Craig Davidson - Cataract City

Would he help? He didn’t owe me anything. What we had together, those old loyalties — that was a long time ago.

“What’re you doin’?”

The girl had snuck up on me. She was tall and reedy, wearing orange shorts and a blue hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves hacked off. Her spindly legs rose out of a pair of vulcanized rubber boots. They looked like flower stems poking out of a pot.

“Just skipping rocks,” I told her.

She cocked her head. Her red hair coiled into ringlets that framed the wide angles of her face. Her eyes were green — made greener by the sunlight streaming through the canopy of trees — and they were wide and alert, but with an alertness different from the wary kind I was used to in the eyes of inmates. Her eyes were simply interested.

“I’ve never done that,” she said.

“It’s not that hard. You can watch me, if you want.”

She sat on a rock, eyeing me. My shoulders tightened slightly under her gaze. My first rock only skipped twice.

“I could do that ,” she said.

She heeled her rainboots off. Her bare feet had the clammy look feet get when they’re wet and compressed: like turnips gone wrinkly in the bottom of the fridge. She dipped her toes in the water.

My next rock skipped seven or eight times, with a few dribblers at the end I didn’t count. The girl didn’t look too impressed.

“Your hands,” she said. “They’re pretty trashed.”

I stared down at them. “Trashed?”

“I mean, like, fucked up .”

I felt my brows beetling, the skin drawing inwards at my temples. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “How old are you?”

She said, “Thirteen.”

“Oh. I thought you were younger.” She was about the age that Edwina’s kid would be — the one who’d left that scar on her stomach. The one she’d given up for adoption. “Anyway, that kind of language …”

She blew a ringlet off her forehead. “You can’t tell me how to talk.”

I lifted my shoulders. “I’m not telling you nothing. It’s just, I thought we were being friendly is all.”

She smiled. “Sure we are.”

I shifted my feet. The tips of my sneakers were wet from the river. “Anyway, you do as you like. I’m not your dad or anything.”

Her smile persisted. “You could be, for all I know.”

We walked together down the Parkway until we reached Burning Spring Hill Road. The Dufferin Islands rolled off to the north in a haze of overgrown sedge and water-rotted sycamores. The Derby Lane dog track was still there, but it had seen better days — although, now that I thought about it, had the place ever seen good days?

“This place is creepy,” the girl said as we walked past the grounds.

I could see why she’d think that. The swaybacked spectators’ gallery seemed to be collapsing into itself like a jack-o’-lantern left sitting on a porch until mid-November. Every single bulb in its marquee was busted, likely the work of punks with an obsessive streak.

“It used to be nicer,” I said. “A little, anyway. I had a dog. My friend and me, we both did. Greyhounds. We raced them here.”

“Bullshit,” the girl said cheerily.

“Not bullshit.” I walked across the lot, glass gritting under my soles. “Dolly Express. That was my dog’s name.”

“That’s weird.”

I acknowledged her complaint with a nod. “Racing dogs have silly names. We just called her Dolly.”

She touched her chin, eyes gazing skyward. “That’s an okay dog name. You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just thinking.”

We’d walked only a little further when the girl said, “This is me.”

A low-rent apartment block sat in the shadow of the escarpment. I watched while she climbed up the front stairs. She went ten steps, turned, and waved.

“See you.”

I waved back. “See you around, maybe.”

Her shrug said: anything’s possible . I watched until she was safely inside the building. She waved me off as if I was being stupid, she could handle herself.

I walked back to Derby Lane. Wind whipped off the river and howled around the marquee, singing off every point of busted glass. A burning ripcurl surged up from my stomach. This was a vital part of my life, right here. And it was gone now. I felt sick with nostalgia. Memory like a sickness, memory like a drug. I stood in the lengthening shadow of the lane, swallowed up by the black hole of my past.

BACK WHEN I WAS A YOUNG WORKING STIFF, I often sat on a bench in the locker room after my night shifts, soaking my hands in a bucket of warm water. A weird smell had started leaking out of my pores after my first few shifts at the Bisk, sweet and spicy like a Chinese bakery. I’d noticed that food tasted different, too: drinking a Diet Coke was like sucking on a battery. But I needed the money. Always, the money.

The regular night-shift mechanic had busted his leg falling off a stepladder in the deep-chill; now, whenever the rollers on the industrial conveyors went wonky, I had to tighten them with a three-foot pipe wrench. I wore heavy-duty work gloves but they didn’t stop the calluses: four dime-sized patches on each hand. Thick and hard, they put pressure on the nerves.

One night, same as most others, I’d scraped off the dead skin with a butter knife. It flaked away in curls, collecting in my palm. The new skin was pearly-white like cooked haddock; it turned pink with the rush of blood.

I dabbed on ointment, emptied the bucket and made my way past the factory lines to the exit. Machines stretched down the floor. I had to remind myself that we made cookies, the kind that kids liked.

Back then I used to dream about those machines growing into me — I mean, into my body .

The dream started with me tightening a lugnut on the conveyor belt, something I would do fifteen, twenty times a shift. Both hands on the wrench, torqueing my shoulder to feel the quiver of the machine across my stomach. Next the silver head of a screw pierces my skin. The tip’s winking in the middle of my hand. I’m like, huh ? But no pain. I’m shocked, but because dreams are driven by their own weird logic, I’m not terrified.

The screw has driven through the wrench and through my hand, anchoring me to the machine. Pressure builds up my spine; I lean sideways, putting weight on my right foot. Which is when steel bolts punch through my Caterpillar workboot. Tink! Tink! Tink! When the concrete dust clears I see the bolts have twisted into a snarl that pins my foot to the floor. I laugh. It’s so strange , it’s funny.

I sink to one knee. Aaaaahh . Feels great to take a load off. The moment I do so, small hooks — like fishing hooks but with a crueller curve, the hooks surgeons use to tug catgut through an open wound — pierce my trousers and sink into my skin. Each hook is attached to a leader like the ones my father used to catch steelhead: braided wire, so the fish can’t rip through with their hacksaw teeth. My dream-skin tears easily. My flesh is chalky and full of holes, like Wonder bread. Still, nothing hurts too much and there is never any blood, a fact that seems more sinister when I’m awake.

I begin to notice the other men around me — the generic Cataract City guys you see around. Their heads sprout like cabbages along the line. They’re talking over each other, babbling away.

“… saw him down at the Hillcrest Tavern and knocked his dick in the dirt …”

“… knocked her up and now she’s figuring to have the damn kid …”

… gonna put a supercharger in it. It’ll blow your doors off, sonnyboy …”

I try to remember just how I got there but the lines don’t meet up, the teeth don’t groove. How did this happen? The way everything does, I guess. One thing follows another, naturally.