No Good Brother

We smoked in the darkness next to the paddock and Jake explained what he could. It was as if he needed the shelter of the shadows to let some of it out. He said that a lot of what you saw on TV and in films about being in jail was bullshit. But not all of it. It was true that sooner or later you ended up needing protection, and when you accepted that protection you were expected to repay the favour some other time.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ he said.

I said I did, or thought I did. At the same time, I didn’t understand at all.

‘What do they want you to do?’

‘Just one thing.’

‘A big thing.’

‘Not so big I can’t handle it.’

‘And then?’

‘That’s it. I get paid and that’s it.’

I said, ‘It’s not legal, though.’

‘That goes without saying.’

I leaned my elbows on the railing, and stared at the empty field. It was mostly hard-packed dirt and on the far side a few show jumping obstacles seemed to hover in the dark.

I said, ‘I just don’t get it.’

‘It’s not complicated.’

‘I mean how this is happening. How this has happened to you. We’re not bad guys. We had a decent family. A pretty nice house, even. Hell, we had a fucking vegetable patch.’

‘That’s all gone and you know it. It’s as gone as that hand of yours.’

I flexed my broken fingers, feeling the sting of the cold. Sometimes, I almost get used to the injury. Other times it catches me off-guard and I see it for the first time, or I see how people react to it. Then I wonder: what the hell is this mangled thing at the end of my arm? But Jake was right. It had all happened and this was where we were at, him and me.

I tucked the hand in the pouch of my hoody, warming it.

I asked, ‘What exactly are you supposed to do?’

‘That’s hard to say, at this stage.’

‘Well, when will you know?’

‘By the weekend. Saturday. It’s happening Saturday.’

‘Why Saturday?’

‘It just has to be Saturday.’

‘I hope you don’t expect help from me.’

‘I don’t expect anything from you.’

‘I’m working till Saturday, and then I’m heading up to Albert’s cabin, with Tracy.’

‘I know you got your other life, now. I just wanted to let you know what’s going on in mine.’ He patted me, a little too hard, on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s have another shot and play the slots.’

Chapter Four

By the time the clubhouse closed we’d lost about fifty bucks – most of it mine – playing video poker and since we didn’t have enough cash left to pay for another cab we had to ride the night buses back across town, by a route that seemed circuitous and convoluted to me in my drunkenness but which I now suspect was deliberate. Jake’s bartender friend had sold us a mickey of Seagram’s for the road and we passed that back and forth between us as we rattled along Victoria. We were sitting side-by-side and I could see our reflections in the window across from us. We looked pretty haggard: just a couple of bums, beat-up and worn-out.

‘Can you believe,’ Jake said, ‘that these places are worth a million bucks?’

He was looking beyond our reflections at the passing houses: one-storey clapboard or stucco boxes, with rusty fences and overgrown yards. But Jake was right about their value.

I said, ‘Every house in Vancouver is worth a million bucks or more.’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

‘No way we’d ever be able to afford a place.’

‘You make decent money.’

‘It’s seasonal. And there’s Ma.’

We got out near Hastings and instead of waiting for another bus just started walking. By then it was past midnight and everything was closed except a few late-night pho noodle houses. A car tore down the strip and the passenger lobbed a half-empty can of beer in our direction. It skittered across the sidewalk at my feet.

‘We could go see Ma next weekend instead,’ I said. ‘After I’m back from the cabin and you’re all done with your “little trip”.’

Jake made a vague sound in his throat. ‘I might be gone for a while, with this thing.’

‘Where the hell you going?’

He took a long pull on his smoke, the flare illuminating his jaw and cheekbones. He exhaled using an old trick of his: blowing smoke through his gap tooth, which makes this eerie whistling sound, high and long and lonesome.

‘It don’t matter,’ he said.

‘Then it don’t matter if you tell me.’

‘You got any cash you can front me?’

‘I knew you wanted something,’ I said.

‘That’s me. Always mooching. I’m the mooch and you’re the Scrooge.’

‘I give you plenty.’

‘Like all the money you gave me to help me get back on my feet.’

‘You still sore about that?’

‘I know you had some.’

‘That was for Ma’s care.’

I pulled up my hood and cinched it tight, using it like blinders to block him out. I walked with my head down and my fists tucked in the pouch of my hoody, cradling my bad hand with my good one. We passed a rundown apartment block and a couple of empty lots and in time came to an intersection, where Jake stopped. I looked up. I hadn’t been paying attention and I couldn’t understand why we were waiting there when the walk light was green. On our right was a used car lot and on the corner across from us was an auto repair shop. I knew those places. I knew that intersection. Hastings and Clark.

‘Oh,’ I said. Just that.

Tied to a directional sign on the meridian, on our side of the intersection, was a bouquet of lilies in cellophane wrapping. Some of the petals had fallen off and lay on the concrete divider. I removed my hands from the pouch and stared at the street and the asphalt, which the rain had left all slickly glistening, like the surface of a dark pool. I figured this final stop had been part of the night’s plan – just as much as the Firehall, and the stables.

‘You put those flowers there?’ I said.

‘You sure as hell didn’t.’

He walked to the centre of the crossroads and uncapped our mickey and poured what remained of it out on the pavement, the liquor glinting gold in the light of the streetlamps and spattering into a small puddle. It was a melodramatic gesture and no doubt partly staged for my benefit. When he was done with the ritual Jake went over to the meridian and laid the empty bottle at the base of the sign, beneath the flowers. He picked up one of the petals.

‘Fucking cheap bouquet,’ he said, which struck me as a very Jake thing to say. ‘I spent fifteen bucks on these shitty flowers and the goddamn petals are already falling off.’

He tried to throw the petal, and of course it didn’t go anywhere. It just fluttered to the ground and landed in a puddle.

Before moving to France Sandy had several more shows to perform with her old company at the Firehall. On that night, the last night, I didn’t see her dance because I was working as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant downtown. It was my day off but I’d offered to pick up a shift and of course that’s one of the things I can’t help thinking about, and hating myself for, because if I’d been at the show I would have waited for her and we would have driven home together, probably along a different route and definitely at a different time. Jake did see the show – we always saw her shows when we were free, even if we’d seen them a dozen times before – but he had Maria with him so didn’t wait around to say hello to Sandy afterwards, which I know is something that haunts him even more than my absence haunts me.

Since neither of her brothers was there after the show that night, Sandy changed and showered and had a glass of soda and lime with her friends and then left the Firehall at five past ten. She had a small white Nissan hatchback at the time and that was the car she was driving. She drove east on Hastings with her windows down, which she always did after a performance, even in winter, because it took hours for her core body temperature to fully cool down. She was going forty-five kilometres an hour, five klicks under the speed limit. I often think of those moments, of that drive with the open windows and the cold coastal air and the sea-brine stench of the city. In my mind and memory, I elongate that stretch, grant her just a little more time. I know she would have been filled with the feeling she always got after dancing, a feeling that she’d never been able to fully describe and which I can only partway imagine: riding that updraught of endorphins, gliding along like a hawk, the world all in focus, clear and sharp as cut glass. I let that elation last for as long as possible.

In reality she only made it ten blocks. At the Hastings and Clark intersection her car was hit broadside by a black Mercedes going a hundred and eight kilometres an hour. The whole front of her car was sheared away and the rest went spinning into the meridian. There is no doubt about any of this because it was not so late that there were no witnesses.

At that point she was alive but unconscious.

At eleven twenty-nine the emergency crew arrived. They examined the car and found that the driver’s footwell had collapsed inwards, crushing Sandy’s legs. The steering wheel was up against her sternum and most of her ribs were broken and her collar bone and breastplate and a lot of other bones, too. They had to use the jaws of life to cut her out. There was blood, of course. Her legs were mangled. They put a tourniquet on each, above the knee, and got her onto a stretcher and gave her blood and oxygen, and that was when she came to, waking into the nightmare of what remained of her life, and started to scream in pain and fear and shock.

Jake and I squatted together on the kerb and stared at the spot where all that had happened. There was nothing to say about any of it and so we didn’t, but simply sat with our elbows on our knees, hands clasped in front of us like two men praying to a saint. I thought vaguely about whether Sandy’s blood had reached the pavement, mingling with the oil and coolant from the destroyed car. If that had happened it had long since been washed into the gutter and down the drain and out through the sewers to the sea. There was no trace here of the sister we’d once had and that fact was brutal and eternal and unalterable.

Eventually Jake stood up and I did too. We crossed against the light and plodded on in a mute and morose daze. Jake was staying at the Woodland – this dive hotel further along Hastings – but instead of heading in that direction he walked with me towards the waterfront. Off to our right was the DP World shipping terminal, where industrial cranes loomed up like monstrous mechanical insects, soulless and indifferent. At Main Street we crossed over the railway tracks and circled back to the Westco plant parking lot. I could see the Western Lady in her berth, the windows dark.

Jake held out his left hand and I took it, and we shook formally, like strangers.

‘I’ll be seeing you, Poncho.’

‘Just tell me what you’re up to.’

‘I’m up to no good – what else?’

‘Seriously.’

He considered it, and said, ‘It’s better I don’t tell you if you’re not going to help.’

‘Do you need my help?’

He put his hands in his coat pockets and kicked the ground. He looked at the water, and at the sky, and then he looked back at me. His features were softened by shadow and in that one moment it was as if he’d aged backwards, losing some of the edge and hardness that prison had given him. Back before Sandy’s death, and all that came after. Back before what Jake had done and what he had become. And when he spoke, it was in the voice of that boy.

‘You’re my brother,’ he said. ‘I’ve always needed your help.’

He turned and walked away from me and then – maybe realizing that was a bit much, a bit too over the top – he flipped me the finger and called back: ‘Stay gold, Poncho.’

‘Nothing gold can stay.’

I watched until he merged with the darkness and faded out of sight.

Chapter Five

One of the last jobs we did each year was to offload the supplies that Albert and Evelyn had brought from their house and didn’t leave on the boat during the off-season. It included a mix of cutlery and crockery, pots and pans, sheets and bedding, dry goods and perishables, and also Albert’s power tools, which were top-of-the-line and worth a pretty penny, as he liked to say. Security at the boatyard wasn’t great and there had been a couple of break-ins over the years.

Thursday Tracy came to help with the unloading. She drove Albert’s truck down to the plant: a big Ford Ranger with a tonneau cover. With Albert and Evelyn, she and I began loading all the supplies into a wheeled skip alongside the Western Lady. Evelyn and Albert carried the boxes onto the deck and I lowered them over the gunnel to Tracy, who arranged them in the skip. She did this in a practised and specific way, so that all the different items fitted together, snug and intricate as a jigsaw.

‘You haven’t forgotten,’ I said.

‘Heck,’ she said, dropping a box of frozen fish into place, ‘it ain’t been that long.’

‘You miss it?’

‘I’ll be back, once I’m qualified.’

Evelyn, who was coming on deck with a sack of flour, overheard and said, ‘She’ll be skipper some day, if I can ever convince that man of mine to retire.’

‘Hope there’ll still be room for me,’ I said, and took the flour from her.

‘There’ll always be a place here for you, Timothy.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘Don’t know what I’d do without your cooking.’

‘Lose some pounds, I reckon,’ Tracy said.

I patted my belly, which was getting substantial. ‘It’s all muscle.’

Albert emerged from the galley, his boots clomping loud on the deck, a box of pots and pans in his arms. He must have overheard us, because he added, ‘Boy’s still a rake, compared to me.’

We laughed at that, politely, and continued handing boxes and bags to one another, like a game of pass-the-parcel. There was a familiar rhythm to it all, and to the dialogue, too.

The morning air carried a frosty, refreshing sting, and behind the clouds the sun glowed like an opal, and everything felt just fine while the four of us worked together. But eventually Evelyn stepped out of the galley and made a criss-cross motion with her hands: no more.

Tracy said, ‘I’ll wheel the skip up to the truck.’

‘Leave that to me and the greenhorn, princess,’ Albert said.

‘I been with you for years,’ I said, ‘and I’m still a greenhorn.’

‘You’ll always be a greenhorn,’ he said. ‘Leastways till you grow up.’

He stepped down from the boat, moving heavy, and we both leaned into the skip, pushing it on rusty wheels down the dock, up the gangplank, and then along the wharf.

‘You thought any about coming up to the cabin?’

‘I thought plenty about it. It sounds real nice.’

In two days they would be locking up the boat and heading out to Squamish. I still hadn’t given any clear indication one way or the other whether I’d be going with them.

‘I could use some help up there. Got a copse of spruce to cut down.’

‘It’s just my mother is the only thing.’

‘Your mother or your brother?’

I didn’t answer immediately, and I guess that was answer enough.

‘You two had a good time the other night, I gather.’

We’d reached the parking lot, and turned the skip towards his Ranger. We positioned the skip at the back, and then Albert locked its wheel brakes and dropped the truck’s tailgate.

I said, ‘He’s a hard fellow to say no to.’

‘His type often are.’

‘He ain’t a type.’

‘I know that.’

Albert shielded his eyes, gazing back down at the boat. Tracy was on the aft deck, waving to get his attention. She held an imaginary phone to her ear, and motioned for him.

‘I’ll send Tracy up,’ he said, ‘to help you load.’

He headed back. He moved slowly – Albert never rushed – but each stride was solid, deliberate, purposeful. As I waited I massaged the fingers of my bad hand, feeling the little nubs that had healed over. A few minutes later Tracy came down the wharf. She clambered into the back of the truck, hunching beneath the tonneau, and I lifted boxes up to her, one by one. As we worked we chatted about her night job, and the training she was doing.

‘It’s just a piece of paper. I know all I need to know about boats.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘But it’s got to be done, if I’m gonna take over.’

‘You ready for a life at sea?’

‘For two fisheries a year, anyway.’

‘I can think of worse ways to earn a living.’

I said it the way Albert might have, which got her laughing. When we finished with the unloading we stood leaning against the truck, jawing for a time. She asked – as casually as possible – about the cabin. I looked down at a coil of rope in the skip, really considering it. I mentioned my brother, and him maybe needing my help. It sounded about as vague and suspect as it no doubt was.

‘But I’m not sure yet,’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard from him since the other night. If I do have to stay around here, though, I could always come meet you up there a couple days later.’

She nodded, but I couldn’t really tell what she thought, of any of it.

‘You don’t talk much about your brother.’

I pushed away from the truck, and picked up the rope. I started knotting a bowline – just to be doing something. ‘You remember how bad off I was, when I first started working with your dad?’

‘No shame in that. You’d lost your sister.’

‘Well, Jake took it even harder than me. He was younger. Our pa died when we were kids and our ma didn’t always have it together. Sandy, well, she was like a parent to the both of us. And after what happened, Jake just got on the wrong track, if you know what I mean.’

‘He went to jail.’

I nodded.

‘Is he getting back on track, now?’

I grunted, snugging up the bowline, and then held it at eye level, checking my work. Through the loop, I could see gulls circling above the cannery, lured by the stench of roe. They went around and around, white scraps in a whirlpool, slowly going down.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t reckon so.’

The night Sandy died Jake got to the hospital first. I don’t remember much of my own drive over there, or finding the emergency room where they were operating on her. It’s all just impressions, really. The glare of those fluorescent tube lights. A hallway lined with white tiles, shiny as a sheet of ice. At that time I didn’t know much. Just that she had been in an accident and had been rushed to Vancouver General, which was the closest hospital to the scene of the crash. They hadn’t told me it was bad or that she was not likely to survive, and I suppose those are the kinds of things they don’t tell you over the phone. She had both our numbers and the home phone number in her emergency contact details on her cellphone and that was how they reached me at work, and Jake, who was with Maria. Our mother had her phone off – she was at a movie with a friend – and so they couldn’t get a hold of her. She had a few more hours before she found out, and in a way I envy her that extra time.

When I got to Emergency, Jake was standing alone and staring hard at a glass window that was covered by venetian blinds. He was staring at the blinds as if he could see through them. Looking back now, the intensity of his expression – the tightness in his jaw, the hard look in his eyes – seemed to signify the beginning of the change that occurred in him. I grabbed him by the shoulder and asked him what the hell was going on and he told me that she’d been T-boned by a drunk driver, and I asked him if it was bad and he said that it was – he said that it was very bad and after that we didn’t say anything.

I went over to a coffee machine in the corner and stared at it. I suppose I went over to it because I’d seen people do that, in TV and films, but I didn’t want coffee or anything else. I went back to Jake and we took up the vigil together, staring at those blinds. Everything that happened to Sandy happened out of sight and out of our realm of knowledge and understanding. I didn’t know what the regulations were at the time about relatives being in the emergency room, but in retrospect I wish we’d forced our way in there to at least be by her side. As it stood we were excluded, relegated to the role of bystanders during those final and definitive moments.

People passed us and at some point a nurse asked us if there was anybody else we should contact and we both looked at her, dazed. I had to think of the question again, going over the words in my head, before I mentioned our mother and that she ought to be called but that one of us could do it. The woman moved away and Jake said he’d already tried Ma. I was fiddling with my phone, thinking I ought to try again, when the door to the operating theatre opened and a doctor came out. He had taken off his gloves and cap and mask but still had his scrubs on and the front was spattered with blood. I knew that it was Sandy’s blood and knew, too, by his expression that she was dead even before he came over and opened his mouth and said words to that effect. For a few minutes I shut down and was vaguely aware of Jake talking to the doctor in intense, terse tones, and when I tuned back in Jake was asking if we could go in and see her. The doctor said it would be okay but asked us to wait while they cleaned up the operating room. He stepped away from us gently, cautiously, moving backwards and keeping his eyes on us, as if he had a feeling that in our grief we posed a potential problem.

The door shut for a few minutes and opened again and the doctor came back out, and the rest of the trauma team came with him this time. They looked at us with sympathy and timidity and the doctor said we could now go in to see our sister if we wanted. He also said something about needing us to come talk to him afterwards but I don’t think we ever did.

The room was smaller than it had looked from the outside and darker than I expected. They had left the overheads off and turned out the surgical lights and the only illumination now came from a bedside lamp that cast a grim yellow glow. Jake closed the door behind us, shutting out the noise of the ward. Any surgical tools and instruments had been removed, and the machinery all around her that had presumably been working to keep her alive, or monitor her life, was still and quiet. The dim silence had a dense and murky underwater quality to it, as if we had locked ourselves in a submersible and were slowly floating down, away from the world of light and warmth that we had always known, towards some place else.

Sandy lay on the operating table in the middle of the room. Her lower half had been covered by a sheet. The sides of the sheet were bloodied. We went to stand on either side of her and we each took one of her hands and the one I held felt as warm as my own, as warm as it always had. Her face was bruised and one cheek swollen into a grotesque bulge but she was still recognizable as her, or what had once been her. Jake reached down for the sheet. When I saw that he was going to raise it I looked up and away, at him, so I never saw what happened to her legs. But I sometimes think that seeing the reaction on his face was worse, in a way.

After that I did something odd. I walked over to the corner of the room and sat down and sort of curled up, like a child or a wounded dog. Jake, he stayed beside her. I could hear him talking to her in low and tender tones and even though I couldn’t make out the words I knew what he was saying and just wished she could have heard it. Through all of this I’ve never been tempted by any notion of comfort in another life and have no doubts that what was lying on the table was no longer our sister, and in that state had meaning only to us.

The door opened. I thought it would be the doctor coming back, but when I rolled over I saw it was somebody else – a younger woman about our age. She wasn’t in the OR scrubs and instead wore some kind of blue uniform. She stopped and made a startled sound and put her hand to her mouth. I couldn’t stand but managed to sit up, facing towards her.