From the Ashes

by Jesse Thistle

  When I explained that to Uncle Ron, he assured me that I’d done the right thing. “It takes a lot of balls to do what you did, Jess. Don’t doubt it.”

  I was surprised.

  Jerry and Leeroy, too, remained steadfast. Leeroy got back from Vancouver right before the murder.

  “What the fuck, guy?” he said when he first saw me. “You just left me out there to die.”

  “I’m sorry. The logs floated by, there was light on the mountains, we were starving, and I had to go.” He crossed his arms, like he wasn’t convinced, but we still started hanging out. Things were different, though. We didn’t share or trust the way we did before I’d abandoned him, he wouldn’t share dope with me as freely, or booze—but he stuck by my side and defended me.

  Jerry and Leeroy were spooked by the company I’d gotten myself involved with, though—killers! But they stood with me, my brother and best friend, as everything collapsed around me. They never once told anyone where I was, even though I was sure people offered them rewards for my whereabouts.

  Around March a couple of new detectives showed up at Uncle Ron’s apartment. They said they were doing follow-up on the investigation. Apparently, they’d been searching for the knife I’d drawn but had come up with nothing. It was a key piece of evidence.

  “We even dredged the pond next to the complex where Mike and Stefan ran after they killed the cabbie,” one detective said. “We had a team of divers there for a month looking for it, but it wasn’t there.”

  The detectives then told us that post-mortem examinations indicated that Baljinder Singh Rai had sustained massive stab wounds to the face and neck with a sharp object, most likely a knife nine inches in length or longer. Just like I’d drawn. That Rai had evidently picked up two males who matched Stefan and Mike’s description at the bus depot in downtown Brampton at ten p.m. on December 31. That he’d then driven them to Gateway Six, just behind the Pizza Hut, where he’d been attacked. They said Rai had held on just long enough to alert staff at the store, before he bled to death.

  That turned my stomach. My heart hurt for his two children—I was raised without a father and knew that horrible pain well.

  “But Mike and Stefan aren’t saying a word,” the detective said. “And without the knife, we just can’t be sure.” His last comment lingered, like a poisonous gas that scorched my lungs, robbing me of breath.

  I’m fighting in the trenches on two fronts now. Against the criminals and cops, I thought, because he’d implied the thing I feared most, the reason why they were in the apartment taking Uncle Ron’s and Jerry’s statements. Why they’d begun canvassing people in my extended family, like Uncle Ralph, who was a Metro copper down at 52 Division. In Ralph’s case, they’d asked him for my character profile, and if I was capable of taking another man’s life. In Uncle Ron’s case, they’d asked for exact times of my movements on December 31, and if I acted strange the next night when we watched The Saint. Jerry never did tell me what they asked him; he avoided all my questions.

  It also began making sense that they’d held me for twenty-four hours after I’d reported the murder, and that I was denied a phone call the whole time I was in custody. The way they had collected my cigarette butts and coffee cups, one by one, during the initial questioning also pointed to the fact that they’d been collecting my DNA.

  I realized I was still a suspect, and had been since the night of the murder. I was a suspect the police couldn’t rule out because they’d failed to find the murder weapon, and Mike and Stefan wouldn’t squeal on each other. Moreover, I was roughly the same size as Mike, and Leeroy, amazingly, was the exact same height and weight as Stefan. It was well documented, too, that I’d had the shirt the crime was committed in. I wasn’t sure if they ever considered Leeroy a suspect, though. I wasn’t even sure if it was all in my head, or if any of it was true. Maybe the pressure of everything was beginning to make me see things that weren’t grounded in reality.

  “Just show up in court and tell the judge what you know,” the detective said before he left.

  I knew that the expression on my face betrayed me—my mind was fracturing.

  “They’re the ones charged, Jesse,” he said, as if to comfort me. “But a conviction is another matter altogether. We have to look at all possibilities.”

  I held on to that sliver of hope for justice for two months until it was time for the preliminary hearing. But I questioned myself every day until then. I hid out at Uncle Ron’s, and drank and smoked crack until the paranoia forced me to hide under my brother’s bed for hours at a time. I wouldn’t even take the dog out for his bathroom breaks. My weight dropped and I was afraid to even put garbage in the apartment building’s chute, thinking it was the perfect spot for my enemies to ambush me and make me disappear, just like Dad had.

  At the end of May, I was called to give evidence for the Crown at the old courthouse on Clarence Street, right in the heart of my old neighbourhood. The courtroom was filled with many of Mike and Stefan’s friends—some from around our hood, others I’d never seen before. No one I knew came—not Leeroy nor Jerry nor Uncle Ron. I couldn’t blame them. I could swear the people who were there mouthed, “You’re dead,” to me from the back benches. I tried to ignore them and sat up near the front, a few rows back from the Crown lawyer, where I knew I’d be safe if anything went awry.

  Mike and Stefan entered the courtroom and glared at me from the bench behind the bailiff. I stared at them to show I wasn’t scared, even though I was shitting bricks. Stefan leered right back. I couldn’t turn away and let him win.

  When I took the stand, the Crown asked me to run through the details. He paused in between questions and let me think, getting me to note exactly how Stefan got the knife and how I’d helped him scam welfare. To me, the whole thing made sense—I’d been framed, Stefan and Mike were the framers, they were the murderers.

  I kept my head up after the Crown finished with me; I sensed it was important to keep an air of confidence. I adjusted my shirt and tie and glanced over and saw that the judge had sketched out a few notes—a couple of words had red underlines.

  “Defence,” he said, his voice a slab of granite authority. “It’s your turn.”

  The judge peered over his glasses at me, and I held my back straight. I thought it might make him respect me more, but his head just swivelled, detached, unimpressed. He pushed his glasses up with his finger and continued on. I thought he might have secretly given me the middle finger. But the Crown smiled at me as he took his seat.

  The defence, however, was having none of it. He walked up to the bench. It was hard to tell if he was angry or happy or what—his face was expressionless. He reminded me of an old west gunslinger at high noon right before a showdown—Johnny Fucking Law. He drew first, interrogating me on where I’d been on December 31.

  I was frank. “I can’t produce a witness as to where I was that night—I can barely remember where I was or who was at that party, but I didn’t kill anyone.”

  He asked the same question a hundred times over, just in different ways.

  I fiddled with my thumbs and thought of my grandma and the time she caught me stealing when I was young.

  Finally, I yelled, “And, yes, I am a criminal! Have been since childhood. And, yes, I do drugs. And these are the drugs I do.” I proceeded to list over a hundred different kinds of liquids, pills, powders, substances, herbs, plants, moulds, and cacti—every drug that I’d ever done since boyhood. I finished with, “But that doesn’t make me someone whose word isn’t good!”

  The Crown’s face had gone ghost white. He was flabbergasted.

  Hell, I was flabbergasted. I’d just sunk my own testimony with my honesty. It was totally on the fly. I was an addict, a fucked-up addict. I had to deal with it. End of story.

  The defence leaned over to the Crown’s desk and whispered loud enough for me to hear, “Solid witness you got there.” He turned to Stefan and Mike and grinned. I didn’t wait to see their reaction before I agai
n peered over at the judge.

  “That’s it, Mr. Thistle,” he said. “You are relieved.” His voice sounded like an ice shelf sheering off into the ocean—kaboom.

  My legs wobbled as I slid out of the witness stand and bobbed toward the back doors. The onlookers were confused at what had just happened. Even Stefan, Mike, the lawyers, and the judge had puzzled expressions on their faces. I’d simultaneously given the Crown what it needed to go forward with a trial, while leaving the defence with enough ammunition to call my testimony into question.

  As I exited the courtroom, I was approached by an East Indian man around my age.

  “Hi, Jesse,” he said.

  My adrenaline made it hard for me to focus.

  “My name is Paul Singh. We were in the same Grade 10 class.”

  It was difficult to tell, but I did recognize him as the quiet newcomer I’d gone to high school with, a boy who was unsure of his English back then. Paul had no accent at all now.

  “Yeah, I remember you,” I said, still not fully aware of what I’d just done, or if I’d get attacked outside.

  “Baljinder Rai was my uncle.” His lip quivered. “I want to thank you for doing what you did—calling the police. I know it wasn’t easy.” His eyes teared up and he moved in for a hug. I opened my arms like a thistle in bloom, wrapping every leaf around him, thorns outward, keeping us both safe.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “I did what I had to do.”

  He invited me to a celebration of his uncle’s life, but I declined.

  A few months later, the Crown cut a deal with Mike. There was still no knife. Whatever happened, Mike MacDonald pleaded guilty to manslaughter and got ten years. Stefan Miceli pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life without chance of parole for thirteen years.

  Me, I got a lifetime of people thinking I was a rat. That I could live with, because I knew what really happened—they tried to make me their patsy, and I dealt with it. What other choice did I have as a young Native homeless man? And I knew that the code of the streets was bullshit—everyone cracks, no exceptions.

  I never found out if Frank had my back with the jersey, or even if it mattered. When I reconnected with him, I didn’t have the heart to ask him about it. I didn’t want to put him in the same position I was in.

  A BOTTLE FULL OF PILLS

  I STARTED SLEEPING ROUGH IN parks, under bushes, on benches in my old neighbourhood—my whole social web was destroyed by the murder case. I went to Olive’s new apartment periodically, but she banned me from her couch after a while—something that’d never happened before. I understood—she didn’t want me around because of the mayhem I’d been involved in, and she had to protect her family. It became clear, too, that Tim had a score to settle with me.

  “Where’s my bloody leather jacket?” he’d yell, his fists held aloft ready to strike me. “Ask your friends, the cops, where the fuck my jacket is!” I never did find out why the cops confiscated his jacket or if they returned it later.

  I ventured over to Mississauga and began using the Salvation Army shelter there. It was way back in the industrial section of town, at least three hours away by bus from my usual stomping grounds. I stayed for a month but felt isolated so I went back to Brampton. But I still couldn’t go back to the Brampton shelter—I’d blown welfare start-up money after the preliminary hearing.

  One night, around midnight, drunk and high, I ventured to Leeroy’s parents’ house. His father and mother had welcomed him home after Vancouver and forgave him—it was like the return of the prodigal son. Sylvia had long since gotten married and started a family of her own, working as a special needs teacher. She’d really come full circle from the Sylvia I remembered in grade school.

  I banged on the window. No Leeroy. I pounded on the door and hollered and heard his dog barking. Still no Leeroy. I’d watched him jimmy open his bedroom window in the basement before, so I crawled down into the window well and pushed the glass up and over to the left in spurts. It popped right open. I poked my head in and yelled his name. The dog rushed over, barking. I dropped down into the room, rubbed the dog’s head, wandered to the kitchen to make myself a snack, and started watching some TV in his bedroom. The phone rang, which startled me.

  Then it hit me. I’d broken into my best friend’s house. I’d violated his space, our friendship, his family. It was much worse than me leaving him in Vancouver. I got up, locked the door behind me, and went into his garage and fell asleep on a pile of wood.

  When I awoke, Leeroy was standing over me.

  “You broke into my house?”

  I leaned back against the wall, my leg slipping on a log.

  “You crossed the fucking line this time!”

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Fuck, man,” he said, but then the expression on his face changed. “You can stay here if you want.”

  His pity wounded me, made me feel inferior. I told him I was sorry again and scurried away. I slept behind the arena attached to the school where I’d gone to junior high, across the way from where we’d smoked our first cigarettes together.

  I felt like Leeroy was avoiding me, like I’d lost my best friend. I figured people would say I was out to rob him blind. Maybe it was payback for Vancouver. Whatever the reasons, without my best friend in my corner, I had nothing.

  I was distraught about everything—the case, being a social outcast, being homeless and hopeless. I went to a drugstore and stole a bottle of a hundred acetaminophen tablets and ate them all before I could think better of it. Then I went and sat by the river with my feet in the water, the rush cool against my skin.

  My toes numbed as I wiggled them in my shoes. A roar filled my ears—like an approaching hurricane. I checked the treetops and the leaves were still—there was no breeze. Stretched thin and sapped of energy, my vision crowded black at the sides, then formed into deep tunnels. I stood up, but my legs had a hard time holding my weight. I wobbled along the pathway, grabbing branches as I fell down on my knees. I hoisted myself up again using the edge of a garbage bin and attempted to breathe deeply, but no amount of air could fill my lungs—they gurgled and filled with fluid. My heart beat faster than if I’d run a marathon at full sprint. I was dying. I panicked and walked the half-mile it took to get to the hospital.

  I glanced in the glass before the emergency department doors slid open and saw myself—deep-set charcoal eyes, plastic-looking skin. I looked like a grey alien.

  “I swallowed a bottle of Tylenol,” I said to the nurse at the desk. “An hour ago.” Without a word, she ran into the back and a team of orderlies came out and put me on a gurney. I gave them Olive’s phone number and then my world went white.

  My eyes cracked open. I was in a room, strapped onto a bed, with doctors and nurses buzzing around. I heard a beeping, and a sound like Darth Vader next to me. There was a mask strapped over my face, and I called out, “Grandma,” but heard nothing. The neon lights above captivated me. The doctors kept running around. I coughed. Breathing was even more laboured now. My head felt thinner, the ringing louder, the wind roaring through me, carrying me away.

  A doctor appeared, ripped off the mask, and jammed a tube down my throat. I watched as black fluid crept down the tube and filled my belly, then spilled out of my mouth, down my neck, and all over my blue gown. Then lights. More doctors rushing. And silence.

  “Wake up,” someone said.

  Their breath smelled like onions. Whoever it was peeled my eyes open and a light blinded me. I tried to look away.

  “Hello,” another said. “Jesse. Mr. Thistle.”

  I tried to respond but the tube made it hard to speak. Then silence again.

  When I finally came to I was in a room with a guard. I was told that was so I wouldn’t run away or hurt myself. Apparently, I’d woken up earlier and ripped the tubes right out of my body, undid the straps, and took off. The hospital rang the local police precinct and put out an
APB on me—I couldn’t remember if the police had brought me back, or if I’d wandered back myself.

  “Rest easy,” the guard said. “The doctors will be by shortly.”

  He looked familiar, and told me we’d played together as kids way back in grade school. “We used to scrap, but that school was nuts back then.”

  I laughed. I remembered him stomping me for playground supremacy. He’d been in one of the rival gangs.

  “You’ve had a rough go of it, eh?” he said.

  I broke down.

  When the doctor showed up, she informed me that I’d taken a lethal dose of slow-release acetaminophen. “It’s one of the hardest overdoses to treat. It releases acetaminophen at a steady rate. We try to treat it with liquid charcoal—which absorbs toxic substances—but you may still have a number of pills lodged in your digestive tract and so are very much at risk. Any more time and your liver would have been destroyed. Did you hear a roaring wind?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how thin your blood was pumping over your eardrums.”

  I had to explain to a psychiatrist that I’d meant to end my life, but I now wanted to live.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “I destroyed a lifelong friendship, and I don’t have anywhere to go. I just can’t stop fucking up.”

  “More common than you know.”

  He filled in a form, told me I needed rest, and decided to hold me for at least another week. I’d already been under observation for seventy-two hours. I gave the attendants the phone numbers of everyone I knew—Leeroy, my grandparents, Olive, Jerry, and Josh. Only my brothers called to see if I was okay. No one came to see me except a friend of Olive’s who’d let me crash on his couch from time to time. He gave me some money, so I could take the bus to Jerry’s new place.