The phone rang at about eleven-thirty p.m. It was his old man.
“I’m drunk,” he said.
From the slurring of his words the truth was apparent.
“Need a ride home?” asked Chuck.
His old man went to a dance.
“What about Darlene?” Chuck inquired.
Sounds like a three-beer night.
“Shum…some friends from Pistrolia are taking her home,” his dad managed.
“Give me about ten minutes, and wait by the front door,” Bru said.
Tired as he was, it was probably better than having the old guy cruising the streets at twelve kilometres an hour, with RIDE checks all over the place these days. The Volvo could safely sit overnight.
Fifteen minutes later, Brubaker picked up his old man and headed south down Tom Longboat Boulevard. Turning left on Currie Street, a couple of kilometres would see them safely home. As he motored at a fuel-saving fifty-five k’s; he noticed a vehicle behind them was following just a little too close.
“If you turn a map of Ontario sideways, it looks like an elephant, and Owen Sound is the asshole,” his old man was saying.
Chuck grinned reluctantly. He really wasn’t in the mood. He was awful hard on the old guy sometimes, that much he knew. He just couldn’t help it, when the blackness fell upon him.
“I got that feeling coming over me, over me, yeah…” went the song on the radio.
Stone Temple Pilots, ‘Unglued.’
The guitar solo unwound its angst as he drove.
His father was talking.
“If you drop a raisin in a glass of water it will only sink halfway,” and Frank was looking expectantly at him. “Who was the first U.S. president to wear underwear?”
The old man must have run into some conversationalists this evening.
“Did you hear about the guy who dropped dead shoveling snow?”
Brubaker grinned.
No stopping the old man with three beers in him. And winter was coming.
“His wife said, ‘At least he died doing something he loved…’”
Then Big Frank dozed off. Bru’s involuntary smile quickly faded.
“Uh, huh,” he responded obligingly.
Dad seemed to have lost the train of thought.
Brubaker despised tailgaters, who normally only behave like that when behind the wheel. When he came to the next block, the light was red. The vehicle behind them got within a foot of the rear bumper. A light snoring came from the seat beside him.
Thank God for that.
“Asshole,” muttered Bru.
As the light turned green, the vehicle stuck close behind, and his anger button was definitely being pushed. His paranoia button was being pushed as well. Another red light loomed up ahead. The blocks in the downtown area were short. The vehicle dropped back, and the high beams came on. Suddenly the vehicle was shooting up at them from behind as he watched the mirrors and the road in front. The other guy was honking the horn now.
“Honk! Honk!”
The glare was blinding in the mirrors. As they moved along, streetlights flashed on and off the windshield of the following car.
“Fuck!” he said.
The bastards, he could see two of ‘em in spite of the glare through the windscreen, locked up the brakes and slid to within a foot or two of his rear bumper; even as he was braking for the next stop light. Luckily the light turned green just at that exact moment.
With a touch of throttle he went on again.
“Wha!” gasped the old man, lost in his own personal fog.
“Hold on!” Chuck blurted.
He peered in the mirror at the blue Chevy Blazer, about a 1996; with a little rust around the rear dog legs. Two males…they were coming at him again. While not ignorant enough to jam on the brakes, neither would Bru speed up to give the fellatio-performers any satisfaction. Neither he nor the old man had a cell phone. He forgot his. The old man was too set in his ways.
“You dirty little cocksuckers,” he grunted. “Arrgh!”
He was just praying for them to pass in front, then pull him over and get out of the vehicle. The license number was familiar enough; or so he thought, although the last two digits were a bit of a blur.
But he couldn’t get a good look at the driver. They finally peeled off down a side street, tires screeching. The vehicle was swaying from side to side due to bad shocks and low tire pressures, he surmised. Maybe they were just drunk.
“Who was that?” his dad gaped out the window on his side.
“Son of a bitch!” he said. “Friends of Mr. LaSally, presumably.”
He knew the vehicle, but not everyone who drove it. Not by sight. Could have been a son, a relative of the old bitch who lived around the corner from LaSally…hard to say.
But that’s where the vehicle was from.
Even then, he didn’t have enough, ‘evidence.’
“No point in calling the cops,” he told his father. “I don’t feel like going to jail or the loonie bin tonight.”
A venomous hatred filled his heart, overwhelming in its sheer intensity.
“Who were those guys?” asked his dad again.
“Pip squeaks,” said Brubaker. “Just pip squeaks.”
Just then a cop cruiser whipped out from a side street and snaked up onto his tail.
“Aw, for fuck’s sakes,” Chuck said.
Sure enough, they were pulled over. The cop car stopped a hundred metres behind them. The lone officer got out. As Bru watched in the mirror, the cop swaggered up to the window. It took a while.
Were they trying to get him to run?
Is that why they parked a hundred metres back?
“I’ll bet she practices that gunfighter walk in front of the mirror,” he muttered.
The police officer eventually stood beside his door, shining a light into the interior. Bru suddenly realized the stench of alcohol permeated the vehicle pretty thoroughly.
“Sir, you seem to be driving a little erratically,” she said.
“I’m so sorry! I really didn’t mean to turn you on,” he grunted.
“I said erratically, not erotically. Would you step out of the vehicle, sir?”
She made him do the whole field sobriety thing. He resisted the temptation to skip, or show off his dancing skills. After going through it twice, he did skip through it the third time.
She didn’t even crack a smile.
“Did you see them guys following us?” he asked.
“Did you do something to provoke them, sir?” she asked, ever so sweetly.
All that proved was that she really was a cop and not an imposter. She ran his plate before making the stop. She knew who he was.
“Still the same old Lennox P.D., I see,” he noted mildly. “Why did you pull me over, anyway?”
“Suspicious vehicle in a school zone,” she informed him matter-of-factly.
“It’s freaking midnight!” he blurted. “It’s Saturday night!”
“Sir, everything you say, can and will be taken down and used against you in a court of law.”
“Stop kissing me officer, and please take your hand off my bum,” he said clearly and succinctly, gazing deeply into her startled blue eyes, consciously letting the light blaze out from his inner depths.
“Oh, yeah. You know you want me,” he assured her, as she stood flatfooted in stunned speechlessness.
She swallowed and took a deep breath, blushing furiously. Then her anger dissipated.
“I’ll catch you later,” she mumbled, and then wandered back in the direction of her cruiser.
At last they were home and he could go to bed, the last refuge of t
he truly unhappy.
* * *
Next thing he knew, it was three-thirty a.m. and Bru was wide awake. He went to pee upstairs, in the bathroom he shared with the old man. He grabbed yesterday’s paper off of the kitchen table and brought it down to his, ‘basement apartment.’ Brubaker rented the basement from his dad, as otherwise the ODSP would have slashed his benefits. There was no way he would ever be able to save up first and last month’s rent if that happened.
It wasn’t happening now; but he saw no reason to penalize his old man. Why should Chuck live for free? Anyway, fuck the shit-ass Ontario government for its smug, middle-class, bourgeois ignorance.
He began to read at the little kitchen table which he never ate off of. Bru hung onto a few items in the rather forlorn hope that he might have a home of his own again someday.
He squinted in the yellowing light of the overhead incandescent.
Overhead he heard certain little noises.
“Aw, fuck,” he muttered.
Sure enough, the old man was getting up, making the bed, shuffling to the bathroom. More noises. The old man headed for the kitchen. Water running, filling up the kettle.
“Jesus H. Christ, how the fuck am I ever going to get a minute to myself?” he asked
the walls as the shower started up in the back of the house.
Now the kettle was whistling. Sighing, he went up to make a pot of tea. Absent-minded old sot. He went back to reading. It was already the start of a really bad day.
On the bright side, that lazy cunt O’Keefe had finally gotten off his ass and done some reporting.
Chapter Twelve
City tops toxic emissions…
Core Values Page 11
