No Good Brother

by Tyler Keevil

  When Jake heard that he sat on the edge of Sandy’s bed and put his hands to his face, as you might if you were splashing yourself with water, only in this case he held them there for a long time. The girl said she was sorry again and I expected her to leave, but she didn’t. Her presence didn’t seem out of place in any way, though, and she stayed with us until Jake stood up and headed for the door and shoved it open and left. I went after him. I came out of that dim murk into the blazing lights of the ward and the noise and the people. I spotted Jake down one of the hallways, moving away from me, hunched forward and cradling his guts as if he were physically hurt or wounded. I called out his name and started to hurry. He reached the end of the hall where there was a big plate-glass window overlooking Oak Street. In front of the window was a gurney, an empty gurney, and Jake picked that up and hurled it at the window. Only the window didn’t break. They must have safety glass in those places, in case of all the things that might happen, things like that. The window didn’t break but the gurney did. It bounced off and landed in a tangled mess, upside down, like a dead mantis.

  I reached Jake at the same time as two orderlies. They held him – gently – by both arms, but he didn’t struggle or react to them in any way. It was as if they weren’t even there. He looked at me and his face was teary and boyish-looking and filled with a terrible hatred. Keep me away from that guy, he said, or I’m going to kill him. It sounded like a vow. At that time we didn’t even know the name of the driver, but I told Jake I would and that was just one of the many ways in which I failed him, one of the many ways in which I’m just as responsible as him for all the no-good things that he’s done.

  Chapter Six

  On the boat that night my sleep was as fretful and uneasy as the first night I’d spent at sea. I had dreams and Sandy was in them, regarding me with what you might call a reproachful expression – which was just like her – and though I do not believe in such things as visitations I knew damn well why she’d appeared. By four thirty I was already awake, alert, waiting. I could hear Big Ben snoring in the bunk opposite. I lay there listening to that. It was a very human sound. After a few minutes I reached for my phone and texted Jake: if you really have to do this you won’t be doing it alone. I’ll see you tomorrow. Then I put the phone away. The only thing left was to break it to Albert. Evelyn and Tracy, too. But especially Albert.

  It seemed as if most of the day was spent looking for that chance. But I needed to get him alone and the opportunity didn’t present itself. We all had our end-of-season jobs, and moved about the boat in an orchestrated routine: passing to and fro, working around each other. Evelyn was wiping down all the surfaces in the galley and Sugar was inside cleaning our cabin and bunks. Big Ben was gathering any excess gear – ropes, buoys, life jackets – and loading those in the storage locker. Albert was down in his engine room, making a few final adjustments: as pernickety and mysterious as a piano tuner. The urgency of the past week was now gone. We had worked hard up until the last day, and had plenty of time to perform these tasks and we did so with a melancholy sort of reverence. The end was in sight and when it is there’s no longer such a rush to get there.

  In the morning, Albert gave me a job I’d done every other season: repainting the boat’s name across the transom. I tied a floating dock off the stern and crouched down there with the brush and bucket of marine paint. I had to use my left hand for the job, since my right was no longer good for delicate tasks. My forefinger and middle finger are the ones that are missing, making it impossible to hold a brush properly. But I’ve gotten pretty good with my left.

  I dipped the tip in the pot of white paint and gently stroked the letters, coaxing them to lustre. The boatyard was still and quiet and echoed with emptiness. Some of the other crews, skippered by captains less thorough than ours, had already battened down the hatches and locked up the cabins and headed back to their respective houses or trailers or apartments or whatever abodes they each had waiting.

  Around mid-morning my cellphone rang. I fished it out of the pocket of my coveralls. I could see by the number it was Jake.

  ‘Poncho,’ he said, right off. ‘I need you tonight.’

  Just that. He didn’t thank me for agreeing to help. I guess my involvement had been a given, for him. I put down the paint brush, balancing it precariously on the edge of the pot.

  I said, ‘You said Saturday.’

  ‘The job is Saturday. But I’m meeting them tonight.’

  ‘You’re meeting these guys?’

  ‘And they want to meet you, too.’

  I stood and stared at the water. It was lapping at my little dock, spilling over the edge nearest me, where my weight had lowered it.

  ‘But you said Saturday. I said I’d come Saturday.’

  ‘And I’m telling you, I need you tonight.’

  ‘Albert won’t let me go.’

  I could hear voices in the distance. He told me to hold on and I heard him swearing at somebody. Then he was back. He said that if I wanted to sell out there was still time and he didn’t care, but if I was going to help him I had to come tonight. That was it.

  ‘I can’t do it, Lefty.’

  ‘Whatever, then.’

  ‘I can still come tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s no good. It’s tonight or you’re not part of tomorrow.’ Again I heard the voices, and again he swore back at them. Then, to me: ‘Look, I got to go. Some horse is shitting all over itself or something. Forget about it, okay? Just forget the whole thing and forget I even asked you.’

  ‘Jake –’

  And of course he hung up. I stood and stared at the phone. I was still staring like that when Albert leaned over the stern to check up on the work I was doing. I tucked the phone away but not before he’d seen it. He didn’t ask about it, though. He eyed up the work and told me it looked good. I thanked him and he didn’t leave right away, and if there was a time to tell him it would have been then. But after Jake’s call I didn’t know what to say, so I just said I’d be done soon and up for lunch when it was ready. And then Albert was gone.

  I bent to pick up my brush but my bad hand betrayed me and I knocked the brush off the side of the pot. It bounced on the dock, splattering paint, and rolled clumsily off the edge. I lunged for it – swiping my paw through the water – and missed. I watched helplessly as it sank, slow-turning through the murk, until it vanished. I hadn’t finished the job. The ‘Y’ was fainter than the rest of the letters, and stood out.

  That night, I got up and left.

  I waited till Sugar and Big Ben were out, which didn’t take long, and from beneath the bunk pulled the duffel bag that I had filled with my belongings. Packing hadn’t seemed odd or conspicuous because all of us were doing the same, and we were due to depart the next day, anyway. There wasn’t much work left to be done but it wasn’t about the work or the hours so much as the act of leaving early and abandoning ship. Albert always said he couldn’t abide a man who shirked his responsibilities and I guess I was about to prove I was that type of man.

  In the galley I stepped into my work boots and picked my jacket off the hook. I had a letter addressed to Albert and Evelyn that explained some and I left that folded on the table. I took a final look around and eased open the door and crept out onto the deck and shut the door behind me – turning the handle before I closed it so as not to make any noise.

  ‘Sneaking off like a thief, eh?’

  Albert was up in the wheelhouse. I don’t know if he’d been waiting for me or just standing up there, on watch, like he did at sea sometimes. I stood, tense and hesitant as a jackrabbit, as he came down the stairs to deck, his big boots ringing on the metal.

  ‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’

  ‘So you did the cowardly thing, instead of the right thing.’

  ‘I guess so. I guess I did.’

  He had his arms crossed and his face looked hard and unforgiving as granite. Just this big carved figure of a man. He said, ‘And you’d also decided not to c
ome to Squamish.’

  ‘I was thinking I could come meet you, later.’

  ‘You can forget about that, now.’

  The strap of the duffel bag was burning my collar bone. I shifted it a bit.

  ‘I’m sorry, Albert. I’m sorry as hell.’

  ‘Tell Tracy, why don’t you.’

  ‘I want to do right by her.’

  ‘She doesn’t need you to do anything for her. She’s fine. Only trouble is she likes you.’ He nodded, once, as if affirming the truth of that. ‘We all do. But you’re making a bad choice here. I know it and I think you know it too.’

  ‘He’s my brother, Albert. He’s in a bind.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘What if it was your family?’

  ‘I’m done jawing about it. Go and do what you got to do, or think you got to do. But don’t expect us all to be waiting here for you when you finish being loyal. Don’t expect a job to be here, either.’

  ‘Ah, hell, Albert.’

  ‘Get off my boat, I said.’

  His tone was furious and fearsome, and if I hadn’t gone he’d have thrown me off. So I went. I’d seen him when he got like that and all I could hope was that time would cool his rage, and that maybe my letter would help some, too. It was a simple letter but it was honest and Evelyn would have his ear. And Tracy, as well. That might be enough. If it wasn’t, I’d just given up the only home I’d had for five years.

  Chapter Seven

  When I reached the Woodland Hotel I stood outside in the dribble of rain, with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. It was a four-storey beige brick building, with two shops built into the ground floor: a paint and hardware store, all shuttered up for the night, and some kind of Christian mission with pictures of Jesus and a crooked cross in the window display. Above that the hotel sign jutted out on an awning, green-on-white, only half illuminated. I had a notion Jake had chosen the Woodland deliberately, to accentuate his sense of hardship and destitution. Or maybe he really was that down on his luck. With him it was hard to tell.

  A black security gate barred the entrance, but somebody had left the gate ajar, so I could walk right in. The hotel had no lobby or reception, and no employees on duty, and in that way it wasn’t really a hotel at all, but more of a flophouse. I pressed the button for the elevator (Jake’s room was on the second floor) but when no elevator appeared I took the fire stairs, which stank of piss and beer. Up there some of the doors had numbers on them, in the form of black stickers, and others didn’t. Jake’s did: twenty-two. I stopped in front of it and considered knocking but then I just reached for the handle and pushed it open.

  Jake was sitting on his bed with his elbows resting on his knees, dressed in jeans and a tank top. His hair was wet and stringy as if he’d just come in from the rain. Something about his expression really got to me. A lot of his performance had been planned, I’m sure, and put on – but not that look: a look of surprise and relief and gratitude. He stood and came over to me and pulled me into a hug, holding me fiercely and clapping my back with his palm.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d cut me loose.’

  What do you say to that – when your brother tells you something like that? I stepped into his room and dropped my duffel bag on the floor, like an anchor I was laying down.

  ‘What about the boat?’ he asked.

  ‘I left the boat.’

  ‘You mean you left it?’

  ‘I mean I left it.’

  ‘Ah, hell.’

  He reached into his back pocket and fished out a rumpled pack of Du Mauriers and withdrew a bent cigarette. He lit it and took a drag and held in the smoke as he crossed to the window, which was open: an old sash window with rotten wooden trim. I could feel the cold wind blowing in. He exhaled in a thin stream and stood for a time looking out. I don’t know what he was looking at. Nothing, maybe. Then he nodded, as if I had said something else.

  ‘I appreciate it, Poncho,’ he said, ‘I really do.’

  The room was a ten-by-ten-foot box, not much bigger than a prison cell. It didn’t have a toilet or shower but it had a sink. Above the sink was a mirror with a jagged crack running diagonally across the centre. I could see a divided version of myself in there, and he looked like a damned fool. Next to the mirror an old medicine cabinet stuck out from the wall at a lopsided angle. Then there was the bed: a steel cot with a thin foam mattress. At the foot of the bed lay Jake’s battered leather suitcase, open and overflowing with dirty clothes.

  Draped atop the pile was a white sports bra. I nodded at it.

  ‘You cross-dressing now?’

  He grinned, both sly and shy, and I understood.

  ‘You and your dancers.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘You know who you’re really after.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  He went over and modestly tucked the bra behind the suitcase. Next to it, his old guitar stood propped against the wall. He picked it up and sat on the bed, resting the guitar across his lap. The body was battered and chipped and one of the strings was missing but I was glad to see it. If he still had his guitar it meant something. He plucked the C-string and let it quiver, resonating.

  I said, ‘You going to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know all of it.’

  ‘Do you know any of it?’

  He squinted through the cigarette smoke. ‘I know we got to make a delivery.’

  ‘Something stolen.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We’ll find out more tonight.’

  ‘And then it’s done?’

  ‘Then it’s done. And we get paid, too.’

  ‘I don’t want any money. I’m not doing it for money.’

  On the top shelf of his medicine cabinet were two teacups and a twixer of Black Velvet. I got down the teacups and rinsed them in the sink. The water smelled brackish and a ring of rust encircled the sinkhole. I dried the cups on the inside of my shirt and poured us each a few ounces. I took one over to Jake and he accepted it and we each pinched our cup by the handle, very genteel, like a pair of elderly gentlemen having afternoon tea.

  We clicked the cups together and drank.

  ‘Was the old man choked at you?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Said he wouldn’t take me back.’

  ‘Damn, man. What about your girl?’

  ‘Tracy ain’t my girl.’

  ‘She’s something to you.’

  I said I hadn’t even had the chance to break it to her. I didn’t know how she’d react.

  ‘But maybe she’ll see my side of it,’ I said.

  We looked out the window together. Directly opposite was the Paradise, this dive bar and hotel where hipsters go to drink. Compared to the Woodland, the place might as well have been paradise. Out on the patio, a handful of customers stood in a herd, smoking and laughing. Every so often cars hummed along Hastings Street. A few blocks down somebody shouted, though whether in anger or merriment it was hard to say. Either way, things were in motion. Time hadn’t stopped. Already the boat and my chaste relationship with Tracy seemed very distant, like some other life. A better life, maybe. But not my life.

  ‘So where the hell are we going tonight?’ I asked.

  Chapter Eight

  In Jake’s truck we headed east on Powell, then merged with McGill and got onto the Second Narrows Bridge, which connects Vancouver to the North Shore, where we grew up. Beneath us Burrard Inlet shimmered and rippled, a dark swathe of water burnished by city lights, and up ahead the mountains stood out blackly against the night sky. On the far side of the bridge we kept going along the Upper Levels and the Cut – this long stretch of highway hacked into the hillside. Drizzling rain smeared the windscreen and one of Jake’s wipers was busted, so the blade flopped around all crazily, like a snake having conniptions.

  Along the way, Jake forgot to act grave and compassionate about the loss of my job. My presence had c
heered him up some and as he drove he whistled through his gap tooth – some little ditty that was irritating as all hell.

  ‘It’s good to have you along, bro.’ He leaned over, punched me in the shoulder. ‘Good old Poncho. The handsome old buck, with a busted hand.’

  He was smiling reminiscently.

  ‘What are you grinning at?’

  ‘Just thinking. Having you involved always made my schemes seem more legitimate, somehow. You were the respectable one. If you were part of it then Sandy and Ma figured it had to be okay.’

  ‘Even when you were up to no good.’

  ‘I was always up to no good.’

  ‘What are we getting into, man?’

  ‘You remember the Delaney brothers? Mark and Patrick?’

  ‘From back in the day? Sure.’

  They had grown up on the North Shore and gone to a rival high school, around the same time as us. I’d come across them a few times. Back then they’d had a reputation as badasses but there were a lot of posers around who dealt a bit of weed and pretended to be gangsters and most of the time it didn’t amount to anything.

  Jake said, ‘They’ve been busy since then.’

  ‘I heard something about that.’

  ‘They’re making a name for themselves.’

  He told me that two years ago they’d formed this new gang that was causing quite a stir. Most of the gangs in the Lower Mainland were one ethnicity or another, but theirs – the World Legion, they called it – had done away with that, and they were muscling in (that was the term Jake used) on the turf of the older gangs: the Triads and the Hells Angels.

  I said, ‘Equality among criminals, eh?’

  ‘They’re the ones who helped me out inside.’

  ‘Because you’re North Shore?’

  ‘An old friend vouched for me, and Mark Delaney remembered me.’

  ‘So that’s why you owe them.’

  ‘Now you’re getting it, Poncho.’

  We’d followed the highway past the Lynn Valley turn-off and took the exit at Upper Lonsdale. We swung north, going up the hill towards the mountains, past the Queen’s Cross pub and the squat apartment buildings near there. The area beyond was leafy, suburban, and pleasant-looking.