Blood Sports (24 page)

“Get your damn hands off me!” Paulie shouted.

The orderly lunged to grab Tom’s forearms and held him to the chair.

“Tom! Tom!” Paulie shouted. “Get off! Now! I mean it! You cunt! You dirty, lousy cunt! You get –”

“Could you turn the
TV
up?” the orderly said.

The puffy-faced woman shot a worried glance at them both, and then turned the
TV
up before going to stand in the doorway. The
TV
’
S
speakers distorted as the audience clapped its approval. Paulie’s voice grew fainter and farther away and then stopped.

“It’s okay, Tom,” the orderly kept saying. “Everything’s okay.”

The private room seemed small and closed off. He’d gotten used to hearing the other patients, their monitoring machines, their visitors. The tranks made his head wobble. His mother pulled her chair close to the bed and held his hand as if he was dying and she was comforting him.

“… silly, old Mrs. Tupper left her frying pan on,” his mother said, indignant. “She denies it, of course, but the firefighters knew. Well. Our place went next –”

“Did anyone die?” Tom said. “Did they find a body?”

“A body?” his mom said. “No, sweetie, no one died. Just me! Oh, I thought you were burned to death! I couldn’t find you anywhere! I went to Mike’s! I phoned the police!”

He did imagine it then. The attempted robbery and bashing the guy’s head in were part of a hallucination. Unless the guy’s partner had dragged out the body. But you’d think someone would have noticed that. Especially if the building was on fire. Maybe they hadn’t happened on the same day. “When did our building burn down? What day?”

“When? Oh! I tried to get
BCTV
to do a story on you! And
The Province
! I called every day.” She lifted her purse onto her lap and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Look. I put up posters everywhere. I went to your school. They let me make a speech in front of all your friends at assembly! Oh, I couldn’t stop crying! And they were all so kind. But nobody knew where you were, honey bunny. You just disappeared after the fire –”

His mother talked and talked, and he waited for her to pause so he could break in, but she didn’t.

“Where’s Paulie?” he finally said.

“She went home,” she said. “I told you that already, honey bunny. Remember?”

“Does she know I changed rooms?”

“I’ll leave a note with the nursing staff,” she said. “Paulina will know where to go.”

“I want to sit in the hall. She might come back.”

“Gosh, here I am yakking your ear off when you should be sleeping.”

She kissed his hand, leaned her cheek against it, and sighed. Tom struggled to keep his eyes open.

“Did you see her leave? Did she say anything?”

“Were you with that Mazenkowski girl the whole time, Tommy?”

Tom pulled his hand away from her. “She found me, Mom.
She brought me here. You shouldn’t have done that. She was trying to help.”

Her lips thinned and she sat up, ramrod straight. “Herself. She was trying to help herself, Tommy.”

He pretended to sleep until his mother left, and then he sat in the hallway and pretended to read an
Enquirer
. He stared at the pictures, nodded off, and then snapped awake. After a long doze, he found himself in bed, tucked under the sheets.

He noticed he wasn’t alone, caught a small movement from the corner of his eye. A guy in his early twenties wearing a black suit with a brown shirt unbuttoned at the top sat in the visitor’s chair, watching him the same way you’d watch an interesting zoo animal.

“Jer-e-my,” Jeremy said slowly and loudly. “I am your cousin. Cousin Jer-e-my.”

“Where’s Paulie,” Tom said. “Where’d Paulie go?”

Jeremy sighed. “I thought you were faking it for the jury. Now I know you’re nuts.”

They drove against the Sunday-night traffic. Cars and suvs and tour buses headed back to Vancouver formed a conga line of headlights. Everybody returning to their normal lives. The Sea to Sky Highway took a serious climb. The air conditioner in their truck didn’t seem to be working. Jeremy kept his window open so he could flick his cigarette ashes out. He wore cammies and a khaki fishing hat, with “Don’t touch my fly” embroidered in blue thread. Tom wore a baseball cap and a vest with a hundred puffy pockets over his hospital lost and found T-shirt.

Earlier that day, they’d loaded the back of the truck with two large, metal coolers and assorted fishing and camping gear.
When the truck came to a sudden stop, the bones in the coolers rattled like stones tumbling in the surf. The truck smelled like it had been washed down with the contents of a septic tank. Tom had retched as he’d helped Jeremy drag the coolers up a thick plank and push them into position by the cab.

“We’re going to get caught,” Tom had said.

“People are dumber than a sack of hammers,” Jeremy had said. “They believe what they see. As far as anyone knows or cares, we’re going fishing.”

They stopped in Squamish at a roadside greasy spoon. Tourists in athletic gear of various styles ranging from Hollywood starlet tight and pink to skateboarder loose and grimy lounged with their après tour beers.

“This is obstruction of justice,” Jeremy said as the waitress walked away with their order. “Eighteen months. Maybe less. Depends on how hard you cry and how many grannies you get on your jury. Grannies cream over your kind of face.”

Tom glanced at the nearby tables, nervous. Jeremy whacked a packet of sugar against the back of his hand before he opened it and poured it in his coffee.

“No one’s listening,” Jeremy said. “And no one cares. You could stand up right now and confess and it wouldn’t matter. Rusty Letourneau was scum. You’re scum. What scum do in the pond stays in the pond.”

Jer was suddenly propping him up by the shoulders, and Tom didn’t remember seeing Jeremy move. Jer shoved him back against his chair.

“Tom, he was skimming off his uncle. And flaunting it. That put him past his best-before date, not you.”

“Who’s in the other cooler?” Tom said.

Jeremy considered him for so long Tom wondered if he’d said it out loud or if it had stayed in his head.

“His partner,” Jer said. “Forget him. His daddy’s a janitor at Wal-Mart. No one’s going to put a biker hit on us for killing him.”

The logging road narrowed until it was two tire tracks in the gravel. Morose brown-needled trees leaned over the road, drooping in the heat. The headlights arbitrarily spotlighted tree trunks, yellowed brush, and the occasional set of red eyes.

Tom took streetlights for granted. Their absence made him uneasy. The dashboard lights made Tom’s reflection glow green against the flat black surrounding them. The darkness behind them was tempered with a faint halo of light from Whistler.

The truck rumbled down the road, finally slowing. At the end of the tracks, a shack with a green roof stood in a clearing, the windows sparking as the headlights passed over them. Jeremy cut the engine. He reached under the seat and brought up a flashlight. He opened the door and stepped outside, sucking in a deep breath. Tom hunched into himself.

“Grab the gear,” he said.

Tom turned to stare at the shack. The lopsided porch gave the shack a smirk.

“Get your fucking lazy ass out of the truck before I kick it out,” Jeremy said.

The shack had four bunks, a wood stove in the centre, and a kitchen. Jeremy lit a kerosene lamp. Tom unrolled his sleeping bag on the lower bunk opposite Jer’s. The floors whined whenever one
of them moved. Mice pitter-pattered through the rafters. The kerosene lamp on the stove hissed. Tom took off his shoes and lay down on the sleeping bag. The bunk’s musty smell made his nose itch. Jer drank out of a mickey of vodka. He sat on his sleeping bag and leaned over, offering Tom a drink. Tom shook his head.

“We should call your mom,” Jeremy said.

Tom couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do less. Hi, Mom. I’m in hell. How are you? “Okay.”

Jer rummaged through his knapsack and pulled out his cell. He shuffled around the cabin trying to get a signal and ended up on the porch. Tom could hear him laughing, chatting. Jer poked his head in the door and gave Tom a look. Tom pushed himself off the bunk and went to take the phone from Jer.

“Hi, honey bunny,” his mom said, her voice choppy with static.

“Hi, Mom,” he said. The two coolers glowed in the light coming out of the shack.

“You sound tired.”

“Long trip,” Tom said.

“Are you car sick? Oh, dear. I told Jeremy you were too weak to go fishing. I told him. You can’t go straight from the hospital to the wilderness and –”

“I’m fine, Mom. Just tired, that’s all.”

“Oh! Tom, do you want one of the bedrooms that faces north or south?”

“I don’t care.”

“The south ones face Pender. But they’re farther away from the living room. Maybe we should wait and see. I wish that man’d move out of Jer’s condo faster. I’m tired of the hotel. Honestly, how long does it take to move one old man into a nursing home?”

Tom massaged his temples. “Okay.”

“I should let you get your sleep,” she said. “Love you.”