by Nadia Bozak
Pulled Pickles’s knife and stabbed the blade deep and hard into the first body part I came to. A leg. A jean. A scream. Gave the knife a twist, pulled it out and poked it in again, into another leg, and then into an ass. And then all those boys got off Dave and they got on me, laid me out in the dirt, and it was my body being ripped and torn and kicked at. Held tight to the knife. Thought, just as soon as I can see something, just as soon as this blood is gone from my eyes, I’m gonna stab a heart out of one of these boys. That made me calm, patient. And then the beating stopped and the pain began. A hand pulled me up to my feet, and I felt arms around me and I knew without seeing that it was Dave. Staggered off into the dark, Dave and me.
“The Goddamns?! Goddamn fucking dirty dyke bitch. Goddamn crazy Indian.”
Shouts followed us as we slip-slod back down to the boat. Dave helped me just as much as he could, but we slipped in the dew on the grass and fell hard, way down that sloping riverbank. Laughed a bit at that, us falling like that. Dave, spitting and swearing. Lay for a minute, wet in the dew, then got up and together we found the boat.
We washed our faces in the water. Dave got a towel from his duffel, tore it in half, and gave me one part of it. Wet it, held it to the face, lips, bleeding eyes. Told Dave I thought I might die, I felt so sore and bad. Above us, the music was back on and car horns were honking, headlights flashing, mocking Dave and me and driving us away. Paddled far enough along so that we could not hear music, and then we stopped, pulled over. Beached the boat and crawled to shore and lay on our backs, wriggling and breathing hard. The bugs came to eat us alive, digging into the blood on our faces, getting stuck there. Got out the Muskol and sprayed it around, and it got in the open sores we had, the messed-up mouths and eyes, and it stung sure-as-shit.
Those guys had used on him a broken bottle. Me, I pulled the hip flask from his pocket. Opened it and took a generous swallow. Passed it back to Dave and he used it to douse a corner of the rag. Said how he would have only one eye now if they’d got him just an inch higher. Held the towel tight to stop up the bleeding, though every time he pulled it away, more came crawling down.
“Fuck,” Dave said. “It’s been a while since I had the shit kicked out of me like that.”
“Me too,” I said. “This fucking sucks.” Spat blood into the water. Heard him there, but I couldn’t really see him through the darkness of the blood in my eyes. “I want to go back and kill those kids.”
“You always will,” said Dave. “Shit like this you never forget, believe me.”
He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and passed it over. Felt his hand was shaking. He rolled another for himself and sat back with it, stretching his legs out as far as that tight ship would allow. Smoked in the darkness, bobbing all calm on the river’s endless drift.
“Fuck, kid,” said Dave looking at me in the moonlight. “What did they kick your ass for? Me I can see, but you’re a girl.”
“I guess when you stab some fuckers like I did, well, you’re just fair game after that.”
Dave said, “It’ll be better when we get to a city. No more of this bush-bash shit.”
“They saw us and they saw a couple of freaks. That and you’re an Indian. You’re always asking for it.”
“I got it coming from all sides because Indians hate me too. They know I’m no Indian soon as I open my mouth and talk White like I do.”
Touching his slice, Dave said, “Likely I need stitches. Not that I’ll get any.”
“Could always just staple it shut,” I said. “Or tape it.”
For a while there was darkness enough we did not know if our eyes were open or shut. Wet wounds airing out in the cool of the night. Talked and were silent and talked some more, and then one or both of us said let’s go set their town on fire.
“Better,” I said. “Let’s go ambush their camp.”
So we took off downriver, back from where we’d just fled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Moon broke free and washed the world in soft white that reflected off the water. Dave looked over at me. Those eyes on him were shining again, not that flat black I’d seen before we had our asses kicked. Thought how me and this metalhead Dave Bashed-up-Boat needed each other now: were in need, were needed, were desperate, were desperados together.
“We’ll wait a bit. Till the music’s down.”
Closed our eyes and fell into a survival sleep, black and empty. The sound of river water was there in our dreams. That sound, it never left us; slept beside it, drank from it, washed our faces in it. It rained us out, and also was our guidepost and our exit, our only way of getting out and as far away as possible. So we slept. Woke and we looked over at each other, found the eyes of the other glimmering through the dark.
In a bit of moon Dave was looking down at the blood staining his clothes. The Rotting Christ design on his sweatshirt looked way tougher now with what had come from his nose, his mouth, the gash on his cheek.
“Let’s do it,” I said. “But let’s go up a bit further. In case we gotta make a run for it.” Spat portside and then reached down for my paddle.
The music got quieter and the light was less because only two sets of headlights were on. Dave took out a bandanna, and he tied it over his face then passed me the one he kept tied around his boot. Told me not to get it all bloody. Tied it on, hid my face. Then together we walked off into the bushes.
We crept along like hunters, our eyes wide for any signs of those lousy kids, puking, humping, passing out.
Where the party was we stopped and held back and crouched low in the bush. Night was not as dark anymore, quieter now. Low music was coming from one of those trucks, and it helped to cover up the sound of us creeping. Dave looked around where we were crouching, and he said it had been around there that he’d fucked that chick.
“You’re a class act, Dave.”
Dave said he was really tripping, and so was she—that he’d got the hit from her, that she was into him way more than him into her. Me, I didn’t say anything about the girl, just asked if he was still tripping like he’d been.
“No,” Dave said. Then, “Music’s off. Let’s move in.”
One truck was left and also the shiny Hidatsa. There were a few tents set up and likely people inside them. We toed around the clearing, weapons drawn. Saw kids laid out, passed out on the ground. Saw broken bottles, barf, blood by the fire pit that we knew could only be our own. Thought the tailgating bush bash had ended early and so many people had left because of Dave and me, and the guys I knifed likely had to go to the hospital and all the rest. Dave was picking up bottles with booze and packs that still had smokes, and I did the same. Kept low, faces hidden, concealed. Were going this way and wondering what we should do, me thinking if we had the fixings we could siphon gas and use it to set the place on the fire. Dave would like that.
Pulled off my bandanna and was going to have a smoke from one of the packs I’d found. Dave was on the other side of the fire pit. Saw a figure coming up, and I knew from the stance that it was Wank. “Hey Dave,” and Dave looked behind so fast I thought of whiplash, thrashing around, and then Dave was on the ground, taking Wank down so that he was eating dirt, arms wrenched behind his back.
We dragged Wank back into the bushes. Dave took off his bandanna and used it for a gag and then I got off mine and we tied his wrists around behind, around the base of a tree.
Smiled at Wank, my face in his, and worked my mitted fist into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the key chain.
“You’re fucked now, ass wipe. You and Al both, dickwads.”
Grabbed a handful of Wank’s hair and pulled until I felt it give and he tried to scream.
“That’s for Dave,” I said. “I should stab you too just like I stabbed your friends.”
Then I kicked him in the side of the leg between muscle and bone.
Dave stood back watching, s
moking. Asked if the keys were for the car or the truck, and I told him the car. Stood away from Wank so he could not hear us talking. Dave said we had the boat to take with us.
“Fuck the boat, we’ll burn it like we said and then drive on south.”
Dave shook his head. “That kid’ll report the car stolen as soon as his pals wake up and find him here and the car gone and all the rest. That car’ll take us for a day or two, that’s all that’s safe.”
Nodded.
Dave got his hands around Wank’s neck and choked him until his eyes closed.
“He won’t wake up for a while now.”
Got his wallet out of his jeans and took the twenty dollars it had inside and also all its id just to be an asshole, and then we left Wank there in the bush, slumped over, gagged, bound, a face full of mosquitoes.
The way out was also the way down, so we coasted onto the dirt road that led, we guessed, out of the bush and back onto some main highway. Went on until we couldn’t see the camp behind us, and then we pushed the car into the bush and disappeared that way ourselves, coming back some twenty minutes later carrying the canoe underhand and our gear on our backs. Getting to be so it was finally morning. Damp and quiet, and Dave and me were all that was alive in it.
With rope and bungee cords Dave found in the truck, we were tying the canoe to the roof when I caught a look at myself in one of the car windows. A dirty, beaten face. Hungrier and whiter than ever before. Dave came around and stood behind. In the glass we saw ourselves together for the first time. Dave whistled when he saw how bad off he really was. The swelling of his upper lip was nothing compared to the right eye, almost completely shut, the lid turned into this shiny purple hood. Gashes, though, those were the scariest part. One going the length of his cheekbone and gaping open to show off the fresh, bloody meat inside. The other one, the slice on his neck, was more just on the surface. The face I had was not as bloody, but lips looked a pulp and eyes were the pair of them punched out.
“I look like a monster,” Dave said. “Like a street-fighting drunken Indian is what.”
“And I look like a drugged-up man-beaten whore.”
“You do,” said Dave. “But you also look like you’ve been in a bad mosh pit someplace. That’s all you gotta say if anyone asks. Like if we’re pulled over. We say we were at a show. Like for speed metal or whatever punk shit you listen to.”
“OK,” I said. “Which one?”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” said Dave.
“Blood Puddle. We were at the Blood Puddle show, in Buttfuck, and now we’re driving on to Montreal to see—”
“To see Voivod because their new album’s out.”
The forest was quiet.
“We should not be here,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Dave. “No one should.”
Got the car back out of the bushes and pushed it down the road. Then I moved over from the driver’s seat because my two swollen eyes looked way worse than Dave’s one. And we drove, went slow and then fast, and at the crossroads we knew not which way to turn, so Dave just went left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Genius of the Waters.” Fountain Square, the geographical centre of Cincinnati, Ohio.
WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS. TURNING INTO A GETAWAY. WISH YOU WERE HERE. AND . . . WISH YOU WERE HERE. ALREADY getting light. The kid’s awake, thumb in the mouth, eyes on the dark figure who’d passed the night in the wooden armchair. It’s not doing well. It has no strength for crying.
“Poor kid,” the stranger says.
Fills the bottle with apple juice, now warmer than the room. Up. Dressed. Smoke lit. Paces about between window, TV, bed, cradling the baby, hugging its fragile body close. The kid doesn’t want the bottle, lips closed to refuse the nip.
With sunlight comes the sound of traffic. The kid needs a mom and the stranger is sorry for that. But now there’s other things to worry about. This baby needs a drink, the kind you can’t buy at the convenience store or beg at a bar. The kid is cradled close, its pale face tucked inward to suggest something like a deep-feeding embrace. But beneath the leather jacket and dirty T-shirt are milkless, useless, soft pink buttons that do nothing more than decorate a pale-skinned chest.
There is another way, a more desperate way, the way of refugees and runaways, blood brothers and scab sisters. Back in the bush the stranger learned that blood can be poison and it can be pain, it can also provide life and strength and hope to carry on.
Puts the baby on the bed. The morning news is on TV.
A scalding shower thins the blood. Then there’s a search through the soul, making sure there is no hate, no bitterness. Not with that soft armful of kid. Clean but dressed in the same dirty clothes, the stranger pulls out a hunting knife, kept tucked down the side of a boot, and with it cuts into the left forefinger. A burst of red breaks through the skin. The kid sucks the finger when it’s offered, lightly at first, and then with some urgency. Red in the cheeks is what that kid needs. Suckling on the pricked finger like it had on the gun. On its chin a bloody dribble. In its eyes a bit of tear.
Breakfast’s in the lobby of the motel, filling jacket pockets with extra doughnuts and apples and sandwiches made from peanut butter and cream cheese spread thick on buttered brown toast. The clerk sees all this, but says nothing on account of the baby. After checking out, they find a mailbox, get gas, and are back on the road before the morning’s even come eight.
Outside’s all sun and sharp shadow. The stranger’s got one hand with a cigarette, one hand on the wheel, eyes darting along the road, trying to keep up with how quick is the land, how fast it goes. The blacktop highway makes things as easy to remember as they are to forget about.
Around Louisville the kid turns white, vomits up blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dawn. Down the highway sped the Hidatsa. On top was the canoe, tied tight to the roof rack. Inside, Dave drove and I rolled cigarettes. Dave got some metal on the tape deck first thing. Said to him I’d like metal full on if it weren’t for all the solos. Then said to Dave that solos was the same backwards as forwards, said how that meant something somehow, but what I wasn’t sure of just yet. Lit a smoke then and passed it to Dave, and then I lit my own. Dropped my matches on the floor, and crawling there under the seat to find them, I came up with the Wild Turkey. A full forty ounces.
“This is almost worth getting that shit-kicking for,” Dave said. “A car already stolen, a bottle, a fucking ride. And Voivod. Voivod on the stereo.”
Opened the bottle and drank from it, and then I passed it over to Dave and he drank from it too. He looked so bad that to me he looked good. Thought to the whole rest of the universe we are ugly and dirty and we smell. But together in the car and all the cold gone and the river away, I wanted to never open up that car door, never feel solid earth again. Better and best to stay there in our own sour warmth, safe and sealed up, next to Dave.
Drove without seatbelts. Drove and drank. Saw no road signs or speed limits. Didn’t know east or west until Dave got out his compass and I checked it and it showed west, so Dave slowed down a bit, made a U-turn, and then we went back in the direction of east, in the direction of the sun.
Watched out the window. Thought if I stopped drinking, if Dave stopped driving, I’d lose hold of whatever it was that was keeping me together. Maybe it was the pain my body felt, the pain in my face. That was real, that hurt and pain, but everything else was less than that, the car, the windows, and what was out there beyond. Dave was real too, maybe more real than any other part of it.
“Hey, kid,” said Dave. “How come you never asked me where I’m from?”
“Because I don’t care to know.” Was looking in the mirror clipped to the visor above me, thinking how my face hurt way worse than it looked and it looked truly awful. If I’d cared about being pretty, I might really be upset about this face of mine all beat
en like that. As it was, I thought it just went along with running away.
“You do so care,” said Dave.
“OK. Where the fuck are you from?”
“Me? I’m from T.O.”
“You are not. You’re from like Rainy butt-fuck River or some northern shitsville like that.”
“I swear it’s T.O., kid. Trident, Ontario.” Dave laughed then, and the gash on his face cracked open what bit of scab had formed there and that shut his laugh up fast.
Passed him over a wad of Kleenex from the box that had been in the back window and Dave held that to his cheek and drove with one hand. Got out Pickles’s boots. Checked to see the postcard was still inside the right one. Took it out for a look. Central Park in Spring, 1969. And not a person to be seen. As lonely there as anywhere else, I supposed. When Dave asked me to, I tied the laces together and hung them from the rearview mirror, and though they stunk pretty bad, they became our mascot again, our guiding goddamn light.
Outside the dawn was turning into full morning. A day to Ottawa from where we were. When we got there, we’d have to get rid of the car, leave it parked someplace. By then the neighbours would be back and reporting it stolen. Into the light of day we kept on, trying to remember the last time we’d slept or had food to eat. But even so, even though we should have been rip-roaring tired, Dave and me didn’t have to try to stay awake. Were too sore and too scared and too reeling, going so quick from being on the Ottawa River to being on the flat black of highway. Were as driven as the car itself, as the twice-stolen Hidatsa. Drank slow, nursing the bottle, and smoked fast, especially when some thrash like DRI was on the tape deck.