in a blue moon was small potatoes compared to running around with local thugs and getting so drunk you couldn't steer a truck down a sixty-foot driveway. But I stayed low-key because he seemed to have his act together at that particular point. I asked him to join me for a shot. He flashed a phony grin.
“You want me to sit and drink with you.”
“Just one, I want to talk about something.”
He fetched a glass from the cabinet and poured himself a short one.
“So, shoot.”
“Where've you been? You have a good night?”
He downed the whisky in one gulp and closed his eyes.
“Okay, old man, you're sitting here waiting for me with a bottle in front of you, you're still up at ten after twelve, and you're all cordial and pleasant, like the fucking Avon lady. You wanna tell me what's up?”
“Well, your brother is going to be talking to some Junior B scouts. What do you think of that?”
He tipped the glass right up, his tongue searching for the remaining drops.
“It doesn't surprise me. I think he could play B no problem.”
“I'd like you to help him, Russ.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Help him? Hey, I quit years ago. Haven't been on skates for five years. How can I help him?”
“I don't mean the hockey part. I was thinking more like just being there for him. He looks up to you, Russ.”
“Well, in case you forgot, I was in the car with you earlier, on the road to that game. You decided to stir the shit.”
I don't remember all of what I said next. But I lost it and said a mouthful. The boy knew how to push my buttons. He knew how to dare you to try and have a regular conversation with him. I stood and whipped the shot glass against the wall. I told Rusty that maybe he could help his little brother by setting an example. For starters, he could stop hanging out with criminals and quit making me feel like a guest in my own home, like I needed a fucking passport to walk in the front door. I told him that I lost my wife, that I knew and loved that woman for years before he was even around, so lose the attitude, the air he put on that made me feel like his was the greatest loss, the sharpest grief. Russ stood when I'd finished. He gritted his teeth and said, “You lost her because you ignored her. You put more value on that pathetic, rundown, backwoods gas station of yours than you ever did on her. She wanted out of this dump long ago. But she walked on eggshells around you all the time. That's what killed her.” He went to the front door and snatched his coat from the closet.
“Don't you drop a cheap shot like that and then walk out of here!”
He tugged the coat on and looked at me like he was challenging me. We'd fought before, back when he was about Travis's age. I damn near knocked him out, but he put up a good fight — he had the heart of a lion when it came to fisticuffs, and I doubted that I could clean his clock nowadays. He stepped towards me.
“Mom's heart failed because it had to be big enough to do the job of your heart too, old man. And you'd figure that would leave you with a lot of time to make some decent choices. I mean, what the fuck did you think the township was gonna do with that road? Everyone knew that factory was coming. Everyone knew that major changes were on the way. Man, you sit down at that greasy restaurant often enough with that blind buzzard Gus and that fat loser postman, gossiping like old women. No scuttlebutt ever reached your ears, old man? Or did you just have your head up your ass as per usual?”
I followed him outside. Travis yelled from the top of the stairs, told me to back off, just let him go. But no one talks to me like that, insults my friends and takes the piss out of my hard work. I reached Russ's truck before he could pull the door closed. I wedged my arm in there and got in his face.
“Get off the truck, old man.”
“You come out here and apologize for what you said.”
He shoved me and I fell backwards into some deep onion grass. The back of my head hit the dirt pretty hard and I got a lung full of his exhaust as he accelerated down the drive. So I sat up and coughed, eventually stood and brushed off my damp overalls. Travis came out in his slippers. He stood stock still when he saw me. He cleared his throat. I could hear the fear in his voice.
“Did he hit you?”
“Naw, he just shoved me. I wasn't ready for it and lost my balance, that's all.”
We went back inside and Travis flopped down on the couch. He sat with his head stretched way back and his forearm across his eyes, like he was exhausted. I sat on the arm of the couch. We just stayed there without saying a word. Eventually, Travis broke the silence by sitting forward and staring at the booze.
“Jimmy Piller's father quit by going to AA over in St. Catharines, you know,” he said.
I was taken back by this. I put the top back on the bottle, which only had a couple of ounces left in it.
“Art Piller was a hopeless drunk who kept losing jobs and failing his family. He had no choice. I quit without going to any meetings,” I said.
Travis shifted around and said, “Can I tell you something, Dad?”
“Sure, you can tell me anything.”
“Well, Rusty says that when he was way younger, like when I was three or four and he was a boy, you used to drink and yell and carry on. He said you were scary, says he remembers it.”
“I used to hit the drink pretty hard at times, yeah.”
“He says that Mom always worried that you'd slip up, go back to it.”
I didn't like where things were going. Rusty had a way of twisting things to suit his needs. And by the sounds of it he'd been filling Travis's head.
“You know, Travis, your big brother tended to suck up to your mom, build her attachment to him, and then use her trust and loyalty to get away with things. I remember one time when he was just sixteen he'd spent the day with her crushing tomatoes for her homemade sauce. That night he took off in a Mustang that I was reconditioning over at the garage. He only had a learner's permit at that time. He only took it for ten minutes, went racing down towards the sixth concession. When he came home I let him have it. A careless thing to do and everyone knew it. But your mom stepped in and told me to cool off, that nobody got hurt, the car was fine, Russ had been helping her all day, and blah, blah, blah. And I remember he stood off to one side while she spoke. I can remember the exact spot in the kitchen where he stood because he had this wicked grin on his face. He loved the way he could manipulate things.”
Travis chuckled nervously at the story. And then he apologized for bringing up the past, but I could see his young eyes were brimming with questions. And I could just about hear the sort of shit Rusty had been feeding him. I sat on the coffee table directly across from him and said, “I've done some things, said some things I'm not too proud of, Travis, but I never hit your mom. A man that hits a woman is the lowest of the low. Let me ask you something, is that what Rusty told you, that I hit your mother?”
Travis wouldn't look at me. He pulled his shoulders back and did some neck rolls, sighed and said, “No, not exactly,
