Slow Recoil

by C. B. Forrest

  They rolled past Mimico Creek to the right. The Woodbine Racetrack was to the left, where horses ran and troubled men lost their paycheques to whims of chance on the legs of pure muscle and momentum. He knew a few horse betters, this sub-genre of the gambling world. They were a class unto themselves. Old guys like Priam Harvey, who could quote Faulkner in one breath then in the next piss his pants sitting at the barstool while circling his picks in the racing form. They were for the most part honestly dishonest men who from time to time gave up the name of a fence or a guy who might be in deep on the ponies, motive enough to rob a mini-mart. You might want to talk to so-and-so, they would say.

  They turned onto Rexdale Boulevard, headed east. They were in the midst of low-rise, congested industry. Garages, industrial units, tool and die shops, minor manufacturing—places around here made fasteners, brass and copper works, plastic and composite moldings for some unknown supply chain. Named for the developer Rex Wesley, Rexdale was low income, blue collar, salt of the earth. The homes were older and smaller, and the men went to work, for the most part, with lunch buckets instead of leather briefcases.

  “Do you like me to wait?” Hassan said. He had pulled off Rexdale Boulevard onto Brydon Drive. He parked the car a dozen metres down from the garage, concealed against a hedge line. McKelvey liked the man’s line of thinking.

  “Ten minutes tops,” McKelvey said.

  Hassan nodded and adjusted the dial on the radio. The disembodied voices of talk radio filled the car. Someone was calling in and saying how Canadian troops should be peacekeepers, not fighters. The host cut right in, and said, “Listen, this peacekeeping racket is a myth that we’ve all bought in to. Plumbers are trained to plumb and combat soldiers are trained to fight…”

  The garage was showing its age, probably constructed in the late 1950s or early 1960s. White stucco siding and a red metal roof. McKelvey went into the small office attached to the four-bay garage. There were guys in the bays working beneath a couple of vehicles up on hoists. In the office were two waiting chairs set against the window, a desk facing them stacked and cluttered with invoices, and an old Coke machine against a wall with a handwritten note taped to it: Quarters Only—No Loonies. Behind the desk was a shelving unit with different brands and grades of motor oil, all of them covered in a thick coat of dust. There was nobody in the office, so McKelvey went to the door that opened onto the bays and stood there for a minute until one of the mechanics, a guy in his forties, stopped his work. He came over to the doorway, wiping his hands on a brown rag.

  “Can I help you?” the man said. He had an accent. Eastern European.

  McKelvey fished out a business card and handed it over. The mechanic stuffed the rag in the back pocket of his blue coveralls and took the card with his grease-stained fingers. He studied it a moment then moved past McKelvey into the office.

  “No holdups here,” the man said. “Maybe you are thinking of Mac’s Milk down at the corner. Gas station there gets hit two times a month.” He started to look through the invoices and work orders on the desk as though he had suddenly remembered a crucial piece of accounting.

  “You the owner?” McKelvey said.

  He watched the mechanic. Wide neck and big hands, thick dark hair greying at the sides. His face reminded McKelvey of one of those dogs, the kind with the face pushed in a little.

  “Owner, yes. Jarko Automotive. You see the sign, yes?”

  “You own a silver 1995 Honda Accord?”

  McKelvey watched for it. It was there. Taken by surprise. It was a lifetime of questioning suspects, knowing what to look for. The eyes, the small gestures.

  “I have a few cars, loaners. For my customers,” Jarko said.

  “How about a silver 1995 Honda Accord?” McKelvey said. “Plate number APVB 319. I can come up with the Vehicle Identification Number if that helps jog your memory.”

  “I have to check, you know, my files. Some ownerships, they are in my lock box. I need to look around. So much paperwork, it takes time.”

  “I’ll wait,” McKelvey said, and moved to sit in one of the chairs by the window.

  Jarko put his big hands on the desk and leaned forward. He stared. He wanted to react physically right here and right now. McKelvey could sense it. “Why you want to know about this car?”

  “Do you know a woman named Donia Kruzik?”

  Jarko straightened up and folded his arms across his chest defiantly. He shook his head, but McKelvey had seen all he needed to see.

  “I don’t know what you want,” Jarko said, finding his legs now, “but maybe you should talk to my lawyer. He knows my business, maybe he help you with all of your questions about cars. You have warrant?”

  McKelvey smiled. “Warrant? Why would I need a warrant? I’m just asking you a few questions. You own the vehicle or you don’t. You know this woman or you don’t.”

  “You didn’t show me your police identification. Your badge number.”

  McKelvey raised both hands, palms out. He said, “Hey, I’m just a guy asking a few questions is all.”

  “Please, I will ask you to leave my business,” Jarko said.

  McKelvey nodded and took a few steps to the door. He turned and said, “Listen, you wouldn’t happen to come across any used Mazda pickup trucks in your line of work, would you? I’ve been looking everywhere.”

  Jarko’s face folded in on itself, flesh and wrinkles. He squinted and shook his head.

  “Guess I’ll find what I’m looking for eventually,” McKelvey said. “Always do.”

  EIGHT

  Jessie Rainbird covered her mouth that Saturday evening when the door opened to reveal Charlie McKelvey in all his bruised and swollen glory. He smiled to mask the fact he felt like Toronto’s beloved George Chuvalo after going fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali. Busted up, but still standing at the final bell.

  “Jesus, Charlie, what happened to you?”

  McKelvey looked down at Emily standing there with a stuffed giraffe clutched under her arm, her eyes wide. Then she grabbed Jessie’s pant leg and began to cry.

  “Shhhh now,” he said, smiled, and got down on a knee. “Grandpa’s getting clumsy, that’s all. He fell and got a booboo.”

  This seemed sufficiently probable to the little girl. She shook off the initial fear and wandered past them into the back room, where she knew McKelvey kept a stash of books and toys that Hattie had helped him pick out.

  “Charlie, honestly. What happened?” Jessie said, setting her suitcase down.

  “It’s a long story. Honestly, it’s nothing. Do you want a coffee? Tea?”

  She watched him move to the kitchen island as she took a seat at one of the breakfast stools and stared at his back until he could feel the heat of her eyes drilling into him. He set the kettle on the stove. He turned to her, a lopsided smile on his face.

  “Besides my aunt Peggy, you do know that you and Caroline are Emily’s only real family?” Jessie said. “She’s going to need to have family in her life. I don’t want her growing up the way I did. Bounced around. Alone.”

  “Message received.”

  “Whatever you’re doing, promise me you’ll be careful.”

  He raised two fingers. “Scout’s honour, Jess.”

  “Speaking of family, I just talked with Caroline last week. She’s thinking of coming out this Christmas to visit, or maybe even in the fall. She hasn’t seen Emily since last spring. She was asking about you. You know, how you’re doing and all that.”

  “Still checking up on me,” he said.

  “She still loves you, Charlie. Men just don’t get it. She asked me what I thought of the idea of her moving back to Ontario permanently. I think she’s had her fill of the west coast. She misses the city. She misses you.”

  “Caroline never did like the rain.”

  “You’re impossible,” she said. She smiled and shook her head. “Shit, never mind.”

  McKelvey looked at this young woman, the last soul to love his son—how close they had co
me to carving a life away from the drugs and the streets and the violence—and he was suddenly overcome with a desire to give her the keys to his home, access to his savings and pension. She could make a better life for her and the little girl with the meager bones of his own corpse.

  After dinner, Jessie cleared the plates while McKelvey gave Emily her bath. He was unpracticed and over-cautious in his handling, his big hands fumbling as though it wasn’t a child in the water, but rather a model ship he was attempting to fit into a bottle. He was soaked and had to change his shirt by the time they were finished. The girl giggled when he took a handful of bubbles and spread it across his chin like a beard.

  “Santa Claus,” Emily laughed.

  He crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her. Jessie watched them laughing and playing from just outside the door.

  He said, “Grandpa loves you, you know.”

  When Emily was in her pajamas and tucked into bed in the spare room, he leaned over and kissed her forehead and breathed in the smell of Johnson’s No Tears shampoo. Straightening, he looked down on her for a moment and saw that she was looking more and more like her mother, the olive complexion and the coal black hair. But there was enough of his son mixed in there, too, the set of the eyes and the line of the mouth. In a world that short-changed you more than it overpaid, McKelvey felt a rush of gratitude for this living reminder of his boy. “Sleep tight,” he whispered and closed the door with the night light plugged in.

  He found Jessie flipping through the channels in the living room. When he came into the room, she clicked the TV off and set the remote aside. She had showered while he read to Emily. The little girl could listen to three or four books before she fell asleep. He saw in this a resilience or stubbornness, and it was something he could name and appreciate. This was the blood of his blood.

  “You really should upgrade to the full cable package,” she said. “Thirteen channels, God, I’d go insane.”

  He could see that she was working through something, knew her well enough now to measure the depth of her moods. It was ironic, he thought, how she viewed herself as a mystery too dark to be cracked, when in fact she was all there to see if you looked hard enough. Sometimes you just had to squint to see things for what they were, or maybe turn them upside down.

  “Do you think I’m doing an okay job, Charlie?” she said. Curled up there in his chair, she seemed what, fourteen, fifteen? She looked it. Her wet hair pulled up in a towel. She was so young.

  “You’re a good mother, Jessie,” he said.

  He took a seat on the sofa across from her. She looked at him, and he saw that she wanted to believe him. This was the place where he always found himself on rough terrain with this girl. Something inside her made it impossible for her to see herself in all of her strength. There were things you could tell a person and things a person had to find out about themselves all on their own.

  “How do you know?” she said. “I mean, how can you be so sure?”

  He said, “I know. I’ve seen it. Gavin’s mother. My own mother.”

  “But you don’t think you were a good parent.”

  He looked at her, then he sort of tilted his head to one side, a poker player trying to make up his mind on how to play out this hand.

  “Why are you so hard on yourself?” she asked.

  “I figure I was tougher on Gavin,” he said.

  “Okay, why were you so hard on him then?”

  He said, “He reminded me.” He stopped for a minute and thought of something. It stuck in his throat. “He reminded me of myself.”

  It was the conundrum of the ages, McKelvey figured. How we tried to kill the things in others that reminded us of the worst in ourselves. Killing this ugliness. From father to son, and so on and so on. It wasn’t fair, not at all, because a man couldn’t be a good father until his own father had passed and he stood there staring into the void that was left. How many nights had he dreamed that Gavin was alive, really alive, that it was all just a big mistake—only to wake to the cold reality of that empty space. But there was a moment in there, upon waking, wherein he felt the greatest rush of gratitude for a second chance to take a run at this thing. Fathering. It was something.

  “Gavin was very stubborn,” she said and smiled at some personal memory. “Both of us, really. Most of the kids living on the street are what you’d call extremely independent. Strong-willed. Something happened, and it pushed them out—usually abuse, right—but it’s their own stubbornness that keeps them from accepting help. That’s the truth of it, Charlie. Gavin knew in the end what he had done, the home he had left, and the chances he was blowing. It’s why he was getting help and trying to get away from the Blades.”

  “You should counsel kids,” he said. “You could reach them. God knows the cops have no effect. They see us as the sharp end of the system, we’re the bad guys. After a while you get tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt. You see through the bullshit.”

  “I’d rather cut hair,” she said. “I’ve had enough of that life. I don’t want Emily to ever know about all of that. Will you promise me that you’ll never tell her about my past, Charlie?”

  “That’s your call,” he said.

  “I don’t want her to think of me that way. The way I was,” she said.

  “When you’re a little older, and Emily’s a little older, you might see things differently. How your past can be an asset. You know, show your daughter how you turned your life around. It takes guts, Jessie.”

  She sighed and shifted in her seat. “It’s hard sometimes,” she said. “Staying clean.”

  “You’re tough,” he said, and felt stupid for it. He wanted to tell her that it was more than that, that he looked up to her. Her knew about the short stick she’d drawn in life. The early abuse and the childhood fire that had claimed her father, all of the dark days she had stared down alone. It was the easy thing to do, to give up. Everybody was doing it these days. Fuck it. Someone will come along and look after you, help you find a cause for your blame.

  “It’s funny, because I got out of one scene and found another one. It just changes shape. The girls in the salon, a lot of them are into clubbing. They go to these after hours booze cans in the east end. Out by…what am I saying, you know where I’m talking about.”

  “I know exactly where you mean,” he said. Oh yes, he’d walked through his share of booze cans, among that crew of the living dead, the cursed ones caught in that godawful crack between midnight and dawn. Looking for some kid from Jane and Finch who’d dropped out of high school in Grade Ten, who’d just committed his first armed robbery at the Gas-n-Go, on the fast track to the pen.

  “I went with them a few weeks ago to this warehouse. It was the music and the crowd, the lights. The whole scene brought everything back. It was horrible. I almost puked, Charlie, I was that scared. Scared that I was in a dream, that this life I’m living right now was going to be taken away from me.”

  He waited for her to bring out the rest. And he knew there was more to all of this. It was no different than his years on the job, sitting across from a perp in an interview room. You could coax and pull a little here and there, but for the most part the story had to come out the way it had to play out to its own rhythm.

  “I wanted to leave. I knew I had made a huge mistake. My NA sponsor told me she’d fire me if I so much as stepped inside a bar. But you know how it goes. You’re there with a group of people. I’ve been doing my placement with these girls for two months. I didn’t want to pull up lame on them.”

  Again she paused, and again he waited. He had all night.

  “Some of the girls bought Ecstasy from this guy I sort of recognized from around the salon. He knows one of the girls there, Sasha. I bought a few hits from him… ”

  “Did you drop them?” he said.

  A single tear squeezed itself from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. It was all she was willing to give, for she quickly sat up and dried her face with the back
of her hand. “No. No, I didn’t. I got my head back on and tossed the shit out the window of the cab I took home. Now this fucking asshole Devon comes around the salon and keeps mentioning how I owe him for the pills. I wasn’t born yesterday, right? I know a thing or two about how it works on the street. This guy throws out names, these heavyweights, the Crips this and that. He’s a wannabe gangbanger. I don’t want to tell him that I know the score, I’ve been down that road. It’d ruin my name in the business down here. It’s a small circle, Charlie.”

  “It’s probably not worth very much, but I’m proud of you,” he said. And he knew he should move to her, put his arms around her. He sat there for a long moment, too long, remembering all those cemetery nights his wife had cried alone while he stood there, a statue in his own living room. He got up and crossed to the girl, and she stood to meet him, and she closed herself inside his arms, and she was a child again.

  “You don’t need to worry about all of that,” he whispered. “You go up to the Island and enjoy your vacation. Don’t think about the city, Jessie. We’ll get everything worked out, I promise.”

  McKelvey was already visualizing his approach to this thing, his jaw set tight. Five minutes with this Devon character, and he’d have him re-oriented in his life path.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Charlie,” she said.

  In McKelvey’s mind it was the other way around. For Jessie and Emily represented the only points of light flickering in the distance. The horizon was murky otherwise. They shone there up ahead through the nights of loneliness and regret. There were days wherein he truthfully wondered how he would reach the end of the month, to say nothing of the decade, stretching things an hour at a time. He circled job ads for security guard positions at least twice a week but never followed up. He went to the coffee shop near the police headquarters on College, hoping to accidentally on purpose run into a few old colleagues. There was a sense of things winding down, of being outside the realm of real activity and function.