Ballistics

by D. W. Wilson

  You need a few stitches, she said.

  We’re too tired for that, I said.

  I can stitch them. Oblige me.

  Okay.

  Leave the shirt off for now.

  I heard her rummage through the first aid kit. The tin jangled. She took the cloth from me and lifted it to inspect. In her hand she brandished a ski needle as long and curved as a thumb. She paused to hold it up, paused again to stare for a moment at my bloodied shirt, heaped in a pile on the ground. I heard her swallow: that loud.

  You sure you’re okay? I said.

  It’s your call, she managed.

  I don’t suppose you’ve got bandages handy?

  None.

  She strung some gut through the needle’s eye. She brushed her fingers on her dark jeans but the dust had already settled on her thighs. It’ll be okay, I told her.

  I felt her prod the wound, tip my cheek to the smoky light. When the needle went through it sent a tingle all down my spine, like the pressure of an electric razor. She tugged the string after it.

  I’m not sure what to do, she said.

  With Colton?

  In general.

  What’s that saying about not knowing where to go? I said.

  We could ask my dad, she said, bitterly. She tweaked the gut in my cheek. The skin moved—an almost pleasant sensation. I wish we hadn’t stopped you guys, she continued. I wish you’d never come.

  She tied off the knot with a tug and swabbed the cut with a douse of iodine and a bolt of cheesecloth.

  I am truly, truly sorry, I told her.

  With just her pinky—same one she’d gnawed on—she hooked a stray hair behind her ear. I saw a missing chunk of skin at the bottom of her lobe, roughly the size of a belt buckle prong. She nudged the bundled shirt my way. It’s Colt’s, she said. Or it used to be.

  I took it. It felt heavier than a shirt. Thank you.

  Reparations, she said.

  There’s no need.

  She flicked her hand—stupid boy. Her feet swung out and in. When they touched the balcony, I felt the vibrations and heard the knock—more a shush, a barely-touch. She must’ve done that often—sat out there with Colton, or maybe the boys. You can never know people. I had no business wishing.

  She draped her legs over the balcony, propped her palms on the wood. We sat drumming our heels on the wood. I don’t care to see Jack, she said, after a while.

  Okay.

  We were kids, Alan. Doesn’t matter what he tells you. We were kids. We didn’t want that.

  Didn’t want me, I said.

  Her lips pressed together in an upside-down smile. Not even a frown—she didn’t regret it, and she wouldn’t refute the truth. I don’t know if I should admire that or hate her for it, but I suppose it’s fair to say that if I didn’t exist then I wouldn’t have chased after Jack or brought Archer to Owenswood, and Colton wouldn’t be dead. I let that sink in, the immensity of it. It is possible to feel with conviction as though someone else deserves the life you have, or still have.

  What will you do about him?

  Bury him here.

  Great place, Owenswood.

  Fuck off, kid.

  Fair enough, I thought. And Archer?

  With her teeth, she torqued the nail of her pinky. Nothing? she said. Let him die?

  Could go to the police.

  You do what you want, but I won’t be around to witness.

  She got up and tucked the first aid kit under her arm. Please, let me take your Ranger.

  Why’s it matter?

  The jeep will smell like Colton.

  I took the Ranger’s keys from my pocket and slid them toward her and they jinkled across the porch slats.

  Do me a favour, kid?

  Yes.

  Don’t report it stolen, for a while at least.

  I can do that.

  She swept her arm in the air in the general direction of everyone else. Her voice caught in her throat. Your grandfather did everything right, you know. Archer’s always been in everyone’s way. It’s a giant clusterfuck. You can’t choose your family or the people you care about, and nobody hurts you like those people. Doesn’t matter how hard they try not to—your family fucks you over. There’s my advice, Alan, straight from your mom. If you care to hear me.

  I believe it, I said, though I didn’t, and don’t.

  She blinked, twice—a flutter. All that ash and dirt in the eyes, it’s a wonder we didn’t blubber around, the lot of us. I saw her swallow, saw her flick something off her jeans. The fingernail scritched along the denim. Nobody had caused as much loss as Archer Cole. He didn’t have much longer to live—a kindness, at least. To him and everyone else. He’d outlived his own happiness.

  Jack’s at a campground, at Caribou Bridge, not far west. He’s been waiting to be asked home. He’ll be happy to see you.

  She slipped the Ranger’s keys in her pocket.

  I hope you find whatever it is you hope you find, she said. I truly do. It just ain’t here, and I’ll bet it ain’t at Caribou Bridge. But that’s for you to figure out, not me.

  Thanks for patching me up, I said, and nearly—nearly—called her mom.

  My mom was staring right toward me but not at me, as if addressing an earlier version of me, as if addressing a progenitor, or a father. I’d landed in the middle of something I would never fully understand. Our time together was drawing to an end without closure, and as each second passed my hope dwindled. But then again, I don’t think I had hoped for anything at all: that I’d find my mother and father amidst the fallout from their pasts, maybe, or that I’d reunite a few old lovers, or that I’d get an explanation for why things happened as they did. Why, not how: that’s a simple matter of trajectory.

  All I want to know is what drove you to leave, I said.

  She rapped the top of the tin box. She hung her head. It was the kind of moment when you should hang your head. There are so many ways to live, she rasped. So many ways life can go. And you have to pick, Alan, somehow, even though you can never know what’s right. There might not even be a right. But you have to choose. I chose to leave. It was just more terrifying to stay.

  Does that make you a coward?

  She combed her pinky once more through her hair. It parted a small channel down her temple. What’s worse, to be born a coward, or to choose to turn into one?

  I looked at her, my mother. She licked her lips, rattled the keys in her pocket. If she said goodbye, I didn’t hear it. She didn’t go inside to say goodbye to Archer, that much I know—one more thing for him to regret. I listened to her rattle around in the kitchen. A freezer lid yawned wide and closed with its vacuumy thump. She placed a few cans of who knows what on one counter or another. Then the front door opened and closed, and I would not see her again.

  The wind hushed down off the Purcells, a chinook almost, and breezed over my arms, lifted the hairs like goosebumps, but I sat there and stared at nothing and wished for a beer, or sleep. Maybe eastward Gramps and Darby did the same, at their version of the sunset. Maybe my mom did, too, as she settled into the driver’s seat. We can never know other people, as I’ve already said.

  From the yellow couch, myself peppered with its sticky foam, I watch Nora shuffle away. She’s naked, has one hand pressed to her lower back, her neck rolling on her shoulders to work out kinks, aches, other pains of lovemaking. The house creaks, moans, seems to take a breath. Summer light glows through the basement window, the locked basement door—it makes her skin look the colour of suede. She stops at the entrance to the rec room, hand on the door frame.

  Got any aspirin? she says, and I manoeuvre to a sit, then a stance, put a hand on her hip and nudge her toward the door at the base of the stairwell.

  I’m steps away, no more—swear to God, just mere steps—but she reaches that door before I do, she opens it, and there’s this sound like a cat’s hiss, and then a fist of darkness billows from that door and strikes her square in the face. It takes a second, less: she d
rops like deadweight, so fast I can’t catch her and I’m only mere feet away, and her head cracks on the concrete floor. Christ, I still remember it: her naked, tensed body slackening, her red hair like tassels in the wake of her descent. It’s the last day I will ever spend as Cecil’s friend, and part of me knows it, even then. The sound of her head on the concrete—it’s the death knell for me and Cecil. Nora moans, her legs kick. I’ve ducked—instinct—and let the darkness fill the basement, thick as tar. Blood pools near her face, near the cleft of her legs. Then I’m at her side, and I kick the door shut, glimpse an orange glow at the landing, through the crack at the bottom. Charcoal, heat, the dryness of air that has had its moisture burned away—these are what I taste, smell. And the house breathes, exhales, cackles. It’s on fire. It’s breathing fire. Around me, above me, my house is burning.

  THOSE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED Linnea’s leaving blurred like slate or sheetmetal skies. My days were punctuated by different moments of hoping for her to come back. Each morning I’d check the foyer for her shoes. After burying my head in the fridge, I’d close the door half expecting to find her standing cross-armed with her weight on the wall. At the end of a long shift I’d kill the ignition and search the house’s windows for signs of light. I couldn’t sit in one place with a beer. In the evenings I turned on the radio just to make it sound like the place wasn’t so empty. Even Nora felt it, when she swung by—a coldness. And sometimes after sleeping with her I’d rouse, groggy, and stumble to the bathroom and pause on the way to listen to Linnea’s quiet old room.

  But no matter how much I missed her, I can say with authority that Jack missed her more. Not that he was one to make his feelings clear. You could see it, though—the squinch in his eyes, the bags on his cheeks that never diminished. Even in the way he held the baby, as if Alan West were a relic of a better time and nothing more. None of us had even told Jack the full extent of the circumstances, because nobody stood to gain by him knowing that she’d left with Crib. The last was Cecil’s call, one evening in his living room where me and him were guarding Alan. Cecil wore his denims and his ballcap and he hadn’t shaved, so scraggly hair patched his cheeks and some even showed in his ears, the old, ugly bastard.

  It’d be a waste of day, Old Man West said, and pressed his thumbs to his temples, himself looking tired enough to die. The boy’s going through enough. He doesn’t need that.

  Understanding, Cecil? I said. From you?

  Got something on your mind?

  You know what they say about understanding? It’s in the dictionary between ulcer and urethra.

  Just don’t tell him, Archer.

  Not a word.

  I’ll warn Nora, he said.

  She probably already figured it out.

  Yeah, she’s got us outmatched, he said, and got up to fetch beers, came back with four so he wouldn’t need to get up again. Across the room, Alan napped on the couch and Cecil watched our grandson even as he popped off the caps.

  I don’t know what to tell him, Cecil said. He sounded like he had congestion in his throat. Never had to deal with this, people just leaving you.

  Guess I’ve been on both ends, I said.

  He grunted at that. His bottle clinked off his lower teeth, and he swore.

  What do I tell him?

  Tell him he’ll be okay.

  I don’t know if that’s true.

  Yeah, I said. But tell him.

  Doesn’t seem right.

  Sometimes you gotta. People don’t always like the truth.

  Fucking hate it. Even not telling him. You know?

  I scratched my scarred arm—acting up with any shift in the weather, even a couple of warming degrees.

  I know, I said. People don’t need to know the truth all the time. A waste, like you said.

  He gulped from his beer, flopped his ballcap onto the table. He looked like a man coming to terms.

  We gotta talk to him.

  We?

  Well, mostly you.

  Cecil.

  He sighed, actually sighed.

  This is your thing, Archer. Talking to people. I’m not gentle enough.

  He’s your son.

  I’m asking you for a favour. It’s what you do.

  I took the beer from the table. And what do you do, old man?

  I go around looking handsome.

  Do a damn shitty job of it, too, let that be said.

  IT TOOK SOME TIME for me to start the conversation with Jack. I have a number of excuses for that, but foremost among them was the fear that it would break his heart all over again; he was on the mend, but I know first-hand how long it can take and how quickly that mending can unravel. So I logged endless looping hours hauling lumber and pulled out of the Wests’ lives for worry that I’d bring things down around me. Cecil swung by on occasional evenings to drink beer and shoot tin cans with the same rifle Jack had long ago used to put a bullet in my calf. Nora and I waved; our interactions outside the bedroom were impersonal and strained. Things had changed, I can’t say what. Our affair felt dutiful now, rote. I’m not even sure her skin warmed when pressed against mine, if our breath would have been visible in cold air.

  Jack had gone to work on upgrading Cecil’s firepit with stones he hijacked from distant areas of the gravel pits—chunks as large as car tires he had to split with a sledge. Most evenings I could hear him behind their house, the hammer’s beat methodical, and I can imagine his breath between each heave—a gasp, really—and every swing backed by the full of his strength, all his body could muster. He was beating out his frustration. He even kept on as the weather froze over, scored a pickaxe to break the hardening earth. He dug holes to level depths and plugged them with stone, chipped them flat if need be, until he’d built a spiral pattern in the dirt, a solid floor around his cinderblock pit. Cecil said Jack would sometimes light that blaze and sit there on a chunk of firewood and stare at the flames until they settled down to coals. Cecil said he let it happen—the whole project—and didn’t help unless the boy asked, and then the two of them would cart boulders around by their bottoms, knees deep and knuckles damned near dragging on the ground like gorillas. They drank beer and sat close together to make small comments.

  It was Nora who sent me to him, one afternoon while we huddled beneath blankets, close enough and content enough for me to call it a rarity. The winter would soon be coming to a close, maybe that had something to do with it—high spirits for once again surviving the killing months. Jack’s mindless work clanged through the bedroom window and Nora shifted against me, prodded at my feet with her toes. She stretched, pushed on my face when she caught me looking.

  Go talk to him, she said.

  Been putting it off.

  We know, she said. It was unusual for her to mention Cecil, even in passing.

  I sat up and Nora fished around under the covers for her bra. She snapped it on while my back was turned, while I dragged my jeans over the floor.

  Archer, she said, and I felt the wind of her breath on my back, twigged on a note of severity, and as I turned to her she looked tireder than I’d ever seen her. I’m pregnant, she said.

  The news didn’t even shock me, not then. But it certainly explained things.

  Does Cecil know?

  Of course Cecil knows.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Her shoulders slouched, forearms across her thighs, sitting like a boy. That old house of mine had patches of cold in it—places where the insulation had probably gone moist or places that were renovated and some that weren’t. We never lit a fire in the wood stove for fear that the chimney smoke would raise alarms. Water pooled on the windowsill and if I squinted I thought I could glimpse my breath in clouds. My crotch ached—a sudden pang.

  Who? I tried to say, but she just pressed her cheek to my chest and we settled right back into the bed and Jack hammered at his firepit—clang, clang, clang.

  NORA COUGHS, high and wheezy. When I press my ear to her chest her heart races like an athlete’s, and I
fight to remember the things Old Man West has told me about smoke inhalation and skin flaking like paper, airways and scar tissue and the human weakness to fire—all his stories over all those years. The house stinks. Trails of smoke sneak around the poorly framed basement door. The air feels orange, as if from a Polaroid photo. There’s the taste of sulphur, guncotton, campfires. I gather Nora in my arms and slink for the exit and try not to think about what Cecil will do. In the distance: sirens, the pop of lumber. Nora’s clothes lay heaped on the couch and for a moment I consider dressing her. Then I reach the back door and move to open it but the key is not in the lock. And the key is not in my pockets, or on the windowsill, or among the shoes and debris at the door’s base. I’ve got no way to open it—I’m trapped. And I all but hear Old Man West giving me shit for that door.

  There’s a single window I could have smashed and climbed through, but no way could I take Nora with me. Smoke twists across the ceiling, blue and heavy, bar-like. Nora’s skin has gone clammy and I try gently to wake her but she coos, she moans. I kiss her forehead. Where, I remember thinking, was Cecil?

  I lower Nora to the floor and reach for the knob and it damn near sears my palm. Heat pulses through that wood, tightens my cheeks the way shower steam does. My arm and the ruined skin on the bicep light up like it’s ’62 all over again, and I smell gasoline and the stink of rubber cement and hair burning like tar and it’s all I can do to swallow my gag reflex. Then I’m in the jungle, that quick, on my knees with my sleeve in dark tatters, skin and muscles pus-white and the whole world cackling like death. A radio sizzles nearby, a black hand, boots and pieces of people and the air shimmers like a highway. It tastes like engine grease, the air—makes your tongue feel fat, coated. Friendly fire, someone screamed, right before whatever hit us hit us. Friendly fucking fire.

  Nora moans from the other room, but it sounds weak, somewhere else—like hearing her through the ringing in my ears, or not even hearing her at all, same as when that bomb hit us, the disorientation. And I can’t move to her, I can’t pull out of those sounds, those smells. It’s all the things that’d gone wrong come to life, there in the basement, there before me in the orange glow: the war and my breakup and Crib and the kid we couldn’t save from the fireball. It’s Linnea leaving and Jack’s broken heart. It’s Cecil hauling ass across the street to rescue me and his fiancée from the fire.