in on this one.” Then she turned to her dog and said, “Come on, time to give him some space,” and she walked back into her apartment, Emma right behind her.

  I threw the screwdriver back into the box. It bounced back and then against the wall, and it rolled all the way to the sidewalk just because it fucking could.

  It was hard to think. Was I a good dad? I didn’t know. I had to believe I was putting my family first by doing the job I was doing. The account had never been fuller. I had saved up a few thousand in a few short weeks. That was money I could actually use because it was declared for taxes from the foreman gig. A few thousand was the most cash I had ever had, and there was a new check coming in every week, too. That didn’t even include the money I had in my wallet or in the car or the insane ways I had been spending the rest of it on food, clothing and anything else.

  I was even considering shit like an RRSP or a small piece of land next to a lake up in Rawdon. That had to count for something. In my mind I was absolutely convinced I was doing everything for my family.

  Patricia saw it otherwise. It was hard to tell how she saw things, as she wasn’t talking much to me anymore. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been talking to me for a while now.

  She was at home the same way she’d been at the park. We’d play with Liam and she’d get silent and get on the phone, and when the kid would need a change she’d send her hair behind her shoulder and just say, “I got it, don’t worry,” take the kid to the room, and close the door.

  I grew up Irish, loved being Irish. Fucking loved it. You got loud and you argued and you fought and drank and fought some more, but you didn’t really mean it this time, and then you ended up drunk and forgiven.

  This silent-treatment thing had to be that French side of hers kicking in, and I fucking hated it. I wanted an argument. I wanted a fight. I wanted to shout, and I wanted her to shout back. Seemed like getting into it at the moment would be the healthiest fucking thing in the world.

  She wouldn’t give it to me. I had long since given up on fixing my door, and I just sat on the porch sipping a beer all afternoon. She put Liam to bed that night; I walked into the kitchen as she took a shower. She walked right past me and straight to bed without saying a fucking word.

  I was raging inside but bottled it up tight, just the way I was supposed to. I looked at the shitty couch cushions that had served as my bed for months now, and I wanted to check into a five-star hotel

  Fuck her and that damn kid, too, I thought. Not the dad or husband of the year for a minute, but I was only human, and these things get out sometime.r />
  They have to.

  Chapter 17

  I decided to call in a stakeout shift with the guys. Couldn’t fucking be at home right now. Ryan was pulling bouncer shifts at Glasshouse, but no luck so far. All week he had worked there, and they had some pretty big nights, but there was no reason to think Ryan would have missed the guy. Me, Karl and Phil were taking turns between daytime and nighttime at the apartment and at the club. It was long, boring and disappointing fucking work, but it was better than home right now.

  I made my way over to Glasshouse, down to that patch of gravel across the street from the club. It was sitting between the elevated tracks and the rest of civilization, too close to the trains to build anything on it. The floodlights only lit up the place in patchy yellow spots and you could hide in-between just fine so we did. Six days now sitting in the Impala, and no one came to ask questions.

  At least that much was good news.

  I knocked on the door and sent Phil home to bed early on the promise of a full day’s pay.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “I need to think,” was my answer.

  “Your call,” he said and took a walk.

  I slid inside the car. The smell of day-old fast food and sweat and cigarettes felt miles away from the fresh new-car scent the damn thing had had only a few days ago. I looked at the dashboard to find Phil’s half-empty pack.

  I slid one cigarette out, wondered if I should take up smoking, and decided that now was as good a time as ever to build some crippling addiction.

  I opened the window and lit the damn cigarette. Coughed my lungs out on the first hit. Coughed my life out on the second then said, “Fuck it.” I wasn’t drunk enough to start smoking. I rested my arm against the window’s edge and let the cigarette burn itself out.

  Glasshouse was there in the distance, sixty yards maybe. A few years earlier the fucking club had been a warehouse one my former employers did business with. It was just a handful of guys doing fancy artsy paper only a handful of clients wanted, and that wasn’t good for business.