then?
Jacob nods.
Dad – beep – hits the stopwatch. We’re offskee.
And Jacob checks his shoulder.
Teddy, quiet now, watches them going like it’s for good.
Keep up, kid.
Jacob, phooh, lengthens his stride. Dad goes out hard the first couple of blocks. Jump-starts the system, he says, lets it know what’s what.
They turn off Victoria, onto Brock, then settle into a medium-slow pace. Saving it for the hills. Jacob breathes into his belly and – he could run the route blindfolded – closes his eyes. Opens them blink just as they pass Immaculate Conception – looks nice in the dark and the hush, without all the buses and kids – and then blink the chocolate factory. Night-shift folks filing out. Lunch boxes and laughing, cigarettes like fireflies. A few people wave and say Morning or Get there faster if you drove, Johnny, and Dad laughs and waves but looks down and says Keep fucken smokin and I’ll be drivin you to hospital, smartarse.
Jacob picks it up a bit to make like he’s not interested, but has a quick look back. Sun-up the factory looks dumpy for being so famous, but in the dark it looks, if you want it to, like a painting, an old painting, of a dark castle. The kind of painting you swear is breathing, and invites you in.
Okay, kid, let’s get goan.
Dad pulls back alongside as they turn onto Sterling Road, into blowing snow, and their shells lash and snap like flags.
Get that head up.
Hurts the eyes, Dad.
Made of sugar?
No.
Then get your head up.
Jacob squints and blinks, blinks and squints.
And Dad says Let me by then. Moves in front. Usually breaks the wind on bad days.
On they go past the beer store and the Hydra restaurant and the old sign Welcome to Glanisberg, Apple Core of Ontario, Population 400, except it should be 4000 but the last zero fell off and no one gives a crap. Most of the orchards are gone, and Glanisberg is way more famous for the factory anyway. You can even buy Cook’s chocolate in Australia because of the new boss – hardly anybody ever sees him, just his flash Jag with the tinted windows, and he’s not even in the Cook family. He’s American. And everybody says he’s changing the way business gets done around here. Started with his own office. Jacob saw pictures in the Herald – swanko – and he’s not sure why exactly but he wants in there, in the boss’s office.
But the Murph won’t let them in.
The mailbox – Jacob can read it from here – used to say THE MURPHYS back when. When his wife was alive. And when his kid was still there. Then he put duct tape over the S and the Y. Some people say it was Children’s Aid had to come. Dad says people should mind their garbage mouths, stop talking daft crap all the time. Still crosses the road, though, whenever they run by and says – here it comes – Watch for dogs.
Dad, we’ve never seen them even once.
Take half your leg off, says Dad, snapping his head like a dog’s got hold of a groundhog. And if they come for you when I’m no here, don’t –
I know. Don’t run.
Stand your ground, smartarse. Or they’ll get you here – Dad dips down and pinches Jacob’s Achilles tendon, makes torn skin and tissue sound. Right the fuck out they’ll take it, and that’s you hobbled. Never heals.
Jacob nods and swallows and blinks away the feeling of teeth on his tendon. Thinks of Teddy. Dad was dead wrong about him. Maybe he’s dead wrong about the Murph’s dogs, too. Might not be friendly with everybody, but probably pals for the Murph, up there alone in a falling-down farmhouse. Dean Spielman, mean Dean, speedy Dean, says the guy’s just a pervert. Spielman should know. Except for the back of hockey cards, all he reads is Hustler magazines his dad leaves lying around the greenhouses. Pornography is Greek and means writing about prostitutes.
Kid.
Eh?
Away with the fairies.
Just thinkin.
About what?
Nothing.
You sure?
I’m sure.
So get a move on. And get this in you. Dad passes him the electrolytes.
It’s cold, Dad, I’m fine.
You’re still losing fluids. Drink.
Jacob drinks. Swallows a gag.
You right then? says Dad.
Jacob nods. Passes the electrolytes back.
Okay, kid, pick it up a bit.
They make the turn into Harris Provincial Park, jump the gate chain and turn left.
Here come the hills.
Jacob closes his eyes, puts a soft please in his out breath.
Lean into her, boy.
Trying, Dad.
Faster.
And then they come, like moths in his skull, smacking the backs of his eyes.
Dull dead eyes but open like saints’ in pictures.
Attack it, son.
Martyred and mortified and looking –
Come on, move.
– up at God like he’ll never let the pain end.
Get that head up.
And bits of skin and tissue, stuck to the sawtoothed pedal spinning this way, that way, this way –
Breathe, fucksakes.
Jacob spits and gulps air and tries to settle his breath, settle his breath, but stabbing the bits keep stabbing his eyes.
Bone bits, and Dad’s bloody hands.
Stay with me, son.
One and two and squelching like a sopping squeezed sponge.
Are you breathing, boy?
And Mrs. Simpson crying black smears O John he came out of nowhere I swear.
They crest, and drop their arms for the downhill.
Let it go, kid.
Johnny, let it go, Johnny,
