On the Up

by Shilo Jones

  “Whatever, Cee, asshole,” the kid says, not taking his eyes off the video game but using my brother’s ultra-secret gangland AKA so I know we’re all good, not here to totally fuck him up. “I knew it was you. Honkey. Get lost. I’m playing—”

  “Just like that. And you’re done, and this grow—”

  “I’m on it.” The kid’s still staring at the screen, but he sounds upset. Like, wounded pride? “I said I knew it was you. I opened the gate to let you in. Duh.”

  “Look at you,” my brother says, pinching his nostrils so his voice sounds funny. “Dogfucker. And also, it stinks of ass in here.”

  “Whatever. No one’s stealthin’, Cee. ’Specially not some fat whitey dickbag”—the kid glances over his shoulder at me—“and his scabby tweaker boyfriend.”

  Clint shoves the game console with his toe. “Turn the sound down. You’re killing me.”

  An armoured transport carrier explodes on screen, makes me think of Hot Lips, my favourite penny candy.

  The kid winces. “Shit! See that? You’re wrecking it—”

  “Turn it down.”

  “Fine. Get your boyfriend to the hospital, hick. They have medicine for that shit.”

  I’m standing by the door, listening real close. It all sounds friendly enough, but there’s a serious edge. When the kid turns I get a look at him. Yup, Chinese. A Benelli M4 Super 90 semi-automatic shotgun is lying on the floor beside a few empty Monster energy drink cans, some Nerds boxes, a half-eaten bag of caramel popcorn. The Benelli’s a sweet weapon. Eight rounds without a reload. I imagine the kid getting tossed halfway across the room when he fires the thing. Maybe he gets lucky on the first shot, but after that the kick lifts the barrel to the roof and it’s over. I’m about to comment on the lousy weapon selection or maybe ask for some Nerds when Clint turns the TV off, plunging us into darkness.

  “Aargh,” the kid yells, smacking for the pause button.

  “Just like that, you lazy slant,” Clint repeats, laughing now, buddy-buddy, and the empty room amplifies the laughter in not a nice way but the kid laughs too, high-pitched, calls my brother a racist white-trash hick, stands and flicks a light on. He’s lean and super ripped. Close-cropped, unwashed hair. A thin gold chain with twin golden scrolls stamped with two characters in fuck knows what language swings from his neck. Fist bumps all around, then Clint introduces the guy as Bo Leung and Bo corrects him by saying call me Doyle.

  “Any Nerds left, Doyle?”

  Doyle shakes a Nerds box, tosses it. I fumble the catch, pick it up, pop a few in my mouth, crunch ’em, say they taste like strawberry battery acid, ask Doyle if he has any better candy, like something more chewy?

  “Clint? Fuck is this guy? Candy?”

  “Mark, stop picking your arms like a gir—”

  “Craving sweet.” Stuff my hands in my hoodie, feel something warm and wet beneath my fingernails. “Scratchy air in this shithole. Can’t you feel it? I like that Benelli though. Doyle? Give it to me.”

  “Fuck’s up with the tweaker? Clint? Should he be here?”

  “That’s my brother,” Clint says, like it’s more than enough answer. “He goes where I say. He’s good. Right, Mark?”

  “Benelli’s sweet is all. Eight rounds. Built Yank-proof. Doyle? I said give it to me.”

  Doyle goes quiet. Takes a step back.

  Seeing the shotgun lying on the floor makes my fingertips tingle, makes my nuts cinch tight, and I wonder what the kick feels like, could I handle it in the prone shooter’s position? “Fuck you guys worried about? No harm in me taking a look. Least I’m trained.”

  “No,” Clint says, “the shotgun’s for Doyle. Don’t touch it.”

  “How’s the barrel choke affect the shot pattern?”

  Doyle shrugs, glances at Clint.

  Try and wipe the grin from my face, fail. “He hasn’t fired it.”

  “No.”

  “So let me have a look. Fuck’s the big deal?”

  “No.”

  Doyle’s doing some not-cool shit, sliding beside Clint, putting himself between me and the Benelli, which is fuck. So now it’s silent. We’re eyeing one another, three assholes in an empty room in a dope-grow mansion in the British Properties. Maybe the next-door neighbour’s an executive. Other one’s a surgeon. They’re so much better than us, ’cept they’re not, cuz here we are. Doyle’s tapping his hands on his thighs, tappity-tap, nervous about something or maybe still upset about his video game getting fucked up.

  “Leave it alone, brother,” Clint says again, slow. “Shotgun’s Doyle’s.”

  “If you say so. It’s Doyle’s.”

  “It’s mine.” Doyle says, trying to sound hard.

  “Good,” Clint says. “Come on in, Marky. Come in and be cool.”

  I walk farther into the room, hand Doyle a smoke as a peace offering. He asks if I’m the real-life soldier. I tell him that’s bullshit, I own a patisserie in south France, and he asks what’s a patisserie and I have a quick laugh while I light a smoke. Doyle asks if I ever killed anyone and I ask have you and this time we both have a laugh, but really I’m looking at him and thinking: no.

  Not yet.

  Clint’s looking at me in that sideways way I’ve been seeing a bunch, like he’s rethinking something important, my place or role in like the grand fucking scheme of things and right when I’m about to say fuck’s your problem Doyle howls and sweep-kicks my brother, surprise attack! Clint blocks, grabs Doyle’s leg, returns some kind of TV martial-arts war cry, flips Doyle on his back beside the Benelli. Doyle knocks Clint’s feet out from under him. Clint yells, falls to the carpet, and now the two of them are at my feet, grunting, smacking, struggling for advantage. The Benelli’s right there. I guess I could fire three or four rounds, blow the both of them apart, and it’s a dope grow so end of story, but instead I toe the shotgun out of the way so they don’t roll over it, turn the TV on and stare at the paused video game screen, first-person shooter, OPFOR’S face exploding in pink mist, nice shot Doyle.

  Clint manoeuvres Doyle into a variation of a scissor lock, cranks his legs around Doyle’s neck. Doyle chokes, goes bright red. Spit leaks from his mouth. His hands paw at Clint’s legs, trying to break the lock—

  “You’re fucked, Doyle. Been in that lock many a time. It’s over.”

  Takes Doyle maybe five seconds to tap out, which is pretty good, bet it felt like forever.

  Gasping, Doyle rolls away, rubs his neck, gets his breath, calls Clint a honkey, a skid. Clint laughs, says shut the fuck up chink. Curious, I ask Doyle how he feels about being called a chink. Doyle scoots to the wall, sits. Still not breathing right. Tells me it ain’t no thing, Clint’s an adopted brother they’re so tight; then he laughs, picks his smoldering cigarette out of the carpet, puts the tiny carpet fire out by spitting on it and rubbing the spit with his fingers, fights for a drag. Plasticky burning stink displaces the smell of Doyle’s ass. I don’t know Doyle well enough to tell if he means what he says, but I know for sure he’s not Clint’s brother.

  The walls are painted a washed-out Pepto-Bismol pink. A few posters are tacked up. Tupac leaning against a polished black Ferrari, shades on, shirt off, in full gangland pose down. Snoop strolling in vintage pimp suit, way stoned, with a huge marijuana leaf in rasta colours framing his image. Bruce Lee scowling and screaming like a boss. An orange-robed Shaolin monk wielding a wicked curved sword. Another poster of a bright yellow Lamborghini hovering in an empty white space like a fucking art gallery. On the bare carpet beneath the posters is a low wooden bench covered in half-burned candles, bright blue fake flowers, incense, a ceramic Buddha and a few plastic statues from the dollar store, of which I recognize an elephant and maybe a monkey or dragon?

  I crouch down and pick up one of the fake jade statues. The elephant. Weighs nothing. “This fucked-up altar yours, Doyle?” Messing with him, testing.

  “Tweaker says he wants my dick?”

  “It’s a shrine, you idiots,” Clint says. “Confuci
us. Sacred shit.”

  Me and Doyle share a look. Apparently we decide to keep quiet.

  Clint mumbles something vaguely Asian-sounding, bows his head. Doyle laughs, calls Clint a gook, says his people are taking over, says Clint’s on his fat gook tip, to which Clint responds by roaring, running at Doyle, lifting him up, dropping him on the carpet, then resetting the video game and fake-bowing across the room.

  Doyle gets up, sputtering and cussing.

  I watch the two of them and wonder if this is the kind of multicultural harmony my university profs had in mind. If not, too bad. Meet the global citizenry, motherfuckers. The Oxys in my gut are making themselves comfy, helping me believe this is real, not a virtual reality or video game where I can press reset or a dream or hallucination where I can will myself to wake up. I return the plastic elephant to the shrine, feeling some kind of connection with the meat-thing that calls itself Doyle…I dunno, empathy or kinship or only shared circumstance, the recognition we’re both fucked? Cigarette smoke swirls around my face, forms into a fire-breathing serpent, and at first I’m psyched but then things go shitty because the serpent’s face morphs, looks like the blown up LAV vc whose name I can never remember so I smack at the air to dissipate the smoke and make the blown-up face go away. Doyle laughs…at what? Maybe me? Clint says he’s starving, asks if Doyle has any food besides bullshit candy. Doyle says maybe Star Wars frozen nuggets, turns on the TV, restarts the game, our cue to leave.

  “Fridge is empty.”

  Clint says no wonder the kid’s skin and bones, leads me downstairs, uses a couple keys on a reinforced steel door. The basement’s dug deep into the mountain. Undercroft, vault, flesh-eating stone. Ten-foot ceilings but no windows. Air smells of no-bullshit bud, chemical fertilizer, nitrates and so on, same shit the OPFOR uses to make IEDS, blow a bastard like me to the moon, meet my god if I had one and what would I say to Him or Her if I did? Press reset?

  The grow’s chilly and damp from an industrial-sized AC system. Cold slows spider mites. Mature plants are growing in tidy rows on metal shelves, one at knee and another at chest height, stretching the full length of the room. A solid amount of quality bud. A blower fan feeds stale air into flexible aluminum tubing that snakes through a hole cut in the ceiling and out the fireplace chimney. Fertilizer’s stacked neatly along the far wall. There’s a workbench with pruning shears, a vacuum sealer, other day-to-day standard operating type shit. Nothing’s out of place. There’s not a speck of dust.

  “Looks legit,” I say, nodding, doing a quick financial calc in my head, feeling wealthy, sacred, holy, imbued with otherworldly knowledge, feeling hydroponic light sink into my skin, absorbing energy, changing, regenerating, money, moulting, I dunno, aliens, exoskeletons, ancient temples, feeling beyond, a creature of light, angel.

  “Pro install,” Clint brags. “I got a crew—electricians, HVAC guys—that set up grows for a flat fee, real tight, and I lease the equipment to independents. Not my weed, though. I’m done slinging dope.”

  I pinch a moist bud between thumb and forefinger, mostly to steady myself, suddenly worried over this thing called mental health, military shrink, retrain my brain, good fucking luck. “Done with dope? You mean off the street?”

  “No. I mean out of weed. Rips happening all the time. Looked into the government medical market, couldn’t be fucked with all that lying. More money in real estate, less hassle.”

  I tell him that saddens me. We wander deeper into the grow, stepping over extension cords. Plastic sheeting flaps beside a fan. Thousands of bright green seedlings are growing in inch-deep plastic trays. Fed from tubes dripping concentrated solution. I take a long breath as goosebumps rise on my arms. “So peaceful. I love it in here.”

  “Me too,” Clint says, turning to face me. “I miss it. Remember our first grow? Spot-planted outside, that shitty shake—”

  “We could be anywhere,” I say. “Bottom of the ocean. Centre of the earth. Outer space—”

  “—had to smoke like a fucking ounce to feel—”

  “—a room wrapped in plastic. Drip tubes leaking nutrients. Electric sunlight. Hermetic. All we need to survive—”

  “—but we sold that shake, made enough to move into coke—”

  “—and the efficiency of it. Stark. Pure. Prisca theologica. Everything inessential stripped out, every lie—”

  “—never thought we’d make it this far—”

  “—could we live forever?”

  Clint laughs. “Live forever? Not if you bust through that door.” Points to a shotgun mounted on a jury-rigged camera tripod. “Pressure plate. Blow a thief bastard in half. Come on. I’m freezing. We crash here tonight. Tomorrow you get your own pad, Coal Harbour, awesome for hookers, all stainless.”

  * * *

  Sitting on a sopping wet balcony overlooking the city, slurping Mr. Noodles from microwaveable plastic bowls. Red and white light flashes through the window behind us as Doyle works his way through Call of Duty for the bazillionth time. Clint’s quiet, which only happens when he’s eating. I watch my brother inhale his third bowl of noodles, amazed at how quick we become accustomed to things, thinking how far I’d go for him, a blurriness that doesn’t let me see clearly enough to uncover an answer. Far enough, I guess.

  Doyle comes out, sets a plastic shopping bag in my lap, vanishes.

  “Three phones,” Clint explains, telling me one’s for him exclusively. “The second’s for anyone in the business. Third’s for personal. You can keep the SAP.” Clint hands me an envelope. I’m guessing three grand cash, widen my eyes all beggar-grateful, make a show of sniffing the money like a fiend.

  “That a fucking thank-you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Use it to get a haircut. Thought the army taught self-respect.” Clint finishes his noodles, tosses the bowl over the railing. “Sold off most of my dope lines, too,” he says, almost wistfully. “Worked exclusive agreements for the crews that took over my old neighbourhoods. Only active in two territories. West Side and West Van.”

  “Yuppies won’t stab you for a dime bag.”

  I count twenty-seven cranes rising over the city. A thought forms in the back of my mind. Brutal and inspired, even in its unpolished state. West Side and West Van. Poshest neighbourhoods in the city filled with upper-class drug addicts. A mountain of Afghan heroin. A direct line on that poison from an old military connect, lace it with an assload of fentanyl and the motherfuckers start dropping—

  “What you thinking about?”

  “What am I here for?”

  “You start work tomorrow.”

  “It’s already tomorrow.”

  “Then you start today. Truck in the garage. Tools in the lockbox. See how I take care of your worthless ass? You’re gonna pick up a kid named Ryan at the Cash Corner. Six o’clock. He’s a mouthy fucker but shows up, works not bad, does as he’s told. Grab another warm body or two while you’re there. Lotsa digging. Grunts get nine an hour, no more.” Clint stands up, pats my shoulder, leaves.

  Gulp a couple pills, sit alone, glaring at the city while my skin ripples into stone like a cathedral grotesque, soaked and shivering but not feeling cold, wrapped in silken opiate warmth, trying to stay focused, work though the angles on the thought that hit me. Truth is I’m excited. After a while I force myself to flap my wings, fly to Doyle’s room. He’s curled on his side in the TV glow, a pillow clutched to his chest, a few feet from the Benelli. Looks twelve years old. I shake him awake, ask if he has a computer. He nods, tells me the password, takingnames, rolls over and falls back asleep.

  Guzzle water from the kitchen faucet, get settled in the dining room, back to the wall, stare at the blank screen. I heard about a fire in a clothing factory outside Bangkok when I was deployed in Afghanistan. News stream, shit stream, child slaves locked behind steel doors when the warehouse caught fire, boo hoo for them. Radio man, eleven-second story while we blasted through Kandahar, rolling coal in the LAV, righteous pricks waving our boom sticks. Tuned
out the radio man’s message, didn’t think much about it. No. Thought nothing about it. Happens every day. Round the world. Eight-year-old gets his arm ripped off in a shrimp boat on the Burmese coast while the catch goes to make cat food. Here kitty kitty! Six-year-olds forced to bob tourist nob in Lao. Whatevs! Kids burned alive while sewing our wicking outerwear? Oops, glitch in the supply chain? We’ll get that sorted? Naw. Fucking liars. Collateral damage. Cost overruns. Threat level critical. But here’s the thing: a few seconds after hearing about those kids, Marky got blowed up. BIG TIME BOOM! Marky got blowed up, kids got burned up. And when I came to it was nothing but fire, piled against the door burning and I felt them—I still do—not their ghosts or spirits but like they’re more real and whole than me or my brother or that city down there, and we’re the ghouls cursed to haunt them.

  Lost half a year to a hospital bed, Oxy up and next thing I know I’m in a sweltering manufacturing district in Bang Phli, across the street from where it happened, sitting in muck and dog piss against a scorching corrugated steel wall, drinking warm Singha and chain-smoking, and the fucked up thing is I couldn’t tell if it happened like the radio said. The company rebuilt the warehouse after it burned, brand spanking new, no memorial shrine with cutesy plastic flowers or photos or letters, nothing, like those kids never happened.

  But they did happen.

  Still happening. Right this second.

  I get online. Go to the website of a high-end outdoor clothing company called Karakoram. Click to the employee page, pull up the image of Mr. Craig Williams, Vancouver boy, suntanned, trim, self-satisfied in that particularly nauseating West Coast manner, speckled grey-blond hair and a shitty-shit smile. Mr. Williams, his biography says, is a U of T finance alum, committed biathlete, and dedicated family man. So good for him. Mr. Williams got a promotion after the Bang Phli fire for how well he handled the PR fallout. Here’s an upstanding family man who knows how to make lemonade.