Slow Recoil

by C. B. Forrest

  “Does it come with a can opener?” Huff said.

  “Is that the model with the lawn mower engine?”

  “Good on gas. Great for parking downtown,” the bartender said as he filled a patron’s mug with amber Stella Artois. “Probably have to bring your groceries home one bag at a time, though.”

  “I suppose I could always get a roof rack,” McKelvey said.

  “And maybe a trailer,” Huff added.

  “Jesus, I hate this,” McKelvey said. He took his pen, scratched out the circled ads, folded the paper under his arm, and got up from his bar stool. “Maybe I’ll just get a goddamned bicycle and a pair of those Spandex shorts.”

  He paid up his tab, said goodnight to Huff, and stepped into the night. One block over, streetcars shooked along their tracks, moving across then up the city through old Cabbagetown, where the earliest and poorest immigrants had carved a life, then on past the gay village at Church and Wellesley. It was a beautiful evening of late summer. The air was dry and still. It was the sort of evening that reminded McKelvey there was hay being cut somewhere beyond the suffocating concrete and chrome of this city, large round bales left standing in fields like something constructed and abandoned by an earlier civilization.

  This was the long weekend that brought with it the end of summer, if not officially, then at least psychologically. It was the Jerry Lewis telethon during which the hundred-year-old comedian removed parts of his tuxedo in hourly increments, mopping the sweat from his face with a balled-up hankie. It was the harried mothers with their bratty kids at the office supply store, baskets piled high with binders and pencil cases, ruled paper wrapped in plastic. McKelvey remembered how his own boy could never fall asleep on that final Monday night before the start of another school year.

  “I’ve got a tummy ache,” Gavin would say.

  Or it was a headache. Or German measles. The sudden affliction of polio.

  It was an area in which McKelvey felt a kinship with the child, for he had also detested that final sleep before entering the battlefield of another school year. Wondering which burned-out teacher you’d get stuck with, rating their defects on a scale—I’ll trade halitosis for dandruff, body odour for the stench of half-digested vodka. He would stare at the shadows on the ceiling, willing some natural disaster of biblical proportions. But his hometown in the north knew no floods or tempests. The deep freeze of winter was broken up by a couple of months of moderate summer. The closest they came in Ste. Bernadette to an act of God were the infinite blankets of blackflies that hatched in early May like the spawn of hell itself. McKelvey had swallowed them by the dozen while riding his bike, choking on them, digging them from his ears and the corners of his eyes.

  The sidewalk in front of his condo apartment off Front Street East was undulating with human traffic now, couples and groups of young people on their way to eat wings and sushi, or simply to sit and look good on the patio bars. All of these young people, McKelvey thought, with their bodies at the apex of health and strength, carefree as though life would always be just like this, filled with free time and spending money. He figured there was no sense in telling them the truth about what lay ahead. They would find out, just as he had, by navigating through one shitstorm at a time. Every year that he lived, he grew fonder of his late father and the example the man had tried to impart. That is to say, he let the man off the hook for all the things he had or hadn’t done as a father. The way things had worked out between McKelvey and his own son, well, it put a man’s view of himself in a clearer context. There was no end to the second-guessing, playing with the pain and regret like a tongue poking a canker.

  The sidewalk gave off a warmth still, as though it were the collective embers of all those golden days of July and August, when the tourists shuffled along on their way to a Blue Jays game or to visit the Hockey Hall of Fame. McKelvey lit a cigarette and enjoyed the rush of dope to his head, the effect of which always seemed compounded after a couple of pints of beer, as though the cigarettes knew his defenses were already weakened, so they took the opportunity to carry him across the threshold. He coughed a little and cleared his throat. It was the third and final allotted ration in what was his latest scheme to maneuver within this habit, for breaking it all together seemed utterly futile. Old dogs and all of that business. He had become, in his advanced years, a proponent of compromise.

  He walked the three or four paces to the door of his condo building. An attractive woman in her early forties walked by in a group of mixed company, and she caught McKelvey’s eye. A nice red dress that fit her well, fit her very well, a white sweater tied across her shoulders to guard against the evening chill. They gave each other this shy little smile, kids flirting in a schoolyard, and McKelvey shrugged as she walked on past, shifting her eyes to the sidewalk when she could no longer hold his gaze. He pinched the glow from the half-finished cigarette, dropping the ash to the sidewalk, twisted the end and put the remainder of the smoke in his shirt pocket. There was a measure of consolation in knowing he would start the next day up half a cigarette in the debit column. It was all just games that grownups played, this mental masturbation. One had to be grateful for the small mercies won or awarded in a day.

  McKelvey climbed the stairs. Each unit had its own landing and a small velvet-topped bench against the wall in case someone was waiting for you and for some strange reason you didn’t want them in your house. It was a new building and they were collectively the first tenants. There was the old Italian, Giuseppe, on the main floor, a former member of the resistance in Italy during the Second World War, the Resiztenza. McKelvey had tried to tell the old man to stop using a stone to prop open the inner door of the building, saying it defeated the purpose of a so-called secure entrance. The old man shrugged and said he could never remember to bring his keys with him when he limped up to the St. Lawrence Market to buy his coils of sausage. On the second floor was a young gay couple, Chad and Russell, both of whom appeared to be lawyers or perhaps financial traders, always dressed in these expensive suits and ties. On the third floor, just below McKelvey, there was a divorced woman in her late thirties or early forties who made Hattie a little jealous because she was cute with her short hair, and she sometimes smiled at McKelvey. It had been an adjustment to leave The Beach, the old neighbourhood off Queen East and Gerrard with its converted cottages and the boardwalks, the first home he had made for his wife and his son; he accepted the fact it was a geographical cure of sorts, the shaking of ghosts. It had been an adjustment, but he was getting used to it. The people in his building were as good a collection of wayfarers as he could imagine.

  Now McKelvey stood in front of his door for a moment to catch his breath, embarrassingly dizzy from the short climb. Stars and pins of light across his vision. He sat on the little red bench, the first time he’d used it in almost a year. It struck him that he had forgotten to eat lunch. A slip, perhaps, a sort of backsliding to old ways. It began with forgetting to eat. Then it was the laundry, or lack of it, wearing the same pants three days in a row, the stubble on his face coming in thick and silver. That living with Hattie had kept his life on track by offering a division of workable quotients seemed glaringly obvious in moments such as these. Living with someone gave reference to each part of the day. They became your gyroscope. There was the time you got up, the time you ate breakfast, the time you went to bed, the time you swept the hardwood, cleaned the toilets. Left to his own devices and vices, McKelvey had only himself to worry about. And therein lay the problem, at least according to Hattie.

  She said, “You’ll jump in the harbour to save a stranger, but you won’t take the time to fucking feed yourself. God, Charlie, what am I going to do with you?”

  He unlocked the deadbolt and stepped inside, the smell of the six strips of bacon he’d fried that morning still heavy in the air. The light was flashing on his answering machine across the darkened room. He drew toward the beacon like a ship guided to a distant shoreline.

  The first message was f
rom Jessie Rainbird, the mother of his granddaughter and the last person to love his son. A runaway from Manitoulin Island, the girl had seen more than her fair share of life and all of its darkness on the streets of the nation’s largest city. She had grappled with the curse of addiction, and the myriad lessons it brought. He knew there were times when the pressure of straight life and the memories of Gavin came back to her, a haunting refrain. He knew also that she stumbled sometimes but always managed to pick herself back up. He was proud of her and had come to love her in a way he had never thought possible—they had a history, this girl and McKelvey, and he knew without doubt he would always come through for her.

  Jessie’s year-long hairdressing course was wrapping up now, and she was planning to head back to her Aunt Peggy’s place on Manitoulin Island to take a break and contemplate her next steps. She said in the message that she wanted to bring Emily over for a visit before the two of them took the Sunday morning Greyhound up Highway 69. Before signing off, she admonished McKelvey for the Coca-Cola he had served the curly-haired Emily the last time she had left the child in his overnight care while she went out with some classmates.

  “And no Krispy Kreme donuts, either,” she said. “She’s turning three, Charlie.”

  He smiled as he made a mental note to buy groceries in advance of Saturday to supplement the jar of mayo and the heel of dark orange cheddar cheese in his fridge. The smile faded as the next message came on. It was Tim Fielding, the young widower he’d met at the men’s grief group up at St. Michael’s Hospital. There solely to satisfy his wife’s desire to see him progress within the realm of healing from grief and trauma, McKelvey had somehow ended up befriending the young man. And it was through tagging along while Tim got a tattoo in memory of his wife that McKelvey had made the strange discovery of Jessie Rainbird. That Polaroid photo of Gavin and Jessie tucked within the pages of a portfolio at the tattoo shop, the fated young couple there to get matching tattoos. The young girl pregnant. Lovers from the street. Everything had unfolded out of that moment of sheer serendipity. And it was for this reason he felt his relationship with the young man was meant to be.

  “Charlie, it’s Tim. Tim Fielding. I’m sorry I haven’t called in a while. Listen. I need your help with something. Please give me a call. The number’s the same. I really need your help, Charlie… someone’s gone missing.”

  It was the sound of Tim’s voice that did it. There was something there, a desperation. Someone’s gone missing. Surely to god the man knew enough to call the police. As a retired detective with the Metro Hold-up Squad, formerly of the Fraud Squad and a lifetime in patrol cars across four divisions, McKelvey certainly had connections and numbers to call, names to drop—the fraternity of the police lasted for a lifetime, after all. But he wasn’t on active duty. And the connections he did have were growing fewer and farther between as new-generation careerists on the force tried to distance themselves from his maverick investigation of Pierre Duguay and all the fallout that had come from it—the files opened by Professional Standards and the Special Investigations Unit. For McKelvey had been correct in his hunch that the lead investigator on his son’s case was off the mark. That Detective-Sergeant Raj Balani had turned out to be truly dirty—that he was on the payroll of the bikers and directly implicated in Gavin’s murder because the boy had recognized the man hanging with the biker Marcel Leroux—well, it was a black eye for the force once the story hit the press. A crime writer with the Toronto Sun apparently had a book in the works. He’d called a few times, but McKelvey had yet to return the call. There was nothing to say; what was done was done.

  He flicked the desk light by the window overlooking the alley and the brick face of an old warehouse preserved in its original character. In this neighbourhood you could turn a corner and walk straight into 1923, half expecting to see old-world mobsters with tommy guns, scuttling barrels of illegal whiskey on the flatbed trucks. He thumbed through his small black address book, most of the entries long ago scratched out. Mutual couple friends, well-meaning folks who had simply drifted away from he and Caroline in the dark days and months that followed the murder of their boy. It was the sort of extraordinary event that made people look a little too closely at themselves, into the fragile nature of this strange arrangement.

  He glanced at his wristwatch and saw that Tim had left the message just over an hour ago. He dialed the number and chewed at the skin on the side of his thumb. If smoking was his worst habit, then this was his oldest. He’d been doing it as long as he could remember, to kill time or boredom or anxiousness. As a boy he’d sat on the floor and looked up as his father did the same thing, sitting at the kitchen table with a stubby bottle of Labatt 50, there in body but somewhere else entirely.

  “Charlie?” Tim said as the lines connected.

  The creepiness of call display never ceased to amaze McKelvey. “I got your message,” he said. “I was down at Garrity’s.”

  “I don’t know what to do here, Charlie. This woman, this student of mine. Not a day student but a night school student…”

  “Slow down, Tim,” McKelvey said, using his cop’s measured, authoritarian voice.

  “Donia. Donia Kruzik. She’s taking English as a second language courses at the high school on Wednesday nights. I’ve been teaching night courses since last September. It gets me out, I make a little extra money. And…and anyway, I’m sure you know how the story goes.”

  “How do you know she’s missing? Maybe she just went away for a while.”

  “She didn’t show up for class last night. I called a half dozen times. Then this afternoon I stopped by her apartment and—”

  “Whoa, hold up,” McKelvey said. “Back up a minute here. Did you say you left a half dozen messages? You stopped by her place? You do that for all your students, Tim?”

  He heard Tim’s long exhalation. He pictured the younger man removing those glasses with the round lenses that made him look just a little like John Lennon, rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Tim said.

  McKelvey said, “I figured as much. It always is.”

  “I didn’t sleep last night,” Tim said, and there was defeat in his voice. “I need to get some rest. I can’t even think or see straight. Will you meet me for a coffee tomorrow morning, Charlie? I need someone to talk to. Someone I can trust.”

  “I’ll be over first thing,” McKelvey said.

  He opens the medicine chest above the toilet and stands there a full minute, perhaps two, this game he plays on odd or even days. The dance is how he thinks of it. Or jerking his own chain, more like it. At last McKelvey sighs, pushes aside the roll-on deodorant, the striped can of Barbasol shave cream, and his fingers find the little plastic bottle—always pushed to the back, as though this will somehow delay the inevitable. Spills the remaining tablets into his palm, counts them, measuring them across days or weeks not unlike the way his own father used to stand in front of the refrigerator on a Saturday night, lips moving in thought as he worked through the mental calculations: bottles of beer against hours remaining until the start of work on Monday. He funnels all but two of the tabs back into the bottle and swallows them back with a snap of his head. The white powder residue tastes of bitter chemicals. He stoops over the sink and scoops up a palm of tap water.

  Looking at his face in the mirror, he is unable to meet his own eyes for just an instant. He knows how slippery a slope this is, for his life’s work revolved around wading through the mess caused by this very thing: the getting of it, the keeping of it, the trading and selling of it, the killing and hurting for it. The motive for the majority of crimes, at least in McKelvey’s experience, could be boiled down to one of three things: drugs, greed or passion. And when those three elements combined to a single force, watch out. It was madness. Every man for himself. Working the Holdup Squad, McKelvey had come face to face with the desperate things a man would do in order to maintain the flow of his dope.

  It was a
lways simply a variation on a story as old as time itself. In his case, the doctor—the same doctor he’d been seeing without any sense of regularity for the past sixteen years—had prescribed the Oxycodone tablets to help treat the recurring pain that was the residue of the gunshot wound. A crease of sliced flesh along the top of the inside of his right thigh. The .45 slug from Pierre Duguay’s pistol had by some miracle missed his femoral artery—not to mention his balls. The scarred flesh was grey and shiny as plastic, and it ached now and then with a strange and unnameable pain, as though it were a radio signal emitting from the inside out. Some days it gave his walk a limp. Other days he forgot about it completely until he was stepping from his boxers and into the shower, when he looked down and saw it and his mind registered that yes, he had dueled in the hallway of his home; he had drawn and won.

  In those moments of utter clarity that came at three o’clock in the morning—when the city was quiet, his apartment was still and he had only himself to betray—McKelvey was incapable of providing a satisfactory justification for the ongoing prescription. Everything hurt, and Christ it felt good to get a little numb, that was all. Numb the way a dentist made your gums before delivering a filling. It seemed as though the things in life which should have been getting easier, the hitching of the belt and the squaring of the shoulders, were in fact becoming more of a struggle. There was a cumulative weight to his movements. His energy was on the wane.

  He moves now to the small living room and sits back in the loveseat Hattie forced him to buy at some ridiculous high-end import place on Queen Street West that had these African masks all over the walls. He had assumed his work was done with the selection of the loveseat, but oh how wrong he had been, for there had followed a litany of questions: selection of fabric covering, selection of throw cushions, selection of accompanying ottoman, and on and on. McKelvey had at one point asked the wafer-thin sales clerk if he was in on this gag with Hattie, like where were the hidden cameras. The thing had cost about as much as his first car, a point that was lost on Hattie in her mission to propel the vessel known as SS Charlie McKelvey towards the twenty-first century.