by Tyler Keevil
‘Ricky-dicky,’ Pat said. ‘You gave that shit away.’
Rick stood up, swearing about luck, and took a swig of Jack. Mark and I were up next, and it wasn’t much of a game. I’d learned to do a lot of things with my left hand, but playing crokinole wasn’t one of them. Mark went to town, creating a cluster of discs in the fifteen circle and bagging himself a twenty-in-the-hole.
‘Take it easy on my brother,’ Jake said.
‘Yeah,’ Pat said, ‘he’s fucking handicapped.’
When it was done – sixty to zero, for Mark – Pat chalked it up. He was due to play Ricky next. We made way for them and Pat brought out his special set of discs. The rest of us sat back, watching. I tried to look as if I cared about their game and sipped my vodka without really drinking much. What I needed was some kind of excuse to talk to Jake, alone. I patted at my pockets, as if looking for something, then asked him if he had his cigarettes.
‘Sure,’ he said.
He seemed to get the idea. He brought out his Marlboros and tapped two smokes from the pack, offering one to me. Pat looked at us in irritation, distracted from his game.
‘Nobody smokes in here. Take that shit outside.’
It had played out perfectly, but we moaned a little about the cold and shrugged on our coats and went out there together. Jake stood directly in front of the bay window and grinned at me and said, ‘Just talk and look happy – like we’re shooting the shit, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said, and grinned weirdly back at him.
‘You hear him joke about the money?’
‘It didn’t sound good.’
‘He don’t intend to pay us, and never did.’
‘You reckon they intend to kill us?’
‘If they feel like it.’
I told him Maria had given me the keys to the truck. He took a long drag, and nodded, still with this deliberately cheerful expression on his face. We looked down at the vehicles. The Delaneys had parked behind Maria’s truck, which looked pretty hemmed in. We might not get around their SUVs, and even if we did there was the possibility we’d get stuck in the snow. But it was the only way out, as far as I could tell.
I said, ‘They ain’t gonna let us just drive off.’
‘We need to be ready. In case this turns sour.’
‘And then what?’
‘Make a break for it. Unless you got a better idea.’
I shook my head. ‘We’ll need our passports, for the border.’
He took a drag, and laughed good-naturedly – and it took me a moment to realize he was still play-acting: pretending we were shooting the shit, rather than planning our escape.
‘How do you reckon we’ll manage that?’ he asked.
‘I’ll slip down there, stash them in the truck.’
‘We got one bottle of Old Crow left. That’s an excuse.’
The door to the house opened behind us. I figured it was going to be Novak, checking up on us in his creepy way, but it turned out to be Mark. He had a beer in one hand and gave us the thumbs up with the other.
‘Jake – you’re up! You and me.’
Jake flicked his smoke into the snow, where it landed lightly, still smouldering.
‘Fucking ace,’ he said, looking significantly at me. ‘Let’s do this.’
Chapter Forty
Jake and Mark settled into their match. I took my seat and poured myself a substantial highball of Jack Daniel’s, then shared the whisky around, splashing it liberally into the other glasses. For our ploy to work, I needed that bottle to be finished. I hadn’t been intending to drink much but it would look suspicious to abstain, so as they traded rocks I knocked mine back, feeling that molten burn. And to be honest, I needed it for what I was about to do.
When my glass was empty, I put it down loudly.
‘Hey Jake,’ I said, ‘do we still got that Old Crow?’
‘Down in the bunkhouse,’ he said, without looking up from his shot – nice and smooth. ‘Go grab it, will you?’
‘Fuck yeah,’ Pat said.
That part was easy: they had no reason to suspect anything.
I let myself out, passing Novak at the door, and trudged down the drive. The wind had dwindled to a whisper and the snow had let up, at least for the time being. But over a foot of it blanketed the ground: a soft dry powder that compressed beneath my boots and made this unsettling squeaking sound, as if I were stomping on mice.
As I passed the vehicles I took a closer look. The two SUVs had us really boxed in. We could potentially squeeze past in the truck, but the edge of the drive sloped up in a steep bank, and that was covered in snow. Manoeuvring around that would be touch-and-go.
‘Goddammit,’ I said, under my breath. ‘Goddammit to hell.’
At the bunkhouse I went into our room. I didn’t take everything. There was no point. I just got our Ninja Turtle backpack and stuffed our passports and wallets in it and the last of the cash we had: a few hundred bucks. The extra clothes I left, along with the random crap we’d brought from Jake’s apartment. I was so rattled I almost forgot to grab the Old Crow.
As I stepped outside, I noticed that the stable doors were ajar, and the lights on inside. I figured Jake and Delaney had left it like that, when they’d come to have a look at Shenzao. But it would do no good for the animals, letting the cold in. I moseyed on over there, and as I drew nearer I thought I heard movement within. I pushed the doors open wider. The horses were standing quietly, dozing. The heater rattled away, but that was the only sound. I didn’t see anybody.
‘Hello?’ I said.
I heard shuffling from the end stall, which was unoccupied. Or should have been. A head poked up from within, chipmunk-like, peering over the gate at me. Sam.
‘I didn’t know who it was,’ she said, stepping out.
‘I thought you were upstairs.’
‘I snuck out the back door.’
‘What are you doing?’
She came towards me, and we met near Shenzao’s stall. I still had the bottle of Crow in my hand. Sam looked at it, and scuffed her hiking boot on the ground, scattering straw.
‘I just come down, sometimes, when Mr Delaney and his friends are over.’
She didn’t look at me as she said it. She looked at the horse. As we stood there, I got my first real sense of what it must have been like for her, living in that place: the atmosphere poisonous and plagued, a big playhouse overseen by a maniac, with all these terrible bastards passing through. Cokeheads like Ricky and killers like Novak.
‘Is that so?’ I said softly.
She held out her hand and started petting Shenzao. I watched her with the horse for a moment. Her face remained stoic, expressionless. I touched her shoulder, and she jumped.
‘Hey,’ I said.
‘Sorry.’
‘We’re going to get you out of here.’
‘Tonight?’
‘If we can. The damned cars are blocking us in.’
Shenzao snorted, and took a step towards Sam. She only meant to encourage Sam to keep petting her, but it drew my attention to the animal. Shenzao eyeballed me right back, in what seemed to me a challenging and insolent way. That was what gave me the idea. It was crazy, all right – even crazier than transporting her on the boat.
I asked Sam, ‘You ever ridden in the snow before?’
‘Sure.’
‘You think you could follow that trail you took us on today, at night?’
She looked at me. She didn’t ask what I meant.
‘I could,’ she said.
I looked around. The riding gear and saddles were right there. It actually made more sense than anything else, or than any of our other options, which were basically non-existent.
‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘You saddle three horses up. The same ones we rode earlier. If me and Jake can get away, we’re just going to go, all right? We’re just going to ride out.’
She crossed her arms and nodded, looking stern rather than nervous. That, more than anything, made
me believe it was possible. We would ride out. It was as simple as that.
‘I’ll wait down here,’ Sam said.
‘Here’s our things.’
I handed her our bag. I lingered awkwardly for a moment, appreciating the security of Sam’s little hideaway. But I had to go. I turned towards the door, then checked myself and glanced back.
‘When the time comes,’ I said, ‘we might be in a hurry. If you get me.’
She said that she did.
On the way back up, I could see somebody standing on the porch, smoking. It was just a shadow, backlit by the porch light, but I could tell it was Novak. He had a thin and sinewy body and he always looked poised to strike, like a snake. I had to assume he was watching me. I meandered up the drive with my hands in my pockets, my head down against the cold, acting as if I hadn’t noticed him yet. I uncapped the bottle of Old Crow and faked taking big, extravagant swigs – slopping a little over the snow in the process.
At the porch stairs I looked up, as if spotting him for the first time. He was right there at the top of the stairs, and again I had the sensation that there wasn’t much keeping him from pulling his gun from his pocket (I was convinced he had a gun) and simply pointing it at me and pulling the trigger. I clambered up the steps and nodded at him, and then stopped to look back – as if to see what he was staring at. In truth, I wanted to know if he could have seen me coming from the stable. But it was dark down there, the buildings a jumble of shapes. You couldn’t make much out.
‘You want some whisky?’ I asked.
He didn’t bother to answer me, as I’d come to expect from him.
‘Ain’t you cold?’ I said. ‘Fucking cold out here.’
He just stood there in his grey hoody and tracksuit bottoms. He was also wearing running shoes. He looked ready to go for a casual jog. Or ready for something, anyway.
‘Are you truly so stupid as you act?’ he said.
‘I ain’t stupid.’
He peered at me, as if honestly trying to unpuzzle me.
‘Look man,’ I said, ‘I just want to party. I just want to have a good time. Everybody wants to but you. What is it with you?’
He blew a thin stream of smoke at me. Right in my face.
He said, ‘I do not like your brother.’
‘You don’t know my brother at all.’
‘You will both be lucky if Pat does not tell me to shoot you tonight.’
‘We’re harder to shoot than you think.’
I said it like a little kid. I turned to go, feeling adrenaline-sick and all a-tremble with fear, halfway expecting him to hit me in the base of the skull or grab me in a chokehold or drygulch me like a fucking bastard in the back. But none of that happened. I reached the door okay and looked behind me and saw him watching, waiting, a shadow in the dark.
I stepped inside. The game between Jake and Mark was still going on, and Pat Delaney was still sitting at the table with them, and Maria was still in the kitchen. The only change was Ricky: he’d moved into the lounge. He had his legs up on the sofa and was watching videos – porn, of some kind – on his laptop.
As I came in, Jake glanced up and shouted, ‘You got the Crow, Poncho!’
‘The fuck took so long?’ Pat asked.
‘Had to take a dump,’ I said.
Ricky cackled, ‘A steamer, eh?’
‘A big one.’
Pat said, ‘I don’t want to hear about your shit.’
I planted the Old Crow on the table. Pat reached for it and poured himself a highball – splashing it on top of whatever dregs were in his glass – without looking at me. I pulled up a chair and sat a bit back from the table. They were on their final few shots. Jake was down on the board but had a twenty in the hole. They both traded clears and then Mark had last shot. Jake had left a disc nestled behind a peg in the ten circle. A tricky clear.
‘You got to shoot the alley,’ Pat said, coaching his brother.
‘I could take it from the side.’
‘The line’s not there.’
Mark shifted back and forth in his seat, testing out different angles, trying to find a bead. He finally settled on his brother’s alley shot, and flicked the stone, which ricocheted off the peg-guard and into the gutter.
‘Ah, shit,’ Mark said. ‘You always screw me. You and your advice.’
‘That was the smart play. You just fucked it up.’
‘What do you know about smart play?’
‘I’m the smart one. I’m the brains of the outfit.’
‘Like hell. You’re the muscle. I’m the brains. I made us.’
They were kind of joking, and kind of not. Mark’s face was red – from the booze and excitement – and when he stood up he did it so fast his chair fell over backwards, banging on the floor. He muttered something about the furniture being bullshit and picked it back up.
Jake stretched and yawned. ‘Who’s next?’
‘Me and you,’ Pat said.
‘I need a piss break.’
‘No pissing between games.’
‘That’s not a rule,’ Mark said. He was still choked about losing. ‘Go take a piss. Don’t listen to head honcho, here. Brains, my ass.’
Jake shook his head and got up and went down the hall. I was about to follow him – to pitch my new crazy plan – but I had no real excuse to give, and Mark sat beside me and railed a line and started talking, loudly and too quickly, in this coked-up way, about why he should have tried the angle he wanted. He said this to me while looking at his brother, who was carefully cleaning each of his discs with a soft cloth.
‘Look at this guy,’ Mark said. ‘Thinks he’s some kind of pro.’
Mark giggled, and slapped me on the back. Pat didn’t laugh.
‘Just watch how it’s done, little brother,’ he said.
‘Jake’s gonna own you,’ Mark said. ‘His finger’s golden tonight.’
I nodded sagely, even though I knew Jake was an average player at best, and that night his shots had all been pretty standard. But of course I didn’t say that. I just sat tight as Mark went on about the skill of Jake’s game.
‘Against a guy like that, you got to play defensive. That was my mistake.’
‘Your mistake,’ Pat said, ‘was getting too drunk and too high – like Ricky.’
Ricky looked around from his laptop. He’d switched from porn to news feeds.
‘Who’s high?’ he said dopily.
Jake came back and took his seat and they shot for first disc. Pat took that – with a clean twenty – and then the game started in earnest. At first they played cautiously: just trading discs, clearing each other. It’s a funny thing, watching two people play crokinole seriously, since it’s such a simple and juvenile game. But their faces were as focused and intense as two guys playing high-stakes poker. When Pat sent a disc into the gutter, and Jake sunk a twenty of his own, Mark started needling his brother about wetting the bed. You could tell the mockery irked Delaney, as did the possibility of losing to Jake.
As he lined up his next shot he said to Jake, ‘You haven’t asked for your money yet.’
‘I figured we’d get to that.’
‘You haven’t forgotten, then.’
‘I wouldn’t forget a hundred grand.’
‘Was that the deal?’
‘That was the deal. The horse delivered, and a hundred grand.’
‘That was the deal, Patty,’ Mark said. ‘I was there.’
‘You shut up, you fucking amateur.’
Maria, who had been listening to the exchange, stood up from the kitchen table and wandered in to join us. She looked fairly dazed and airy-headed, and by that point I didn’t know how much of it was an act put on to help us, and how much actually due to the booze.
‘Are you boys okay in here?’
‘Your friend was just telling me I owe him a hundred grand.’
‘I said that was the deal.’
‘What if I said I want to renegotiate the terms?’
‘H
ow about we finish our game, and negotiate after?’
‘Ignore him, Jake,’ Mark said, ‘he’s just trying to throw you off your game.’
Looking broody as a spoiled child, Pat finally took his next shot. The attitude didn’t help his game, any. He missed that shot, and Jake countered by sliding a disc neatly into the fifteen circle. I don’t think Jake was even trying (winning clearly wasn’t going to do him any favours) but Pat was making it hard for him to lose. Pat’s follow-up shot went wild: clipping a peg and flipping right off the board. The disc landed in my lap like a dead beetle.
Pat glared at me. ‘That retard moved as I shot. He threw me off.’
‘Whoa man,’ I said. ‘No way.’
‘I saw it. You did it on purpose.’
‘Pat,’ Mark said. ‘You’re wigging out. I’m sitting right here and I didn’t see it. Did you see it, Ricky?’
‘I don’t fucking know anything,’ Ricky said, without looking over from his laptop.
‘It must have been an accident, Patrick,’ Maria said soothingly.
Pat was still staring me down. ‘Don’t sit there,’ he said.
‘Shit man. Okay. Calm down. I’ll move over here.’
I shuffled my chair around. I had this sick, feeble feeling I get in situations like that.
‘If you need to blame my brother for losing,’ Jake said, ‘that’s pretty weak.’
‘You’re fucking weak.’
‘Boys,’ Maria said. ‘Just play your game. I’ll mix you all some drinks.’
She drifted into the kitchen, swaying a little as she went. I heard her opening and closing the fridge, and the glug of liquid. Then the ice cracking. As that went on Jake began lining up his next shot. His upper body was still. He looked calm. But under the table his right knee was twitching up and down. As we sat like that, with the game nearing last shot and everybody on tenterhooks, Ricky leaned forward and said, ‘Holy fucking shit.’
We all looked. I could see the laptop screen from my position at the table. What I saw was video footage of a boat, and a horse, dangling in a seine net. There were two guys on deck and you could hear women giggling and catcalling to them. I looked at Jake and he looked at me.
‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘we did only ask them to wait a couple of days.’
