Down with the Underdogs

by Ian Truman

  “We play rugby together,” was my answer.

  “Yeah, we were there. Openside for the other team works for us.”

  Openside for the other team? Who the fuck was that and where is “openside” in rugby to start with? Now, that was a problem. The guy didn’t ring a bell, and I felt stupid for two reasons. First, he may have played for real and I couldn’t remember who it was, and second, he was fucking with me and it was working.

  “The way you played,” the RCMP continued, “I’d say you don’t know much about the sport.”

  “Recently unemployed. Seemed like a good time to learn.” I wasn’t biting. He knew it. “I’m a guy people can work with. I’m the guy who’s trying to stay right in the middle and see things through,” I said. “But you’re not gonna trample me.”

  He started to look around for a moment. A group of young urban professionals were crossing the street ahead, four guys, all looking like a slightly different version of the same guy. Same difference, same patterns, same life, so fucking boring. I was judging them pretty harshly from my seat in a federal car. The class rage just never went away.

  They had no idea anything in particular was going on. I would have had a hard time believing they were born in Montreal. That was new-rich money right there. I was a new hire for the mob, cutting deals with the RCMP, and they were just having coffee on the way back from their tech jobs.

  “All right, listen,” the federal guy said. “You just started working—”

  “Exactly. I just work. Every man needs to work.”

  “Plenty of other jobs around.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He scowled. “They all say that. All the tough guys say that. ‘I don’t care!’ Shit! They all think they don’t care about violence or they don’t care about prison. And you know that’s the truth right there. That’s what’s waiting for you down the road. It’s violence and prison.” He looked away for half a second and dove right back into it. “All the tough guys. You all talk shit, but when it comes down to it, I haven’t seen that many guys actually hold their ground when the reality hits. Do you think you’d be happy in prison?”

  “I don’t care what the work is. Could be lifting boxes, could be driving around, doesn’t matter to me because right now all I need is a fucking job and I don’t care.”

  “Do you think you’ll be better off when someone beats you up? Kills you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You got a wife, kids?”

  I grinned, and so he knew.

  “You think they’d be happier if you’re dead or in jail?”

  “Murder rate’s pretty fucking low.”

  “And yet you just made the list of the very few people who could get shot in this city.”

  “You can literally do the worst thing in the world. People will let you do it if you had a good reason for doing it.”

  “That’s a nice little phrase. That’s a very nice-sounding phrase right there. I don’t know where it’s from, but it sounds so good it could excuse everything, right? The philosophical implications are pretty shitty, though, aren’t they?”

  And right there he had me. I was tired and fed up, and it just got out. “You know what? Fuck you. Two years ago I had a brother. Two years ago my brother was killed, and I swallow that pill just fine. I worked that shit out, but then six weeks ago a series of garbage trucks left with what was left of the shit, fucking building I worked in, and now I’m fucked. A week later they put up a neat little billboard with a nice, rich young professional couple on it, like these motherfuckers right there,” I said as I pointed to a group of four waiting on the corner.

  “They even added fancy glass swings,” I continued, “next to that fucking sales office they got set up because the rich, they like their little fancy shit, don’t they? They’re rich. They don’t give a shit either way about me or guys like me, right? Probably don’t give a shit about you neither. Just do the job, keep the place clean, and the developments going, right? Fucking cops, man, you think they’ll care about you once they’re done? They don’t give a shit about you more than they’d give a shit about me. Six weeks ago I had a decent job and a steady income. And then just like that—” I snapped my fingers, “—no job, no income, no food, no home. I have my mother living upstairs where I can take care of her. I barely have room for myself and a place for my kid. A’ight. So save me the moral fucking bullshit, Mr. I-Know-Everything, because you look like you should fucking know better.”

  I was out of breath but not out of anger and my right hand was rolled tight into a fist.

  “You done?” he said.

  I could only answer, “Yes,” in contempt.

  “I’m starting to like you,” he said,

  “That’s good to know.” I looked away.

  He hesitated about something. I could hand it to him: the guy wanted me free and alive. I really believed that.

  “All right. Listen to me,” he said. “Go home, sleep, and have some breakfast. Go to Service Canada, look for a job or some training or something. You do seem like a good guy, and trust me when I say this, I don’t hand out compliments that often.” He paused. “You look tired.”

  “I know. I am,” I admitted. I took a deep breath and thought about it. I really needed a few good nights’ sleep.

  “Stop with the tough-guy bullshit, all right? You don’t seem like that guy to me. Honestly. So listen, I know how this works. I know how this works extremely well,” he added as he handed me his card. “Give me a call when you get in over your head. Don’t think you can avoid it. You’re bound to crash someday.”

  And there you had it. Some federal unit wanted me as a snitch. Didn’t think I’d go there, but it could prove as useful as it could prove dangerous. On one hand, I could get some leverage, send information where I needed it to go, maybe even move some things around thanks to that guy. That was my way of seeing it. I wasn’t so sure about Sean or Karl or even my boss. My pieces were entering into play without even me asking them there, but they were on the fucking board to stay and I knew that very well.

  Russell Lauw, the card read. That and a phone number and a nondescript e-mail address. Black ink on white paper. I flipped it back and forth.

  “Chinese?” I asked.

  “Taiwanese.”

  “Close enough.”

  “It’s not the same,” he snapped at me. He seemed to take the difference seriously. Maybe they hated it the way the Irish hated to be called Scottish and vice-versa.

  Then I asked, “Vancouver?”

  “St-Catharines,” he replied. “Ontario.” He was done being nice.

  Oh, well, I thought. There go the clichés.

  Chapter 6

  I had money. I know it might sound stupid, but when you’ve been short for the better part of the year, having something as simple as a few hundred bucks is a fucking bliss.

  We didn’t really need anything, not really. Diapers, food, bills, all of that was taken care of. That could have been enough, but money had a certain way to burn your fingers like nothing else in the world.

  We rented a car and Patricia drove us out to the mall. We got her some yoga pants and mats in one of those fancy stores I never even imagined walking into. She looked really fucking good in those pants. One look at her ass, and I stopped wondering right there what the hype had been all about.

  “You can wear those all day, any day,” I told her.

  She was happy about that and let me know with one of those glances of hers that could melt an Irish heart. There was a little bit of her shoulder showing, and that always meant she was in a good mood: plenty of smiles and attention in the form of voluptuous grabbing and prolonged kissing.

  When she was done with her shopping, I wanted to get something for Liam. I wanted a lot of things for Liam. The kid was asleep and, well, the kid was too young to want anything, so this was really all about me, and sometimes that was fine, too.

  We walked i
nto Toys “R” Us, and I just started to pick up everything and anything. Science kit, there you had it. My son was gonna be an engineer. Crayola rack to the left, and a set of paint-it-yourself mugs, and why not make it as an artist? A set of Nerf guns for the fuck of it. I wanted to buy anything. I could actually afford anything. My kid was still wearing diapers, and I was walking around planning his goddamned college application like he was walking into McGill. That was a good idea right there: college. That kid was going to spend the rest of his days behind a desk and collecting dividends if I had anything to say about it. To hell with the working class, and to hell with the struggle.

  Having a thousand to spare will do that to a man like me.

  I dropped another toy box in the cart. “You’re crazy,” Pat said.

  “I’ll narrow it down at the cash register.”

  “No, you won’t. Ou est-ce qu’on va mettre tout ça?” She laughed, wondering where we were gonna put all this.

  “Peu importe,” I replied. “On the couch.”

  “You’re sleeping on the couch.”

  “I’ll sleep on the toys, then—” eyeing a display in the video-games section.

  “Liam doesn’t need a PS4.”

  “Oh, that one is for me. And Phil, maybe.”

  “Uh-huh!”

  “You’ll get to play too if you want.”

  “Un-huh!”

  “Anything else you want? We can go anywhere. I got all day.”

  “I want a Jeep.”

  Didn’t expect that.

  “A Jeep?” I asked.

  “New job. New life. We need a car. I want it to be a Jeep.”

  I thought about it. We could use a car. We wanted a car. I wanted a car. Might as well be a Jeep. She’d look good in a Jeep.

  “I don’t know if we can afford that just yet.”

  “You could forget about the PS4.”

  “There’s a pretty good sale right now.”

  “No, there isn’t,” she said with a smile. She crumbled up some store flyer and threw it at me.

  “How about we start with, like, a Kia or something?”

  “Nah-ah! A Wrangler. Straight up.”

  “A Wrangler?”

  “Yeah!” Her eyes lit up.

  “Oh, you’re a demanding woman,” I joked.

  She had that smile on her, that smile that was a pinch in the corners of her lips and that look in her eyes that could make me do anything in the fucking world. I knew that look. We were going to buy a Jeep soon enough. That much I knew.

  “All right, we’ll look into it.”

  “Yay!” She jumped, clapping her hands.

  I smiled, and she kissed me. She ran an arm around me, and I wasn’t shy with my hands either. Felt the good flesh of her lower back and moved on to her ass without any shame. It felt good to have money. One job for the mob, and the wife was happy for once, and I was happy. I was buying a fucking PS4, and I was looking into buying a fucking Wrangler. A few more and I could move my ma out of my second floor, get her something good and brand new in one of those towers they were building.

  Why the fuck not? Right. A few more jobs, and anything could happen.

  Chapter 7

  It didn’t take long for my next job to come in. Sean called me, said, “Tomorrow afternoon. Bring a few guys who can hold their ground.”

  I didn’t feel like suffering Karl’s bad mood that day so I called Phil and Ryan. Karl had gotten one job, one easy job, so why not spread the money around?

  The guys didn’t seem pissed that we hadn’t spoken in a while. One simple text saying “wanna get something to eat?” and that was done. We met over at some deli in St-Henri a few hours later.

  I walked in, and the guys were already there. Ryan was busy talking to the cook, who also looked as if he owned the place. They were arguing loudly and sounded like something you’d hear on the trash-talk radio.

  “Hey, D’Arcy!” Ryan gave me a big fucking bear hug. Phil got up to do the same.

  “Osti, ça fait du bien,” he said. “Câliss!” he added as he took me in a big bear hug.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Sorry I didn’t call sooner.”

  “Est-tu fou, osti, tu viens d’faire un flot, voyons donc,” Phil said. You just got yourself a kid. That was true.

  I didn’t mention that I probably wouldn’t’ve called them even if Liam hadn’t been born. Not after Cillian’s death and the thing in Hamilton.

  “Vincent, this is D’Arcy,” Ryan said, introducing me to the cook. “D’Arcy, Vincent.”

  “Nice to meet you. How you doing?” Vincent said loudly.

  “So, how’s business?”

  “Meh! It’s all right.” It didn’t take long to notice the guy had a mouth. “It could be better,” he said, laughing. “It could always be better but it’s okay. It’s all right. So, what are you into?”

  “My job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shipping,” I said. Technically that wasn’t entirely a lie.

  “No shipping happening right now? Two in the afternoon.”

  “Hey, I run the place. I can do whatever I want.”

  “So, you the big boss, eh?”

  “I’m a boss, not the boss.” Now, that was a half-truth. I did prefer half-truths to outright lies.

  “Good. That’s good for you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What can I get for the boss, then?”

  “Two hot dogs, mayo, and a coke.”

  “All right,” Vincent said. He turned to some kid over at the counter. He was busy on his cell phone. “Hey, Michael. Two steamé avec mayo.”

  “Add a fry to that.”

  “Avec une fritte.” The kid wasn’t moving. Vincent sighed, I laughed.

  “Coming up,” the kid said with his thick Québécois accent, pronouncing every syllable where most Anglos would have cut it sharply at the n. He finished his text and finally got to work.

  Vincent looked at us. “Eh, I’m gonna have to get rid of that kid.”

  “Doesn’t work much?”

  “He’s got a girl on his mind that one, I tell you.” He ran a wet dish towel over his counter.

  “Don’t we all?”

  “I mean. I’m no brain surgeon. But he’s not going to school, he’s not really working. I got him here part-time, and as far as I know he’s got nothing else going.” He sighed. “C’est ben’ triste quand tu y’ penses, I don’t know. Maybe he’s too dumb for this. He’s not looking to learn the job. This is a subtle business, you know?”

  “A diner is subtle business?” Phil asked.

  “Of course it is. Are you kidding me?”

  The waitress came around to toss empty plates in a dirty grey bin, “Vince,” she said, “deux poutines ’pis une rondelle su’a trois.”

  Vincent quickly shouted the order in Frenglish to his cook and leaned back on his counter. “It’s like in the morning, he makes the eggs and half the damn egg is sticking there, burnt to the plate. Une croute ça d’épaisse, osti. And I tell him, ‘Jesus Christ that’s my profit you’re burning over there.’ And I’m not even talking about the time we’ll waste cleaning this mess up. Ciboire! Où l’autre jour,” he sighed. “I mean we get some of those fruit flies in the garbage back there, ’tsé! Ta-bernak! Some mess that was. So I go out and they sell me this powder to put in the bottom of the bags and this kid he sees the powder and he doesn’t ask about it and the bag’s empty and he just changes it. No wonder I’m losing my shirt over this place.”

  We all thought it was funny. We all smiled and had a good time. The guy was probably just as broke as he was saying he was. There’s no way there was any real money in food services. But it was the way he turned all of it into a grandiose story of life and death.

  I liked it. I liked it a lot.

  “He doesn’t get it,” Vincent continued. “Y’ comprend pas,” he repeated in French. “You got to count everything. Every bag, every egg,
every bun, everything, Ostie. Otherwise you’re eating your profit, ’tsé.” The deli’s phone rang. Vincent picked it up and shouted, “Yeah?” He paused for a second and then started speaking Greek. He looked back at us and switched to French and English again, “Heille ça s’en viens là, guys! All right? Deux minutes, okay?” before going right back to shouting in Greek on the phone.

  There was no other way to say it: I fucking loved this city.

  The food came and we moved to a booth in the middle of the place. Vincent got back to his burners and his bags of bread and steamers full of sausages. Some of the shifts ended at three-thirty and no matter what people in the new towers would like to believe, this was still a working-class town.

  “So, what you’ve been up to?” I asked the guys as I was making myself comfy in the booth.

  “Not much,” they both said.

  “Come on man. Nine months I haven’t seen you guys. Ten months maybe.”

  “I don’t know,” Phil said. “I’m thinking of moving back east.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just doesn’t feel like home anymore.”

  “Magic is gone?”

  “Fuck yeah,” he said. He was honest about that too.

  “I know the feeling.”

  “I mean, I’m walking home from work, you know and I’m walking across the bridge.”

  “Took yourself a piss in the canal? Didn’t you?” Ryan asked.

  “Like every morning for the last eight years and counting,” Phil replied.

  Then he got theatrical. “So, there I am, ready to take my leisurely piss in the open air toilet that used to be the canal, and so I’m walking there over the bridge and it’s just beautiful, you know? The port and the Saint-Lawrence away in the distance. It’s five a.m., the breeze is nice against sensitive the skin of my fabulous testicles and I’m looking at the scenery. There’s some fucking seagulls flying, swimming, shitting. I’m starting to get the work shift out of my system. You know the feeling. That’s when I hear ‘What the fuck?’ and so I look down. It’s fucking five in the morning and there’s some fucking hipster down there in a kayak in the canal like it’s a goddamned place to fucking kayak. He just looks at me and says, ‘What the fuck are you doing up there, man. It’s disgusting.’ So I answer, ‘What the fuck are you going down there. Don’t you know that’s a fucking toilet down there?’ He looks pissed but he ain’t gonna do shit about it. What the fuck’s he gonna do about it? Climb up here with that paddle? He’s got that look, too, he’s got that Santa fucking beard they all got and some tattoos that are just, like, lines and shapes and shit.”