These guys had picked their spot perfectly. But first, I decided, those pricks in the front seat would have to get me out of the car, and they would have to kill me before I would let them do that.
The car stopped in the middle of the road and the driver popped it into park. “This is where you get out,” he said, without turning around so I couldn’t see his face.
I said nothing, just sat in the middle of the back, my arms crossed in front of me. I knew one of them had to get out and open the door, because the locks in the back couldn’t be opened from the inside. The guy in the passenger seat slipped on his gloves, and without saying a word, got out of the car and flung open the back door on his side of the car. “Get out,” he commanded.
“Fuck you,” I replied.
“I said get the fuck out.”
“Fuck you.”
“Son of a bitch!” He leaned forward, his hands above the door. “I’ll fucking drag you out of there!”
“Come and get me, you motherfucker! I dare you!”
He stopped and backed up a step. The driver gave a short guffaw, but did nothing to help his partner. “Hurry up,” the driver said. “You’re letting out all the warm air.”
The other one stood up straight and grabbed his belt to adjust it. It was the typical intimidation routine, but I wasn’t scared of him. I had nothing to lose. He placed his right hand down by his right hip, clicking open a holster. “Listen, you piece of shit! I’m sick of fucking bastards like you fucking up the world, so you get out of this car now!”
“Fuck you!”
He pulled his gun out, getting into the two-fisted stance seen on every cop show and movie since forever. He leveled the pistol at my head. “Get the fuck out of the car now!”
“Come and get me, you fucker!”
There was a short click, like someone turning a key in a lock, as he flipped off the safety. Then there was a longer, deeper click that echoed so loud in the cold, clear air that I flinched, thinking he had shot me. But he had only cocked the pistol.
His voice was a monotone hiss and his phrasing came out as several one-word sentences. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
The lack of emotion in his demand showed that he was ready to shoot me, but I didn’t care. I was already dead. I knew that. There was really nothing I could do about that now. I would either die on the backseat of this car, or freeze to death on the side of the road, and I decided that I wasn’t going to let them take the coward’s way. I wasn’t going to let myself go down easy. They would have to take an active role in my death, get actual blood on their hands, by shooting me. I spat at him and taunted him, trying to force his hand.
“Go ahead! Blow my fucking head off! Blow my fucking brains out! I don’t care! It won’t bother me, ’cause I’ll be dead, and even if you dump my body in the street out here, you’ll still have to explain the blood, brains, and DNA all over your backseat! Plastic can’t protect everything, and you can detail it all you want, but something’s going to be left behind. You should know that. Something is always left behind, and you’ll be fucked!”
The tip of his pistol dropped for a second, came up again, held for a second, and then dropped again, this time for good. “Goddamn it! Son of a bitch!” he shouted as he rose out of his stance. I let out the breath I was holding, my hammering heart starting to slow with the realization that I had won this part of the showdown.
“Fuck this shit,” the other cop said from the driver seat, and another set of mosquito-type stings struck me in the neck. Everything erupted in another blast of fire and jolt of agonizing energy. My body stiffened like a board, but this time the attack was much shorter, only a brief second, and I was released, my resistance destroyed. I was dragged out of the car, flopping like a fish, and left on the side of the road. Lying on my back. My body twitched in a series of aftershocks. Daggers of pain danced about my body, turning my skin inside out, it seemed. Arctic air, burning like acid, burst into my lungs and throat, as I gasped for breath.
My eyes blinked with tears as the pain dissipated, as my brain switched from its primitive mode into something more human. I saw that the sky was clear, the stars scattered across the dark night, and the moon bathing the air in a pale blue glow. There was no sound, except for the distant crackling of ice crystals in the air. The car was long gone, or at least I thought it was. I had lost all sense of time. But I couldn’t have been on the ground for too long, because I was still alive and the cold was tearing at me with more vengeance than the Taser. Still, I didn’t move. I just blinked and stared at the beauty of a clear winter sky.
34
Get up!
No.
Get up!
No. I don’t want to.
If you don’t get up, you’ll die.
I don’t care if I die.
Of course you do.
Get up!
No!
Get up!
Leave me alone!
You can make it.
I said, Leave me alone, Grace!
You can do it, Leo. You can make it.
What the fuck do you know, you stupid Indian? Did you make it? Huh?
Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself. Get up. You can do it.
No. I can’t.
Yes you can. But only if you get up off this road.
What’s the point, Grace? What’s the point?
The point is to live.
You didn’t.
I know I didn’t.
They don’t tell me how to live my life. Or how to die.
But I didn’t have a choice.
Sure you did. You could have stopped walking the streets. Cleaned yourself up. Gotten a real job.
It’s not that easy, Leo. And you know it. Besides, it wasn’t my fault. I was murdered.
So was I.
But you’re not dead yet. I was dead before I hit the ground. You aren’t. You can still get up.
But I don’t want to get up. I want to stay here.
No. You don’t. Nobody does.
You’re too young to know, but sometimes people do.
And I’m always going to be too young. But I know enough, I know that you don’t want to give up.
You don’t know shit.
What about your kids? They know you’re alive.
So what?
So stay alive for them, Leo. That’s the least you can do.
But I keep fucking it up, over and over again, so what’s the point?
You don’t want to end up like me. I’m dead, so what’s your excuse? What’s ours?
I don’t understand?
What’s your excuse for lying here in the middle of the road and not getting up?
I’m tired. I’m tired of it all.
But that’s still not an excuse.
But what’s the point of it all?
The point is to get up. Just do that and figure out the other stuff later.
* * *
I got up. I sat up in the middle of the road.
There wasn’t too much in the way of windchill out here; it was worse downtown with all the high buildings to funnel the air into harsh gusts. But the cold still ripped into me, scratching and slashing at my exposed skin like jagged shards of glass. I was up, but I had to do something quick, or the weather would kill me right where I was. I couldn’t stay where I was, because I was in the middle of nowhere. I had to move. The strip mall area was only two or three kilometers away, so it was possible, but I had to fix things first before I did.
I pulled off my boots, undid my pants, and took off my jeans, placing them underneath my butt. And I took off the socks, followed by the long underwear. I ignored the cold that thrashed at my exposed legs, and pulled the long johns over my head—the lingering scent of urine and sweat seeped through the fabric—and tied the legs once around my head and a couple times around my neck.
The cold diminished the instant my head was covered and my face protected. My breath misted against my face. With eighty percent of body heat escaping throug
h the head and face, I knew I now had a better chance.
Once my head was covered, I wasted no more time. I pulled on my jeans and slipped on my boots. I pulled the socks over my hands, and once I stood up, I shoved them into my pockets. I headed in the direction of the strip-mall buildings, using the feel of the concrete of the road as a guide, because I was blind. I tried not to think of the bone-chilling air, tried to ignore my legs. I was angry with the cold and my shivering body, and focused on one step at a time. One foot in front of the other.
I took ten steps but worried I might trip or walk into the ditch, so I peeked one eye through the pee-hole to see where I was. The buildings weren’t any closer, but I was still in the middle of the road. I wasn’t worried about my two assailants coming back, because they were cowards who had done their deed and were long gone. I didn’t worry about any traffic coming my way, because if anybody else came down this road, they would see me before I saw them, and I’d be saved. Nobody would drive past me in this weather.
My exposed eye started to tear, and my tears started to freeze, so I closed the pee-hole and continued walking. I walked twenty steps before I looked again; still no closer. Over time, I became comfortable with my sense of direction and less worried about walking off the road, so my steps increased between each look, to thirty, forty, fifty, seventy-five. The buildings seemed to be getting closer, but my tears that froze instantly made it difficult to see.
My body stopped shivering and the burning in my legs and toes faded until I could barely feel anything below my waist. Walking became more difficult with every step. I jogged a bit, but that only aggravated the remnant pain in my ribs from the time Jackie’s neighbor beat me. So I went back to walking. My shoulders and neck throbbed with the pain of keeping them hunched against the cold. Breathing was almost impossible.
I did make it to the strip-mall buildings, and even though I felt a brief gush of relief, I knew I was only halfway there. I had to get into one of these buildings somehow and I knew there were would be no unlocked doors. This was the industrial equivalent of the suburbs, and all doors would be locked.
The only way to get in was to break in a door, but the ones at the back were strong safety doors with no glass. The front doors were all glass, which I could probably kick in with my boots, but they, too, had another inner safety door that a tank couldn’t get through. The only breakable material was the large picture windows at the front of each business.
But these buildings were well taken care of, so there were no rocks, no large pieces of debris lying around I could use to smash a window. My pocket contained only my wallet, keys, and some coins, but the coins only clattered off the glass and fell to the sidewalk.
I thudded the side of my fist against the glass but it was like hitting a brick wall. The only reaction was pain in my wrist that radiated into my shoulder and almost knocked me flat. The glass was thick and the little sticker at the bottom right-hand corner told me it was “SAFE-T Glass, Industrial Strength Against Breakage.” I kicked the glass but it only vibrated slightly. I threw my body against it and the glass flexed and vibrated and bounced me back. I fell on my ass, but got up quickly, tore the long underwear off my head, and threw myself against the glass again.
“Break, you fucker, break!” I screamed, body-checking the glass over and over. It vibrated like a leaf in the wind but it wouldn’t break. I screamed like a karate freak and did everything I could, threw my body, kicked with my boots, drummed with my hands, but the glass only shook in response. It wouldn’t break.
“Goddamn it. Goddamn it!” I screamed, banging my fists against the glass until my strength gave way and I collapsed in a heap at the base of the window. I slugged it a couple more times, but I knew I was defeated. There was no way I was going to get into these buildings, no way I was going to be warm tonight. There was nothing for me to do but to let the cold come in and take me.
I pulled myself into a ball, and once my body cooled down from all the banging activity, the cold struck. I put both hands into one sock to share the warmth, my skin colder than the hand of death, because the hand of death wasn’t really cold. Only the weather was cold, and the hand of death, once it came, was warm and inviting, like sleep. My eyes closed and I drifted. The warmth came from inside and, even though I knew it wasn’t right, I didn’t push it away. I fell into it, and it became warmer. I accepted it without reservation and without regret, except for a wish to have seen my kids one final time.
35
When I was a kid, I didn’t deal much with bullies like those two cops who dropped me off to die in the cold. Things were different for army brats. Moving to a new school was never a problem for me; you could expect a new school every two to three years. And while there was a bit of minor bullying, every kid was in the same boat. You could be the biggest kid, the fastest runner, the best hockey player, the smartest one, the best looking at the school, but there was no point lording that over people because that could change in the space of a week or two. Your dad gets posted and whatever standing you had in the old school is gone. Or a bunch of new kids get posted in and they are now bigger, faster, smarter, or prettier.
But one time, after we returned to Edmonton from Germany, Dad figured it was time for me to learn French. Instead of enrolling me in the DND elementary school a five-minute walk away, I was sent to a city public school that had a French-immersion program.
I figured it was going to be no big deal to take a bus to this new school where there was going to be a bunch of new kids. But most of these kids had known each other from birth and they had already drawn their lines of demarcation. Every clique was set, every kid had his role and would be stuck in the role, unless he had some major life-altering change, till he graduated from high school.
So when I tried jumping into a game of keepaway before the bell rang, the kids froze with shock when I grabbed the ball and started to run. In the army base, there would be a pause—“Who’s the new kid?”—but the game would go on. Here, the game stopped dead. Nobody moved, and when I turned and saw what had happened, I froze, too.
Thinking this was part of the game, I waited, and tried to figure out the aspect of play that came next, but nobody said anything, they just stared at me like I was some type of leper or alien. We stood there for at least thirty seconds until it registered that I wasn’t welcome.
Mostly out of spite, I held onto the ball for several more seconds, and then tossed the ball to the ground. It rolled to the feet of another boy, and when he picked it up, the game started again.
I went over to the fence where I had placed my lunch box and sat down next to a bunch of other kids who seemed to be coloring. I smiled at them but they shook their heads and walked away without a word. This was a very weird school, I thought.
It got worse in class. Since I was in grade three, I lined up under the teacher holding up three fingers when the bell rang. She shouted out something but I couldn’t really understand her, but it seemed like three. And I was right because when I sat down in the classroom, at a seat near the back, my name was called and I shouted, “Present.”
The class giggled at that and the teacher frowned, but only for a second. She then smiled a bright smile and pointed at me in a jocular yet admonishing tone. When she spoke, I understood nothing. It was just like the trips we took to Quebec; people spoke, even to me, but I couldn’t understand a word they said. Why don’t they speak English? was my typical thought during those trips. And it was the same with that teacher. Why doesn’t she speak English?
When I didn’t answer, her bright smile turned into a frown and the admonishing was no longer jocular. She kept asking me questions, which I knew by the inflection in her voice, but I had no idea what she was saying. Just to make her happy, I replied once, saying, “Yes,” but instead of nodding, she harrumphed and shook her head. The entire class laughed out loud. Finally the teacher spoke to me in English, accented like Dad’s. “Leo, if you are unable to participate in the class, then please sit quietly for
the rest of the morning and don’t interrupt us.”
She turned away from me and started to teach whatever lesson was up for the day. I spent the morning drawing in my notebook, filling up the page with one complete line, a confused scribble that straggled across the page, while the various members of the class whispered, giggled, and pointed.
At lunch, I found a spot by myself and started to eat my baloney sandwich. While I ate, a kid I recognized from my class came up to me. He sat down. “Your name is Leo, right?”
“Yeah, so what?” I said, wary. I wasn’t sure if this guy was one of those who had laughed at me but I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Well, my name is Michael,” he said, saying it the English way, not Michel, the French way, which sounded like a girl’s name. He offered me a cookie. A peace offering? A sign of friendship? I took the cookie, glad to have met a new friend and offered him my banana. He took it with a smile, peeled it, and started to eat.
We said nothing, just ate, me the cookie, him the banana. When he finished, he tossed the peel in the garbage can by the corner. “Pretty good shot,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s true, then, that you can’t speak French?”
There was nothing for me to say except, “Yeah.” Still, a nervous feeling came over me, like it was before I was going to throw up.
“So if I said…”—and then he said something in French—“you wouldn’t know what I’m saying?”
“Nope.”
“And if I called you…”—he said a few words—“you wouldn’t know what I was saying?”
“Nope.”
“Okay,” Michael said. And as fast as he had sat down, he stood up and went over to a group of boys who were watching us. Michael was the biggest of them all and he whispered to them, pointed a few times, and they nodded.
After a minute or two, they came over, smiles on their faces. I thought, great, Mike’s going to introduce me to new friends and I’ll be part of the group.
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