Once You Break a Knuckle

by W. D. Wilson

  The Ranger’s engine hissed in the August night. Mitch tweaked the key so the radio revived and he caught the tail of a nineties rock ballad. Luke’s light went out and Mitch felt the evening air sweep through the rickety old truck, that relic of a truck. You go on and you go on – that’s what Mitch knew. You go on and things work out or they don’t but you keep trying, you keep on trying, because you have no other choice. He didn’t leave the truck right away, just stayed in his seat and listened to rock songs from his youth and stared at those two dark windows.

  ONCE YOU BREAK A KNUCKLE

  The summer before Will finished university, he damn near broke a promise to his old man but came good on one to me – a childhood pledge to help build my first home. About the same time, a kid we knew from highschool forded the Sevenhead River and disappeared into the bush beyond, last seen wearing camouflage waders and gumboots and a Jack Daniel’s trucker cap turned sideways. He was packing a 30-30 Winchester, pockets full of hollowpoints, and enough nautical rope to hogtie a grizzly. His motives were unknown. His potential to kill somebody was above average. Will’s old man had been a cop longer than I’d been alive, and the Force assigned him to tracking the kid down. He asked me to help him, out in the bush, since I knew my way around the wilderness and since my own dad was once a bit legendary across the valley. Will’s old man figured the two of us could shave days off a search, could bag it and tag it in no time at all, but all roads to Hell are paved with the best-laid plans, or so the saying goes.

  When Will finally rolled through town – Inverhole, he called it – in early June, I was more than halfway done building my new house. I’d framed and sheeted the exterior walls, wedged up the load-bearers, and banged together some ladders between the floors. It only took me and Will a month to polish off the insides. I helped him plot circuits and measured sockets against my hammer, and he drilled holes through floor joists, in threes, for his electrical feeds. Will’d lost weight on the West Coast, but he was wiry as a devil. He only stood as high as my chest, but most people only stand as high as my chest. Growing up, what Will lacked in size he made up for with stubbornness. A few times he’d come home big-lipped, cheeks veining like a bloodshot eye. His old man used to think Will’d make a good boxer – he had the build to do well in lightweight, the build of a long-distance runner – but his knuckles were as brittle as onion skins. He broke three bones in his jab hand before his old man put the kibosh on the whole operation.

  There were days when Will stomped around like a guy with something to win back. There were days I’d have fired him if he worked for me. He chipped four of my auger bits on nailheads. He sunk a hole straight through my styrofoam insulation and we had to patch it with blast-in fibreglass. Some days the temperature peaked over forty and we’d call a French advance and retreat to the basement where the heat couldn’t kill us. This was 2009, with forest fires burning the Okanagan dry. The radio droned on and on about blazes skipping barricades and counter-fires gone rogue and a crew of bushworkers digging ditches to keep themselves alive. Nearly every half-hour, waterbombers filled their monsoon buckets in Lake Windermere, and in the evenings their distant engines made a sound like pissed-off wasps. It was an uncanny summer – the sky wouldn’t darken or light up completely. Even in the dead of night it was all off-brown, like a puddle full of sawdust, the Purcells’ upper ridge aglow. Flames bigger than cities nipped at the far side of those mountains, and you could never escape the feeling that warm air, as if from a car radiator, as if from a dog’s breath, was blowing in your face.

  WE FIRST HEARD ABOUT the missing kid midway through July. Will’s old man showed up at the end of the afternoon in scuffed jeans and a T-shirt that said, I Will Kick Your Ass and Get Away With It. Me and Will were out on what would one day be my porch. We’d kicked up our feet on empty spools of fourteen-gauge wire. Piles of those things littered the place, like giant versions of the bobbins on my wife’s sewing machine. That was Will’s doing: he worked fast as the dickens but was piss-poor at guesstimating how much wire he’d need for any given room. Hence the empty spools. Smart and fast, but not second-nature – that’s how Will Crease worked. He was studying to be a writer at the time, on the West Coast, but a few summers ago, in a rare moment of bared hearts, he told me he’d have turned cop if his old man didn’t make him promise not to.

  That day in July, Will’s old man looked tired like only someone of his profession can. He wore dark sunglasses and a pair of Gore-Tex boots instead of steeltoes. A red-and-pink gash above his eyebrow drew my attention to his baldness. At a distance – or from most angles – John Crease looked like the kind of guy who’d either kill you in an alley or drag you from the pits of Hell. He was two-hundred-twenty pounds of old man strength. His cop’s moustache was mostly grey, but immaculate. He called his fists “Six Months in the Hospital” and “Instant Death,” and if you said something stupid he’d hoist them up and make you choose. Only when he took off his sunglasses did he show his age – or at least how bad his day had been. He did so that evening – took the sunglasses off – and hooked them in the collar of his shirt. Lines spread out from his eyes, down his chin. He seemed to be perpetually gritting his teeth.

  He turned a wire spool on end and lowered himself to a sit. Then he waved toward the six-pack of Kokanee on the ground beside me. I flipped him one.

  —You guys remember a kid named Duncan Jones? he said, and cracked the beer.

  —Dragged me out of the Kicking Horse, Will said, referring to a whitewater-rafting trip with our grad class, eight years prior.

  —Thought that was him, Will’s old man said. He picked at the beer tab with a thumbnail. It tinked, over and over, until he grimaced and twisted it straight off. —His family reported him missing today.

  —He’s our age, I said.

  —I know that, Mitch.

  —How long he been gone?

  Will’s old man shrugged, swung his gaze from me to Will, but Will just stared straight forward, hands behind his head, watching the sun sink below the Purcells. The sky had gone the colour of a rusty sawblade. Will probably liked the look of those mountains. We used to say they looked like breasts, even though that’s stupid. As kids, me and him could pinpoint a cave on a rock face, noose-shaped and dark like a hole in the world. Maybe Will was thinking about how Invermere hadn’t changed, since mountains don’t change, not like the rest of the world. On the West Coast all he had was hippies and the ocean – and even the ocean is always moving around.

  —Guys your age don’t go missing, Will’s old man said, eventually.

  —Not by accident, Will said, and he slunk an eye sideways to look at his old man, whose tongue moved in a slow circle over his teeth, his face soured up like he had a point to make but didn’t care to do so in public. The two of them weren’t on speaking terms that summer, but hell if I was in the know.

  —Girl trouble, I said. —That’ll send you over the deep end.

  Will’s old man shot to his feet and booted an empty wire spool with a kick worthy of the CFL. Women: about the only thing those two talked about less than feelings. —Get so fucking tired of this job, Will’s old man said. He stood there a minute, like he had something profound to add. Instead, he tapped my shoulder with his toe. —There any easy work to do, anything I can haul around?

  —There’s some ten-gauge upstairs, Will said. —Need to move it down.

  For a second his old man just loomed above us like a cop, like all the dirty secrets he knew about everyone – even me and Will. He pressed his fists to his lower back, where thirty years wearing an RCMP gunbelt had rubbed the muscles threadbare. Then he stomped off.

  —He alright? I said, and Will, hands cupped behind his head, shrugged as best he could.

  —We had an altercation, he said.

  —What happened?

  Will rocked forward, brushed his hands on his thighs in two brisk swipes. He could’ve been one of us right then, one of us small-towners, boys who hadn’t and wouldn’t move on from t
he ’Mere. He didn’t have to be a university kid. —I’ll tell you later, he said.

  A floor above, Will’s old man cursed and you could hear his boots clunk toward the stairwell. He probably had that massive roll of wire hugged to his chest like a body. Damned thing weighed near a hundred pounds, and that’s why we’d left it upstairs for the night, since only a desperate idiot would steal it. Will cocked his head and smiled to himself – he and his dad were engaged in a lifelong game of one-upmanship, and who knows what kind of joke was whizzing through his head. Those days, me and Will might have been best friends, but he’d acquired his old man’s knack for leaving things unsaid.

  —Andie will have dinner ready, I told him. That’s my wife, Andie.

  Will dipped his head. —Ash gonna be there?

  That’s my sister. I said: —Fuck you, Will.

  Beneath his ballcap Will grinned his mischief grin – the one he used to put on whenever he played horrible pranks on his dad, like when he taped plastic wrap over the old guy’s bedroom doorway, like the time he weaseled himself into his dad’s weight division at a judo tournament, just so the old guy could pin him to the mat.

  —I drive a thousand kilometres for you and this is what I get, he said, sounding indignant, but it was all pretend. We’d outgrown the Code. Plus Will and Ash had been sleeping together for near eight years, and I’d already whaled on him for it, long ago – cracked him edgewise with a two-by-four so hard he couldn’t lift his arm for a week.

  —Remember when she dumped you, I said. —For that scrawny kid.

  —I got her back.

  —Will Crease: always gets ’em back.

  He swiped at me but fanned it. Then he tugged his ballcap low over his eyes. In his Carhartts and steeltoes, reclined as he was, he could’ve been a spitting image of his old man, right down to the stubble tracing his jaw. Will’d done better than us all – got the best grades, got his university paid for, had some stories published someplace – but he was nowhere near to crawling from under the shadow of his dad. John Crease could cover a lot of distance just by walking a mile, or so the saying goes.

  The house shuddered, as if releasing a sigh. From the basement Will’s old man hollered: —When are we gonna eat?

  A FEW DAYS LATER Will came up with the idea for the pulley-swing. He wanted something to do after work, while we sat around drinking beer. The swing was simple: just a pulley and a swivel hinge that he fixed together and attached to a truss with a screw like you’d use to hang a punching bag. He looped an inch-thick rope over the wheel, measured it to centre. And just like that we had our own little carnival ride. We took turns seeing who could hold the other off the ground longer, our arms shaking like weightlifters’. One time Will hoisted me high enough to make me let go for fear of my fingers getting chewed in the wheel.

  Ash came by to share beer and deliver news from Will’s old man. She taught piano to elementary-school kids, but on the side she worked at the station, guarding weekend drunks. According to her, Will’s old man had taken a police dog named Annabel, a great big German shepherd blind in one eye, and tracked Duncan Jones to a hill above the marsh, on floodplain from the Sevenhead River. There, he found leftover campfire and fistfuls of dried milkweed packed to a nest and what looked to be the antlers from a six-point whitetail – which was bad news, since it wasn’t season. Duncan himself was missing in action, but Will’s old man numbered the day a success. He loved dogs, though – all animals, really – so that’s a given.

  Ash brought a fold-out director’s chair, a canvas thing, and she set it up while me and Will horsed around on the pulley. I could get Will spinning at a pretty good clip, since I outweighed him by thirty pounds. Ash wore dark cord pants and one of Will’s few collared shirts that flopped sideways and showed some skin. She always donned the clothes Will hated just so they could argue about it. Her strawberry hair was tied in a braid and she tended to play with it while idle. There were three little scars on her cheek in a tight triangle like that one constellation, and a speck in her iris I don’t know what to call except a speck. She pulled a page of the Valley Echo from her ass pocket and as she smoothed it flat I saw a grad photo of Duncan Jones, the headline: BROKEN HEART? Ash stared up at us past her eyebrows, her lips pulled to a pucker like a mom.

  —Is this what you’d do if Andie left you? she said to me. —Probably, I said.

  —Will?

  —As long as she didn’t tell Mitch she was leaving me, I’d be okay.

  —Fuck you, I said, and Will winked. Then he dropped the rope and crossed the room and sat down between Ash’s feet. He put some weight on her knees. She nabbed his hat and flung it away like a Frisbee. On the West Coast Will played like the king of the wild frontier, swore to wear his ballcap even if he someday won a big award, if he ever got famous, but Ash had no time for it, the facade. She didn’t like rednecks and idiots.

  —I applied to the Force, Will said. He had his elbows on Ash’s knees, and her thighs pressed his ribs. Her lips were pinched in a straight line, and looking at her, I had no idea what she thought or if they’d even talked. Will couldn’t see her from his angle, but he relaxed with his weight on her legs. It was like he expected she’d take his side.

  —Don’t tell my dad, he added and gazed out over the unfinished balcony as he said so, out across Invermere. We were never the kids who ran the town – it never felt like ours, probably because none of us ever intended to stay. As it turned out, only Will escaped. The rest of us got claimed by the mill, or by our own dads’ careers, or by girls. That’s the small-town curse. It’s not a bad life to have, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a life you should only choose after you’ve got the know-how to choose. My one regret, maybe. Right then, I had a flash of Will’s old man when he found out Will was applying to be a cop – that special way he could pull his face to a scowl, that special way he could make you feel, right before he punched you.

  —Your dad’ll kill you, I said.

  Ash said: —He’ll choke you out, at least. And then he’ll choke out Mitch for keeping it secret.

  —Just don’t tell him, Will said, looking from me to Ash and back again. —Don’t lie. Just don’t tell him the truth. Omit the truth.

  —That’s the same thing, Ash said.

  —It’s not.

  —You want to ask your dad? I said.

  Will smiled toward his hands, but it looked more like a grimace, like the face you make when somebody cracks a joke that reminds you of a dead person. —Dad and I aren’t really talking, he said.

  —I know.

  —He wants me to keep at it, in Victoria. Do grad school. Be the first Crease to get a master’s.

  —What’s so bad about that? Ash said.

  Will shifted between her legs. He latched onto her knee and squeezed and she yelped, but before he could grin or enjoy it she twisted his ear, hard. They’d always been like that, so combative. And they argued about basically everything – but that’s what Will liked about her, I’m sure of it. She could stand up to him, physically or otherwise. Once, on a roadtrip to the coast, they argued the whole way about churches and cults. Another time, Ash re-broke Will’s collarbone when she knocked him down a set of icy stairs. They were just like Will and his old man, except for the obvious parts. I got the impression, watching them, that there was stuff Will wasn’t telling me and stuff he never would.

  —It’s not real. What my dad does. That’s real.

  —I don’t know about what you do, Will, I said. —Your dad thinks it’s enough.

  Will rubbed his jaw for a second, looked up at Ash as if to get support. She was playing with his hair, flat and egg-rimmed by the ballcap she’d whipped across the room. After a second of his gaze, she tweaked her eyebrows at him – well?

  —You try having a cop for a dad, Will said, which pissed me right off every time he brought it up. It’d always been the opposite with my dad, rest his soul. He was a birdwatcher, a Parks naturalist, university educated, but he wanted us boys to land job
s you could have an arm-wrestle with. Not that it hasn’t worked out for me and my brother, but sometimes you get envious.

  —There’s no rush, I said, but I’m not even sure what I meant.

  —Everyone says that.

  —Well maybe everyone’s right.

  Will’s face twisted up, so disgusted – his unmatchable stubbornness heading its ugly rear. He gave me a limp wave, just the wrist moving, as if I wasn’t smart enough to know how he felt, as if I were a dumb redneck and not his best friend since who knows how long. —You try having a cop for a dad, he said.

  —I would, Will, except my dad’s dead, I snapped.

  —Guys, Ash said.

  —Stop being a whiny bitch, I told Will.

  He sunk against Ash, lolled his head over her knee. —You’re right, he said toward the ceiling. Will could tell straightaway when he’d crossed a line, could defuse a situation like no one’s business – something his dad taught him. The first weapon a cop employs is his mouth, Will’s old man always said. The second weapon is an ass-kicking.

  —I won’t tell your dad – unless he flat-out asks.

  Will flipped me a beer and cracked one for himself – a peace offer. —You’re a good friend, Mitch. Possibly the best of friends.

  —Fuck you too, Will, I said, and then we drank.

  A couple days later, I took the day off working on the house so me and Will’s old man could go do a search and scour for Duncan Jones. I left Will in charge, which under normal circumstances would be a mistake, but there you go. His old man had done the cop thing and found out Duncan Jones liked to camp at a place called Mount Tobias, in the Rockies. We headed off that way in his squad car, a Chevy Impala with the code name fifteen-Charlie-seven and a series of bullet-hole stickers on the driver door that he thought were cool. He’d brought the German shepherd, Annabel, and the beast panted away in the backseat. During the ride, Will’s old man made the required joke about the criminal in the back who’d forgotten to shave, and then another about him getting dibs on the shotgun – the one stored in a rack right between the front seats – if it came to a firefight or a tactical repositioning from a grizzly. —I don’t have to outrun the bear, he said to me, and winked, but I’d heard that one before.