The summer before Will finished university, he damn near broke a promise to his old man but came good on one to me – a childhood pledge to help build my first home. About the same time, a kid we knew from highschool forded the Sevenhead River and disappeared into the bush beyond, last seen wearing camouflage waders and gumboots and a Jack Daniel’s trucker cap turned sideways. He was packing a 30-30 Winchester, pockets full of hollowpoints, and enough nautical rope to hogtie a grizzly. His motives were unknown. His potential to kill somebody was above average. Will’s old man had been a cop longer than I’d been alive, and the Force assigned him to tracking the kid down. He asked me to help him, out in the bush, since I knew my way around the wilderness and since my own dad was once a bit legendary across the valley. Will’s old man figured the two of us could shave days off a search, could bag it and tag it in no time at all, but all roads to Hell are paved with the best-laid plans, or so the saying goes.
When Will finally rolled through town – Inverhole, he called it – in early June, I was more than halfway done building my new house. I’d framed and sheeted the exterior walls, wedged up the load-bearers, and banged together some ladders between the floors. It only took me and Will a month to polish off the insides. I helped him plot circuits and measured sockets against my hammer, and he drilled holes through floor joists, in threes, for his electrical feeds. Will’d lost weight on the West Coast, but he was wiry as a devil. He only stood as high as my chest, but most people only stand as high as my chest. Growing up, what Will lacked in size he made up for with stubbornness. A few times he’d come home big-lipped, cheeks veining like a bloodshot eye. His old man used to think Will’d make a good boxer – he had the build to do well in lightweight, the build of a long-distance runner – but his knuckles were as brittle as onion skins. He broke three bones in his jab hand before his old man put the kibosh on the whole operation.
There were days when Will stomped around like a guy with something to win back. There were days I’d have fired him if he worked for me. He chipped four of my auger bits on nailheads. He sunk a hole straight through my styrofoam insulation and we had to patch it with blast-in fibreglass. Some days the temperature peaked over forty and we’d call a French advance and retreat to the basement where the heat couldn’t kill us. This was 2009, with forest fires burning the Okanagan dry. The radio droned on and on about blazes skipping barricades and counter-fires gone rogue and a crew of bushworkers digging ditches to keep themselves alive. Nearly every half-hour, waterbombers filled their monsoon buckets in Lake Windermere, and in the evenings their distant engines made a sound like pissed-off wasps. It was an uncanny summer – the sky wouldn’t darken or light up completely. Even in the dead of night it was all off-brown, like a puddle full of sawdust, the Purcells’ upper ridge aglow. Flames bigger than cities nipped at the far side of those mountains, and you could never escape the feeling that warm air, as if from a car radiator, as if from a dog’s breath, was blowing in your face.
WE FIRST HEARD ABOUT the missing kid midway through July. Will’s old man showed up at the end of the afternoon in scuffed jeans and a T-shirt that said, I Will Kick Your Ass and Get Away With It. Me and Will were out on what would one day be my porch. We’d kicked up our feet on empty spools of fourteen-gauge wire. Piles of those things littered the place, like giant versions of the bobbins on my wife’s sewing machine. That was Will’s doing: he worked fast as the dickens but was piss-poor at guesstimating how much wire he’d need for any given room. Hence the empty spools. Smart and fast, but not second-nature – that’s how Will Crease worked. He was studying to be a writer at the time, on the West Coast, but a few summers ago, in a rare moment of bared hearts, he told me he’d have turned cop if his old man didn’t make him promise not to.
That day in July, Will’s old man looked tired like only someone of his profession can. He wore dark sunglasses and a pair of Gore-Tex boots instead of steeltoes. A red-and-pink gash above his eyebrow drew my attention to his baldness. At a distance – or from most angles – John Crease looked like the kind of guy who’d either kill you in an alley or drag you from the pits of Hell. He was two-hundred-twenty pounds of old man strength. His cop’s moustache was mostly grey, but immaculate. He called his fists “Six Months in the Hospital” and “Instant Death,” and if you said something stupid he’d hoist them up and make you choose. Only when he took off his sunglasses did he show his age – or at least how bad his day had been. He did so that evening – took the sunglasses off – and hooked them in the collar of his shirt. Lines spread out from his eyes, down his chin. He seemed to be perpetually gritting his teeth.
He turned a wire spool on end and lowered himself to a sit. Then he waved toward the six-pack of Kokanee on the ground beside me. I flipped him one.
—You guys remember a kid named Duncan Jones? he said, and cracked the beer.
—Dragged me out of the Kicking Horse, Will said, referring to a whitewater-rafting trip with our grad class, eight years prior.
—Thought that was him, Will’s old man said. He picked at the beer tab with a thumbnail. It tinked, over and over, until he grimaced and twisted it straight off. —His family reported him missing today.
—He’s our age, I said.
—I know that, Mitch.
—How long he been gone?
Will’s old man shrugged, swung his gaze from me to Will, but Will just stared straight forward, hands behind his head, watching the sun sink below the Purcells. The sky had gone the colour of a rusty sawblade. Will probably liked the look of those mountains. We used to say they looked like breasts, even though that’s stupid. As kids, me and him could pinpoint a cave on a rock face, noose-shaped and dark like a hole in the world. Maybe Will was thinking about how Invermere hadn’t changed, since mountains don’t change, not like the rest of the world. On the West Coast all he had was hippies and the ocean – and even the ocean is always moving around.
—Guys your age don’t go missing, Will’s old man said, eventually.
—Not by accident, Will said, and he slunk an eye sideways to look at his old man, whose tongue moved in a slow circle over his teeth, his face soured up like he had a point to make but didn’t care to do so in public. The two of them weren’t on speaking terms that summer, but hell if I was in the know.
—Girl trouble, I said. —That’ll send you over the deep end.
Will’s old man shot to his feet and booted an empty wire spool with a kick worthy of the CFL. Women: about the only thing those two talked about less than feelings. —Get so fucking tired of this job, Will’s old man said. He stood there a minute, like he had something profound to add. Instead, he tapped my shoulder with his toe. —There any easy work to do, anything I can haul around?
—There’s some ten-gauge upstairs, Will said. —Need to move it down.
For a second his old man just loomed above us like a cop, like all the dirty secrets he knew about everyone – even me and Will. He pressed his fists to his lower back, where thirty years wearing an RCMP gunbelt had rubbed the muscles threadbare. Then he stomped off.
—He alright? I said, and Will, hands cupped behind his head, shrugged as best he could.
—We had an altercation, he said.
—What happened?
Will rocked forward, brushed his hands on his thighs in two brisk swipes. He could’ve been one of us right then, one of us small-towners, boys who hadn’t and wouldn’t move on from the ’Mere. He didn’t have to be a university kid. —I’ll tell you later, he said.
A floor above, Will’s old man cursed and you could hear his boots clunk toward the stairwell. He probably had that massive roll of wire hugged to his chest like a body. Damned thing weighed near a hundred pounds, and that’s why we’d left it upstairs for the night, since only a desperate idiot would steal it. Will cocked his head and smiled to himself – he and his dad were engaged in a lifelong game of one-upmanship, and who knows what kind of joke was whizzing through his head. Those days, me and Will might have been best friends, but he’d acquired his old man’s knack for leaving things unsaid.
—Andie will have dinner ready, I told him. That’s my wife, Andie.
Will dipped his head. —Ash gonna be there?
That’s my sister. I said: —Fuck you, Will.
Beneath his ballcap Will grinned his mischief grin – the one he used to put on whenever he played horrible pranks on his dad, like when he taped plastic wrap over the old guy’s bedroom doorway, like the time he weaseled himself into his dad’s weight division at a judo tournament, just so the old guy could pin him to the mat.
—I drive a thousand kilometres for you and this is what I get, he said, sounding indignant, but it was all pretend. We’d outgrown the Code. Plus Will and Ash had been sleeping together for near eight years, and I’d already whaled on him for it, long ago – cracked him edgewise with a two-by-four so hard he couldn’t lift his arm for a week.
—Remember when she dumped you, I said. —For that scrawny kid.
—I got her back.
—Will Crease: always gets ’em back.
He swiped at me but fanned it. Then he tugged his ballcap low over his eyes. In his Carhartts and steeltoes, reclined as he was, he could’ve been a spitting image of his old man, right down to the stubble tracing his jaw. Will’d done better than us all – got the best grades, got his university paid for, had some stories published someplace – but he was nowhere near to crawling from under the shadow of his dad. John Crease could cover a lot of distance just by walking a mile, or so the saying goes.
The house shuddered, as if releasing a sigh. From the basement Will’s old man hollered: —When are we gonna eat?
A FEW DAYS LATER Will came up with the idea for the pulley-swing. He wanted something to do after work, while we sat around drinking beer. The swing was simple: just a pulley and a swivel hinge that he fixed together and attached to a truss with a screw like you’d use to hang a punching bag. He looped an inch-thick rope over the wheel, measured it to centre. And just like that we had our own little carnival ride. We took turns seeing who could hold the other off the ground longer, our arms shaking like weightlifters’. One time Will hoisted me high enough to make me let go for fear of my fingers getting chewed in the wheel.
Ash came by to share beer and deliver news from Will’s old man. She taught piano to elementary-school kids, but on the side she worked at the station, guarding weekend drunks. According to her, Will’s old man had taken a police dog named Annabel, a great big German shepherd blind in one eye, and tracked Duncan Jones to a hill above the marsh, on floodplain from the Sevenhead River. There, he found leftover campfire and fistfuls of dried milkweed packed to a nest and what looked to be the antlers from a six-point whitetail – which was bad news, since it wasn’t season. Duncan himself was missing in action, but Will’s old man numbered the day a success. He loved dogs, though – all animals, really – so that’s a given.
Ash brought a fold-out director’s chair, a canvas thing, and she set it up while me and Will horsed around on the pulley. I could get Will spinning at a pretty good clip, since I outweighed him by thirty pounds. Ash wore dark cord pants and one of Will’s few collared shirts that flopped sideways and showed some skin. She always donned the clothes Will hated just so they could argue about it. Her strawberry hair was tied in a braid and she tended to play with it while idle. There were three little scars on her cheek in a tight triangle like that one constellation, and a speck in her iris I don’t know what to call except a speck. She pulled a page of the Valley Echo from her ass pocket and as she smoothed it flat I saw a grad photo of Duncan Jones, the headline: BROKEN HEART? Ash stared up at us past her eyebrows, her lips pulled to a pucker like a mom.
—Is this what you’d do if Andie left you? she said to me. —Probably, I said.
—Will?
—As long as she didn’t tell Mitch she was leaving me, I’d be okay.
—Fuck you, I said, and Will winked. Then he dropped the rope and crossed the room and sat down between Ash’s feet. He put some weight on her knees. She nabbed his hat and flung it away like a Frisbee. On the West Coast Will played like the king of the wild frontier, swore to wear his ballcap even if he someday won a big award, if he ever got famous, but Ash had no time for it, the facade. She didn’t like rednecks and idiots.
—I applied to the Force, Will said. He had his elbows on Ash’s knees, and her thighs pressed his ribs. Her lips were pinched in a straight line, and looking at her, I had no idea what she thought or if they’d even talked. Will couldn’t see her from his angle, but he relaxed with his weight on her legs. It was like he expected she’d take his side.
—Don’t tell my dad, he added and gazed out over the unfinished balcony as he said so, out across Invermere. We were never the kids who ran the town – it never felt like ours, probably because none of us ever intended to stay. As it turned out, only Will escaped. The rest of us got claimed by the mill, or by our own dads’ careers, or by girls. That’s the small-town curse. It’s not a bad life to have, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a life you should only choose after you’ve got the know-how to choose. My one regret, maybe. Right then, I had a flash of Will’s old man when he found out Will was applying to be a cop – that special way he could pull his face to a scowl, that special way he could make you feel, right before he punched you.
—Your dad’ll kill you, I said.
Ash said: —He’ll choke you out, at least. And then he’ll choke out Mitch for keeping it secret.
—Just don’t tell him, Will said, looking from me to Ash and back again. —Don’t lie. Just don’t tell him the truth. Omit the truth.
—That’s the same thing, Ash said.
—It’s not.
—You want to ask your dad? I said.
Will smiled toward his hands, but it looked more like a grimace, like the face you make when somebody cracks a joke that reminds you of a dead person. —Dad and I aren’t really talking, he said.
—He wants me to keep at it, in Victoria. Do grad school. Be the first Crease to get a master’s.
—What’s so bad about that? Ash said.
Will shifted between her legs. He latched onto her knee and squeezed and she yelped, but before he could grin or enjoy it she twisted his ear, hard. They’d always been like that, so combative. And they argued about basically everything – but that’s what Will liked about her, I’m sure of it. She could stand up to him, physically or otherwise. Once, on a roadtrip to the coast, they argued the whole way about churches and cults. Another time, Ash re-broke Will’s collarbone when she knocked him down a set of icy stairs. They were just like Will and his old man, except for the obvious parts. I got the impression, watching them, that there was stuff Will wasn’t telling me and stuff he never would.
—It’s not real. What my dad does. That’s real.
—I don’t know about what you do, Will, I said. —Your dad thinks it’s enough.
Will rubbed his jaw for a second, looked up at Ash as if to get support. She was playing with his hair, flat and egg-rimmed by the ballcap she’d whipped across the room. After a second of his gaze, she tweaked her eyebrows at him – well?
—You try having a cop for a dad, Will said, which pissed me right off every time he brought it up. It’d always been the opposite with my dad, rest his soul. He was a birdwatcher, a Parks naturalist, university educated, but he wanted us boys to land jobs you could have an arm-wrestle with. Not that it hasn’t worked out for me and my brother, but sometimes you get envious.
—There’s no rush, I said, but I’m not even sure what I meant.
—Everyone says that.
—Well maybe everyone’s right.
Will’s face twisted up, so disgusted – his unmatchable stubbornness heading its ugly rear. He gave me a limp wave, just the wrist moving, as if I wasn’t smart enough to know how he felt, as if I were a dumb redneck and not his best friend since who knows how long. —You try having a cop for a dad, he said.
—I would, Will, except my dad’s dead, I snapped.
—Guys, Ash said.
—Stop being a whiny bitch, I told Will.
He sunk against Ash, lolled his head over her knee. —You’re right, he said toward the ceiling. Will could tell straightaway when he’d crossed a line, could defuse a situation like no one’s business – something his dad taught him. The first weapon a cop employs is his mouth, Will’s old man always said. The second weapon is an ass-kicking.
—I won’t tell your dad – unless he flat-out asks.
Will flipped me a beer and cracked one for himself – a peace offer. —You’re a good friend, Mitch. Possibly the best of friends.
—Fuck you too, Will, I said, and then we drank.
A couple days later, I took the day off working on the house so me and Will’s old man could go do a search and scour for Duncan Jones. I left Will in charge, which under normal circumstances would be a mistake, but there you go. His old man had done the cop thing and found out Duncan Jones liked to camp at a place called Mount Tobias, in the Rockies. We headed off that way in his squad car, a Chevy Impala with the code name fifteen-Charlie-seven and a series of bullet-hole stickers on the driver door that he thought were cool. He’d brought the German shepherd, Annabel, and the beast panted away in the backseat. During the ride, Will’s old man made the required joke about the criminal in the back who’d forgotten to shave, and then another about him getting dibs on the shotgun – the one stored in a rack right between the front seats – if it came to a firefight or a tactical repositioning from a grizzly. —I don’t have to outrun the bear, he said to me, and winked, but I’d heard that one before.
We went as far as the road would take us. Will’s old man let Annabel out, and the dog came and put some weight on my shins. I scratched her behind her ears. Then Will’s old man removed the shotgun from its rack. —Because Duncan Jones was armed, he told me. I guess, as the saying goes, it’s better to have what you need than need what you have.
Will’s old man figured Duncan Jones wasn’t a threat to anyone but himself, and maybe some of the poor animals who wandered between his irons. If a guy was going to go postal, he just went – that’s what he told me. Guys like Duncan, guys off the deep end, could be scooped back to shore with some gentle persuasion. When Will’s old man said gentle he made quotes in the air with his one free hand. John Crease: the kind of guy everyone wants as a dad up until the point they do something stupid.
—You talked to Will at all? he said, holding a branch so it wouldn’t whip me in the teeth.
—A bit, yeah, I said.
—He say anything?
—Anything about what?
—About anything, Mitch, Will’s old man said, and let a little sigh follow the last word, and I felt pretty dumb right then, and then pretty terrified, because I might have to lie.
—He said you guys were fighting.
—We’re not fighting, Will’s old man said. He scowled at me, giving off all that menace as if he might just punch me right then and there. Not that he would punch me. Still, he looked like he might.
—Well, not talking, I said.
He scratched the nape of his neck. —He mention what his plans are?
—No.
—He doesn’t want to do a master’s degree, but the Force’ll pay for it.
—Man, that’s free money, I said, uneasily.
—He could stay in Victoria. The Force will pay for it, his old man said. —Maybe I could get transferred there.
We got going again. I was worried he’d know I’d omitted the truth.
In general, that summer, the forest wasn’t in great shape. The place smelled like woodsmoke instead of pine needles and nectar and the air was dry enough for it to tickle your throat if you breathed too deep. I don’t know a whole lot about ecology, but to my mind soil shouldn’t be grey and it shouldn’t powder your fingers like chalk. People said the hot spring and mild winter had caused more mountain meltwater than ever, but everything – the low, bent dogwoods, the knee-high bushes, even the falling pinecones that my head was like a magnet for – was parched, papery, brown.
Eventually Annabel perked up, and Will’s old man tightened his grip on the shotgun. The dog veered off the path and bolted between the trees, not running, but fast enough that the two of us had to hustle. We must’ve been nearing the summit, where people camped all the time. As we bushed on through, I couldn’t see ten feet forward, but Annabel’s clumsy traipsing was enough to guide us. Will’s old man held the shotgun in front of him, at an angle, and he used his elbows to ease branches and debris out of his way.
After another minute of fighting through the woods, the tree cover fell aside and the forest opened up into a glade with a great, wide panorama of the valley and the Purcells off on the horizon, white-capped like the teeth of the earth. The sky blazed like a chimney, but I don’t know if that was from the fires or the afternoon sun gunning light through the haze. Six years earlier the same thing had happened, and most of the Interior got burned. A lot of people lost their homes. Invermere, and most of the Kootenays, had the Purcells as a shield, but if the fires wanted to scale the mountains, the fires would. It was pretty awe-inspiring, all that destruction, all that power.
Then Will’s old man said my name in a slow, sober way that made me not want to turn around, not want to see whatever it was he’d discovered, because I’m not like Will’s old man or even Will – I can’t block things out like they can, I don’t have the stomach for it. Most people don’t, even though most people – at least most guys – like to say they do. But there’s no way to test it. You just have to end up staring something awful in the face, and maybe not even something physically awful. Everyone regrets things, and to be a cop, I think, you need to be able to face that regret full on, or else it’ll ruin you. Will’s old man always said the job eats up your humanity. I still don’t know what to tell him in response.
What he’d found was a decapitated stag’s head, impaled on a tripod of sticks, its antlers sawed off and its open mouth stuffed to bulging with milkweed. It was a gruesome thing to look at, and then, looking at it, to smell – the eggy stink of gore and flies and that way animal guts stain your skin orange. The creature’s eyes lolled into its head, probably where they went as it bled out. Its mouth had been forced open – I could tell by the rigid muscles in its cheek. It was like staring all dead things in the face.
Will’s old man had taken off his sunglasses and hooked them in the collar of his shirt. The creases around his eyes bunched up, especially in the fatty bit above the cheekbone. He loved animals so much. Annabel inched forward to sniff the stag’s head, but even she seemed unnerved, or at least as unnerved as dogs get. Will’s old man let the shotgun’s muzzle touch the dry dirt, and with his free hand he pinched his temple, the bridge of his nose. —I’m sorry, Mitchell, he said.
—No.
He waved his hand at me – just the wrist, just like Will. —I’ll call this in, he said, and pulled his shoulders back and straightened, cashing in on one last energy reserve.
And then a rifle blast cracked through the air.
It was close, so close, and as loud as a treefall or a lightning strike or a backblasting car with no muffler. I felt the concussion of it, the whoomp of air, and then Will’s old man clamped one massive hand on my shirt. He heaved me to the ground. I landed wrist-first, on my knees, felt the impact spike all the way to my shoulder. Will’s old man yelled something, I don’t remember what. The bushes were all shuffling, and the trees, and the dry grass shimmered in the air as if we were in some part of the Old West. Will’s old man levelled the shotgun, pressed the stock to the meat of his shoulder. His whole upper body leaned forward, one foot braced, knees bent and calves quivering in anticipation of the firearm’s kick. His face was stone solid. His eyes squinched to bead points. He breathed slow, even, as if the adrenalin hadn’t touched him. And he’d flattened me, effortlessly. People actually fought with that man.
A second shot barked from the forest, but there was no flash, no sound of impact. It was a warning, a scare tactic; maybe no bullets were being fired at us. Will’s old man hauled me to my feet and we bolted for the tree line, and then, without words, jogged down the path with Annabel taking point. Will’s old man breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth in double-exhales, sweat pearling at his temples and on the ridges above his eyes. He looked like he was clenching his teeth. Somewhere during the run his sunglasses had shaken loose from the collar of his shirt.
—Fuck sakes, he said when we reached the car. Sweat had turned the neck of his shirt grey, and his cheeks were flushed red, burning. He pressed both of his fists to his lumbar, knuckles first, and he sucked a steadying breath, as if to ignore a great discomfort. Then he opened the rear door and leaned on it while Annabel clambered inside.
—You can’t even help anyone anymore, he said.
He’d misjudged the situation and was probably hating himself for it, would be slow in forgiving himself. That’s how things went, how they always had: he held grudges for a long, long time, and he could just as easily hold one against himself. He eased the door shut, making sure Annabel’s tail was clear of the latch, and then he put his hands on the top of the squad car, spoke right at me: —It’s like nothing you can do will change a thing.
He therraped his fingers on the roof. After a moment of that, of me looking anywhere but at him while his fingers thrummed, he pushed away from the car and lowered himself in. Annabel loosed a low, throttling whine from her throat. I’m not sure if Will’s old man wanted me to say anything, or what I could possibly have told him to make things okay, but not a day passes when I don’t wish I had gathered the nerve to try.
IT ISN’T EASY TO sleep after getting shot at. Take that from someone who knows.
Will’s old man stopped at the foot of my driveway and the two of us sat in the idling car and stared at the lights and the windows of my house, listening to the radio play who cares what. He stuck his fingers through the ringwire grate that separated us from Annabel, and the beast set about licking them. We hadn’t said a whole bunch on the way home. Will’s old man had reports to file, questions to answer – the Force might be in touch, he’d told me. It was the time of night when everything turns the same shade of grey. The dying hour, I’d heard it called.
—If you see Will, don’t tell him what went on, he said.
—You got it, Mr. Crease, I said, and climbed out of the squad car. He waited for me to get inside before driving off – thirty-eight percent of all assaults happen while people fumble for their keys. I had a missed call from Ash and another from Will, but neither left any messages. I didn’t call them back because the last thing I needed to hear was that Will had drilled through another plumbing line or blown up the breaker panel or cut off his own hand with a tigersaw.
Andie had ordered pizza and left them on the coffee table and hit the rack early, so I ate straight from the box, turned on the TV and listened to a repeat of some Liberal politician touting the slogan It Can’t Hurt to Try. I didn’t exactly care to hear about the war or the economy. All I could think about was the gunshot and Will’s old man pushing me to the ground. It was like I could taste the sulphur, somehow, or the smell of cordite, but of course I’m imagining that. Still, it got my heart racing. I don’t know how anyone faced those kinds of situations days out and days out. That doesn’t make me a coward. That makes me normal. The line between being brave and being stupid is thinnest at both ends, or so the saying goes.
I checked in on my wife. She had our hot water bottle hugged to her chest and some of the liquid had spilled across her and probably made the evening heat bearable. Then I grabbed a yoke of three Kokanees from the fridge and headed for the beach. About everybody I know likes the beach at night, and even though the sign says it closes at ten, the cops won’t kick you off if you don’t cause a ruckus. One time, when me and Andie were first dating, I brought her there and spelled out her name with tea lights in the sand. It seemed like a good idea until a motorboat made a wave that put them out all at once, but maybe that was pretty cool itself. Later, a cop named Berninger found us and gave a sharp tsk, but we weren’t causing a ruckus.
I cut along a dirt path that brought me around the rim of the gully, not because it’d get me to the lake any quicker but because I’d pass by my new house, still in its skin-and-bone state. I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t make me proud, that house. Just seeing it gave me a tingle in my chest, in that spot right above the gut. Three thousand square feet, a good size for a family. My dad helped pay for it – said he owed me, from when I helped him build his own home, putting in sixteen-hour days for two bucks an hour, way back when I was thirteen. He slapped a sweaty cheque in my palm, for a wedding present. Twenty-five thousand dollars.
I thought I’d drink one of the beers on the porch, since that way I could stuff the other two in my pockets and be less conspicuous if I bumped into a cop. Not that they’d take them away. But when my house came into view I saw flashlights on the upper floor, zipping around as if searching the nooks and crannies. Fucking thieves. Probably the hicks – the same rednecks I’d been fighting since grade seven.
If I went in solo I wouldn’t stand a chance. Usually I’d go get Will and we’d take a beating and hopefully dish one out, but I had no idea where he was, even if I figured it’d be with Ash, and she lived across town anyway. I couldn’t even call the cops, hadn’t brought my cellphone. Right then, I felt like an idiot kid again, like when I was thirteen years old without a place to go in the world. That time, I’d ended up going to Will’s old man, which, as I watched those lights in my house, in the house I’d built and paid for from scratch, was the only place I could think to go.
He lived a couple streets down. It was twelve fifty-two when I reached his yard, and I knew he drifted asleep way earlier than that, on the couch, watching whatever movie happened to be playing on satellite. I knocked once and heard rustling, the unmistakable thump of their tomcat hitting the carpet, and then Will’s old man peered through the slatted living room blinds, scowled like only he can, and came to the door.
—What is it, Mitch? he said. He wore grey Nike sweatpants and a T-shirt with a picture of two bears in bandanas eating human bones. The caption read: Don’t Write Cheques Your Body Can’t Cash.
—Sorry, Mr. Crease, sorry to wake you.
—Couldn’t sleep anyway.
—I saw lights at my house.
—Lights? he said, and when he did it sounded so stupid, even to me.
—Like, flashlights, I said.
—You think there’s someone up there?
—I got my tools in the basement.
—What’re they worth?
—I don’t know.
He scratched the nape of his neck, his whole arm moving in a circle above his head, looking old in a way I couldn’t pin down. Maybe that ratty T-shirt made him seem frail, who knows. He blew a long, tired sigh out his nose and opened the door enough for me to step through. —Let me get some pants, he said, and waved me in. As he walked away I saw one arm bent at his hip, fist pressed to lumbar, and he shuffled his feet as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Operational police work is a young man’s job – that’s what he always told Will. It’s a career with an expiry date.
He came downstairs in jeans and socks and sandals, with his handcuff key chain in one palm, and he flipped the keys in the air and caught them without looking – a trick him and Will perfected years ago when they did judo together. He jerked his chin at the door. To the west, you could trace the outline of the Purcells – silhouettes against the dark tungsten sky. Will’s old man tugged the door shut, and then he turned and faced those mountains, his chin raised and his eyes squinted, as if staring something down.
—We’re going on evac warning, he said, but not in a way that invited me to comment. He did his cop’s shrug. Then he stretched, probably to ease a knot in his lumbar, and I imagined those muscles of his untangling like galley ropes. I stood a full head taller than him but it felt like looking up.
The street lamps are far and few between in Invermere. We walked in darkness. Only the spill from living rooms and porch lights lit our way. Will and me used to hike around Invermere’s dead streets at night, when the air smelled like paving salt and pine needles and lake. Since Will left I didn’t have so much time to just walk around doing nothing, and even less since I got married. I suppose that’s the way things go. Part of me wondered if Will’s old man might not mind walking in the dark.
My house wasn’t far off – in the daylight by now it’d have been in sight, or at least the roof would’ve.
—Is Will going to marry your sister? Will’s old man said.
—He is? I said, coming to a stop.
—No, I’m wondering.
—He never said.
—Well, they’ve been sleeping together for like ten years.
—Jesus, Mitch, Will’s old man said, this look on his face as if to say what the hell, as if he might headbutt me. Then a beam of light flashed around my house’s second floor and Will’s old man snapped his eyes away to look at it. He ran his tongue along his teeth. —Don’t you keep your tools locked up in the basement?
—Yeah.
—Wonder what we’re gonna find, he said with a little grin.
We kept on. Part of me hoped to find rednecks there so me and Will’s old man could beat them pulpy, maybe smack them with his elbows – the hardest impact point on the lower arm. I have a history with the rednecks. Will’s old man used to bitch about the justice system, until he got worried me and Will would turn into vigilantes. He might not have been unjustified in that fear – the two of us got in our fair share of scraps, and our dads had to spring us out. Will never got special treatment for being a cop’s son.
—The kid, Duncan, Will’s old man said all of a sudden. —He tried to kill himself, this evening.
—Why?
Will’s old man stopped again, at the foot of the driveway. —That’s what I like about you, Mitch. Everybody else asks how.
—Thanks, I said, but I’m not really sure what he was getting at.
—Her dad’s an electrician.
He rubbed the back of his neck. —Well, she saved his life, he said, and did his cop’s shrug, and that was that. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and I looked right at it. Those hands of his – I’ve never seen any part of anybody that took such a beating. Once you break a knuckle, he always said, you will break it again.
—Don’t let Will throw his life away.
—Okay, I said.
—You’re a good friend, Mitch.
My house had no doors installed yet. Will’s old man used his cellphone to light our way over the empty wire spools and other stuff that could make a racket. For an old guy, he glided around.
When we reached the stairwell he raised a finger to his lips and we listened in the darkness. I heard a squeaking sound, like a rusty teeter-totter. Will’s old man cocked his head, bent his arms to half-guards – ready, I guess, in case one of us got jumped. All me and Will kept on the second floor was drywall and bags of fibreglass insulation – pink plastic packages big as couch cushions. I used to know a guy who stuffed his boots with that insulation.
Then a great Jesus ka-thoomp shook the house from upstairs, in the master bedroom. Will’s old man gave a nod, like in cop films before guys storm a room. We went up. And there was Will and my sister, in the master bedroom, playing with the pulley-swing. Not fucking, thank the Lord – I’d rather get shot than see that. Will had his end of the rope coiled and he twirled it round and round so Ash whipped about the pivot at forty-five degrees. Her red hair was flung loose near her shoulders.
Will saw us standing there, let my sister slow down and drop with a thump to the plywood. She put a hand on his shoulder, probably not for balance. Will had this smug little smile on his face – almost a frown, actually, as if only half his face dared grin. His old man leaned on a stud and it creaked so he scowled at it.
Everyone stared at each other as if we were in a Western movie. Then Will’s old man snorted. —Mitch thought he was being robbed, he said, and I damn well expected him to smack me. —I thought we’d find you guys sleeping together.
—In my brother’s bedroom? Ash said.
Will’s old man yawned, his big mouth opening wide. He sat down on a wire spool and brushed his hands over his thighs in a pair of slow, methodical swipes, his whole body – arms, shoulders, even his back – stretching with the action.
—I’ve got beer, Will said, nodding to a flat of Kokanees near the exit to the unfinished balcony. He flipped on a pair of halogen work lamps that lit the room amber, like a great big candle. —Was going to try and seduce Ash with them.
She belted him, and good on her.
I leaned on a sawhorse and Will tossed me a drink and I fumbled it and left it to sit so it wouldn’t foam up. He and Ash had that look about them – not exactly sweaty but almost there, not red-cheeked but somehow blushing. They sat shoulder to shoulder. If it were anyone but Will and my sister, I’d have left them be.
—We got shot at today, Will’s old man said, his eyes on the plywood.
—Where? Will said.
—Up Mount Tobias. Was probably Duncan.
—Jesus.
—That’s all I need, another hole in my chest, Will’s old man said. He meant it as a joke but nobody even giggled. Will slurped beer suds and watched his old man, who didn’t stop staring at the floor. They barely ever looked at each other at the same time, that summer. A confrontation was brewing, anyone could see it. It’d been brewing for a while.
—I want to join the Force, Will said.
—You think I don’t know that?
—Crossed my mind.
—Why? Will’s old man said, but there’d be no answer to that. He’d played all his cards, spent so long and done so much to get Will out, to get Will happy, and he knew – Christ, he knew – that Will’s happiness would fly right out the window when he strapped on his first gunbelt. Ash rubbed her hand up and down Will’s spine, the only support she’d shown. Will and his old man each chewed their lips, and at two different moments their eyes flickered to me, and I had this horrible feeling that they wanted me to take a side. Which they did, of course – I was the closest thing to a brother or a second son they had. Mitch Crease, they’d both called me, on separate occasions, growing up.
Then Will’s old man noticed the pulley-swing. He waved his arm at it. —So what’s this thing?
—A pulley, Will said.
—For what?
—Tug-of-war.
Will’s old man laced his hands behind his head. —That so?
—Yeah, Will said, crossing his arms and getting into it. —That’s so.
Even as he finished, his old man rose to his feet, wandered to the pulley, and took hold of one end of the rope. He gave a slight jerk, as if to appraise its worth. —You got what it takes, boy? he said, a devious twinkle in his eye.
Will stepped up. His old man rolled his neck around his shoulders and if it were an action movie you’d have heard the vertebrae crack. He adjusted his grip on the rope and Will did the same, and their hands and arms tightened until that thing went taut. Will’s old man had the weight advantage by damned near seventy pounds, but Will had his unmatchable stubbornness.
—This is out of our league, Ash said to me, and gripped my arm as if to pull me away. She was dead right. The pressure in the air was tectonic. We sat down on the porch – not even in the same room – shoulder to shoulder, and I felt the evening wind rush past us and wondered what exactly was at stake.
I shouted the go-ahead, and in unison Will and his old man dropped a few inches, knees bent and their whole bodies straining. Their arms barely moved: father-son, sweating pearls and wearing beer-grins. Happy as ever, it looked like. You could see their determination. Will’s old man had been shot, bludgeoned, once had both his shoulders popped from their sockets when he held three grown men on a rope ladder. But the way his teeth grit and his lips peeled over his gums – it was as if this stupid test was the standard to measure a guy’s worth. Will looked the same. His arms were tenser than the rope. His face squeezed together around his nose, and his cheeks reddened even in the amber working light.
I could have watched that tug-of-war forever. It seemed like nothing would happen. They were so even, the two of them. Then Will’s old man yelled out – a guttural, barbaric sound, a sound like you’d make to benchpress a car – and he heaved like I never knew a man could heave. Will flew straight into the air. He really flew. It was like something out of a Shakespeare play. His arms snapped above his head and his body just glided on up. And his old man kept the heave on. Yell, heave, flight – the whole thing lasted maybe a second, but I remember it in detail: Will’s old man with his whole face bending inward and this wild amusement in his eyes; Will not even registering the fact of his ascent; the ca-REAK of the ceiling truss as it fulcrumed the weight of Will’s whole body. I remember it in slow motion. And then like that Will was lodged two knuckles deep in the pulley-swing.
He flailed mid-air and yalped and swore and it took a moment for his old man to compute the mechanics of the situation. When he did, he dropped the rope, straight up fumbled it, and Will fell like deadweight. He spewed curses I had never heard. Ash bolted to him. He clutched his maimed fist and his old man kept distant, gazing at his own hands and his arms and the pulley – as if he’d come out of a trance, as if these things he trusted so much had at long last failed him.
—Will? his old man croaked, and stepped forward. I did too, came up behind Ash. The first two fingers of Will’s left hand – his jab hand – bent sideways, toward the palm, and the knuckles rose above their sockets, black and blue and flattened in places they ought not be flattened. When he saw that hand, Will’s old man went blood-white. He stood there above his son as awkward as a boy. He picked at the hem of his shirt, tugged it down, over his gut and belt. Will squinched his eyes to slits. I can’t imagine how much that must’ve stung, and I’ve had my share of stuff like that.
And then in the next moment Will’s grimace bent to a grin – his fucking mischief grin – and his eyes opened and he laughed. That’s right – he laughed. He laughed like a guy does when he’s suffered a wound that won’t kill him. And that quick his old man went from sombre-face to shit-eating and, hell, so did I. Smiling like idiots, all of us. Well, except Ash, but behind every injured man is an unimpressed woman, or so the saying should go.
We all looked at it again: swelled up now, like a baby’s hand. —I guess you win this round, Will grunted to his old man, who knelt in front of him and rolled up the sleeve so he could inspect it and, about as tenderly as I’d ever seen, cupped that mangled hand in one big, creased palm.
ME AND ASH WENT to get my truck, and some ice packs, and to let Will and his old man go at it, since enough had happened for the two of them to have an actual conversation. Not that I thought they’d work anything out – they were each too stubborn to yield, too much alike.
—You gonna marry Will? I said to Ash as we walked along the same dirt path I’d taken earlier. She was drunker than I expected, her footing erratic but not unsure, even though the path pitched and dipped at random.
—I don’t know, she said.
—Ash, I said, and touched her arm. Below us, the gully spread out to the edges of vision, into the darkness beyond the spill of house lights.
—We talked about it.
Ash Crease, I thought, had a weird ring to it. And I couldn’t get my head around the concept of having Will as a brother-in-law. When we reached my place I gave Ash the keys to my truck so she could get it started, and then I snuck inside to grab some ice packs from the freezer. I didn’t want to wake Andie, because there’d be too much explaining to do and because we needed to get Will to a hospital one way or another. I heard my truck start with a cough – Ash not giving the glowplugs enough time to heat.
I took two ice packs and went to the truck. Ash had rolled it onto the road in neutral and swapped to passenger, lowered her window down and almost finished a smoke. Under the amber light of a street lamp, she looked way older than me – but that’s the kind of effect amber light has, don’t get me wrong.
—So big brother doesn’t think I should marry Will, she said. She flicked the cigarette out the window, and I realized I had some kind of chance, right then, to change things, to not let Will throw his life away. And I knew, I knew, exactly what that chance would cost me.
—Is it a good idea? I said.
She gave me a devilish look, with just one eye and with half her mouth tilting to a smile. —Marrying Will, or your idea that I shouldn’t?
—Both.
—What do you want me to say? Will’s still a boy.
I chewed on that one for a second. —His old man thinks you’re going to get married.
—I’m not sure Will’s dad is an authority in this matter, she said.
We got quiet. My tires kicked up pieces of the asphalt because the roads were in disrepair. You could hear bits clanging around the wheel wells. The sky was brown and the rim of the moon looked like the edges of old paper. The air smelled of soot, and so did my truck.
—Will’d kill you, Ash said after a while. —If he found out what you’re trying to do.
—I’m bigger than him.
—Mitch, she said, not in the mood to joke.
—He’d never talk to me again.
—But you’re willing to risk that?
I thought about the two of them. Will was smart enough to get promoted through the RCMP ranks, and pretty quick. They’d make a down payment on a house big enough to raise a family, or Will would hand me the blueprints to a home he’d designed himself, and he and I would go at it – our childhood pledge. His old man would retire to grand honours, with a long-service award and so many people lining up to clap him on the shoulder – Corporal John Crease, more a legend than even my own dad, rest his soul. Will’s old man would sell his home and he and Will would add a grandpa suite, and there he’d settle, while his son levelled drunks with his maimed jab hand, scoured forests for missing kids, and himself got shot at, himself felt that pulse of fear and dread that his old man must have felt so goddamned often.
—Why does it seem like I have to take a side? I said.
—I don’t know. Why does it?
—I just want everyone to be happy.
She nodded like she understood. She nodded like I’d made a point. We rounded the corner to the road where my house was, and Ash reached out and patted me on the leg. —You’re a good friend, Mitch.
—Everyone says that, I said, feeling sour.
I CAME UP THE stairs to my master bedroom with the ice packs in hand. The truck idled in the driveway, and I could all but picture Ash smirking as I tiptoed away. Will and his old man hadn’t seen me yet, and I got a rare look at them as they are when no one else is around. They sat side by each on wire spools, shoulders slumped and wrists on their thighs, elbows flung wide and knees damned near knocking. They were grinning like guys with no reason not to. Man, Will would’ve ditched everything for Ash, banged together a life in good old Invermere, in the shadow of the Rockies and in the shadow of his dad. Things I kept him from: marriage, two boys who’d grow up to call me uncle, a gunbelt to rub his muscles threadbare, our friendship lasting to the end of days, to the moment of some head-on collision in a mountain pass – all the stuff his old man didn’t want for him.
Will and his old man could have been the same guy from two different moments in time. Their talk was all murmurs and sudden bursts that made them go red-faced with guffaws. I missed my own dad right then, and I missed days like these with Will and his dad, looking forward in time or something, just the bullshit of it. You don’t need to be a wise man to predict matters of the heart, or so I say. Behind them, the sky had turned the colour of plywood, and I realized Will and his dad looked about as happy as ever and that I hoped that would never change.