Once You Break a Knuckle (13 page)

Then, on a clear day in October when leaves piled the streets, Winston's mother climbed into a two-seater Datsun and took off for Vegas with the lockbox and a pregnant school friend named Eileen. The boy was two. Conner spent one full day so fucked he awoke naked in a hotel room beside Jack's wife. The room smelled like used sheets and latex. It had musky wallpaper and a titty-lamp mounted on the ceiling above the bed. Residual white grains lingered on the nightstand. Her pale back faced him and in the amber light her blond hair looked ruddy and her skin tanned. She was weeping and she shrunk toward her knees when he trailed his knuckles along her spine.

Conner pulled it together. At dawn he'd drop Winston at his old man's acreage at the outskirts of Edgewater. His old man wore flannel shirts and his skin was brown and farmered below the elbow. A scar halved his right ocular and a glass eye lolled in that socket like a ball bearing. When Conner came home he pinged spare change into a Folgers tin he and the old man set aside for a new TV, so they could replace the panelboard relic slouched in a corner. The old man barbecued steaks. He mashed potatoes with barbaric, two-handed thrusts. In the evenings they
sipped heavy beer and watched news coverage of the war and lounged on the porch passing the toddler between them. At least once, the old man told Conner he'd done him proud.

After a while the boy's mother showed up penniless and a cokehead. Conner shut the door on her. She threatened to lay abuse charges, showed him finger bruises on the soft flesh beneath her biceps and the bulge of her jugular. He called her a fucking whore. She said it'd be a shame for Winston to see his dad hauled to jail.

A few summers later, while the boy's friends skewered grasshoppers on willow spears, Conner and him hung a tree fort off a pine so thick around the base they couldn't ring it, even with their fingertips touching. Winston's mother had fucked off on another binge with her whore friend Eileen. Conner and the boy fashioned a pulley system around the tree's branches, and as his son helped him heave on a rope to hoist the base, the nickname came to him: Winch.

EVENTUALLY, CONNER SNAGGED
his ring finger in a pipe threader and the machine tugged it off with humbling nonchalance. He pressured his maimed hand in an oil rag and traced the wrecked bone beneath the cloth. At the hospital they stitched him but told him there wasn't enough left to reattach. The doctor asked if he wished to keep the remains, maybe in a pickle jar, and then he laughed like a man who'd used that joke before.

The finger healed but he didn't get any money since
he worked under the table. His old man knew a few guys in management at a barium mine forty minutes away. Conner and him spent a night awake until the morning light cleared the mountains. Dirty work, the barium mine, and thankless, and likely to put him out of commission with lung defects in two decades. Upstairs, Winch coughed in his sleep.

—Et'll pay the bills, his dad said, and Conner nodded into his wrist.

Not long after, Conner was braving the rainy highways with one hand knuckled at the twelve-o'clock and one hand on the gearshift. Deer crowded the ditches and one time he swerved to the opposite lane when he rounded a blind curve. His ancient Ford shuddered like a desperate mutt. Cars churned slop onto his windshield. The air blasting through the radiator smelled like woodsmoke and if Conner sucked a deep breath it tickled his nostrils like his dad's cigarettes used to, when he was a kid riding shotgun through the hoarfrost hours of the morning.

A year through the work, he came home and found his dad at the base of his porch with a busted hip. He was propped on an elbow and he leaned his head against the lowest step.

—Cunt took Winch, his dad said.

Inside, Conner dialed the hospital and told them his old man broke a hip. The Folgers tin was on its side and looted except for loose change. He slammed the receiver.

—Go get yer boy, his dad said when Conner knelt to help him inside.

He did. At his home, he found a ratbag Benz 230 parked on the front lawn. Inside the house, Winch hunched on a lemon-coloured sofa with patches of foam torn out like a bloodied creature. The boy looked alright, was toying with a shoe-sized buggy constructed from a scrapped Meccano set.

—Y'awright? Conner said.

Winch nodded.

The boy's mother was in the kitchen.

—Ya can't come in here, she said.

Conner booted a chair out of his way and in two steps had her by the neck. He heaved her at the drywall and it crunched. She clawed his four-finger grip. His old man once told him people change when you've got them where you want them. You can see it, his dad said. Their wild, desperate eyes.

Conner pushed his knuckles upward against her nose so her chin tilted.

—Ya hurt muh dad an' took muh savins, he said.

A throaty sound choked against his palm. He drew his fist back to his ear and watched her track it with her eyes.

—I thought you were gonna hurt muh boy, Conner said.

He dropped her. She landed on her ass in a crumple and made a long, whinnying noise. Conner led Winch to his Dodge Sweptline and they drove to the hospital where his old man was strung up in a cushy bed. In a day's time the house would burn to cinder and he and the boy would toe through the rubble. He got a handful of insurance paid out but houses in Edgewater had little value. They moved
to his old man's place officially and Conner spent the cash on a colour TV and a set of winter tires, and on the day his old man hobbled home the three of them crashed on the couch and watched
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
.

WINDLASS

When Winch turned twelve, him and his dad and his dad's friend Sampson – who his dad called Doc – and Sampson's son, Dallas, packed into a '60 Bronco and tear-assed to a cabin out at Brisco. His dad had taken the weekend off. He worked more and more and sometimes Winch wouldn't see him for days at a time, or he'd shoulder through the front door before bed. Those days, Winch's grandpa – his gramps – rose from the couch and zigzagged to the kitchen to heat food. Winch's dad gamed with the cabbage-like smell of pulp, and rust, and he'd have pink-stained hands from the barium, but Winch liked the way he had scratchy whiskers. His dad would sleuth one eye sideways and he'd pretend not to notice, and his dad would start to growl, and if Winch smiled he'd get tackled and they'd wrestle a few minutes, until his gramps brought a plate and a beer in a giant ceramic mug with a picture of two guys tending a bonfire. —Awright you two, his gramps would say. —Don't make me sepraychya.

Sampson and his truck smelled like mothballs. He had a jean jacket with hewn edges, worn open over a Black Sabbath sweatshirt. His cheeks were narrow and tanned and his nose jabbed forward with a hook. He habitually
lifted his Coors Light hat straight off his head so he could swipe a hand over his matted hair. Winch's dad filled the passenger seat in a checkered overcoat and jeans faded in swaths and a beaten blue ballcap. He had the kind of hard cheekbones that could absorb their share of blows, and Winch had seen them bruised and bloodied more than once over the years.

Dallas was a beaver-toothed kid with freckles who talked about rifles all day. Winch had never touched a rifle, but his gramps kept one locked in a fibreglass case above his headboard.

It was September. Rain clouds stirred over the mountaintops and already the peaks had whitened with snow. The morning smelled like winter, the scent of brick and pale sunlight. Winch and his dad flung supplies into the rear of Sampson's canopied Bronco. His dad fished two granola bars from inside a backpack and flicked one over and they chewed on the bars while Sampson spot-checked. Winch's dad mentioned the poor state of his treads and Sampson jerked a thumb toward the box, a milk crate full of chains. —I'm from the Prairies, he said.

While they drove, Sampson smoked cigarettes from a carton he kept in the glove compartment. He lowered his window and flicked ash over the glass and flecks of it whirled back into Dallas's face.

—I saw yer girl, Sampson said.

—She's not muh girl, Winch's dad said.

—Even still.

—Don't care to hear about it.

Sampson crushed his cigarette in a white foam mug taped beneath the radio.

—She's gone and cleaned.

—Ya know where I stand.

—Maybe ya should give 'er a chance.

—Maybe you should keep yer fingers outta this pie, Winch's dad said, and belted Sampson on the shoulder.

They veered off the highway. Sampson's Bronco bobbed over roots and divots and Winch bounced against the restraint. His dad braced one palm against the dashboard and the other clutched the oh-shit handle above the passenger window. Tree branches whipped by, clunked into the windshield and the roof.

—Why we gotta come all the way out here? Winch's dad said.

Sampson seemed to eye Winch's dad sideways. —Et's a big load, Con.

—Seems a long way is all.

—Bein safe. Ya know?

Winch's dad clicked his teeth. —Just seems a long way out.

—That's the point, Con. No one sees nothin.

—Don't like havin muh boy here for it, neither, his dad said, and when he realized Winch was listening he gave a big wink.

They got a few kilometres down the dirt road before a fallen tree blocked the way and Sampson platformed the truck trying to bog over it.

—Fucken truck, he said.

Winch's dad dropped the seesawing distance to the ground and dusted his hands together with two brisk swipes. —Lock 'er in four-wheel, he said.

—She ent a four-wheel.

—Sonabitch.

His dad circled the truck and Winch twisted in his seat.

—Put 'er in gear, his dad called, and then he slammed his shoulder against the box and heaved. His boots dug in the damp earth, and when Winch glimpsed his dad's face it was red and bunched together. The truck teetered, its front tires touched down, and then Winch's dad fell away.

—Winch! Get down here and gimme a hand.

—I'm comin Con, Sampson said.

—I said Winch come help. Doc, you stay in yer sissy truck so it don't steer into a tree.

Winch scrambled between the seat and ducked out the door. His dad had his lips pulled in a half grin and he gave Winch a little shove. —Let's get this done, he said, and on a three-count they plowed the tailgate and Winch heaved and his dad's boots dug gruelling progress and the truck skidded forward over the log so the rear tires bit the tree bark. Sampson hooted. Winch's dad hawked and spat and wiped his sleeve along his mouth. —Takes one an' a half men, eh Winch? he said, and winked.

The cabin sagged on one side like a wounded dog. Its exteriors were dark cedar. A tarp and poles jutted off the side and Sampson parked the truck beneath this makeshift carport. He turned the key in the ignition and the truck juddered to sleep. —Here we are, he said, and stretched.

While Sampson took his keys to the door, Winch helped his dad lug four packs from the truck. When he lifted the nearest one, it was heavy and objects swung inside it like bricks. He loosened the strings to peer inside but his dad tore it away from him.

—Don't be a snoop, his dad said.

His dad superheroed three of the four bags and Winch scurried behind with his own. They hucked the packs in a corner except one, which his dad handed over to Sampson with a nod. The rat-faced man slid it into a cupboard and brushed his hands together and let out a breath that puffed his cheeks.

Winch's dad handed him a couple sixers of Kokanee and told him to sink them in the lake. Dallas joined him, a BB gun slung against his shoulder like an army cadet and a grocery bag full of empties dangling from the tip. Winch weighted the sixers with a football-sized rock and staked a branch in the sand so his dad could find the beer, then him and Dallas balanced the empties on bleached driftwood. Dallas pinged coloured bullets off the cans and glass bottles and never offered Winch a go. Sampson hoofed it to the lake's edge and tore two cans free of their yoke and pressed one to his cheek. He gave an affirmative nod, like a man who knew the right temperature for beer, and then climbed to the cabin where Winch's dad reclined on the porch.

—Met yer mum, Dallas said.

—She's a bitch.

—Muh dad likes 'er.

Winch rolled onto his back. Dark clouds rolled over the mountaintops. He looked for the haze that meant rain.

—Last I seen 'er she took a bunch of money.

—Yer dad was mean to 'er.

—Well, yeah, Winch said. —She deserves it.

For lunch they ate game meat pressed into burgers. —Not even the haunch of the six-pointer I got, Sampson said. —Got 'em through both lungs. Shoulda seen the sucker keel.

They wheeled a grouchy propane barbecue from inside and Winch's dad scorched his face when the old thing fireballed. They all laughed. His dad got the barbecue going and it wheezed thin smoke out its sides, and Sampson smacked bloody wads onto the grill with one cupped hand. Winch listened to them sizzle.

—Y'ever seen muh gun? Sampson asked after he'd shut the lid.

Winch's dad pursed his lips and said, —Nup.

—Gimme a sec, he said, and darted inside. He returned with a rifle held before him like a ceremony, a smile big enough to reveal a missing canine. —Three-oh-eight Winchester. Bolt-action.

He ratcheted the bolting mechanism and sighted through the scope, made a
pow
noise and faked a recoil strong enough to blast him backward into a deck chair. Dallas laughed in a slow ribbit:
huuh-huuh-huuh
.

Afterward, they lounged full-bellied in the deck chairs. Sampson and Winch's dad nursed beer and Dallas and
him sucked on Cokes. Sampson faced the three of them, not reclined, elbows fanned to the sides on the arm rests like a man who might rise suddenly. He lifted the Coors Light cap and brushed a palm across his matted hair. A couple times he tapped a finger on his gums. The Winchester leaned against the cabin's wall, arm's reach, draw distance.