Blood Sports

by Eden Robinson

  While Jeremy burned the clothes in the wood stove, Tom pounded the bones into fragments. They’d placed them in a thick sack and Tom wailed on them with a sledgehammer. The sun was high. Jeremy kept feeding wood in the fire. The heat in the shack was ferocious. Tom shed his gloves, shirt, hip waders – everything down to his shorts. He paused, dizzy. He caught Jeremy staring at him. Sometimes his cousin stared too hard. Tom used to think it was the coke, because he’d seen Jeremy stare at a rug or tree bark with the same intensity, like he had X-ray vision and you harboured a bomb he was going to have to diffuse. Tom lifted the sledgehammer and pretended not to notice. Jeremy snapped back to the present and fed more clothes in the fire.

  Tom thought of Paulie to get through the rest of the afternoon. Little things, dumb things they’d talked about or done. A few days ago, they’d had a long, meandering chocolate discussion in front of a hospital vending machine, trying to decide what candy bar to get. She didn’t like cream-filled chocolates, but she could stand the nutty ones. She liked caramel, but not chocolate-covered caramel, which she said was overkill. They’d ended up with a bag of Doritos and Tom had fallen asleep on them and squashed them into crumbs.

  “Is that my fault? You put them away. You have to find them yourself.” The woman rolled her eyes, smiling lopsidedly, half-turned and leaning against the pay phone under the Carnegie stairwell, inviting Tom to participate in her telephone fight with a guy who was currently screaming through the receiver. “Well, then, you’re going to be late. Baby, I’m not a fucking psychic. I can’t make your keys fucking levitate to you so don’t yell at me. Stop yelling.”

  Tom heard the people in line behind him shuffling impatiently, clearing their throats loudly, hinting at Not Psychic to hang up.

  Not Psychic turned away from all of them. “Baby, I can’t do anything. I can’t.”

  After waiting in line for so long, Tom realized he was going to have to make a phone call or look like a total doorknob. He didn’t have anyone to call. Jeremy wouldn’t take his calls since the blow-up with Chrissy, and his family was staying out of it. Tom could phone the Kingsway Motor Inn. See if his mom was home yet or still hiding out with the rehab boyfriend. He didn’t really want to talk to his mom. He was tired of the pointed, hurt silences and the unsubtle hints she wanted Tom to see a shrink. Maybe she was trying to help. Maybe it wasn’t punishment for having secrets that made her nervous. He wondered what she would do if she knew everything.

  Someone pelted Not Psychic with an apple core. She glared behind her, her eyes shifting, studying them as she continued to argue with her boyfriend. But she finally took the hint and wound down, saying she’d be home with pizza slices.

  Tom pulled a matchbook out of his pocket. The motel clerk patched him through to his room and the phone rang and rang and then was sent back to the front desk.

  “You want to leave a message?” the clerk said, sighing, and from his tone, obviously hoping the answer would be no.

  “I’m staying in room 220 with my mother,” Tom said. “Did she leave a message for me?”

  “No,” the clerk said.

  “Oh, okay,” Tom said. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah,” the clerk said, hanging up.

  Paulina was gone. Tom waited by the desk, wanting to leave but also wanting to see her. He waited and waited because he had nothing better to do and nowhere better to go. He considered asking the other volunteers when her next shift would be, but then he thought better of it. He scribbled a note for her. Tom, here. Just checking in to say thanks for bringing me to VGH, for hanging out. His phone number, in case she didn’t run away, screaming.

  “Does she know you?” the guy taking Paulie’s place said.

  Tom nodded. “We went to high school together. We were in band.”

  “What kind of band? Speed metal? Punk?”

  “High-school band,” Tom said. “She was a flutist.”

  “Man,” the guy said. “You think you know someone.”

  The Kingsway Motor Inn was two stories high. Age had stripped the stairs of paint, revealing grey, grease-stained concrete that was black in the middle where everyone walked. A waist-high iron railing rusted all along the edge of the covered walkway. Dotted with the grey skeletons of plants, terra cotta planters now served as neglected ashtrays.

  They had moved into the corner room on the far side of the motel the night they left Jeremy’s condo. Tom knocked on the door, just in case. She didn’t like to be surprised. The room was empty. His mother used to leave him notes telling him not to worry, that she was out with friends. He never thought he’d miss being called honey bunny, sweetie, doll face.

  As it touched the horizon, the sun broke through the rain clouds, flared orange, and then faded. Tom leaned against the railing. He almost convinced himself he wasn’t watching for her. He brought a chair onto the walkway. Put his feet up on the railing. He smoked a joint, waiting for the soothing effect to kick in, for the blunt.

  She hadn’t even left the phone number of the rehab boyfriend. He had no way to reach her. He resented the rising panic he felt, the pictures in his head of her body in an alley, washed in rain, lifeless eyes turned to the sky.

  He wasn’t a kid. He could leave. He could get up and walk out, and she could take her passive-aggressive bullshit and eat it. Because that’s all it was. Bullshit. He wouldn’t do what she wanted so she didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Let her cool down, he’d told Jer.

  Jer with his head lowered, beer in one hand, sullen and silent.

  His mother and her sudden need for space: days and days of not seeing her, worrying the way she wanted him to worry.

  Jeremy was entirely capable of making their lives history, a sentence on D72 of the newspaper tucked in between the robbery gone awry and the car crash that held up traffic and killed a family of four. And she wanted to press assault charges.

  It’s not fair, she’d say. He shouldn’t get away with it. You’re letting him get away with it.

  He went back in the room, shut the lights off one by one, ignoring a growing sense of urgency. He left the hallway light on. He pulled his covers back, and shoved the extra pillows into position so that it looked like someone was sleeping in his bed. He heard voices outside in the parking lot, a woman’s pealing laughter, a man’s grumbling chuckle. He had frozen without realizing what he was doing. He took the cushions from the grungy plaid loveseat and made a bed in the hallway closet. He lay down. He carefully pulled the closet door shut.

  His breathing sounded loud to him. If he fell asleep and someone came in, they would be able to hear him breathing. One part of his brain was saying, this is stupid. Go sleep on the nice bed. Another part of his brain was saying, go get a knife. Put it under your pillow.

  They’d come a long way down from the condo. In the bathroom, he watched a line of ants trooping back and forth from under the sink to a crack in the flowered shower tiles. Tom splashed water on his face, trying to get into a semi-normal headspace. He heard a tentative knock on a door.

  “It’s okay,” Tom said. “I’m decent.”

  After a long pause, the knocking came again, a little louder, more urgent. She’d probably forgotten or lost her keys. Tom wiped his face. He hoped she was going to talk to him tonight. He loathed her silent treatments, her offended sulks. Sobriety had made her unexpectedly judgmental, and she made it clear she found him unworthy.

  “Hi,” Paulina said, cramming her hands into her pockets.

  The world was suddenly soundless. Traffic streaked behind her, tracers of light reflected off the wet pavement. Rain, backlit by the streetlights, sparks falling. Paulie’s hair frayed loose from her bun, a wispy crown around her solemn face. Her eyes black in the dim light of the covered walkway.

  “Hi,” Tom said.

  2. Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.

  The pedestal fan by the window blew in the dusty smell of car exhaust from the traffic clogging the stre
et in front of Paulie’s house. The heat coming through the ceiling from the roof made the air sticky. Tom and Paulie had lazy morning sex, with long pauses when they stopped to go to the bathroom or eat the wrinkled oranges they scavenged from the bottom of Paulie’s cocktail fridge. Afterward, they lay on their sides, resting their foreheads together.

  The woman next door talked on the phone, complaining about her haircut, the parking-lot attendant who made her late for work, the shiftless co-workers who dropped their work on her desk before they took off early for the long weekend. The sprawling house had been divided into seven bachelor suites and everyone seemed to be home today. TVs and stereos played different shows and music and the sounds garbled. Outside, someone mowed their lawn. In the distance, fire trucks honked, blaring their sirens.

  Paulie raised her head, propped it up with her hand and stared at him, letting her fingers wander around his face, tracing his eyebrows, his nose, his cheek. She tilted her head back and squinted. “Fuck. That can’t be the right time.”

  She scrambled out of bed and tore open a drawer. She jumped into a pair of underwear and then pulled on a bra.

  “What’s up?” Tom said.

  “I’m late for anger management,” Paulie said.

  “Oh,” Tom said. He pushed himself up, yawning.

  “Relax, hang out,” Paulie said, flapping open a folded pair of jeans. “I’ll drive you back to the motel after.”

  “No rush,” Tom said.

  “You should phone her before she calls in the army.”

  “We’re barely talking. She’s probably relieved.”

  “So you’re going to stay the night again?”

  Tom shrugged. “I can stay or go.”

  “I need to get out tonight. The walls are closing in.”

  “There’s fireworks,” Tom said.

  “Fireworks? Jesus fucking Christ, Tom, I’m not four. I need grown-up fun.”

  “Give fireworks a chance.”

  Paulie gave him a quick peck before she was out the door.

  He put an arm over his eyes to block out the light. If his mom wasn’t going to tell him where she was spending her nights, he didn’t see why he should. Let her wonder. The guilt crept in. That logic ranked right up there with sticking out his tongue and going nyah-nyah, especially after his disappearing act last year. He listened to the background noise for a few minutes longer, and then he pushed himself out of bed and hunted through his pants for the phone number of the motel.

  “Kingsway Motor Inn,” the clerk said.

  “220, please,” Tom said, feeling his shoulders tighten in anticipation of a fight.

  “Just a sec,” the clerk said.

  Tom could hear a voice in the background complaining about the quality of the TV reception. The phone clicked and then rang again.

  “What?” a guy said.

  Great. She’d brought a date back. “Hi. Is my mom there?”

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “Tom Bauer. Christa’s son.”

  “I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Chrissy. Chris. Look, tell her if she doesn’t want to talk to me, that’s fine.”

  “You got the wrong room.”

  Tom listened to the dial tone, wondering if his mom had told the guy not to tell him she was there. Tom had run blocking duty for her too many times not to know that trick. He phoned the motel again.

  “Kingsway –”

  “Christa Bauer, please,” Tom said.

  “Give me a minute,” the clerk said. Tom could hear the slow click of hunt-and-peck typing and then a long pause. “She checked out last night.”

  “That can’t be right,” Tom said. “I’m staying with her.”

  “I’ve got her signature on the credit-card receipt. She checked out.”

  “Did she leave any messages? I’m her son. Tom Bauer.”

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  “Are you sure? Can you check again? Try Tommy Bauer. Or Thomas.”

  “Uh … I’m sure. She didn’t leave anything. Sorry, man.”

  She checked out. She hadn’t left a phone number. Instead of wondering and worrying about where he was, she’d taken the opportunity to sneak off. Like all her dumped boyfriends, Tom hadn’t seen it coming. She was saying, you think you’re leaving me? Ha. Not if I leave you first.

  The lobby had vaulted ceilings like a church. Two room-sized tapestries faced each other on the taupe walls. A uniformed man looked up from the concierge’s desk and offered them a warm smile. Tom’s mother squeezed his hand, biting her lip.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Rieger,” the concierge said.

  “Good afternoon, Bert,” Jeremy said.

  The elevator doors chimed pleasantly and opened to a hushed hallway with two doors made of burled wood. Theirs was on the left. Jeremy put the card in the lock and flung the door open with a flourish.

  “Ta-da!” he said. “Welcome to your new digs.”

  Stark and storm grey from the lofty ceilings to the buffed streaked-marble floor, the entranceway opened to a living room as wide as their old apartment. A wall of glass on one side had a view of Stanley Park and the harbour between the office buildings. A large-screen TV and its speakers took up the other wall. On the other side, twin gunmetal staircases led up to two loft rooms that looked down on the living room like it was a courtyard.

  “What do you think, Aunt Chrissy?” Jeremy said to Tom’s mother.

  “It’s like a dream,” she said. “It’s like a fairy tale.”

  His mom couldn’t relax in the condo. She put a blanket down before she would sit on the sofa, ate over the sink, and wiped her fingerprints off the many glass surfaces. She agonized over whether or not to tip the man who delivered their groceries, sometimes giving him too much, sometimes not giving him anything. She wasn’t sure how to treat the concierge, and would rush by him, avoiding eye contact. She washed her underwear in the bathroom sink rather than give them to complete strangers at the laundry service that picked their clothes up every Monday and Thursday.

  “It’s so quiet here,” she said one night, curled into the corner of the sofa. “It’s like we’re the only people on Earth.”

  “It’s soundproofed,” Jeremy said. “You’re not supposed to hear anything.”

  “Oh, I’m not complaining. You get used to hearing people in other apartments. I kind of miss it. Do you remember the Baker twins? Oh, my, were they a handful. All that guitar playing and drumming and screaming.”

  “You miss your noisy neighbours,” Jeremy said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, no, not at all. But you get used to people sounds.”

  “People sounds.”

  “Arguing, laughing, babies crying, people vacuuming, TVs blaring. Ordinary sounds. Oh, listen to me. I do sound like I’m complaining, don’t I?”

  Tom woke the next morning and his mother was gone. She’d left a Post-it note on the TV, “Mommy’s night out! See you at breakfast! Don’t wait up! Hugs! I love you, Tommy!”

  Two days later, when she still wasn’t back, he went looking for her. She liked to end an evening dancing at The Balmoral. She told him it always gave her a kick to think she was in the same hotel that the Queen herself had once been in. Tom was pretty sure Queen Vic wouldn’t be sitting around getting wasted with her drinking buddies.

  “Tommy!” she said. “Honey bunny, come sit beside me.”

  “Mom, I think we should go home. It’s not safe down here. You’re going to get –”

  “Oh, don’t be a fusspot. My friends will take care of me, right?”

  A chorus of agreement from the people around the table.

  “Another round for my friends!” she shouted at the waitress.

  Six rounds later, he tried to pull her up.

  Her friends pulled him off, told him to go home, stop trying to spoil the party.

  Tom sat with them into the evening, listening to his mother getting drunker. Her drinking buddies nodded their h
eads to agree with her as she rambled. The bar filled, and she was surrounded by people bumming drinks. She used to be the one looking for free booze, but now she sat tall, smiled at him whenever she decided someone was worthy of her generosity.

  Tom started home after the bars closed. His mom was going to a boozecan. She’d invited him along, but he was tired of watching her play queen bee. She’d come home when she ran out of money, which might be a few days because Jeremy was giving her a monthly allowance larger than anything she’d ever earned at a job.

  He stopped at The Raging Insomniac, a twenty-four-hour Internet café. He bought some pot off a guy, and then played Doom on-line until his wrists hurt. He squinted against the early morning light as he smoked up in the alley.

  Jeremy had passed out on the couch, sitting with his head thrown back, mouth open. His slacks had a tear on the bottom. His jacket hung over the coffee table. The subwoofers on the surround sound for the TV rattled with distortion as zombies cornered a buxom, vocal victim. Tom decided he’d put on headphones or dig up some earplugs. Jer was like a ninety-year-old. He’d wake up the second the TV was shut off or made even a degree quieter.

  “Howdy, stranger,” Jeremy said, opening one eye.

  Tom paused, hesitating at the hallway entrance.

  “Watch this part,” Jer said, sitting forward and pumping the volume even louder.

  The zombies attacked in a frenzy of cheesy effects, wet smacks of flesh being chomped and torn.

  “This is all pre-CGI,” Jer said. “All the gigs are homemade. Pig guts and chicken skin. Cool, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Tom said.

  Jeremy sucked in a loud breath. “I smell cheap hooch. How’s your mom?”