Bull Head (19 page)

The dish pig informs me that Linda went home early. I buy a bottle of wine from the off-sales counter and leave. It's a clear, cold night; the walk energizes me.

Light seeps through her window. I peer through a gap in the blinds. Candles lit on the night table, the sheets a tumbled mess. Her hair is dishevelled. She sits on her bed in a housecoat. I tap on the window. Linda looks up; her eyes are puffy, but she doesn't move. I tap again. She doesn't move. I try the window; it slides open. She jumps back and shouts, “Get out before I call the cops.”

“What's wrong? What happened?” I push the blinds aside but she looks scared so I stop from climbing in. “Let me explain.”

“I'm calling the cops.” She stands and picks up her phone. “You guys make me sick.”

I close the window, leave the wine bottle on the sidewalk, and take off, running until my legs are heavy, my lungs tight. When I reach Travis's place, I bang on his door. I hammer the door again, lean over to catch my breath.

“Back here.”

He's sitting on the picnic tabletop in the yard, beer cans strewn in the grass beneath the table. “Hey buddy-boy, what's up?” Travis smirks. “How's the Bride?” He sips from a can.

I charge him.

“Slow down, man. What the hell?”

I slap the beer away from him and soak his jacket.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Travis sweeps the beer off himself and laughs. “Jesus. Chill. Have I got something to show you.”

I grab his collar, twist, and pin him on the table. My first punch misses his face and slams into the table. It hurts like hell and only makes me angrier. “Were you even with the Bride?”

“What do you think, dumb-ass?” Travis sits up. “Christ, get it together.” He shakes his head and laughs. Linda's rose quartz hangs off his neck.

My next blow hits him on the top of his forehead, thick and dull. Travis lays stunned, holding his head; blood seeps from the cut. I rip the necklace off and jab him with the pointed edge of the stone. He shoves me, and we fall off the table. He knees me in the groin. I curl up and cough; bile floods my throat.

“You okay?” he says.

I swing at him wildly but miss, get up and tackle him, slam
him against the table. We fall on the ground, and I pummel him with both arms, vicious punches that glance off his face and head. My fists are bloodied and sore.

He cries out; I strike him harder. Freshly turned dirt stuffs my nostrils. Travis knees me in the groin. I wheeze; blood and dirt flood my mouth. He struggles to get up; his breath is laboured, quick. He yells out. My eyes throb. I head-butt him, and a headache surges through me, a splitting pain that blooms and radiates through my skull. I rest my forehead against Travis's head and smash him hard again and again, smearing blood between us. His breath is shallow and rasps in my ear. I grab him, hold him tight, and sob against his neck, our chests rising and falling together.

W
HILE SPLITTING WOOD
one late October morning, Sonny sensed there'd be trouble when Bacon Face barked at his neighbour striding across the property, swinging a bucket of turnips.

The pail clanged against Bojan's thigh. Behind him, his glazed log home loomed wide and immense, its roof peaks vaulted toward the sky, a pre-fab package shipped up from the States. To the side stood a large pine tree with broad limbs that Sonny had climbed as a child while his father smoked his pipe below, and later where Sonny had hung deer, elk, and moose carcasses after hunting trips with his wife, Norma. “The Pines Bed and Breakfast” sign was now nailed to its bark.

Bojan's veranda sheltered cords of neatly stacked tamarack dropped off by someone Sonny didn't know. Sonny hadn't seen a guest yet, but suspected they'd show up in droves to escape the noise and pace of the city, relentlessly clawing away at their lives. They'd trample Sonny's property, snap pictures of the big pine or the gentle curve in the river, Bull Head Mountain in the background. They'd clutch their guidebooks and ask him about the upside-down mountain and then take pictures of his hand-chopped firewood, cords of it stacked in a convoluted system of woodsheds and lean-tos. Sonny planned to scowl when they
pointed their cameras at him and Bacon Face, chase them away with his axe, shout like some wild man, laughing when he turned and walked back home, the axe across his shoulder. The novelty of it. Some people had no sense of place.

Bojan dropped the bucket at Sonny's feet. “What is this all about?”

Bacon Face circled Bojan, barking, his brown hackles up along the ridge of his spine. Sonny snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground where Bacon Face sat and growled until Sonny snapped his fingers again and the dog quieted.

Sonny crouched down and lifted another log. He couldn't understand what Bojan's wife, Milica, saw in Bojan, a crude rain barrel of a man who sounded ridiculous with his formalized English. He set the log on the chopping block and steadied it. “Looks like a bucket full of turnips.”

“I am glad your sense of sight is not yet gone.” Bojan shook his head from side to side; his grey whiskers scraped the collar of his plaid shirt. “Can you tell me why this bucket is full of torn turnips?”

Sonny picked up his axe, held the smooth handle in his palm. The head gleamed bright in the sunlight, sharp enough to slice the paper the annual property assessment was printed on. “No need keeping me in suspense.”

“Just because you are mayor does not give you a right to joke at my expense. You know full well the reason these are shredded is that dog of yours. Milica is upset. Your mutt has been tearing up our garden every night.”

Sonny winced at the mention of Milica. He lifted his axe and split a log. Woodchips dusted the sleeve of his flannel shirt. He
stacked the wood against the white Tyvek-covered wall, bent over to pick up another log, and leaned on his axe. “I know we ain't been neighbours for long, but that ain't my fault. My father settled here in 1904. We've survived forest fires, two floods, mine disasters, disease, and every other affliction laid on this valley. If there's something we've learned over time, it's you can't tell which way the train went by looking at the tracks.” Sonny stepped back, lifted his axe and struck the log, popping it in half. “You've got some nerve coming over here making accusations.”

Bojan shook the pail in Sonny's face. “I do not care how long you have been here. A fact is a fact. Your mutt was in our garden.”

“It weren't Bacon Face.” Sonny dropped the axe. He walked over to the woodpile and grabbed a shovel leaning against it. He jammed the blade in the loamy soil of his garden, dug up a shovelful of turnips, shook the dirt free, and wiped them against his shirt. He placed each one carefully in the bucket. “Take these back to your wife. Let's move on and be neighbourly.”

Bojan gripped the bucket handle. “If I see your dog sniffing around my property, I will shoot him.”

“That won't be necessary. Even if he has wandered over there, and there's no way he did, I can guarantee you he's not interested in turnips.”

“What kind of man names their dog Bacon Face?” Bojan turned around and trudged back to his house before Sonny could answer him.

Every day after chopping wood, Sonny walked to the Bull Head
Inn—City Hall, as it was known—a cramped bar with three guest rooms above it jammed with old refrigerators, broken neon signs, three-legged chairs and tables, and dusty, taxidermied bears, fish, wolves, and deer. Bacon Face followed, rooted around in the bunch grass and meadow parsley that choked the path. At the bar's entrance, Sonny picked up a log from the woodpile and pushed open the squeaky door, made his way to the woodstove. He tossed the log in, took his regular seat, and nodded to Lorne.

“Today's the day, Sonny. This will either knock your rubber boots off or melt them to your feet.” Lorne set a bowl of baked beans in front of him.

Sonny picked around the beans with his plastic spoon and pushed it away. A jar of pickled eggs and another of pigs' feet sat on the bar top next to a rack of peanuts and Barney the Beagle, a taxidermy dog with a marble for one eye, once voted Mayor of Bull Head, his name embroidered on a toque that rested on top of his head. Lorne poured Sonny a cup of coffee. Sonny opened a
National Geographic
and flipped through the pages.

“Anything new?” Lorne said.

“Animals.”

“What kind of animals?”

“Animals, dammit. Just animals.”

“Who pissed in your cereal this morning?”

Sonny slurped his coffee and set it down. He kept his hand on the cup's handle, stared at it, rubbed it with his thumb. “Says he's gonna shoot Bacon Face if he goes near his property.”

“Who?”

“Bo. Bohunk. Bojangle. However the hell you say his name.”

“Empty wagons do the most rattling.”

“Not in this case.”

“He'll settle in. Look on the bright side. You're a shoo-in for mayor again.”

Sonny lifted his eyes from his magazine. Five large jars crowded the faded red terrycloth tabletop. Above the table, pictures of previous mayors hung in a circle around a closed toilet seat with a caption that read: “Who's the next Mayor of Bull Head?” Anyone who lifted the seat found themselves staring into a mirror with an inscription, “You Are!” Sonny's jar was jammed with pennies, though he never put in a cent himself.

“I wish you'd leave me out of it.”

“Hell, Sonny, even after you're long gone, we'll just stuff you like Barney, prop you up in the corner, and you'll still win.”

Sonny shuddered. The annual election was something he used to enjoy, the media attention and film crews, the locals raising their glasses to him. It helped him forget Norma briefly. But when the crews left and the bar emptied, his longing for her returned with a searing vengeance. “Over my dead body.”

“Precisely.”

Votes in the form of pennies raised money for the volunteer fire department, established after the great fire of 1908. Anyone could vote as many times as they wanted, including the candidates, but whoever won had to promise that as Mayor of Bull Head, they would do absolutely nothing. The whole event rankled Sonny. It had devolved into a circus that only brought more people to town. Next to his jar sat the other half-empty jars of the other candidates: Ed the fly fisherman from Montana, Betty Ford, The Invisible Candidate, and Casey the Goat.

“It's no way to live out my days. Can't you just let things be?”

“Just don't lose to that one.” Lorne gestured toward the Invisible Candidate's jar.

In his kitchen, Sonny dragged a match on the tabletop and lit a kerosene lamp. He pictured Norma smiling, handing him a cup of coffee. He blew out the match, dropped it to the floor where thousands of other matchsticks lay, turned down the wick, and placed the glass cover back on.

The light faded outside, the snags no longer visible on the mountain. Among the thick mossy stumps and thin second-growth, the concrete and brick skeletons of the coke ovens and powerhouse crumbled. Everything Sonny ever cared about was in those hills, and everything good was behind him. He pulled a tattered magazine from the stacks on his bookshelf and sat down in his father's old armchair to read. He picked up the matchbox and lit a few more matches, watched them burn to his fingertips before blowing them out and dropping them on the floor. Outside the window, snow fluttered down. A shadow passed in Bojan's garden. Sonny pressed his forehead against the cold pane and peered into the darkness. “I'll be damned.”