Once we had left the Delaneys’ and were alone in Jake’s truck, cruising back along the Upper Levels towards the bridge, I didn’t say a damned thing. Not at first. I sat with my arms crossed and stared out my window at the concrete barricade that divided the highway from the houses and yards and normal lives that lay on the other side. I was trying to demonstrate my rage and general ire at the mess my brother had once again gotten himself into, and me along with him. In addition, I was trying to work out the whole thing in my head, but didn’t have much success. A lot of what I’d heard in there hadn’t made any kind of sense. But one thing had stood out. ‘Maria,’ I said. ‘Your Maria.’ ‘She ain’t mine any more.’ ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was part of this?’ ‘She isn’t, really.’ ‘That’s not what it sounded like.’ ‘She’s with him now. Big slick.’ ‘When did that happen?’ ‘Few years back. You know Maria. She’s got her needs.’ When it all went haywire after Sandy’s death, he and Maria had both gotten into a lot of different shit. Jake went clean, eventually, but Maria didn’t. And apparently still hadn’t. ‘I knew she was rolling with some shitty people,’ I said. ‘But that boner?’ He flicked his cigarette out the window. ‘Why do you care, anyway?’ ‘I care because you told me this was about you paying your debts.’ ‘It is.’ ‘Now it turns out Maria’s involved, and brought you into it, and that we happen to be working for her boyfriend, who’s a total fucking Carlito. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence.’ ‘Of course it’s not, you turnip. You heard him: she suggested me.’ ‘Why would she do that?’ ‘Maybe because she knows I need a chance to pay them back.’ ‘Or maybe because her boyfriend needed a patsy, and she knew you’d do it.’ We were on that section of the Cut with a wide shoulder. I told Jake to pull over and, after a second’s hesitation, he swung in and shoved the stick into park and killed the engine. The rain spattering the roof and hood seemed to crescendo, like the roar of applause, or laughter. I said, ‘Are we doing this for her or for you?’ ‘It’s not that simple, man.’ ‘It’s simple enough.’ ‘It’s not like it was all laid out. It’s not like they called me up and said, “If you don’t do this you’re dead.” She recommended me and they asked me and I said yes because these are not people you say no to, and because I owe them, okay?’ He paused, and shifted in his seat, as if he’d sat on a pinecone or prickly pear. ‘And I owe her, too.’ ‘You don’t owe her anything.’ ‘You weren’t even here.’ ‘Weren’t here when?’ ‘When do you think? Some brother.’ I couldn’t talk to him like that, all twisted sideways in the cab. So I got out. I got out and he got out and we started shouting at each other across the hood of the truck in the rain. I pointed at him and demanded he take it back, but he said it was the truth and that at the time I hadn’t been much of a brother, and I told him that was a cheap and low-down thing to say. He said, ‘Sandy dies and you skulk off like a total shrew, and go tree planting for God’s sake. You were up there for like three months, having your little blue-collar bonanza. What the hell do you think was happening back here, aside from Ma having a stroke?’ ‘I know what was happening. You and Maria were playing Sid and Nancy.’ ‘Fuck you we were. We were looking after Ma, getting her treatment.’ ‘That sure worked. Did you inject heroin directly into her brain?’ Then something shifted in his face and I understood we were going to fight, right there at the side of the highway. And it came as a relief, that realization. It was inevitable and probably had been since he’d first arrived at the boatyard. Jake walked around the truck and started trotting towards me and I stepped into him and we sort of crashed together like that, like a couple of rams or bucks, both of us hard-headed and bone-stubborn, and both of us just as dense and senseless as the other. I know exactly what my brother will do in a fight and he knows the same about me. He has a penchant for chokeholds and grappling and I prefer to punch him repeatedly in the ribs and torso. We rarely hit each other in the face unless we’re drunk or insane with rage, which sometimes happens – so perhaps by rarely I mean less often than not. He tends to get my head under his arm and squeeze down so my chin touches my chest and my windpipe gets cut off, and now the tendons at the back of my neck click repeatedly from having suffered this technique so often. But I also know how to wriggle out of it, just as he knows to cover his sides with his elbows to avoid the body-blows with which I aim to hammer him. It’s worth noting that my punches are much less effective than before the accident with my hand but in truth even before that I wasn’t much of a puncher. My hands are too small. This makes our fights strangely futile. Neither of us can get the advantage because neither of us really wants to win. What we want, I suppose, is to annihilate the other and at the same time absorb or become him. We’re like conjoined twins, frustrated at being yoked together, grasping and punching and flailing both at our brother-double, and ourselves. We scuffled like that for several minutes, flopping about in the wet gravel, caught in the glare of headlights as cars swept past. Some of the drivers honked (either disapprovingly or enthusiastically) and others slowed down to heckle us or just rubber-neck and have a look. Eventually one of the cars pulled over and an old-timer got out. By then we were spent and gasping and lying on the shoulder of the road like a couple of wounded raccoons. ‘Cops are on the way,’ he said, tipping back his cap. ‘You two better move along.’ ‘You called the cops?’ Jake said. ‘My wife did.’ ‘Damn.’ Jake picked himself up and sort of brushed his jeans off extravagantly. I sat there for a moment longer, still panting. I’d skinned the knuckles of my good hand on the asphalt and they were bleeding and Jake’s face was bleeding too. He held out an open palm to me, and after staring bitterly at it for a moment I took it. He tried to haul me to my feet, but I was too heavy, or he was too weary, and so instead I ended up pulling him back down beside me. Jake wanted to buy me a drink to make up, but no bar would let us in looking like that so we took his Black Velvet up to the roof of the Woodland, where we sat on a vent in the cold and gazed over the alley to the inlet. The darkly shimmering water reflected back a broken version of our city, and we stared at that and drank miserably from his little teacups and nursed our wounds and didn’t speak. I must have smacked my head during the fight because my skull seemed to be buzzing, irksomely, as if there was a small insect inside it. It was true what Jake had said, about me sneaking off after Sandy’s death. I signed on with a tree planting company based out of Quesnel and bought a Greyhound bus ticket for sixty-eight dollars and change and that was enough to leave behind what remained of my family. In the mornings we were assigned plots and given sacks of yearlings – baby trees – and I would take my sack
