Tyler Keevil - No Good Brother

Jake had his truck at the Firehall but he was too far gone to drive (he was very particular about that, on account of what happened) and instead we took a cab down Granville and west on Marine Drive towards the Southlands area. There are some huge spreads out that way: big rancher-style houses with sprawling yards, which might have been smallholdings or farmsteads back in the old days. We cruised past those and I had no idea what we were doing, or why, but something in me – my brotherly pride, I suppose – refused to pester him about it.

Jake told the cabbie to drop us at a place called Castle Meadow Stables and Country Club. The sign out front was small and discreet: just a brass plaque mounted on a gateway beside a curving drive. We walked up the drive in the dark, crunching gravel beneath our bootheels. At the end of the drive was a parking lot, and the clubhouse. Over to the left were the stables, still and quiet at this time, and beyond them a field or paddock or what have you.

As we approached the front doors, I finally gave in and asked, ‘You going to tell me what we’re doing way the hell out here?’

‘Just getting a drink,’ Jake said, and pushed through the doors.

They opened into a foyer, leading on to the clubhouse and bar: a big room with low ceilings and hardwood floors. The walls were lined with wainscot panelling, and above the wainscot hung black-and-white pictures of old racehorses, presumably famous ones. The place felt like an old-time golf club, crossed with a western-style saloon. In one corner a cluster of video poker machines bleeped forlornly.

It was getting on near ten o’clock and the only other customers were a bunch of good old boys wearing plaid shirts and cowboy boots and, sitting a little apart, two younger guys in suits. At the bar Jake ordered us two more Molsons and two shots of Crown and asked the bartender to put it on his tab. The woman smiled at him and punched it into her screen, and I figured this was partly why we’d come out here – just for me to witness Jake order on a tab.

We sat down and knocked back our shots, which were tasting better and better. After being dry for so long it was going to my head and I felt very tender towards my little brother.

I said, ‘How’d you get membership in a place like this?’

‘I ain’t a member.’

‘How’d you get a tab, then?’

‘This is where I work.’

‘I thought you had a cleaning job.’

‘I do – cleaning stables.’

It took me some time to get my head around the notion of Jake cleaning stables, or being associated with that realm in any way. It just seemed so peculiar. But then, no more peculiar than delivering brake parts or laying paving slabs or working on a seiner or any of the other jobs we’d both done over the years.

‘So you’re like a stable boy?’ I asked.

‘Hell no. Stable boys actually look after the horses. They groom them and feed them and dress their injuries and crap. I’m not even really supposed to go in the stalls. I just clean the alleyways between the stalls, hose down the drainage troughs, carry loads of horseshit out back to the bin. Make sure the stable boys and trainers have everything they need.’

‘How in the hell’d you land a job like that?’

‘Connections I made inside. A lot of the gangsters are into horses.’

He nodded significantly at the two guys in suits. They were eating chicken wings and talking earnestly about something and didn’t appear drunk at all. If Jake hadn’t pointed them out I would have assumed they were businessmen.

‘What – they ride them?’ I said.

‘They ride them and breed them and race them. This is one of the places you can keep them, if you don’t have a ranch of your own. And I clean up their shit. Literally.’

‘I guess hard work is honest work,’ I said, ‘as Albert would say.’

‘Work sucks. But it’s something. And I get a tab.’

‘A tab you’ve got to pay.’

‘Not tonight I don’t.’

He looked up at the TV above us. There were half a dozen spread around the room. The screens were all the same size – thirty inches or so – and they were all showing the same image: a long shot of a racetrack in some exotic location, where the skies were dreamily blue and where everybody wore white linen clothing and wide-brimmed hats and carried parasols. It made me think of Monte Carlo or Casablanca. Some place that we’d never see, anyway.

‘Mostly it’s a farce,’ Jake said. ‘Hardly any of their horses get into real races, let alone win.’

‘But the bigshots need something to do with all that money, eh?’

‘You got it.’

We touched glasses and drained what remained of our beers. It was warm and flat and tasted almost soapy, like watered-down dish detergent. As I finished I heard a buzzer going off, and the TV screen images changed to a close-up of the starting gates, springing open. In the faraway country the horses were racing now. At a nearby table, this beefy guy with a mullet started shouting at one of the horses, telling it to come on, come on. But even before the home stretch he’d given up on that and sat watching morosely. He was all on his own.

‘How’s Ma?’ Jake asked.

‘No worse, but no better, either.’

‘I was thinking of going over there this weekend, if you want to come.’

‘I usually do, when I’m not on the boat.’

‘The model son.’

Jake picked up a bar coaster and drummed it repeatedly on the table, tapping out a rhythm that I recognized but couldn’t quite place. I knew he was holding something back.

I said, ‘Down at the plant you said you needed to talk to me.’

‘I’m going on a little trip and I just wanted to see you and Ma before I go.’

‘What kind of trip?’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I’m not worrying.’

‘Worry about your other family, and your little fishing girlfriend.’

‘Her name’s Tracy. And she ain’t my girlfriend.’

‘Sure – she’s your mermaid.’

‘I don’t know what you got against them.’

‘Forget it. Tonight, I just want to have a good time with my big brother.’

Hearing that, more than anything else, made me start worrying in earnest. Jake hopped up and took our empties back to the bar and returned with another round of whisky and beer. This time when he knocked back his shot I left mine standing there.

‘Lefty,’ I said. ‘Are you in some sort of jam or what?’

‘I’m always in a jam, Poncho.’

‘How bad a jam?’

He folded his hands and rested them on the table. He looked at them for a long time and then he looked up at me. Greasy strands of hair hung out the sides of his bandana, and his jawline was shadowed with stubble. Then there was that gap tooth. But he still had this innocent look about him, somehow, which he hadn’t lost since childhood.

He said, ‘We never talked about my time inside.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘I’m not laying a guilt trip on you. I’m just trying to explain.’

Jake jerked his head at the mullet-haired race fan, as if implying he didn’t want the guy to overhear. Jake got up and I followed him out. He led me through the clubhouse to a set of glass doors that opened onto a patio overlooking the training grounds. They had tables and chairs out there, but no heaters or lights. Nobody was sitting in the cold.

We smoked in the darkness next to the paddock and Jake explained what he could. It was as if he needed the shelter of the shadows to let some of it out. He said that a lot of what you saw on TV and in films about being in jail was bullshit. But not all of it. It was true that sooner or later you ended up needing protection, and when you accepted that protection you were expected to repay the favour some other time.