Daniel held Lumpy’s gun and when he looked down at it he didn’t even have his finger on the trigger. Wallace came over and Daniel turned at him quick. Wallace held up and reached out with one large and hairless hand.
“I’ll take that, big guy,” Wallace said.
Daniel gave up the pistol and Wallace handed him the duffel bag of cash. Wallace checked the chamber of the pistol and let the slide snap back and then he went over to where his boss had Asselin knelt down at gunpoint. Clayton was talking to the man and then suddenly Asselin’s eyes were wide and he took his hand from his cheek and grabbed at his far shoulder and at the base of his neck. Muscles there gone rigid and severe through the skin. Then Asselin keeled.
Clayton lowered the gun and looked down at the man. He turned to Wallace and Wallace shrugged.
“What’d you do?” Wallace said.
“Nothing,” Clayton said. “Well, nothing else.”
Wallace kicked Asselin’s boot. He did not move. Daniel dropped the duffel bag and hurried over. He knelt in the concrete beside Asselin. Put his hand near to the man’s mouth and nose, leaned in close. The blood ran steady from the seam hewn through Asselin’s face.
“Did you want to kill him?” Daniel said loud.
“Not really,” Clayton said.
Daniel looked at Clayton and Wallace each.
“You fuckin’ idiots,” Daniel said.
He positioned himself over the man and put his ear to Asselin’s mouth. After a few seconds he turned to face Asselin and made a ring over the man’s lips with his thumb and forefinger and blew. The man’s cheek split again and bubbled red.
“Motherfucker,” Daniel said.
He did what he could to cover the wound and Asselin’s mouth both and then he blew again. Daniel began compressions at Asselin’s chest. He counted thirty and leaned in and listened once more. He breathed air into the man.
“Stop,” Clayton said.
Daniel kept at it.
“What are we going to do if he comes around?” Clayton said. “Call the fucking ambulance?”
Daniel had nearly made his count but before he could Clayton stepped around Asselin and aimed his pistol at Lumpy. He shot Lumpy three times by his heart and put another bullet in his brain.
The van was parked on little more than a clay trail some twenty feet from the bay inlet. Jack Pine branches were bent against the vehicle panelling on the side nearest to the waters. A ramp had been built into the beach and over the low shieldrock. It led down to a ramshackle jetty that had no true owner but was built and rebuilt as needed. The three men sat quiet in the van and the blue digits on the dash climbed in minutes. Blackness otherwise. Not long and they could hear the distant growl of a small motor.
“That’s him,” Wallace said.
He got out of the truck with a garbage bag in his hand, weighted enough that it swung while he walked the ramp. Down and down to where the jetty left the beach. The inbound boat had one headlamp and it cut out sudden. The engine idled low. Wallace stood on the planking and waited. He knelt and reached for something. Another man got out in the shadow and started tying ropes to the dock-cleats. He stood full and they were talking. After a few seconds Wallace whistled loud enough to scare something clear from the brush beside the van.
Clayton backed down the ramp all the way to the end of the beach. Loose sands that covered the low end of the grade. They stopped again and Clayton pulled the emergency brake. The back double-doors came open and Wallace had his hands on the plastics that covered the smaller body.
“Aren’t you going to get out and help him?” said Clayton.
Daniel shifted in the seat but he didn’t go. The skin of his hands carried a red tint. He’d tried to wash at the warehouse but the place was a shell and there were no cleaning supplies. Ghost of the metallic taste of blood in his mouth that kept coming back.
“I don’t believe I will,” he said.
“No?” Clayton said.
“Ain’t no way.”
Clayton studied him some and then he got out. Swung the door shut. He walked around to the back and Wallace had already unpinned a metal trolley from its straps against the interior wall. He lifted it down to the jetty with some effort and then he reached back in and hauled the rolled-up man by winch-straps that held the plastics. One hand in either. He hefted the man and set him down hard on the trolley-bed. The second load had Clayton in the van on his haunches, pushing the thing clear. He got down to the dock again and he and Wallace managed to lower the dead man to the metal. Wallace started towing the trolley down the pier, the wheels clacking in the gaps. Clayton said his thanks to Daniel and followed Wallace down toward the boatman.
They watched the boat go out into the black with its cargo. Could hear it but small. From where they stood they could see small lights on the inland hillside. Distant glow of lamps way out on the big island. Clayton guessed where the ferry ran in the waters but he couldn’t see enough to know for certain. He was a quarter-Mohawk by blood and his kinsmen had no active links to the First Nation out in the bay.
“When was the last time he got out there?” Clayton said.
“Dan?” Wallace said. “Don’t know. Years ago.”
“He was seeing that girl.”
Wallace nodded.
“The family didn’t like the idea of it. Tried to talk him out of it,” Clayton said.
He spat from the jetty.
“That’s one way to say it,” Wallace said.
“He beat the one brother bloody. Stood off a few more until they got the better of him. They didn’t let him off easy. He was lucky to get off the island.”
“How d’you know all that?” Wallace said.
“Me and his old man picked him up at the ferry landing. Arthur wanted to go back over and kill somebody.”
“That true his father had some Ojib blood?” Wallace said.
Clayton shrugged.
“He never looked into it that hard. He was always funny about it.”
The men waited to see the boat lights turn on again. They didn’t. Wallace started walking down the pier. Towed the trolley behind.
“If I remember right, somebody he knew put him on that ferry,” Clayton said.
“Didn’t think it was fair to see him killed.” Wallace said.
Wallace came back to the van first and then Daniel did get out, took an end of the trolley and lifted it into the back by the interior bulblight. Sweat trailed the side of Wallace’s head, his cheek and neck. Clayton was still down by the boat launch trying to see where it had gone. Daniel and Wallace sat the fender and the van sunk a half-foot on its suspension.
“You put a lot of trust in that man and his shitty boat,” Daniel said.
“He’s my cousin,” Wallace said.
Daniel shook his head.
“They’d have a hard time keepin’ the regular cops off the reserve if they find out there’s corpses being planted there. Whatever you think.”
“Thanks for lookin’ out for us, man,” Wallace said.
Daniel got off the truck. Looked to the waters and the dark. At the figure of the man stood out there on the warped planks of the jetty.
“I’ve about had it with all this shit,” he said.
Wallace smiled a little. He said no more.
Daniel’s truck crept into the driveway, gravel shifting under the heavy tires. No light shone in the cab. Wrinkles in the metal where the frame had been bent by the crash and bent back by a winch and harness while the truck sat anchored in a mechanic’s lift. Daniel rolled the truck to a halt and put it in park and there he sat for the better part of an hour, his hands shaking above the steering wheel and his chest tight. Fog of his breath on the windshield. He’d pulled in at nearly five in the morning while the sky paled and he didn’t move from his seat until a thin yellow strand grew slow at the horizon line. H
e made his hands into fists a few times and then he pulled the doorhandle. He had to shoulder the door open and the metal squealed and when he closed the door behind him he had to drive it shut with that same shoulder. Too loud. He looked at the house and waited for a light to come on. Nothing happened. Daniel stood with his hand on the battered truck, watched the world take shape. Highgrass fields and a thin, winding stream. The distant treeline. Nothing there that belonged to him.
He eased in through the front door and made it halfway to the fridge before he remembered his boots and went back and took them off. He crossed the room and took a beer from the fridge and his hand still trembled some but he got the cap in his palm and tore it loose. Tipped the bottle near upright at his lips and drank until there was nothing left but drops. Daniel set the bottle on the counter and his eyes watered. He felt like he might sneeze but he stopped it. Burped quiet against the back of his hand. He blinked until he could see the bottle clear again on the counter. Shook his head and tried to think where he might have whiskey. After a few seconds he went back to the fridge and got another beer and when he left out for the bedroom half an hour later there were five bottles lined up neat beside the toaster.
When he went into the room he could see Sarah on her back in their bed, her head to the side. Red hair fanned out over both sets of pillows. Her right hand lay palm up in the mattress-dent where his haunches came to rest every night. Daniel stared at her in the shallow light, at her small nose, freckles on either side that went sparse where they lined her dimpled cheeks. She wore a tank top that showed the ridges in her shoulders. Rude surgery scar for a torn rotator cuff. Slow swelling of her chest as she breathed. He leant against the doorway by his forearm with his chin at the crook of his elbow. She stirred and then her eyes opened. She blinked hard. Smiled at him.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey.”
“What are you doing out there?”
“My shift ran late.”
“I meant what are you doing standing all the way over there.”
“That’s a fair question,” he said.
Sarah propped herself up on her forearms.
“You look like you got into it tonight,” she said.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah.”
He looked down at his feet. Worksocks frayed and worn thin in patches. Quiet in the room. He looked back up at her.
“What happened out there?” she said.
Daniel kept looking at her.
“Just come here,” Sarah said.
“I’m gonna get in the shower,” Daniel said. “I got to wash this off me.”
“Okay. Then after that get into this bed,” she said, and threw the covers back. “But you gotta keep your filthy mitts to yourself.”
“I can’t make a promise like that,” he said.
“I know.”
She let herself drop to the mattress. Rubbed her eyes with both hands. Put her hands on the blanket at her belly. Daniel took his arm off the doorway but he didn’t go into the room.
“Hey,” he said soft.
“What?” she said.
“I gotta see the girl first.”
Sarah had her eyes closed.
“I knew that too,” she said.
Madelyn slept in a mess of blankets, pillows all about her. She’d managed to get the corner of the comforter up to her chin sometime in the night and wore the thing like a toga. She lay there with her arms and legs splayed out, skinny limbs in her wrinkled pajamas. She had lately started to outgrow her small bed. Daniel shook his head.
“Jesus, kid,” he said.
He leant down to her and put his hand on her forehead. Her skin very soft against the roughness of his palm. He smoothed her hair and saw the size of his hand next to her head, the swollen knuckles. Daniel put his right hand in his pocket and kissed her as gentle as he could on the top of her head and then got up and went out. Left the door part open. He loosed the doorhandle and went down the hall with his head hung low.
He’d a dream that he had many times before. That he always remembered. A cage with the fencing painted black and the crowd back beyond the cage. Sound of so many people talking. He was fighting a man far bigger but he did not fear it. On the matting he moved well and he took the centre and they traded. But there the man was fast and Daniel’s punches were slow, like they were moving through waters. He kept at it and then his right eye went black. He was over by the cage wall. The outside leg knelt in the narrow ditch between the mat and the fencework. He was trying to cover but his arm wouldn’t come up. By the one good eye he saw two men at ringside. The man that looked like Daniel pointed. His other eye quit. He could hear his heart and his breathing. Heavy thud of bonejoints finding his face and sideribs.
When Daniel woke up he saw the girl sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed. He’d taken her arm sudden through the sheet. It didn’t seem to bother her.
“Hey,” Daniel said, and let go.
“You okay, dad?”
“How long you been sittin’ there?”
She shrugged. Daniel coughed and ran one hand through his short hair. Pushed himself up so that he was leaning against the headboard. He’d no shirt on and the girl was studying the shape of him.
“You slept a long time,” Madelyn said.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll remind you about saying that when you start workin’ for a livin’ and Saturday rolls around.”
Madelyn sat there quiet for a time. She had her hair tied back loose and wore basketball shorts and a Raptors T-shirt. Athletic build in the making. She was barely twelve but by her eyes she looked older. Her nose twitched.
“Jeez dad, you’re ripe,” she said.
Daniel turned to her slow. She mimicked him.
“That’s about how I feel,” he said.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” he said.
Daniel sat up full in the bed. He looked for his shirt and saw it on the near floor. The girl reached down for it and handed it to him.
“Well, it’s okay,” the girl said.
“Thank you for saying so.”
“Mom said don’t wake you up.”
“You didn’t.”
“You were saying weird things and moving around. Did you have a bad dream?”
Daniel thought on it.
“I don’t remember,” he said, and then he threw the covers off. “Let’s get up outta here and see what’s happening.”
“Okay,” she said.
He pulled the shirt on and stood up beside the bed and Madelyn cleared out toward the door. When Daniel got there he punched her shoulder light with his left hand and followed her out. She stopped short and planted her feet. Daniel shoved her some and she took hold of the framing. Held on as long as she could. When she came unmoored she had to jog a few steps to stop from falling.
Sarah sat at the kitchen table reading the paper, a can of Diet Coke in her hand. When she saw them she got up and went over to the oven and opened it.
“Sit,” she said.
Daniel did as she said. So did the girl. She ran her hair back behind her ears and took a sip from the can in Sarah’s spot.
“Madelyn, you already ate your breakfast,” Sarah said. “You should go back out and practice. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“It’s alright,” Daniel said.
Sarah took a plate of bacon and sausage out of the oven and then went to the microwave and turned it on and then started putting the meat on a cool plate. When she was done she went to the toaster and pushed the lever and then she waited for the chime from the microwave and heard it and then took the eggs out, steam rising from the bowl. She forked out a mouthful and tried them and then she scraped the rest out onto the plate. Brought it to him.
“Let me know
if they’re any good.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
She went back to the counter for the toast. Carried it over on a plate. Daniel took a knife up and spread the butter on thick. Madelyn watched him.
“That’s an awful lot,” she said.
“I’m about to hear that again from her, so just take it easy.”
Sarah got him a mug from the cupboard and poured his coffee. Handed it to him.
“I didn’t think I’d sleep like that,” Daniel said. “What time is it?”
“It’s not that late,” Sarah said. “Now eat.”
Sarah settled at the table and took up the paper again and read at it. Once in a while she’d look up over the page to him. Madelyn poured juice into a glass and read the print on the back of the paper. Reports of a warehouse fire in the city that spread to bordering soyfields and still burned wild when the presses ran. Sarah hadn’t seen it. Soon enough she quit reading and set the paper down.
“Come on,” she said to Madelyn.
Sarah got up and went through to the bedroom and came back in sweats. Running shoes in her hand. Madelyn left her father at the table and found her beat-up shoes in the entryway, pulled them on with the laces still tied. Sarah made a noise at her but left it at that. They went outside and let the door close. Sound of a basketball on the packed gravel. Daniel had made Madelyn a backboard out of plywood and fixed a rim to it firm, bracketed the entire ugly thing to the lip of the roof. He sat there eating and could see them both through the kitchen window. Madelyn put up free throws with an awkward kind of shot where she catapulted the ball from back over her right shoulder. More often than not Daniel heard just net or the back-iron of the rim as she sunk buckets. Sarah caught the ball or tracked it down on the misses and fired it back to the girl. Daniel cleared his throat and put his head down while he ate. The knife and fork shook some in his hands and he studied that for a second while he listened to the sound of sneakers shifting grit.
In the Cage Page 2