Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

She was trying to possess him, and love was not about possession.

  John, being the wolf that he is, feasted on these little bunnies, all the while telling his deluded wife that they had crushes. All these women had become of their own accord infatuated with him because he was simply so irresistible. And he was trying to let them all down easy is what he told George when she questioned the time spent alone with them.

  They were deeply wounded by some other fellow, he suggested, and this suited George’s purpose finely as it kept her pretty picture hanging on the wall a little longer. Her husband was the most sought-after man in town and he had chosen her above all the others, which meant she was the most talented and desirable woman.

  The best woman.

  And she fucking well needed that to be true after what Andrew had done. So she feigned ignorance. Even when she caught him touching Sarah’s cheek in the doorway. Even when Sarah moved to the other side of the world without warning. Even then, George pretended that it had nothing to do with John.

  Acknowledging for a second that John could have played a role in a woman running for her life was more than George could get a handle on. It was better to sacrifice the next round of young servers. And so George left him to it so that she could pursue George stuff. She deserved that.

  Though sometimes when she ran off to conferences in Dubai, she thought, I am close to Sarah, Sarah is not far, I could ask her. But she did not dare send the woman a message because sending her a message would be like inviting the truth in. Any contact with Sarah would result in George knowing things that she did not want to know.

  Namely: John is a lying cheating son of a bitch who has never been faithful to an idea let alone a woman.

  And now here’s Iris, screeching into the tablecloths.

  John, get our coats.

  * * *

  Calv has wrestled Roger to the ground just beyond the delivery door.

  The wind is gusting something hateful still and this had worked momentarily to Calv’s advantage. He had tried hard to reason with Roger.

  Calv finds it fucking infuriating when people don’t listen.

  His collar has always shot up hot when he says something that garners no response. People should fucking listen to him. Roger had somehow made his way to the parked truck with Calv blindly bawling down Water Street until making his way up one of them nothing side streets meant to connect you to more important streets. He tries to convince Roger that the truck will be fine tucked in there. But Roger can’t be persuaded. He says he’ll have a little lie-down in the truck and then drive. But that’s crazy too. They can’t very well both go to sleep in the parked truck idling in a blizzard on Valentine’s Day.

  What if they suffocates accidentally? What will everyone back home think?

  So, he smacks at the keys when Roger pulls them out to unlock the doors. Beep beep goes the truck and then ba-bam! Right down across the portside of him. And it is likely that Calv’s level of inebriation such as it is has made him throw in a little too aggressively and he has by all accounts given Roger the best kind of wallop. He recognizes he overdid it when Roger cowers from him with one shoulder up and arched in expectation of a beating. Calv recognizes this posture from their childhood. Roger’s older brothers right regular gave him a trimming for being younger and smaller than them, like it was an offensive choice he himself had made.

  What’d you hit me for, Calv b’y?

  Roger says this in a timid voice and Calv almost regrets the course of action as he roots around for the keys in the slob hole where he saw them land. He’s turning to explain when Roger gives his backside a little kick and he falls palms-first into the wet snow. It is freezing and full of grit from the ground. Roger is demanding his keys back. He is standing up in the fucking moonlight with his hands hung but Calv can see him curling and uncurling his wrists hung alongside that blown-open ski-doo jacket.

  I hates your fucking coat!

  Calv don’t know he is saying it until it is well gone out of his mouth, and the effect it has on Roger is one of shock. That was not what he was expecting, and the combination of information and countering narcotics delays his reaction long enough for Calv to gain his purchase and start off across the road. Roger is travelling behind him bawling slurry gibberish about just taking a nap in the cab of the truck. But Calv don’t believe it. Cause Roger is a jesus liar. He always has been. Since they was boys and playing guns out behind the shop.

  Gets them in over the tops of their rubbers every time.

  They were liable to die in the fucking truck, Calv is yelling back after him. That’s how people commits suicide. Don’t you fucking know anything? Jeremy’s older brother in the gear shed in he’s Camaro that time in high school. That’s what he done. And Roger stops momentarily to take this in cause he never knew that before.

  Really?

  Yes, Jesus!

  Why’d he do that?

  Cause he was low minded.

  I would never do that.

  I knows you wouldn’t.

  No one would believe it.

  Sure they would.

  No b’y.

  Found dead together from carbon monoxide on Valentine’s —

  Go on.

  — they’ll say we’re queers.

  No, they wouldn’t.

  Yeah, they would. You knows they would.

  The delivery door opening surprises Roger and Calv into silence. And the blowing blistering gale provides a temporary shake tent of sound that they hide inside until they hear the door close shut again. The emerged person tries to light a cigarette, hands up, flick, flick, but no flame proceeds from the raw scratches. He stands there swearing and shaking the lighter to release that last bit of life-giving fluid.

  Damian had been inside listening to the triangle walls come apart in the kitchen.

  He had been quietly eavesdropping, a forefinger to his lip, facing Omi, who was trapped in the adjacent dish pit afraid to run the water. Through the crack in the swing door, he could see Ben across the hall with his back pressed against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest.

  The linen cupboard had grown quiet so Damian had thought the worst had passed. He motioned to Ben that he was going to have a cigarette at which the bartender waved him off, bewildered that anyone could think of smoking at a time like this.

  That’s what he knows, Damian thinks to himself. When shit goes down, Damian is filled with an almost destructive urge to shove a whole pack in his gob and light the works on fire. What do he need them lungs for? He’s not running any marathons, is he? The people that do only seems marginally better off anyhow. Listen to George out there in the dining room quietly crying as a member of her staff sobs into the table linens. She don’t exactly have her licked out there just cause she can run twenty odd jesus miles.

  I knows you.

  And Damian let the lighter drift in the direction of the voice and now he has no lighter. The words through the snow startled him. These words full of conviction and rage. Deep and foreboding, just loud enough to reach him through the weather. Followed almost immediately by another voice.

  You don’t know him, come now we goes.

  Damian had suspected that Calv had recognized him. All afternoon and evening. He had been certain of it because Calv had been sober when he walked in and out of the hotel that night.

  He was working there.

  Yeah, course. We just ate there.

  No, not there. There.

  Roger b’y, you’re loaded b’y.

  You was working at that hotel, wouldn’t you?

  And Damian says nothing.
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  Wouldn’t you? Before Christmas.

  Because what can he say?

  We had a party there one night.

  Come on, Roger b’y, let’s go, I’m froze.

  We had one of them little tarry hookers.

  And rage is weird. Sometimes it feels like getting sick. Or like you’re physically exploding. Like your guts and bile and blood are trying to fast escape your body. Every hair on end, rising, like striking an electrical field where everything becomes heightened. And you are hyper-aware of yourself and the moves that you make or don’t make and time is moving but immovable and it is like you are once again a small child with the will to rip the head off your sister’s Barbie because you wanted a Barbie but they won’t let you have one.

  The night you raped the shit out of her, he says.

  And rape is a powerful word well-despised by rapists the world over, because they rightfully don’t like being called out for what they are or what they do as it will for sure impact their ability to continue doing so. Not full on prevent them from continuing to rape, but it is a kind of inconvenience in life moving forward.

  Roger has Damian’s staff shirt hauled over his head before he has time to elaborate. Had Damian played hockey past Peewee, he would have seen that obvious move coming. But he didn’t because, like Roger is informing him now, he’s just some fag. And Roger is giving him the boots straight over his ribs with the full motion of one side of his whole body weight, back and forth, contact, breakage.

  I never raped no whore you fag.

  Never raped no whore you fag.

  Raped no whore you fag.

  No whore you fag.

  Whore you fag.

  You fag.

  And the details are lost in the night as Damian feels the blood come into his mouth and thinks with a quiet confidence that he deserves this. He deserves all of this. Every bad thing that happens to him is because he deserves it.

  Thwack.

  It is a strange hard noise a cold metal fan hood makes clipping a drunk man across the jaw. It reverberates and echoes in the wind. The crunchy noise of the sharp corner connecting with bone followed by the bellow of pain and confusion as they all look up to see Omi holding junk metal, heaving his chest, full of adrenalin upon discovering two men murdering his co-worker in the alley.

  This is what Omi is thinking as Calv drags Roger away from the smoking nook.

  Omi is thinking that he has saved Damian’s life. He is watching the trail of blood left behind, half expecting more to emerge from behind the snow. He is standing there holding the fan hood up, his trunk rising and falling, ready to strike again if need be. Damian never stacks his plates properly and pretends to not see the full garbage bag but he is a friend.

  And Omi doesn’t let a friend get beaten to death in the snow.

  * * *

  John hands George her coat.

  She pulls it on over her shoulders and places her hands in her pockets. But it is not right.

  There is something wrong-feeling. She wraps her right hand around a familiar piece of plastic and her left around a small peanut-shaped biscuit. These are correct feelings, but across the shoulders is all wrong. She pulls both hands out and holds them out in front of her. The blue plastic bag is perforated every six inches and attached to another blue plastic bag for tearing. It is covered in little bones, an unnecessary decoration that George has thought amusing and altogether tacky. She has always, until now, smiled pulling these bags from her pockets. Dog bags everywhere. Everywhere. But she is not smiling now.

  This is not my coat.

  What?

  This is not my coat.

  Of course it is.

  No, it’s not.

  It looks like your coat.

  It’s not my coat.

  It’s my coat.

  And of course it’s Iris’s coat. And of course he doesn’t know them apart.

  All coats look the same to him.

  And George remembers herself less than twenty-four hours ago feeling triumphant for having gotten home. She had gone to airports hours early in Toronto and then Halifax. She had placed her name on lists and paid change fees, bartered politely with the airline staff. George had done everything to get home to John for Valentine’s Day.

  She had flown through bad weather for him not once but twice.

  The first flight turning back to Halifax just as they reached Bell Island. Then circling, the quick plucks upward, George gripping the armrests, her gel nails digging into the hard plastic. All the hopeful women trying to get home staring at the tiny airplane on the little lit screen, willing it not to turn around until it does. The moans from the cabin, even a small groan from a member of the cabin crew behind them and out of sight. George remained hopeful until the pilot announced they had to turn back to Halifax. And then the crying from the disap­pointed knowing that it would be days now before they actually reached their destination. Well past any point of romance.

  Missing their chance.

  And the attendants at the customer service desk had no time or patience for silly soft-hearted women trying to get home to their partners because they weren’t home either so they had no empathy to share around. Instead, they chastised the rumpled passengers about the realities of flying in February as if every Canadian didn’t already know that flying in the winter was a punishment. As if there was any other way to get to Newfoundland. As if feelings were rational.

  They were forced to ready themselves for the Dartmouth Holiday Inn, order terrible pizza and search Nova Scotia basic cable for HGTV. But not George.

  Different kinds of planes can land in variable weather conditions, so George booked all the planes. Stayed at Stanfield the whole time, which is Eastern purgatory for haughty Newfoundlanders. Some feel a part of civilization just being in an airport, but George is seasoned and not impressed by the offerings. Fast food. A fountain. It is vaguely skeety. But she stayed there in the event that something could get off the ground, and travelled to get home to a husband who seemed startled to see her.

  Surprise, she said.

  Surprise, he said weakly and kissed her on the side of the mouth.

  He had kissed her on the side of the mouth, avoiding her ready-puckered and persistent lips. She assumed something horrible about her sleepy breath.

  But it was because he had been with Iris. George sees that now. He had been with Iris and Iris had been walking her dogs.

  You walk my dogs.

  And Iris just doesn’t want to face this kind of hurt in another lady so hides her eyes in her hands.

  You walk my dogs.

  John’s locus of control is legless as he searches for a quiet way to remove them from this place.

  You walk my dogs!

  Sometimes.

  My dogs.

  Sometimes I walk your dogs.

  They can’t run after they eat —

  I know —

  They’re barrel-chested.

  I know.

  You know?

  An hour. To prevent bloat.

  Bloat can kill.

  Yes, yeah, I know.

  And when the dogs run into the restaurant wagging their tails it is to see Iris. And when she saw Iris walking them last winter it meant she had been walking them last winter. How many months was that? How long ago? George’s vision blurs. And there was a night before that, a Basia Bulat concert, George had been unable to go, Board of Directors meetings for RANL, so John had gone with people from work, he said. That was before the winter. That was in the fall. October. Two Octobers ago. The BOD meeting had been cut short b
ecause the Chair’s children were sick and throwing up. George had been so careful to not touch anything. She had a trip to Singapore she just could not miss. So she went to find John and the people from work. They would be easy to spot.

  But when she got there she could not see them. She walked around and around. She drank a Blue Star on an empty stomach. She texted John. When finally she spotted him, he was leaning over Iris at the bar by the bathrooms, whispering something in her ear. She had her elbows on the bar behind her, her hips jutting out. When George walked over, John looked surprised but put his arm around her and kissed her on the side of her mouth. Leaned into her ear. Said, it is really loud in here.

  Later, he left.

  He left the bar without telling either of them. Iris said he was not feeling well. Headache. Gone home probably. George texted John. He said he needed some quiet. But she didn’t go home. She stayed out with Iris. Stayed right beside her the whole night. Needed to befriend her. Needed Iris to know her because knowing her would prevent it from happening. George only realizes this now. Only now knows why she followed Iris from bar to bar that night in October even after it started to rain. George never stayed out when it rained. The rain made her bangs go funny.

  You bought me a beer that time.

  I did.

  You were on a date with my husband.

  And then I was on a date with you.

  Putting her fist through the first pane of glass brought shock. George’s capacity for it was shocking. But like any good student, George learned to lean into it as she smashed each individual pane of glass in the French door over Iris. The shards of glass cutting her arm from wrist to oiled elbows. Coconut oil would not fix this. The broken panes ripped at her flesh as she tried to push the broken glass in on Iris, toward her, closer, toward her neck and face. It was not Iris specifically George wanted to slice apart but the conditions that brought them so low. All of them. George wanted to smash that knowing intangible thing up. She wanted to sweep it into the trash. Have it taken out. Take it outside. Drag it off to the dump. Incinerate it. But the ways of being cannot be scorched as easily as a French door held fast closed by your husband’s girlfriend can be smashed in her face. Larger pieces of glass landing at her feet. She’s no socks on in her ballet flats. No fucking socks.