Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

In the bathroom, he gingerly washed his face with cold water. He winced, marvelling at how quickly the wounds from Don’s fists had bloomed under his cheek and beneath his eye. The blood had stopped, but he looked rough as hell. There was a bottle of prescription painkillers on the upper shelf in the medicine cabinet. The prescription was made out to “Benson, Don,” he noted with grim pleasure as he put the bottle in his knapsack. Jordan would need it later, he was sure. His nose probably wasn’t broken, but Don had hit him pretty hard. It was starting to hurt like hell. He hoped Don felt worse than he did and that he’d go looking for these pills as soon as he came home from his round-the-block sulk.

Piece of shit, Jordan thought. These people are crazy. Especially Fleur. Crazy bitch. They’re all crazy bitches. They marry men that hurt them and kick the ones who don’t hurt them out the door. And when the kid is born, he’ll be next. Just like I was.

He heard her knocking on the bathroom door as he turned off the faucet and dried his face on the dirty towel hanging over the bathroom curtain.

“Are you OK in there? Come on, Jordan, you’ve got to leave. He’ll be home any minute.” She was dressed in her smock again, and it looked like she’d run a comb through her hair. Her eyes were puffy from crying, but she was visibly calmer, more like the flower power “it’s all beautiful” freak chick he’d met three months ago.

“One question,” he said in the doorway. “Why? Why me? Why now?”

She shrugged. “I liked you. You’re cute. Don and Mack, you know… Well, we’re all going to be together once the baby is born, and I thought-”

He cut her off. “He’s going to hurt you. And he’ll hurt the baby. He’s not going to stop.”

Fleur shook her head. She smiled blankly and said, “No, he’s not like that. I just made him jealous. He’s never like that. He’d never hit me.”

Half an hour later at the bus depot, Jordan asked the ticket vendor when the first bus for Lake Hepburn was leaving. He told Jordan there was a Greyhound departing for Sault Ste. Marie at midnight with a stop in Lake Hepburn just after 5:00 a.m.

At some point between the apartment and the bus depot, it occurred to Jordan that he had very likely committed a crime by beating Don as badly as he had. A crime that Don could report to the police, one that could land Jordan in jail. And if he was in jail, he could kiss off any chance of saving his mother from his bastard father. He looked around the station guiltily, half-expecting to see police officers coming through the doors, pointing at him and drawing their guns.

“Anything before that?”

The ticket vendor looked up and raised his eyebrows when he saw Jordan’s bruises. “Not a fan of our great city, I see. Okie-dokie, just a minute.” He checked the schedule again. “Well, lookie here. There’s a Northern Star bus leaving in an hour. Ticket’s almost half the price.” He leaned closer to Jordan. “It’s sort of an old bus, kid. Not real comfortable. If you wait for the Greyhound, you’ll have a smoother ride. You look like you could use it.”

Jordan said, “I’ll take the Northern ticket, please.”

The vendor sighed. “Round trip or one way?”

“One way, please,” Jordan said. He paid for the ticket and went to wait on one of the benches near the platform.

Jordan boarded the busat six p.m., making his way to the back where, as fate would have it, he met the vampire, who was sitting in the opposite row of seats.

He smiled sympathetically at Jordan and said, “I hope you made the other guy look worse, at least?”

Jordan turned his head. “Excuse me?”

“Your face. It looks like you were in a fight.” Jordan thought the man might be in his late thirties, certainly no older than forty. He was darkhaired and clean-shaven, but his face had a thick five o’clock shadow. “Was it over a girl?”

“Yeah, it was a bad fight,” Jordan said. “And it was over a girl. And the other guy did look worse. A lot worse.”

“My name’s Richard,” the man said, extending his hand across the aisle. “Richard Weal. My friends call me Rich.”

“Hi, I’m Jordan.” He shook Weal’s hand warily. He wasn’t used to talking to strangers, but since the ride was going to be a long one, he figured it was better to be friendly than not, if only to ensure a peaceful trip.

Weal smiled. “Where’re you headed?”

“Lake Hepburn,” Jordan said. “Just before Sault Ste. Marie.” He shrugged off his jacket and put it on the seat next to him. Feeling obligated, he asked. “How about you? Going far?”

“A town called Parr’s Landing,” Weal said. “It’s been a long ride for me. I’ve been riding this bus since Ottawa. That’s five hours already. I can’t feel where my back ends and this seat begins.”

“Never heard of it,” Jordan said. He shrugged. “I mean Parr’s Landing, not Ottawa. You have family there, in Parr’s Landing?”

“It’s near Marathon.” Weal smiled again, revealing a mouthful of yellowish teeth that looked like they hadn’t been brushed in days. “On Lake Superior. In the bush. In the middle of nowhere, truth to be told.” Weal laughed, an abrupt high giggling screech of hilarity entirely out of sync with the rest of his delivery. “I used to live there a long time ago. I’m an archaeologist. I’m doing a PhD at the University of Ottawa on the history of the Jesuit settlements in northern Ontario during the seventeenth century. Or rather, I was. I took a bit of a sabbatical, for health reasons. But I’m going back to complete some of my research.” He patted his hockey bag. Jordan saw that his nails were filthy, the cuticles crusted with what looked like dried mustard and ketchup.

“So… you got family there?” Jordan repeated, more out of politeness than anything else. He’d not finished high school by the time he escaped his family tumult in Lake Hepburn and he had no idea what a PhD was. He was having a hard time following the conversation. He wondered if he’d taken more of a hit than he’d thought when he landed on the floor. His head was beginning to pulse in earnest. “I mean, in Parr’s Landing.”

Weal smiled at that. “Blood family.” He covered his mouth with his hands and giggled again. “The best kind.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Never mind.” Weal held up a thick sheaf of papers bound with a heavy clip. “I’ve been re-reading the manuscript of this book I’m writing. I’ve been editing it. It’s going to come true soon.”

“It’s going to what ?”

Weal leaned close enough to Jordan’s face for Jordan to smell his breath, which was quite foul. “I said, it’s going to be published soon.” His eyes narrowed. “Why, what did you think I said? Are you hard of hearing?”

Jordan pulled back, nauseated by the odour of Weal’s breath. “Sorry,” he said. “My head hurts pretty bad. You know, the fight.” He decided then to bring the conversation to a close. He wouldn’t have felt like talking, even to someone less unkempt and, frankly, weird. He wanted to sleep. He felt like shit and he wondered if maybe Don hadn’t actually managed to break his nose after all. He looked up the aisle, but all the free seats were in the back, where he already was. He couldn’t easily move without calling attention to his desire to distance himself from Weal and he had no desire to antagonize him, or otherwise engage his attention beyond what he still hoped was just small talk. “I think I’m going to close my eyes, Rich.” He yawned in an obvious way he hoped didn’t look too fake. “I’ll talk to you in a bit, OK? You can tell me more about your book.”