The Journey Prize Stories 27 Read online

  “Fuck Pinky,” Gus says, turning away abruptly.

  What’s he supposed to do? Gus left them broke, wandering for days then begging for money on their doorstep, sending his wife for depression pills. Pinky won’t let any more of his bad blood in. Last time they took Gus back, he sold Pinky on the internet. Amazing how many men will drop the price of a used car on a mail-order Chinese bride. Gus posted her picture on a dodgy-looking website advertising Exotic Lucky Asian Brides. Pinky was wrapped in white-and-pink wedding chiffon, a purplish-pink orchid in her hair, something bite-sized dangling on the end of a shrimp fork. Gus wrote that she was petite, submissive, ornamental. Some old goat paid Gus $1,400 cash on a subway to share his life with “Pinky Cameroon Sparkle.”

  Cheap Chinese takeout, Gus said to Donny, winking, flashing his wild smile, as he handed over a wad of hundred dollar bills in the hallway. Donny could tell Gus was on a mounting high, heading from glue-headed to God in a few hours. Meds were sparks going off, Gus had told Donny. Light screaming through his skull, flash fireworks, followed by the inevitable hours of blind panic. Gus said he was only trying to pitch in. Pinky was ready to move out.

  Gus pulls his belt from his housecoat, tying it like a tourniquet across his bicep. The familiar phrase rattling in Donny’s skull. Think you can save your brother? You can’t even save your marriage, useless fuck.

  “Pinky will come around,” Donny says, trying hard not to look restless. “Her dad’s covering my new equipment loan.”

  Gus starts to flap his arms, a whooping crane in a stiff wind. Donny holds his brother’s arms down. Gus wrenches away, rising to his feet.

  “Pinky’s got a face like the back of a shovel.”

  “Gus,” Donny orders, trying to wrap his arms around his brother’s aches, hold his burden tight.

  Gus steps away, shouting in a faux-Asian accent. “Twyme, twyme, me, moneybackgawantee.” He flaps and turns away again. “Fuck Pinky.”

  Donny met Pinky in one of those mahogany-and-brass steakhouses with the deer antlers mounted above the bar. She was serving rib-eye steaks to men who chewed the fat over real estate deals. Turns out her dad owned the place. Owned three apartment complexes and a dry-cleaning franchise. Her family was an empire. His was a broken tenement. She danced through the room, pale blue moons dusting her eyelids, still as a watercolour. He knew he wouldn’t be worthy but he asked her out anyway, tumbling over his syllables. On their fifth date, he made a nest of his long arms, cupped her bird bones inside, called her My Lily Hands.

  Donny pulls Gus’s hand away from his dismal face, turns to see Joe pound down the stairs toward them.

  “Get away Tomahawk Chuck,” Gus shouts, seeing Joe approach.

  Joe grabs Gus firmly by the terry cloth shoulder—“Smoke break. It’s noon polar bear. Let’s migrate”—leading him toward the front door.

  Donny moves in to help, but Joe raises a dismissive hand, motioning for him to stay put. Gus is led to the front door. Donny hurries to stuff an envelope filled with pizza money inside Gus’s housecoat. Joe shoots him a puzzled look, stomping his feet.

  Native guys float, they had told Donny. Mohawk or Cree, toeing twenty-storey beams, steady rivet gun in their hands. It was all bullshit. Joe preferred doing the ground metal framing but left to repair a support brace on the third floor. Crew said he must’ve had a rubber backbone the way he bounced down in one piece. Whatever was on his mind back then never came back. Joe was on his own so Donny found him a place with Mrs. B. Once Joe settled in, Donny figured it would be good enough for family so he dropped Gus off with two green garbage bags and a blue duffel bag, two days after his brother had set fire to their shower curtain. Abandon ship! Blame Pinky? Sure. He was fucking free.

  On site two hours later, the front-load driver shouts down to Donny: Okay to take another run? Donny nods, directing traffic. Raising its toothy bucket, the driver steers the front loader through wet mud, shattering glass on a downward strike. Whining like a beaten dog, the low-rise splits in half. Burying his toe in sharp debris, Donny thinks—this is the job. Build an extension off the house to give Gus his own entrance. Donny returns to his truck, roughs up his estimate pad, knowing the numbers won’t add up. Pinky will never go for it. Her parents would pull the loan. He’s nothing but a low-level contractor. Pinky’s mother is a princess. Her tiara’s halfway up my ass, he thinks. Fuck it. He’ll find the money. Set Gus up in some studio apartment close by. Take him out twice a week, get his meds on track.

  Donny knows the drill. Pour concrete slab, pound the building out, pad an invoice or two. Take his commission off the top. Throw me an extra buck, he’ll tell the subs, I’ll throw in the townhouse complex too.

  Things Gus will do for a dollar:

  Clean the kitchen floor with a soapy grey mop.

  Commit to Cheerios in the morning and finish them.

  Buy Marlee and himself cigarettes when she gets her Thursday cheque.

  Gus pulls two turtle blues from his pillbox when Donny leaves, his arms heavy rubber fins. He lumbers to the bus stop, watches the number 12 roll up. He stubs out his cigarette and climbs the stairs. Staring down at the fare box, he watches the coins tickle the steel throat, then spit out a paper tongue at him.

  “Alberto’s Pizza,” Gus slurs like a drunk directing a cab.

  Brusquely, the driver motions him to the back of the bus. Gus sits in the last row, opens his pillbox, swallows another. Blearily, he watches Bookbag get on. She sits up front with a friend but waves back. Gus can’t lift his sweaty hand. They rumble on for ten minutes until Alberto’s red neon lights up. He yanks the cord.

  At Alberto’s, an alert hostess ushers Gus to a back table. He’s blinking fast. Skipping ropes and twigs start to stretch and snap in his head. Flat bottom spinning between the temples, Gus stabs a fork into his leg so he’s clear enough to order his usual Hawaiian Special. When the silver tray arrives, a large pie, thick crust smeared with pineapple and ham, he dips a wedge into his Coke. He orders another coffee, adds six sugars, then pockets the spoon. The table is pivoting, but he needs to piss.

  Along the corridor in the restaurant, Gus counts gold diamonds fringing the emerald carpet all the way to the men’s room. He teeters before the urinal next to a bank of stainless-steel sinks. The burly man next to him bounces on his toes. Watching him, Gus bounces too. The man zips. Gus pulls slowly at his fly. The man calls him something Gus can’t grasp. Gus grabs his own crotch, fumbling furiously.

  “Pull that faggot shit on me again, you’re dead.” The stout man drops his shoulder and drives Gus hard into the mirror before walking out the door.

  “Don’t you cry,” Gus says, pounding his thigh on the bathroom floor. “Don’t.”

  He weeps silently, then rising, pictures himself racing up the stairs of his mother’s house, hands locked around a pair of scissors. He digs his keys into his thighs.

  Gus enters the middle stall, unfolds the tabloid paper left behind on the floor, and drapes it across his lap. When he’s through emptying his loose bowels, he scoops out his own feces with the newspaper.

  “There’s stuff in here that could bring me down,” he mumbles, folding the mess up on his way back to the table.

  When he returns, the manager is waiting to escort him out. Rain flooding the streets is gunfire in his head. He slaps at his skull while he waits for an overcrowded bus to stop.

  Donny thwacks his muddy work boots against his truck. His cell is ringing the special tone. He holds up a finger to the impatient engineer.

  Gus has left his shit (Mrs. B says “excrement”) on the table at Alberto’s Pizza. Donny listens, but the phone cuts out so he asks her to repeat it. She does. “I can’t just leave,” he shouts at the phone. “I’m the fucking guy in charge,” he says, instantly regretting his tone. He punches the truck door, feels acid backing up in his throat. Donny digs his boots into the muck. Mud sucks his ankles until his boots disappear to the top red stripe of his wool socks.

  Beetles storming hi
s lids, something loose crawling. Riding back to the HMS Shitstorm from Alberto’s Pizza, Gus paws his eye socket, fist deep, until he sees lime-coloured streaks. He slides the bus window open and breathes, the stench of sweaty fish seat making his stomach churn.

  At the next stop, the bus door opens with a shudder. Bookbag waves from the aisle, then sits down next to him.

  She’s dressed in black, wishbone thin, prickly teenaged forehead. Gus watches her smooth back her raven hair, bunch a ponytail she never fastens. Her fingertips sift and sort, thunderbolts, won’t stop moving light around.

  Gus pockets his balled fist. He tries to focus on the brittle slogans screaming across her tits: No blood for oil. Draft beer, not war. Fuck yoga. Seeing the bulge in her breast pocket, he taps two fingers to his lips. She slides out a Player’s Light and hands it to him.

  “You okay, Gus?”

  Gus drives his palm heel into his cornea. Her voice, too shrill. He closes his droopy lids, makes a wish, opens—she’s still there. Emma twisting the curling iron at her cheek. An orange ball bursts from the rod, ashes dusting her gingham blouse. A mouth opens—a thousand night birds shrieking.

  Gus pulls out the spoon he’s stolen from the restaurant, licks the metal, and sticks it to his chin.

  “That’s cool,” Bookbag says, “like a shiny goatee.” She rakes her fingers through her tangled hair.

  Gus can’t stop the screams, sees all the bones in Emma’s cheek shattered. “Savemesavemesavememoneybackguarantee.” Gus’s mouth begins running on bus rhythm.

  Bookbag pulls Gus’s hand from his face, gently turns it over. His whole body vibrates while she smoothes the padded skin. After a while, Gus’s baggy body slumps down in its seat. Together they look out the rain-spattered window, watch the hanging duck breasts glimmer along the gluey sidewalks of Chinatown’s Dim-Sum Drive.

  “This is me,” Bookbag says, rising uncertainly. “Gonna be all right?”

  Gus hauls her back down. She stiffens when he slaps something into her hand. A wad of bills crackles in her palm. Gus is rocking in his seat again.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll keep this safe for you,” she says uncertainly. “Four more stops then pull the cord. See you tomorrow?”

  Gus watches Bookbag climb down the stairs, light up, blow a silver plume through the open doors. He fans the sulphur sting, feeling sharp metal boxes clang and clip the corners of his skin.

  Mrs. B is waiting for Gus in the doorway, knowing better than to make him talk. She leads him back to his room and settles him down on the bed.

  “Trouble comes,” she says, patting his hand, then pulling a tight arm around his torso. “Blame genes, or blame Jesus, just don’t let it get you down.” She rises to fetch water for his pills. “Better tomorrow.”

  Gus lies with his back against the wall, watches the floor beams split, the light shattering him into a thousand pieces.

  Two heel-clicks, three stomps down the hall before lights out. When Joe knocks on his door, Gus doesn’t answer. Gus swallows two white pills, letting the night swarm slowly under his chin. Metal flies and bounces from the top of his skull. Knife-prick fingertips until his hands go numb.

  By 3 a.m., he is still wide awake. His knocking head won’t quiet. He decides to slip downstairs to the kitchen, grabs his favourite apple-green cereal bowl from the cupboard. Mrs. B is lying on the living room couch, a wet facecloth across her forehead. Gus fills his bowl with Cheerios, tucking the box under his arm. Creeping past Mrs. B, he sees her hand jerk on her belly. He bends over, kissing her lightly on the lips. Her eyelids flutter but she hardly moves. Padding back up to the third floor, he pushes on to the end of the hall, closing the bathroom door behind him.

  From the back of the toilet tank, he removes the pills he’s been collecting all year. He drains the last of the Cheerios box, mixes the blue turtles and O’s with water, watches the candies sink and toss in their oat sea. He tosses in another few. He pulls the restaurant spoon from his khakis’ pocket and stirs the mess before shovelling it into his mouth, craving a long, cement-headed sleep.

  Mrs. B is clutching the cordless when Donny arrives. The ambulance attendants are balancing Gus on the stretcher as they descend the stairs, Joe yelling at them to hurry.

  Donny orders them to put his brother down in the living room. Reluctantly, they set their burden down. With all his force, he lifts his brother’s torso from the stretcher, works his way down the arms, torso, feels for the broken soul bones.

  Sirens silent, he watches the ambulance roll down the street.

  Donny motions he’ll be right back, needs to get the cell from his truck to call his wife. He closes the front door, making sure he hears the solid click.

  In the truck, he steers straight for an after-hours bar. Head swimming in booze, he drives until he remembers.

  On his way home from his buddy Cheevie’s house, pie-stuffed and pleased with himself after winning drunken Pong on Nintendo. Light on in his sister’s room above the garage. When the acrid stench reaches him in the hallway, he mounts the stairs two by two.

  From the doorway, Donny sees Emma on her knees, hair locked in a curling iron set flat against her skull. Smoke streams from the brittle strands of Emma’s hair. Everyone is screaming. Lying next to his sister, Gus is face down, his right hand closed around a pair of scissors to set Emma free.

  Head swimming with Cheevie’s dad’s cheap rye, he watches Emma punch out weakly with her left arm. His mother is giving Emma the old Fingernecklace from behind, her hands locked around his sister’s fragile windpipe. Donny touches his throat. So drunk he can hardly move.

  It won’t stop.

  Not when Emma falls forward, face striking the bed stand.

  Not when his mother tears the electric cord from the wall, lifts the ceramic lamp overhead.

  Parked on the demolition site, Donny sucks in a chestful of diesel. The smell comforts him, in a quiet way, as dawn breaks between glass and steel, bathing Yonge Street in fractured yellow hues. He bends to tighten his bootlaces, then rising, deliberately smashes his face against the side-view mirror.

  Gus and Mom and he and Gus and Pinky and Joe and the sharp, bottomless world tucks a rusty hook in his mouth, hoisting him over the city twenty storeys. His swooning face a wrecking ball, Donny cracks a fat-lipped grin, the momentum in him growing, knowing now he’ll never be able to avoid the crash.

  K’ARI FISHER

  MERCY BEATRICE WRESTLES THE NOOSE

  Ghost-Mom has been hanging around me all evening, smoking her cigarette. When she was alive she always had a pack of her fer shit sake sticks nearby in case of an emergency. Now that she’s dead, a machine-rolled Du Maurier hangs endlessly from her lips. She sucks on it pathologically. In the last few months, I’ve yet to see her need to light a new one.

  “Why are you here, Mercy Beatrice?” she says. Her see-through body bristles up like a used scrub brush. “I told you to stay away from this place.”

  Here is Bodie, British Columbia. Bodie used to be a self-sufficient whistle-stop along the Canadian Pacific Railway during the lure of Gold Mountain. When the rush was over, they flooded 920 hectares of forest to power the twin turbines running the aluminum smelter on the other side of the cordillera. Now all that remains is my father, his junkyard that operates off scrap brought in on the train, and Pauley.

  I know she isn’t really angry because I’m in Bodie; she just wants to know why I’m hanging around my father. My mother’s ghost is a bit like the ones in those Biblical bully-fests she used to read to me at bedtime. Her voice comes from a bottomless pit, and there’s a warning in it, like she’s asking for some sort of repentance, but I don’t know what for. What does she expect me to do? Air-grip her legs and squirt tears of supplication out of my eyes? She’s on repeat: Why are you here? I told you to stay away from this place … over and over. When she sucks in, the fiery cherry burns off her fog-body and evaporates her mouth.

  The first time I saw her here, wind was tearing through the rusted carcass
es in the junkyard, gathering speed off the reservoir. It was a few days after I’d arrived and she surfaced suddenly, as if she had always been there, but the wind took away the haze, leaving behind only the stubborn: the rocks, the trees, my mom. Immediately, cold goosebumps prickled up along my arms, but when I went toward her, there was nothing—no smell of her tar soap or trace of acrid cabbage soup on her breath. I cautiously waved my hand through her torso. She just stared and drained her cigarette like she always did when she thought I was being theatrical.

  I have to admit, Ghost-Mom looks amazingly accurate, even down to the wiry dark hairs on her forearms, the muscular face, and the thin lipless dash of her mouth. She’s always dressed in her professional wrestling costume, the one she wore when she performed as “The Polish Poo-Bah,” with the blue tights and a flowing shirt with a wide red belt cinched around her diaphragm where her breasts should be. Her cape, with its carefully embroidered gold crucifix, falls flat against her back and its stiff collar rises behind her head like an old carapace. All I had when I got to Bodie was my suitcase and my dad’s old trading card, fished out of the garbage from one of Mom’s tossed cigarette packs years ago. The picture was taken around the time my parents met during a mixed tagteam event, when he was one of the world’s most feared heavyweights. He had just won the 1940 Midwestern title. His name, “Little Lew,” sashays across the stiff paper and underneath my father looks out like an Adonis.

  When I handed over the money I got from Mom to buy the train ticket, I slipped Dad’s card into her empty cold-cream tin to take with me and held tight. All I knew of him was what was found on the back of that card: 6 feet 2 inches tall; 140 consecutive wins; 350 pounds, plus an anecdote describing how he once jumped off a balcony with a noose tied around his neck while he whistled “Yankee Doodle”—and lived due to the impressive strength of his 22-inch neck.