Ballistics (13 page)

When I arrived, they’d just climbed out of Cecil’s work truck. Cecil had dressed in the heavy flannel coat he wore to the sawmill—a blue-and-black-checkered thing that weighed as much as a duvet—as well as a grey wool tuque, earflaps and all. He looked like a logger. Nora was bundled like a spaceman, hadn’t bothered to come with a change of shoes because delicate movement—like bending to tie laces—made her coat squeal and rub together enough for Cecil to crack a joke about being followed by a vinyl couch. They’d driven because of laziness but also because the truck could act as a bastion of warmth should any feet go numb or any idiots crash into the deadly cobalt water.

We walked down the slope to the pond’s edge. Nora’s footsteps were as heavy and awkward as a mule’s, until Cecil cut in front and gave her a piggyback. At the bottom, me and Cecil laced up. I saw him racing me but pretended not to notice. Not everything has to be a grab for alpha male, despite what Old Man West might think.

Nora skated in circles. I always wanted to do figure skating, she said, and immediately fell onto her ass, wrists bent to an
L
to cushion her landing—a good way to fracture a bone. But I kept quiet, even if it’d be the end of the world for Nora to injure herself enough to require me and Cecil to tend her wounds.

Ever play hockey? Cecil said as we set off.

Just in the street. Goalie.

The noblest position.

More like laziest.

Nora glided up to us. Does Linnea skate? she said. Jack’s pretty good.

I don’t know, I said, wobbling on my feet. I can keep forward momentum and I can keep my balance, but nobody should expect it to be pretty. I never took her, I said. But her mom might’ve.

Cecil waved to some people up the slope and they waved back. He took the opportunity to complain about the sawmill job, and about some dumbass apprentice who nearly blinded himself by putting his face too near the welding bead. Nora mentioned the politics at her school, insisted she was not part of it. Everyone just likes to bitch about each other to me, she said.

We looped the pond.

I make a pretty decent bodyguard, I said, meaning the tradesmen’s party.

You guys better not get Jack killed, Nora said. I’d get in trouble from the school.

Yes ma’am, I told her. The boy’s safety is my top priority.

She let out an exaggerated sigh. I hazarded Cecil a wink. It felt good to be out there with those two. It felt like having a normal life, normal friends. The air smelled like nothing, there on the ice. Winter has a distinct scent, but you only notice it once you’ve gone indoors. That, to me, makes it a very human scent—a social scent. A cold cheek smells so much nicer than a warm one.

This’ll be your first gravel pit, eh? Cecil said.

Been up there, looked around.

Scoping the place.

Escape routes, I said. Never know when you’re gonna get shot from the forest.

Jack’s a stupid boy sometimes, Cecil said.

Why
, Nora said, in a long-syllable, high-pitched way that suggested she was about to make a point, did you have the gun with you to begin with?

In case of cougars.

Cougars.

Devious mountain killers, Cecil said, and gave a manly shrug.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about it either, West, I said.

Your leg’s fine.

I still owe you.

He muttered. He was a good mutterer. You don’t owe me anything.

Except a hole in the leg, Nora added.

Except that, Cecil said. But I’ll make you work for that.

Not long afterward, Nora’s feet got cold. Cecil figured her skates were too tight, and she agreed, but still wanted to head up, and the two of us had no chance of denying her anything she wanted.

I can wait a bit, she said. In the truck. Keys?

Cecil flipped them over. The toss was way too high, and off-centre, but Nora’s mittened hand shot out and she palmed it from the air like a pop fly.

We’ll just do one more lap, Cecil said, and looked to me for approval.

My feet are cold as hell, Nora said.

She turned uphill and walked to the truck with the sound of her spaceman’s suit squealing as she went. She muttered something I didn’t hear, but Cecil tweaked his eyebrows at me. When Nora had climbed into the truck and was out of earshot, Cecil jerked his chin in the general direction of the pond.

What’dya think, he said. Race?

You’re a Canadian, I said. You skate to work.

Scared, then.

Of what Nora’ll do to us, yeah.

Cecil craned his neck toward the truck. He puffed a big, hot breath that hung in a cloud before his face. The cab light was on but Nora wasn’t visible, curled forward to loosen her skates, to warm her feet against the heaters. Insulated skates kept the heat out as easily as they kept it in.

Cecil produced a hip flask. Winner takes this, he said.

That doesn’t make sense, I said. It’s yours.

You in or not?

Alright.

Gimme a five-second count, Cecil said. He had a wild look in his eyes.

I counted
one
,
two
, and then pointed toward the truck. Shit, she’s looking, I said, and when Cecil turned to check for himself I shoved him in the chest, hard enough to knock him over, and took off before he’d even hit the ice. I heard him scramble to his feet, the cold-metal sound of his skates carving crescents. He howled like a foreman.

Leisurely, circular skating is one thing, since I could ride out my momentum. Tear-assing across the ice is quite another. The pond was dark enough that I felt like being in a sphere of light, or a bubble. Ridges reared into my sights without warning, and only through a desperate sense of balance did I stay upright. Cecil’s rhythmic gliding sounded Hollywood in its perfection. I could even hear his breath, not huffing, but chuckling.

Then he was beside me, and the ease that he kept pace seemed animalistic, as if at any moment he’d tire of the game and deem it time for me to die. He swerved inward, to dodge under a tree limb. I lifted a foot to dodge a heave in the ice. There wasn’t a star in the sky, and from beneath cloud coverage the moon glowed like a low-wattage bulb.

Cecil pulled ahead, then slowed so I caught up. You’re a fucker, I told him.

You’re doing good, he said.

I’d punch you, if I could catch you.

I saw no way to win, unless I barrelled into him to put an end to the competition, which I wouldn’t be surprised to learn was his intent all along. Somehow skating with his arms crossed, Cecil said, I’m thinking of setting a date.

I faltered a bit, accidentally, but it was a good show. Christ, I said. Where’s the real Cecil West?

Fuck you.

When?

The summer. I’m just thinking.

I slowed to a stop, put my hands on my knees, took a gamble: Jack’s out of school by then.

Haven’t told him yet.

Not like you need his approval.

Cecil pushed his tongue to the corner of his cheek, gave me a look to say I was talking with no way to back it up. Well, I said. Okay.

Jack ever say anything, to you?

I’d let you know if he did.

He never even knew Emily—his mom, Cecil said, which might have been the first time I ever heard him mention his former wife.

How old is Jack?

Fourteen.

Just talk to him, I said.

You ever tried to talking to a fourteen-year-old?

Alright.

Kid goes from thinking you’re a hero to thinking you’re scum. No reason.

He sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and then shoved his hands in his pockets. We breathed a while.

I don’t think he ever thought you were a hero, really, I said.

Fuck you, Archer. Jesus.

Best policy, as they say.

He waved his hand, made a sound like
ach
. Such a blast, talking to you, he said.

How’s that flask?

Cecil took it out of his coat, swigged it, gave it over. I put it to my lips, almost coughed: it wasn’t whiskey. I smacked him, for good measure. This is
sherry
.

Cecil loosed a belly laugh like I hadn’t heard from him since that first night at the cabin. Come on, he said, taking the flask.

We got going. I thought about how things would change once he and Nora finally married, whether I’d see less of either of them. It didn’t seem like there should’ve been a difference, but you can never predict these things, you can never predict the more tender matters of the heart. They might decide they needed a bigger house, or that they had tired of the valley—maybe Nora had family elsewhere, even out of province—and pack their things and go.
Nora West
just didn’t have the same familiar ring. And it was tough to think of Cecil as a husband.

Then I lost my balance and lurched sideways, and he reached out—either to catch me or to pull me over—and his arm went around my neck, like you’d headlock someone. I hit him shoulder-first, speared him at the midsection like a rugby tackle, a desperate change of direction. There was a second where we held our balance—me double-bent, him with one skate horizontal, an arm reaching earthward—before momentum won out over us both.

I landed on him. He
oof
ed a breath against my hair. I tried to dig my skates in but my knees got tangled with Cecil’s. The ice ridges bumped their way under his back, and I reached out dumbly to try and slow us down with my wrists. We plowed into the shore, through the mat of dead reeds the water had frozen around, and into a snowbank. At first, it almost didn’t seem we’d stopped—just a more absolute darkness, forehead-deep in the snow. The cold tickled my cheeks and made my upper lip slick with snot and meltwater.

Cecil pushed me off him. His whole body shook with laughter. We lay against the snowbank, and it didn’t even seem cold. Numbness is a lot like friendship: it helps you forget how bad things are about to get. Cecil fumbled for his flask, and I heard the tinny scrape of its cap around the thread.

Anyway, he said. I guess I’ll need a best man or something.

That sounds like a proposal.

Sure is.

Is this how you proposed to Nora? I said. Anyway, I guess we’ll need to get married or something?

He elbowed me, sloshed sherry on his gloved hand even as he passed it my way. I shifted in the snow and it made that crunching sound beneath us. Cecil brushed powder off his thighs. He was wearing jeans, so it’d soak right in and freeze his ass solid if we stayed much longer. Across the pond, the headlights of his truck flashed from bright to dim—Nora getting impatient. And fair enough.

THE GRAVEL PITS
were big as a soccer field. One end degraded to a cliff, and, years ago, someone built a cedar fence to block it off. Since then, the fence had sagged all the way to the ground and become a tripwire that’d send a drunk somersaulting downslope. The other end of the pits was ringed by forest, and on either side by eroded hills that rednecks tried to drive their Ski-Doos up in winter. Guys found the weirdest things among the gravel—unexplainable things: beer cans from breweries that none of us had ever heard of; this black, polished volcano stone; even a set of baby teeth, arranged in a tight circle as wide as a Mason jar lid.

I knew many of the guys at that gathering, most good enough to trust your house keys to. Harold was there, and some of his workers, including the Frenchman, Philippe, who Harold had fired and then rehired and who spoke with his jaw loose so his
o
’s took on a long moaning quality. I waved but didn’t join them, and Harold touched his beer to his forehead in salute. Crib was nowhere to be seen, but I refused to dip into the liquor in case he showed. Cecil told me it’s better to prepare for what you expect than to expect what you’ve prepared for, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. As for himself, Old Man West introduced Jack to colleagues and cohorts and guys who may someday hire him to weld their shops. I kept my distance. That was their thing, some version of father-son bonding. Not that I judge them for it. I am not keen to judge people for the ways they try to get closer to one another. Everybody’s weird in some way.

The man Nora feared showing up was a guy named Morgan Lane. There were a few unspoken rules around town among the tradesmen, not about who could bid what, but about how much you could bid for. If a guy bid too low, especially a contractor like Morgan, suddenly guys had to work below their paygrade or watch outside tradesmen scoop their jobs. He was the kind of guy Cecil hated, and, by extension, the kind of guy
I
hated: a married man—Nora said she was using
married
in the loosest term—without kids, a man without anything to take responsibility for, a man who stayed behind when the rest of the world went to war. Who, I’ll wager, saw a lot of lonely, worried women around town.

A car lurched up the road, tires spinning and its back end swung out in yaw. Its headlamps bobbed like a thing afloat and the noise from its muffler was like an aircraft blowing its nose. A group of guys shifted out of the way and their voices rose in that low, communal way that true rage begins. One slapped the hood. Another toed the panel. Beer splashed over the windshield, was squeegeed away by the wipers. Then it was past them, and they watched its taillights flare and dim. Now, in the glow of burning shipping flats, I could see the car for what it was—for what, it seemed, it had to be: a Ford Fairlane, all stars and stripes. Crib.