Ballistics

by D. W. Wilson

  Then I restarted the jeep and set off, having figured out not a thing.

  Years ago, Gramps drove us through Caribou Bridge, en route to the west coast; back then, the town was summed up by a single motel, after its namesake—the Bridge. Not much had changed; the streets spread out from the motel at its centre where the main haul looped it like a moat. Shops that keep a town alive—the liquor store, the grocery, the post office—dotted that strip, and I cruised around it in lazy laps. By that time in August, the wildfires had mounted the broadside of the not very distant mountains, and smoke sizzled into the air above them like three great, grey-haired legs. Ash and soot coated everything: the jeep’s hood and its windshield smeared as though by oil, the eavestroughs of local houses, the grim-skinned faces of those few remaining kids who dared the outdoors and whose parents had elected to hold the line.

  I parked in front of a shed-sized brick building cordoned off from the grocery store. Canada Post’s red sign was nailed lopsided to the brickwork; holes and the rusted leftovers of concrete anchors dotted the wall where the sign had previously hung—torn off by thunderstorms, teenagers without proper angst outlets, old Father Time. It was a long shot, both that the office would be open—the town had evac’d—and that they’d know Jack well enough to direct a stranger to him. I unfolded from the jeep and stood in the dregs of daylight and imagined, had that town been populated, that people would have watched me with shifty sideways eyes, would have shuttered their windows and clutched infants to their breasts. Across the street, in a lawn chair on the gravel parking lot of the Bridge motel, a rockstar-haired guy older than me nursed a beer.

  They’re not taking mail, he hollered.

  I tugged on the hem of my shirt and gathered what remained of my endurance.

  I’m actually looking for Jack West, I called, and made my way toward him.

  Think these fires are coming? he said. I’m Trevor, by the way. Guess I run this thing behind me here.

  You guess? I said. He had the squint of hangover, the early stages of beer gut. His nose curved off-centre and fatigue lines shadowed his cheekbones, dark as grease smears. But he was relaxed-looking there, had the posture of a guy just happy to talk. He’d given up fighting. My name’s Alan.

  Trevor patted his thighs—baggy, newly washed jeans—and swept his hands outward, to indicate everything.

  Family fucked off, certain the fires would take the place, he said. But these mountains never let us down before. Hell, they could landslide any minute if they wanted to. Worst you get is the occasional mountain cat, and that’s not more than an uninvited guest. I know old Jack, odd case, but he’d give you the shirt off his back. Good guy to drink beers with.

  I’m his son.

  That’s unexpected, Trevor said. He picked at the label of his beer, but I hadn’t seen him take a sip. Maybe he just liked to set an image.

  I’ve been getting that impression.

  He never mentioned any kids. I guess I never thought to ask. You look about as smart as him.

  Did he evac?

  A smile teased its way onto Trevor.

  Not Jack, no. He’s at the campground, I suspect. Unless he tried to canoe his way out. Want a beer? I bought a stash, soon as I found out everyone was leaving. Keeps me from being lonely.

  No thanks, Trevor.

  I’m sensing this is not a happy reunion, eh?

  Misery begets, I said.

  Trevor let his chin tip toward his chest—not quite a nod.

  You gonna cause him trouble? he said, no hint of threat, or warning, or judgment.

  I don’t know, I said, honestly.

  Well, head north outta town until you hit the turnoff marked by a tractor tire. That’s the campground he owns. Tell him I said hello, unless you’re going to kill him, in that case don’t tell him I said hello.

  I hope this place doesn’t burn up, I said.

  I still got my van. If it comes to it, I’ll load up whoever’s left and make for high ground.

  He finally sipped his beer and pressed it, afterward, to his forehead, eyes closed and his features loose in a way of great relief. I almost reconsidered his offer, but I needed my wits, needed to be able to coerce and threaten and guilt Jack into piling into my commandeered jeep. Gramps had waited long enough.

  A PADLOCKED GATE barred entry to the campground’s parking lot, so I abandoned the jeep on the roadside and cleared the fence with ease. The grounds had a communal roasting-pit with slate slabs laid out in a spiral and chop-logs set in a ring around the pit. A ways off: RV hookups for American campers who liked their satellite TV, a panelboard hut that said Hot Showers—25¢. Opposite that, somebody had attached a log cabin to a long, flat building with rusted-out flashing. Within, I saw the dim glow of small-wattage bulbs. Administration, it read. It had a wheelchair ramp, greening wood steps, windows gone unwashed, and shingles curling up like anxious, thirsty tongues. In the distance, where tenters would pitch camp, the residue of cookfires trailed away in a line. Overhead, and blotting the sun, columns of smoke drummed skyward, wide and twisted as barbicans, and the daylight barely pierced the cloudscreen. But for once it didn’t smell like burning wood—it smelled like my childhood, like good times with Gramps. This is where I came from, I thought. And then: I could die here—all it’d take was a shift in the wind.

  My palms had gone sweaty, so I wiped them on the hem of my shirt. The campground was in decent shape; I had expected rust and disrepair, the stink of garbage and of meat burned to charcoal, a dirt-and-gravel slaptogether where drunks would stagger rather than home to their wives. But Jack’s campground was clean, landscaped, the trees thick with greenery and life. Quaint, I guess. Like a home. Around the administration building, he’d planted bushes; I heard the tick-a-tick-a of a sprinkler, some ways off, probably in disregard of water regulation—and ridiculous, either way. The whole moment, all the time it took me to take it in, was like stepping into someone else’s dream: a striped canvas lawn chair had been angled at the setting sun—it looked well-sat-in; at the foot of the green-wood stairs, a football tottered in the wind; inside the house, a low orange light flared up, and then went dark. I felt like I was on the verge of a memory, or on the outside of one, looking in. A dog ought to have barked, or a bird of prey should have wheeled skyward and away. But instead I got the silence of a place devoid of woodlife, a place abandoned. Caribou Bridge was a ghost town to more than the people who’d forsaken her homes.

  He came out of the cabin in a ballcap and a khaki shirt, in blue jeans faded at the thighs and scuffed boots that could’ve been military. Average height, my height, with a bare lip—I expected a moustache?—and sideburns peppered grey. Forty-seven, he must’ve been, or forty-eight. His cheekbones were visible beneath his eyes and shadowy with sleepless bags and as he approached I saw or imagined the pupils constricted to beads, the whites veiny as Christmas mints—drinking alone, here beyond the end of the world.

  His right leg limped and his foot tended not to lift high above the gravel and instead churned pebbles beneath the sole. A spitting image of Gramps, if Gramps were forty years younger. He moved like a man uncertain, slipped one hand in his back pocket, the other to the nape of his neck, rubbed it in the slow-motion way of someone coming to realization. Jack West, my father—a middle-aged, tired-looking guy in boots that needed a polish.

  He stopped—ridiculously—at gunfight range, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a holster on his hip, a Peacemaker unlatched and its hammer cocked, his thick, fatherly fingers two twitches shy of a draw. We stood there, breathing at one another. I think, there in that parking lot, that I understood why he couldn’t have gone before Gramps without invitation.

  Is it Dad? he said, and flicked his hand, as if to dry it. Then he rubbed its knuckles.

  He had a heart attack, I said after a pause. But he pulled through.

  Jack’s hand went to his cheek, his finger scratched the skin beside his ear.

  Is he okay, though?

  He thi
nks he’s dying.

  Is he though? Dying?

  I shoved my hands in my pockets. He sent me to find you, to bring you back. I’ve got a bunch of your things.

  Memory box?

  Something like that.

  I’d like to see it, he said. He had a gravelly voice, like someone who’d spent a few good hours crying. I could see his throat bob when he swallowed. A breeze flicked his short hair, one or two strands dancing up and down.

  You gonna come see him?

  Been waiting almost thirty years, of course I’ll go see him. Might need a drink first, but of course I’ll go see him. Want to come inside?

  I gave in, and he held his ground as I approached across the gravel, until I had neared enough that he could have reached out and belted me a friendly punch on the shoulder. He turned on his heel, and almost side by side we walked the last stretch to the administration building. At the entrance, he knocked his boots against the stairs; I followed suit. The door hung loose on its hinges, but once inside I saw another, stronger, wood one that barred entry to his cabin, his small reclaimed personal space. We pushed through that, too.

  The cabin was the size of a studio. Its kitchen spanned one wall opposite his bed; at night, he’d hear the fridge’s growly rumble. The oven door yawned open—the cabin was probably not the best-insulated structure this side of the Rockies, and heat is heat. On the windowsill sat a knot of parched vine, some kind of herb. His tap had a filter. Outside, there’d be a compost pile.

  Aren’t you going to tell me I picked a helluva time to show up? I said, to pre-empt. Jack went to the sink and filled a kettle, set it on an element.

  He shrugged, a flash of goofy dad. Are you hungry? he said.

  I don’t really eat breakfast.

  How about some eggs. With the coffee I’m making.

  He brandished a pan at me, reached for the cupboard door.

  I’ll have some eggs, I said.

  Free-range, he said, then he set about cooking, and I flopped onto the shiny leather sofa that seemed like it didn’t belong.

  I took it in, that cabin with its manhandled walls of pine, the kerosene lamps and the candlewax that dotted the surface of a coffee table, the sooty dust that gilded all the places beyond easy reach. What I wanted to see was a clue about his life—pictures or trinkets or the kind of baubles you can stuff inside a maroon shoebox and tuck beneath your bed. A bookshelf stood against the far wall, stocked with titles like Firewater and Home-Brewing for Dummies and European Spirits. On the top shelf: a bottle of plum-coloured liquid with a bloated wood cross somehow crammed inside. There was an otherworldly scent to the house. I smelled dog, but more than that: I smelled a place I knew from my childhood, like déjà vu, or like coming all of a sudden into possession of a memory—like when you wake from a dream so real you can’t be sure it wasn’t.

  I watched Jack’s shoulders, the stiffness of those neck muscles so determined not to turn his head. He smeared oil in the pan and cracked two eggs, scrambled them with swift, gladiatorial thrusts. Dishes columned up at the sink’s side; flattened pizza boxes were wedged between the fridge and the counter. Thirty years separated us, and I couldn’t place him. Awkward, humble, reticent in that way of shy people and dads who can’t talk to their sons.

  Do you have a dog? I said.

  Sent him away with a buddy, he said, and scraped the eggs onto a plate. He set it down in front of me on the coffee table, pressed a thumb to the edge to kill its wobble.

  Why not just take him yourself?

  No licence, he said. Then he dragged a chair from the table, sat in it reverse, arms draped over the backrest like a teenager. I made the trip to Owenswood to try and get Linnea out of there, but I can’t drive legally.

  He paused, linked his fingers together, elbows thrown wide. His eyes moved over his knuckles, as if counting each one.

  There are worse things, I said.

  Let me get you some cutlery.

  I ate, and he gravitated from that chair to the window, watched me or watched whatever was outside. The fires maybe, so close now you could feel the heat on your cheek like breath. We needed to get in Colton’s jeep and head east, we both knew that. But I finished eating and he took the plate and rinsed it without soap and set it on a drying rack of braided tree branches. For a second, he lingered like he might attack the rest of the dishes, too, but instead he ran cold water and lowered his mouth to the stream, came up wiping his chin with his sleeve, like I’d seen Gramps do a thousand times before.

  Jack lit one of the kerosene lamps, lifted it from its hook.

  Tell me straight: is Dad okay?

  He thinks he’s dying.

  The skin around Jack’s eyes constricted, the muscle in one cheek tensed.

  But is he?

  He had a heart attack, but they defibbed him.

  Can’t you just tell me?

  I don’t know if he’s actually dying, Jack. I’m not a doctor.

  Well, he said, and shrugged a defeated-person’s shrug. I didn’t know that.

  He went to the cabin door carrying the kerosene lamp. Then he seemed to notice it, made a grimace at it, a confused shake of his head.

  Let’s have a drink, he said, and pushed on through.

  I followed him out. His yard—his space—had its own firepit with handcrafted wooden chairs and another slate spiral, this one far more carefully done, more evenly spaced and angled as if measured. There, he limped toward a padlocked shed twenty or thirty metres away. Trees broke up the mountain view; the grass had been recently mowed. Strung between a couple of trunks was a tire rubber. At its base: a pigskin, worn to a snub nose at both tips. The occasional beer can lay in the grass, some of them doublebent and hole-punched by bullets. There was a swing set; I don’t know why. Jack’s limp became more pronounced the closer he got to the shed, or maybe he just picked up speed. With each step, he threw the leg forward at the hip, hardly bent the knee at all. That’s the kind of injury that will one day cause a leg to buckle, and I thought about asking him what had happened, and I thought about telling him, then and there, the fate that had befallen Colton and that even now he wouldn’t be able to get my mom back.

  It’s far away to reduce vibrations, he said upon reaching the door. A fist-sized padlock barred entry, and Jack drew the key from a leather cord around his neck. Inside was a distillery, barrels with their bent-up tubes and that warm smell of fermentation like a small-town pub. He kicked off his boots, tossed me a wink, and tiptoed across the floor—concrete, and probably immaculately level—and snagged a bottle from a stand. It sloshed with translucent liquid. He offered it to me, two-handed, like a thing of great worth.

  I was trying for something European, he said, but pronounced it Euro-peen. Really, not much more than firewater. Can’t make it right.

  Have you got old tin cans we can swig this from? I said from the doorway.

  He squinted, lifted the corners of his mouth.

  I could empty out some beans.

  I’m kidding, Jack.

  His eyes darted instantly to the bottle. He swirled it.

  I don’t mind. I could empty some beans. If you’d like that?

  Let’s just have a drink, I said.

  We crossed the yard. Jack kicked an empty beer can and something inside it tink-a-linked. He paused to stare up at the smoke, to inhale through his nose and shake his head, let his chest deflate much slower than it’d inflated. He motioned to two lawn chairs in the shade cast by the small cabin, and I dropped into one while he rummaged inside for two clean glasses. Through the open window I heard water run, the squeak of him scrubbing with a bare hand. He came out flicking water from the insides of two jam jars.

  I never really saw the point of buying cups, he said, and handed one to me, threads and all.

  How long you been here?

  I lost count. More than a decade. But I was away.

  Away where?

  Europe, he said, with a certain severity.

  Doing what?

>   As he sloshed the liquor into the jars his hands shook. The liquor tasted like liquor, and not much else. Like drinking a Christmas tree, Gramps once said of a buddy’s homebrew. Jack scratched his temple incessantly; the skin was raw and waxy there and when he finished he checked his nails for blood and the bedrock of dead flesh. A breeze blew by from the east, but it didn’t cool me so much as just move the heat around. If I stuck my tongue out, I tasted charcoal.

  Jack refilled his glass, a finger’s worth.

  I didn’t think Dad would send you, he said after a time.

  Neither did I.

  How’d you find me?

  Archer, then my mom. Had a run-in with her husband.

  I’m not surprised, Jack said. Then he shot the liquor in his glass and wheezed against the burn.

  It’s a story for the drive, I told him, and he eyed me quizzically between the whoops of his cough.

  When he had cleared himself, he sat just looking at the alcohol in his glass like some kind of diviner. Then he emptied the jar onto his yard in a wide spray, and corked the bottle. The chair sagged when he dropped his weight into it. I wondered what to say to him, what kinds of stories he’d like to hear, if any.

  You like football? he said.

  Hockey.

  I don’t mind the CFL. Hope the Yanks don’t buy it up?

  No opinion.

  How about Iraq? You’re young.

  They say it’ll be like Vietnam again.

  Is that what they say?

  He looked at the bottle. I considered asking for another, but the day was still young.