Down to the Dirt

Joel Thomas Hynes

For Sherry and Percy

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

1. The Missing Middle Finger

2. Firebug

3. Halfway to the Devil’s Kitchen

4. Tooth and Nail

5. Games Well Played

6. Show Me Your Friends

7. Joey Neill’s Lookout

8. As It Is in Heaven

9. One Last Second Chance

10. It’s Always Been You

11. The Devil You Don’t Know

Acknowledgments

Praise for Down to the Dirt

Copyright

About the Publisher

1. The Missing Middle Finger

So comes along Miss Glenda Devereux in late July of that year, snatchin’ up the job in the little canteen at the fish plant. Just in time to collect her stamps for the winter. She caught me tryin’ to swipe a pack of Rothman’s off the shelf while she was clearin’ up the lunchroom.

—Are ya that hard up for a smoke? The size of ya.

She gave me a couple. We had a game of Crazy Eights. She told me she’d left her husband the year before, and his brother Billy, who drove a forklift for the plant, had hooked her up with the job here in the Cove.

She’d just turned twenty-six. She had two boys, an eight-year-old and a toddler, and it was the third move they’d made so far that year. But this one was gonna be a brand-new start for them. Although, when it came to the Cove, I couldn’t quite see where she expected this new start to take her. With only one shop and one club, there was shag all to do. The shop’s hours depended solely upon the moods of the old fella who ran it, and he didn’t even sell ice cream. The club was only opened on Friday and Saturday nights and then shut down altogether from January to March. A brand-new start.

They moved into Mrs. Mary-Angus’ house, a massive turn-of-the-century two-storey just over the road from where I lived. The clapboard was in rough shape, the foundation crumbling and overrun with sting-nettles. Surrounded on all sides by giant maple and spooky black spruce trees, it was a hard place to have to walk past after dark. Glenda was delighted with it though. Lots of space for the youngsters.

About three months before Glenda showed up, the previous owner, Mrs. Mary-Angus, had been carted off to St. John’s in an ambulance. She was declared a danger to herself after she sliced off all the fingers on her left hand while cleanin’ her electric lawnmower on the front step. She’d tried to pick a clump of old grass out of the mower while it was still runnin’. She got the grass out, but the mower didn’t want to give it up without takin’ something in return. Wrap-pin’ her hand in a dishtowel, she calmly walked across the road to her neighbours’.

—I’m after havin’ a little accident.

The towel was unwrapped to expose the spurting, bloody stumps that only minutes before had commanded four mildly arthritic digits. An ambulance was called and Mary-Angus was rushed to St. John’s.

The neighbour’s son-in-law went across the road with a baggie to collect the fingers in case they could be reattached in St. John’s. He claims he found the index and the ring finger, old tarnished wedding band and all, still twitchin’ and squirmin’ on the porch floor. He found the pinky stuck to the blade of the mower, and he searched well past dark for the other one, the middle finger, but never found it. Myself and my buddy Andy spent a good many evenings afterwards on our hands and knees scourin’ the grass in her yard, jumpin’ up all excited over bits of stick, cursin’ over chicken bones. We couldn’t find it either. Not two weeks after her little accident, Mrs. Mary-Angus died in her sleep in the hospital in St. John’s.

I never saw much of Glenda beyond the scatter-quick chat in the canteen durin’ the last of that summer. I was busy cuttin’ tongues, swimmin’ and smokin’, ridin’ bikes and tossin’ rocks at the girls. But in the fall I started droppin’ in on her in the evenings after school. She was grand about it too. Her youngsters were always gone off with their dad from Thursday to Monday. Myself and Andy would go there to smoke in peace, sick of havin’ to hide up in the woods out of it. She didn’t treat us like children either, but more or less as friends. Maybe she was glad for the company. She bought us beer on Friday evenings, gave us a few draws now and then. Once, I tried to tell her the story about Mary-Angus but she made me stop, afraid it might spook her out in the nighttime.

Back then it didn’t take Andy and me much more than two or three beer before turning into loud-mouthed little shits, at which point Glenda would remind us that she had a Friday night to prepare for and so should we. On one of these occasions, when we were most gracefully told to get out, she was standin’ at the sink with her back to us while we were pullin’ our jackets on. She was wearin’ a sleeveless sports top that made clearly visible the strap of her bra. I leaned in and grabbed it, drew it back like a bowstring, and let it snap against her bare back. She let out a yelp.

—Take that thing off, girl.

Andy snickered as he slipped out the front door.

She didn’t look too amused when she turned around. I figured I was in for it. She grabbed me by the wrist and hauled me into the back room. No doubt she was gonna belt me across the face, but she didn’t. She did not. She pulled me towards the couch and whipped up her top, her small boobs pokin’ out beneath the wiring of her bra.

—Is this what you wants, Keith?

Well, it was a far cry from what I expected. What I wanted was another thing.

Her nipples were dark, like rust, and swoll up for some reason. Before she had a chance to straighten herself out again, I bent down and sucked one into my mouth. It was hard and salty. I felt myself stiffen. She smirked and pushed me away.

—Go on out of it now, you. Save it for your girlfriend.

I never told Andy what happened. I came out of the house, my jacket covering the little bulge in my jeans, and I gave him a big shove. He shoved back and we wrestled and kick-boxed our way up the road towards the weekend.

That same night at the games room where we hung out, I had a good look at all the different breasts around me. Tried to decide on the shape, size and colour of nipples. I listened to the b’ys talkin’ about havin’ felt up this one and how some other one was all for it. I couldn’t fathom the notion that any of these girls, girls my own age, could possibly have concealed in their bras treasures as fine as the ones Glenda had shown me. Long before my curfew was up I considered takin’ off back to the Cove to see if she was home. Glenda. Twice my age. Probably just havin’ me on, havin’ a good lark at my expense. But I couldn’t get her out of my head. When I went home to my room that night I gave myself a good tendin’ to. All I saw was nipples.

Normally I’d spend Saturday afternoons over to Glenda’s place, smokin’ stogies and havin’ a laugh. I made my way, out of habit, down the path to her house. Halfway there I stopped. Couldn’t go in. I’d spent all morning thinkin’ about the past evening and I s’pose I was afraid she wouldn’t acknowledge what’d happened. I couldn’t risk it.

The next Wednesday I ran into her comin’ out of the shop. She had her two little fellas with her. She smiled and asked me where I’d been hidin’ out.

—I didn’t scare ya off, did I, Keith b’y?

That was it. The nod I wanted. I told her I’d been workin’ on a paper for school but was plannin’ to drop over the weekend. She told me to come on over the next evening. The b’ys would be off with their father. No problem.

When Andy called after school on Thursday evening I told him I had to go down the Shore to the dentist. He wouldn’t go in to Glenda’s without me. And I couldn’t have told him the truth. I didn’t want to have to explain it to him, convince him. Plus, I figured I was better off keeping my mouth shut. I didn’t know if anything was going to happen or not, and if it did, it wouldn’t exactly be the sort of thing to go around braggin’ about. She was twice my age after all.

I splashed on some of my father’s cologne, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and took a good look at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t that bad lookin’. My complexion was pretty clear and I liked my hair. Some of the b’ys in my class had stubble on their faces but I didn’t. Never had to shave in my life and it was maybe less than a year ago that I’d first noticed hair growin’ down around my bird. I went to bed one night, same as always, and when I woke up the next day I’d gotten hairier. My legs too.

Around that time I had my first orgasm, not by accident either. I’d spent the whole day at school tryin’ to stay in my seat so’s not to draw attention to the poker in my pants. They were joggin’ pants too, so no matter how I adjusted myself, or tried to hook it up under the elastic of my drawers, it still stuck out. By the time I got home that evening I was in pain. I locked myself in the bathroom, ran the taps, and flipped through the lingerie section of the new Sears catalogue. Before long my head was swimmin’ with muddy images of bras and pantyhose. I didn’t know exactly what it was I was s’posed to be doin’, just that the more I pulled and squeezed at myself, the better it felt. The better it felt, the more I pulled and squeezed. Everything started to go black, the muscles in my legs jammin’ up on me. And then that thick, gunky relief. Fireflies danced all around me. I collapsed onto the floor, delighted and suddenly anxious. I tore the ruined page out of the catalogue, brought it downstairs and put it in the stove. Goodbye, my love.

It took ages to get to Glenda’s that evening. She lived not five minutes away but it felt like I’d walked for miles by the time I got there. Despite the dirty October wind, I was sweatin’ all over. But I strolled on in as usual, like I owned the place, and planked myself down at the table. Sparked up a smoke. She offered me a drink of rum, under the condition that I didn’t use any mix.

—Only b’ys uses mix. Sure you’re not a b’y anymore, Keith.

I took the drink and flattened it. She giggled soft and pulled the curtains closed. We had another drink, this time more civilized, and then she took the bottle out to the kitchen.

—We’ll save this for later. You’ll be no good to me sure.

No good? Now what did that mean? How will I be no good? She turned off the porch light. The clocks had gone back not long before and it was already comin’ on dark. She smiled at me when she passed back through the room and then creaked her way up over the stairs.

What do I do? What’s goin’ on here? Is she just gone to the bathroom? Is she gone for a nap? Does she want me to follow? How foolish am I at all, to think that she’d actually…

—Keith? You stayin’ down there by yourself? Come up, I wants ya.

I takes the stairs three at a time. I’d never been upstairs at Glenda’s before. It’s kind of dank and stale compared to the newly renovated, modernized downstairs. There’s a statue of the Virgin directly at the top of the stairs. A set of rosary beads hangin’ from a doorknob. A faded plastic holy water bowl mounted on the wall outside a room. It’s like some beyond-the-grave warning from Mrs. Mary-Angus, cleverly delivered through her dreary and blind, dismal-beige Catholic sense of fashion.

—I’m in here, Keith. Last door down.

I dips my hand into where the holy water should be, hopin’ maybe to cancel out what I’m about to do, but it’s full of cigarette butts. Glenda’s been usin’ it as an ashtray.

I turns down towards her voice. The door is closed. There’s a full-length mirror mounted onto it. I watches myself approach. My lad eager against the inside of my jeans, the new cowboy boots I begged for at the start of the school year, the tight scar on my forehead I got when I was five.

I pushes the door in and looks about. Full queen-size bed, old mahogany dresser scattered with dozens of drugstore perfumes, hairdryer, body lotions, magazines, ashtray, alarm clock. There’s a giant mirror attached, doubling the size of the room, and I spots Glenda in it sneakin’ up behind me, a bouncy grin on her face. I don’t turn around, but holds her gaze in the mirror. She slips her arms around me from behind and starts rubbin’ my crotch through my jeans. I turns around to face her. She’s stark naked, her slinky body covered in goose bumps, her nipples just the way I remembered ‘em. I reaches down between her legs but she catches my hand and brings it up to the space between her tiny breasts.

—Did you lock up, Keith?

—What? No, I—

—Go down and lock all the doors. And stay clear of the windows.

I takes the stairs six at a time on the way down. One of Glenda’s b’ys is after leavin’ some sort of robot at the bottom. Something about the shape of its torso gets me thinkin’ about the old Atari I had when I was eight or nine. I remembers the day my father brought it home smellin’ of hard new plastic. Pac-Man came with it. I saw them little purple ghosts in my sleep that night and I couldn’t wait for the morning ’cause Andy had a spare Space Invaders cartridge he was gonna give me.

I locks the front door and then creeps round to the back one. When I glances out onto the road I spots Andy walkin’ along with Bobby O’Neill, hockey sticks in tow. I thought we hated Bobby? So, just like that, I goes down the Shore to the dentist and Andy buddies up with Bobby-fuckin’-O’Neill? I reminds myself to somehow confront Andy with this tomorrow in school.

I takes my time on the way back to Glenda’s room. Now that I knows what to expect I feels a little calmer. It might also be a fine way to torment her. I even stops into the upstairs bathroom to wash my hands. A wink for the Blessed Virgin and I strolls on down the hall.

Glenda’s on the bed, the smell of her perfume fillin’ the room. I starts to take my shirt off but she tells me not to. She sits up and unbuttons my jeans, takin’ me into her hands, yankin’ on me. Feels like I’m gonna explode right on the spot. But she stops and lets go and I starts thinkin’ maybe she’s after changin’ her mind, or worse, that she really is just havin’ me on. But then she pulls me up on top of her and settles me in between her legs so that I’m jammed painfully against her pelvis. She pulls my head down towards her boobs and I goes back and forth between the two like some starved savage.

Her body is gorgeous. Bonier than I expected, but soft at the same time. Flesh. Female. She’s pushin’ up against me with her hips and I thinks I’m squattin’ her or something. Maybe she wants me off of her. So I starts to get off but she pulls me closer, pushin’ harder. I tries to kiss her then, but she turns away. So I slides my head down between her legs, not knowin’ really what I’ll do down there, but she hauls me up out of that too.

—What then, girl?

She takes my lad in both her hands and presses it off her cunt, wrigglin’ her hips up and down against it. I feels myself nudge into her, this warm new opening that I’ve found. She puts both her hands across my backside and tries to pull me into her, but I don’t go no further. It’s too dry. There’s no give. It hurts. Are you s’posed to lose your foreskin the first time? She curses under her breath and spits into the palm of her hand. A great big shockin’ gob of it. She rubs it all over the head of my lad and pulls me towards her again. This time I slides all the way up inside of her and she lets out a sharp grunt. It sounds so foreign, so unnatural, that I’m sure I’ve done something wrong, that I’m doing it wrong. She slides her hands up to my lower back, somehow pullin’ me even closer. Her face turns funny and her jaw juts forward so that I can see the cigarette stains on the insides of her teeth. I can feel the bone of her pelvis grindin’ against me and I suddenly wants to get off of her, out of this room, out of this house. I nearly wishes I was over in the yard playin’ dinkies, buildin’ little roads in the gravel, worried about keepin’ my clothes clean.

—I’ll trade you the General Lee for Boss Hogg’s car and two cop cars?

This is not my friend Glenda, if she ever was in the first place. I don’t recognize her no more. I keeps waitin’ for the punchline, that saucy spark in her eyes to reassure me that we’re still just havin’ a laugh.

She keeps on pushin’ and pullin’, her two hands clenched into my backside again, pullin’ me into her, pushin’ back at me, yelpin’ and moanin’. Soon enough though, despite my distraction and dread, I finds myself ready to blow. But before I do, somewhere between a buck and a gyration, I slips out of her.

—Fuck. Fuck. Jesus. Come ’ere, b’y.

She grabs it and stuffs it back up inside of herself. This time I starts pushin’ back. Now she’s gruntin’ and moanin’ like some kind of zoo animal and I thinks I’m hurtin’ her again ’cause she gets louder and louder and I starts to come and then she starts whispering things and somewhere in there I hears her say Billy. Not Keith, Billy. The jerk on the fuckin’ forklift.

I jumps up off the bed and pulls up my jeans. I’m already halfway down the stairs when she starts singin’ out to me.

—Keith? Where you goin’? I’m sorry, sweetie. You’re not gonna tell anyone?

On my way out the door I grabs her bottle of rum, already deciding where to stash it ’til the comin’ weekend.

The Cove is not exactly big enough to hide yourself from anyone, but I did my best. If I had to go to the shop I’d pass by Glenda’s on the far side of the road, keepin’ my head down. I didn’t know what to make of what we’d gone and done. Didn’t think I could just go in and sit down with her and smoke and chat like nothing happened, but I didn’t want to talk about it either. And then too much time passed. The winter came in full force and I started hangin’ around with a young one from up the Shore. I never told a soul about Glenda, but I thought about her all the time, to the point where, on one occasion, I had my boots on and was out my front door with the notion of bustin’ in on her and doin’ it all again. I s’pose I missed her. But I stayed clear.

Of course, it became the ultimate of fantasies. Plain old nipples wouldn’t do it for me no more. I hauled myself off over it every other day. Only thing was, as soon as I’d finish, I’d get all pissed off. Couldn’t relax in the aftermath. I felt like runnin’, hidin’ away out of it. That winter I had a few scraps with Andy, fistfights, over the stupidest things. My father caught me swipin’ twenty bucks out of his bedroom. I was suspended from school for writin’ shit about the teachers on the bathroom wall. Suspended from hockey for the last three games of the season.

Now, I’m not tryin’ to say that that stuff had anything at all to do with Glenda, that because of her my behaviour took a nasty turn. That’d be the furthest thing from the truth. I crossed a line when I went with her. Sure. But I crossed lots of lines that year.

One evening in late April, Glenda poked her head out her back door while I was passin’ by. She told me to come down, that she had something to give me. I wanted to say no, give her some excuse, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Felt like I couldn’t say no to her, like I had no right. Her eyes were on me as I walked towards the house. I felt small.

—You weren’t even gonna say goodbye, Keith?

Boxes all over the floor of the porch. She was movin’ again. Off to St. John’s where there’re more opportunities for a woman her age. Better nightlife. A brand-new start. She had an apartment lined up already and the forklift jerk would be comin’ soon to give her a lift. The youngsters were gonna be livin’ with their dad from then on.

—Keith, you never told no one, did you? We could get into a lot of trouble.

I s’pose she was right. There’d be an awful mess if my mother got wind of it all. I’d never hear the end of it.

—I never told no one, girl.

—Do you think you might?

—No.

—Good. Thank you, Keith.

An awkward silence then, like she was expectin’ me to talk about it, say something reassuring, but I’d nothing more to offer. I said I wouldn’t tell and I meant it. She pulled a little white envelope from her pants pocket, held it out to me.

—I’ve had this for a while now, Keith. Found it last August under the steps. Thought you might like it for a keepsake.

She was lookin’ at me all strange. Her eyes started to fill up. I just stood there shivering in the silence, tryin’ to think up something safe and kind to say. Nothing came.

—Well, I s’pose this is it, Keith b’y? Still, never can say for sure. It’s a long old life.

I told her goodbye, glad to hear myself say it. She disappeared inside the house without another word.

When I got up on the road I opened the envelope and emptied it into my hand. Three stubby pieces of stark white bone. I connected all three together, the thickest piece sliced clean off at the end. I weighed them up and down for a second before fully realizing what they were.

Mrs. Mary-Angus’ missing middle finger.

My heart skipped a beat.

I couldn’t wait to show it to Andy and Bobby.

They were gonna be some jealous.

2. Firebug

Sure every young fella in the Cove had a go at it one time or another. Light a match, toss it in the grass and see what damage it does before the panic sets in and you’re forced to stomp it out. It’s about knowin’ when to back down without losin’ face. I s’pose that’s what Keith was up to that evening, only he was down on the far side of the Gut Pond doin’ it by himself and he either couldn’t or wouldn’t back down in time. Of course, no one knows whether his side of the story is true or not. His sides of the story I should say. There must be a dozen or more, and I’d say they’re all true to some extent. Except for the part where he says he never struck a match.

It’s true that he’s a bit of a savage, but he’s only ever guilty of half the shit he gets the blame for. Now if it was me that nearly burnt the North Side of the Cove to the ground, they’d be rushin’ up to me all concerned and worried about smoke inhalation and mental trauma. It’d automatically be assumed an accident and some mother hen would drive me home. Keith though, he spits on the side of the road and there’s just got to be some dark motive behind it. But, I’ll give him this much, if he got something in mind he does it out in the open, not carin’ who sees what, or just too stunned to wrap his head around the notion of discretion. That particular evening his idea of discretion happened to be a mushroom cloud one of the Murphys said later that they spotted from out past Stone Island.

—Ahhh…it wasn’t that bad. It went out on its own sure.

That’s Keith’s argument. True enough too. It did go out on its own. By the time the little gaggle of firemen and plant workers made it up to the scene of the fire, it’d burned itself out. Keith was lucky, and so was the North Side. Caused a fair bit of damage though. What used to be a healthy, thick patch of evergreen and alders was suddenly nothing more than a smokin’ black scar, a hole in the woods you could see from miles away for years after.

Of course Keith had to drag me home with him that evening to face his old man. Figured it’d be easier with me around, hopin’ by the time I left the news would have lost its effect a little and things might’ve cooled down. I knows my father wouldn’t spare the rod on me. Although, to be honest, no one really knows for sure what goes on behind the closed doors of the Kavanaghs’ house. Keith don’t say much when it comes to that kind of stuff. But there can be no dispute that there’s always some kind of drama unfolding there; Keith the victim of some grand injustice, some tragic misunderstanding with his version of the bigger picture. I can only imagine the racket if his folks finds out about him and Glenda Devereux. It’s not exactly the big secret he pretends it is.

Myself and Bobby O’Neill were up on Gormon’s Hill haulin’ up our old rabbit snares and markin’ out the good paths for next season. Bobby spotted it first.

—Ho-ly shit!

He nudged me and I turned to catch it at its peak moment. Blackish-green, snot-grey soot fumin’ up into the evening. It curled upwards, thick and heavy, for a short minute before it brought up solid, hung there in mid-air for a second, then sank back down around itself. Even from that distance, over a mile away, the sheer size and immediacy of it frightened me. It didn’t belong. Like the time the big bull moose came down from the track and swam across the harbour. He looked so foreign in the water. Because he was. He didn’t belong there.

Another blast of greenish smoke shot up through the middle of the cloud and I fancied I could feel a wave of heat brush my face. I’d only ever seen one on the TV before. A real mushroom cloud here in the Cove. Sweet Jesus.

We wasted no time covering the mile between Gormon’s Hill and the Gut Pond. Down over the tops of the trees, through the bogs and streams, staggering and somersaulting down the side of the gravel pit, over across the beach and down to the slipway at the edge of the pond. Something to look at, something to do. The Cove needed a good fire. As we got closer we began to make out actual flames, smelled the sweet, spiced aroma of blazin’ evergreen. Then another mushroom cloud, this one only half as big and almost cute by comparison. The whole North Side of the Cove threatening to go up in flames.

—That’s Keith now. Betcha any money.

Bobby could hardly hold back his excitement but mine was rapidly givin’ over to panic to think on Keith burnin’ the whole town to the ground, spendin’ the rest of his teenage years at the b’ys home in Whitbourne, comin’ home ten times worse and full of stories. I imagined Keith standin’ back laughin’, watchin’ it all burn, smokin’ a cigarette and tossin’ matches at the blaze. Or maybe hidin’ out somewhere so’s to stay out of trouble, cursin’ himself and the wind?

I knew it was Keith. Just as well as I knew he’d once again come out on top. And, as time passed, the tale would distort and garble into something heroic and somehow historic. For about a week Keith Kavanagh would be a household name from Bay Bulls to Trepassey. The story would get bigger and bulkier ‘til it just burned itself out and was only ever mentioned in reference. But it’d be enough. Keith’s name turnin’ up in conversations in places he’d never been. Never havin’ to introduce himself to the young ones down the Shore. Never havin’ to buy a toke or a beer.

I crossed my fingers and hoped for more wind. Let just one house catch fire on the North Side and then we’ll see what kind of a household name he’ll be. Let this be something that’d finally stick. Put the fear of God in him. Not like that time his mother brought him down to the cops in Ferryland and got him locked up for a couple of hours for smashin’ up that old truck down by the plant. That never done him shag all good. He got worse, if anything. Keith said the cop grabbed him by the collar, shoved him in a cell and slammed the door shut.

—How would you like to spend the rest of your life in here, young man?

Keith said he lay there on the bunk for two full hours and thought about cigarettes. Had to walk all the way home ’cause the cop wouldn’t give him a ride. Then he tried to get me feelin’ guilty about it ’cause he never mentioned my name at the station!

—Why didn’t you tell on me sure, Keith? Think I couldn’t handle a jail cell and you can?

A week later he robbed his father’s car and ran out of gas passin’ through La Manche Bottom. That was some uproar.

The first time I met Keith we were barely five years old, splashin’ around in Slaughter’s Pond. The summer before we started kindergarten. I gave him a lend of my flippers and snorkel. A little while later he reared up behind me with a snarl and jumped on my back. The water was only up to my knees so when the weight of Keith landed on me, I fell forward and scrunched my face on the bottom. Split my lip open on a rock. Came up for air and the first thing I saw was my mother runnin’ towards me with her arms out to scoop me up and drag me to safety. I wiped my hand across my face. The sight of the blood on the backs of my fingers had me screechin’ straight away. My mother got a towel and held it to my lip. Someone handed me a green Popsicle so it wouldn’t swell up too much. Blood stained the Popsicle. I just sucked it off. Then a woman, the lady from the post office, shoved Keith in front of me. His mom.

—Go on. Say you’re sorry.

—But it was an accident.

On the verge of tears himself.

—It wasn’t an accident, Keith. An accident is something that you didn’t mean to do. Are you saying that you didn’t mean to jump on his back and push him down? How can that be an accident?

—I never meant to make him bleed.

—Well that was the result of your actions and now you have to say you’re sorry.

He shook his head and stared defiantly out over the pond. His mom grabbed him by the arm and whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear. Then she shoved him back in front of me. He stood facin’ me with the meanest expression on his face, as if I’d been the one who bloodied him up and ruined his trip to the pond.

—I’m sorry I pushed you down and made you bleed.

Wouldn’t be the last time I heard him say that.

My mother gave my lip another dab with the towel. It came back green.

—Ah, sure it’s only a scratch, sweetheart. Go on out now and have another dip before the sun is gone.

I looked at Keith. His eyes were fixed on my Popsicle. He looked up at his mom and she handed him the other half. We took off down to the water, pushin’ and splashin’ like long lost brothers.

There was already a fine sized crowd gathered, lookin’ across to the scene of the fire on the other side. The fish plant was shut down, the offal hopper brought up short, droves of nosey, gossip-faced workers in aprons and fishy gloves, all gawks and tut-tuts at the sight of the flames on the other side of the pond.

—That’s young Kavanagh up there now. Smokin’ cigarettes.

—He was walkin’ over the road this afternoon with a piece of pipe in his hand and I says, ‘Keith, what in the name of Christ are you up to with that pipe?’ He looks at me and says, ‘Jimmy, you sees me goin’ over the road with a piece of pipe, you knows fuckin’ well I’m up to no good.’

—Har Ha.

Sirens screeched and wailed from all angles. The Forestry. Police. Fire trucks. Ambulance. A full-scale, big budget production at the drop of a match.

But when the fire trucks showed up there was nowhere for them to go. They couldn’t very well drive up through the woods and cross the river to the other side of the Gut. The only way up is on foot. So a small group of plant workers who knew the area volunteered to join the firemen and the one forest ranger. Luggin’ buckets, old blankets, and a couple of hatchets, they made their way across the slipway towards the blaze. I looked around for Bobby and spotted him jumpin’ into the car with his older brother. Cops questioning bystanders.

—Has anyone seen Keith Kavanagh?

—Someone saw him earlier with a piece of pipe…

—Go home, ye pigs! This is not yere business. It’s a little woods fire, not a goddamn murder.

—He’s one of them, watcha call it, py-ro-maniacs.

—He’s a little firebug!

—Keith Kavanagh is in St. John’s to the doctor, officer.

—Keith’s gone out to the trap with Martin Sweeny.

—He’s up there in them woods somewhere, watchin’ all this. Lock him up if ye catches him. We’ll all be burnt in our beds some night.

Another burst of black smoke and flame rises up out of the woods. A cop beckons me over to his car. I pretends I don’t see him. He calls out to me:

—You there! Young man!

I turns back towards Gormon’s Hill and I hears him calling:

—Over this way! You there!

I sets my eyes on the edge of the woods and starts walkin’. I’ll never live it down if I’m seen talkin’ to the cops. Not on this day. Not any day. The best bit of advice my old man gave me was to never ever talk to the cops. He said if ever I finds myself in a position where I absolutely have to talk to ’em, tell ’em lies. Anyway, no matter what I might say in Keith’s defence, it’ll only be remembered that I spoke to the cops the evening of the big fire. There’ll be a racket some evening over a game of road hockey and someone’s guaranteed to shout RATBAG! And that’ll be it. Shag the cops. I don’t know nothin’ anyhow. Shag Keith too.

As I’m comin’ off the edge of the gravel where the bog begins, the cop is pullin’ into the pit behind me. Lord fuck. Of all the crowd down around the plant, he has to zero in on me. I puts my head down and keeps walkin’. I glances back to see him steppin’ out of his car. He’s scratchin’ in a notebook. I breaks out across the bog and hurls myself up over Art Ryan’s wire fence. The cop is yellin’ at me to stop now but I’m off like a rabbit on a first frost. No fuckin’ cop is catchin’ me. I runs ’til my face is poundin’, adrenaline and fear pushin’ me on. Then my foot snags in a bit of upturned root and I goes face and eyes into the bog. One arm sinks clear to the elbow in the thick, black, stinkin’ muck and I have to pull hard to get it back out. I gets back to my feet and makes a mad dash to the edge of the woods. I climbs the bank ’til I finds the secret path leadin’ straight up the middle of Gormon’s Hill. Me and Keith cut it out last year and blocked off the entrance with an old dead Sally tree. You gotta climb over the tree to hit the path, but when you do it’s all easy walkin’. Wicked for a game of prisoners.

I climbs up onto the tree and looks back towards the gravel pit. From this height I have a safe look at the cop. He’s standin’ outside his car gabbin’ into his two-way radio. He’s scannin’ the woods but I knows he can’t see me. Then, top of his lungs, Keith shouts:

—Fuck you, copper! Chew me goddamn nuts!

I gets such a fright I falls off the old tree onto the path behind it. Keith is peekin’ out through the spy-hole, laughin’ and smokin’, takin’ it all in. He looks me up and down, my chest heavin’ to burst, my clothes blackened and drenched with bog. He hands me the butt of his smoke.

—Calm down a bit, Andy b’y. Where’s the fuckin’ fire?

I snaps. Can’t stand the look of ’im and I drives the lit cigarette into his chin with the full force of my fist, burnin’ my knuckles in the process. An explosion of sparks and oaths from Keith as we hits the ground rollin’. Knees and elbows colliding with ribs and balls. Heads crackin’ together hard with spite. Keith giggling under his breath, delighted to be fightin’ with someone. For all my anger though, I can’t last long after all the runnin’ around. We separates and rolls onto our backs, all-in, and I notices that his eyebrows are gone, his hair singed back flat to his head. His new hockey jacket burnt and crispy, hangin’ on a branch nearby, still smokin’. The bottoms of his jeans are burnt through and there’s a bright red patch of skin showin’ through his sock. He looks like he’s come through hell. I gets a bit overwhelmed with the guilt for havin’ wanted him to get caught. He could’ve been killed. He could have stopped being alive. And they says fire is one of the worst ways to go. I pictured him burnin’ alive, his flamin’ body runnin’ deeper into the woods and catchin’ everything else ablaze, his last thought some foggy scene from his primary school days he hasn’t remembered for years. We lies there for a minute, pantin’ like spent dogs.

Keith lights another cigarette. The air is thick with the smell of burnin’ woods but it’s hard to say if it’s comin’ from the site of the fire or if it’s off Keith. His lip is bleedin’. He hands me the cigarette, the butt soaked with his blood. It squishes and caves in when I takes a draw.

—Never meant to hit you, Keith. I was just pissed off.

He props himself up on his elbow, this grim, worried look on his face.

—You gotta come home with me, Andy. I’ll be shot. Everyone’s gonna think it was me.

3. Halfway to the Devil’s Kitchen

It was my mother I finally went to. Of course. She nodded in all the right places and when I was done bawlin’ she just stood there starin’ at me. For a brief second I fully expected, wanted, desperately needed her to wrap her arms around me and love me, lighten me and make it all go away. But she didn’t. She carried on foldin’ the sheets and said:

—Natasha, don’t dare tell that to your father ’cause you knows he’ll go off the head.

Silenced. All my hurt swept beneath the carpet ’cause pretty young things should concern themselves first and foremost with remaining pretty young things. Silenced because there was no room in her perfectly proportioned little world for scandal. Whatever would the neighbours think?

We never spoke of it again. But things changed between us. There was a new distance. Part of me welcomed it and another part tried to deny it. She didn’t seem to care so much about little things anymore. I wore what I liked and I went wherever I pleased. She hardly batted an eye. One night I stayed out ’til daylight and she didn’t even ask where I was. She didn’t give a flyin’ fuck about the bottomless black hole in my heart.

So I had no one to turn to. My insides were tied up in knots and I had no clue how to untie them. I wish I’d gone straight to Dad in the first place. He would have lost his mind and slaughtered Francey O’Dea on the spot. Who’s Francey O’Dea? He’s a sick, drug-dealin’ beast with no more brains than God gave the common dog. Some years older than me. He used to babysit me and…fuck…and he gets to go on eatin’ and sleepin’ and breathin’ and livin’ in the same harbour as me.

The way I sees it, the suggestion, the possibility, of sex is a powerful weapon. Even more potent than the deed itself. Give a little taste and they’re like whipped dogs beggin’ for scraps at the table. Bobby O’Neill was my first. Not my first love. That was Keith. Bobby was more like a piece of play-dough, an experiment, to see whether or not I was capable of actually goin’ through with it. Could I really lie there and let another person gain pleasure by touchin’ me? Could I find pleasure in it myself? Before Bobby I’d been afraid to even touch my own self. Would I lose my mind? Would I see Francey O’Dea’s sticky face before me and lash out?

No, none of that. Bobby was a sweetheart and he made it so easy for me. And after the first time it just got easier ’cause all he wanted was more and more and more of me. All I needed was to say no and that used to drive him mental. I’d say no and he’d show up with new CDs and books and clothes and once he even brought me a kitten but Dad flipped out and made him bring it back.

It was all silly games to me though, and I felt shitty about not feelin’ anything for him. But there was no spark, no energy, no adventure. It was too safe. I wanted something with a bit more bite to it. I wanted someone to see me. Badly. I needed someone to know me and feel me and share me. The real me. I could never bring myself to open up to Bobby. So all he knew of me was what I let him see. Besides, if he’d had even a peek of the girl I saw when I looked in the mirror, I doubt very much he’d have stuck around as long as he did.

So after a while I started lookin’ around for something different. I didn’t have to look far.

One night myself and Bobby were curled up on the couch watchin’ a movie when we heard a racket outside the house. I pulled the curtain back. There was someone out standin’ up on the bumper of Dad’s pickup pissin’ all over the bonnet. He was all dressed in black and he had his hood up so I couldn’t make out who it was. Then he let out a big roarin’ laugh and Bobby said:

—Shit, that’s Keith.

Keith Kavanagh out pissin’ on Dad’s truck, laughin’ his head off. Loaded drunk. Coolest thing I ever saw. Just the extra bite I was looking for. I’d heard a hundred stories about Keith Kavanagh and the cops and out fightin’ with the Trepassey crowd, lighting fires and fallin’ out at home and gettin’ suspended from school every second day for sayin’ this and doin’ that. I even heard somewhere that he lost his virginity to some old hag down behind the fish plant. And he always had black eyes or cuts or a limp or something goin’ on. He had a girlfriend, a ditsy girl from Toronto who was just here over the summer or something. But all that was fine too.

—Bobby, Dad’s gonna murder ’im! Go out and see if he’s alright.

Bobby gave me a strange look then, a mix of fear and suspicion. He obviously didn’t want to go out there and confront Keith Kavanagh, who was by then sittin’ up on the bonnet in the exact place he’d just pissed.

—What do you mean see if he’s alright? He’s drunk or stoned and being a dick. Go tell your father on him is what I’d do.

—Well I’ll go out myself, will I?

Bobby wasn’t long jumpin’ up then. He hauled his boots on and went outside. I peeked through the curtains as he approached Keith. I slid the window open a crack so I could hear what went on between them.

—Hey, Keith. Keith?

—Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man. You frightened the shit out of me.

—You should get down off the truck before—

Keith slid down off the hood of the truck but couldn’t keep his balance when he landed on the ground. Flat on his face. Cockeyed. Bobby bent over to help him up.

—Jesus, what’re ya at, Bobby man?! Never sees, never sees ya out and around no more.

—Shhhh. Keith, listen to me. You have to keep it down or—

—Give us a smoke, Bobby man. I never sees you around.

—I don’t smoke no more.

Bobby helped Keith back to his feet and leaned him up against our fence. Keith hauled out a cigarette and lit it.

—What’s this then? Fuck am I suppose to do?

—Keith, you’re drunk or something and you’re gonna get in trouble.

—Trouble? You wants trouble. I was just sittin’ around at nothing. You’re the one wants fuckin’ trouble.

—No, Keith, I came out to help you. If Natasha’s father catches you at his truck he’ll—

—Natasha? Fuckin’…Healy, is it? Where’s she to? Tell her to come out.

—She’s in bed, she can’t—

—Bed? Right place for her. Fine piece of gear like that…

He looked towards the window. I think he saw me before I ducked back.

—Keith, look, what do you want up this road? You’re gonna get caught—

—Ah, Bobby b’y, me and you are the best kind. Remember there last year we got the big racket on the go out back of the games room? Big fuckin’ sheet of ice and all hands shitfaced.

—Yes yes. You have to get home now, Keith. It’s gettin’ late and—

—I got no home no more. Takin’ off in the morning. Goin’ up to see Shannon.

—Goin’ where, Toronto? Sure how long do you know her?

—She told me I could go up and live with her and her mother. So I’m gone in the fuckin’ morning. Gone.

He said this like he was darin’ Bobby to defy him, although it sounded as much like he was still tryin’ to convince himself. Shannon. That was her name. Morris Kelly’s daughter. She came to the Cove for a couple of weeks every summer. Lived in Toronto with her mom all year. I didn’t know her only to say hello.

—But how are you gettin’ up there?

—Thumbin’ down to the Argentia ferry in the morning. Going from there.

—Thumbin’? To Ontario? You’re cracked, Keith.

—Cracked is right. Give us a smoke will ya?

—You’re smokin’ one, b’y.

They stayed chattin’ for another while. Keith gave Bobby a big old hug but Bobby didn’t respond, probably ‘cause he knew I might be watchin’. Keith told Bobby to have a good life and keep an eye on the young one, meaning me. He tottered on out the road and I heard a bottle smashin’ on the rocks in the ditch. Bobby came back in the house shakin’ his head. I told him to go home, that I was tired. I went downstairs to my room and wrote it all down in my journal.

I s’pose Keith must have been making his rounds, sayin’ goodbye to the Cove the only way he knew how: by pissin’ on trucks and yelpin’ and smashin’ things. I wished I was leavin’ with him. Must be so liberating to just pack a bag and hit the road. Leave it all. See the world. Never set eyes on this dull crowd again.

And to take off with Keith Kavanagh?

Keith and Natasha.

Natasha and Keith.

I liked the sound of it.

But I could hardly up and hightail it to Toronto with some fella I hardly knew. I’d be shot. I’d just have to bide my time, pick my moment. Besides, I doubted very much he was gone for good.

The next night there was a bonfire in at Devil’s Kitchen. That’s about a fifteen-minute drive off the main highway at the outskirts of the Cove. The track leadin’ into the pond is so narrow that if two cars meets, which happens often enough, one of ’em has to reverse and drive back ’cause there’s no room to pass. To put a stop to the endless rows that erupted because of this, someone erected a flag to mark the halfway point so that the driver not yet past the flag when two cars met would be the one to back up ’cause they had the shorter distance to drive. Whoever’s already come the farthest has earned the privilege to keep on goin’. We never met a soul on the way in that night in Bobby’s father’s truck.

The fire was enormous. Someone tossed an old guitar in on top of it. Someone else kicked up a fuss and tried to save it but couldn’t get close enough. We heard the strings snap and twang one after the other. A lonely song for a dull crowd with not much to say.

I wandered down to the end of the old wharf. The night was warm. I stripped down to the buff and jumped in the pond. It was freezin’ at first, but I warmed up by the time I reached the speedboat moored off a small ways from shore. Bobby stood on the wharf shriekin’ at me:

—Are you alright? Don’t go no further. You’ll catch your death…

All that shit. I’d already made up my mind to leave him as soon as possible. As soon as I laid eyes on Keith Kavanagh again. I ducked underwater to drown out the squawk of Bobby in my ears. The real world left behind, I found myself weightless, floatin’ in tremendous silence. I looked up towards the surface as a flash of light burst across it. A car. I went back up for air. Bobby’s voice had a bit more panic in it now.

—Yes, b’y. I’m fine. I’m fine.

Just then someone came clompin’ past Bobby. Big boots thundering across the wharf, a leather jacket jingling. There was a whoop and a splash, and someone was thrashin’ towards the boat where I was still hangin’ on, treadin’ water to keep warm. I held my breath. I somehow knew it was Keith. He made it to the other side of the boat and pulled himself up into it. Off came the leather jacket. He shouted back to shore at the car that had just arrived.

—That’s two packs you owes me. You knows what kind I smokes.

—Yeah, like fuck.

—Like fuck, is it? You wants tires left on that piece of shit you’ll have ’em for me tomorrow night.

—Touch my car, Kavanagh, and I’ll break your scrawny little neck.

I recognized the voice. Francey O’Dea. The fun drained out of my night. I was all of a sudden shivering, my teeth chattering uncontrollably like I’d been in the water for hours. I was naked, all my clothes out at the head of the wharf.

—Come on out and try it then, Fucko!

Keith stood up in the boat, still unaware of me. He was in the buff now too. He let out another whoop and did a clumsy backflip off the boat. Bobby shouted for me at the same time Keith hit the water.

—Natasha?

—Shut up, Bobby! I can look after myself. Go home out of it.

Some of the small crowd still left on the beach laughed. I felt bad for him. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt or embarrass him. He was only ever sweet to me. I just didn’t want him here anymore, screamin’ out my name.

Francey O’Dea swaggered down to the wharf and stood next to Bobby. He nudged one of my socks with his boot, looked out over the water. Then Keith’s head popped up alongside of me. He’d been under so long I’d nearly forgot about him. His long hair slicked back over his forehead. He gave me a big grin.

—A freshwater mermaid? So do I get a wish?

Now, comin’ from anyone else it would have sounded like the lamest line of bullshit. But there was something in the way he said it, with this real intensity, as if his whole world depended on whether or not I went along with him. He stared at me expectantly, not a trace of a smile.

He leaned his head back into the water and stared up at the stars. His brow scrunched up like he was struggling to make the right decision. He really was wishin’ for something and what I wouldn’t have given at that moment to jump inside his head and have a look around. I decided I’d grant him his one wish, just this once, as long as he wished for me. Then Bobby’s seagull yelp broke the spell.

—Fuck this, Natasha, I’m not standin’ around all night.

The fire was pretty much dead by then and Francey had gotten back into his car, a souped-up Monte Carlo with tinted windows and foolish neon lights under the front bumper. Some kind of super monstrous engine I heard the b’ys at school ravin’ on about like dickheads. Francey’s pride and joy. If you asks me, he’s just tryin’ to make up for his shortcomings in other departments.

A couple of trikes took off out the road and then, finally, Francey’s car turned around and disappeared. Keith brushed a strand of my wet hair back behind my ear. I shivered.

—You better get, Missy Healy. Your man don’t sound too pleased.

—He’s not my man.

I reached out and put my hand on his leg. His skin felt nice under the water. He ducked under and came up on the other side of the boat.

—Hey, Bobby? Natasha says I can get a run out the road with ye. How’s that sound?

Bobby didn’t answer for a long while. He just stood there on the wharf, glancin’ back and forth between myself and Keith. I felt bad for him but I couldn’t stop my heart from going where it obviously wanted to go.

—Your clothes are soaked, Keith. You’ll get the seats wet.

—Who gives a fuck? You want me to walk out and freeze to death in the bushes somewhere? Fuck that, man.

When I made it back to the wharf Bobby told me to come round the other side ’cause he didn’t want Keith to see me naked. I pulled myself up in plain view and even glanced back towards Keith but he wasn’t lookin’. He was back in the boat struggling into his wet clothes. I got dressed as quick as I could, more so because I didn’t feel right in front of Bobby anymore. I heard a splash and Keith disappeared under the water. He was under for so long I thought I’d have to jump in after him. And I would have too. His head finally broke the surface about three feet from the head of the wharf. He gasped for breath and I reached out for him when he slipped climbing up the ladder. He weighed a ton, his boots and jeans and leather jacket drenched through. He stood on the wharf cursin’ and shivering and stripped himself down to his jeans again. He wrung out his tee-shirt and slung his jacket out into the pond.

—Robbed that out to the Village anyhow.

Bobby was already over waitin’ in the truck. He didn’t look too pleased with the situation. He was expectin’ a little private moment I s’pose. But not tonight. He could have all the privacy he wanted when he dropped me off. I climbed into the middle and Keith sloshed in alongside me. I nudged my knee against his until I felt the wet soak through my own jeans.

—Keith, I thought you told me you were heading off to Toronto? Said you were going this morning?

—Who said? Me? I never opened me mouth to you.

—Last night, b’y! You were in by Natasha’s place and I came out to talk to you. Don’t tell me you don’t remember?

Keith stared out the side window for a second before answering.

—Yeah, I remembers talkin’ to ya. But I never said nothing about Toronto…Jesus, I’m froze. Roll up that window, Bobby. Who got a smoke? Mine got a bit wet.

I lit a cigarette for him. Bobby drove on for another few minutes before slowly rollin’ up the window. Taking his time in his daddy’s truck. The track was so narrow in spots that alders scraped at both sides of the truck. No one spoke. We were almost up to the halfway flag when we saw headlights comin’ towards us. Bobby sped up a little.

—Move faster, Bobby, we’re not goin’ all the way back in there now. Shag that.

—What do you want me to do, girl? Tear the rear end out of ’er, will I?

—It’s a four-wheel drive, b’y. You’re hardly gonna tear the rear end out of ’er. She’s designed for this kind of road.

—Listen to you. Wouldn’t know now but you knew—

—I knows if we have to back up I’m gettin’ out and walkin’. How’s that sound?

Bobby shifted the truck into four-wheel drive and gave ’er a shot of gas. I glanced at Keith. He stared straight ahead, this devilish gleam in his eye, the hint of a sly grin at the corner of his mouth.

The approaching headlights got brighter and brighter ’til they were right upon us and we had to stop. We hadn’t made it past the flag. The car came closer ’til we were bumper to bumper. It was Francey. I took hold of Keith’s arm. No way in hell was I sittin’ there while Bobby crawled back towards the pond in reverse, Francey-fuckin’-O’Dea gawkin’ up through his windshield at me.

—Let me out.

—Natasha. C’mon. It won’t take that long.

—It’s long enough gettin’ this far going forward, Bobby. I’m walkin’.

—Hold on a second, girl. He probably thinks there’s people left in there.

Francey got out of his car and came round to Bobby’s window. I slid closer to Keith. He laid his hand on my leg. It felt right. I didn’t care if Bobby saw or not. Bobby rolled his window down but Francey looked right past him and settled his eyes on me. A shiver went through me. I hated him.

—You gonna back up there, Bob?

—Francey, there’s no one left in there. Be easier if you just backed out to the road.

—Well, I’m long past the flag, Bobby buddy. And I’m goin’ the rest of the way now, seein’ how I came this far. We’ll have a little draw sure. How are you, Natasha? Lookin’ healthy.

I shrank back into the seat. I could feel Francey’s sick mind at work, his eyes scannin’ my body. I wanted to die, curl up into a little ball and die. Keith gave my leg another little squeeze and I felt for a second that he understood. No. How could anyone really understand without knowing? He was just squeezin’ my leg to see how far I’d let him go.

Bobby offered Francey another half-assed protest, but soon enough we were inchin’ our way back in to the Kitchen. Bobby was more interested in the prospect of a draw than anything else at this point.

Francey would let us back up about ten or fifteen feet, then rev up his engine and charge at us full blast, stoppin’ only inches away from our front bumper. Bobby was impressed.

—Some fuckin’ power in her what? Stops on a dime too.

—Too bad she’s wasted on a fuckin’ moron like that.

—What’s your problem, Keith b’y? Francey’s the best kind.

Francey’s repulsive face starin’ up through the windshield at me. Pushin’ me back into the night. Forcin’ me into a corner. Holdin’ back for a while, then revvin’ his car to burst back at me, all the while lookin’ up at me with this triumphant smirk as if to say I got ya now, don’t I?

I couldn’t take it anymore.

I was about to explode.

Then Keith sent the night in a whole new direction.

He was rootin’ around down on the floor and came up with a dirty old can of Big 8 cola. Gave it a little shake and pretended to open it in my face. I never even blinked.

—Hey, Bobby, I ever tell you about the time I fucked over this fella from the Goulds with a can of drink?

—What? Hit him with it?

—Christ, no. He was a big fella…I poured it in his gas tank.

—What?

—Oh yeah, it fucks everything right up. Ya often heard tell of sweetening up someone’s gas tank?

I don’t know about Bobby, but I’d certainly heard tell of it. Someone did it to my father’s boat a couple of summers before. It was a hot topic around the house for a while. The government had given Dad a sentinel fishin’ license that summer. Him and my uncle Rick were the only ones in the Cove allowed out after cod. Dad and Rick were delighted to be back on the water, but a lot of people were pretty pissed off. But Dad wasn’t even allowed to take home a single fish so I don’t know what all the racket was about. They were to haul the trap every morning and whatever was caught had to be turned in to the fisheries for tests and stuff. They had to carry out some kind of tests themselves too, like recording the water temperature and wind conditions. Anyhow, about a week into it they were out at the mouth of the bay when the engine stalled. They tried all their tricks to get her goin’ but nothing worked. Then Rick opened the tank and found sugar spilt all around the rim. Right away they knew the engine was screwed, and they were pissed off, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone had to row in out of it. Only thing was, when they went looking for the oars, they were gone. Probably tossed overboard the night before. On top of that the box of flares were emptied, so they couldn’t even shoot one off for help. And, worst of all, the lifejackets were missing. If you asks me, that’s attempted murder. Dad and Rick drifted out to sea for about half an hour before the wind turned. Imagine. They finally flagged down a tour boat outside Burnt Cove. The cops were back and forth to our house for a few days but nothing ever came of it. Dad is pretty sure he knows who done it but he won’t say. He likes to pick his moments too.

Keith was gettin’ more and more animated as his story went on. Some guy in the Goulds was after shortchanging him on a draw.

—’Course a bottle is better than a can, but when you’re stuck you’re stuck. All ya needs is a bit of stick or a pencil to hold open the airway. Pour the drink right in. If you spills a bit you can just sop it up with your shirttail. But, see, real sugar is messy and someone can see right away that the car is after being fucked with. Plus you have to go shaggin’ around with a funnel. But a can of this shit—

He clenches the can of Big 8 in his fist and looks straight into my eyes as if making sure I’m fully graspin’ the tact in his little story. I nods and smiles. He don’t miss a beat.

—…no mess. He don’t know what the fuck is going on. Goes to start his car and she won’t go. Sugar in the gas lines. I don’t know how it works, but it works. You can spoil the engine for good if it’s not flushed out quick enough.

Bobby glanced sideways at me and rolled his eyes. But Keith seemed so proud of himself, baskin’ in the memory of his own mischief, I couldn’t help but feel a little proud of him too.

Francey was drivin’ normal again now. Probably thought we were talkin’ about him. I looked right at him and smiled just to make him paranoid.

When we made it to the clearing Bobby pulled up next to the remains of the fire and Francey pulled in headfirst on the other side, near the edge of the woods. We all got out and followed Francey down to the wharf. He stuck a joint in his mouth and pulled it out slowly between his lips, staring at me the whole while. I could see the grease around his nose glistenin’ in the moonlight. I really wanted a draw but no way was I smokin’ something that touched his scuzzy mouth. Filthy pig. Keith and Francey and Bobby formed a semi-circle at the head of the wharf. I kept myself out of it. Francey lit the joint, the paper soaked through with his pasty saliva. Keith cracked open the rotten old can of Big 8 and took a swig. I wondered if Francey could swim. Bobby held the joint out to me. He was in his glory.

—You gonna have a draw, sweetheart?

—No. I’d only fall asleep…I’m bustin’ to piss anyhow.

—Well, go on then. We’re in the woods. Ha ha! More for us.

Bobby let out a thick blast of smoke and it smelled so sweet. I didn’t really need to go piss. I just had to get away before I gave in. I wanted some so bad. They all seemed good and stoned already. But I couldn’t. I would not.

As I was turnin’ to go up to the woods Keith handed me the can of drink.

—You want the rest of that?

I thought he was jokin’ first. Then it all clicked in. The possibility. All of a sudden I really did need to go pee. I took the can and had a little taste. It was warm. Bobby tried to bat it out of my hand.

—Are you cracked, girl? That’s in the truck since Christmas. Father had that for mix.

—So? Not like it goes bad. I’m dyin’ of thirst, b’y. Leave me alone.

—Alright then. But you’ll be doin’ more than pissin’ after you drinks that slop. Ha ha!

Bobby was wrecked. Keith winked at me as I left. Francey was in another world altogether. I walked straight towards his car. It was hidden from view behind the truck, so they wouldn’t see me at it. My heart raced. I scoured the ground for something to use to hold open the airway like Keith had said. I found a Popsicle stick. My heart. A roar of laughter rolled up from the wharf and I caught a faint whiff of the weed. I had another look down towards them. They were lightin’ up another joint. Keith glanced up but I don’t think he could see me. I crouched down beside Francey’s gas tank and I went right at it.

What if he caught me? But then again, so what if he caught me? What in the fuck could he do to me? Not like he could beat me up or anything. Not like he could say one god-blessed word about it for that matter. No doubt he must be aware, somewhere in that thick skull of his, that if I wanted to, I could make things pretty complicated for him. I could ruin him. If I wanted to.

I got the gas cap off and then had to go fumbling through my pockets for the Popsicle stick.

Found it.

Stuck it in the hole.

Say Ahhhhh.

My hands were shakin’ so hard I could barely keep the can steady as I tipped it into the tank.

Another rumble of stoned laughter from the wharf.

And then a calm washed over me and time stood absolutely still.

All I could hear was Big 8 fizzling down into Francey O’Dea’s gas tank. I couldn’t recall a moment quite so…satisfying. A heady sensation of power, a fresh current of strength seemed to course through my veins. The can of Big 8 growin’ lighter, and my heart along with it.

And then the can was empty.

And I was not.

—Natasha?

—Hold on. Hold on. I’m coming.

I screwed the cap back on and closed the shutter. No mess. When I stood up I felt ten feet tall. I pretended to be doin’ up my pants as I walked down to meet them. Then I realized I’d forgot to go pee and I really, really needed to go. But I’d wait it out.

Now, I thought, what if Francey’s car don’t start and he wants a ride with us? Well, I decided, I’d throw a fit and walk out. And I’d make Keith walk with me. Tell Bobby where to go. Jump Keith in the bushes somewhere on the way out.

Keith Kavanagh.

Keith and Natasha.

I liked the sound of it.

They were finished their toke, stumbling back towards the cars. Off in their own little worlds. Bobby’s head bobbin’ up and down and Keith with this zoned out, foolish grin on his face. Francey had his eyes to the ground and for the first time ever I wanted him to look at me ’cause I felt I might cut him in half.

—Ya missed it, Natasha. Fine old buzz.

I felt like sayin’ I had a fine old buzz on myself. But I was startin’ to get worried about how this was all going to play out. No way Francey was ridin’ with us. He’d be gettin’ in the back. Or we could tie him on to the back bumper and drag him out to the highway. That’d suit me just fine.

We piled into the truck. Francey jumped into his car. Bobby pulled out to the opening of the track. Francey had come in head-on, so he had to get the car turned around first. I strained to see him fumbling the keys into the ignition. And then the engine roared to life and my heart sank. He revved her up. She sounded healthy as ever. I glanced at Keith. I think he winked but his eyes were sunk so far back in their sockets it was hard to tell. He did a little drum roll on the dash.

—Let’s get the fuck outta this place, Bobby man. All systems go.

—We gonna wait for Francey?

—Naw, fuck ’im. He knows the way.

Bobby put the truck in gear and we were movin’. I looked back and saw the arse end of Francey’s car buckin’ like it’d just struck a brick wall. Was it workin’? He started her up again, gave a big shot of gas, put her in reverse…she stalled again. I looked at Keith, who was lookin’ at me, and smiled. I turned on the radio and turned it up a bit so Bobby wouldn’t pay no mind to Francey. He was too stoned to notice anything anyhow. We rounded the turn and the Kitchen was out of sight. I thought I heard Francey’s horn so I turned the radio up another notch.

—Natasha, you never drank all that?

I still had the empty can in my hand and I felt a twinge of panic. Evidence. I’d never done anything like this in my life. I could get arrested or have to pay for damages or…Francey O’Dea had a long walk ahead of him tonight. I let out the first of a thousand giggles.

—No, I never drank it, Bobby. I poured it out.

Myself and Keith doubled over in the stitches. Bobby just shook his head.

—What’s so funny? What’s so fuckin’ funny, Natasha? What are you laughin’ about?

I couldn’t stop and I didn’t want to. I glanced out the side window as we tore past the halfway flag.

No goin’ back now.

4. Tooth and Nail

Poor little shagger. He just sat there for days on end. Barely touched his food. Rarely made it to his litter on time. No response to the endless stream of sweet-talk and rub-downs, a bag of catnip dangled in front of his nose, canned food. We assumed he’d been poisoned. Maybe a bowl of milk laced with anti-freeze. Anti-freeze said to be sweet and carrying no scent when diluted, then slowly goin’ to work on the stomach lining, thinnin’ out the blood and eatin’ at the insides of the veins. Attacking the liver, the heart and the brain. A dirty, cold-hearted trick. His eyes seemed to fog over in those last few days, tired and waitin’, no means of communicating his pain. Poor little shagger.

Muggins, Natasha’s lanky and clumsy Irish Setter, had come scratchin’ at the door one day with the cat, then only a measly kitten, clamped tenderly in his jowls. Lucky for the cat that it was ‘Tash’s little sister Becky who answered to Muggins’ scratches that evening.

—Whatcha got, Mugs? Oh my God!! Can I keep it, Daddy? Can I?

Had it been the old man answering the door, he would have slung the kitten out over the fence into the neighbour’s yard. He might even have aimed it at the fence. But Becky kicked up a stink because the kitten did cute kitten things for her. Jumped and pounced, purred and nuzzled.

—I’m keepin’ it!

She fed him little drops of milk and dollops of Cheez Whiz, off her pinky finger.

A fast learner, he wasn’t long slippin’ into the ebb and flow of the household. At least he had the good sense to keep himself clear of the old man’s temperamental steel toe. More than I can say for myself.

He was a bit of a runt. Half cat, half kitten. But the kitten charm in him just vanished one day. No more play. Slide him out of the way with your foot to keep him from bein’ trampled. One day he’s doin’ backflips after horseflies in the pantry, and the next he’s dead weight slunkered on the bathroom floor.

That’s where Natasha found him in late September, surrounded by a pool of his own excrements, howlin’ a throaty protest against his pain.

We’d skipped off school at lunchtime to pick mushrooms in the Pasture Lands. I was never too big on the mushrooms and had in fact sworn, each time I did ’em, never to touch ’em again. Natasha couldn’t get enough of ’em.

—I just finds they makes me come in my pants for no reason.

Now who was I to say no to that? We picked a couple of handfuls each and counted them out when we got back down to the road. There was about a hundred. Opening up the sandwiches saved over from our lunches, we stuffed the mushrooms in between ham and cheese and forced ’em down. As soon as they were in me I panicked and tried to throw ’em back up, but she wouldn’t let me.

—No!! Keith, no. We’re in this together. Come on, sweetie, you said you would. I don’t want to take a trip by myself. It gets too lonely.

Sweetie.

We strode on up to Sheen’s Bridge and leaned against the railing, idly wavin’ our thumbs at passin’ cars, not really givin’ a shit if we got a run or not. I felt the shrooms gurgle and rumble in my stomach. Sick. We never said much, just waited for something to happen. We’d been havin’ a racket about the past Saturday night. She’d gone off to a party in Fermeuse and got plastered, couldn’t remember how she got home.

—Well how can you say for sure you never fucked some-one?

—Because I’m not a slut, Keith. Contrary to what you might believe.

—I’m not sayin’ that. I’m not. All I’m sayin’ is that you coulda been taken advantage of. That’s all.

—What? Think I can’t handle myself? Sure I’m tangled up with the likes of you.

—The likes of me. Well, if you can handle yourself so fuckin’ well, how come you can’t remember how you got home?

You can’t fuckin’ win. Pullin’ teeth. We lapses into a bitter, frustrated silence. It’s the only way around it.

—What?

—What?

—Thought you said something, that’s all.

—Never opened me mouth, girl.

A big, plush Town-car stops to pick us up and as we slumps in the back Natasha is gripped by such a powerful yawn that it seems her bottom jaw will pop off. Her eyes squints up and starts watering, her cheekbones pullin’ tight, scrunchin’ up her nose. A hungry young starling waitin’ for a worm, threatening to eat its own head. The yawn lasts about ten seconds. Before she’s done one overcomes me as well. The mushrooms are kickin’ in fast.

The old couple in the car don’t say much and I’m glad ’cause I feels so heavy and groggy, like this big cushy seat is gonna swallow me up. We rides in silence, myself and Natasha afraid to look at each other for fear we’ll take a laughin’ fit, or worse, that we won’t.

By the time we’re dropped off in the Cove it feels like I’ve lived no other life, but was born in the backseat of this Lincoln. I pulls on the handle of the door, feels something inside of it go clernk. It vibrates up my arm and into my head and I understands the door. I says thank you to the old couple and I really means it, I’m genuinely thankful.

‘Tash’s pupils are the full of her eyes and her face seems smaller, sunken and mousy. I tells her this and she tells me I looks like a girl, that mushrooms must bring out the feminine side of me, asks me if I’d like to borrow a dress. Now, she knows this’ll only upset me, and I knows that that’s what she’s trying to do. Push me ’til I makes a prick out of myself so when it comes time to lay the blame, get to the root of the racket, it all seems to have started because she made a little joke or because I said she was mousy looking. I’ll be left lookin’ like an asshole again.

I takes a few deep breaths to catch myself, knowin’ full well the only thing to be accomplished in retaliation is another racket. Maybe she is only jokin’. I don’t know. Besides, it sounds fun. I pictures myself in one of her dresses, maybe that skimpy little black one she wore at her aunt’s wedding. The way it clung to her breasts, the sunlight shinin’ through to her bare thighs. I gives her a little curtsy.

—Why don’t I try one on then? We can take my picture. Send it in to the Buy-n-Sell.

We’ve got the house to ourselves. Down in her bedroom in the basement. Fuckin’ around. Makin’ the best of one another’s company. Really connecting. She pulls the elastic from her ponytail and shakes her hair out. She’s so beautiful. Sometimes I loves her so much I feels like screamin’. But them moments are few and far between these days. Maybe it’s just a matter of communication? I knows she wasn’t with nobody the other night. I knows it. She just hates havin’ to answer to anyone. She likes to live in the moment, and I tends to resent that trait in anyone other than myself. I don’t know why I have to beat things to death all the time these days. I likes to party pretty hard myself.

—See that?

—What?

—The room. It closes in on us when I breathes in and blows up again when I breathes out. Look. Ya see it?

—Your face is meltin’, Keith. There’s nothing masculine about it anymore. It’s like there’s a woman underneath your skin tryin’ to free herself.

—Fuck off, ‘Tash. Can’t we just—

—No, no. I don’t mean it like that. She’s kinda cute lookin’.

Natasha leans in to kiss me but pulls away at the last second before our lips would have touched. I digs through her closet and comes out with the dress I was thinkin’ about. She unbuttons my jeans, pulls ’em down around my ankles. Hauls my shirt up over my head. I takes the dress and tries to step into it, losin’ my balance and fallin’ onto the floor.

—You can’t do it that way, b’y! You gotta pull it down around yourself. And be gentle.

I yanks the dress on over my head. I gets the first arm out through the sleeve alright, but when I tries the second one my elbow catches and there’s not enough room to straighten it out. I forces it, hearin’ the dress rip somewhere. I pretends not to notice.

—Don’t be such a savage, Keith. That’s a hundred-dollar dress for frig sakes.

—I’ll sew it. Calm down, girl. I’ll sew it.

—No, come on. Take it off. You’re gonna have it ruined. That’s my only good dress. It don’t even fit you.

It is a bit tight around the shoulders, but I don’t want to take it off. So light and soft against my legs. I hooks my finger in the belt-loop of her jeans, pulling her down onto the bed. We tries to kiss for a bit but our mouths have gotten so dry that our tongues meet like sandpaper. Out of the corner of my eye I catches something shuffle, bendin’ in on itself and vanishing when I tries to focus on it. Some devil in the room. I bolts up straight.

—See that?

—Keith, shut up. You just don’t want to kiss me.

—No, I do. It’s just that our mouths are so dry and I’m so stoned. It’s disgusting.

—Oh, now I’m disgusting, am I? Well you should see yourself in that dress.

I unbuttons her jeans and slides my hand down into them.

—I’m on my period.

I pulls my hand away like her jeans are on fire.

—How come you never told me earlier?

—I don’t know. Never knew I had to make a big announcement. We’ve done it before sure.

We have done it before. A long time ago.

There was a time between us that if one had the flu, the other wanted it. Anything that’s in you, I wants. That’s when it felt real, like there was no one else on the planet. I could kiss her, deep, first thing in the morning, her breath sour and shitty and me not mindin’, knowin’ I tasted the same or worse. Now I can’t look at her in the morning ’cause morning breath has become somewhat of a window for attack. You comes to a point somewhere along the way where them things are no longer accepted, but pounced upon and used against you. Like fartin’. When we first met it seemed almost like a competition of who could let the biggest one go. We were that easy with one another. Now it’s just another bad smell in the room.

My stomach turns at the thought of her menstrual blood for lubrication.

All at once I feels like my bladder is gonna let go, like I’ve been needin’ to go now for hours and just never noticed. I jumps up out of bed and rushes upstairs to the toilet.

—Keith? Sweetheart, where’re you going? I’m alright with it you know.

Sweetheart.

—I’m bustin’, girl. Am I allowed to have a goddamn piss or what?

I expects some sort of nasty response to this but it don’t come. She’ll wait for me to apologize. But I won’t. I pisses and I can see the chemical from the mushrooms, or maybe what’s left of my soul, collecting on top of the water in the toilet. This is what I’ve amounted to. I brushes my teeth ’til my gums bleed.

On my way out of the bathroom I almost trips over the cat. He’s sittin’ in the middle of the floor, starin’ off at nothing. He’s gotten a lot thinner, but he’s still a gorgeous little tom. Charcoal grey and shiny all over.

—Hello, Puss-Cat.

Puss-Cat don’t acknowledge me. I goes back downstairs.

—We should get Puss an appointment with the vet. Or a psychiatrist. He’s weeks like that now.

Natasha don’t acknowledge me either. She’s curled up in the corner of her bed, huggin’ her pillow. Asleep. Jesus, feels like I was only gone for a minute. But it’s possible that I zoned out for a while. It’s beyond me how anyone can get to sleep so easy when they’re fried on mushrooms.

I spends the next couple of hours fadin’ in and out of consciousness, never knowin’, when it seems like I’m wakin’, if I’ve been asleep or not. Somewhere in the back of my mind a creature screams. I pictures it swingin’ around on scraps of stringy membrane, Tarzan fashion, back down deep in the creepy pockets of my brain. Now I remembers why I’ve sworn to never do mushrooms again. Comin’ down is too fuckin’ retarded.

I watches Natasha sleep. I feels sad for us. We used to be so good for each other. It was loads of fun when we first got on the go. But I s’pose you can only pack so much into it all before the bottom falls out. Now it’s nothing short of a tug-a-war, and neither of us is strong enough to win or walk away. Weaknesses, fears once confided to the other are now preyed upon. It’s all about who can take the most pain, who suffers hardest in the face of the other’s suspected betrayals. Who can walk away but won’t, who can’t walk away but wants to. It’s a warped, miserable pattern of anger and resentment, fear and make-up sex. Always the prospect of this intense, needy make-up sex to reel you back in. Just when it feels like it’s over, like this is it, that there’s nothing left to give, our emotions drained, our heads and hearts about to explode with frustration, that’s when we wants each other the most.

A damp patch of drool has collected on her pillow, her eyes fluttering beneath the closed lids. I tries to imagine bein’ with her in a few years’ time. Can’t see it. I doubts we’ll even squeeze another six months out of it. But I can’t imagine goin’ on without her either. I nuzzles into her, spoon fashion, and eventually, despite the screamin’ creatures in my head, I drifts off to sleep.

What feels like ten years later I’m roused out of bed to the distinctive sound of Natasha blarin’ from the top of the stairs. Suffering Christ. At least I’m sure it’s not in my head this time.

—Keith? Keith, come up quick. I think he’s dyin’!

—What? Who’s fuckin’ dyin’? Where are ya?

—In the bathroom! It’s the cat. Come up. Hurry up.

Feelin’ so sluggish now, the mushrooms not quite worn off. Can’t believe I let her talk me into wearin’ this stupid fuckin’ dress. It didn’t even look that good on her. She keeps squelchin’ like a busted bullhorn from upstairs so I just grabs my jeans and hauls ’em on underneath the dress on my way up.

I finds her sittin’ on the edge of the tub, a mingled look of disgust and horror on her face as she stares down at the cat, sprawled out on the floor, eyes rollin’ back into his head. His little silver chest laboriously risin’ and fallin’, losin’ momentum with each passin’ breath. Natasha drops a towel on a stinkin’ puddle of catshit. There’s a milky white froth dribbling from his mouth. Too late for a psychiatrist now, Puss.

—Sweet Jesus.

Natasha tries to stifle a low groan, her chin quivering. She loves this little cat. She’s struggling to hold back the tears, tellin’ me to do something, anything, before Becky gets home.

—Fuck do you want me to do about it, girl?

—Take him out back and kill him, Keith.

—Take him out back and kill him? Christ sakes, ‘Tash, are you fuckin’ cracked?

—Well drown him in the tub or something. I don’t know—

—Drown a cat in the fuckin’ bathtub? Mind out now.

—Well I don’t know, just…just get rid of him. He’s in pain.

He is in pain. He’s suffering and don’t understand why it’s so hard to breathe, why his legs don’t have the strength to hold his skimpy body up to walk.

—Alright then. Alright. I s’pose I’ll take him out back. I gotta go change first.

—No, Keith. Do it now. You have to do it now. Becky’s gonna be home soon. I was just talkin’ to her—

—Well yes, I will but—

—Do it fuckin’ now, Keith!

She half-screams this last bit at me, a touch of hysteria in her voice. My mind is too fragile to go against her.

So I scoops the poor little morsel into a white plastic bag. He howls something fierce to be touched. He’s gotten so frail you can actually feel your thumb and index finger meet by squeezin’ underneath his spine. No meat left on him at all. His bowels lets go again as I’m liftin’ him and Natasha makes a heave towards the toilet.

Puss settles into the bag quite comfortably though, and I remembers how he used to love this when he was a kitten. Stick him in a plastic bag and swing him around ’til your arm got tired. Hang the bag on a doorknob and he’d go right to sleep in it. Claw his way out when he woke up. I wonder if he’s made the association himself, and if so, if it lessens his pain any.

Out in the woods behind the house with a practically dead cat in a plastic bag, looking for the most civilized way to kill it. Drownin’ always sounds so lonely. I takes his head out of the bag and holds my hands around his throat. Holdin’ ’em there. One little twist and he’s gone, out of his misery. But I can’t. I couldn’t. He’s so small and his throat is warm and his eyes are open and under different circumstances they’d look, I don’t know, mischievous, maybe even predatory. He’s so small.

I’m in no state for this shit. I stuffs him back down into the bag, lays him on the ground and paces around for a bit. I bounces around is more like it. Generations of windswept needles from the evergreens have made the ground spongy, yieldin’ readily to the pressure of my boots. How to do this the right way?

Without thinkin’ I digs a large muck-covered rock out of the ground, lifts it up over my head and slams it down onto the cat’s face. But the ground beneath him is too soft, his head presses into it and the rock bounces back at me. He lets out a screech quite unlike any sound that ever comes from a cat; a high-pitched, piggish squeal he must have reserved all his life for the moment when someone should happen to slam a ten-pound boulder onto his face. Some new strength at the face of death gets his hind legs twitchin’ and scrawbin’ at the inside of the bag, howlin’ and savage.

I can’t stop now.

Can’t let him live like this.

I slams the rock down onto his face again. His front legs reaches out of the bag and aimlessly latches onto the hem of my dress. Natasha’s good dress. He dangles there for a split second before the horror of it reaches my brain and I swings him off me, his claws shreddin’ into the fine fabric of the dress. Still only half out of the bag, he spins through the air and lands with a thud against a rotten tree stump. I goes over to him. Can’t look him in the eye as I pulls the bag back over his head. I looks up to the sky and blesses myself. Then, with all my strength, I laces the rock down on top of him. His eyeball pops out through the bag and he twitches for a bit. Nerves.

Catshit on my forehead, splattered all over the inside of Tash’s dress. Blood under my fingernails. Fuck. I goes back to the house to clean up a bit and get a new plastic bag, a proper coffin. Natasha is watchin’ some talk show.

—Is he dead, Keith?

—Pretty much, I s’pose.

I washes the dirt off my forehead, off my forearms, searches the cupboards for a bag.

—How’d you do it then? You never tortured him, Keith?

—Tortured him? No I never fuckin’ tortured him…I drowned him in a bucket. He never even knew what happened, girl. Any garbage bags?

Natasha starts cryin’ again but I won’t hug her. Her pupils are still dilated. She’s still stoned. Compassion is pointless. I leaves her standin’ there in the middle of the kitchen, starin’ at her feet, tears streamin’ down her cheeks.

When I makes it back out to the woods the cat is nowhere to be seen. The cat is gone, the old bag bloody and foul where I left him. This is impossible.

—Here Puss. C’mon Puss-cat. Here Puss Puss Puss.

Something rustles and fidgets over in the bushes to my left. I checks it out but it’s only an old strip of plastic tangled in a bush. I does a little search of the area, knowin’ that he can’t have gone far without something draggin’ him away. A cloud passes in front of sun, the woods goin’ dark, branches like fingers reachin’ out at me from the corners of my eye. I starts to get real spooked out, thinkin’ that maybe something in the woods is after takin’ the cat.

I finally finds him staggering off into some shrubs a good twelve or fifteen feet from where he should have died. His eyeball is hangin’ out of his head and his skull is crushed and matted with blood. White stuff drippin’ from his ear. He topples over onto his side and meows with about the same level of urgency he uses to be let out of the house in the mornings. I goes back to get the rock but it’s coated with cat filth and my hands feels too clean from the wash. There must be some other way. I paces again, and when I goes back to him, so help me Christ, he’s purrin’. Lying there on his deathbed with his face bashed in, purrin’ away. Given the circumstances, it’s one of the creepiest sounds I’ve ever heard.

So I stomps him into the ground with my boot. Stomp. But he won’t stop twitchin’…stomp…howlin’…stomp…scrawbin’…stomp…squirmin’. Tooth and nail he struggles on. I finally have to grind the heel of my boot into his neck until his head lets go from his body. Fuck. My boots coated with cat sludge. Natasha’s good dress ruined like she said it would be.

I holds my breath and scoops him into the clean new bag. He’s a mess. A bloody, matted lump of fur and grizzle. I ties a knot into the top of the bag and slings it out over the tops of the trees down into the pit below.

Nobody ever thought to give that cat a proper name. Just called him Puss.

Natasha looks me up and down when I comes back into the house. She sees the state of the dress and we’re right back where we started.

—Keith. My friggin’ dress. It’s ruined!

—Well I told you I wanted to change it before I—

—You saw how upset I was.

—That’s why I didn’t go and change. You never gave me a chance.

—I told you not to put it on!

—It was your fuckin’ idea!

Puss don’t come home that night. Or the next night. Nobody minds. Cats are busy creatures.

A few days goes by and Becky starts in whinin’, out on the step ’til midnight calling Puss Puss Pusssssss.

Stories about old Jack Reddigan skinnin’ cats with a straight razor.

Myself and Natasha talkin’ of a move into St. John’s next year.

—Maybe if we had our own place…

Becky leavin’ a bowl of milk and some Whiskas out on the front step.

A scratch at the door one evening.

Becky opening the door to let clumsy old Muggins in.

—Whatcha got in the bag, Mugs? Did you bring me home a present? Is it a present for Becky?

Fuck.

5. Games Well Played

We’re down by two with fifteen minutes left in the third period. I glides in over the blue line with the puck. Keith’s in the clear on my left. I should pass. Makes perfect sense. He’d have a dandy shot on net. But I don’t. Can’t risk it. I fakes the pass and snaps a little bullet to the right hand corner. Goal! The sticks are up. My teammates gather round, slappin’ me on the back, pokin’ me in the arms. Goddamn. Feels good. We’re back in the game.

Face-off. Once again we have to wait for Keith to get into position. I don’t know why he bothers. Sure he never looks at the puck. All he minds is checkin’ and slashin’ and hookin’ and fightin’. That’s it. He mopes around until he spots something or someone he don’t like and then he goes cracked.

Last week we finished up practice with a little scrimmage. Seeing how goalies gets their own separate practice time, the rule for a scrimmage is that you have to strike one of the posts with the puck in order to score. Not an easy thing to do. I have yet to score a goal in a scrimmage game. Anyhow, there’s Brad Ryan from down the Shore, hustlin’ up the ice, all alone with the puck. Keith comin’ up behind him. One thing I’ll give Keith is that he is a good strong skater. Don’t know where he gets his wind though, ‘cause he’s down under the bleachers before every game eatin’ cigarettes like candy. Brad crosses over the blue line with Keith just inches behind him. Keith hooks his stick around Brad’s ankle. But Brad skates through it and Keith goes down himself. Brad keeps on towards the open net. See, in a scrimmage it’s no sense takin’ a shot on net ‘cause your target is so much smaller and harder to judge. You’d have to be some shot. So Brad carries on, stops with the puck about a foot from the post. He shoots and misses. The puck goes in the net. He stands there tryin’ to dig it out, hopin’ for another shot while he still got time. The tip of his stick finds the puck and scoops it out. Just when he gets it back out front and takes aim at the post, Keith slams into him from behind. Now, Brad’s a big fella. On skates he stands about two feet above the crossbar. But he got no defence. He don’t expect it and sure who would? His neck hits the crossbar. Clothesline. He goes down, his left shoulder takin’ the full weight of his fall. He lies motionless in the net. The game stops and everyone gathers around to see if he’s alright. Rolly, that’s our coach, coaxes Brad to his feet again. We all bangs our sticks on the ice, whoopin’ and cheerin’ as Brad lumbers off to the dressing room. Keith cheers right along with the rest of us, then skates away, grinnin’ from ear to ear.

Brad’s out for today’s game with a dislocated shoulder. He’s on the bench though, showin’ his support. If he had any sense he’d have the shit pounded out of Keith. If we weren’t all on the same team I’d probably kick the shit out of him. Maybe if he wasn’t my oldest friend. But it goes to show how much he cares for the game that he crosschecks one of our best players, his own teammate, during a fuckin’ scrimmage, a week before the championship game.

The championship. It don’t mean fuck all in the end. Banquet night is always good though; wings and chips, medals and a dance. Makes it easier to put up with the same faces winnin’ the same medals every year. Coach’s sons. Favourites. But, to be fair, it is usually the coach’s sons who deserves it. They’re made to live and eat and breathe hockey and they usually are the most valuable or most sportsmanlike. Well, they’re not usually the most sportsmanlike but that don’t seem to count for much. Most sportsmanlike usually goes to the second-best player on the team, no matter if he’s the sookiest cunt on the planet or not. That’s just the way it goes.

Two years ago Keith won a medal for most improved player. Quite the shock at the banquet, but we figured it had to do with the last game he played. During that last game, last one for the season, he scored two goals, back to back, same shift. Only points he got the whole year. But he didn’t raise his stick or do a jig. He didn’t pump his arm and gloat. If anything he seemed embarrassed. After the second goal he kept his head down, skated on back to the face-off, then made a run at the right-winger as soon as the puck dropped. Five minutes for crosscheckin’. Still, his first goal tied the game and the second one won it. We were all more than happy to win, even if it was only for third place in the league. Better than last. Keith wouldn’t put up with any praise in the dressing room afterwards. He just muttered and cursed and shook his head like we were pointin’ the finger at him rather than congratulating him.

Weeks later at the banquet dance he tried to use his medal to pick up a few young ones. None were impressed. Most valuable player gets the pick of the bad girls. Most sportsmanlike gets the pick of the good girls. Most improved? Well keep tryin’, maybe next year. I found Keith’s medal on the dance floor that night. The ribbon was busted off. I think I still have it home somewhere. It’s a nice medal.

Nothing suits me better than steppin’ on a sheet of fresh cleaned ice with my skates laced tight and razor sharp. I’d almost say I likes the warm-up before the game better than the game itself. No pressures, just skate, just go. Faster. The feel of the blades slicin’ into the ice when you takes that turn behind the net. I loves the gear too. All I ever wants for Christmas is new hockey gear. I s’pose I gets a charge out of it, wrap-pin’ myself in a shell of hard plastic armour. You feels taller, heavier, faster and stronger. Bring it on. The uniform works for me too. Gives me a real sense of…belonging. Ten other bodies, dressed just like me, all with the same purpose in mind. Bring it on.

Keith’s always late on the ice. Shaggin’ around in the dressing room or off tormenting some young one. He tromps across the bleachers, no skate guards on, and jumps the boards into the bench. Sometimes he don’t even set foot on the ice ‘til the second period. And he’s always missin’ something, havin’ to borrow a stick or a neck guard or God knows what. How can you show up expectin’ to have a game of hockey without even bringin’ your own stick? It’s beyond me. He treats it all like it was going on up in the meadow. It’s a big lark to him. I wonder if he knows how much his father forks over to sign him up every year?

I’ve made a lot of decent friends in hockey. Fellas from all up and down the Shore. I finds it good like that. I never was one to be a part of the gang, one of the b’ys, or any of that shit. But I think hockey gave me a place to start from. It don’t seem to be Keith’s thing at all though. He couldn’t be bothered hangin’ around after a game. He never talks hockey ‘cause he don’t know how. He don’t even watch the play-offs! Still, everyone knows him. Not like he’s some poor unfortunate scrap over slunk in the corner with no one to talk to. He runs his mouth off often enough, just never about hockey. It’s like he shows up every week for the sole purpose of expressin’ his absolute contempt for the game and anyone involved in it. All he wants to do is slash people.

That’s how everyone knows him. He’s got the dirtiest name in the whole league. Rather than tryin’ to rack up the points or the goals like the rest of us, he’s always in competition with his own penalties-per-minute record. He brags about it all the time. And if some guy steps on the ice that poses even a hint of a threat towards the record, you can be guaranteed, before the game is up, Keith’ll be after droppin’ his gloves and havin’ a go at him, just to get himself sent off the ice.

Earlier this year the coach from the other team came charging into our dressing room after the game. Said he’d give his left nut to get Keith alone on the ice for five little minutes. Said Keith shouldn’t be allowed in the arena to even watch a hockey game, let alone set foot on the ice with fellas who are tryin’ to learn, fellas who takes the game seriously, fellas who knows how to play. He was some poisoned with Keith. He ranted and raved, kicked shit around. I forgets what Keith did to cause that racket. I’m sure it wasn’t nothing good.

Ten minutes left now. There goes Kieran Maher, flat out with the puck. No one is on him so I cuts across the ice. Where’s the goddamn defence? I’m almost caught up to him as he crosses our blue line. Then some jerk, probably Kieran’s mother, shouts at him:

—Have your shot, Kieran. Have your shot. Don’t let that little fucker catch you!

I guess I’m the little fucker. Kieran tries to have a shot on net but he makes the foolish mistake of stoppin’ before he does. Lots of fellas are like that: can’t take a hard shot while they’re still on the move. But I’m not stoppin’, Kieran buddy. Oh no. And I hope your mother’s got a bird’s eye view. Boom. I hammers him into the boards and down he goes. A nice, clean check. The puck slides right into the crook of my blade and I whips it back up the ice with a flick of the wrist. Dandy.

Time I took a little break now. Shane Maher, Kieran’s twin brother, takes my place on the ice. They’ve never once been on the same team and I think it’s ‘cause the coaches have such a hard time tellin’ ‘em apart. No trouble tellin’ ‘em apart on the ice though. Shane’s one of the best players in the league. Kieran’s average. I’m not sayin’ I’m anything extra myself, but I can hold my own. I made the all-star team last year and I would’ve this year only for my ankle was shagged up during try-outs.

Rolly leans over and pats me on the shoulder.

—Nice one, Andy. Good clean hit.

Rolly’s the best coach I’ve had yet. He’s younger than the other coaches by years, so he’s able to keep up during practice. Coachin’ is more than talk. It’s more than speeches in the dressing room and shoutin’ at us from the bench. Rolly gets out there on the ice with you, shows you what you’re doin’ wrong and then how to do it better. He’s a good laugh too. He knows all the tricks, how to play dirty without the ref catchin’ on. Plus he’s not at it ‘cause he’s got someone belong to him in the league so he don’t play favourites. If you’re havin’ a bad game, he’ll let you know it, no matter who you are.

A few years ago a scout from the Quebec Nordiques came to watch Rolly play in the regional championships in St. John’s. Rolly’s team lost, but he made a good impression with two goals and two assists. Mr. Scout cornered him after the game and offered him the moon. Said Rolly had to strike while the iron was hot, while he was still young enough, in his prime. But Rolly wouldn’t hear tell of it. Some says it’s ‘cause he was still workin’ on his engineering degree. But no one really knows for sure why he turned it down. Quebec weren’t doin’ so bad that year and he could always have finished his schoolin’ some other time. Some says he was afraid of gettin’ swallowed up, that he’s more content being the hot shot on the home ice here rather than being a face in the crowd up there. But I don’t think that. That’s only jealous talk. Rolly’s a pretty humble fella. God knows what was goin’ through his head at the time.

Big Frank Lowe is our assistant coach. He don’t say much. He’s a gruff, crooked presence for the most part. But he knows hockey and he keeps a close eye on the game. His son, Little Frank, is on our team. Little Frank’s a decent defenceman, but he’s a bit on the heavy side. He loses his wind pretty early in the game and don’t ever seem to get it back.

Shit, only six minutes left now and we’re still down by one. Little Frank comes huffin’ and puffin’ up to the bench lookin’ for a break. I looks up towards Rolly and he nods for me to go on. As soon as I hits the ice the whistle goes. Offside. Face-off behind enemy lines. That’s what we likes to see. I takes the face-off myself. Before the puck drops I hears shoutin’ from our bench. It’s Big Frank. He’s up in Rolly’s face growlin’ and cursin’, and then he walks back to the other side of the bench. That’s odd. The puck drops and I misses it. Shane Maher swoops in and saves it. He passes it over to the left-winger. I finds an opening and positions myself in front of the net. I picks up the pass from the left, fakes a shot, passes it back to Shane, he shoots and he fuckin’ scores! What a goddamn play. She’s all tied up with over four minutes left. We can win this game. One side of the arena is howlin’ for blood and the other side is hootin’ and whistlin’ and clompin’ for joy. Nothing like it.

Face-off. Little Frank comes back on the ice to replace a defenceman. When the puck drops I pulls it back to my skate and kicks it up the ice between the other guy’s legs. Rolly showed me that. I darts forward and picks it up again before anyone knows what happened. And then I takes a vicious shot to the ribs from the butt of someone’s stick. Fuckin’ Kieran Maher! Still pissed at me for knockin’ him down I s’pose. He leans towards me with a big stupid grin on his face and grunts something at me. Sounds like he called me a little queer. I drops my gloves and gives him a good hard shot to the throat. No sense goin’ for his face when he got the mask on, I’d only tear the shit out of my knuckles. I slugs him again and down he goes. That’s another way to tell the twins apart, on or off the ice: Shane’s the best kind, but Kieran, he’s a sly little shit.

The whistle blows and I makes my way over to the box without being told. A cheer goes up on the enemy side of the bleachers. Applause for the referee. Kieran’s mom has a few more words to say to me too. I don’t know what she’s so loopy about. She’s got a son on each team. One of ‘em’s going home a winner for Christ sakes.

Two minutes for roughin’. Four and a half minutes to go and I’ve left the team shorthanded. Keith skates past the box and gives my helmet a crack with his stick. He’s fuckin’ askin’ for it.

I hangs my head and tries to catch my breath. I glances over at the bench. Rolly shakes his head at me. He got no time for fightin’ on the ice. He says if you can’t settle your scores with a good clean hit, wait for the bastard outside the rink after the game. But it’s hard not to lose your head out here when your blood is pumpin’ and some asshole starts playin’ dirty, callin’ you names.

I tries to focus on the game. The puck ricochets into our end. Little Frank is just standin’ there, lets it go right past him. He dawdles down into the corner to pick it up but the other guy is comin’ up strong behind him. Our goalie gets to the puck in the nick of time and shoots it back up the ice. Rolly calls Little Frank over to the bench and sends someone else on in his place. The play is in our end. Keith has a shot on net but don’t even come close.

—Pass the puck, b’ys. Pass the puck!

I said that for badness. Not like Keith gets ahold of the puck often enough to hog it. I’m after watchin’ him play a lot of hockey over the years and one strange thing about his game is that no matter how much practice he puts in, he’s guaranteed to panic soon as the puck touches his stick. He gets rid of it quick as he can. He got no concept of settin’ up the play. If he sees the net, he’ll shoot at it. If one of his teammates is closer, he’ll pass the puck. Or he’ll just bang it off the boards, not givin’ a shit where it goes. I have to laugh at him sometimes.

Three minutes left. Tied up at four. Goddamned if I’m stuck in this box! Shane makes his way up the ice with the puck, passes it over to the wing. The whistle blows. What the fuck is that for?

A crowd is gathered around our bench. Must be a time-out.

—Let ’im up!

—Get off ’im, ya big lummox!

The game grinds to a standstill. I climbs out of the box, makes my way over to the bench. Both teams are gathered around. I elbows my way through the gaggle. Big Frank has Rolly pinned down in the corner of the bench, punchin’ him over and over. His fist is covered with blood. Steam is risin’ from Rolly’s bloody mouth and nose. Little Frank’s got his arms wrapped around his father’s knees. Big Frank spits down at Rolly. He speaks through his teeth.

—You’re always ridin’ him, always on his case. It’s minor fuckin’ hockey, not the, the, the fuckin’ NHL! Equal time on the ice. My b’y’s not no goddamn benchwarmer. You’re always ridin’ him, always on his case…

Little Frank lets go of his father’s legs and nimbly catapults himself back onto the ice. I’ve never seen him so agile. Head down, he skates off towards the gates. Halfway there he stops, raises his stick over his head with both hands and brings it down across his knee. It don’t break. He tries again. He can’t break it. One final time he raises the stick up over his head. He holds it there a moment before lettin’ it drop to the ice with a clatter. Someone opens the gates for him and he steps off without lookin’ back.

Big Frank Lowe climbs over the glass behind the bench and jumps into the bleachers. He boots an empty can out of his way. It rattles and clanks, echoin’ angrily around the rink. He disappears into the dressing room behind his son. All is quiet for the first time since we’ve hit the ice tonight. No one moves. My heart is poundin’. Then the clack, clack, clack of twenty-odd sticks against the ice, off the boards, the trompin’ of a hundred winter boots on wooden bleachers. Hands clap-pin’ and mouths whistlin’. Rolly back on his feet, arm raised high, timidly wavin’ away the applause. Someone hands him a towel and he holds it to his gushin’ nose. A first aid kit arrives but he pushes it aside. He calls the referee over to the bench. The coach from the other team joins them in a clumsy, awkward huddle.

Two short blasts of the whistle gets the game back underway. I sits up on the boards and waits out the ten seconds left to my penalty, then I’m back on the ice. My legs are shakin’, my mind racin’. The puck bounces off my kneepad and drops right in front of me, but I’m all froze up. It slides through my legs. I feels my body spinnin’ around as the so-called enemy shoulders his way past. He’s takin’ the puck on up the ice. For the life of me I can’t think of one good reason to try and stop him. I glances over at Rolly. He’s still nursin’ his face with the towel. He bawls out at me.

—C’mon, Andy. Snap out of it! It’s not over yet.

It’s not over yet. It’s not over yet. It’s not over yet. I forces the game back into focus and scrambles after the puck. Number 12 is closin’ in over the blue line. He’s all alone. He crosses the line. Our goalie hunkers down, ready for anything. Number 12 picks his target, pulls back his stick and takes his…from out of nowhere Keith comes in with a good clean hit. Number 12 goes down like a ton of bricks. Good thing Keith got no size to him. He passes the puck back up to me but I’m too far away from it. It glides along the boards into the other end and is picked up by the defenceman. He passes it out to the centre but I intercepts it. Keith moves into position on my left. Fuck this though. I’m gonna have my shot. Probably my last shot for the year. Maybe ever. I don’t know. I glances at the clock. Fifty-one seconds to go. I crosses the blue line. Kieran Maher makes a swipe at the puck and cracks me across the ankle. Pain shoots up my leg but I tries my best to ignore it. I pulls around him and loses the goddamn puck in the process. He doubles back, scoops it up and tries to pass it out to his wing. His brother intercepts and passes back to me.

—Have your shot. Have your shot…

Twenty-eight seconds. I’m on my own, closin’ in fast. I blasts a shot on net but before the puck even leaves my stick I knows I should have waited, should have gotten a bit closer. The goalie blocks it with ease. It trickles into the corner behind the net. The goalie slams it off the boards and, to what I can only assume to be his utter horror, it’s comin’ right back to me.

Five seconds left with an open fuckin’ net. The puck only ten feet away and slowin’ down to a slither. I tries to skate towards it but can’t put any pressure on my ankle. The puck stops. I sort of limps, sort of hops towards it, usin’ my stick for balance. Five feet away. I can almost reach it. Three seconds left. Almost…there. Two seconds. I hears someone skatin’ up behind me and I braces myself for the hit. That’d be perfect. Just fuckin’ perfect. At the last second, literally, Keith comes roarin’ past me, and taps the puck into the open net.

The buzzer sounds.

Game over.

We’ve won the championship.

I falls to the ice, more from the pain in my ankle than from any sense of relief or pride or happiness. The stadium whoops and claps and hoots and boos. Mostly boos.

I struggles to my feet to go congratulate Keith. If he’ll let me. Amidst all the commotion I spots him doin’ a little dance for the crowd on the other team’s side of the arena. He raises his stick in the air. They hisses and boos at him. He skates over to the other side of the bleachers and does the same. The crowd cheers. Holdin’ his stick at both ends, just like Little Frank, he brings it down across his knee. It don’t break. The crowd laughs. He glides over to the open net and slams the shaft of the stick down on the crossbar. It still won’t break, so he hammers it off the ice over and over until the shaft splinters up the middle. He takes it in both hands and twists it back and forth around his knee and finally fires it into the corner, still in one piece. It’s not fuckin’ easy to break off a hockey stick.

Rolly comes out onto the ice, dabbin’ at his face with the bloodied towel. His nose is a bit crooked but the bleedin’ is stopped. I skates over alongside of him. He looks me up and down with his one good eye.

—Shoulda passed the puck, Andy. You knew Keith was in the clear.

I can only shrug and then take my place in the line up at centre ice; both teams set to congratulate each other on a game well played.

6. Show Me Your Friends

I don’t remember much about Nan Healy. She died when I was little. Accordin’ to my father, one of her favourite expressions was Show me your friends and I’ll show you what you’re like. Not the most open-minded turn of phrase if you asks me. But, Dad rarely finds himself short of an occasion to quote her on it. Like the first time I brought Keith to the house.

—Dad, you knows Keith don’t you?

He took one good look at Keith’s black nail polish and tore-up maggoty jeans, realized I was introducin’ him as my new boyfriend, grunted and walked away. Steady racket in the house for the next two weeks.

—Don’t fuckin’ well bring him here no more, I’m tellin’ ya!

—But why? At least give me a reason—

—Because it’s my goddamn house and I don’t want him here. That’s reason enough!

No amount of pleadin’ and bawlin’ could change his mind. Then, to my shock, my mother came to Keith’s defence. She’d worked with his mom at the post office a few years back and I s’pose she remembered a different Keith than the one Dad kept hearin’ about around town. She gave Dad the old spiel about how there’s nothing for the young crowd to do, how they’re bound to get in a bit of trouble every now and then, that Keith is no worse than he was at that age. I was impressed. Sure, Mom hardly acknowledged my existence anymore. But, whatever her reasons for stickin’ up for me when she did, Dad backed down and at least made the attempt to tolerate Keith’s presence when he came to the house.

I mean, I knows Keith’s no angel, but he’s not near as bad as some people makes him out to be. Then again, Nan Healy would have rolled over in her grave the day he discovered the vibrator in back of the filing cabinet in the master bedroom and insisted that I hunt down some batteries.

—Put that thing down, Keith. Put it back right now!

That’s exactly what I said to him. Honest to God. I wanted nothing to do with it. Its very existence shocked me. I didn’t want to think about where it had been, what late night role it’d been playin’ in my parents’ bedroom.

Keith raised it to his nose and sniffed it. He scrunched up his face. I made a grab at it but he took off into the bathroom and ran it under the taps for a while. I took the batteries out of Becky’s headset. Next thing I knew we were downstairs in my room and Keith was slabbin’ the KY Jelly on me. KY is okay at first, but it gets sticky and gross after a while. I likes lotion better, but sometimes it burns or makes me break out. Keith wanted to use Crisco one time when there was nothing else around.

He slicked the tip of the vibrator with extra Jelly and slid it in me. It was alright. Tickly. A bit cold. I lay there and let him get his kicks. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what all the fuss was about, it was nowhere near as good as the real thing. Then he turned a knob at the end and it buzzed to life. Humming little quivers of bliss shot up through me and I felt my thighs squeezin’ shut almost right away.

Anyway, we did the deed, and, even though I knows Keith’d slaughter me if he found out, I can’t resist tellin’ on him for havin’ his turn at it too. That’s right. That was my condition, that if he wanted to shove some battery-packed plastic cock up in me, well he’d have to take the plunge too. But it’s not like he put up much of a protest. Matter of fact, I think he liked it a whole lot more than I did. Most fellas are like that sure. Just so long as they’re gettin’ what they wants from a female, then there’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing gay about it. What they don’t seem to realize is that they have this convenient little button called their prostate that makes things feel a whole lot better than it does for us girls. I tried the back-door business a few times with Keith and it felt like I was bein’ ripped in half. Where’s the fun in that? Deny him of it then and I’m being a prude.

—I’ll go slow, ’Tash, I promise.

Well if he can promise to go slow through one door, what’s wrong with taking it a bit easier when he’s in through the other one? Give me a chance to enjoy myself. I shouldn’t have to be finishing the job on my own all the time.

By the time we finished with the vibrator we were all in. Keith propped himself up on his elbow to recite the first half of the latest suicide note he’d written. A poem really. But always about death and turmoil and shit like that. I worries about him sometimes. It’s nice though, when he puts himself out there like that, when we’re feelin’ close. When we’re not at each other’s throats, which is more often than not. I mean, I loves him and all, but I’m hardly gonna be spendin’ the rest of my life with him.

After our cigarette we passed out in a sticky heap in each other’s arms. Some time later the sound of Dad’s signature stomp down over the basement steps woke me up. He kept a lot of gear in the furnace room so I had no reason to be alarmed. Then he almost put his fist through my bedroom door.

—Natasha? I knows you’re in there, now open up.

The only time he sounded that vicious was when he was drinkin’. But I knew a thing or two about how to handle him then.

—Dad, go on upstairs and lie down now. I’m tryin’ to do some homework. You go sleep it off.

—Sleep it off? That’s your solution for everything. Sleep your goddamn life away. You open this fuckin’ door, Natasha. I’ll count to three. One…

Alright, so he wasn’t drunk. He can’t count up to three when he’s drinkin’. I went over in my head what I might’ve done. I hadn’t raided his wallet in over a week and I’d rolled a whole pack of cigarettes for him that very morning. He was in good spirits then sure. I prayed to Christ it wasn’t about the vibrator. Myself and Keith were both stark naked, half asleep, and the room stank of sex and sweat. We scrambled into our clothes as quick as we could while Dad kept poundin’ away.

—Two…Open this bloody door or I’ll knock it in onto the fuckin’ floor, Natasha.

—What? What’s going on, Daddy?

I don’t know where the Daddy came from. I hadn’t called him that in years.

—You knows full well what’s goin’ on, girlie. Someone was rootin’ around in my bedroom. Kavanagh? You in there?

That’s another thing, in this real dismissive tone, he’s always called Keith by his last name. It’s his way of sayin’ that Keith is not a real person, not an individual, but rather an extension of the Kavanagh clan and what they’ve always stood for. Which isn’t much as far as Dad’s concerned.

—He’s trouble, Natasha. His crowd were always trouble. Show me your friends…That’s what your grandmother always said.

Dad kept hammerin’ on the door. My kindergarten picture fell off the wall. Keith looked at me and shrugged. He had his clothes on by then, sittin’ innocently in the corner armchair, a book in his lap. The hammerin’ came harder.

—Daddy, please. You’re scarin’ me! I’m not lettin’ you in until you tells me what’s wrong.

—Two and a half…Open this door, so help me Christ.

—Alright. Alright. Hang on a second—

—Three!

I just managed to hide the vibrator under the blankets when my bedroom door, moulding and hinges—the whole works—came bashin’ in on the floor. That was a first. I was good and scared. Keith too I s’pose, seeing how a piece of moulding struck him across the face. Dad walked in over the trodden door, frothin’ and droolin’, red as a beet and smellin’ like the twelve days of Christmas. But his breath was a bit sour, more like a hangover than a fresh drunk, so that was a plus.

—What are ye two at locked in the bedroom this hour in the day? Spendin’ an awful lot of time down here.

He had an apple in his hand, hardly a bite gone out of it. He pointed at Keith

.

—Kavanagh, get your boots on and get the fuck out of my house.

Keith didn’t argue, delighted to be let off without a scene. He scurried out through the doorway without so much as a backward glance in my direction. You can hardly blame him though. Not two weeks before, the two of them were after havin’ words over something or other. Well, a little more than words. Keith had gone upstairs to roll a few smokes. He wasn’t gone five minutes when I heard Dad roarin’ something at him. Then I heard, or felt rather, a thump that seemed to shake the whole house. Keith didn’t answer when I asked what it was so I ran upstairs to see for myself. There they were, Dad in his drawers, his big belly jigglin’, his hand gripped around Keith’s throat. Keith’s toes were barely touchin’ the floor. There was a dent in the wall behind his head and I guessed that to be the source of the big thump I’d heard. His face looked like it could burst under the pressure of Dad’s beefy hand. He squirmed and wriggled and did all he could to loosen the grip, but his efforts were useless. Dad’s a big man. Plus he had a seriously psychotic look in his eye, a vacancy, like he didn’t know where he was or who it was he was tryin’ to kill. I didn’t care what it was all about, but I didn’t want Keith dead and I’m sure no one wanted the scandal of Dad going off to jail. I jumped on his arm, the one attached to Keith’s throat, and started bouncin’ up and down, screamin’. But the more weight I put on his arm the harder he seemed to clamp onto Keith’s neck. At the sight of Keith’s eyes rollin’ back in his head, I panicked and dug my thumbs into Dad’s eyes. He grunted like a Sasquatch and started swingin’. He caught me full in the chest and the force of it sent me sailin’ across the kitchen floor. I started to cry. He seemed to come back to his senses for a second. He let Keith slump to the floor and he turned towards me. He never spoke a word. He reached down to help me up and must have only then realized he was standin’ there in his drawers. He put his hand over the outline of his dick and trudged off towards his bedroom. Keith had bad bruises on his neck for a few days, but he flat out refused to tell me what the racket was about. I picked and poked and prodded at him constantly, but he wouldn’t give an inch. I should have let Dad choke him to death.

My room, as always, was in such a state that there was hardly a clear spot on the floor for Dad to stand up. He bent over to pick something up, but stopped himself. He walked over to my bureau and set his hand on the handle of the top drawer.

—If I opens this drawer will I find something belong to me?

That was enough proof right there that he was off his head ’cause he’d never dream about searchin’ my room. I don’t know whether it was some moral thing, some parental code, or if he just didn’t give a shit, but I figured I could stash dead bodies in my room and Dad wouldn’t even ask about the smell. As far as he was concerned, what was in my room was my business.

—Look, Dad, what’s goin’ on? Are you drunk? You come in here…you beat my door down, scare the shit out of me and Keith…

—Did Kavanagh put you up to this, Natasha?

—Put me up to what?

—Don’t play stupid with me. I had a toy, a skinny little party toy someone gave me up to Martin Sweeny’s birthday last year. I wants the truth.

—Daddy, please, I don’t know what you’re—

—Goddamn it, Natasha!

He smashed the apple off his forehead. Pulp and peel and seed splattered around the room. The ceiling, the mirror, it was everywhere. Juice went into my eye and I started to bawl. I figured it was safer to bawl. Either that or bust out laughing in his face. I reached under the blankets, pulled out the vibrator and hurled it at him. Apple drippin’ off his chin.

—Get out! Get out! You’re a pervert!

The embarrassed, shaken expression that came across his face had me regretting it right away. He seemed shocked, like he was realizing for the first time that this might look bad on him, that his own daughter might think him a sick beast of a man. He bent over and picked up the vibrator between his thumb and index finger, like he was afraid to touch it any more than he absolutely had to. He left the room with it danglin’ at arm’s length and I heard the distinct squeak of the furnace door opening, then closin’. All sheepish lookin’, he came back and sat down on the edge of my bed.

—Natasha, my trout, listen to me. That was something for adults. A toy for adults…

This was serious. He hadn’t called me his trout in a long, long time. I remembers one day, when I was really little, I came up behind him as he was goin’ up the steps to the house. I’d been playin’ in the frog pond for the better part of the day and I was filthy. He heard me behind him and without turnin’ around he said:

—How’s my little trout today?

Then he got a good look at me and he said:

—I guess that makes you my little mud trout.

A toy for adults? How thick did he think I was?

—I didn’t know what it was, Dad. I was just curious. I never used it or nothing.

He cringed at the image that must have jumped into his head. His little girl down in her bedroom with a vibrator.

—Did Kavanagh put you up to this, Natasha?

I could have laid it all on Keith right then and there. Should have. It was his bloody fault and he was already in the black books anyhow. But I figured Dad was too embarrassed by then and was gettin’ ready to drop it.

—No. Keith didn’t even know I had it. I’m sorry.

I put my head down and sobbed. He put his hand on the outline of my shin beneath the blankets, then pulled his hand away like the sheets were on fire. He stood up, dug a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to me. He picked up the door and leaned it against the wall, promising to have it fixed before I went to bed for the night. He couldn’t look me in the eye as he left the room. Halfway up the stairs he stopped and came back to the room. I sat there on the bed, poutin’ and teary-eyed, hopin’ he’d slip me another few bucks. But he didn’t. He fixed his eyes on the floor before he spoke once more.

—Sweetheart, please don’t mention this to your mother. Any of it. If she found this out she’d fuckin’ well divorce me.

This time, as he turned and walked out of my room, I noticed something stickin’ out from just above the waistline of his belt. Something long and skinny. There was a tiny damp spot where his tee-shirt clung to it. I listened to him upstairs in his bedroom, the drawer of his filing cabinet rollin’ open.

When I was sure it was safe, I got up, grabbed my boots and went out lookin’ for Keith.

The crumpled twenty sweaty in my palm.

He’d be delighted.

Maybe we could pick up a case of beer or a draw.

I looked all over but couldn’t find him anywhere.

7. Joey Neill’s Lookout

Not much chance of anyone findin’ me up here. ’Cept herself, I s’pose. If she ever decides to grace me. Safe enough. Always felt like something watches over me up here. In the daylight anyhow. The Grotto. That’s all it’s called. One of three in all of Newfoundland. I’ve been comin’ here since way back. Sometimes though, sometimes if you comes through the Grotto in the nighttime, you’re likely to feel anything but welcome. There’s an old darkness here. I don’t come to the Grotto in the nighttime no more.

Rumour has it there was a time the Cove was mostly made up of dirty black Protestants and the handful of Catholics willin’ to risk practising their faith had to do so in secret, during the night. Representing this small band of rebellious practitioners was a young Irishman name Joseph Neill. No one knows for sure whether Joseph Neill was a real ordained priest or not, but it’s said that his sermons were so forceful that he even won over a few diehard Protestants in his day. Lookin’ out over his sleepy-eyed congregation, Father Joseph didn’t bark and roar and bawl with a blistering red face and streams of aimless saliva to hammer home the word, but whispered. Whispered because not a sermon was given before the stroke of midnight and discovery meant, so they says, public hanging. Joseph Neill did hang eventually, but not by Protestant hands.

The Grotto marks the general area where Joseph Neill held his midnight masses. It stretches up through the woods just up behind the church. The Catholic church. There was no Catholic church back in the days of midnight masses, but there’s not a single Protestant living in the Cove today.

Lengthways at the edges of the Grotto are the fourteen Stations of the Cross, massive white monstrosities, seven up and seven down. The Grotto is closed in by evergreens and a few crabapple trees and on one side the woods slopes upwards for a good distance until they peaks at what’s now called Joey Neill’s Lookout. From up on the Lookout you can see for miles in any direction. They says you can see half the lights on the Shore from up there in the nighttime. But no one in their right mind is gonna climb up there after dark. There’s an unmarked grave up there somewhere.

Myself and Natasha sort of claimed the Grotto for our own when we first got on the go. Even did the deed here a few times. Right on the ground. No one ever comes up here. No one seems to show much interest in anything church related since all that shit went on with them faggot priests. That was a shock to the Cove. A shock to the whole Island. Our parish priest was the very first to go down for fuck sakes. I was in grade six. First day back to school after Christmas and we were all called into the gym where the nuns told us the news. Of course everyone already knew the gory details but the nuns had their own version of events. We were warned about gossip and hearsay and some nonsense about a stone in the devil’s garden. Certainly we couldn’t forget the good things the man done for the community. And hadn’t we learned by now that a man is innocent until proven guilty? Didn’t we know that some people wouldn’t think twice about ruining a man’s life if they thought they could get something out of it themselves, how some people thrives on scandal?

I never listened to the fuckin’ nuns. I listened to my Gran. She gave me a new set of rosary beads every goddamn Easter and I can’t recall ever havin’ seen her without a set in her own hands, or at least dangling from her pocket. She went to church two and three times a week, every week. And she was always pinnin’ some medal, St. Jude or St. Christopher, to the inside of my jackets. But she was only one of countless devout Catholics up and down the Shore. She had it in her bones, force-fed the Psalms, Revelations, Job, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John since she was no more than a scrap. One time Grandfather sliced open his finger in the kitchen and muttered just a tiny little Jesus through gritted teeth. Well fuck, she gave him such a clout up the side of the head that he forgot all about his finger and wandered out into the yard in a daze without givin’ another thought to the half-gutted beast of a codfish in the sink. She gave him a clout for that too. But when all that shit came out about child abuse and drugs and pornography and homosexuality, her rosary beads vanished and she never set foot in the church again, not even for a wedding or a funeral. Neither did I, if only because no one forced me to go no more.

A strange thing about the Grotto is that sometimes on horrible, miserable windy days, there’s not a breath of wind in here. You can sit and blow smoke-rings while the trees whip and swirl and thrash all around you. And on cold days the Grotto can make you feel warm, stable and safe. On rainy days you can always find a dry place to sit down. Other times, when the sun is splittin’ the rocks, you can walk into the Grotto and wonder what you were thinkin’ not to have brought your jacket. On calm, peaceful days there could be near tempest winds in here. Them are the times when you can’t stay long. Like something don’t want you to be there and pushes you out, some long-buried fury hibernating in the very ground beneath your feet. So many weary souls have passed through these Stations, dumpin’ their burdens and wanton confessions, beggin’ absolution for their vile, hypocritical ways. It makes sense, to me, that the place would grow resentful. All that doom and gloom had to have seeped in somewhere I s’pose.

I’ve been havin’ this horribly vivid, recurring dream about the Grotto. I first had it around the time I started seein’ Natasha. It’s always the same. I’m leadin’ her by the hand, up between the big white crosses in the woods at night. I feels double-jointed and ten times stronger. She’s whimpering and scared and beggin’ me to tell her what’s wrong, where we’re going. But the more upset she gets, the more she cries, the more powerful I gets. After an eternity of this, something more or less shorts out in my head and I seems to deflate. I becomes overwhelmed with love and compassion, tryin’ desperately to connect, console, make things good again. But she grows more and more distant each step we takes. When we gets through the crosses and deeper into the woods we comes to a menacing black wooden door. My instinct is to turn back at this point but she always insists on goin’ in. Now she moves with a real confidence ’cause she already knows what’s on the other side of the door. My body grows weaker, my movements sluggish and clumsy. She opens the thick black door with ease and we enters a squat, claustrophobic room that’s covered wall-to-wall, even the ceiling, with hard green carpet. Four church pews, polished to a shine, are situated at the end of the room closest to the door. The air is thick and musty with the stifling stench of that sickly Easter incense. Wax drips from a few ceremonial church candles, but their flames don’t give off much light. We can barely make out the outline of another door at the far end. Then Natasha takes me by the hand and pulls me through the room. I feels like a child bein’ drawn away by a stranger, far away from all things familiar and warm. As we’re approaching the door we passes a closed and battered wooden coffin. ’Tash makes it to the door first and yanks it open. There’s laughter on the other side, natural, uninhibited laughter like children on a playground. I tries to get a glimpse but Natasha pushes me out of the way and slips out the door herself. She closes it shut in my face with a deathly quiet. The door handle disappears. I’m left alone in the room. I turns around to find the coffin is now open, the interior worn and rotted through to the bare board in places. To my sheer horror I sees myself inside. But I’m not dead. I’m starin’ out at myself with a vacant, desperate look that seems to ask—What have you done now?

Why I keeps comin’ back to the Grotto, I don’t know. It’s like the very force that pushes me out sometimes when I’m here, sucks me right back in when I’m not. There’re times that I simply arrives here, no recollection of havin’ made a conscious decision to come. Or I’ll find myself walkin’, look down at my feet, watch them move, one in front of the other, knowin’ they’re leadin’ me to the Grotto. But today is different. Today I knows exactly why I’m here. I’m comin’ clean. If she wants to leave me she can go right ahead. She’ll have every right to by the time I’m done.

I’m gettin’ restless so I decides to take a walk up to the Lookout to see what I can see. If she’s out and about, I’ll spot her from up there. It’s gettin’ on in the day and I wants to get this over with before tonight. There’s a big bash down the Shore and I’d like to show up as a free man for a change.

The woods are steep enough that you can’t get away with regular walkin’, but are forced to utilize all four limbs the whole way up. I finds a dandy stick on the ground and uses it for a staff. It’s a long old haul. By the time I makes it to the top and steps onto the huge rock that marks the heart of the Lookout, I’m so out of breath it feels like my lungs might bleed. The smokes are takin’ their toll on me already. Handsome young fella like myself.

Now. Look out. What a goddamn view. I can see pretty much every house in the Cove from here. Streetlights are flickering over on the South Side. There’s a ghostly cargo ship slicin’ through the currents behind Stone Island, its red and green beacons flashin’ every so often. I makes a quick scan of the roads and spots Natasha comin’ out of her uncle’s woodshed. She’s headed this way, quite a view in her own right. How is it that I’m just not content to give it a go with her? There’s not many can hold a candle to her here in the Cove, that’s for sure. It’s a matter of loyalty I s’pose. I have a hard time with that one. Even when I’m dead sober, the notion of loyalty is, well, just that, a notion. And when I gets drunk it goes right out the fuckin’ window altogether. Wherever I falls, that’s where I stays. I’m after wakin’ up in a lot of strange places with strange arms around me.

Natasha stops to lace up her boot. She’s gorgeous and gettin’ more so every year. But that’s just it. Every Year. We’re goin’ on two years now. That’s long enough to be fuckin’ around with the same young one as far as I’m concerned. I should be free while I’m young, and so should she…

A tree or a twig snaps somewhere nearby, startling me. I looks around and remembers where I am. My skin breaks out in goose bumps and, without thinkin’, I begins a hasty, fumbling descent back down to the Grotto. Branches slashin’ at my eyes.

The story goes that after twenty years of secret masses and midnight vigils, there was, all of a sudden it seemed, not enough Protestant presence in the Cove to keep the Catholics from practising openly. Around the end of the eighteenth century I think. So the Protestants just up and left one night, bound for New York and Boston, Canada, to start new lives and new families, and new churches no doubt. Mostly what you’ll hear around the Cove is that the Protestants couldn’t take the hard weather, that they were weak on the water and that the devil lured ’em off to greener pastures. Soon enough the Cove was all Catholic. A church sprung up. Turns out Father Joseph was a bit of a woodworker himself and played a good hand in the construction of it. A few years passed and word of Father Joseph’s powerful sermons, combined with the rumour that he’d managed to convert a town full of Protestants over to the Catholic Church, reached the big guys in the church in St. John’s. A letter arrived one day announcing the impending visit of Bishop John Blaney. The Cove went into an uproar. A fresh coat of paint on every house, stable and outhouse was mandatory. Anything broken down had to be mended. No slack-arses, no exceptions. Jesus Christ himself might as well have been on his way to the Cove, considering the feverish panic of the preparations.

It was cited in the letter that Bishop Blaney would be arriving by boat. So Father Joseph took it upon himself to carve an archway under which his holiness could pass as soon as he hit the wharf. Try as he might though, he couldn’t get it quite right. Some minor detail, undetectable to any other eye but his own, always rendered the finished product less than perfect, and therefore, as far as Father Joseph was concerned, an embarrassment and shame to the entire community.

Again and again he carved it out and then chopped it down. Carve it out, give it a good sizin’ up, then the crack of his maul would echo off the cliffs from one end of the harbour to the other. Douse it with kerosene and light it ablaze in a fit of rage. Toss it out over the wharf, heartbroken.

As the weeks wound down and the day of Bishop Blaney’s visit drew closer, Father Joseph took to sleepin’ with his project down on the wharf. Some of his most devoted followers tried to intervene, to talk him back to his senses, but he wouldn’t hear a thing of it. Nothing they could say or do would convince him to give it up, to come home, or even to serve mass, which he’d neglected to do for almost a month. In the end they just let him go to it, and it became the common opinion that Father Joseph had lost his mind altogether.

On the eve of the big day Father Joseph was heard to remark that if he didn’t get it right this time, the devil could have him. For the most part, the people of the Cove were convinced that had already happened. Still, there was the hope that the arrival of the bishop might somehow bring Father Joseph around. At dawn a shower of shotgun blasts from an incoming schooner told the Cove that Bishop Blaney had arrived on time. All hands proceeded down to the wharf in their best Sunday clothes to greet the bishop and pay their respects. There they were met, but not altogether surprised, by the grisly silhouette of Father Joseph’s body, hangin’ by the neck from the centre beam of his latest attempt at perfection.

Considering Father Joseph had taken his own life, Bishop Blaney ordered the body cut down and buried on the highest point in the harbour so that the devil would have to work at least that much harder to drag his tarnished soul down into hell. A small wooden cross was quickly constructed, but Blaney wouldn’t allow it placed at the grave site. There were no prayers, just a hole dug and then refilled with body and dirt. To this day the grave has gone unmarked.

Five more feet to the Grotto and I rips the leg out of my goddamn jeans. Always something. It’s after coolin’ down a bit. The light is fadin’ fast. I’m gettin’ a little paranoid as the woods slowly give over to shadow. Can’t sit still. I finally gives in and jump up to leave. Before I takes the first step, Natasha’s shadowy form comes trompin’ up the head of the path. I does my best to conceal the fright, my heartbeat all-consuming.

—Well, Mr. Kavanagh.

—Hey, ’Tash.

—So what’s this big important thing you have to talk to me about that just couldn’t wait?

Her eyes are fogged over and bloodshot. There’s a smell of weed off her breath. She’s stoned. This is no good.

—What were you at down in Pat’s woodshed?

—Spyin’ on me now? I was havin’ a draw.

—Nice to know I’m well up there on your priority list.

—What is it, Keith? Did you get me up here to rip my heart out and leave me? Lighten your own load by addin’ to mine? What? Go ahead.

She gets right aggressive on the weed. Gives her a real power trip. Wish it’d hit me like that. Anytime I has a draw I turns into a stuttering moron, can’t carry on a sensible conversation to save my own life.

She tips her head back and gives her eyes a shot of Visine. In no time they’re clear and blue again. God she’s gorgeous. I feels myself soften. I’d spent the past couple of days preparing everything I had to say, reworking it in my head ’til I got it just right. But now that the moment is here, I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want to. I can’t. I takes a step towards her and hugs into her. She giggles, her breath hot and sweet on my neck.

—I just wanted to see you, girl. We haven’t come up here in a while and I thought it might be nice. Look at me.

I takes a step back, holdin’ her face in my hands. She won’t make eye contact. She smirks and stares off. I hugs her again and as I do I sees something black move into the opening at the far end of the Grotto. At first I thinks it’s a dog, maybe the O’Brien’s old black Lab out for an evening tromp. But it’s not a dog. No, by fuck. It’s a darkness blacker than the shadows it moves through. A fast, bottomless black movin’ right towards me and ’Tash. I tightens my grip around her back, afraid to move or take my eyes off the shadow.

—What is it, Keith?

I can’t get to speak. I turns around, takes her by the hand. We starts walkin’ as fast as we can without actually runnin’. She holds on tight to my arm, lettin’ me know that she feels it too, that I’m not imagining things. We’re being pushed, swept out of the Grotto by something more than just a bad feeling. We’re ridin’ on a wave of something old and dark. It gets closer, crawls up the backs of our legs. We are unwelcome. No choice but to leave. It’s dead cold in the Grotto now.

We don’t speak or even so much as glance at each other ’til we’re well down on the road and even then we’re too afraid to acknowledge it.

—There’s a big bash goin’ on down the Shore tonight.

—Got any money?

—Enough.

We walks up towards the main highway, hand in hand. All is calm across the Cove, not a ripple on the water. Fine night for thumbin’.

I takes one last glance back up at the Grotto before we rounds the turn past the church. The trees are twistin’ and whippin’ back and forth in a sudden outburst of violence, threatenin’ to uproot.

Something’s just not right about the place.

8. As It Is in Heaven

—Just what do you think you’re doing, Mr. Kavanagh?

—Cleanin’ my nails. Why?

—Put it away, please.

Fuck sakes. Sure everybody I knows got a knife in their pocket. I flicks the blade closed and slips it back into my coat. What fuckin’ next?

—I would appreciate, in future, that you refrain from brandishing knives or any other weapons in my office.

Jesus Christ. Nothing like a trip to the welfare office to make you feel two feet tall. Natasha tried to make me feel better about it.

—Look, Keith, that’s what they’re there for. You’re entitled to it. It’s not for the rest of your life.

Yeah. Right. Try walkin’ in here with that attitude. They goes out of their way to make you feel like you’re robbin’ from their own personal piggy bank, that their kids are in for a second-rate Christmas because of you. Welcome to your new life. And what’s with all the goddamn questions? Have I committed a crime? Jesus, it’s only a lousy hundred bucks or so. Where’s that gonna get me?

The flimsy bastard behind the desk hands me the cheque. I reaches out to take it, but he won’t let it go. I pulls my hand back right away. I’m not playin’ that stupid game. I stands up and makes like I’m gonna leave, hopin’ he’s not gonna call my bluff. He does. He lays the cheque down on his desk, starts rearranging his papers. Puts on his readin’ glasses. I sits back down. He holds the cheque out again and this time when I reaches for it he yanks it away. Bastard.

—Plans for the future, Mr. Kavanagh?

I have a few plans for that cheque, you lanky prick.

—I have a few plans.

—Like what?

—Well I’d kinda like to keep ’em to myself, if you don’t mind.

—We’re going to be looking in on you, Mr. Kavanagh. This is about more than just showing up every month and having a cheque cut. We have an active interest in your case. Our system is designed to help get people on their feet. This cheque is to go towards your room and board at the…ahhh…Healy residence. Nowhere else. It’s not spending money, not party money. If your living situation changes you are to notify us immediately. Understood?

—Yup.

—Pardon me?

He folds the cheque in half and scratches his cheek with it, stares blankly at me.

—Yes, sir.

He finally holds out the cheque. I snatches it from his hand, turns around and makes a straight cut for the door.

I’ve been stayin’ at Natasha’s place for nearly a month now. I fell out with my own crowd. Big time. Natasha’s parents don’t seem to be for or against my bein’ there, which is fine by me. Her old man is on a bit of a power trip these days, but I keeps a low profile for the most part. As long as I’m not sleepin’ in the bed with Natasha. Of course that’s where I usually ends up. I offered to pay my way but her mom said not to be so foolish. She’s been pretty good to me. It’s only for a short while anyhow. I might be goin’ to school in St. John’s this comin’ fall. Waitin’ to see if my student loan is gonna come through.

Up on the road from the welfare office I sits on the guardrail and unfolds the cheque. One hundred and sixteen dollars and seventy-six cents. Wonder how they came up with that figure? They couldn’t just round it up to one-twenty? No. That’d be too easy I s’pose. Room and board. Sure if I handed this over to Natasha’s mother it’d be like slappin’ her into the face. What’s she gonna do with this?

I hears a car comin’ round the turn. It’s only Francey O’Dea, so I don’t bother to stick my thumb out. He loves to see me out on the road thumbin’. Loves to pass me by too. I’d sooner walk the whole ways back to the Cove than get in with the likes of him. So it’s quite a shocker when he slows down and stops a little ways up ahead of me. The passenger side door falls open. Fuck it. Feels like rain anyhow.

Francey is drivin’ a rickety rust box of a Chevette these days, not much guts in her at all. She can hardly make it up over the hill goin’ into the Cove. I feels bad for him. He used to have a dandy car. On the way down the other side of the hill he floors it, the little car rattling and shimmying all over the road. I reaches for my seatbelt but there’s neither one there. That’s no good. In the side mirror I can see puffs of thick blue smoke shootin’ out from the rear end. I glances at Francey, his bloodshot eyes hangin’ out of his fuckin’ head. The needle on the speedometer keeps on climbin’.

Please God, don’t let me die in a car with Francey-fuckin’-O’Dea. Don’t tell me this is what you had in mind for me all along. I don’t want to be tied to this motherfucker for the rest of eternity. I didn’t even have my thumb out, for Christ’s sake. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry. But please God, get me home safe and sound just this one more time.

—What’s the matter, Keith b’y? Scared? I thought you were the real speed freak?

Francey reaches behind himself and hauls his seatbelt on. The car swerves over into the left-hand lane. He grins and whoops and pulls it back to the right side of the road. I’ve got my body squashed as far back into the seat as I can get it, my feet pushin’ hard against the floor beneath the dash. Both my hands are gripped tight to the edges of my seat, knuckles bone white. But even in the midst of all this panic, I can’t bring myself to ask Francey to slow down. I’d never hear the end of it. The car picks up more speed and I jams my eyes closed, fully expectin’ to lift right off the ground any second at all.

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom fuckin’ come thy will be fuckin’ done

On earth as it is in Heaven…

Francey roars at me over the noise of the car.

—Now then. Satisfied?

He nods towards the dash to show me that he’s after buryin’ the needle. I s’pose he’s hopin’ I’ll spread it around town, make a hero out of him. I lets go of the seat and slips my knife out of my pocket. I flicks it open and, quick as a wink, slashes right through Francey’s seatbelt. When he feels the pressure of the strap lettin’ go, he reaches down to check the buckle, only to find it still in place. He releases it and snaps it in place again. His hand finds the end of the seatbelt. It’s a clean cut. One thing I’m good at is sharpening knives. He looks across at me. I holds the knife up to his face. He can’t believe his eyes. Neither can I. Things are gettin’ out of hand here.

—Let me out of this fuckin’ thing, Francey O’Dea, or I’ll gouge your goddamn eyes out.

He hits the brake. My free arm automatically reaches out for the dash in front of me and an image of my father flickers through my head. Back before the seatbelt law came to Newfoundland my father used to drive an old grey Ford Custom. Whenever I was in the truck with him I’d get to stand up in the front seat. If he had reason to touch the brake he’d straighten his arm out in front of me to keep me from flyin’ through the windshield or fallin’ into the dash. I’d latch onto his arm with both hands ’til he’d pull it away. A seatbelt’s never made me feel that safe.

Francey manages to bring the little shitbox to a stop. The engine stalls. He makes no attempt to start it up again. He don’t speak or even look in my direction. Sweat trickles down his forehead.

From out of nowhere the sickening wail of a cop car fills the air. The old blue and red lights in the rearview. That’s all I fuckin’ needs. Francey peels a strip of hash off his steering wheel. A gram or so. I hadn’t noticed it ’til now. He pops it into his mouth and squats it in place under his bottom lip, checks the look of it in the rearview.

I closes up my knife, slips it into my pocket and jumps out of the car. The cop car grinds to a halt inches from Francey’s back bumper. Two cops jump out and the one on the passenger side runs straight at me. It’s Stanford. That angry fucker. He hates me too. He’s movin’ with such speed and savage intent that I takes an instinctive step away from him, loses my footing, and slides down into the ditch. He’s upon me before I even hits the ground. He pulls me to my feet and pushes me over to the hood of the Chevette.

—Spread your legs, Kavanagh, hands out in front.

—Get your fuckin’…

He grabs me by the back of the neck and pushes me facedown onto the car. He shoves his knee up between my thighs, forcin’ my legs open. My arms are stretched across the hot bonnet. He’s riflin’ through my pockets. Fuck.

—You’re not allowed to do this! You needs reasonable doubt or reasonable cause or something!

—Probable cause, Kavanagh. Probable cause. That’s exactly what I got. Been drinking this evening?

—Fuck you.

—Why did you try to run away just now? Trying to get rid of something? Oh my, what have we here?

He’s flicks open my pocketknife with a sarcastic whistle of admiration.

—Nice knife, Kavanagh. Who owns it? Look here, Officer Bowden.

Bowden is searchin’ the backseat of Francey’s car. He must be new. I’ve never seen him before. He nods towards us.

—Will we call this a concealed weapon?

Bowden eyes the knife, doesn’t even look at me.

—I don’t know. We’ll have to take it back to the station for measurements.

Cocksuckers. It’s a tiny little gator blade. They knows it’s under six inches. But they’re gonna take it anyhow. Nothing I can do. Stanford keeps rootin’ around and then pulls the cheque out of my ass pocket. He holds it up to the sky and reads it.

—Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. I didn’t know you worked for the government, Kavanagh. Why didn’t you say something? Oh, wait now. Oh. Department of Social Services. Oh, I see. It’s a handout. Not a very big one though. Jesus, Kavanagh, you think they’d throw a few more bucks your way, fine upstanding citizen that you are. Unless you’re on a day rate with them?

Embarrassed and pissed off as I am, I decides not to say one more word. That gets ’em every time. That’s the best way to deal with the cops. Just shut the fuck up. You’re better off. Plus it drives ’em off the head. They can’t stand it. Believe me, there’s nothing they loves more than playin’ head games and puttin’ words in your mouth and lettin’ you dig yourself into a hole. It’s the RCMP for fuck sakes. They got nothing better to do.

Once Stanford realizes I’m not gonna speak no more he lets up on me and hands me back the cheque. The other cop gives Francey a speeding ticket and another ticket for not havin’ functional seatbelts in the car. Ha! Francey’s shittin’ himself, givin’ me the evil eye. Wouldn’t know but it’s my goddamn fault. I can see the outline of the hash under his bottom lip and I fuckin’ well feels like pointin’ it out to the cops. But I’m not that bad.

They won’t let Francey drive the car the rest of the way to the Cove so he gets in the back of their car. They offers me a ride but I refuses. Time enough for the backseat of a cop car. Francey gives me the middle finger and makes the cutthroat sign as they drives away. When they’re well out of sight I launches a hefty chunk of pavement at Francey’s front windshield. Right on the driver’s side. I stands and watches the spiderweb spreadin’ across the windshield. When I’m satisfied with the damage I turns towards the Cove.

It’s only a half-hour walk to the Cove. I decides to hoof it. It commences to rain. It pours out of the heavens. By the time I makes it to the Cove I’m drenched to the bone. The first house I comes to is the Careens’ place. I was never allowed near the Careens’ place when I was young. Course that’s where I spent most of my time. When I was growin’ up, the Careens’ place was forever teemin’ with hooligans from all over the Shore, carousin’ and scrappin’ day and night. But, aside from the two youngest brothers, the place is pretty much empty these days. The whole clan scattered when the plant shut down. The parents drowned in a canoe in Slaughter’s Pond a couple of years back. All the two b’ys does these days is drink and sell and smoke dope. They’re a bit older than me, but I gets along with ’em pretty good. I started buyin’ dope from the youngest brother, Gerald, when I was around fourteen. He’s twenty-six and easily the hardest of the two. He’s got a reputation from Bay Bulls to Trepassey for bein’ the fastest, toughest son-of-a-whore on the go. He don’t look like much. He’s only skin and bones really. But I’m after seein’ Gerald Careen take down fellas twice his size with one smack. One night we were sittin’ around playin’ cards when a car pulled up outside and blew the horn. Some big lummox jumped out, belchin’ at the top of his lungs for Gerald to come out and fight. Gerald had a few beer and a few draws in, so he didn’t give a fuck. He stood up from the table, whipped off his tee-shirt, marched straight to the car and beat the livin’ snot out of the stunned fucker. I watched the whole thing. Gerald punchin’ the poor bastard to the ground, then pullin’ him to his feet so’s he could punch him down again. The car was full of hockey-heads but none of ’em dared open the door to help their buddy. Finally, Gerald gave it up. He spat a big dirty snot onto the windshield, said he’d kill the whole crowd of ’em if that’s what they came for, if not, go to fuck home out of it. Someone got out and Gerald went towards him but the fella was only tryin’ to get his shit-hauled friend back into the car. Gerald gave him a hand. When he came into the house again he sat back down to the card game and started bawlin’ me out for supposedly riggin’ the deck while he was gone. Like nothing happened. Blood drippin’ from his knuckles. I asked him who it was he’d just pounded the daylights out of. He said he never laid eyes on any of ’em in his life.

There’s no one home at the house when I walks in. I goes out around back and yells for Gerald, but there’s no answer. The stove is blazin’ and there’s a forty of Russian Prince on the kitchen table, so he can’t have gone far. I puts some ice in a glass and fills it to the top with vodka. I drinks it down and then fills it up again. I drinks it down again. That warms me up a bit. I takes off my jacket and shirt and hangs ’em on the clothesline behind the stove. Pours myself another drink. By the time Gerald walks in I’m feelin’ a good buzz. He joins me for a drink and then puts the bottle away ’cause it belongs to his older brother Harry. ’Cause when Harry wants a fuckin’ drink there better be one waitin’ for him. I’m in no mood to stop drinkin’ though. Neither is Gerald. He’s got no money so I offers to go over the road for some beer.

—Fuck did you get the bucks to?

—Dole.

—Right fuckin’ on. Milk ’em for whatever they’re worth, Keith b’y.

The cheque is a bit soggy but I don’t have no trouble cashin’ it since it’s a government issue and all. I buys a couple of packs of smokes, a dozen and a half beer and a big bag of chips. But rather than go straight back to Gerald’s I takes a walk up the track above the store where I devours the chips and flattens five beer. It’s comin’ on dark and I feels a few drops of rain so I sets off down through the woods again. I’m so drunk that I spends most of my time on my back or face down in the bushes. The world in front of my face seems to freeze as I moves through it. Then the picture breaks off and floats away before I can focus on the next frame. I struggles to keep myself walkin’, not wantin’ to pass out in the woods in the rain and maybe die. I runs faster but that only causes me to tumble around more and to hit the ground harder when I do. At some point I stops to vomit. I’ve put nothing in my stomach all day but the chips and the beer and that’s all that comes out. And vodka. I keeps bumblin’ my way through the trees and the rain. After a while the woods fritter away and I tumbles onto someone’s back lawn. I’m delighted to find that, throughout the whole ordeal, I managed to keep the dozen beer intact. But the box is soaked through and it’s not gonna hold much longer. I staggers across the lawn towards the back porch of what I think is Harold Reddigan’s house. Can’t say for sure. I mindlessly pounds on the door but no one answers. It’s not locked. I walks into the porch and flicks on the light.

—An…body ’ome?

I pokes around until I comes across an old duffle bag full of someone’s laundry. I empties it onto the floor and puts the case of beer down into it. I considers leavin’ a note or something, but it’s likely to be too much hassle. I locks the door behind me and makes my way down the driveway to the main road.

Gerald’s got his head down on the table, the vodka bottle empty in front of him. I causes a big racket tryin’ to sit myself down and he jumps right out of his chair, fists clenched and ready to go.

—Where the fuck are you goin’, Benny? What time is it?

—Gerald, it’s only me. Who’s Benny?

He picks up the bottle, sees it’s empty and then hurls it at the cupboards. I pulls the beer out of the bag and hands him one. I twists one open myself but I gags on the first mouthful. Gerald takes a chunk of hash out of his top pocket and cuts off a few blasts. Looks like the kind Francey had, soft and oily. I turns on the propane burner on the stove and lays the knives over the flame. No matter how fucked I am, I can always straighten up enough to cook a draw. Once the blades are red hot Gerald drops a blast onto one of ’em. I lets it smolder for a second before pancaking the other blade on top of it. Gerald don’t bother with a funnel. Thick white smoke blasts up into his face. He brings his lips closer and closer to the red blades as the draw burns out. Smoke curls up around his head and drifts to the ceiling. He fills his lungs and then chokes his guts up. Then I does one. Big mistake. The room spins round and round. I tries to make it back to my chair but some cunt’s after fuckin’ with the floor. It’s gone rubbery and keeps slantin’ away like the house is fallin’ over the cliff. Gravity pulls me across the room towards the far wall. I tries to pull myself back to my feet, but I don’t have the strength. Gerald cheers me on. The ceiling pulsates. It’s gonna collapse. I slumps down in the far corner and vomits onto a pile of shoes and sneakers. Gerald bolts towards me. In a flash he got me on my feet, holdin’ me up by the collar of my jacket.

—You dirty little fucker. I should make you lick that shit up.

—Go fuck yourself.

Don’t know what I was thinkin’ to go and say something like that to Gerald Careen on a drinkin’ night. He draws back his arm and lets me have it square into the face. He hits me so hard that I bounces off the wall behind me and lands right back in the standin’ position, facin’ him once more. Then I says it again.

—Go fuck yourself.

He draws his arm back again, but don’t follow through with it. My knees gives out and I hits the floor. I can already feel my eye swellin’ up. The taste of blood in the back of my throat. My nose is bleedin’ and I starts bawlin’. Fuck. Tears and blood and drool and snots runnin’ down my face as I drags myself on my hands and knees into the bathroom. I wraps myself around the toilet bowl and vomits some more. Not in the toilet though, onto the floor around it.

I lies there for a while, tryin’ to stop from sobbin’ out loud. It’s not the pain. I can hardly feel a thing really. Just, I don’t know, sometimes I bawls for no real reason these days.

My thoughts are driftin’ and I’m almost passed out when I hears someone poundin’ on the front door. My first instinct tells me it’s the cops. I tries to push myself up with my hand, but it slips in the vomit and I cracks my face off the toilet bowl. Now my lip is bleedin’ too. I strains to hear Gerald’s muffled voice in conversation with whoever’s at the door. I hears my name. My full name. I forces myself to my feet and steadies my body against the shower. I locks the bathroom door and then opens the window that leads to the back yard. It’s a tight squeeze, but I manages to get out just in time. As I hits the ground on back of the house I hears Gerald knockin’ on the bathroom door.

—Keith, you alright? There’s someone here lookin’ for you. Keith?

Then I’m gone.

I’m out of there.

There’s a path that runs from the back of Gerald’s place right over to the North Side of the Cove. I lets my legs do the walkin’. My nose and lip are stopped bleedin’ but my eye is pretty much swollen shut. I’m soon stumbling down the back steps to Natasha’s house. All I wants to do is lie down with her and go to sleep. She was expecting me a lot earlier but I’m sure she’ll be understanding when she sees the state I’m in. I tries to be as quiet as possible. Last thing I wants to do is get her old man on the go. No such luck though. Someone’s after stackin’ a bunch of beer bottles behind the basement door and they all comes crashin’ down when I opens it. The house snarls to life. Heavy footsteps from the upstairs hallway, stompin’ across the kitchen floor. The basement door squeaks open.

—Natasha, is that you?

It’s the old man. I turns back up the basement steps. My wet boot lands on a loose bottle and I topples out onto the concrete walkway. Then he’s in the doorway, towering over me, silently surveying the mess of broken bottles on the basement floor.

—H…hey, Mr. Healy.

—Don’t Mr. Fuckin’ Healy me, Kavanagh. What the fuck happened to your face? Where’s Natasha to?

—I’m sorry, I don’t…I’m a bit—

—You’re loaded fuckin’ drunk. Where’s Natasha?

—She’s…I don’t—

—What were you told about showin’ up here drunk? And what were you told about usin’ the basement door? I’m not havin’ it. The cops were here lookin’ for you. If you got Natasha tangled up with the goddamned cops I’ll crack your fuckin’ skull.

—I’m not dringin’—

—No wonder she’s after gettin’ so goddamn hard to talk to, the likes of this goin’ on all hours. You listen to me, you little rogue—

—I’m not dringin’—

—Lie to me face now, will you?

For the size of the man he’s pretty fuckin’ fast. He pulls me to my feet and slams me up against the wall. Some set of arms on him. He shakes me around like a rag-doll. This is it. He’s snapped and he’s finally gonna pound me. He’s been lookin’ for an excuse for a good while now anyhow. Then Natasha’s mother appears in the hallway. Thanks be to Christ.

—Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph! Keith, look at your face. Stan, let him in for the love of God, b’y.

That’s his name, Stan. But she’s the only one ever calls him that. Everybody else in the Cove calls him Beef. Me and Natasha calls him the old man, not to his face though. He lets go of me and stomps back up over the stairs. He barks down:

—You deal with him then, and we’ll be done with it. He’s cleanin’ up that mess before he goes too. And ask him about Becky’s little cat.

She leads me over to the couch and sits me down, goes into the laundry room and comes back with a first aid kit. She washes my cheek with an alcohol pad.

—Who were you fighting with? The cops were here.

—I wasn…fighdin…I was—

—My God, you’re loaded drunk. On a school night, Keith? You were told last time about this. Stan wants you gone. He don’t trust you.

—What?

She takes out a patch of gauze and tapes it over my eye. Goes to work on my lip with a cotton swab.

—…and Natasha won’t talk to us anymore. We lays down rules and no one listens. I found an ashtray under her bed this morning. She doesn’t smoke. I can only assume it was you—

—I’m not—

—Why is it so hard for her to sit down and have a conversation? Tell us where she’s going or what’s going on in her life? I asked her what time she was coming home and she flew right off the head at me. Like I’m some kind of animal.

Her expression is pained and her eyes well up.

—What am I doing so wrong that my own daughter won’t sit down and talk to me without cursing and swearing and—

—Maybe she’s not fit.

—Pardon me?

She stops cleanin’ my lip. Stands back and looks at me. Looks at the bloody cloth in her hand as if she’s just now realizing that I’m not one of her own.

—What did you say?

—Mentally I mean—

—Mentally? You’re going to look me in the face, with that face, and tell me my daughter’s not mentally fit to talk to?

—I don’t mean—

—Go.

—I didn’t mean—

—Go. Get out of my sight. Get out of my house. We’re not having a live-in boyfriend. Nor a thief. God knows what you’re fillin’ Natasha’s head with.

—Where’m I gonna go to?

—I don’t care where you goes, but if you don’t go now, I’m gettin’ Stan.

She can’t be fuckin’ serious? This can’t be happening. She walks back up over the basement steps. I hears her cross the kitchen floor. She hollers at the old man. He’ll be down soon to have a go at me.

What in the fuck did I have to go and say that for?

I coulda just gone to bed out of it.

I was only tryin’ to say…ah fuck it. Fuck it.

Headlights comin’ my way as I’m walkin’ out the road from Natasha’s. I jumps into the ditch and squats behind an alder. It’s the cops. Jesus. They pulls in at Natasha’s. This is bad. I racks my brain to remember if I’ve done anything illegal. No. Not that I knows of. I’ve been playin’ it pretty straight this past few weeks. Maybe it’s about Francey’s seatbelt? Or the pocketknife? Or the old man might have called ’em when I showed up. He’s like that. I watches him come onto the front porch to meet the cop car. He gestures down the road towards me. I moves further into the woods. Christ, I’ve spent half the day in the woods. The cops swings their car around and crawls down the road with their big spotlight shinin’ back and forth. I lies down flat and seconds later the light passes over me. They creeps along for a bit, then picks up a bit of speed, and they’re gone. I lets out a breath I never even knew I was holdin’. I rolls down out of the woods into the drain and claws my way back onto the road, the whole time with my eyes on the taillights of their car. They pulls off at the end of the Point and carries on past the old graveyard. Fuck.

I can’t go home. I can’t. Sure the last time I laid eyes on my father I took a smack at him. I came home from school that evening and Mom scarcely missed my head with my ghetto blaster. She was up in my room with the window open, tossin’ all my shit onto the balcony below. Tapes, books, clothes, posters tore in half and balled up. My stereo didn’t break, but when she came downstairs to greet me, I showed her how it was done. I jumped it and stomped it and kicked it and smashed it into the ground while she stood watchin’. I had no idea what it was all about, if I had a defence or an alibi or what the fuck was going on. But I figured it was bad. Turns out it was all over a pair of binoculars. How the fuck was I supposed to know they belonged to her father? They didn’t look antique to me. What do she want with a pair of binoculars? Lookin’ around. What’s goin’ on over at the Sweenys’ this evening I wonder? That’s perverted if you asks me. Anyhow, I sold the fuckin’ things in Tors Cove one night for forty bucks and I honestly thought I was rippin’ the guy off. I told Mom I’d get her the money back. She told me to go and not to come back. So I left for a while. Waited ’til about ten o’clock before I went back. Her and Father were sittin’ in the kitchen. The rest of my shit was jammed into garbage bags. They gave me a choice: I could either seriously change my ways, live there under a new trial basis where if I screwed up once more I was gone for good, or I could just go now and find some other place to live. I still thought it was all a bit much for a fuckin’ old pair of binoculars. So I said as much, grabbed a couple of garbage bags and went for the door. My mother lost her head.

—You can go out and give blowjobs to old men, sell drugs, rob the gas station. But the first time I hears tell of anything, I’m goin’ straight to the cops.

She took the rest of the bags and threw ’em out on the ground. I told her to go fuck herself. That’s when Father shoved me off the step. I jumped up and made a run at him. Mom took off into the house and he backed in behind the door, slammin’ it just as I would’ve hooked him in the face. My fist made full contact with the door and afterwards I found out my knuckle was broke. But the look on Dad’s face was the worst. An expression somewhere between fear and…empathy. An expression I never expected or wanted to see on my father’s face. A lot of bad shit, a lot worse than that, has gone down over the years. But something felt different this time. A line had been crossed and I knew there was no going back. I wish I’d just turned and walked away without runnin’ at him like that. That’s no way to be carryin’ on with your father. It had nothing to do with him. He didn’t care about the goddamn binoculars. He was just following orders.

I took a few things from one of the garbage bags, went over and lay down in his truck for the night. But I couldn’t get comfortable. All I saw when I closed my eyes was his face through the glass as I struck the door. I think I bawled. I managed to get to sleep for a couple of hours, but I got out of the truck before he went to work the next morning. I stood up on the bank overlooking our lane as he made his way to the truck. He got in, started her up, then put his head down on the steering wheel. I figured he must only be tired, that he never got enough sleep.

I wonder if I should go back to Gerald’s and crash on the couch? He’s probably after drainin’ the rest of my beer, passed out at the table. He won’t remember fallin’ out with me. Or I could swing by and see if Andy’s home. No. Me and Andy are after driftin’ apart these days. All he minds is his fuckin’ hockey. And I think he’s shaggin’ around with some young one from up the Shore.

Fuck.

I can’t go home.

The rain is pickin’ up again. The church is my best bet for now. Surely the Good Lord will have me. Keep me dry for a while. I’ll figure out what to do in the morning. I picks up the pace, not feelin’ so lopsided now that I got a place to go.

We spent a fair lot of time arsin’ around in the church when we were growin’ up. Runnin’ up and down the aisles, jumpin’ over pews, climbin’ down from the choir like monkeys, bangin’ on the organ. I even had Shannon Kelly on the go in there one night. We drank what wine we could find. One time myself and Bobby O’Neill went in and swiped every hymnbook from every pew, lugged ’em down to the beach and burnt the works in a bonfire. There was some uproar over that.

It’s rainin’ good and hard again now. Lightning flashes in the mouth of the bay. I scurries up the church steps only to find the door locked. Surprise. I probably would’ve been too creeped out to go to sleep in there anyhow. Still, who the fuck do they think they are to go barrin’ people out of the goddamn church?

I sits down on the steps and tries to think.

My face is poundin’. My arms and legs are stiff and bruised, my feet hot and itchy in my army boots. Soaked to the bone. My cigarettes too damp to smoke. I’m all-in. I lies back, closes my eyes and lets the rain beat down on me.

A dull pain in my armpits as a pair of leather hands jerks me to my feet. I smells cinnamon. My heels clunkin’ down the church steps, draggin’ through the mud of the parking lot. Pain in my head like a knife stuck on the inside tryin’ to stab its way out. The squelch and bleep of a two-way radio. The world turns blue, then red. Blue. Red. Then a steady gust of dry, hot air blankets my body. I’ve died and gone to heaven. A brief surge of alarm penetrates my new-found bliss as I hears the words:

—We got him. We’re bringing him in.

Then darkness…

They releases me the next morning, after makin’ me sign a dozen fuckin’ papers and askin’ me a ton of questions about Gerald Careen and Francey O’Dea. Even though it’s nowhere near true, I tells ’em that Francey supplies half the Shore.

I’m being charged with break-and-enter and theft under a thousand dollars. My court date’s in two months. On top of that, they’re tellin’ me I’m s’posed to come back to the station every Friday to sign my name. Christ. All over Harold Reddigan’s maggoty old duffle bag. What fuckin’ next?

Steam rises up off the cold, wet road ahead of me. At least the sun is shinin’. Looks like it’s gonna be a dandy day. I have no idea why I’m headin’ back towards the Cove. There’s nothing there for me no more. Never was. Sure even if I wanted to stick around and there was a bit of work on the go, who the hell is gonna hire me? I don’t even have a place to go lie down for fuck sakes. I s’pose I’m after pissin’ too many people off over the years.

Fuck ’em.

I checks my pockets, counts out a little over eighty bucks. I got a few places to crash in St. John’s. Eighty bucks might do me for a couple of nights. I’ll figure things out from there. I crosses to the other side of the road and starts thumbin’ towards the city. There’s lots of early morning traffic. Most people just slows and stares at me like I’m some kind of fiend. The rest speeds up and pretends they don’t see me. I resigns myself to a long walk. People still slows and stares. Twenty minutes of this by the time some human being pulls over and stops up ahead of me. I keeps my head down and tries to collect myself as I runs towards the vehicle. I’m in no mood to talk to no one, but, if they’re going right to St. John’s, it’s a good hour and a half drive. So I’ll have to be halfway civilized.

My head is in such a mess that I’m already sittin’ in the cab of the truck by the time I realizes what I’ve gotten myself into. Father’s truck, Father at the wheel. On his way to St. John’s. It’s gonna be a long, long ride.

9. One Last Second Chance

Look at him, shovelling it aboard himself like a savage. That vicious scowl on his face. Swear he never saw a bit of ground beef in his life. Get it in you, b’y. Don’t choke. My God. Dogs eats like that. It’s in their blood. I saw it on Discovery last month. Goes back to before they were domesticated, when they ran in packs. Barely chewin’, afraid they won’t get enough. But sure it’s only me here. I got my own plate. I’m hardly gonna leap across the table and grapple him to the floor for his share.

We’re here two weeks now. Not much light gets in, but it’s a nice little apartment. Decent area. Lots of trees. Twenty-four-hour shop just up the road. Walkin’ distance to the university. Suits me. Keith had his heart set on a spot downtown, but I talked him out of it. I’m after hearin’ too many stories of people gettin’ sucked into that scene. Plus he’s on a court order, not allowed to possess or consume alcohol, and so I figured the last thing we needed was pubs and clubs on all sides.

A few months back he wandered into the Reddigans’ place on the South Side of the Cove and made off with a duffle bag and a short-wave radio. Stupid. He was cockeyed. The cops found the bag at Gerald Careen’s place, but the radio never turned up. Keith swore in court he knew nothing about the radio. But, I don’t know, sounds like something he’d rob. Anyhow, there was a load of break and enters goin’ on at the time, the high school in Ferryland and the gas station in Fermeuse. The cops were comin’ down hard on everyone. They gave him a year’s probation with all kinds of retarded regulations: the alcohol thing, no non-prescription drugs, sign in at the station every Friday, no hangin’ around with anyone with a criminal record. Half the Shore’s got a criminal record for God sakes.

They made him go see a counsellor too. A place in St. John’s called the Second Chance Society. How cheesy is that? Anyhow, I started drivin’ him into town in Mom’s car every Friday after he checked in at the station in Ferryland. When I picked him up after his first meeting with the Second Chance crowd, he was in seventh heaven, goin’ on about how he finally found someone who could relate to him, someone to trust, someone who actually understood what he was goin’ through. But that’s Keith for you, always havin’ to lug around the heaviest burden. No one else knows what it’s like and all that.

But, to be honest, I was excited for him myself. Long time since I’d seen him so energized. He’d been mopin’ around since his court date, mumbling and depressed. No interest in doin’ anything with me. Wanted to be off by himself, readin’ books about vampires and listenin’ to The Doors. I was at my wit’s end.

On the way back to the Cove after that first visit, he broke down screechin’. Right out of the blue. He’d been goin’ on and on about this counsellor guy he was talkin’ to, how easy it was to open up to him, then in mid-sentence he started wailin’ and howlin’. Frightened the life out of me. I’d seen him shed a few tears in the past, but never like that. It wasn’t the regular old what-am-I-gonna-do-I’m-so-fucked-up kind of cryin’, but more or less this huge outburst of, well, liberation. Guttural sobs. Nice to see him with his guard down for a change. I pulled in on the side of the road just past Tors Cove and let him cry in my arms for a while. Maybe things were gonna start lookin’ up.

And they did. I’d drop Keith off at Second Chance on Friday evenings and he’d come skippin’ back to the car an hour later. And he was that much easier to talk to. My God. He opened right up. All his doubts and worries about his livin’ situation, his future. Our future. It was new ground for me. For the most part I figured he just lived from day to day, not carin’ how the world saw him or where he was gonna be in five or six years down the road. So it was nice to know that he included me in his plans. It made it easier to move forward in my own life, knowin’ I had him with me. He even broke down and confessed to sleepin’ with my cousin Margaret at a Christmas party in Aquaforte. Said the guilt was tearin’ him up and he didn’t want them kinds of things between us. We had a fine-sized row over it, but, in the end, I was glad he came out with it. I resolved to move past it. If he was willin’ to wipe the slate clean, then so was I. Things were lookin’ up.

Reverend-Doctor Shane Adams. That was his name, the guy Keith was assigned to, the head honcho at the Second Chance Society. He supposedly had lots of pull in the courts, counselled inmates down at the Pen and everything. He came out to meet me after Keith’s fourth or fifth session. Nice bit of gear he was too. Early thirties. Wicked shape. Pale blue eyes and an easy smile. I could tell right away there was something about him, like a glow. He had this fire in his eyes, this infectious energy that made me want to just jump out of the car and break down bawlin’ in his arms. Take me! Take me! I needs a second chance too! I don’t know, maybe I was a bit jealous.

As Keith was about to get in the car, Adams walked over to him with his arms held open for a hug. Keith wouldn’t. They shook hands instead. Keith had told me that was the one thing he wasn’t so struck on. At the end of every session, Adams’d spread his arms out as an invite for a hug, like it was some kind of test to see if Keith had made any real progress. Or maybe a trust thing. Sure, me and Keith are goin’ on three years together and it still drains me to coax a hug out of him. But I thought it was a bit odd, Adams puttin’ Keith on the spot like that, right in front of me. It didn’t seem appropriate.

Keith wasn’t near as enthusiastic about that particular session. He hardly opened his mouth. I wasn’t gonna push it. But by the time we got past Kilbride and he still hadn’t said nothing about it, the tension was drivin’ me cracked.

—So?

—So what?

—So how did it all go?

—You don’t want to know, girl.

We drove on in silence for a while, him wolfin’ back the last of my cigarettes. Bruce Springsteen came on the radio and I turned it up on bust. Thought that might cheer him up a bit. Halfway through the song he turned it off.

—All he wanted to know about was sex.

—Like your sex life? Keith, you didn’t talk about me?

—No. He wanted everything but. It was fuckin’ creepy. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on what he was doin’ to me. Like, he got this way of askin’ questions—

—Well that’s what they does. I mean, he is a psychologist—

—No. It’s different. It was like he was tryin’ to mesmerize me. Like he was takin’ me places against my will. Had me sinkin’ deeper and deeper into the past. Little details I never thought about for years. And I was tryin’ to keep my wits about myself, but he kept askin’ why and how and how did that make you feel. And the questions were comin’ out of him so fast that I barely had a chance to think about what I was sayin’. And before I knew it, I was down in the lower meadow playin’ dicky-birds and shit.

—Oh.

—Yeah. And it was like he got right off on it. It was right fuckin’ weird. He didn’t want to know about girls or what women I went out with or how things are with you. He wanted to know about things I did when I was little.

—Well, Keith, I guess he knows what he’s doin’. You can’t expect to just walk in to a place like that and not give out anything about yourself—

—That’s another thing too. He’s always talkin’ in these fuckin’ tacky metaphors. We’re gonna walk you through the sewers of your life, but you’re gonna come out clean on the other side. Shit like that. And here I am, goin’ right along with him, thinkin’ yeah, my life really is a fuckin’ sewer.

—Keith. Come on. Maybe it’s too good to be true? Maybe you’re just pullin’ away ’cause you’re afraid. You can’t expect—

—Too good to be true? I have a few more pressing issues in my life right about now, ’Tash. He was s’pose to give me a hand with the cops and all that bullshit. Sure I don’t even speak to my family. I’m half the time sleepin’ in a parked car, or sneakin’ around your place when there’s no one home. Slept in the stable the other night. What’s that got to do with whether or not I experimented when I was a little fuckin’ youngster? It’s sick. And he wants to hug me then when I’m leavin’? Fuck. Tryin’ to make me feel like everything’s gonna be fine and dandy, that my world won’t come crumbling down, long as I makes my way back to see him every Friday. It’s like brainwashing.

He spent all the next week broodin’. I knew it was too good to last. He started readin’ up on cults and communes and that sort of stuff. Jim Jones. Charlie Manson. A book called Savage Messiah about some freak from Quebec. Another one called Cults: Is Your Child At Risk? He read some of it out loud to me. It was mostly just tabloid and propaganda, but I had to admit, the similarities were there. Most of them characters at least started off with a bit of respect from the towns they lived in. And they were oftentimes ordained ministers with a background in psychology or social work. Handsome, intelligent, charismatic fast talkers. But it was a bit much to think that Keith had gotten himself tangled up with that kind of fella. In St. John’s of all places. And that the courts had ordered him to go there.

So I convinced him to give it another go. It was only an hour a week and he’d get in more trouble if he just blew the guy off. Wow, that never came out quite right.

The next week when I pulled in to pick Keith up, he was already waitin’ for me on the sidewalk in front of Second Chance. His eyes were all red and his hand was bleedin’. Some heavy bouncer type was hangin’ around the front door. Shane Adams was nowhere to be seen.

If Keith’s story is anything to go by, things got pretty tense. Apparently, their get-together had been goin’ along fine, Keith relaying all his defects and problems while Adams sat there like a sponge, every now and then concocting just the right metaphor to keep Keith fuelled. Then, out of nowhere, he invites Keith to Montreal. Said he had a place up there where people could focus on straightening their lives out. That’s when Keith lost it, accused Adams of posin’ as some kind of guru lookin’ to brainwash him and stuff. And, just like that, the office door flew open and in burst this big burly chap who snapped his fingers and straight away ushered Keith to the front door. Like he’d been listening in the whole time. Adams shouted after Keith that he was more than welcome to come back whenever he felt ready to get his real life underway. But no hug, no handshake, not even a simple goodbye. Imagine. Keith hung around outside and took a few cracks at the side of the building while he was waitin’ for me. That’s how he messed up his hand. He was some vicious on the ride home.

The never-ending drama of Keith and Natasha. God help us.

We were expectin’ that Keith might get picked up by the cops then, for breakin’ his probation order. But, oddly enough, nothing came of it. Keith kept signin’ in at the station every Friday like clockwork. I made sure of that. And, as best I could, I tried to keep him clear of the beer. Wasn’t easy. So I mostly just hung around and made sure he never got too loud and wild. I felt bad for him. He was so miserable all the time, hangin’ around down by the wharf all hours in the night and half the time sleepin’ in the twine shed.

It got old pretty quick though. I got sick of babysitting, sick of spendin’ all my time worrying about what was gonna happen with poor old Keith when I hardly had a clue what I wanted to do with my own life. So, I started makin’ plans to move us into St. John’s.

Mom and Dad weren’t too keen on me and Keith shackin’ up together. For one thing we never had a cent to go about it. But I started savin’. Then I convinced Keith to put his name in on a scallop dragger in Cape Broyle.

—Go on, b’y. Sure you’re always talkin’ about gettin’ in shape. It’s only for two weeks. Fast money. When you comes back, you’ll have your own place to lay your head. Our place.

A few days later he was gone offshore. Two whole weeks. And let me tell you, I might have missed him a bit and worried about him, but them two weeks were the best I had in a long time. I went mad. The weather was warmin’ up, all kinds of parties on the go. I got so loaded one night I ended up neckin’ up a storm with Bobby! He called me up the next evening and asked me to go for a run down the Shore. I went. For a laugh. We drove down to Witless Bay and picked up some weed. On the way back we pulled in the track just outside Horse Chops and got wrecked. We shagged around a bit but I never screwed him or nothing. I’m not that bad.

I got two strange phone calls while Keith was offshore. The first was from Shane Adams. He was all concerned about Keith. I told him what I tells everyone, that Keith is doin’ the best kind, workin’ away, off the booze and maybe goin’ to school in the fall. But Adams didn’t seem to want to hear that. Something peculiar came into his voice, this weird urgency and he started askin’ me shit that was none of his business, like whether or not I was faithful to Keith, and suggesting that maybe we weren’t really right for each other.

—Who the fuck do you think you’re talkin’ to?

But he just barrelled right over me. And I let him. I don’t know what the problem was, if it was anyone else I’d just hang up. But it was like Keith said, he had this way of draggin’ things out of me to keep the conversation movin’ along. And even though I was pretty pissed, I realized I was hangin’ on his every word. I wound up spillin’ my guts about our plans to move into St. John’s, about what I wanted to do with my own life, about Keith’s drinkin’. When he let me off the phone I literally had to give my head a good shake. Like I was in a daze.

The second phone call was from R.N.C. headquarters in St. John’s. Lookin’ for Keith. It was a detective from New Brunswick. She was working with the R.N.C. on an investigation concerning none other than the Reverend-Doctor Shane Adams. They were lookin’ up all his former clients, lookin’ for statements in relation to Adams’ character. I asked what the investigation was about, but she wouldn’t tell me. Just left her name and number for Keith to get ahold of her as soon as possible. Christ, there was a movie in there somewhere. Or a book, at the very least.

Keith landed in St. John’s, skinny as a rake and hell-bent on a new tattoo. We found a little hole on the west end of Water Street called the Black Rose. Keith was lookin’ for a small tattoo of a scallop shell with the words never again underneath it. There was nothing even remotely like that available, so he settled for a little spider. He wanted it on his hand, between his thumb and index finger, but I talked him out of it and he got it on the inside of his wrist instead. Thank God. All bad enough. He told me to take my pick too. He’d gotten an advance of five hundred dollars off the boat and was expecting another twelve hundred the next day. I had a good look around while he was havin’ his tattoo done. Mostly just broken hearts and schooners and angry biker symbols though. Nothing there to suit me.

After that we went lookin’ at apartments. All the best ones were too expensive. Keith fell right in love with this hideous place above a bar called the Hatchet on Water Street. Whoever had just moved out were most likely checked into the mental. There was sick, demonic murals all over the walls. Everything was smashed to bits, holes in the ceiling. Something like spaghetti was splattered everywhere, dried onto the walls. The guy showin’ it to us also happened to own the bar beneath it, told Keith he’d make a fine bartender. Not exactly what I had in mind.

I called Mom and to see if I could keep the car overnight. After a good racket with her, me and Keith checked into the Captain’s Quarters on Kings Bridge Road. When we settled into our room I had him call R.N.C. headquarters. I was dyin’ to know what that was all about. But Ms. Nancy Drew was out of town. After that we watched a bit of pay-per-view and had a nice, sweaty night. Fish and chips, queen-sized bed. I hadn’t realized how much I was missin’ him. Next morning we found the place on Anderson Avenue, paid the damage deposit, and that was it. We went and got a couple of keys cut and then I drove up the Shore by myself. Keith stayed in town. I dropped him off on Water Street before I left. He said he was goin’ for a bite to eat. I knew he’d end up in the bars.

I made half a dozen trips back and forth to St. John’s that week. Aside from my own gear, I had to go all over the Cove trackin’ down Keith’s stuff for him. A hockey bag full of tapes at Gerald Careen’s place, a chest full of books down in the twine shed by the plant. A lot of his stuff was in my room. He asked me to go by his parents’ place and pick up the rest of his clothes, said they’d be packed up in garbage bags in the porch. But I couldn’t go there. Last time I’d been there his mother called me down to the dirt.

Mom brought me out with the last load of gear. We stopped at Value Village and I got a few things for the kitchen. Like I said, Mom wasn’t too keen on me movin’ in with Keith. He was in the black books at the Healy house ever since he brought the cops to the door. Mom got talkin’ about this summer job in Toronto. Dad had a friend in real estate that was lookin’ for a summer secretary. Two or three months. Good money. Dad wanted to pay for the whole lot. It sounded pretty decent, I must say. But I was determined to at least give it a try with Keith. Mom dropped me off in a huff and wouldn’t even come inside for a look around.

Keith was s’posed to meet me at the apartment for a little celebration. Of course he wasn’t there. I waited. I called around to a few bars. When I called the Hatchet, the bartender muffled the phone with her hand and I heard her say:

—Keith? Phone. Are you here?

She came back on the line to tell me that she hadn’t seen him all night.

I lugged all the gear down over the basement steps on my own. Then I got ready and went downtown to get Keith. I’d never set foot in the Hatchet before and I almost choked on the stench when I walked in. Smoke, sweat, piss, shit, fermented booze and vomit. Smelled almost like…like burnt flesh. Like the time Dad singed his hand on the stove. And what a crowd of wasters. I never saw the like in my life. Half past ten on a weeknight and no one with a leg to stand on. I walked through the whole bar, even checked the men’s toilet. The smell. I’d smelled it off Keith’s jacket before. On my way back through the bar I could feel all eyes on me, like I was a slab of meat or something. Or maybe they were just amazed that I could walk a straight line.

I was in the porch and just about to push the door open when I caught a glimpse, through a little grime-laden window, of a couple tucked away in the corner near the front windows. They were goin’ right to town, suckin’ the face off one another. I felt my knees go weak. I walked back into the bar and turned the corner behind the door. Sure enough it was Keith, face and eyes into some slut with a big shock of red hair and about twenty earrings in her ear. I grabbed him by the head of the hair and yanked him away from her. The slut looked up at me, all insulted, but she caught on quick enough. I was vicious. She jumped up and stumbled over to the bar, giggling and glancin’ over her shoulder at me. Keith tried to pull away from me, but I had a firm grip on his hair. I dragged him to his feet and out onto the street and gave him a good crack across the face. He fell down on the sidewalk, loaded. Didn’t even know who I was. I hailed a cab and the cabbie helped me load him in the car. We had to stop twice on the way uptown for him to throw up. I got him into the apartment and into bed. Somewhere along the way he’d gone out and bought himself a pair of leather pants. They didn’t look cheap either. They were tough-lookin’ biker pants. Nice to know he had his priorities straight.

He couldn’t remember anything the next morning. He was a mess. Shakin’ and bawlin’. I didn’t have the energy to bring up the incident with the slut at the bar.

Nancy Drew called that afternoon. I walked down to the police station with Keith, mostly to make sure he found his way home afterwards. On the way, we passed by the building where the Second Chance Society should have been. There was a chunky padlock on the front door and the big bright Second Chance sign was gone. We peeked in through the windows of the front office. The place was gutted, not a lick of furniture, nothing on the walls, like it’d been vacant for years.

Keith was still half-staggering when we walked through the front doors of the station. His breath reeked too. He was askin’ for it alright.

Turns out they were investigating Adams for his suspected involvement with some child pornography ring on the mainland! The good Reverend was on the missin’ list as well. Keith went and told the detective everything he knew, all about his own experience with Adams, his suspicions. Then of course he had to go and tell her that I’d been talkin’ to Adams. She called me in. Pumped me for information.

—Did he say anything, anything that might attest to his whereabouts, Ms. Healy?

There was nothing I could tell her.

Keith was some delighted with himself though. How he saw through the whole thing all along. He wouldn’t shut up. I felt like chokin’ him.

We spent the next while fixin’ up the apartment, scrubbin’, buyin’ groceries and all that happy domestic shit. My heart wasn’t in it. After Keith got through the initial stages of booze withdrawal, he lapsed into this dark, gloomy silence. I found myself bouncin’ around, grinnin’ like a proper fool, tryin’ to cheer him up. He’d look at me and grunt. Enough to sicken you. He told me one time that there was nothing, only silence, in his house for months on end when he was growin’ up. If that’s what I had to look forward to…

Anyhow, we’ve finally gotten around to our little house warmin’ celebration tonight. I bought some whole-wheat pasta and a pack of ground beef at Stockwoods. Stir-fried some veggies. Keith sat around in front of the little black and white TV ’til the table was all laid out. I put on a nice top and a bit of makeup and everything. He hasn’t changed them leather pants from the time he bought ’em. I s’pose he thinks he’s Jim Morrison now. Wouldn’t surprise me. He was Leonard Cohen last week.

Look at him, shovellin’ it aboard himself like a savage. That vicious scowl on his face. Swear he never saw a bit of ground beef in his life.

10. It’s Always Been You

SMASH!

Glass shattering on the bathroom floor.

I’m up out of bed in a flash.

I checks my bedside clock.

2:35 a.m.

I sleeps with a big piece of steel pipe at the foot of the bed. I grabs it and creeps out into the living room. I’m gonna be sick. I wish I had my boots on. It’s always easier with my boots on. What’s that? A rustle and a scuff from the bathroom. A low murmur. The light is on. I never left that light on.

I’m braced, legs spraddled for balance, pipe clenched in both hands. Mortified. Some of the most ear-piercing and nerve-racking sounds in the world are the ones made by someone, or something, tryin’ to keep quiet.

The familiar squeak of the bathroom doorknob pushes my heart up into my throat. The bathroom light falls across my face and I screams, chargin’ at the opening with the pipe up over my head, aimin’ to maim and maim for keeps. But my intruder screams too and slams the door shut just as I’m about to make contact with a face. The pipe digs into the first layer of wood on the bathroom door and something, maybe the mirror, falls from the wall and shatters onto the bathroom floor.

—Who’s here? C’mon then. You picked the wrong fella to—

From the bathroom, a quivering, choked-up voice:

—Keith? Keith, honey, it’s me. What’s wrong? Sleepwalking are you?

It’s Natasha. Up using the bathroom. I forgot she was back. Shit. Where does my head go? She regains herself and is not at all pleased when she inspects the hole in the bathroom door.

—Natasha. Jesus. I heard a noise. I thought it was the window and I’m half asleep girl. I had a horrible dream—

—The cat knocked a bottle into the bathtub, Keith. And the mirror is ruined now too. I got my period back. Be careful in the morning ’cause there’s glass.

The cat comes lumbering out of the bathroom, altogether oblivious to my life. I’m standin’ there with the pipe, feelin’ foolish and wantin’ the moment to pass. Natasha starin’ at me, shakin’ her head.

—You coulda killed me, Keith. I’m goin’ to bed.

She cut me off, that’s what happened. Nothing was gettin’ in the way of that job. There were greener pastures in Toronto for some reason. Greener pastures in Toronto. For the love of Christ. We’d been livin’ in St. John’s not two weeks and we were a long way from settled in. She cut me off. Just like that.

Her old man had set her up with a cozy office job for some fancy real-estate firm up there and she’d be gone all summer. The unspoken plan was that she’d meet some nice fella up there, get a taste for the good life, and leave me in the dust. By hookin’ her up with a place to stay, payin’ for her ticket and sendin’ her off with some cash in her hands, they had more or less obligated her to pay ’em back by never lookin’ back. Not in my direction anyway. She was cold as ice the days before she left, said it was a family thing.

—Family comes first, Keith. Family comes first.

Family? Two and a half years and she still don’t think of me as family? Well what am I then? I was cryin’, sobbin’ out on the steps on a blistering hot day in June. The whole summer was comin’, but it didn’t matter shit to me. I just knew that when she went, she was gone for good. This was her big chance and she was jumpin’ at it.

She laughed at me too. Laughed ’cause I was weak and she was gettin’ stronger. That’s the way it always is I s’pose. The one who walks away first carries all the power. But she swore she wasn’t walkin’ away from me, that she’d be back, and that it was all good. Good for us. Time and space. Empty bullshit used to appease me so she wouldn’t have to deal with the Keith situation. All she wanted was to be happy and free and off to Toronto for the summer. I didn’t see it for the blessing it shoulda been.

We fucked like rabbits when we first met. Four, five times a day. Never did take any precautions, practised and well-timed withdrawal bein’ our only form of birth control. A thousand times I’m sure. Condoms were too clumsy, and the pill…well, the last thing we needed was more hormones floatin’ around. But, when I got the phone call two weeks after she’d arrived in the big T.O., tellin’ me she was pregnant, my first reaction was complete and utter disbelief. Not shock or anything like that. I just didn’t believe her. It seemed so fitting for her to go and make it all up so’s she could still have that grip on me, a grip which, as I’m sure she must have figured out by then, had been loosening up considerably.

See, I was well able to let her go once she’d gone, that was the funny thing. I wasn’t the volatile, blubbering, desperate mess we both expected me to be. I was movin’ on, makin’ a clean break from my last real connection with the Cove. Natasha. Now she was tryin’ to tell me we were gonna be bound to each other by blood for the rest of our lives? Like fuck.

But then I knew. I knew it was true ’cause I knew Natasha. It’s not in her nature to be that manipulative. She wanted a clean break just as bad as I did. I doubted very much she’d go to that length just to suck me back in.

We talked some more.

Pregnant.

I hung up the phone and went out for a walk.

How in the fuck did it happen? But I knew that too. In the back of my mind I knew that phone call was on the way. I was losin’ her, see? Or I thought I was losin’ her, and the prospect of it scared me. The night before she left she softened up a bit, for my sake I s’pose, and we managed a bit of routine, mindless and mechanical sex. But towards the end, some part of me wouldn’t, or couldn’t, pull out of her. Not right away, not before I’d left some part of myself in her. To keep her with me.

I walked for a long time. I hung my head in case maybe the heavens were watchin’ and might one day show me a recording of my reaction. The big camera in the sky. This is your life. But I never cried. I certainly never jumped for joy. I never felt a thing. I just roamed the streets for a while and tried to look the part.

When she called me up later that night and told me she wasn’t gonna have a baby, that she’d make an appointment in the morning and go alone to some clinic to have this new crisis sucked out of her, I never felt a thing. There was no question of morals where I was concerned. Not for a second did I even consider any other alternative. All I could think was that I was low on smokes.

We spent hours on the phone those few weeks before her appointment. Hours. She wouldn’t go see a counsellor for fear she might be guilted out of it. And I’m pretty sure she wanted to be guilted out of it. She was scared shitless while I managed a level of calm that surprised and impressed me. She’d call me up, bawlin’ with the panic, and I’d have her settled down in no time. You’d swear I was an old hand at it. But at the same time I wanted to throw it all in her face about how she’d tortured me, left me with nothing, talked down to me. Family comes first. But how cruel is that?

I knows she was struggling with it though. I knows she wanted me to say shag it, let’s have it, we’ll do the best we can. But I never once let on that there was any other option available to us.

Lyin’ in bed some nights, I must admit, I did entertain the notion of fatherhood. But bring a child into this dark and twisted world? Subject a child to Keith and Natasha? I don’t think so. I think relationships, like everything else in this life, are predetermined by fate. They’re fashioned around a particular time frame, allowed to blossom at a certain time, and are accompanied by a specific end-date, the end-date arrivin’ after sufficient notice has been given. Warning signs. Myself and ’Tash had gotten all the warning signs, received our notice in the mail long ago, balled it up and tossed it in the stove.

I slept with a girl named Monica on the last night before the big day, Natasha up in Toronto tossing and turning. Monica was the new bartender at the Hatchet and I’d only met her earlier that evening. We hit it off well enough and arranged for her to come to my place after she got off. I went home and slept for a few hours, not knowin’ whether she’d show. I was sober and I measured the consequences. I spent half an hour on the phone with Natasha, reassuring her that I loved her, that I couldn’t wait ’til she got home, that things were gonna be okay. The big appointment was 10:00 the next morning. Natasha. Curled up in her strange bed in the big city. A million miles away. I whispered things and told her little stories. I held the receiver to the cat’s chest and let her listen to him purr ’til she fell asleep. The dial tone woke her up five minutes later and she called me back to say she loved me and wanted things to be different from there on in.

Things were gonna to be different alright. That’s probably half the reason I asked Monica home to my place. Bang another nail into the coffin, have some other reason why I could never go back to Natasha. At 3:30 a.m. there was a quick tap on my door and I let Monica in. She handed me a joint and I lit it. She pulled a blanket out of her bag and spread it across the floor. That’s where we spent the night. I forced Toronto and abortions and all that shit down to the back of my mind.

The phone rang the next morning and it was Natasha, all anxious and neurotic. Only two more hours. The early morning sunlight was blinding and for a moment it stripped me bare. I saw what I’d done to her. Ruined her, darkened her. I wanted nothing more in the world than to be there with her, take her into my arms and hide her away. She’ll have to live with this now for the rest of her life and when she’s thirty, and finds herself with room for a child in her life, she’ll probably look in the mirror and spit. And all because I didn’t want her havin’ the upper hand.

I heard Monica runnin’ the shower. It’d be another couple of weeks before ’Tash came home from Toronto. I guess right then and there I decided that I’d leave her. For real. I’d be there verbally, say all the right things to help her through the aftermath. She deserved that much. But I’d never be with her again. It wasn’t gonna be easy, but it’d be a whole lot easier than tryin’ to make things work now.

I wished her the best, told her I loved her, put the phone down and slipped into the shower alongside Monica.

Natasha told me later that everything went smoothly as far as abortions go. They put her legs in stirrups, shoved a vacuumtype mechanism up in her, and sucked the fetus out into a bag. There was pain. She never saw what came out. The nurses were nice and gave her some Valium. They wouldn’t let her leave on her own, so she waited for the next couple to be finished and then they walked her to a cab. She stopped the cab outside some bar, stumbled into the street and went for a drink. She said she sat at the bar in a daze, not really able to get her head around what’d happened, took all the Valium and woke up at home some hours later, a nervous wreck.

No amount of sweet talk could calm her down that night. I would have walked to Toronto if I thought I’d get there in time. But over the next few days she settled into it all, started turnin’ on me, pointin’ the finger. She’d been talkin’ to a friend of a friend who said I’d been a bad boy in her absence. I denied it all. She hung up. I called her back, couldn’t get hold of her. I left a hundred messages over the next few days, beggin’ her to call me back, to let me know if she was alright, tell me where it was I stood with her.

Another week went by and not a word out of her.

About two days before she was due home she left a message on my machine tellin’ me what flight she was on and the arrival time and not to be late. That’s all I heard from her ’til I saw her at the airport. She fell into my arms in an exaggerated state of exhaustion.

We never said much in the cab on the way home. I never bothered to ask her why she hadn’t answered my calls. I didn’t care. She was home. That’s all that mattered to me.

She slept ’til 2:00 the next day.

I nearly went mad waitin’ for her to wake up.

—They told me it might take up to six weeks before I gets my period again. So I don’t think we should have sex ’til I’m back on track.

There was something harder about her, like her anger was that much less of a front. I tried everything to get through to her, to bring out the old Natasha, but her walls were up and they weren’t comin’ down. She went home to the Cove that evening.

—I’m probably gonna be up home for about a week, Keith. I got a lot of thinkin’ to do and we got some serious shit to talk about.

Within ten minutes she’s out the door and gone. I spends the night pacin’ the floors, forcin’ myself not to pick up the phone. Jesus. How far out there do you have to put yourself before you gets a little humanity in return? How am I s’pose to handle the whole week without her?

She comes back the next day with a little bag of weed. We spends the day smokin’ it and rompin’ around in the bedroom. It’s like old times again. We’re like rabbits.

She smokes a cigarette beside me.

—I’m thinkin’ about goin’ to Halifax for a while this fall. Mom’s got a friend up there that’d probably let me stay. I wouldn’t have to pay rent or nothing.

Halifax. I knows it’s just a threat. Why would she take off again after she just got back? She’s just lookin’ for a reaction out of me. She’s still angry. It’ll pass.

—Halifax? That’d be nice. Maybe I could come visit?

—Maybe.

We lies there for a while, not sayin’ much. The cat comes by and nuzzles up between the two of us, purrin’ and kneadin’ Natasha’s chest with his paws. I takes a playful smack at him. Natasha turns to face me.

—Keith, what would you do if I told you I was never really pregnant in the first place?

She turns back towards the ceiling. I searches her face for signs of anything. Fuck. I could bring it all to an end right here and now. End all this sick, twisted shit. Maybe. But I don’t have the energy to come clean. I’m afraid she won’t get upset.

—Don’t say things like that, sweetheart. It’s all behind us now. I’m with you. It’s always been you.

We sleeps then, for what seems like days. I dreams that I cooks a fantastic big Sunday dinner. When ’Tash opens the pot to have a peek, she bawls and runs from the room. I looks in the pot and something small looks back at me.

SMASH!

Glass shattering on the bathroom floor.

I’m up out of bed in a flash.

I checks my bedside clock.

2:35 a.m.

11. The Devil You Don’t Know

Been tryin’ to get through to her for days. I don’t just mean through to her, like in the regular pick-up-the-goddamn-phone sorta sense. I means through to her. She was on the bloody phone alright, but she wasn’t really there. Always rushin’ off to some fuckin’ play, some big-shot nightclub with her new snort-mongrel, prancin’ and privileged suck-hole theatre friends. Mushroom season. Period cramps. Aunt Gertie waitin’ on an important phone call. Taxi’s here. All that shit. All that shit took its toll.

She was all so soft too. Make ya fuckin’ sick.

—Yes, Keith, for God’s sake. Will you listen to yourself? Come off it, sweetheart. Am I not allowed to make the best of this?

Sweetheart.

See, I wasn’t askin’ her to have a bad time of it. No I was not. I was only wantin’ to find some way to make the best of it myself, and she wasn’t much help. You should’ve heard her. Like I was delayed or something. She just didn’t get it.

—What do you expect me to do, Keith? Pack it all in, jump on the next flight, blow another few hundred dollars so you can sleep better? Lyin’ there with a knife, threatening to carve yourself up because you thinks I’m up to something? C’mon, Keith, sweetie. It’s always just you and me. I’m still here. Look, my cab’s here. I gotta go…I’ll call you tonight…Yes! For frig sakes, I promise. Now I have to go…Yes I loves you…Yes I knows how much you loves me…Look, I really have to go…I can’t do this right now. I’ll talk to you later. I’ll talk to you later—

Click.

Now what the fuck was that? See how cold? See how empty? Sweetie.

Leavin’ me to pace the floors and wait. Pacin’ the floors. Imagine a handsome fella like myself up pacin’ the floors over some young one. Cuttin’ myself up over some flimsy young one.

And she never called first nor last. She never called. Gone for the whole night. Out there somewhere. With someone. At something. She never called. You knows that hot, grindin’ sensation you gets in your gut? Like if something don’t soon give, like your bowels or your lungs or your goddamn head, then you’re just gonna fuckin’ explode? Splat. Coat the walls. That’s how I was feelin’. Like I had to break, smash, fuckin’ destroy something quick, before the whole situation destroyed me or I destroyed myself. That turned out to be my short-wave radio. Never did work right anyhow.

Some says that too much anger is a bad thing, that it cripples you and it eats you alive and all that shit. I says it’s the one feeling that makes me feel…whole. But enough about me.

During my long night of pacin’, one of the longest nights of my long, long life, I received a visitor. Andrew the Psychology Major. My old friend. Tryin’ to play me for a lab rat.

I pretty much lost Andy to the world a while back. I s’pose around the time I first started seein’ Natasha. But that happens to the best of us. We gets that first taste of new skin and everything else goes out the window.

I’ve known Andy since kindergarten. It’s always been a bit of a strange relationship, but never so strange as since he started on his psychology degree. Now he really understands me. Matter of fact, he understands just about everything under the goddamn sun these days. But there’re an awful lot of things in this fucked-up world that you can’t find no answer to in some grand and fabulous fifty-dollar textbook. Still, I lets him say his thing. I loves to be analyzed.

—Hates to bust your bubble, Keith, but there’s no camera rollin’. You’re not livin’ in one of them books on your shelf. So you gotta drop the romance for a second and hear me out. This is all about power and control, and lack thereof. Sometimes the very thing you’re good and used to, the very thing that keeps you goin’, gets taken for granted. When that thing is suddenly taken away from you, you finds out quick enough exactly who you are without it. From what I can see, you don’t like the new you very much at all. Natasha was like a warm and cozy security blanket that you could wrap around yourself anytime you needed to. Now you can’t find your blankie and you’re in panic mode. It’s very common. Irregardless, you’re a menace to yourself and I doubt you’re doin’ her much good either. Are you bleedin’?

Irregardless. Just fuckin’ gag me.

See how cold? My Christ, it’s a cold world we lives in. How do you respond to the likes of that? Really? What can you say? I’ve known him all my life. But I s’pose you can’t be too quick to lash out at people this day and age. The older you gets the less chance you got of makin’ new friends. Especially me. I knows I exhausts people. If only ’cause I have a desire to see things my own way. When I’m strong and happy, people tends to distance themselves. But when shit goes south, they comes out in droves to patronize and condescend. No one wants to see you up and on your feet. The world wants you on your knees ’cause the world is cold.

Anyhow, talkin’ to Andy is like talkin’ to the goddamn stove.

—I knows. Andy, I knows. But you don’t know how it feels. Try walkin’ around with a knot in your stomach the size of your goddamn head…Look, I knows something is up. I knows that girl. Something’s not right. What am I expected to do? Call her up, all nice and calm, la-de-fuckin’-da, ask about her new little friends? No rackets, no bullshit? Well that’s not gonna happen. I’m after puttin’ too much into this to simply walk away or roll the fuck over. Anyhow, she won’t let me be calm. She’s too slick. She plucks and meddles in that sweet little voice ’til I snaps. Then she tries to tell me I’m pushin’ her away. But I’m not pushin’ her away. She’s pullin’ herself away. Pushin’ me away. And you know why? Because she’s up there screwin’ some faggot! And I’ll get it out of her too. Supposing it’s five years down the road and she’s married to the star of the fuckin’ show, I’ll get it out of her. I don’t give a shit. I’ll get the truth—

I was barely underway before Andy mumbled some excuse to leave and did so in a hurry. Right. As long as he gets his five cents’ worth in. Why in the fuck do I even bother explaining myself? All my upheaval, all my pain, bouncin’ off his cold textbook point of view. I heard he’s gettin’ all Cs anyhow.

Pacin’ them floors again. Like the proper fool. Waitin’ for the phone to ring. Handsome fella like me. Imagine.

By daybreak I was after groovin’ a dirty path into the carpet. It was 8:00 in the morning before the phone started ringin’. I let the fucker ring. Ring, ring.

Then, watchin’ my arms reach out to the phone like I was lookin’ through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Answering a telephone in a little snot-box basement apartment, uptown St. John’s, mushroom season, on probation, and I would have been content to have died in the ditch playin’ G.I. Joe and never known any other life.

Sayin’ hello.

To Natasha.

I tried to be calm.

I really did, but like I said, she wouldn’t let me.

—Where in the fuck were you all night? What? No, wait! Wait?…’Tash, I’m sorry. That’s not the way I wanted to start off. I just wanted to tell you that it’s okay. I’m okay. We’re fine, me and you. I knows you have to be there now and I realizes I’m only makin’ it harder on you. I s’pose I was panicked and feelin’ a bit insecure when you wouldn’t talk to me the right way. I feels a little out of control without you. But I won’t put you through that shit no more. It’d be nice though, if you wouldn’t tell me you’re gonna call when you have no intentions of doin’ so. You did, ’Tash. Yes you did. Jesus, I wish I had a tape recorder on you. I specifically recall you tellin’ me that you’d call me as soon as you got in last night. You promised me that you would, knowin’ full well I was sittin’ here, drove cracked. And you wonders why I’m thinkin’ something is up? I don’t know where you are or who you’re tangled up with. You could be gettin’ raped for all I knows. Yes, raped. Natasha, I can’t take much more of this. One day you says you’re comin’ home next week and then you’re goin’ on about how much you loves it up there, off to some fuckin’ audition. Then it’s Christ, Keith, I misses you so much. I’m bookin’ my ticket tomorrow. Of course we’re O.K. I don’t wanna be here any more than you wants me here. And then you’re feelin’ all pressured and Mom says that Daddy’s comin’ out to town to straighten me out ’cause I’m tryin’ to control his little fuckin’ angel—

That bastard. He’ll get some fright if he knocks on my door. I’ll smack him with a hammer. Fuckin’ ignorant, hard-done-by, thick-skulled piss-head. The only man in the Cove who knows what a real day’s work tastes like. Sure the man stomped out of his bedroom one night in his fuckin’ drawers and grabbed me by the throat ’cause he thought he heard me sayin’ something nasty to her, his precious little girl. But I never said a word to her and we both knew it. Squeezin’ my neck, spittin’ and snortin’ down my throat ’til I started blackin’ out.

—You don’t know me, Kavanagh. No one talks to my little girl like that and lives to tell it. You don’t fuckin’ know me.

But then, that was exactly why it was happenin’. He knew that I knew something I shouldn’t have known. Anyhow, Natasha showed up in the nick of time and started screamin’, hangin’ off his arm and smackin’ at him. He drooled and spluttered, gave her a smack, his precious little girl, turned around and went back to bed. Left me slumped in the corner gaspin’ for breath. Sees me the next morning and asks me for a fuckin’ smoke. Like nothing happened. Psycho. Bring him on, girl. Like I said, I’ll crack that thick skull open with a hammer.

—If you’re seeing someone up there, ’Tash…Look, I needs to know the truth. I can’t take this. Let me have the goddamn truth! I’d never treat you like this…No, I never!…I most certainly did not…Okay, but that was different…We’ve been through all this. Why do we need to go draggin’ all that shit up? What the fuck does she have to do with anything? I already told you what happened…NOTHING FUCKIN’ HAPPENED! Stop changin’ the cocksuckin’ subject…This is nothing like the last time you were gone. Nothing at all. The only reason you came home that time was ’cause of the you-know-what…I’ll say what I like. I went through it too. On the phone every night with you…Why, you plannin’ to have another one? ’Cause you can be fucked before I takes responsibility this time. Matter of fact, I’m not even so sure about the last one…Hello? ’Tash?…I’m sorry…That was mean…Look, I’m just so frustrated, girl. It’s like I’m losin’ it…No…No, I’m not drinkin’. Hardly at all…Are you screwin’ someone else? Promise me…I don’t believe you…No, I’m not callin’ you a whore, you’re the one said that, not me. I wasn’t thinkin’ anything like that. But when I looks back now you know, I seems to recall you promisin’ Bobby-fuckin’-O’Neill that you weren’t screwin’ around on him while I was right there in the bed alongside you. How do I even know where you’re callin’ me from? I can’t star-sixty-fuckin’-nine you from Halifax! Well let me talk to Gertie then. Gone out, is she? Well, how convenient. Sing out the top of your lungs then…Scream out how much you loves me. Why the fuck not? Afraid you’ll wake him up? Did you put him through a hard night of it? Put him on the goddamn phone. Let me talk to him…I knows full well there’s someone there with you, ’Tash, and I swear to Christ, I’ll jump on a fuckin’ plane this very night and walk them fuckin’ streets ’til I…Hello? HELLO?

Now, what’s the goddamn point of all this anger management and this A.A. shit they wants me to be goin’ to? Clarity of mind. Did you hear that muddled up nonsense? She’s retarded. Was I crossin’ some boundary or something? Are you not allowed to be inquisitive from time to time?

Decided to take a little trip to the shop. Told myself I wouldn’t, but let the goddamn gulls go sober, see how their day woulda gone. I wasn’t facin’ this without something in my system. All the time in the world to punish myself. See, you gotta let yourself be weak every now and then to be able to measure how strong you’ll have to be when the time comes. I decided I was nothing short of a normal human being. I’d drink her away.

Made my way down to the gas station in a feverish panic for booze. Now, I’m the type who wants things right away. I don’t like scenes either. But when I got to the counter this scrawny little cross-eyed…individual…had the fuckin’ temerity to go askin’ me for identification. Me. I’m twenty years old for fuck sakes. But you know what it is? Some kind of power trip for him, that’s what. Take them army fuckers who gets barked at all day by superior officers. They comes home and barks at the whole house.

—Outta my way, dog.

Reducin’ their youngsters to tears if they can’t bounce a toonie on their beds.

—I thought I told you to put the garbage out last night? Drop and give me twenty!

Oh yeah, if they’re feelin’ inferior at work then they’re gonna bloody well be the boss behind closed doors. That’s exactly what was goin’ on with this little clerk. Pissed off ’cause he got bawled out for not stockin’ the shelves the right way or he rang something in twice or whatever the fuck. And he just has to exercise some kind of power over someone, some customer, in this case me, to make himself feel better. To empower himself. And didn’t he pick the wrong fella to fuck with. Identification please.

—I-DENTI-FI-FUCKIN’-CATION? They won’t be able to identify you if I haves to go all the way home and come back again.

No. I never really got on like that. But I would have. If I hadn’t got what I wanted. ’Cause, by the fuck, when I wants something I wants it right away. I’m like that. Don’t like havin’ to cause a scene either.

So, take me and the cat and a dozen of our good friends from Black Horse, rollin’ smokes and havin’ a grand time. Without her.

—Well Puss…Cheers! Here’s to catnip and the little brown bottle. No? Puss don’t want a toast? Well shag the puss cat then. Shag the puss cat. I’ll smoke it myself, will I? Yes, I will. Yes, I will. What’s that fuckin’ look for? Go in the goddamn room out of it then. You’re goin’ back on the dried stuff. No Name brand too! No more fuckin’ Sheba or Whiskas for you. Ingrate. Yes, you are.

Took a couple of hours to finish the case. I slept at the table. When I woke up I headed straight for the shop again. Just couldn’t face myself alone. Like that Springsteen song. Took my ID with me this time so’s I could rub it in that little prick’s face, but he’d already gotten off work. Story of my life. I dug into the second case before I was even back to the apartment. What a fuckin’ dive. Bottles, butts, ashes, tobacco, all mashed into the floor. Something breathin’ in the sink I’m pretty sure. Worse than all that though was the cat had started in sprayin’ again. What a reek. No idea how I was gettin’ through the night alive, I planked myself down at the table and started all over again.

Four or five beer later it came to me.

Brilliant, said I to me.

Fuckin’ brilliant.

—Yes, I’m callin’ to inquire about your rates. St. John’s to Halifax. Well, soon as possible. Right now if one’s available. 8:50 tonight? And what’s the student rate? Jesus. Well, I’d like to book a flight if that’s alright with you. I don’t have a credit card. So I have to come in to book it? Well, what time do you close? And what time is it now? Okay, well I can be there in about ten minutes. Can’t you wait that long? It’s an emergency. Well, I’ll be there in five then? Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks. Wouldn’t know now but they were doin’ me a favour. Gyppin’ me out of a couple of hundred bucks that I hardly had. What are they like at all?

So, you coulda seen little ol’ me in a mad scramble to the travel agency and havin’ a hard time with my mouth ’cause of this big line-up when I got there. After gettin’ personal on the phone and pleadin’ with the bastards when they made out like they were just about to lock the doors. Lord Jesus. Lucky thing I was in one of my more pleasant moods.

Walkin’ back home, ticket in hand, I realized I had no cash for the trip. I blew every cent on the ticket. No way in hell I was showin’ up in Halifax flat broke and lookin’ to Natasha to go feedin’ me. Fuck that. And I had nothing in my place worth selling.

Time to swallow my pride and spread myself too thin once again.

—Hi, Andy there please?…What’s goin’ on?…Right on. Listen, I got a bit of a favour to ask you…How much money have you got? Well, have you got like fifty bucks to lend me ’til next week?…I can’t tell you…It’s an emergency. I needs about fifty bucks to get me through the weekend. It’s not for booze…Well, yes, I had a few but I’m just sittin’ around with the cat. He’s drunker than I am…No…Listen, you’ll think I’m cracked…Alright, alright, but first I needs to know if you can lend me the money…Well?…I just bought a ticket to Halifax. Ha-li-fax. One hundred and ninety-nine and tax. That’s every cent I had…Well it’s already paid for now and it leaves tonight. No, she don’t know…I’m just gonna surprise her…Well, it’s too late now anyhow. I’d be goin’ up there one way or another, ticket or no…Yes, b’y, for the love of Christ—

Fuck sakes. Our Andy might be a fine candidate for the constabulary. I don’t mind a fella askin’ a few questions, especially if he’s got a bit of money on the line. But it’s his tone. Haughty and superior. And I don’t need to be interrogated by friends. That’s her job. I’ll tell you something about Andy now. I won’t play the self-righteous prick to say he’s any worse than what I am, but he’s no better. No, by Christ.

Years ago myself and Andy were down by the fish plant waitin’ for work to start up. I suppose it was about 5:00 in the morning ’cause there was a pretty big racket in the harbour coming from about a dozen punts and skiffs. Whether they were comin’ in or on the way out, I don’t remember. What odds is it? Plant work didn’t start ’til 8:00, but the earlier you were on the ball, the better spot you got on the offal chute. We weren’t workin’ in the plant, see. We were cuttin’ tongues outside the plant where the filleted fish made their way down this long aluminum chute. The chute emptied into a barge that was taken out the harbour every evening to be relieved of its mushy contents. Guts and garbage and dead gulls. If you got to sit at the top of the chute, you got first grab at the bigger fish that came down. Which meant bigger tongues. Which meant you could make your money faster because you were sellin’ by the pound. Smaller tongues are better for eatin’ though, less jelly.

Anyhow, the first to arrive had to mark the top spot with their buckets or knives or their maggoty old gloves and then they were free to shag around the wharf ’til work started.

So myself and Andy had the place to ourselves. Throwin’ rocks at gulls, jiggin’ sculpins, smokin’ butts out of the fishermen’s cars. We wandered over to the twine shed on the other side of the plant, lookin’ for bottles, when we spied an old flatbed truck parked all by its lonesome, half-hidden in the alders. Tryin’ to hide on us. It was likely sittin’ there all summer but we never really noticed it before. I s’pose we saw it in a new light. We had a laugh at our luck, but before the thought even entered my mind, Andy picked up this old rusty rim of a tire, raised it over his head and slung it at the windshield. It crunched into the lower corner but never done much damage. It certainly got the blood pumpin’ though.

The doors were locked so I bashed the driver’s side window out with a rock. I found a hammer under the seat in the cab. Next thing you know the glass to the speedometer was broke out and we were roarin’. Then it was the gas gauge. Bustin’ our guts laughin’. The rearview mirror. The dashboard. Andy, slashin’ up the seats with an old guttin’ knife. Slashin’. He hauled the steering wheel off. The gearshift got broke off. The passenger side window exploded. I was bangin’ on the windshield with the hammer. I s’pose we really lost it. Tears streamin’ down our faces. Then Andy made an odd sound. I had a glance at him. His face was wet with tears but he wasn’t laughin’ no more. His chin was quiverin’ and his eyes were fuckin’ savage. Pure rage runnin’ down his cheeks as he drove the knife into the seat cushions over and over. I guess I’d stopped laughin’ sometime back too. Years and years of smalltown bullshit rose up in us. Nuns and straps and bitter, petty teachers. Comin’ in second. Being the last pick for a game of ball up in the fuckin’ meadow. The dashboard became the face of some big prick from the North Side of the Cove, his knees pinnin’ your shoulders to the ground, rubbin’ horse shit on your face and smackin’ you ’til you bled or bawled, whichever came first. Fuck the repercussions. Fuck it all. When we started on the outside of the truck, there wasn’t really much left to do to the inside, aside from burnin’ it I s’pose. Which crossed my mind, but I wasn’t that bad.

Then we started in laughin’ again. Laughin’ at our own savagery. We stood there in the early morning, cool as you please, like we had every right to do what we were doin’, popped up the hood and started slammin’ the biggest kinds of rocks down into the engine. Cars passin’ up the road. Not a fuck did we give. We were hell-bent to shag that truck up. Headlights, windshield, tires slashed. That hammer went through the bonnet, the doors. We even tried to beat the front bumper off. You name it. And you’d be amazed what damage two young fellas like us could do. I spent an hour in jail for that little episode. Not Andy. Me.

See what I’m gettin’ at? He’s no better. Where did he get off to sit there in judgment of what I should or shouldn’t allow myself to do? Drillin’ me for information like I was some kind of criminal. How many sociology electives do you have to take before your sins are forgiven?

—Andy, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t just sit around on a Friday night, wonderin’. Torturin’ myself. I have to see her. I have to look her in the eye. So I can get on with it…Jesus, Andy, you saw the state I was in last night. That’s nothing. I can’t sleep, can’t eat. I can’t take it no more. I have to see her…Well, I’ll worry about gettin’ home when the time comes to turn around. Besides, I might just keep on goin’. This town makes me sick to my guts half the time. The rest of the time it just depresses me…Look, I needs the money for food, probably a cab from the airport, smokes and shit like that. You knows I’ll pay you back. I paid you back the last time…Well, yeah, but I still paid you…I’ll get you the money next week…Right…That’s perfect…Oh listen, if I leaves you my key will you come by and feed the cat? I’m afraid he’ll fret to death with no company…Dandy. Well, I’ll see you soon then…Listen man, I really appreciates this you know. Pay you back the week. Alright.

Click.

Know what pissed me off the most about that? It’s that I likes things to move in a more secretive nature. I was wantin’ to just vanish, so that if the plane went down no one in the world would know that I was on it. Leave without a trace. Vanish. I likes the notion of just bein’ out there somewhere, reinventin’ myself with every step, leavin’ it all behind like a good clean fire. Like the Poetry of Departures. How difficult it is to make such a simple fuckin’ move. But I s’pose you can’t expect to get away that easy. Because no one believes in adventure anymore. Anything out of the ordinary constitutes a scandal nowadays. I was just a bit of juicy gossip for Andy to run to his girlfriend with. I tell you, my generation is numbed and ruined by the modern convenience of mind-blowing entertainment. Who in their right mind is gonna open up a bookstore this day and age? Hollywood and prime time gibberish has got my crowd by the balls. No one has a sense of adventure anymore ’cause there’s no need for one. You can go and rent the grand adventure at any old time and experience it risk-free. Eat your fuckin’ Doritos and drink your goddamn Pepsi and fuck off to your bloated bed. Get up and go to school or go to work. No cuts or bruises. No scars. You get to look your best and feel alright about not doing anything out of line, out of the ordinary. Every now and then you’ll have made an arse of yourself at the bar and that’s your big crime.

—Oh my God, I didn’t say that to her, did I?

—Jesus, I went right out over the table and took the whole works down with me.

—Gave some sauce to that bartender.

And that’s the worst you’ll get.

See, I’m of the firm belief that each and every little misadventure should be marked with a scar of some sort. Battle scars to document your passage in the battle of life. Life is a fuckin’ battle. Theodore Roethke was not an idle man. Manic maybe, but never idle.

I packed a bag two hours ahead of time and then sat down to a couple of beer. Decided to drop by Andy’s for the cash at the last minute so’s I wouldn’t have time to talk about it all. He handed me the money and shook his head with this totally condescending, poor-old-Keith-when-are-you-gonna-smarten-up grin on his face. He was wearing a Habs sweater and I said a silent prayer that the day he was caught dead he’d be wearin’ that very same sweater. Not that I wants him dead or nothing.

Made it to the airport with no time to spare, just the way I wanted it. The cab cost me ten fuckin’ bucks.

Metal detectors. Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t know now but we were in Saudi Arabia somewhere. This is St. John’s we’re talkin’ about. Nothing ever happens in St. John’s. Mag-light, belt buckle, boot buckles, Zippo lighter. I likes metal shit. I’m also very particular about what I carries in my pockets. That’s how they’ll judge you in the end. They’ll find you scattered in bits, strewn across the highway with your head crushed and mangled, and of course they’ll check your pockets. And if you happens to be carrying the latest Stephen King novel, then that will be the level you achieved in reading. That’s the degree to which your literary tastes will have matured. And if you happens to have a big Nike swoosh plastered across your chest, they’ll assume you spent your final moments in a feeble attempt to promote the benefits of overseas slave labour to the fat bastard who knocked you down. Listen, you gotta keep yourself dressed for the weather this day and age.

Security took my fuckin’ Zippo. I filled it up right before I left the apartment and it was still drippin’ a bit. They said it posed a threat. For the love of Jesus. The very lighter I robbed from the evidence locker at the cop shop all them years ago. The very lighter I almost burned down half the Cove with. I’ve turned cafeterias and games rooms bottom up over that lighter. I wanted to have that lighter on my person when I packs it all in. But no such luck. It’s a threat to health and safety. Not like I was plannin’ to set fire to anything in mid-air for Christ sakes. Then again, that’d be a pretty evil way to hijack a plane. Wait now, was I allowed thinkin’ that?

Security shoves my lighter into a little plastic bag.

—So I’ll get it back in Halifax, will I? Definitely? Alright then

Christ Jesus. Downright discrimination. Why is it that every psychopathic, child molestin’, drugged-up Nazi dresses just like me?

The lighter incident pissed me off even further when who should I spy with my twisted eye, breezin’ on through the metal detectors, beepin’ and fluttering to beat the band, no one battin’ a Jesus eye at her but me? Juliet Carey. Who in their right mind would call a child Juliet? Suits this one to a tee nevertheless.

Well, you knows them types of youngsters that bawls in such a way that you wants to peel the skin off their snotty little faces? Now I ain’t sayin’ that I’d do that. Certainly I’d nail anyone who tried it. I’m just sayin’ that there are some children who screeches and bawls in such a way that you’d just love to grab ’em by the cheeks and rip the flesh right off the bone. It’s not necessarily the sound of the cryin’, children needs to throw a good fit every now and then, but it’s the way their faces twists and contorts to such a state of hideous and hateful vulgarity. Maybe I was one of those children? Although I highly doubt it.

Anyhow, the lovely Juliet got a face like that. Always. But you have to get pretty close to spot it. And let’s just say I got pretty goddamn close. Long before Natasha. I spent a small fortune one time on some stupid silver chain with a fuckin’ dancin’ unicorn on it. Dickhead. Princess Juliet. That’s what she’s got, precious princess syndrome. But how can you blame her with a name like that? Our little princess. Little Miss fuckin’ Priss, who thinks that the very reason the earth revolves around the sun is ’cause it shines directly out of her arse.

I hadn’t seen her in a long time and would have been content to have gone another while, let alone share an airplane with her. But I decided to do more than that. I was plankin’ right down next to her, even if I had to beg someone to move. I was a walkin’ tornado and she was about to develop a fear of flyin’. Did I mention she gouged the heart right out of my chest? Oh yeah, left me curled up in a ball for weeks.

—Juliet! My God, this is a queer one. I was lookin’ over and I said is that who I thinks it is? Looks like we’re sharin’ a seat.

I sat myself down before she even registered who I was. She looked tired.

—Christ, you looks like hell, girl…I mean, you looks tired is all.

Big dark bags under her eyes and she was chewin’ on her thumbnail. For a second my heart almost went out to her, but I put a stop to that right away. The last thing she wanted was to share a seat with someone from her old life, from that world. Especially me. She was bankin’ on a bit of sleep. I could tell. Poor girl.

—Fancy this then. Where you off to?…Ot-ta-wa? What’s takin’ Miss Juliet to Ottawa? Must be love is it? Oh right, right. I remembers hearin’ tell of you gettin’ yourself engaged or pregnant or something…Ah Christ, girl, I’m only coddin’ ya.

She rolled her eyes at me, sighed, turned to the window. Her hair had gotten long and fell across her face when she turned. I caught a hint of her perfume, the same stuff she always used to wear. An intense loneliness washed over me. The smell of her. I wanted to reach out, lay my hand on her face and talk. Find out about the roads she’d gone down. Maybe she could help me straighten out the one I was on before I went through with whatever it was I was doin’. I wanted an old friend.

The engines roared and worked their way into a mad frenzy. We were rippin’ down the runway and all I could think about were the lives that I’d led and the people I’d hurt along the way, how we realistically got no control over where our lives go. A lump swoll up in my throat. I watched my hand make its way toward her hair. Just before it reached her, she turned to face me. Caught me. She shook her head.

—Same old Keith.

—What’s that s’posed to mean? I was only tryin’…

—Well don’t bother ’cause it won’t get you nowhere. Now be sensible.

That look came over her face and I wanted to haul the cheeks off her. What a fuckin’ shit-sham world we got ourselves into. Try and reach out to someone and all they does is shoot you down. I sat back in my seat and thought about takin’ a vow of silence. I was still determined to come out on top though, and I cursed myself for that moment of weakness. Weakness.

She turned back to the window and soon enough we started to feel that rush, that last chance to change your mind, as the plane was sucked up into the night. Very strange and unnatural that is. Her knuckles were bone white from the grip she had on the armrest. So Miss Priss is a very nervous flyer.

—Ho-ly Fuck! This frightens the shit out of me, girl. Completely at the mercy of nature now. Or I guess this defies nature altogether, don’t it? If we crashed in the woods somewhere would you eat me? If I was dead, I mean?

She bust out with a nervous giggle. It was gonna backfire on me. She seemed all of a sudden delighted with me, or the distraction I was offerin’. Something to focus her anxiety on. I had a couple of Valium in my jacket but I wasn’t givin’ her one. She wasn’t gettin’ off that easy. Besides, I realized I was at that point where I could hardly string a sentence together, let alone know what buttons to push.

Then, luck of all luck, the stewardess was stunned enough to park that little bar-on-wheels right next to me and walk away. I stuffed my pockets with little bottles of white Bacardi. I don’t normally drink Bacardi, but they had to do. I managed to capture seven of ’em before the stewardess got back, at which point I ordered a beer. Seemed like forever since I had a beer.

—Yes, I’ll have a Black Horse, seein’ how we may never see this lovely land again. And Miss Juliet will have a…what will Miss Juliet have?…Jesus, you have to have something, girl. How often do I get to buy you a drink? Vodka and 7Up?…Yes, one Black Horse and one double vodka and 7Up…Yes, girl, have a double, sure two in the air is only equal to one on the ground. It’s the truth. Ask the Captain. Captain!?…Ah sure I’m only shaggin’ around, girl. Now then, Cheers! Catnip and the little tin can. Catnip. Have you never smoked catnip? You don’t know what you’re missin’. I’m smokin’ it all evening.

She started in askin’ me this and that about my life. As if it was any concern to her, as if she had any fuckin’ right to share a seat with me. But I’ve never been one to hold grudges and I s’pose it’s always good to resolve matters through a little civilized conversation. Sure you can smooth out years and years of shit-stained wrinkles with a little sweet talk. But sweet talk was just a little out of my reach right then and there. So I grabbed hold of the moment, feelin’ my second wind, and filled her with shit. My life is fuckin’ grand.

—I’m on my way to Halifax to meet some people about my book.

—Book? Wow. Still writin’ your little poems?

My little poems. Fuck.

—I am. Puttin’ a book together these days. Gonna call it Old Scars and Open Wounds. Fancy that. Like to be able to say that I’m off to the vastly cultured city of Ot-ta-wa for love, but life just ain’t that special for the rest of us.

She just sat there starin’ at me like I had ten heads and then, would you believe, she had the fuckin’ gall to go haul out some novel and start lookin’ for her page? Nothing drives me more. Here I was, makin’ a second attempt to be friendly, tryin’ to reconcile and make good and all she could think to do was further insult me. Some people got no sense of timin’.

—I actually had a close call with death not too long ago. Takin’ a little weekend excursion now. Yup. Got run down by an off-season snowplough on Queen’s Road. Broke my back, my skull. Shattered every bone in my face. I got up and walked it off but they still gave me a disgusting chunk of cash. How’s that sound?

She wasn’t listening to a word I said. I was the same old loud-mouthed cunt in her eyes. Still, I knew the truth. I’d come through hell and back and the world had changed me. It had. It has. There’s so much I could’ve said to her, but all that came out was that same kind of drunken bullshit. I got savage with myself for tryin’ to justify my life to the likes of her. Cold bitch. Then, feelin’ deflated and disgusted with myself, I realized it was all just misdirected anger and rage that I was unsuccessfully takin’ out on someone who’s got absolutely nothing to do with me no more. I’m a constant discredit to myself. Makes me almost want to lay my cards on the table and tell it like it really happened. I wished I was sober, but I couldn’t stop drinkin’. We spent the rest of the flight in a repressed, sullen silence, me breakin’ it only when the mini-bar passed by, and she by makin’ light of my drinkin’.

—Jesus, Keith b’y, you never changed a bit.

Fuck you, Miss Priss.

Relief washed over me when I felt my balls come up in my throat, my eardrums on the verge of collapse. The plane creepin’ down over Halifax. I wished I’d stayed home in bed. I wished I was just a little more loaded.

—Well, Miss Juliet, here’s to love in our country’s capital, unwanted pregnancies and tainted engagements. Cheers.

She didn’t look too pleased with that.

It pleased me just fine.

We quickly separated once we were in the airport, only to come face to face again in the hallway outside the public toilets. It was an awkward moment to say the least. Somehow the contrast between the tight, closed quarters of the plane and the spaciousness of the bright, fluorescent hallway made for a sense of nakedness and vulnerability. Like she was in an even better position to judge me, as this was the way I actually looked in public these days. For the love and honour of Christ. I didn’t know whether I should apologize or piss on her boots. So I told her to fuck off. She slipped past me without so much as a goodbye.

I turned and made a straight cut for the security booth where I waited in a fat line-up for about twenty minutes only to discover that my lighter never made the flight.

—Yes, I had a silver Zippo lighter cuntfiscated before I got on the plane. I was wondering where I could pick it up?…I came in that time from St. John’s…What do you mean on the way back? I bought a one-way ticket…Ohhh, so I lost it is what you’re sayin’? Great. Grand. I’ve only had it all my Jesus life. It belonged to my grandfather, you know. It’s a fuckin’ family heirloom.

I stormed off in a rage. What a bunch of rogues. I turned to go back to the booth but I s’pose that would’ve constituted a scene. I had to find some way to get the bastards back though, no doubt about that. I’d just spent two hundred bucks on a flight and then they had the cocksuckin’ gall to rob my lighter besides.

After buyin’ a ticket for the shuttle bus into town, I strolled on in to the liquor store. With absolutely good intentions. Absolutely. Who was I hurtin’? Really? Not like the liquor board was gonna go under ’cause of little ol’ Keith.

Robbin’ a flask is pretty much the same thing as robbin’ a book. Ever rob a book? Easiest thing in the fuckin’ world. Just make sure you wears a good jacket. Hold the book in your right or left hand, depending on the position of the salesperson, and slip it up under your armpit inside your jacket while you pretends to coop down to a lower shelf. In the same movement, that’s the trick, pick up another book, preferably of the same size and colour, in your free hand and then stand upright again. There’s only a split second where anyone can possibly detect what you’re after doin’. And they’d have to be pretty keen or pretty goddamn bored with their job to catch you at it. Then you just browse for a bit, natural as possible, eventually deciding against a purchase, holdin’ the other book firmly under your armpit. You’d be surprised at the size of the books you can get away with too. Oh, it’s also a good idea then to ask the clerk to locate a book that you knows the store don’t carry, or one you knows don’t even exist.

—You got anything by that Kavanagh fella? Ahh…Keith Kavanagh?

This helps them feel as though they’ve let you down. All’s left to do is to walk off lookin’ disappointed. Easiest thing in the world. And a respectable crime at that. Oscar Wilde’d be right proud of me if he could see my bookshelf. Sure he’s long dead. It’s just some money-grubbin’, trice-removed, distant bastard relatives makin’ a fortune off of his words, which they’ve likely never even read. And if they have, they’re probably the same type of cunts who had him locked up all them years ago. Myself? Well, I’m gettin’ a free education out of it. What with the cost to educate yourself these days, I sees no harm in pickin’ up a few good books from time to time. Especially the classics.

One of these days, when I’m old and grey, I’m gonna walk into Weston’s Books in St. John’s with a big bag of books, dump ’em all out on the floor and say:

—I stole every one of these books in this very store while…that guy right there was workin’.

Then again maybe I won’t. I can’t stand scenes.

So I pocketed a flask at the airport liquor store in much the same fashion. I asked for Screech at the desk, knowin’ full well that it’s rare outside Newfoundland. I laid on my thickest accent, playin’ up to the old stereotype so’s to alleviate any suspicion. I sounded too stunned to steal anything. Buddy behind the counter even talked really loudly to me, like I had some kind of handicap.

Walkin’ out through the doors I got the wickedest rush of adrenaline when I came face to face with some pig and his drug-hungry German Shepherd. Lookin’ at me. Sizin’ me up like I’m some kind of low-life, his dog sniffin’ at my nuts. I loves cops. Did I mention that?

Then it struck me that I was Newfoundland’s Acting Ambassador to Nova Scotia for fuck sakes. I was in a position to grossly misrepresent my fellow countrymen, ’cause I doubted very much I’d make anyone proud. That last thought depressed me to no end and I even contemplated returning to the liquor store and payin’ for the flask. But it was Jim-fuckin’-Beam. Hardly worth the hassle. Besides, what would it all come down to? What was the worst that could happen? No one ever remembers the time it didn’t happen. So one way or another you just gotta live to twist the tale.

—When I was your age I got caught stealin’ a flask in Halifax airport. Took four big old security guards to wrestle me to the floor. And by the time they finally did, I had the fuckin’ thing gone. So they couldn’t arrest me ’cause they had no goddamn evidence. Now don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Be good. Hear me?

I dipped into the flask outside at the bus terminal. It burned and bubbled in my guts and I knew there was no goin’ back for me then. But I made up my mind on the shuttle bus into the city that I’d try hard to make the best of this little trip for all those involved. Other than that, I tried not to think about what I was doin’. My physical situation had nothing to do with my quest. Quest. That sounded good. A little adventure. Better than lookin’ back some day and not rememberin’ that time I decided not to jump on the next available flight to Halifax. That’s like sayin’:

—Remember that time we decided not to slash Art Cumben’s tires after he sold us savory for weed?

That Andy b’y, he’s some nuisance.

I considered myself privileged to share a seat with some guy who was obviously well practised in the ancient art of fellatio. But I didn’t care. I was determined to be nice. I broke out the Jim-fuckin’-Beam and we started chattin’ her right up. We were soon havin’ a gay old time of it. Yes, and he simply adored my leather pants and even wondered out loud where he could get a pair. I informed him that if he played his cards right he could probably have mine. I think I was half-serious too. I often wondered you know.

Jesus, Natasha kicked up some fuss when I bought them pants. She went on and on about bills and rent and responsibility to one another, now that we were shacked up. The way I sees it, I was only savin’ money in the long run. She goes out and buys half a dozen pairs of fancy jeans every year, and the knees and the arse wears out of them in no time. Leather pants are gonna last a lifetime. They’re designed for landin’ in the ditch for fuck sakes. I mean, I s’pose I coulda spent that money on the rent, but where’s the month of June to now? Gone. Never comin’ back. And where are the leather pants? Exactly.

Soon enough King Fellatio started gettin’ a bit too comfortable for my likin’. Every time he laughed he laid his hand on my leg in some kind of personal manner. As if he knew me or had a goddamn right to breathe the same air as me. I got a bit hostile, usin’ the F word and the Q word without restraint. This further disgusted me, as I loathed the notion of this shameless knob-gobbler havin’ roused any form of emotion in me. Imagine a fine fella like myself made ill at ease in presence of such a tiddlywink as he. Christ.

I got up, to his relief, as well as his blatant disappointment, and moved towards the back of the bus where I planked myself down next to a fine young female specimen of the shy and innocent persuasion. She smelled so fresh. I wanted so bad to be a decent fella, make a good impression. Even if it meant sittin’ there in silence for the whole trip. I could only give it a half-assed shot though, no chance of playin’ my cards right. I really wasn’t playin’ with a full deck anyhow.

She struck me as one of the good girls, probably on a weekend getaway where she could be free and cut loose and all that shit without havin’ to answer to anyone any-which-way associated with her “real life.” Because nobody understands the real me. I have dreams. I have desires. Christ. I almost got up. But then I just said shag it. Shag it.

—Wanna drink? Whiskey, says I. Mix? Don’t be so foolish, girl. The mix is what kills you. I wouldn’t drink it no other way. Sacrilege. Go on, look. No harm in it.

My speech was all slurred and the more I tried to straighten it out the worse it got.

She looked and smelled absolutely delicious and that sickened me ’cause I knew I was dirty lookin’. I hadn’t showered and I likely stank of the booze. On top of that, she probably thought she was too good for me. Well, she couldn’t hold a goddamn candle to Natasha.

Her name was Melissa. She held out her hand. I informed her, my name bein’ Jacob, that I would refer to her as Mary-Anne, if only because I went out with a girl named Melissa one time and the most profound realization she ever had was that her black lipstick made her teeth look really white. That worked. She cracked a bit of a smile, told me a little about herself. She obviously didn’t want me to lump her in the same category with this other Melissa, whom I must admit I’d concocted there on the spot.

Seems Miss Mary-Anne’d just been to St. John’s to visit her boyfriend who’s studyin’ bio-crucial-fuckin’-snortistry, or some such shit at the university.

—He’s just the sweetest guy.

Well, my God. Eat your heart out, Jacob b’y. Bor-ing. They’re all the same, keepin’ an eye out for the Big Bad Wolf.

—Me? I’m on my way into town to meet my half-brother Keith. He’s one of them fellas, you know, bit of a genius, walkin’ the fine line. Yup. Gonna spend the weekend on a big fuckin’ tear. God help us all…Me? I’m a writer. Workin’ on a book of prose poetry. Gonna call it Contradictions and Confessions in the Ninth Person. Fancy that, Miss Mary-Anne…What’s it about? It’s fuckin’ poetry, it’s not about anything. What kinda foolish question is that? Wouldn’t know but you’re gonna rush out and buy it or something. Here, have another swig of this.

She took a little sip and scrunched up her face like a South Side girl. I leaned in closer to let her know that I’d taken her into my confidence and that her fancy boyfriend in St. John’s meant fuck all to me.

—Actually, I just ripped off this flask. I did. Back at the liquor store in the airport…I just waltzed on in and took it…I don’t give two fucks who saw me.

She gave me a look then, dismissed me as a nutcase. I was losin’ her.

—No, girl, that’s not true…I had this in the fridge this past two months now. I hardly ever drinks. Only when travelling, that’s my rule. Sure what else is there to do on a plane? Read? I don’t read. Sure I was sittin’ next to this retarded deafmute fella. He wasn’t up for much conversation. Ha!

And that’s where I lost her.

—Oh, excuse me, “hearing impaired.” Christ, touchy aren’t we? Touchy. Fuckin’ sensitive.

She brazenly informed me that her little brother is hearing impaired, that she’d prefer to be left alone, that I talked too much. Well, fuck me, then. Not like I had a gun to her head tellin’ her to shut the fuck up and let me do all the talkin’. Christ, if I’d known I was such an asshole I wouldn’t have let her share the seat with me. I would’ve told her to get up. Imagine the excruciating ordeal of listening to the likes of me for a whole twenty minutes.

—Nice to meet you, MELISSA…

I wobbled and belched my way down to the back of the bus, hopin’ to find a seat to myself. All eyes were turned towards the highway or the floor or some magazine, deliberately avoiding contact with mine. Some people even pretended to be sleepin’. I walked up and down the aisles but couldn’t find a single seat. Finally, up front again, I planked myself back down in Fellatio Central. You can’t fuckin’ win. Try to be nice and all you gets in return is ignorance. I spent the rest of the ten-year shuttle ride eatin’ the mangled mush that used to be the flakes of ham sandwiches I packed back in St. John’s.

A gloomy silence settled over the bus, and I s’pose it was all my fault. I looked down towards Miss Mary-Anne. Some hefty jock prick was after takin’ my place, only he was likely gonna take her out somewhere tonight. He glared up at me, this look of false disgust on his face. Like I should count myself lucky that there were women and children around. Bring it on, cock-rocker, said I to me. A little scene wouldn’t have gone astray. A scattered one never hurts, I suppose. But no such luck.

I washed down the sandwiches with what was left of the flask. King Fellatio starin’ out the window at the passin’ night.

I soon found myself smack-dab in the middle of Halifax with my bag slung over my shoulder. It contained nothing but an old mouth organ that I never bothered to learn to play, my copy of The Favorite Game, which I am actually plannin’ to read, my notebook, a packet of cat food, a little sack of coffee, and seven little bottles of white rum. These are the items I wants the powers-that-be to sum up my existence with when I finally packs it all in. Other than that I had the clothes on my back, a few smokes.

Halifax City, where I knew not a soul, save for a girl I thought I knew. But that was all gonna change. This whole fuckin’ town might know my name one of these dark and dreary days. Lots of time left yet.

See, it’s the common cliché that life is short. But that’s the easy way out. It’s just a last resort for them kinds of jerks who refuses to face what’s goin’ on around ’em. You’ve heard it said:

—Life is short, b’y. That’s my philosophy anyhow. Might as well have a good time while we’re still around.

Bullshit. Nothing only jerk talk. That’s not a fuckin’ philosophy, that’s a boring old cliché. Oh, and clichés exist because they’re true? More bullshit. Clichés exist because…because people are too terrified to have a good hard look at their lives. Afraid they’ll see something they won’t like and won’t know how to handle. Clichés exist because so many assholes needs a shortcut through this mortifying process known as thinkin’. Sure if they were so goddamn smart, wouldn’t they make up their own clichés?

Look, the fact of the matter is that life is long. Life is a long, drawn-out and disgusting ordeal. If it was so short, I wouldn’t drink. I’d want to have a good grip. I’d want to remember things. Life is long. Just think back through the years, all the days and hours lived to this point. One summer. Last Christmas. Lives touched or tortured. All them blurry faces and names. People out there in the world that you’ll never set eyes on again. All them mad nights with their wayward banters about nothing and everything. All those redefining moments. Countless lost thoughts, ideas, plans and notions slippin’ into and out of our minds while we’re washin’ dishes, takin’ showers or just havin’ a good wank. Lost. Gone. Life is long.

Alright, I’d never set foot outside of Newfoundland before. But I figured the world couldn’t be that big if I was smokin’ the very cigarettes I’d rolled in St. John’s only hours before. I was not afraid. Sure I nearly made it to Toronto a few years back. Went to go chasin’ after Shannon Kelly. She was dandy. I packed up all my tapes and books, rolled a big load of smokes, swiped fifty bucks from my mother’s purse, and had Andy drop me off on the Trans-Canada. Fuck it all. It only took me about six hours thumbin’ to make it down to the Argentia ferry. But when I got there the ferry was gone. I could still see the foamy trail of it in the harbour. S’pose I shoulda called ahead. Some old geezer with a potato lodged in his throat told me there wouldn’t be another ferry for three more days. I mean, I woulda spent the night if there’d been another ferry the next morning. But three days? Fuck that. I had no choice but to go on home out of it. I was some pissed off. But I got tangled up with Natasha that very night in to the Devil’s Kitchen. She tried to give me a handjob underwater with her fuckin’ b’yfriend standin’ right there on the wharf. That’s fuckin’ fate for you.

I took a good look around and decided I wasn’t so far outside my element as I’d expected to be. It’s all the same old shit. City life. Nothing to be afraid of. Besides, I had a pretty good defence against the boomin’ metropolis of Halifax, and that was the common knowledge that they got no culture. Oh yeah, they got their little lobster fishery and they plays the bagpipes, but they got no real culture. Sure the Scottish robbed the bagpipes from the Irish anyhow. Everyone knows that. Meanin’ that Nova Scotia is in possession of goods indirectly stolen from the better part of Newfoundland. That’s the Southern Shore. The Irish fuckin’ Loop in case you’re wonderin’.

I searched my pockets for Natasha’s address. Agricola Street. Then I thought maybe I should phone first. I had to straighten up. This was exciting and I didn’t want to fuck it up. Last thing I wanted was to finally meet up with Natasha, after so long, and for her to think I’d just gotten loaded and jumped on a plane like a savage. I needed a phone. Or a club, better yet. Seemed like ages since I had a beer.

Despite my dwindling cash flow, I flagged down a green cab.

The cabby wore dark prescription sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes, which I hated ’cause I could feel him sizin’ me up in the rearview. Who in their right mind wears sunglasses drivin’ in the nighttime? His front teeth were missin’ and the rest of ’em might as well’ve been for how black and rotted they were. He had a long hooked nose and seemed to talk through it when he spoke. Told me his name was Gerard. I told him nothing, only to take me to the closest bar.

Now, I don’t mind a fella makin’ a little extra money for himself, but if it’s at my fuckin’ expense, I tends to take it personal. We were up to about ten bucks on the meter when I noticed the same drugstore I saw when I got in, only this time on the left. He was takin’ me around in circles. I figured there must be hundreds of pubs and clubs in Halifax and not one five minutes away from another. Sure that’s all they does is drink, everyone knows that. I commanded Gerard to stop the cab outside a place called the Lion’s Den, just like in that Wilburys’ song. I gave him a five-dollar bill, insisted that he keep the change. He threatened to call the cops. I told him to go right ahead, that I’d be in there havin’ a beer, that I’d sooner sleep in a jail cell than on the street anyhow.

Christ. People can be so mean-spirited. Here I was, some young fella who didn’t know his way around, lookin’ for a place to go have a beer and the first thing that runs through this cabby’s head was to rip me off. Then again, how could he have known that he was pickin’ up Newfoundland’s Acting Ambassador to Nova Scotia and that I would gladly and ruthlessly document such ill treatment. Conniving prick.

The Lion’s Den turned out to be one of those dives that might be a gay bar, from one angle, for an hour or so, then maybe a student bar from another angle. Sailors, lawyers, hookers, classic rock to classical to contemporary to country. Dark and smoky. Sporadic outbursts of violence, domestic feuds gone public, regulars demanding special treatment ’cause they knows the owner and they got a tab, angry bartenders spittin’ in the drinks, just passin’ through on their way to the big time. A wholesome little drinkin’ hole. My kinda place. Of course these were only split-second observations ’cause they wouldn’t serve me for some reason or other. I knocked over a chair on my way out. Fuck the Lion’s Den. Assholes and alcoholics. Bunch of savages.

Gerard was still there when I got back to the parking lot, sittin’ in his cab, yakkin’ into his cell-phone. He nodded in my direction and started up his car when he saw me. I s’pose he was the goddamn reason the Lion’s Den wouldn’t serve me. He must’ve phoned ’em. And he probably had the cops on the way.

I dashed up this rickety wooden wheelchair ramp that was attached to the building next to the club. There was about a ten-foot drop over the rail at the end of the ramp. I glanced back at Gerard. Another green cab pulled up next to his. Fuck. I took a breath, tossed my bag over the side and then tossed myself over. I landed in someone’s back yard and started runnin’. As I was passin’ up the narrow driveway alongside the house, I caught a glimpse, through the basement window, of some young couple doin’ the business on an old couch. I stopped to have a gander. Buddy was on top and he was givin’ it to ’er. He looked like a real eighties metal-head, his big hair flyin’ all over the place. He still had his sneaker-boots and jeans on, so I s’pose they were havin’ a fast one. Missus was just lyin’ there, not makin’ much of a fuss about it. Then I started to feel like a pervert, so I got up to go. Just as I took a few steps down the driveway, a green cab passed up the road. Couldn’t tell if it was Gerard or not, but it was a bit too coincidental for my likin’.

Less than half an hour in Halifax and I’d already become a wanted man. Jesus.

I hunkered down next to the house ’til I couldn’t hear the car’s engine no more. To pass a bit more time I went back for another look through the basement window. But, as fast as that, the curtains were closed. I heard the side door squeak open. I figured it was Metal-Head, so I took off back through his yard and jumped the fence into the next yard. Five or six more times, up and over fences, straight over lawn chairs and picnic tables, kids’ swing sets. Hooked my boot in a lawnmower and flattened on the concrete walkway. Gave my knee a good bang, but never even got the chance to stop and feel the pain ’cause a dog was barkin’ savage and lights were comin’ on in the yards behind me. I just kept runnin’, no clue where I was goin’, just goin’.

I calmed down and caught my breath when I figured it was safe. Started walkin’, always keepin’ an eye out for cops and cabs. One thing I learned from a pretty early age was how to spot a cop car by the headlights. And if you weren’t sure, then you’d just assume it was a cop and hit the ditch anyhow.

I was on a mad rampage. Reelin’ in and out the alleys, across people’s lawns. Up North Street and right on Gottagen or Gattigan or whatever the fuck it’s called. Young Street, everyone’s got a fuckin’ Young Street. Charles Street, West Street, back on North again, left on Robie and up Quinpool Road. Fuck. Creative bunch, whoever named the roads. Still, for all that shaggin’ around, Agricola Street was nowhere to be found.

I realized right then and there how full of shit I really was, thinkin’ I’d find Natasha’s place through sheer force of will. In a strange city with fuck all money. No place to sleep and I doubt that I was welcome anywhere considering the state of me. A fine sight indeed.

Natasha wouldn’t turn me away though. No. She likely already knew I was in town, or at least on my way. Andy probably had her warned. He’s like that. Still, for all I knew, Agricola coulda been out in the goddamn boondocks. ’Tash coulda been in some stud’s bed with her wrists tied to his bedposts. Havin’ a fine time for herself. Of course this possibility enraged me and I started in screamin’, no longer givin’ a shit about cops or cabs, or anyone for that matter.

—Natasha! Natasha! Naataashaa! Listen up, Halifax. Ye’re all abunch a thievin’, horse-fuckin’ Scottish rejects! Go on and have at yourselves!

Another few minutes of ravin’ and wandering before I found myself slumped on a bench in some dodgy park.

Halifax City on a Friday night.

Loaded drunk.

Down to my last match.

I downed a little bottle of rum and got this…this overwhelmingly tragic and hopeless feeling as I watched the bottle fall from my hand to the battered old asphalt at my feet. A fine sight, there beneath the dusty old orange streetlight with my bag and my bad attitude. I stretched out across the bench and closed my eyes for a second.

Was it so much to ask for a little honesty? That’s all I wanted. She coulda given it to me over the phone. There was no need for all this. I coulda been home in bed or downtown drinkin’, playin’ pool at the Hatchet. Friday night in St. John’s, home-turf and all that.

I started thinkin’.

I made a few plans.

When I gets through with all this nonsense, I’ll be makin’ a few changes. I’ll find me a place where people’ll feel like wipin’ their boots when they drops by, rather than leavin’ ’em on for safety’s sake. I’ll get me a straightlaced, uncomplicated, almost fulfilling sex life by pickin’ out the right movies and changin’ the sheets on a regular basis. I’m gettin’ a new toothbrush, maybe one of them fancy electric ones.

—That wet towel don’t belong on the bedroom floor!

—Isn’t it my turn to do the dishes?

I’ll be walkin’ a four-legged dog and curlin’ up to the Wednesday night sitcom marathon. I’ll be all the time quittin’ smokin’. And if you happens to open my fridge, you’ll find light mayonnaise, whole grain bread, some kinda smoked fuckin’ cheese, and some of that French fizzy water in the green bottle. Sure you’ll have to compliment the curtains that match the carpet that go so well with the little place mats.

I’ll be soberin’ myself up too.

—Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Sorry, all I got is decaf.

Listen here, I’ll take my chances with the devil I don’t know. Can’t be much worse than the one that I knows.

Someone was nudgin’ me, shakin’ me in a most aggressive manner. From the back of my soggy brain I could hear:

—Hey! Buddy? Get up! C’mon, you can’t sleep here.

I musta dozed off. On such a pissy park bench. Halifax City. Friday night. My neck all stiff and feelin’ like it might break. My head pounding. Limbo. Floatin’ somewhere between rip roarin’ drunk and mildly ossified. I reached for a match to light a cigarette and it all came rushin’ back to me. Fuck. I squinted up into the face of one ragged-lookin’ old night crawler. Faded denim skirt, black tights, red cowboy boots with white trim, a black low-cut blouse and a white leather jacket with fringes. I thought there must be a Sally Ann around there somewhere. And she was standin’ right in front of my face, pushin’ fifty if she was two days old. She had a bottle of beer in her hand. It looked some good.

—Fuck d’ya mean I can’t sleep here? Is it your goddamn bench or something?

Ms. Sally Ann proudly informed me that this was her place of work, verifying my suspicions. As if her queer rig-out hadn’t already made perfect sense to me. I gave her a good sizin’ up, asked her for a light and inquired about her prices.

—Twenty for a blowjob, fifty for a fuck. I don’t waste time on handjobs if you’re wondering.

I drained a little bottle of Bacardi and slipped her a twenty, wishin’ it was a fifty. That left me with about seven bucks in change after what I forked over for the shuttle bus from the airport. Thievin’ bastards. And that schemin’ fuckin’ cab driver then. Lucky thing I’m such an easygoin’ fella.

Ms. Sally Ann took me over behind some shack at the other side of the park. There was a swing set and a busted merry-go-round just to our left. Her knee cracked when she eased herself to the ground in front of me. She laid her beer down and slid her cold hands up under my coat. She was searchin’ me. I almost took offence but then I figured that even though her job must be jam-packed with all manner of glamour and perks, it wasn’t without its share of risks. I raised my arms skyward.

—I’m clean, girl. Search away. They cuntfiscated my lighter at the airport, so I can’t even set your hair on fire. No, seriously. I’m only coddin’ ya. I wouldn’t harm a fly.

She started in on me. I couldn’t help wonderin’ where that mouth was after bein’. Fuck it. I let my head fall back against the shack and waited for something to happen. Waited. But nothing happened. Something was wrong. Like my lad was gone numb or simply refused to wake up. Sally Ann kept at it though ’cause this was her job and I was a payin’ customer and she knew I wanted my money’s worth. I did too, seein’ how I was basically broke. But something was definitely wrong. She was goin’ up and down, up and down, squeezin’ and spluttering, but I wasn’t responding at all.

After about ten more minutes I got to feelin’ all guilty and told her to stop. Don’t know why I felt guilty about it though, seein’ how she just took my last twenty bucks for not even twenty minutes’ work. That’s over sixty bucks an hour, for Christ’s sake. Fellas don’t make that on the goddamn draggers.

—Ah shag it, girl. Shag it. It’s no use. Been drinkin’ since last Wednesday. Don’t know, girl, never had it happen before…Well, once or twice I suppose. But only when I’m drinkin’.

I pulled my pants back up. She held her hand out to me like she was lookin’ for more money. I was about to tell her to fuck off before I realized she just needed a hand gettin’ back to her feet. She moaned on the way up, asked me where I was from. When she heard I was from Newfoundland she went over the moon and insisted that I come back to her place to meet the man of the house. Her invite struck me as a bit wacko, given that she just had my cock in her mouth. But, she assured me that all was well, that the man of the house was totally supportive of what she did for a livin’. She only had to give him sixty percent of her income and that covered her rent and a few small habits. In fact, he was the only man allowed up in her without a condom. So, there was his sense of security present and accounted for before I was even in through the door. But what about mine?

She handed me the last of her beer. I drained it and smashed the empty bottle off the merry-go-round. She laughed and slipped her arm around my waist. As we wobbled back through the park, I found it hard to tell for sure whether she was holdin’ me up or just usin’ me to support herself. A car backfired somewhere in the city, the engine spluttering, asking to die.

We walked for a bit. She swore on her dead mother that everything was fine and dandy with her man. Not to worry. I was still feelin’ pretty stupid and apologetic for my…lack of performance. I tried to explain myself, but she wasn’t really interested. I s’pose she’d heard it all before. Then, for no apparent reason, she stopped, put her two hands on my cheeks and looked straight at me.

—You’re young and you think you know it all but you don’t know anything yet. Everything is already laid out for you, written in the stars. You can only go with it, wherever the road takes you. But you have to slow down and enjoy the ride because life is short and we only pass through once.

—Bullshit. Life is—

—Life is short as shit, little man! Believe me I know. You take your eyes off the road for a split second and then glance in the rearview to see forty-five years behind you. Gone. I know.

Sally Ann lit a smoke and shook her head. She stared off into the dark, all forlorn and teary-eyed. For the first time in a long time I thought about Glenda Devereux. I s’pose Glenda’d be about thirty-three or thirty-four by now. Haven’t laid eyes on her since she left the Cove. Standin’ on her doorstep with her life packed into boxes. Someone mentioned a while back that she was runnin’ a club out in Torbay. I s’pose you never knows from one minute to the next where you’ll end up in the world. Life is fuckin’ long.

Myself and Sally Ann stumbled up the walkway and in through the front door of this lopsided old bungalow that was badly in need of a facelift and a paint job. That’s where I met Renny.

Renny in his cheesy sneaker-boots with the chunky tongues. Thick gold chains on his wrists and neck. Hair cut short on top, long and stringy on the back. Green, blurry, tattooed prison knuckles. One of them Pat Garret beards, and the beady, sunken, dead eyes of a shark. The world owes Renny a favour. Probably never out of jail long enough to settle in somewhere. Back and forth between halfway houses, boarding rooms, crack houses and prison. He sparks up a smoke in the non-smokin’ section and gets six months for parole violation. He’ll never leave the system behind and it’s only a matter of time before he murders someone. Lifer.

The pissy, spiced stench of free-base cocaine hit me square in the face. It wasn’t lost on me that I’d just gotten a blowjob off this guy’s missus. I parked myself down at the head of the table but he hardly noticed me. Sally Ann told him where I was from, that I was lookin’ for Agricola Street, lookin’ for my girlfriend. He mumbled something about Newfoundland but he couldn’t muster up enough coherent thought to make a full sentence. Our Renny struck me as a bit of a time bomb. Just tickin’ away. I whipped out a couple of the little Bacardi and, for a brief moment, his eyes came alive, only to retreat just as quickly, back down into the depths of criminal limbo. Tick tick tick. He fumbled over one of the little bottles, tried to read the label. Unable to decipher the strange markings on the bottle, he opened it up and poured it down his throat like water. He slammed the bottle down hard on the table in front of me, darin’ me to walk down the same roads he had. Psycho crack-head or not, though, he wasn’t drinkin’ me under the table, especially with my own liquor. I guzzled mine too, only, not wantin’ to come across as confrontational, I was a little easier settin’ the bottle back down. I tried hard not to acknowledge the burnin’ fire in my guts. Tough as nails is our Keith. Renny stared at me for a long time, but I don’t think he was really seein’ me. I looked around for Sally Ann. She was gone. Renny started to sway back and forth, starin’ at me with them sunken, lifeless eyes. Starin’. Hateful. Pasty, bone-white skin. Spittle ran down his beard and it suddenly became a great effort for him to keep his head up. Renny was leavin’ me. I stared straight back at him, feelin’ safer due to his wasted state, and I flattened another Bacardi. Before it even hit my stomach, Renny slumped over, slid off his chair and plastered himself to the kitchen floor. Lifeless. Well, not dead but close to it.

I swiped one of his smokes.

The fridge cuttin’ in and out.

Renny snorin’ away.

Lucky fucker.

Next thing out strolled Sally Ann in a spandex suit, her tits saggin’ out through roughly cut holes in the fabric. I got on like it didn’t shock me in the least, probably ’cause at that point it didn’t, and I suggested that she see to her husband or her pimp or whatever she called that droolin’ lump of snot on the floor.

I made my way to the toilet.

There was no light to guide my passage to the end of the hall, where I assumed the bathroom was. I was gettin’ a bad case of the spins and I thought I might vomit. The door at the end of the hall turned out to be a spare room. No furniture, but neatly adorned, wall-to-wall, with boxes of what looked like cartons of smokes, cases of liquor and beer. A sobering moment for our Keith. It dawned on me that Renny’s house was more than likely bein’ watched and, for that matter, so was I. His place was probably wired for sound. So much booze and smokes was worth at least a few years in jail. Liftin’ Christ. I switched off the light and left.

Takin’ a leak in the bathroom and something didn’t feel quite right. Something was a bit off. Wasted as I was, it took me a moment to realize that nothing was hittin’ the toilet at all. I was actually pissin’ into a condom that Sally Ann, the Queen of Spandex, had, unbeknownst to me, hauled on over the old lad before we did the business back in the park. Fuck. I jammed it tight at the top, yanked it off, and tossed it into the bathtub on top of a thousand old butts and roaches. Hot piss runnin’ down my thighs. I was fuckin’ outraged. No wonder I couldn’t get it up. Sure it was wrapped up in a rubber suit. Who ever heard tell of suckin’ someone off with a safe on? Especially a payin’ customer. A first for me.

I could hear Sally Ann in the kitchen crucifying the chorus to the “Ode to Newfoundland.” What a goddamn madhouse. I had to get the fuck out. Fast. Before I was killed. But I was gettin’ my money’s worth first.

I peeked out into the hallway. No one around. I slipped out of the bathroom and crossed the hall to the contraband bedroom. I left the door open a crack so’s I could see. Didn’t want to turn the light on in case Sally Ann looked up the hall. I popped open a case of, lo and behold, Jim-fuckin’-Beam. Don’t know if I even had more than a taste of the vile shit in my life and there I was rippin’ off a second bottle of it in the same night. I moved on to another box that said Player’s on the side. It wasn’t sealed. It was full of loose Styrofoam packing. I rooted around but couldn’t find any cigarettes. Then my hand found something heavy and cold down in one corner. When I wrapped my fingers around it I knew right away what it was. I’d never even seen a handgun before, let alone held one. Not in real life. I had no clue what kind or calibre or any of that macho shit. I just knew that I wanted it in my own pocket. And that’s where it went. Get fifty bucks for it back home. Then I really started to panic ’cause I figured if there was a loose gun lyin’ around in here, then someone obviously misplaced it, or worse, miscounted it. Either way, it was safe to assume there was more guns around the house. And Renny was just the type to use one on me. I had to move fast. Faster. I opened another box and pulled out a handful of Nevada tickets. Stuffed ’em in my arse pocket. Finally I found cigarettes. A carton of Player’s Light. Not my brand but they were gonna have to do.

Under any other circumstances, like if I’d come across this stuff in a cabin in the woods or somewhere, I’d count myself the luckiest bastard on the planet. But my knees were shakin’ and I could feel sweat rollin’ down my back in buckets. I stuffed the bottle and the smokes into my backpack. As I was tyin’ the string on top, I turned around to see Sally Ann standin’ in the open doorway. Watchin’me. A tight, stoned grin on her face. Busted. I yammered what excuses I could muster up, but she just waved me off and told me to help myself. I doubt she meant the gun though, if she even knew it was there. I tried to push my way past her. Had to get as far away from that house as fast as my legs would let me. But she wouldn’t let me pass. She made a grab for my crotch, tellin’ me that Renny was out for the night and maybe she’d like to give me a freebie. The whole shebang. She pressed her bare tits to my chest. For the first time I noticed the stench of festered sweat rising up from her body. I cringed at the thought of what a fine state her bed must be in. Her and Renny’s bed. Fuck. I could hardly have been declared Mr. Hygiene Newfoundland myself, what with piss dryin’ into the leg of my pants, but I have my limits, if not my preferences. I’d not be rollin’ around on her sheets anytime soon. I bulled past her and made a straight cut to the front door. She started whinin’ and huffin’, wantin’ me to stay. Apparently I had no idea what I was missin’. She told me I’d never find another night like she could show me. I was in total agreement. She called me an ingrate and a stupid fool, until finally, as I was walkin’ down the front path, I heard her screamin’:

—Renny! Renny! Get the fuck up! He’s after stealing a case of liquor. RENNY!

But Renny didn’t stagger out the front door wieldin’ a shotgun in a shit-stained strap shirt. I was pretty sure Renny was out for the night. Still, to be on the safe side, I ran like hell ’til I thought I’d drop dead.

Set to wander once again. Round and around in circles like a dyin’ spin-top. Back up and down the same streets ’til they became one strangled mess of fences and road signs, streetlights and parking lots. On the verge of collapse, I flagged down a cab. A green cab. I had the back door opened and one leg in before I realized it was old hook-nosed Gerard. He grinned a big toothless grin back at me.

I slammed the door and took off straight down the road in the other direction from where he was facin’. The road was pretty narrow, so I figured he’d have a hard time turnin’ around a big car like that. He’d at least have to find a driveway and I’d run until I heard him turn around, then I’d duck in out of it somewhere. Maybe I’d even have to shoot him in the face if he got out of hand. But I didn’t hear him. He wasn’t comin’. I stopped and looked back. He was pulled up to the curb where an old couple was gettin’ into the car. I s’pose he had his money made by then and decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.

One thing though, between Gerard and Metal-Head and Sally Ann, I hadn’t had that much exercise in years.

I fell into a phone booth. When I picked up the goddamn receiver there was no dial tone. A couple of buttons were missin’ too. For the love of fuck. I rifled through the phonebook for a roadmap. Sure enough, there was one on the inside cover. I tore out the map and walked into the street to see where I was. I walked ’til I came to a couple of signs where Robie and Young Street crossed and from there I had to swing back around to get to Agricola Street. Sure it was just around the fuckin’ corner the whole time. When I turned onto it I realized I’d already been on it once or twice already. I counted down the numbers on the houses ’til I finally found Natasha’s place.

Funny, but I had it pictured different from the stale yellow house that stood before me. One of them row houses. There’ll all over downtown St. John’s. Everybody squat right tight. People on either side of you. No yard. The fella next door has a smoke in bed and the whole block goes up. Rat-holes. Deathtraps. Thing is, any time I spoke to Natasha on the phone, I had her pictured livin’ in some bright, spacious Victorian-style mansion with a huge lawn and garden, complete privacy, trees, bronze water sprites round back. The good life.

I sauntered on up to the door. Absolutely good intentions. Absolutely. Put on my best sober face and gave a loud bang on the screen. Waited for a bit. Not a stir in the house. It was already pretty late and Natasha was likely asleep, so I whacked a little louder. Footsteps. A light in the hall popped on and the door creaked open a few inches ’til it brought up on a chain. Right out of the movies. It was Gertie. Shit. Forgot all about her. She’s an old friend of Natasha’s mom. No relation, but Natasha still calls her Auntie Gert. I think she used to live in St. John’s but moved to Halifax years ago to work with underprivileged kids or some such shit. She won some kinda humanitarian award a while ago and it was all over the news back home. So she took Natasha in as a favour to the family, meanin’ that Natasha had no real bills to pay, no real expenses, aside from long-distance phone calls. But I doubt that particular bill was very costly, seein’ how the precise reason I was there on her doorstep was because she couldn’t pick up the goddamn phone once in a while.

Gertie in her nightdress. Half asleep.

—Hi. I’m Keith. Is Natasha at home?

Gertie the nervous twitch.

—Keith? Natasha’s Keith? How did you get here? It’s two in the morning.

—Listen, I’m sorry for the intrusion but I really needs to see her. I’m not cracked or nothing. It’s been a long day.

—Well, she’s not here now. She won’t be back until tomorrow morning. She’s staying at a friend’s house. You can’t stay here—

A friend’s house? A fuckin’ friend’s house? I knew it. My heart raced at the thought of Natasha off with some fuckin’ artsy Nova Scotian mommy’s boy. Smokin’ cigarettes in bed and watchin’ late night TV in the buff. All fucked out. And there I was, half-dead from exhaustion on her doorstep. After comin’ through all this shit. All the way from St. John’s. Just to lay eyes on her. And where is she? Off fuckin’ some pansyassed theatre cunt.

—Ah…what exactly do you mean by friend? Like a b’yfriend or something? Do you know the address? I really needs to find her.

She knew but she wouldn’t say. Grizzly old bitty.

—No, and I don’t know how to get in touch with her either. Come back tomorrow. During the day.

Well, at least I was invited back. She went to close the door but stopped long enough to witness me fallin’ backwards off the step and givin’ my head a good crack on the sidewalk. She peeked out at me. I could see the pity motherin’ up in her eyes. I s’pose she was seein’ me as one of them fuckin’ underprivileged youngsters she worked with. Enough to turn your goddamn guts. Sure I never came lookin’ for nothing off her. I’d sooner sleep in pig slop than lay my head down in her house.

—I’ll tell Natasha you’re in town if she calls.

She shut the door and locked it.

Well, fancy me, sprawled off on a Halifax sidewalk with no money and no place to sleep. Miserable old bag. What am I, some kind of leper? Havin’ to roam around for a place to sleep. Imagine.

I lurched up and down the street lookin’ for a decent place to lay my head. Some place discreet. I finally sat down in an alleyway just up from Gertie’s house. I watched two cats fuckin’ for a while. The old tomcat doing the pushin’ was all black except for his two white hind paws. Got me thinkin’ about Metal-Head screwin’ missus with his boots on. Made me feel a little lonesome. People all over the world, curled up with their lovers in beds and on couches and poor old Keith got no one ’cause he’s too fucked up to hang on to anyone. Fuck. The cats finished up with a howl and a shudder, then took off in separate directions. Just the way love should be. No bullshit. Once the cats were gone I felt really alone.

Crouched in a shitty alleyway.

Halifax.

Lord dyin’ Christ.

It had to be love. There certainly seemed to be no logical way to explain it. Love is the most illogical force on the face of this planet. Love is a lie someone made up a long time ago that everyone fell for. I fell for it. But Natasha was worth all this to me. Yeah. I tried to convince myself that I was only jumpin’ to conclusions. Maybe she really was just off to a friend’s house. A girlfriend. Natasha. Love. They’d find me dead in this piss-ridden alleyway and Gertie’d curse herself and her cold notions. Natasha’d have to live with the guilt for the rest of her days. Might even make the papers. Newfoundlander Abroad Dies In Search of Love.

I could hear ’em already, all the old bags back home in the Cove.

—Jesus Christ, couldn’t she let the poor young fella sleep on the couch? Sure she could have given him an old blanket or something. Not twenty feet from her house and he froze to death. Imagine. Knees hugged right tight to his chest and they nearly needed the Jaws of Life to straighten him out to send him home. Imagine his poor mother. God love him. I remembers the lovely speech he wrote in Grade Eight. I don’t know why he went the way he did. Must be the drugs and the booze, but that’s hardly his own fault. Sure once that stuff gets ahold of you you’re as good as gone no matter where you lays your head. Poor lost soul. What’s the world comin’ to at all?

Now this is the self-pitying garbage sloshin’ through my head as I’m suckin’ on the bottle of Jim Beam, which is growin’ on me, considering the circumstances. Keith, says I to me, who twisted your arm tonight? Airport security? And I mean, how can I blame Gertie? I wouldn’t let the likes of me in at two in the goddamn morning either. A fine sight I must be, on the booze this week without a shave or a shower. I could be home in bed now, curled up with the cat, readin’ my book and havin’ a smoke. Beer for breakfast.

Some shithead stops at the mouth of the alley and has a good gawk in at me, his big white sneaker-boots the only thing I can clearly make out. Sneaker boots? Fuck sakes, they’re all the rage in Halifax. And they says Newfoundlanders are behind the times? A car passes up the road and I gets a brief glimpse of the shithead’s dodgy beard. My heart goes up in my throat. Is that Renny? Jesus. Could very well be. Tracked me down and hungry for violence. Knowin’ full well I just had my dick in his wife’s mouth. But I was a payin’ customer! My hand grips the handle of the gun. Renny’s gun. My gun. I’ve got a gun in my hand. I’m about to pull it out of my inside pocket and point it when the shithead steps into the light. It’s not Renny, just some poor, drunken scrap lookin’ for his own place to crash. I lets go of the gun and stands up to face him. My alley.

—Have I got something on belong to you, buddy? Well, what the fuck are ya lookin’ at?

Shithead mumbles and totters back into the street. Wise fuckin’ move too. I slumps against the wall and slides back down the ground.

I s’pose this is the place where I’m expected to just kick off and die? All heart-broke and defeated? Well, fuck that. It’ll take more than a bit a cold weather to put Keith Kavanagh in the ground. The way I sees it, if you’re gonna kick the bucket, you gotta kick it good and fuckin’ hard. Smash it in bits with your big steel-toes and be fucked to the lot of ’em. Don’t think I’m gonna fester and bloat like some strung-out old boozehound. Sure I’ve been two hundred miles offshore for two weeks at a time. Draggin’ scallop in ragin’ sadistic sub-zero winds, compliments of the devil himself. Tied on by the ankle, geared up in a big old floater-suit tryin’ to haul up an old Digby deathtrap in the pitch black. Monstrous black waves swampin’ across the deck, nothing left to do but wait. Wait to see if we sank to the bottom. Completely and utterly at the mercy of the merciless North Atlantic. Three or four of us tied on so’s if we were tossed overboard, no one would have to go in after us. Just grab ahold of the rope and haul you back on deck. If the boat went down, I was goin’ down with her, not havin’ done one fuckin’ worthwhile thing to be remembered by. And, assuming my body ever turned up, it’d be found draped in slimy secondhand oilskins, and they’d say:

—Oh. He must have worked for Black Diamond.

Drenched to the bone and freezin’, I was exhausted and resigned to die. My whole life would mean nothing, would have been lived to reach that end. Half a dozen of the hefty older fishermen on board, men on the water all their lives, jabbering out the rosary. And I doubt it made fuck all difference, the rosary, but we made it. We made it. Got home and got drunk and got tattooed, blew every red cent. So the way I sees it, if I wasn’t taken back then, I’ll more than likely live through a cold night in Halifax.

There’s a fine racket comin’ from the street. A herd of drunken muscle-heads wrestling their way past my alley. Could be trouble. But I’m too far back in the dark for them to notice me. I listens to ’em whoop their way down the sidewalk. Wise move, motherfuckers.

I huddles up in some sour corner, drinks some more whiskey, and slowly shivers myself to sleep.

I wakes up a lot throughout the course of the night, baffled and bitter, thoughts of Natasha runnin’ through my mind. I slips in and out of my dream about the Grotto. I’d give anything to be hunkered down in the Grotto. I’d face it.

Sometime after dawn I heaves up my guts. My pants are soaked on the inside and my arse and feet are numb. It takes me a minute to realize where I am. Sweet bald-headed Jesus. What have I done? Horror and paranoia soon turns to selfloathing, which inevitably turns to disgust towards every livin’ soul on this planet. Cocksuckers. Juliet Carey. For the love of Jesus. Renny. You stupid fucker. Gertie.

I gets up and takes a piss and a stretch and a good long swallow of Mr. Jim. That clears up the old noggin. From the end of the alley I can see Gertie’s house. So it’s just a matter of time before I sees Natasha. I makes myself comfortable with my bottle. I don’t have no matches so I bums a light off every second person that passes on the street. A fine sight I must be. A group of young ones have a laugh at me like I’m some old bum. Which I s’pose I am. After about an hour of this I manages to trade a pack of Player’s for a nice black Bic lighter. My favourite. Dandy. Fuck the lot of ’em now. No life at Natasha’s place yet, so I just shifts from one foot to the other, and drinks.

Then I remembers the Nevada tickets and I whips ’em out all excited. Nope. Nope. Nope. Cherries! Lemons! Nope. Nope. Nope. I goes through the whole stack and all I comes out of it with is a free ticket and five bucks. And that’s why I never gambles, ’cause I’m always left holdin’ the shitty end of the stick. Even though I knows it’s useless and stupid to try and cash the tickets in somewhere, I can’t bring myself to throw ’em away. At least it passed a bit of time. So does the whiskey. Soon I’m loaded again.

It’s gettin’ cold so I goes back in to the end of the alley to sit down out of the wind. I pulls a greasy cardboard box out of the dumpster and sets it on the ground to sit on so’s my arse won’t get so numb. I keeps on drinkin’ ’til my head starts to feel so heavy that I decides to grab a quick wink to pass the time. First I roots around in the dumpster for another box, which I pulls around myself to block the cold. With my backpack for a lumpy pillow, I drifts off to sleep. This time more soundly.

I dreams Natasha is standin’ over me. Her hair is brushin’ my face and it’s the nicest thing I’ve smelled in a long time. It’s the old Natasha. The Natasha I fell in love with. The one with long, careless blonde hair and the army boots. Not the new Natasha with the designer jeans and them flimsy new-age fake-leather fuckin’ George Street shoes. She’s strokin’ my face, smilin’ and callin’ my name.

—Keith. KEITH! Get the frig up!

I’m yanked out of my sleep to find that she really is here in front of me. I tries to stand up but I trips out over the cardboard box that I’m wrapped up in. When I hits the ground I gets the sickly-sweet stench of regurgitated booze off the ground and this causes me to wretch, and wretch again ’til I’m heavin’ and chokin’ to beat the band. Nothing comin’ out of me only the raw liquor. It burns my throat and runs out my nose and my eyes are stingin’ and watering. Can’t breathe right.

I feels her hands in my hair and I wants to scream in her face. I wants to whisper in her ear and I wants to tell her everything and I wants to not have to say anything, or say exactly the right thing, ’cause I never meant to be so drunk and I’m not drunk, I’m just sick ’cause I missed her and I still loves her so goddamn much and she’s my little girl and I’ve come through all this just to lay eyes on her and please, please don’t make me explain it all over again. Please just come home now.

But Mr. Jim Beam has his own plans for what comes out of my mouth this fine morning.

—You cunt-face. I nearly froze to death last night and you were—

Someone else is with her.

He’s holdin’ her hand.

He’s got a tongue.

—Listen up, Keith. I can’t have you talking to Natasha like that. Watch yourself.

Watch yourself? Now what the fuck is this? I wipes the vomit off my mouth and tries to stand up. Arms reach out for me but I pulls away. I gets my hand against the wall for balance and manages to half-lean, half-stand against it. They’re not holdin’ hands now. But they were. I saw it.

—Hello, Little Red Riding Hood. Not happy to see me? Who’s your friend?

I makes a lunge at buddy, but I’m so badly off balance that he don’t even know I was aimin’ for him. I staggers and falls and cracks my head off the other wall, but I don’t stay down. I’m up now. And I’m sober.

—You’re in my fuckin’ bedroom, you know. Know that, Mr. Fuckin’ Cock Rock?

I’m gonna rip his Jesus throat out. I’m gonna shove my fingers up his nostrils and ram his head off the concrete wall ’til shit runs down his leg.

I takes another step towards him and trips in my own boot. Fuck. Natasha reaches out to steady me and I lets her. Her hand on my arm feels real.

—Keith, listen, what’s going on? You’re after scaring the life out of Auntie Gert. She didn’t want you back at the house because she’s afraid of you. She watched you come in here last night. I didn’t know but I’d find you dead. I was afraid to come alone. This is Mitch. He’s a friend. You’re after screwing up this time. Look at yourself for frig sakes.

For frig sakes. How grand is she after gettin’ at all?

—You were holdin’ his hand, ’Tash. How fuckin’ friendly are ye? How stupid do you think I am?

—I was not holding his hand. You’re seeing what you want to see now. So wrapped up in yourself that you have me pinned down as a slut or something just because everything isn’t going your way. I haven’t been seeing anyone up here. I’ve been looking for work.

She’s fuckin’ him. I can feel it in my bones.

—Gertie told me you stayed at his house last night.

—She said nothing of the sort, so don’t lie. I stayed at Jenny’s house. Remember Jenny? If you’d get past yourself for a second and listen to what someone else might have to say you wouldn’t be in this mess now. Would you?

This sounds half-reasonable, like half of me wants to believe it so there don’t have to be a big racket, but I ain’t swallowing it. Not right away. If it don’t smell right, don’t put it in your mouth. If it don’t taste right, don’t fuckin’ swallow it. I knows this girl. She can be pretty goddamn cute when it comes to covering her own tracks.

—So here I am then, Natasha. A bit hungover, but I’m not dead. Might wish I was dead but that’s something else altogether. Nothing to be afraid of. It’s just me. I’m not lookin’ to hurt no one. I just wants to talk is all.

I looks across at Mr. Mitch, but he won’t make eye contact. He’s not so fuckin’ big. He looks a bit nervous and I wouldn’t blame him in the least. He’s got on his good jeans too. He could get his head split open. Then I remembers the gun. I reaches into my pocket to feel the handle. If I pulled it out and stuck it in his face, he’d shit himself, and so would Natasha, and it’d be something neither one of us would ever forget for the rest of our lives. Then I looks at Natasha and her hair is all flippin’ around with the wind and I knows that somewhere in there she’s the same girl she always was. Way back when. Sure I can’t hurt her, not like that. Besides, it’d probably be a ton of paperwork if the fuckin’ gun went off.

—Mitch, why don’t you mind your own business and fuck off out of it?

He takes a step towards me and I watches his fist tighten up. His right fist. That’s the one that’s comin’. I readies myself for a good brawl. Natasha gets in between us and pushes him back.

—Why don’t the two of you grow up? God. Look, Mitch, can you just give us a minute?

He gives Natasha this intimate concerned-for-your-personal-safety look. She walks him out to the mouth of the alley, tells him she’ll catch up with him later. Like fuck she will. I offers him a shrug and a little grin. He looks back and forth between myself and ’Tash, then sulks out to the road and disappears. Sure I didn’t need no gun to take that nancy-faced bastard to the ground.

So. We’re here. At long last. Face to face in a filthy alleyway in Halifax City. It’s come down to this. I had this chunky notion floatin’ around in my head that things’d be much grander than this, that this was more than anything anyone’s ever done out of love for her. I’ve travelled a thousand miles to see her face and this is what love is all about. But no. None of that. The Big Bad Wolf is after trackin’ ’er down. I s’pose Andy was right with his talk about there not bein’ no romance to it all. He got a decent head on his shoulders for all his bullshit.

—Keith, before you start, I don’t want to hear it. I have enough money here for you to take the twelve o’clock bus to North Sydney and fare for the ferry as well. There’s a bit here for food, but not much, so I hope you got cigarettes. I’m right to assume that you’re flat broke?

—Don’t be talkin’ so fuckin’ grand, girl. It’s only me.

—Keith—

—Are you sleepin’ with him, ’Tash? Tell me the truth.

—Keith, I told you, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear about another one of your big neurotic adventures, about how you almost froze to death. You’re here now. You got what you wanted. Alright? You caused your big scene. Now you’re gettin’ on that bus supposing I have to knock you out and put you on it!

I laughs at this and takes a big suck out of my Jim Beam. She belts it out of my hand, bangin’ the rim of the bottle hard off my teeth. It bounces off the wall but it don’t break. Most of what’s left seeps down through the cracks in the concrete. Tragic. I picks it up and finishes it off, this time out of range of her barbarism. I smashes the bottle myself when I’m done. I loves that dramatic shit.

—Holdin’ his fuckin’ hand, strollin’ up the road like you knew him all your life. That’s what I saw. And you were with him the last time you called me.

She tries to reply but I don’t let her. I’ve come this far and I’m gonna have my say.

—Half of me felt so stunned you know, ’Tash. I hoped I was just bein’ paranoid, that it was all in my head, that I was just bein’ irrational. But it was my gut, the other half. And my gut is always right. Something to trust. Oh, but you don’t care about this shit. I’m just an inconvenience now. I ruined your day is all.

She pushes the money into my hand and yawns in my face.

—Keith, listen for a second—

—I won’t! I just slept here in this fuckin’ shit and I’m gonna have my say. All you tells is lies anyhow…I got a blowjob off a prostitute last night.

She just smiles and nods like I’m makin’ it up to hurt her. Like she knows me or something. She don’t fuckin’ know me.

—I did, Natasha. Best blowjob I ever had. Unless you counts your lovely cousin Margaret.

She puts her head down, brings it back up poker-faced. I s’pose I shouldn’t have said that last bit.

—’Tash, I’m sorry. I’m just pissed off—

She pulls an envelope out of her inside pocket.

—Keith, this is a one-way ticket home. I bought it last week. I was coming home this Tuesday night. Do you have any idea how hard it was not to tell you? Bawling in my ear like a youngster. Accusing me of sleeping around on you. Cutting yourself up. Now, what was I thinking to want to come home to you? I hate it up here and I missed you. I told you that from day one. Theatre sucks and so does the nightlife. But now I’m thinking I’m probably a lot better off up here than I would be in that grimy little hovel with you. So, we’re going to the bus station and you’re gettin’ on the bus and going home.

—’Tash…C’mon. All I wanted was to see your face, girl. I can’t stand it without you. Nothing makes any sense to me. Everything seems like shit when you’re not around. You knows I’d keel over and die for you.

—You’d keel over and die for the cat, Keith. When was the last time you went a day without a beer or a draw or a pill?

—’Tash, I’m sorry. Drinkin’ just makes it easier to handle. Nights are so fuckin’ empty with you gone.

—Does it have to be fuckin’ empty? Can’t you speak one sentence without cursing? You know, if I thought for a second that you could get off the booze, straighten up and get some kind of future going for us, I’d be there in a flash. I wouldn’t think twice.

—Alright. Alright. I’ll give it up—

—Yeah. Right. I heard that one before—

—Look, I just came all the ways up here to see you. Don’t that say nothing to you? I loves you, girl. There’s nothing more important to me on this planet. Not booze, not fuckin’…sorry, not booze, not partying. Nothing. And if I thought that you were serious, that you’d come home to me if I sobered up, I’d never touch another drop. I loves you, ’Tasha sweetheart. I really do. Come here to me—

I reaches out to her but she pulls away, glancin’ out at the mouth of the alley.

—Keith, you’re a lunatic, you know that?

She says it soft though, and I finally gets a glimpse of the girl I came lookin’ for. I brushes her cheek with the back of my hand and I leans in to smell her hair. She finally gives in and lets me collapse into her arms.

Here, in a piss-ridden alleyway off Agricola Street, I actually have her in my arms. Nothing ever smelled so good.

I starts bawlin’ and after a while she starts in and you can hear it echoing up off the rooftops. But I feels lighter now than I can ever remember feelin’. Me and her, we’ve come through worse shit than this. Sure this is fuck all.

—So you’re not screwin’ him then?

—Keith! For the love of God.

—I’m sorry. Sorry. Just wanted to make sure.

Mitch gives us a ride to the bus station in a brand new 4x4. Must be his mommy’s. I feels like such a hypocrite. I don’t want nothing from this prick. Natasha talked me into it. She sits in the back with me and I slumps down across her lap. We rides in silence. I can feel Mitch watchin’ us through the rearview mirror. She gets out with me when we gets there. The bus to North Sydney is already boardin’ so I have to be quick about buyin’ my ticket. We leaves one another with a thousand little promises and I love yous. She seems to be lookin’ forward to Tuesday night as much as I am. I hugs her tight and gives Mitch the finger from behind her back. Cunt. I makes a mental note to meet him again some day in some other dark alley.

There’s a smokin’ section on the bus, which surprises and delights me, so I smokes my way through the lonesome deciduous landscape of Nova Scotia. As Acting Ambassador of Newfoundland I decides that Nova Scotia is probably a prosperous place to live if you’re a sheep farmer with a video camera. All tasteful jokes aside though, I’m gonna make a go of cleanin’ myself up. The very thought of goin’ sober scares the shit out of me, but I s’pose I’m strong enough to pull it off. I’m sick of this shit. Wakin’ up and not knowin’ where I’ve been or what I said or did to who, never havin’ a cent and always feelin’ like I’m comin’ down with some disease. I’ll give it a try.

I’m still not fully convinced that Natasha wasn’t up to something with this Mitch fucker. Despite all that, I feels a warmin’ kind of…lightheartedness towards people in general as I’m driftin’ off to sleep. Things are gonna be alright.

I feels pretty broken and wore out boardin’ the ferry in North Sydney five hours later. About fifteen dollars left from what Natasha gave me and I heads straight for the bar. I’m thinkin’ about beer, but I orders up a big old pint of ice water at the last second. I can feel it rushin’ through my body, cleansing and healin’. Some dick named Evan Roberts is playin’ the most ridiculous newfie music you could ever imagine. This type of garbage is the very reason the word newfie still exists. Nothing wrong with traditional Newfoundland music, just the way some guys turns it all into this big joke. Like, hey everybody, look at me, I can barely play this here guitar and I can’t sing for shit but I’m gonna stand on stage all night long just to prove I don’t have a dust of sense either. And of course the crowd loves him. He’s a fuckin’ star. Fuck. People from all over the planet comes to Newfoundland and this type of shit is their first impression of our culture and heritage. It should be outlawed.

I watches one sorry bastard get hauled out of the bar by the bartender. Everyone gawkin’ and laughin’ at him. Sad. I can’t believe that used to be me. Never again.

I finds my way out onto the deck. Half a dozen smokers are leanin’ on the railing. I finds my own little spot away from the rest of ’em and I leans way out over the rail, fillin’ my lungs with good, clean salt air. The only thing visible is the wake of the ferry, its powerful rudders slicin’ through the icy water. After that, all I can see is black, black night. A lonely hole in the world and I’m right in the middle of it. At least Nova Scotia is gettin’ further away. But the prospect of gettin’ closer to home don’t exactly thrill me. What am I goin’ back to? What if I falls back on the booze and me and ’Tash goes right to hell again?

I pulls the gun out of the bottom of my bag, where I’d stashed it while I was still on the bus. That’s the best thing about ferries and buses I s’pose; no one gives a fuck who you are or what you got in your bags or none of that shit. No goddamn metal detectors.

I points the gun into the darkness and takes aim. There’s got to be some purpose behind this little excursion of mine. Don’t tell me this wicked hunk of metal in my hand is the reason I travelled all the way to Halifax. If this was all meant to happen, written in the stars like Sally Ann said, then what’s the big deep meaning I’m s’posed to get out of it? Why was it written? Where’s the lesson learned? Why do I feel so hollow, so…finalized? Where am I ever gonna find the strength to get through it all, the days and weeks and years to come? And are they really even comin’? Imagine me tryin’ to go straight and sober. Me. Keith Kavanagh.

I peeks down into the barrel of the gun. I could splatter myself all over the deck right here and now. Matter of fact, I could hold the fuckin’ gun to my head and jump overboard. Shoot myself on the way down. They’d never find me. Plus I wouldn’t have to drown. I wouldn’t have to suffer that sense of peace that’s s’posed to come over you when you drowns. Sure what’s the good of it when you’re dyin’? Ahh…I don’t have the guts to do it anyhow. I hangs my head and tries to cry but nothing comes. A fine sight I must be.

Fuck it! Fuck it. I flings the gun over the side into the swirlin’ path of the ferry. I loses sight of it before it hits the water. Can’t even hear the splash over the roar of the engines. Don’t know if it’s the smartest or the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I coulda gotten a bit of money for that gun. But I s’pose I’m lucky I never killed someone. And maybe I actually saved a few lives by takin’ it out of the hands of that sleazy Renny. The deed and the thought gives me a fresh sense of hope about myself. I’m gonna have to try. Gonna make it work this time. Turn it all around.

Drained and cold, I makes my way back to the passengers’ lounge and finds a nice little spot to lie down between a row of seats next to some big guy with a seein’-eye dog. I’m hungry but I knows I won’t be able to eat for a good while. I earned that I suppose. Rummaging through my backpack, I finds the last little bottle of rum from the airplane. Seems like ten years ago now since I went through the metal detectors in St. John’s. I puts the rum back in the backpack, which I’m once again usin’ for a pillow, and tries to get some sleep. But my brain won’t let me. I flips and tosses around like I can just turn away from the bad shit goin’ on in my head. No matter which way I adjusts myself though, I’m always right there. Tears wellin’ up in my eyes.

Fuck sakes. Look at me. All in a huff ’cause I thought my missus was fuckin’ around. Off on some kind of self-righteous mission to find her and along the way I stops and mouth-fucks a hooker on the street. Meanwhile, the girlfriend is after makin’ arrangements to come home and surprise me ’cause she misses me and she loves me. Now I got the gall to go pitying myself? And I expects the world to commiserate? I s’pose I’m a hypocrite if ever there was one. Then again, I was there. I looked her straight in the fuckin’ eye and I knows what I saw. She’s been with him. I knows it in my gut. But what the fuck should it matter to me now? I got the truth. I saw with my own eyes. And she’s comin’ home now anyhow. I just wants things to heal. And as for Sally Ann, well, I s’pose I could offer myself some boring excuse about bein’ drunk, that it never meant nothing and all that shit. But I won’t. I knows it’s hypocritical, but I can live with it’cause that was the nature of the old Keith.

Next morning, after a horrible night with the screamies, I grabs a handful of them little coffee creamers on my way off the ferry. They settles my stomach quite nicely.

The best I can do to stay alive as I’m walkin’ up the highway into Port Aux Basques is take comfort in my cigarettes and sing and stick my thumb out. Seems like a hundred big old tractor-trailers tears past me ’til I gets the hint and just starts walkin’. After what might be two miles I comes to a sign that reads:

—ST. JOHN’S – 931 Kms.

This sign breaks my heart to pieces. The reality of my situation hits me like a hard crack across the face. I starts thumbin’ again, but I guess I still got that Nazi look about me. Before I knows it I’m screamin’ and dancin’ and cursin’ God, makin’ deals with him.

—God, please, just get me to a gas station. I’ll start doin’ it all different. I’ll pick myself up. I’ll give up the booze. For real. Just get me home. Please, God?

I takes out the last little bottle of rum and, after eyein’ it for a bit, I tosses it down over the bank into the woods.

—I’ll never drink again, God. Just get me to St. John’s.

Then a car comes along and keeps on goin’ and I’m cursin’ him all over again.

—Go on to fuck then, you miserable bastard. I’ll walk before I asks for your help!

I even walks back about half a mile to see if I can locate the rum. It’s nowhere to be seen. Just as well. I’m laughin’ now, but not in a healthy way. More or less as a last resort.

Joey Smallwood walked right across Newfoundland one time. Unionizing the logging camps or some shit. Well if that festered, four-eyed, gangly fuckin’ sell-out could do it, so can Keith-fuckin’-Kavanagh. Least I knows where my heart is. I starts walkin’.

After about an hour, during which time my spirit gets on like a yo-yo on acid, someone finally stops. A black van. Fuck. Never even had my thumb out. In all my years of hitchhikin’ I’ve never trusted black vans. Fuck it. I swings open the clunky side door and jumps on in.

Lo and behold it’s Bobby O’Neill! Long time no see and all that shit. He says he’d seen me on the boat but wasn’t quite sure it was me or not. I can’t imagine that I’m that different lookin’. But it’s been a long week. Bobby’s put on a bit of muscle, workin’ for some transport company in New Brunswick. On his way home to his grandfather’s funeral. Other than that he seems happy and comfortable with himself. But our conversation is strained and awkward and I knows I’d have tons more to say to a stranger. I can tell he’s dyin’ to ask me a thousand questions, like where I’m comin’ from and why I looks like I’ve been run down on the road by a garbage truck. After the initial mandatory small talk and a quick jaunt down memory fuckin’ lane, we lapses into a smooth, monotonous silence. I remembers I stole Natasha right out from under his nose a few years back. He didn’t seem to hold it against me at the time though, and I guess he wouldn’t now if I told him what I was really up to these past few days. Funny how two fellas can come from the same little scrap on the map, reared up pretty much the same way, then head off in such completely different directions. Same with Andy. Imagine Andy O’Toole with a fuckin’ psychology degree. Dr. O’Toole.

Fuck.

I have a vague sense of my eyes closin’, the drone from the engine consuming my thoughts. Bobby gives me a shake to tell me that if I’m tired I can crawl into one of the bunks in the back and go to sleep. I’m tired and I wants to. Badly. He hands me a draw of a joint before I goes down back. I don’t normally smoke it ’cause I gets vicious anxiety attacks. But what odds? I takes a little draw and climbs out back. My brain shuts down as I curls up in Bobby’s huge down-filled sleepin’ bag. Thanks be to Jesus. I don’t hear a sound or make a move after we pulls out of some gas station outside Corner Brook. Next thing I knows, we’re pullin’ into Stockwoods in St. John’s. Bobby drops me off without ceremony, just a wink and a nod, as if he’ll surely see me tomorrow. He disappears into the city. Fine by me. The apartment is only a two-minute walk away. Now that’s a good ride.

The cat seems happy to see me, at least for a while, ’til he finds interest in a ball of paper on the floor. His dish is full. There’s a note from Andy askin’ me to give him a call when I gets home. Home. The place is a state. I’m afraid to take my boots off. I just wants to sleep now. I never wants to see the light of day again. Five bottles of cold beer in the fridge. I pours four of ’em down the sink. Can’t bring myself to dump the last one. There’s a half-pound of bologna there too. It’s turned hard and greasy at the edges but I just drowns it in mustard and wolfs it down. Even though I just slept for about eight hours comin’ across the Island, and I had a bit of sleep on the ferry, I’ve never experienced such exhaustion in my whole life. I turns on the heat, locks the doors, unplugs the phone, turns out all the lights and goes to bed. The rent is not due for another week. This place is mine. The cat is fed. Keith is off to the Land of Nod.

I spends most of the next day cleanin’ up, myself along with the apartment, and sleepin’. The shakes have me by the balls. My skin is crawlin’. I feels like some cold-turkey junkie, lyin’ on the couch sweatin’, the walls spittin’ abuse at me. I vomits the bologna and the only thing my guts can handle is the last beer. One beer and that’s it. For medicinal purposes, to help me further my campaign towards sobriety. I’m just about flat broke anyhow and Natasha will be home tomorrow. It’s as good a time as any to straighten myself out. I’m not gonna fuck this one up. I’m not.

Feelin’ better on Tuesday. The big day. More energy, although my stomach is barely hangin’ on by a thread and I still can’t eat. Can’t wait to see Natasha. The place is startin’ to look good. Not much I can do about the carpet. I took a couple of Valium. Forgot they were in my coat. Feelin’ a little less edgy. They don’t seem to make me drowsy like they normally would. The shakes are subsiding, the walls have stopped cursin’ at me. That’s a good sign. I manages a trip to the gas station and picks up some milk and bread and Rolaids. They don’t sell whole wheat bread, but that’s what I would’ve bought. I would.

Anyhow, it’s a start.

Tried callin’ Natasha last night to let her know that I made it home alive. She wasn’t there. I s’pose she was out sayin’ her goodbyes or goin’ down on what’s-his-face one last time. I don’t know. Don’t know how to feel about it all. Just wants to forgive her now and move past it. Try and understand it from her angle. Have to find some measure of peace in myself before she gets home. But it’s not that easy. I put a cigarette out on the back of my hand right before I got in the shower this afternoon.

I tries to get hold of her all evening. When I finally gets past the busy signal, Gertie says she’s out. I asks her what time Natasha’s flight is due in, but she makes like she knows nothing about any of it. She thinks Natasha might have been stayin’ at a friend’s house. A friend’s house.

I says I’m sorry to Gertie for my recent histrionics, but she makes it clear that she’s just as sympathetic now as she was at the time. I don’t blame her. I don’t really mean it anyhow. She says she’ll tell Natasha to call me as soon as she hears from her.

I tries to do some readin’ but I can’t concentrate, thoughts dartin’ off in a thousand directions. I digs around in the medicine cabinet ’til I finds a half-bottle of Demerol that I bought outside the Hatchet months ago. I pops a couple to ward off the anxiety. One more for luck. The night slows to a crawl. Starin’ at the phone. Pacin’ the floors. Imagine, a fine and handsome fella like myself up pacin’ the floors over some young one.

Tunnel vision from the pills.

My face starts to itch and I starts in scratchin’.

Gnawin’ at my bottom lip ’til I gets the taste of blood.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to express thanks to the following organizations: Newfoundland Labrador Arts Council. The Resource Centre for the Arts. St. John’s City Arts Jury. ACTRA. Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador. Newfound Films. NIFCO. Kickham East Productions. FilmPro. CBC Radio and Television. The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Association. Creative Book Publishing.

Friends and allies, past and present:

Gina Anderson. Chris Barlow. Arnold and Nancy Bennett. That crowd of hooligans in Cape Breton. Renee Boland. Tommy Boland. Shaun Bradley. John and Nikki Christian. Jennifer Clouter. Steve Cochrane. Stephen Condon. Michael Crummey. Damienne Cryderman. Mary Dalton. Ramona Dearing. Glen Downey. John W. Doyle. Michelle Cable-Foot. Ray Guy. Debbie Hanlon. Jonny Harris. Kevin Hehir. June Hiscock. Amy House. Declan Hughes. Connie Hynes. Lily Hynes. Lois Hynes. Michael Hynes. Mom Hynes and Granda. Vicky Hynes and all the gang from A Feast of Cohen. Andy Jones. Bruce Jordan. Karen Kane. Nicole Kane. Bride Kavanagh. Susan Kent. Dwayne LaFitte. Ruth Lawrence. Kevin Lewis. EmirMahic. LisaMoore. Roger Maunder. Stephanie McKenzie. Fionnuala McMahon. Heather Mills. Barry Newhook. Cyril O’Keefe. Lorraine O’Neill. Marnie Parsons. Rhonda Pelly. Helen Peters. Anna Petras. Dave Picco. Liz Pickard. Angela Pitcher. Emily Pittman. Margie Pryde. Holly Reddy. Dawn Roche. Gordon Rodgers (my merciless editor). Paul Rowe. Dennis Saunders. Don Sedgwick. Bernie Stapleton. Alana Steel. Edith Steffler. Mrs. Gertie Sullivan. Helen Sullivan. Joan Sullivan. The Traynors in Clontarf. Bob Tucker. Iris Tupholme. Agnes Walsh. Des Walsh. Mary Walsh. Anne Whelan. Jon Whelan. Lee White. Leoance White. Michael Winter.

If I’ve left you out, look me up.

An extra special thanks for tolerance, compassion, inspiration and understanding:

Frank Barry. Lois Brown. Gus Donovan. Dyane Gyesdol. Blair Harvey. Dolores and Gary Hynes. Ron Hynes. Adrianna Maggs. Justin Simms. Sheila Sullivan.

Praise for Down to the Dirt

Winner of the Percy Janes First Novel Award

Finalist for the Winterset Award

Finalist for the Atlantic Book Award

Nominated for the Dublin Literary IMPAC Award

“Compulsively readable. I couldn’t put it down…I can’t wait for the next book.”

—Mary Walsh

“Raunchy, humorous and energetic…A gritty, moving portrait of growing up—or trying to, anyway.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Well written, fervently paced…capturing vivid moments and the strong-willed voice of rabble-rouser Keith Kavanagh.”

—Library Journal

“Combine Frank McCourt and Roddy Doyle’s gifts for evoking a sense of place with Raymond Carver’s way with dialogue, and you have Down to the Dirt.”

—Winnipeg Free Press

“A terrific debut…Down to the Dirt is scary, sexy and funny, sometimes all three at once. It’s a hell of a ride.”

—Michael Crummey, author of The Wreckage

“A beautiful, artful book. It reads like a 21st-century Huckleberry Finn, a compelling mixture of innocence and lost innocence. Sex, hockey, friendship, loneliness, love, self-destruction, coming-of-age—it’s all here.”

—Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!

Copyright

Down to the Dirt

© 2004 by Joel Thomas Hynes.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-1-554-68961-3

Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, incidents and places depicted are imaginary. Any resemblance to real people, events or places is coincidental.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication data

is available upon request.

ISBN: 978-1-55468-424-3

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