by D. W. Wilson
Ahead of me, my mom picked her way over roots and divots and I envied her footwear and her balance and her practised grace. I grew up rampaging through a gully just like that forest, lost in the freedom of it alongside a neighbourhood’s worth of kids. Manhunt, tag, capture the flag: we played all those games in the gully. A few times, Gramps joined us for cops and robbers, and he outclassed us by tiers: once, he stepped wraithlike from behind a tree when all us kids had our backs turned; another time, he scaled a wide poplar and pegged us off from its branches until the forest floor was littered with foam bullets. Later, it was paintball, but the same story. Gramps: untouchable. Now, trudging behind my mom, I realized just how much I didn’t belong.
We arrived in a small clearing with a circle of rocks that ringed some leftover charcoal.
Here? she said. People use it. Less likely to get dug up. And if spirits are real he’ll have some company.
Thank you, I said, and she waved her hand.
It didn’t take long to dig; the dry dirt came apart without resistance. Each scoop, a swell of dust scattered toward us, weightless in the breeze. I pushed the shovel’s blade through clumps of brittle chaff and twigs and dead roots long buried. My mom hung nearby, and I wished she would say more, say anything, because it seemed like she was supposed to do that—she was my mother.
Jack was here, she said at last, and I stopped digging. Circles bagged her eyes, and her face had the sallowness of a person who’s been up late, worrying. She chewed at a hangnail on her thumb. I assessed her, and the hole before me. I planted the shovel in the ground.
You’re gonna have trouble getting to him, she said.
Do I have to ask when he was here?
Days ago.
And you didn’t think to tell me. Like, maybe when I asked about him.
She leaned on a nearby tree, arms over her chest like some tomboy from the cornbelt. I waited for her to go on, but she just touched the crown of her skull to the bark. Her eyes ran up and down over me: that same appraisal of worth, like some continent-crossing pilgrim weighing the burden of a wounded companion.
He’s gone west.
You say that like I can’t go after him.
We might need you here. Owenswood’s not a good place.
You keep saying that.
It’s Colt’s call, she said. This is an evac zone. You have any idea what that means? Criminals, kid. Bad guys. They shot my husband.
Jesus, are you a cop too?
Fuck off.
I stepped on the shovel, drove it deeper in the ground. Its haft wobbled.
We’re having some trouble, she said, not toward me, and I didn’t need to look up to know that she’d begun, again, to scan the tree line. Around us, I realized, the forest made no noise at all—not even the whistling of bugs. Humans are the only beasts who do not instinctively flee from fire.
Why do you keep looking around like that?
Why do you think?
But why did he get shot? Come on, Mom.
I’m not your mom.
I bit my tongue. Pettiness: Archer’s daughter. What’s keeping you guys here? I said.
You need to talk to Colton.
And Archer? What’s his deal with Colton?
She spit the hangnail off her tongue—a single, quick pip. That’s an old wound, she told me. Overhead, the sun inched above mountains’ edge, though we couldn’t see it through the trees—just a warmth that tasselled the cloudscreen. Anyway, you’re about to finish up, she said. Can you find your way back here on your own?
Yes.
Can you carry him on your own?
Yes.
Okay, she said. Bury him, then talk to Colt.
I don’t like the way this sounds.
She shrugged, shoved her hands in her coat pockets. Then she jerked her head, toward the Verge, toward Colton—we’ll see, maybe, or you don’t have to. I couldn’t tell.
PUCK HADN’T BEEN DEAD long enough for rigor mortis to pass in full, but I ferried his stiff body to the hole I’d made and laid him down within. I slid my hand over his flank, touched one fuzz-soft ear, and thought about the wonderful mess I’d made. Not just Puck, but the whole batshit thing: Darby, and this foolish search, and now with Archer, who no doubt wouldn’t abandon his long-lost daughter to whatever grim fate awaited. I should never have left Toronto. Darby’d labelled me a coward, and who was I to refute her: I’d fled home precisely because it was easier than facing the reality of us.
Puck’s grave was shallower than I’d have liked, but he would not be soon dug up, though that’s the circle of life, anyway, and I don’t know if he’d have minded much. I figured Archer didn’t need to find out that I’d buried him, and I didn’t know what to say to Gramps, if I even got the opportunity to say anything. He’d call me a dumbass, and fair enough. I’d killed his dog.
The dirt rose in a lump above the campground floor. No amount of hardpacking had made it less obvious, so I toed through the remnant fire and the logs around it in a search for something that’d make the grave less obvious: a moss-specked log, or a couple cinderblocks shunted some few feet out of place. But in the end I settled for a bundle of arm-length blackened kindling that I dumped over Puck’s final rest. If the fires blazed on through Owenswood, at least they’d pave his grave with fertile charcoal, and he could himself grow to become a tree, or a bastardly bush—stinging nettle, maybe.
I made my way to the Verge to collect Archer and carry on. We had, I figured, wasted enough time, and Colton’s fight was not our fight. Through its front windows, I saw Colton and my mom bent over the Verge’s front counter, side by side with mugs of coffee airing cool. Their lips moved and their eyebrows drew in and on more than one occasion they tapped the countertop as if it were a map and they two tent-dwelling generals. Four crossed arms, two hushed voices, the smell of old Folgers gone sour as bile. Colton wore no shirt, but cotton gauze bandoliered his chest, and even indoors, in his maimed state, he’d donned a set of aviator sunglasses. When he spotted me he lifted his lips upward and outward, something like a snarl though not quite—more like trying to loose stray gristle from his gums.
The front door bumped me on the ass as I went in, as if to say, Go on.
We had a moment of saying nothing as I reined up under their gazes. My mom tapped her foot to a rhythm nobody could hear, and Colton took one delicate sip from his coffee and set it down so it made not a sound. Those two had information that’d been too long withheld from me, and to tell the truth I was getting sick of it.
Colton broke the silence: I understand you just buried your dog. I’m sorry.
Thank you, I said.
I also understand you know how to handle a rifle.
Used to shoot clay pigeons, at school.
That all?
Deer hunting, maybe. Years ago. I can handle a gun. Why?
Colton hefted his mug from the counter and held it below the rim of his shades. His big palm enveloped it, mouth and handle all. Through the shades I could see his eyes half squinted.
Just feeling you out, hoss, he said, and slurped. When he spoke, he had a slight south-of-the-border drawl, his vowels too soft and stretched too long, as if he’d imbibed a whiskey—feeelin, hawss. He smacked of small-town county deputy, more lawman than federal cop, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a tanned holster belted to his hip, an ancient six-shooter cradled in the leather and hide. Last man standing, my mom had called him.
I’m trying to find my dad, I said.
How’s old Cecil?
Dying, I told him.
Colton sucked his teeth. His mouth came forward in a pucker. I’m sorry to hear that, he said. I got on with Cecil.
I looked to my mom. You said Jack was here?
A few days ago.
Three days ago, Colton said, almost cutting her off.
I don’t appreciate being lied to, I said.
You’re in the wrong family then, hoss.
I’m beginning to see that.
That’
s my boy, he said, and my mom rolled her eyes. But put the blame right here, not on Lin, he said, and he thumbed his chest, twice. No bad blood between blood, that’s what I say. If she’d have told you about your dad you’d be gone after him, and that’s not safe, to say the least.
I appreciate the concern, I said.
Colton touched his head, a salute, and pulled off the aviators and placed them beside his coffee. He had cheekbones round as irrigation pipe and a line of dad-like stubble dulling grey in swaths, big marble eyes drooped in bags and that dead-tired flatness to his mouth—another sleepless night. His nose was off-centre, but not crooked like a busted one; it’d just grown the wrong way toward the sun.
Who shot you? I said.
He tongued his canines, chasing gristle.
There’s a crew of guys out to loot the town. They’ve set up on the road west—the road that leads to Caribou Bridge, where you aim to find Jack. I was having a pleasant chat with those fine gentlemen yestereve. He let himself smile.
Must’ve tickled, I said.
Like banging your funny bone. You learn to like it.
I met some bikers who got through, I said. How’d they do it?
Colton rubbed his thumb down the culvert of his sternum. Probably just drove through. But they’re heading the right way—out.
And Jack? I said.
Colton turned his hands up. He went the wrong way.
My mom climbed on the counter and sat with her legs draped over the edge—small-town girl. They’re opportunists, she said, but not criminals yet.
Except for the one who shot me.
That’s your history, she said.
My own uncle, Colton said, and rubbed himself, for emphasis. Bit of bad blood and he gets it in his head to take a potshot. See what I mean, hoss? No bad blood between blood.
So what’s your plan? I said.
We’re hoping the fires will flush them. Like foxes.
I said: Like foxes.
That’s right. We flush them like foxes.
I can’t wait that long.
Colton’s mouth drew in and sucked air from the meniscus of his coffee. He cycled it out his nose, as if expecting to breathe steam, and after a few rounds of this my mom touched his elbow and his head pendulumed across his chest to look at her. She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. A nod, nigh imperceptible. They’d expected me to say exactly that. I realized, then, that I had the two of them scheming against me. That left me one ally for hundreds and hundreds of miles.
Unfortunately, Alan, Colton said—and when he said my name he did so without the cowboy drawl, without the camaraderie and wit—you’re staying with us. I don’t have the manpower to drive them out, but I do have the manpower to drive you out.
Adrenaline preened in my spit glands. Sorry. I can’t.
Colton set his coffee down so it clunked and leaned forward on his elbows. Beneath the gauze, his muscle pressed like rope. I noticed the tips of a scar at the border of the tensors, a great scab-like line of skin that teased his collar. You don’t have a choice, he said.
You gonna arrest me?
Well. Yes. It’s my job to get this place evacuated.
We breathed at each other. He flattened his palm on the countertop, the fingers spread wide so the bones of his hand strained up against the skin. The nails were chewed down below the quick, and the sides of his palm—the part that’d rub raw against an axe handle, or a rifle stock—looked grained by callus and the hard tissue of scars.
This is really important, I said.
He fiddled with the aviators, eyes downcast. When he bored of that he looked once more to me, and I saw in his eyes a dangerous intelligence and remembered Archer’s warning and wondered if, after all, I ought to have brought the old man the shotgun. A family of connivers, that’s what I had, every last one of them with their cards clutched to their chest—first Gramps and Archer and now Colton and Linnea. If there’s an honest gene in me it had to come from Jack.
Colton turned his hands out, looked at me like he was sorry.
Now you don’t have to like this arrangement, he said. But you’re just gonna have to live with it. Free rein of the restaurant, best I can do, until we get the all-clear. Unless, of course, you want to make a move and head east, and out. I won’t stop you. But try to go west and I’ll be watching.
I felt the urge to fight swim into my bloodstream. You can’t watch me all the time.
If you make me chase you, then everyone’s in danger.
So don’t chase me.
I’m asking you not to make me chase you.
He put his sunglasses on and reached backward to his hip where, with a buckle-pop, he produced a set of handcuffs beaten matte from use. They clattered when their steel met laminate counter, and he just stared at them and waited and swallowed. The fight left me.
I appreciate your urgency, Colton said. And as soon as this blows over, I’ll get you on your way. Man’s word.
The room, all of a sudden, stunk of body odour and bacon grease. Colton’s teeth appeared, off-colour like the sky, as though he’d been sucking on charcoal. Then he pushed away from the counter and he grimaced—it wouldn’t have tickled. From there he stomped through the saloon doors to the kitchen beyond, and for a moment neither my mom nor I dared move or speak until, seconds later, Colton hollered Lin from the kitchen. She slid off the counter with a thud, and in one practised motion she swirled her coffee dregs and sent them, mug and all, down along the countertop in a spin.
I WENT OUT THE DOOR and crossed the gravel to Gramps’ Ranger and turned the key in the ignition. The engine gurgled to life; the radio played static and dices of music, too white-noised to be recognizable. I pressed my wrists to the wheel as the truck shook, and I tried to figure how to look Gramps in the eye. It’s no problem, he’d say, and probably mean it, but I would never know.
I reclaimed my key. The engine cooled down. Tufts of Puck’s yellow hair caked the back seat and his unwashed, cheese-like smell lingered still. It would linger for a while, I knew. Gramps’ shotgun was nowhere to be found, and I figured Colton had confiscated it in a judgment call I couldn’t really disagree with.
Archer’s grim scowl followed me around the parking lot and I paused long enough to offer him a nod meant to convey some semblance of watching each other’s backs. For his part he returned it. I let myself kick bushels of gravel a while longer before I set my jaw and went upstairs to convene with the old bastard. It occurred to me that we were prisoners.
In the room above the kitchen, Archer had straightened on the bed and somehow come into possession of a hacksaw that he’d used to carve a series of lines on the cot’s wooden frame. You are one sad case, I said to him, and confiscated the saw.
Downstairs, directly below us, the two boys bounced their ball in a two-beat loop, and now and then it banged on the ceiling. Colton and my mom had not re-emerged from the kitchen, and between the rhythm of the ball I listened for evidence of their presence, but found none. Even the groaning fridges had gone silent, but I didn’t know what that meant, if anything, unless they’d been turned off so as to more easily monitor the old man and me. The morning was taking a long time to lighten into day.
I knelt beside Archer’s cot. On cue, he lowered his voice to a murmur: What’s up?
You were right, I said.
He blinked, twice. He flattened a palm to his chest. Oh my God, he breathed, and let the words press him backward. First time I heard those words in thirty years.
Archer, this is serious.
Okay, he said. He was suppressing a grin.
Colton won’t let me go farther. He’ll arrest me.
I waited.
He clapped his hands on his knees, his version of a shrug. We got bigger problems than that, he said. They’re lying about the evacuation. The Force would never let one guy oversee an evacuated town all by his lonesome. There’s always a skeleton crew. Dispatch, a mess hall, whatever. Sure Crib’s got some boys here, and maybe your mom counts as radi
o. But there’s always more than one cop.
Somewhere, the restaurant cawed—old wood with growing pains, a cackle. Jesus, I said.
Exactly, kid. They’re hiding something.
I should’ve got you the shotgun. It’s not in the truck anymore.
He tapped his knuckles on his thigh. I saw him out there, messing around, he said.
And you didn’t think to do anything?
I suppose I could have scowled at him. Put the fear of God in his heart.
Archer, this is fucking serious.
Anything that happens, happens, Archer said. He didn’t look at me when he said it, and I didn’t know what he meant. It seemed like an odd thing to tell me. But before I could press him an engine’s low ribbit came from outside, from the direction of Owenswood proper. Archer’s head cocked sideways and I moved to the window’s edge and peered around the side.
How’d you get the hacksaw, anyway? I said.
He nudged his chin toward the room’s far corner. Found it near the closet.
But you can’t walk.
I can walk. I just ain’t a fucking gazelle.
Footsteps banged around downstairs as the sound got louder. Colton yelled something to the boys. My mom yelled something back. A lot of yelling went on, in general, in that place. At the sound of Colton’s voice, Archer’s spine had gone straight as lumber and his jaw clenched so tight sweat squeezed from his temple.
A dented pickup the colour of old paper bobbed into view at the rim of the Verge’s parking lot. It kicked a flute of gravel skyward with its rear wheels, and the screech of spinning tires without traction wheezed into the air. Three guys hunched in the truck’s bed, big checkered coats and denims all, camo ballcaps and cropped beards—guys a generation my senior. Each one held a hunting rifle upright at his side, muzzles in the air. A display, I thought, like a war banner.
What is it? Archer said.
Cavalry, I said, bitterly, and thought of Colton’s wounded chest.
The truck came to a stop a good twenty metres from the restaurant. A man stepped down from the driver’s side—no ballcap, white hair, dressed otherwise like the others. He shut the door and shoved his hands in his pockets, put his weight on the truck. He hawked at the ground, tapped a booted heel to the gravel, twice. The four of them exchanged words that looked no more than grunts. A few guffaws, their shoulders like a hammer drill. From my distance I couldn’t tell if the man on the ground had a weapon, but he must have. Vibrations hummed through the floorboards and up my knees—stereo bass, air conditioner, great, otherworldly purr.