LITTLE GURUDWARA ON THE PRAIRIE

And we left the EDM around four in the morning and St. Albert a little before then, of course. My shirt had been nearly torn off at Black Dog a couple of hours before, maybe it was time to call it a night. I dropped my friend off at his house and, since her shift had just ended, picked up another friend. Lake doesn't mind the random, she's a fan, she's smallish and darkish and she likes to wear hats that are too big for her, tams, newsboys. I remember "Chessboxin" dubbed over Warren Zevon pushing through the car stereo—"I'm makin' devils cower to the Caucus Mountains"—and it's a rough stereo in that car, no lie, U-God sounds like he can't speak unless his throat is choked with smoke. I remember John Darnielle giving it his bitter all with "No Children" and I remember Wilco and also Marina And The Diamonds, "Shampain Sleeper" exactly matching the grind of the wheels. Also, of course, Prince and then Hot Chip and then Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. I palmed the wheel and headed into the country-side and we rose and fell over the highways around Edmonton for hours. My car is a bag, no disguising, acceleration is more like an adjective, an idea, than a verb in that vehicle. I remember bumping the car into a ploughed field a little bit after sunrise and, looking around, realizing I didn't have the damndest clue where we were. A few minutes after we got back on the road, I saw a Disney castle, solid as a dream, standing in the middle of the plains. Lake said she would stay in the car. On the other side of the largest room in the world inside that castle, a man sat behind a low desk, four hundred feet of carpeted floor between him and me. He raised a turbaned head when I entered but he didn't move, he didn't speak. I ran back outside and realized my shoes were in my hand. The tires on the car are a little low, the car squealed hard as we left, I looked back to see if I could spot the other men I had seen coming toward me out of the sides of my eyes. It was seven-thirty when we finally entered St. Albert. I dropped my friend off and watched her drive away and then parked the car and fell asleep. No disguises, two empty two-sixes of Plymouth are still rolling around the back seat and the car reeks of Player's, I suppose that's maybe not such a good better best thing.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

was the only novel I read the summer I turned seventeen, I said, and I read it nine or maybe only eight times, it's a very big novel, a bible. And that was a hot summer, and kids with baseball bats drove around the country-side sabotaging picnics and bbqs, and the gunslinger sun pistolled and raked the baseball pitches in Centennial Park into acres of burnt bristling grass and, not stopping there, no, baked the earth so hard you could see your reflection in the dirt. And the scuffed balls bounced high across the hard yellow fields. Eleven old people died in their homes around our town if you count the dusty farms over to the east as part of the city. Later that summer I saw a seagull drop out of the sky. The bird’s wings had simply stopped moving, it must have believed itself to be an albatross. Or maybe it was just heat exhaustion. Trying to cool off in the basement, I watched a television adaptation of Crime and Punishment. I was in love with a dark-haired girl who had spent the spring sitting on the front steps of her parent's verandah, but the heat had driven her indoors, and there was no point in me being outside. My favourite song that July was off a compilation album from Asthmatic Kitty. "Go To The Crossroads" is two voices chanting tags from Dostoevsky over clashing piano lines and static, it's beautiful, it fades to black with the repeated diminishment, "Blood on our hands," four words circling high and away and falling down again. I got a tattoo at the end of August, lanky copperplate reading CHRIST IS RISEN across the top of my chest. Three hundred dollars on my body forever. Must have been the heat. I’m not saying this was a good decision, me getting that tattoo, but the sun had seared Rodion Raskolnikov into my brain and I was only seventeen and mostly missing the point of Crime and Punishment.

NO, WAIT A MINUTE, SAID EARLY.

He took his glasses off and rolled over to scoop up a set of ironwood knuckles on the night table. A dark-eyed friend of his had bought them in Thailand or Malaysia or some small jungle-black island in the South Pacific. The wood was as warm as honey, but pointed, four little pyramids of pain or panic on a clutch of bunched fingers. Early turned and launched himself at Ben like a small boy jumping off a dock, a dark lake and a hot summer sun.

Wait a second, I said.

The first backhand knocked Ben’s glasses into a pile of laundry. The second backhand drove up his nose, tossed the keys back into the car and strolled through the front door, shouting for a steak dinner. Ben snorted and shook his head and clutched Early close but Early managed to keep his right hand free and laid into Ben like a surveyor zoning a field, mathematical, precise, mapping out future suburbs of bruises. I lunged and grabbed Early’s right as he drew back and managed to pin his hand down on the bed, Early and Ben piling mountain and mountain on top of me. I tried to wrench those wooden knuckles off Early’s hand, but he balled his fingers up and started lashing out with his legs. His knee angled hard and bashed me across the bridge of my nose. I shook the sting off and twisted those wooden knuckles hard as I could, driving them into Early’s own hand until he shrieked and lay still. Ben staggered to his feet and pawed around for his glasses. They were unbroken, a miracle, tipped into a rank pair of Calvin Kleins under the plush chair in the corner. We were all breathing hard, Early most of all, pressing his injured hand underneath his arm.

Early, said Ben.

Early screamed and rushed Ben, bundling the blond giant into the doorway. But the bedroom door had been knocked shut during the fight. Ben let himself be pinned for a moment and then pushed Early away, maybe pushed a little hard. The man straightened and pirouetted, he half-danced half-flew into a short bookshelf. A trade paperback of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction fluttered to the hardwood floor.

Get out, Early screamed again. Get the fuck out of my room.

Alright, I said, We’re going. We’re leaving right now, okay? Ben shouldered his way up the stairs, I followed him.

Who expects that, said Ben. His voice was a bit raggy at the edges, blue eyes bewildered. He tweaked his glasses and brushed back the flutter of hair across his forehead. Just wrestling, right? He exhaled stertorously.

Whatever, I said. Early doesn’t have any brothers, so no one ever told him not to be insane. Or beat him when he was.

My hoodie lay on the edge of the sofa, its hood caping, zipper flickering. I fished a pack of Craven A Menthols out of the pocket and went outside. The light was grey and fading, a smell of rain in the air. A black bank of clouds crept doubtfully over the edge of the city, the autumn early in their darkening shadows, and the dark branches of the trees in the street looked like a thousand hands warding off a slab of piano. The girl across the street banged the door shut behind her and pitched down on the top step, bringing her legs together tightly as she sat. A slim white cigarette glowed in her fingers. I put a cigarette between my lips and flicked the lighter.

By now, of course, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t always believe what you read in the newspapers, you know I haven’t been telling the whole truth. You might even think, damn you, that I’ve been lying. I won’t say you’re wrong. I’m not a particularly honest man, as far as honest men go, which, let’s face it, is not very far. But in the photographs I have from those days, the slick film bruised by the sticky weight of the magnets on the fridge, you can barely see the marks on Ben’s cheekbones, small red shadows like flowers on a mountain, or tiny hoof prints across his face.