Claudia Casper - The Mercy Journals

He came out from under, sized up the gathering group, and grinned. Yeah, Allen, now that you mention it, I’m bloody hungry too. Why don’t you two hop in, and I’ll give you a ride?

A young guy, shaved head, medium height, built, called out from the crowd, Who’s he, then? and jerked his head toward the infractor who still faced me. And why’s he — he jerked his head toward Larry — looking under that vehicle?

The questioner had me stumped. Usually infractors are aware of the danger they’re in and slink away as fast as possible. I’d never been in this position before, and I had no idea what to answer — A friend? A passerby? A beggar? I didn’t think the crowd would buy any of those.

Him? Larry answered for me. Just some nutcase who wants to change the world. Larry opened the driver’s side door, lowered the hook, got out his jack, and went around to the front of the offending vehicle. Hop in, boys, he said to us, but the young guy moved between us and the truck and the crowd followed. The questioner looked at the infractor’s feet.

Those are some fancy shoes, he said in a hyper-loud voice, playing to the crowd. How’s he want to change the world then? He asked me the question.

The infractor had been looking at me the whole time. I figured he was crazy, but when you looked at him, looked him in the eye, he didn’t seem crazy.

You can go, the young man said to me, nodding at my uniform.

It would start as a beating. There was no predicting how far it would go. Climate vigilantism was not prosecuted yet. The government wasn’t strong enough, and the rage was too strong. Someone in the crowd yelled out, Cheaters are killers! and in response another voice called out, Absolute adherence!

You’re wrong, I started to say. This man is not the driver of that car. He’s … Here I tripped up. I had no plausible explanation for him.

Who the hell are you ? the infractor yelled at the young man. His voice was louder than the young man’s by a factor of ten. Everyone went quiet.

One of the new fascists? You posturing skinhead scum! Who the hell … The questioner launched himself at the infractor and punched him in the jaw with a force that sent his head cracking back, then rammed him to the ground with his shoulder. The questioner took a step back, then kicked him in the stomach. The infractor groaned. The crowd moved in. I don’t know why I got involved because the infractor seemed not to care what happened to himself. Maybe it was because I was standing so close or because Ruby had just opened me up like an oyster shucker, but I went in and punched the questioner in the head. I got him in a plumb, my forearms on either side of his neck, hands clasped behind his head, and kneed him a couple of times in the liver. I whispered, Get lost now or I’m going to kill you. He nodded.

Several people in the crowd had begun to kick the infractor, but I landed a few more blows and pulled him back to his feet. The crowd backed off, but no more than a couple of feet.

I stood beside him and shouted to them, You’re wrong — you’re dead wrong about him. Larry heard me and started to drive gingerly into the crowd. I locked elbows with the infractor and held my arm out to push the crowd back.

We reached the truck, and Larry popped the passenger door. I pushed the infractor in ahead of me, but had difficulty climbing up with my leg. By the time Larry ordered the infractor to lean out and give me a hand, the questioner had come back with something to prove. He threw a punch at the back of my head. My endocrine went into hyper-drive. I unleashed on him, this time making sure he wasn’t getting back up. I tried not to kill him but I know I broke bones and teeth. When I turned back to the truck door, Larry reached past the infractor and yanked me in. I started to tremble top to bottom and stared out the side window as we drove away. Tears ran down my cheeks, yet even then, in that stressed state, I sensed something about the guy in the middle seat. There was something about him. The bulk of him next to me felt different from other people.

Larry took us to the impound lot. I stayed in the truck, working to bring myself back in. He brought us two cups of hot sweet tea. My mom always told me to drink something, any liquid, to stop tears when I was a kid.

I had a scratch on my check, a sore scalp, and sore ribs. The infractor had a bloody nose, a swollen eye, scraped hands, and probably bruised or broken ribs. We got out of the truck. Larry unloaded the vehicle and returned to us.

You can say goodbye to ever driving again. He demanded the infractor’s identity card, keyed in the particulars. The infractor watched closely.

You want a drive to the office? Larry asked me.

Sure. Yeah.

And how about you? Larry looked at the infractor.

He nodded.

I cleaned up in the office washroom and let Velma confirm my companion’s information and tell him what to expect by way of penalty. He was still hanging around the front door when I came out. He’d wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve.

Sorry for giving you a hard time, he said.

Yeah, well. Times are hard.

I have nowhere to go.

No home?

The wife kicked me out. I gave her everything and then, “my behaviour was maladaptive.” Just as everything was going to shit.

That’s a long time ago, man. You’re milking it a bit, aren’t you?

I can’t get hooked up.

Why not?

I’m an outlaw.

I shrugged and turned to go for lunch. I was hungry.

You don’t know me, do you?

I stopped and turned back. Something about you seems familiar. There’s something about your voice.

I’m your brother, asshole.

I looked into the burning eyes I’d been avoiding. How could I not have seen it? True, I wasn’t looking for connection with the outside world, even less with a cheater, but I should have known him, even after twenty years, even with the hair and the beard.

I suppose that means I have to keep you? I said.

I let Leo have my shower that night. Then I fed him. Then I’d had enough of him. He complained that there was no booze in the place. I wrapped a sheet around a pile of my clothes for a mattress, gave him the seat cushion from the easy chair for a pillow and my army blanket to supplement his coat and retreated to my bedroom.

I wanted to be rid of him. It was Ruby I wanted to find and bring back to my apartment, not my brother. I had worked seventeen years with pure discipline to tamp down my past, and now here was this hairy, smelly, demanding emanation threatening my hard-won equilibrium because he had nowhere else to go?

But as I folded my clothes and put them away, threaded my way into my pyjamas, turned out the light, and lay on my back waiting for warmth, I remembered how I used to crawl into Leo’s bed after a nightmare even though I was the older brother, and he’d pat my head with his smaller hand and we’d look out the window at the chestnut tree as I whispered my nightmare to him, and he’d say, Don’t worry. Hamschen (our dead pet hamster) is watching over us, and we’d start to giggle and drift back to sleep together. I remembered that he always used to ask me to feel his muscles, and they were just tendon and bone, like a frog’s quad grafted onto a humerus, and he’d be looking at me with unguarded hope. When my own boys were that age and they did the same thing, I’d feel their walnut-sized biceps, knowing they wanted serious acknowledgement, but all I had was affection and the memory of Leo underneath.

Sometime in the middle of that night, with Leo sleeping in the living room, I sat up and was flooded by memories of my old life. I missed Jennifer so much. I think I’d been reliving in my sleep the last time we’d had sex, and I kept trying to wind the dream back the way you used to rewind a DVD by jumping back a chunk, watching a bit of the beginning of the previous scene, then jumping back to the beginning of the chunk before. I was making love with her, and then the dream would leap back to making love when the kids were little, then to when Jennifer was pregnant, then to before we had kids when I returned from a tour in Afghanistan and the sexual excitement was explosive, so to speak, but the dream kept sliding back to the last time we’d made love and somehow Ruby was there but invisible.