Debris (9 page)

The next four liquor trailers went staggered, two local stores with a few weeks between them. Then two stores at a three-hour ride to the northeast and three-hour ride back, and those robberies done but three days apart. We had to lug fuel so that we wouldn't have to stop. The cold near crippled us and some of the sleds struggled over the length. We did both of those jobs with Doug on the torch and when we got back from the second job he sat bone-chilled by our wood fire with his hands burnt and bruised. He had good whiskey and water in a tall glass and drank through a straw.

“Why in fuck did we do those two like that again?” he said.

Dad got out of his armchair and knelt by the fire. Took up his brother's hands in his own and kneaded the joint muscles, careful by the little stump.

“Two jobs in a row with that kind of gear to haul makes it look local.”

“What?”

“Local to there, Dougie.”

On the next job me and Ronnie went through the roadside windows of a store in the next county with a sledge and fire-axe. Made a godawful mess of the place. Ronnie cleared the framing with the axe and boosted me in, handed up the sledge. The alarms squealed loud enough to blow your eardrums. I carried the hammer to the front door and swung near the knob. Blew the hasp clear out from the jamb and let the door swing and come back. Ronnie came in and split the alarm siren with the axe and it warbled low and quit. We worked double-quick to load the booze and fire up the sleds. Tore through the bush to our home county but a half-hour away.

Constable Francis came by the house the next afternoon. He carried his girth around back to where my Pa shovelled a blackened slush heap into a wheelbarrow for me to haul. We could see the big man coming by his gait but he wore only jeans and flannel, a ball cap on his huge head. Pa stared at him for a second and then kept on shovelling.

“I can't remember when I last seen you outta your blues, Francis,” Pa said.

“Sometimes I change outta them. For church and the like.”

“It ain't Sunday.”

“I hear Jesus saves any day of the goddamned week now.”

Pa smiled. He planted the shovelhead in the muck.

“What the fuck's he doin'?” I said.

“Shut up,” said Pa.

Francis studied me calmly from across the yard.

“Heard you got a job at the FoodTown?” he said to me.

“I did.”

“You ain't got work today?”

“I quit.”

“Oh?”

“He's helping me round the shop,” Pa said.

Francis nodded.

“What is it you want exactly?” Pa said.

“I need to talk to ya, Rick.”

“As a cop or as a regular person?”

Francis stood up tall as he could get and eyeballed my dad.

“Don't be a fool,” he said.

Pa stared at Francis a long time. Then he handed me the shovel and said he'd be back. They left out together in Francis' car and they were gone for hours.

 

 

By nightfall the old man was
back and full of whiskey, stink of bar-room sweat in his clothes. He sat heavy at the kitchen table and fumbled with the radio. Those massive fingers gently turning the dials. He had not uttered more than a grunt.

“He knows, don't he?” I said.

Pa grumbled, took a drink.

“The cops got nothin'. ‘Bewildered' is how he put it. But they're ready to start casting out in any direction just out of pure fuckin' embarrassment.”

“What's that mean?”

“You see any cars parked in the road of a night, you let me know.”

 

 

I picked Claire up from her house.
She had her hair teased out and let down and wore jeans and a girl's golf shirt. Little make-up to colour her pale cheeks, faintest eye-shadow. She hustled out to the truck and tried to put her jacket on as she went. When she got in she kissed me long and tasted like wine and bubblegum.

Aunt Colette had roast chicken and potatoes ready in the oven when we got there. I led Claire in through the side door where the yard-bound mutt licked at her hand. Colette peeked over from the stove when we came in. Red-haired and tall with thick, strong arms. Slippered feet on the linoleum.

“Charlie, you are late,” she said.

“Sorry Aunt Col.”

She studied the both of us. Took a long look at Claire. She smiled and cocked a thumb toward the sitting room.

“Animals are in back,” she said, eyes on Claire yet. “Honey. You can stay here with me.”

Claire took to all of them like nothing. She talked to Aunt Colette about what it was like in the high schools now and she talked to Ronnie about her older sister, Karen. Ronnie said Karen probably wouldn't remember him but Claire said she did. She talked to her last week. The sister lived out west now. Ronnie nodded solemn but he got a charge out of the whole thing. Pestered Claire throughout the meal. Pa said little until he was done eating. He waited for us all to finish and took all the plates to the kitchen. Came back with a good bottle of whiskey and set it by the wine on the table. Pa poured a glass and slid it down to Ronnie. Then he leaned in toward Claire.

“This here Irish wine is better than the girly stuff sittin' there,” he said. “Don't know if you got the taste for it.”

“I could have a small one,” Claire said.

Pa poured the glass quarter-full without looking at it. Claire took it and Colette squinted her eyes at the girl, looked down at her placemat for a second. Pa sent me a half-glass and poured his glass full to the brim.

“To Claire,” he said, raising the thing thimble-like between his thumb and forefinger. “May her luck with men improve by the day.”

Ronnie busted out laughing until I backhanded him at the shoulder. We all drank. Claire downed the stuff in one slow gulp and set the glass down. Not a twitch or shudder. Pa smiled a little.

“What's your dad do for a livin', Claire?” he said.

“He works at the
TRW
. Runs the floor for the morning shift.”

Dad nodded.

“What'd he say when you told him you were comin' out for dinner?”

“Try to be back by midnight.”

“Yous aren't from here, originally?” he said.

Claire shifted, ran her hair back behind her ear.

“Moved here when I was ten. Dad is from Rochester and my mom's from Niagara Falls.”

My Pa poured himself another whiskey. Tipped another small one into Claire's glass. He winked at her.

“She's a good'un, son,” he said.

 

 

Claire helped Aunt Colette
with the dishes for a few minutes until Col told her to grab me and get along. I got up from the couch and gave Ronnie the finger. He tried to swat it out of the air. Pa sat heavy in an armchair and he saluted lazily at me as I went. Barely did he look up. We left the house and my aunt watched us by the lamplight at the side door. Claire kept looking back and waving. My aunt held a hand up.

The truck rumbled heavy on snowed-over ruts in the forest lane. Pine branches whapped along the edges of the windshield and brushed the length of the truck. Out we came into a clearing, the ground under two feet of snow. Nothing there but the hoof prints of a wayward deer, twinned rabbit tracks. I pulled up crooked on a shieldrock plateau that fell five feet to frozen water. To the right stood a set of falls that spilled yet and broke thin-formed slates of ice over and over. There was a six-pack of tallboys by Claire's feet. She pulled one and popped the tab, took a drink. She saw that the armrest at the bench-middle had been taken out, moorings and all. Then she handed the can over to me and pulled her shirt up over her head.

Not too long afterward we lay there on the bench with the windows all afog. There was little room to move and I'd had to shift toward the dash, thighs pressed up against the steering wheel and my ass halfway off the seat cushion. The heater had gone again but nobody noticed until our breath started to hang in the air. I bashed the console once with the underside of my fist and the fans whirred.

Claire shuffled her elbows along my chest until she had propped herself up there, eyes fixed on a fat collarbone scar I'd earned at five years old. I felt the curve of her back with the rough flat of my hand. Asked her what was the matter.

“We gotta be more careful,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I'm on the pill. But I'd rather be paranoid than barefoot and pregnant at seventeen.”

“I hear ya,” I said.

“You can never tell what might happen. Just look at your aunt.”

My mouth opened to talk and then it shut up. I started to breathe so hard that the girl rose and fell a good four inches atop me. Claire looked into my eyes and took hold of my head firm with both hands.

“My God, Charlie,” she said soft. “Didn't you know it?”

 

 

Out in the yard I stood with
a bottle of whiskey upended and fixed to my lips. I drank deep and near had to take a knee before drinking again. Then I pitched the bottle at the house. It glanced off the siding and emptied on the narrow back porch, spinning oddly. I went up the steps and put a barbeque lighter to the spilt booze but it wouldn't take. I opened the back door and walked in.

Pa had settled into his armchair with a short glass in his hand and a few bottles of beer on the nearby side table. Otherwise, the house was immaculate. He looked up at me for just a second and then went back to watching the
TV
. I stooped down next to the fireplace, lifted a fifty-pound ceramic plant pot, soil and tree and all. I trod over and dropped it through the living room table. Dirt and debris flew as the wooden tabletop slammed down to the carpet. Pa got to his feet and I stepped over the mess and drove him back against the wall with my shoulder. We careened off the panelling and went over the chair and then we were rolling on the carpet. Scrambling to our feet in front of the TV. He had me by the collar and cuffed me hard with an open hand. The weight of it stung me but I was at him again until he pitched backward and took out an entire length of shelving with our old pictures and postcards and framed letters from wars past, pages yellowed.

In the centre of the room he stood tall, wheezing, hands half up. He could've killed me and we both knew it. I lunged and caught him on the jaw with an overhand right. Back and back he stepped, arms reaching while the walls came down around him. He did not fall. I saw him duck and bolt and then I was up by the ceiling fan, down on the floorboards with my guts afire and not a breath left in me. I swatted at his great and ugly face until he held my wrists.

“Calm down, son,” he said.

We could have been minutes like that, or hours.

 

 

M
ild weather settled in through
late winter. The roads were clear for many weeks and snow lay but sparse on lawns and farm fields. Unlucky fishermen had their huts founder and collapse on the ice, or they came by of a morning to see a jagged, slush-filled hole and no more. Pa spent his days at Aunt Colette's and watched the round of her belly grow. He drank plenty and it never appeared that he'd slept. Ronnie didn't seem to know how to talk to me but the sentiment I got from him was just goddamned overwhelming joy. Like if we weren't brothers before I had no choice now. Dummy. Like we weren't before.

At the tail end of March we got one good cold snap, an Alberta clipper they called it, minus thirties in the day and bone-chillers overnight. Pa and his brothers were in the garage late hours and I started waking to fry-ups in the kitchen. Two platters at our little, barewood table. The old man would watch out of the corner of his eye to see if I'd eat or not. I did.

One morning Pa quit eating and put his elbows on the tabletop, wrapped one busted hand with the other and looked at me.

“We're gonna take another run.”

“Ice ain't thick enough,” I said.

“This cold'll last another week. After that, season's up. We gotta go.”

“When?”

“Early Sunday mornin'.”

“The ice ain't thick enough.”

He just shrugged and went back to his breakfast. I wolfed what I could in the five minutes I could stand to sit there and then I cleaned the plate and set it by the sink. Got my coat and hat and went out the front door, down to the truck with my boots unlaced. I drove the length of our street with my teeth rattling in my head. I'd done laps of dirt road by the time the heat kicked in. I parked atop a rise just north of us and from there I could see clear to Aunt Colette's house.

 

 

Of course I went with my pa
for that run in the bitter fucking cold. We set out to rob a trailer at county's edge, a triple-jointed sucker again and we went in messy, no need for the torch or the industrial saws. It snowed light and stopped while we scooped out the cargo. I did not like that. Pa had planned for it. Ronnie helped breach the place and then he took off on Dan's loaded-up cargo sled, following the shoreline as close as he could, where the ice was thicker by inches. At a paved launch near to the far shoreline a U-Haul sat with a box big enough to carry the two cargo sleds, a ramp that lowered to the ground. The other sleds would ride long trails and switchbacks and cut across lengths of county road, down dirt paths where the frozen claypack would take no marks.