Once You Break a Knuckle

by W. D. Wilson

  Then a great Jesus ka-thoomp shook the house from upstairs, in the master bedroom. Will’s old man gave a nod, like in cop films before guys storm a room. We went up. And there was Will and my sister, in the master bedroom, playing with the pulley-swing. Not fucking, thank the Lord – I’d rather get shot than see that. Will had his end of the rope coiled and he twirled it round and round so Ash whipped about the pivot at forty-five degrees. Her red hair was flung loose near her shoulders.

  Will saw us standing there, let my sister slow down and drop with a thump to the plywood. She put a hand on his shoulder, probably not for balance. Will had this smug little smile on his face – almost a frown, actually, as if only half his face dared grin. His old man leaned on a stud and it creaked so he scowled at it.

  Everyone stared at each other as if we were in a Western movie. Then Will’s old man snorted. —Mitch thought he was being robbed, he said, and I damn well expected him to smack me. —I thought we’d find you guys sleeping together.

  —In my brother’s bedroom? Ash said.

  Will’s old man yawned, his big mouth opening wide. He sat down on a wire spool and brushed his hands over his thighs in a pair of slow, methodical swipes, his whole body – arms, shoulders, even his back – stretching with the action.

  —I’ve got beer, Will said, nodding to a flat of Kokanees near the exit to the unfinished balcony. He flipped on a pair of halogen work lamps that lit the room amber, like a great big candle. —Was going to try and seduce Ash with them.

  She belted him, and good on her.

  I leaned on a sawhorse and Will tossed me a drink and I fumbled it and left it to sit so it wouldn’t foam up. He and Ash had that look about them – not exactly sweaty but almost there, not red-cheeked but somehow blushing. They sat shoulder to shoulder. If it were anyone but Will and my sister, I’d have left them be.

  —We got shot at today, Will’s old man said, his eyes on the plywood.

  —Where? Will said.

  —Up Mount Tobias. Was probably Duncan.

  —Jesus.

  —That’s all I need, another hole in my chest, Will’s old man said. He meant it as a joke but nobody even giggled. Will slurped beer suds and watched his old man, who didn’t stop staring at the floor. They barely ever looked at each other at the same time, that summer. A confrontation was brewing, anyone could see it. It’d been brewing for a while.

  —I want to join the Force, Will said.

  —You think I don’t know that?

  —Crossed my mind.

  —Why? Will’s old man said, but there’d be no answer to that. He’d played all his cards, spent so long and done so much to get Will out, to get Will happy, and he knew – Christ, he knew – that Will’s happiness would fly right out the window when he strapped on his first gunbelt. Ash rubbed her hand up and down Will’s spine, the only support she’d shown. Will and his old man each chewed their lips, and at two different moments their eyes flickered to me, and I had this horrible feeling that they wanted me to take a side. Which they did, of course – I was the closest thing to a brother or a second son they had. Mitch Crease, they’d both called me, on separate occasions, growing up.

  Then Will’s old man noticed the pulley-swing. He waved his arm at it. —So what’s this thing?

  —A pulley, Will said.

  —For what?

  —Tug-of-war.

  Will’s old man laced his hands behind his head. —That so?

  —Yeah, Will said, crossing his arms and getting into it. —That’s so.

  Even as he finished, his old man rose to his feet, wandered to the pulley, and took hold of one end of the rope. He gave a slight jerk, as if to appraise its worth. —You got what it takes, boy? he said, a devious twinkle in his eye.

  Will stepped up. His old man rolled his neck around his shoulders and if it were an action movie you’d have heard the vertebrae crack. He adjusted his grip on the rope and Will did the same, and their hands and arms tightened until that thing went taut. Will’s old man had the weight advantage by damned near seventy pounds, but Will had his unmatchable stubbornness.

  —This is out of our league, Ash said to me, and gripped my arm as if to pull me away. She was dead right. The pressure in the air was tectonic. We sat down on the porch – not even in the same room – shoulder to shoulder, and I felt the evening wind rush past us and wondered what exactly was at stake.

  I shouted the go-ahead, and in unison Will and his old man dropped a few inches, knees bent and their whole bodies straining. Their arms barely moved: father-son, sweating pearls and wearing beer-grins. Happy as ever, it looked like. You could see their determination. Will’s old man had been shot, bludgeoned, once had both his shoulders popped from their sockets when he held three grown men on a rope ladder. But the way his teeth grit and his lips peeled over his gums – it was as if this stupid test was the standard to measure a guy’s worth. Will looked the same. His arms were tenser than the rope. His face squeezed together around his nose, and his cheeks reddened even in the amber working light.

  I could have watched that tug-of-war forever. It seemed like nothing would happen. They were so even, the two of them. Then Will’s old man yelled out – a guttural, barbaric sound, a sound like you’d make to benchpress a car – and he heaved like I never knew a man could heave. Will flew straight into the air. He really flew. It was like something out of a Shakespeare play. His arms snapped above his head and his body just glided on up. And his old man kept the heave on. Yell, heave, flight – the whole thing lasted maybe a second, but I remember it in detail: Will’s old man with his whole face bending inward and this wild amusement in his eyes; Will not even registering the fact of his ascent; the ca-REAK of the ceiling truss as it fulcrumed the weight of Will’s whole body. I remember it in slow motion. And then like that Will was lodged two knuckles deep in the pulley-swing.

  He flailed mid-air and yalped and swore and it took a moment for his old man to compute the mechanics of the situation. When he did, he dropped the rope, straight up fumbled it, and Will fell like deadweight. He spewed curses I had never heard. Ash bolted to him. He clutched his maimed fist and his old man kept distant, gazing at his own hands and his arms and the pulley – as if he’d come out of a trance, as if these things he trusted so much had at long last failed him.

  —Will? his old man croaked, and stepped forward. I did too, came up behind Ash. The first two fingers of Will’s left hand – his jab hand – bent sideways, toward the palm, and the knuckles rose above their sockets, black and blue and flattened in places they ought not be flattened. When he saw that hand, Will’s old man went blood-white. He stood there above his son as awkward as a boy. He picked at the hem of his shirt, tugged it down, over his gut and belt. Will squinched his eyes to slits. I can’t imagine how much that must’ve stung, and I’ve had my share of stuff like that.

  And then in the next moment Will’s grimace bent to a grin – his fucking mischief grin – and his eyes opened and he laughed. That’s right – he laughed. He laughed like a guy does when he’s suffered a wound that won’t kill him. And that quick his old man went from sombre-face to shit-eating and, hell, so did I. Smiling like idiots, all of us. Well, except Ash, but behind every injured man is an unimpressed woman, or so the saying should go.

  We all looked at it again: swelled up now, like a baby’s hand. —I guess you win this round, Will grunted to his old man, who knelt in front of him and rolled up the sleeve so he could inspect it and, about as tenderly as I’d ever seen, cupped that mangled hand in one big, creased palm.

  ME AND ASH WENT to get my truck, and some ice packs, and to let Will and his old man go at it, since enough had happened for the two of them to have an actual conversation. Not that I thought they’d work anything out – they were each too stubborn to yield, too much alike.

  —You gonna marry Will? I said to Ash as we walked along the same dirt path I’d taken earlier. She was drunker than I expected, her footing erratic but not unsure, even though the p
ath pitched and dipped at random.

  —I don’t know, she said.

  —Ash, I said, and touched her arm. Below us, the gully spread out to the edges of vision, into the darkness beyond the spill of house lights.

  —We talked about it.

  Ash Crease, I thought, had a weird ring to it. And I couldn’t get my head around the concept of having Will as a brother-in-law. When we reached my place I gave Ash the keys to my truck so she could get it started, and then I snuck inside to grab some ice packs from the freezer. I didn’t want to wake Andie, because there’d be too much explaining to do and because we needed to get Will to a hospital one way or another. I heard my truck start with a cough – Ash not giving the glowplugs enough time to heat.

  I took two ice packs and went to the truck. Ash had rolled it onto the road in neutral and swapped to passenger, lowered her window down and almost finished a smoke. Under the amber light of a street lamp, she looked way older than me – but that’s the kind of effect amber light has, don’t get me wrong.

  —So big brother doesn’t think I should marry Will, she said. She flicked the cigarette out the window, and I realized I had some kind of chance, right then, to change things, to not let Will throw his life away. And I knew, I knew, exactly what that chance would cost me.

  —Is it a good idea? I said.

  She gave me a devilish look, with just one eye and with half her mouth tilting to a smile. —Marrying Will, or your idea that I shouldn’t?

  —Both.

  —What do you want me to say? Will’s still a boy.

  I chewed on that one for a second. —His old man thinks you’re going to get married.

  —I’m not sure Will’s dad is an authority in this matter, she said.

  We got quiet. My tires kicked up pieces of the asphalt because the roads were in disrepair. You could hear bits clanging around the wheel wells. The sky was brown and the rim of the moon looked like the edges of old paper. The air smelled of soot, and so did my truck.

  —Will’d kill you, Ash said after a while. —If he found out what you’re trying to do.

  —I’m bigger than him.

  —Mitch, she said, not in the mood to joke.

  —He’d never talk to me again.

  —But you’re willing to risk that?

  I thought about the two of them. Will was smart enough to get promoted through the RCMP ranks, and pretty quick. They’d make a down payment on a house big enough to raise a family, or Will would hand me the blueprints to a home he’d designed himself, and he and I would go at it – our childhood pledge. His old man would retire to grand honours, with a long-service award and so many people lining up to clap him on the shoulder – Corporal John Crease, more a legend than even my own dad, rest his soul. Will’s old man would sell his home and he and Will would add a grandpa suite, and there he’d settle, while his son levelled drunks with his maimed jab hand, scoured forests for missing kids, and himself got shot at, himself felt that pulse of fear and dread that his old man must have felt so goddamned often.

  —Why does it seem like I have to take a side? I said.

  —I don’t know. Why does it?

  —I just want everyone to be happy.

  She nodded like she understood. She nodded like I’d made a point. We rounded the corner to the road where my house was, and Ash reached out and patted me on the leg. —You’re a good friend, Mitch.

  —Everyone says that, I said, feeling sour.

  I CAME UP THE stairs to my master bedroom with the ice packs in hand. The truck idled in the driveway, and I could all but picture Ash smirking as I tiptoed away. Will and his old man hadn’t seen me yet, and I got a rare look at them as they are when no one else is around. They sat side by each on wire spools, shoulders slumped and wrists on their thighs, elbows flung wide and knees damned near knocking. They were grinning like guys with no reason not to. Man, Will would’ve ditched everything for Ash, banged together a life in good old Invermere, in the shadow of the Rockies and in the shadow of his dad. Things I kept him from: marriage, two boys who’d grow up to call me uncle, a gunbelt to rub his muscles threadbare, our friendship lasting to the end of days, to the moment of some head-on collision in a mountain pass – all the stuff his old man didn’t want for him.

  Will and his old man could have been the same guy from two different moments in time. Their talk was all murmurs and sudden bursts that made them go red-faced with guffaws. I missed my own dad right then, and I missed days like these with Will and his dad, looking forward in time or something, just the bullshit of it. You don’t need to be a wise man to predict matters of the heart, or so I say. Behind them, the sky had turned the colour of plywood, and I realized Will and his dad looked about as happy as ever and that I hoped that would never change.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe a debt of thanks to a great many people who invested a great many hours in the shaping of these stories – first among them Jessica Lamothe, who suffered the rough drafts of all but two (and damned near sixty others), and Anna Smith, who raised her fists in my defence over four years of undergraduate creative writing workshop.

  Andrew Cowan lent (lends?) me his expert editorial eye, his scathing wit, and his non-stop constructive abuse. Thanks, too, to my classmates at the University of East Anglia for their thorough and thoughtful feedback, especially Joshua Piercey, Armando Celayo, Ellie Wasserberg, and Ben Lyle – their books are a-coming, take note.

  The Gentlemen’s Fiction Club fills a certain gap of literariness and expat camaraderie in what is otherwise a cold, grey city. Shout-outs to Hal Walling, Trevor “Chest” Wales, Rosie Westwood (honorary gentleman), and Annabel Howard (honorary expat).

  My agent, the effervescent Karolina Sutton, deserves special mention for tolerating my hijinks and for persuading the folks at Penguin to print this book. On that note, I am grateful to Nick Garrison for his subtle yet profound work as an editor, as well as to everyone else over at Penguin Canada for their tireless enthusiasm.

  Versions of some of these stories have appeared in Grain, PRISM, Prairie Fire, Southword, and The Malahat Review. In particular, thanks to John Barton and Rhonda Batchelor of The Malahat for publishing my first story and for subsequently inviting me to the fiction board. They’re career-launchers, those folk.

  The legendary – if not mythological – Bill Gaston bestows me with his blessings, editorial and otherwise, upon request, and the sheer calibre of these blessings is rivalled only by the calibre of his beer guzzling.

  Lastly, and most obviously: my heartfelt appreciation to Lorna Jackson, who saw in me some spark of potential and set about nurturing it for four full years. She’s a mentor, an inspiration, a friend.