Once You Break a Knuckle by W. D. Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

The water swam with sediment. I had Bellows’ shoulder wedged against mine but I thought I could smell Charlie – the scent of citrus fruit. I’d have given anything to switch places with Bellows.
    Charlie dangled the Crown Royal between her thighs. —I can’t drive stick, she said.
    â€”It’s just timing, Bellows said.
    â€”You could show me.
    â€”Yeah, if the time’s right.
    He never closed the deal. Charlie offered him more whiskey but he had to drive. Out of courtesy she offered me some and I tried to taste her lips on the bottle. Then we heard boys yell and tires screech, and when we looked at the Camaro there was Ham’s truck and a bunch of guys scrambling out of it. Bellows straightened. I caught Charlie’s eye and I could see that she wished I were not there. Bellows took off in a sprint. By the time he reached the parking lot the hicks had scratched Fucking Fag across the Camaro’s hood with a key.
    Ham was halfway inside his truck when Bellows heaved him to the asphalt and kicked him in the ribs, hard. He grabbed Ham’s hair in one fist and cracked him in the nose, and cracked him again, and again. Other hicks climbed from their truck but one glare from Bellows made them wait it out. The whole time Ham blubbered like a kid being beaten. He was saying sorry. He was saying he was so sorry.
    When Bellows finished, Ham’s face was puffy, as if by bee stings. He went fetal. Bellows had blood and snot on his knuckles and teeth marks in the bone and one hand had swelled to the size of a ten-ounce boxing glove.
    â€”Call someone, he told me.
    â€”Bellows? I said.
    â€” Call someone , he said again, this look in his eyes as if he meant help me .
    Bellows’ parents didn’t take well to the news. In a few days his dad made plans for him to hash out his last school year in Manitoba, at that community for JWs. It was August. Town slowed to a drift. Summer jobs ended and kids hit the streets to meander their dwindling freedom. Me and Bellows did what small-town boys do. We got shitfaced on cheap vodka and pinged rocks off coal trains. We made half-hearted attempts to score girls. In the dirty hours of the morning, with the sun cresting the Rocky Mountains, we traipsed down the street and discussed anything except the fact of our parting.
    In four months I’d be in the thick of my grad year and Bellows would join the Canadian Forces, take his knuckles overseas to the sandblasted Afghanistan dunes. There, some iron shrapnel would open his throat like a quartered grapefruit and he’d see God as things go blue. I’d graduate at the top of my class, and on the evening of convocation Bellows’ old man would show up and pat us all on the shoulders. I’m still not sure why he came – to look for ghosts, maybe, or to hang on to something. At the end of the night he caught my arm and hissed, —You wereeverything to him. A decade later I’d need a new electrical panel and the electrician turned out to be Ham, clean shaven and ready to make a name for himself. —Whoever woulda thought? he’d say to me.
    But that’s summer for you. Or, that’s summer for me. These nights are short, and some evenings I sleep and wake and dream, here on this porch, until the sun lifts over the mountains. Bellows was the only guy who ever bared his teeth for me. Even my dad, rest him, never had the stones. When night recedes and the dawn turns cobalt, I shuffle inside and put music on to make it sound like there’s somebody home. I pour myself a drink. There are probably a few things left unsaid between me and Bellows, but that ship, as my dad used to say, has run aground.
    This is how me and him say goodbye: on the eve of his departure we climb into the Camaro and blaze around the gravel pits with the headlamps dark, and we bawl and laugh and hug and skid donuts until we’ve kicked up so much gravel it’s like a sandstorm passing in our