The Path of Most Resistance

by Russell Wangersky

  “It has to change,” she finally said, the first words across the breakfast table in weeks, pressed out carefully between her lips as I brought the newspaper down to half-mast to listen.

  “What has to change?”

  “You have to change,” she said. “For my sake.”

  I didn’t know what to say. She looked away, and after a few minutes of silence, I ended up safely back inside the tent of the newspaper. But I wasn’t reading. My head was spinning. She didn’t say anything else.

  I came home after work, and she was gone. One of the old suitcases was gone. Her car was gone, and there was a note in the kitchen that just said, “Think about it.”

  “I’m listening, I’m thinking. I always am.” I even said it out loud. But the kitchen stayed quiet. My newspaper had been folded in half and put into the recycling bin, just like every other day. There was a grocery list on the fridge, and when I opened the door, there was a single pork chop defrosting on a plate on the top shelf. Somehow the pork chop, sitting there alone on its plate, only made the whole thing worse.

  This will pass, I thought, and until it does, I can make toast. I can cook eggs. I can be ready when she calls.

  She didn’t call.

  Smitty is right out there in front of the module for the last leg, walking backwards with the remote controller for the hauler hanging on the front of him on its neck straps, driving the whole thing like he’s playing a video game, even though his eyes never stop moving. His feet never stop moving either, because he can’t see both sides of the haul at the same time. Smitty’s the one I always pick for the controls: Smitty was the one I picked.

  His fingers barely move, hardly more than twitch, but the all-wheel-drive hauler reacts right away. When it gets tight, I put Smitty out in front, and I put spotters on all the corners along with one guy who just watches the top in case anything shifts. Heck, maybe one of the street lights angles down just a little too much and, if no one notices, we hook it with a corner or something. The power company’s on call in case that happens, but this company’s tight with its cash. Other places, they’d send a truck out to bird-dog us the whole way.

  We’ve been stopping every five hundred yards or so, checking the chains and the tensioners the way we’re supposed to, even though I’ve never had one of them shift after I’ve checked it, before we roll again. There’s only so much time to do the whole haul. I have commitments made that are going to be kept.

  Two inches is a tiny amount of space, not even enough room to squeeze between the rig and the bridge railings, so the only way to get to the back is to climb over the top of the rig and make your way along the gangway that’s built right into the module for when it’s set up offshore and operating. I can’t send anyone up there when we’re rolling, so the front and back talk back and forth on walkie-talkies. I’m watching Smitty and he’s got an absent-minded little smile on his face, like he was actually somewhere else and if I didn’t know him so well, I would have been worried about that. It takes a lot to stop that much weight, and I made sure ahead of time there’d be no one in the dockyard until seven — no one in doing any unscheduled overtime, no watchman out for a little fresh-air stroll — because just a little nudge from all that weight and there’d be a lot more than a beer bottle falling into the yard. It would be raining concrete.

  One of the new guys on the crew yells and Smitty stops right away, but it turns out to be nothing — a piece of tire retread that he thought came from one of our wheels, but that one of the spotters had seen on the side of the road from in front, and kicked away from our tires. We get going again. I’m not even looking at my watch anymore, because we’ve got a tight right-hand turn and a straightaway all the way to the docks even after we get through this squeeze, and I’m pretty sure rush hour’s going to catch up with us before we get it there. Suddenly there’s a racket and I see Smitty’s hands come flying off the controls, usually unflappable Smitty, and everything stops all over again.

  But this time, it’s not any of my crew shouting. I look down over the side of the overpass, the rig right next to me pressed up against my side so I can feel it trembling while it sits there, waiting, like a big animal waiting for a chance to pounce.

  Forty feet down and off to the right, there’s a car stopped on the street with its headlights thrown out across the pavement, both of its front doors open, and there’s a young woman on one side of the car and a man on the other, and the early morning air is so darned heavy and still that I can hear their voices as clearly as if they were right up there on the overpass with us.

  First she yells and then he yells, back and forth, back and forth like a tennis match with words, and he calls her a bitch and she calls him an asshole. And then she calls him a “dickless wonder” and it’s like that strikes a chord with him and his arm comes up, almost like it’s on strings and he’s cutting the distance between them, his fist making little darting motions like it first has to find the measure of the air and the physics and the distances involved. Engineering a way from his fist to the side of her face. Forty feet down and two hundred yards away.

  This would be the time when it would be nice to have some of those police cars that are supposed to be escorting us, but they gave up for a nap when they saw how slow we were going to be going.

  I let out a yell from all the way up on top of the overpass, it feels like a quarter of a mile away. “Hey!”

  Nothing more than that, just enough to let him know that he’s not all alone with her down there, that there’s someone else who can see what’s going on.

  He hears my voice and looks up at me, his face little more than a pasty smear but turned up my way for sure. He looks up long enough for me to know that he’s seen me with all that orange and blue and yellow metal piled up behind me, like I’m a circus barker for an industry freak show, and then he turns and starts walking toward her.

  She’s not even yelling anymore, just watching and backing up, her hands thrown out in front of her now, wrists turned — and the only sound I hear is the grumble of the engine from under the rig.

  Smitty is looking at me with his hands hovering over the controls, not touching them. The crew knows not to move the thing as much as an inch without my say-so. I look at them, and I look back over the side, where the man is closing in on the woman.

  I watch from the overpass, knowing that I’m the one that’s going to have to go down there. That my schedule is now truly going to be shot all to hell — but screw it. And I’m going to have to run. Closer to sixty years old than to forty, and I’m going to have to run.

  Me, the only one who ever gets anything done. The only one who can fix things.

  That’s what they just don’t understand.

  Then I’m yelling, “Hold on, Bev, I’m coming,” and I’ve already got my fists up and I’m running as fast as I can.

  To everyone at House of Anansi — most of all my superb editor, Janice Zawerbny, publisher Sarah MacLachlan, and the absolutely irrepressible Laura Meyer — my deep gratitude.

  To my agent, Shaun Bradley, thanks again for helping to negotiate (literally and figuratively) the wilds of the Canadian publishing industry.

  To our youngsters near and far, much gratitude for your patience and understanding.

  Most of all, thanks to my wife, Leslie Vryenhoek, for her unswerving support and faith in my work.

  Russell Wangersky is the author of five books. Most recently, his crime thriller Walt was named one of the top crime books of the year by the National Post. Wangersky has won, or been nominated for, numerous awards for his writing, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the B.C. National Award for NonFiction, the Edna Staebler Award for Creative NonFiction, the Thomas Head Raddall Award for Fiction, the BMO Winterset Award, and the National Newspaper Awards. He is TC Media’s Atlantic regional columnist and lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this da
y even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”