Craig Davidson - Cataract City

I said, “And nobody arrests them?”

“You can’t walk onto a rez and start slapping on cuffs. The Six Nations never ceded to the Crown. They’re a sovereign people who walk the path as brothers and equals under the law — but our laws don’t apply. They can cross the border freely. No guards. No duty. They got their own police force, but …”

“It’s complicated?”

“Ever been down to the Akwesasne? Right out of Mad Max , man. Where does the money go? Not into infrastructure. Tough tickets, the Mohawks.” Owe smiled as if to say, Crazy, huh? His insurance adjuster’s eyes slid over the slope of my shoulder to my nose, the plugs of bloodied TP, his gaze resting comfortably on mine. “Our old pal Drinkwater’s neck-deep in it.”

“That so?”

“It is a fact,” said Owe. “Makes him a whole lotta wampum. That’s racist. Sorry. He smuggles across the river into Canada. A risky game, but his rake is huge. Plenty of money on both sides of the river — in Drinkwater’s pocket on that side, in the distributor’s pockets over here. But the river itself … that’s where the smugglers operate. They’re low-level mules, totally expendable. Here in Cataract City, you can’t walk five feet without tripping over one of those poor fools.”

My bladder tightened. I got up and went to the toilets, and stared at my reflection in the fly-spotted mirror. Did Owen know? Had he seen or heard or somehow read the thoughts bouncing inside my head? Owe was smart — smarter than me. I couldn’t outfox him. He’d give me a heads-up, wouldn’t he? Let me know which way the wind was blowing?

A quickie vacation — that’s how I floated it to Edwina. Don’t ask where the money came from. Don’t ask me to justify it. Just say you’ll come.

We’d planned a similar trip years ago, to New Orleans. We’d made it to Kentucky before my old pickup’s engine blew, which was just as well — something burned deep inside my bones the further I’d gone from the city.

But I remembered even the smallest details from that trip: Ed’s feet on the dashboard, the chipped candy-apple of her nail polish. How we’d sat in a café in West Virginia eating eggs whose yolks were the size of quarters — pigeon eggs, Ed had called them — with sunlight falling through the yellowed windows. How Ed had grabbed my hand impulsively and bit the knuckles. I still had knuckles back then.

She had sat on the bed in one of those no-tell motels along the interstate, cupping her breasts, laughing and telling me casually, “I really like my tits.” Later that night, dehydrated and ravenous, we’d ransacked our pockets for quarters and wrapped our naked bodies in the motel duvet and crept out to stock up on cold Cokes and Ho Hos, giggling like kids in the glow of the vending machines.

During that trip I’d realized you can’t have it all in a relationship. Constancy and the ability to thrill — these rarely dwelled within the same person. So you took the best of what you could reasonably expect, made your choice and held to it.

This time we drove north into Pennsylvania Dutch Country. The grey sky held a perpetual hesitancy, as if it could open up at any moment. The exit signs fascinated me. Turn off at any one and the possibility existed that you could be somebody else entirely. The miles dropped under the hood and tension eased out of my chest. In Cataract City everything was a struggle. It knit itself deep inside you. What was the most awful thing about living as an adult on the same streets where you grew up? It’s so easy to remember how perfect it was supposed to be. Reminders were always smacking you in the face. Good things happened — sure, I knew that. They just happened in other places.

“Am I a gift?” Ed asked me one night in an interstate motel. “Because you’re a gift, Duncan Diggs. And I treasure that gift. Really, I do.”

“So do I, Ed. I treasure you, too. Why wouldn’t I?” But the refrain in my head said, Just tell me not to do it, Ed. Whatever it is, whatever you think, just tell me not to go through with it — and I won’t. I swear to you, I won’t .

But she wouldn’t say anything about how I’d managed to find the money for the trip or what I might be planning. It wasn’t Ed’s way. Looking back, I believe she was making plans even then. The trip had that end-game undercurrent.

We drove back through unending rain. My cell rang outside Buffalo.

Drinkwater said, “How’s it going, paleface? Get your sea legs ready.”

The night before the job, Owe called.

“Got a minute?”

“Sure, always.”

He was drinking — a slurred tempo to his words. I pictured him in his well-ordered cop apartment drinking whatever cops drank.

“You never asked me about Fragrant Meat, man. You never asked how my dog was doing.”

I sat by the window overlooking the street. Dolly’s head rested on my lap. I scratched her ear flaps and said, “How is he?”

“Dead.”

The fact hung between us —dead —like a squashed bug on the sidewalk. Owe laughed, the same mirthless, thousand-yard laugh he’d started using after his knee surgeries.

“I’m sorry, man. I knew you really cared about—”

“No, no. Just listen , okay? Listen.” When I didn’t say anything he carried on. “So a stupid fuckhead gets off his stupid fuckhead job on Friday afternoon. The stupid fuckhead has a few too many drinks with the other stupid fuckheads he works with and then hops in his truck and goes screaming down a neighbourhood street at ninety K. That neighbourhood was my neighbourhood. Southern edge of Calgary — I couldn’t see the Rockies from my house, the angle wasn’t right, but the area felt safe, Dunk, and that mattered because I never really felt safe on the job, right?”

The clatter of glass, the sloppy gloh-gloh-gloh of liquid sloshing out of a bottle. A heavy exhale, then two convulsive swallows — I heard the click of his Adam’s apple. He’d reached that state of drunkenness where cold clarity settled in. He spoke fluidly.

“I was walking Fragrant Meat. But I didn’t call him that anymore. Wasn’t any sort of name for a creature you loved, right? He slept on my bed, which was fine seeing as the ladies weren’t exactly lining up to share it with me. I heard the truck before seeing it. The grrrrrr of its engine. It rounded the bend, skipped the grassy strip dividing the street, hopped the curb and … there was no time to do anything. I tell myself that now, Dunk, and … really, that’s the truth I think. But it felt like I had all the time in the world. But that’s only because time slows down in a crisis — that’s what everyone tells me, anyway.

“The fuckhead hit Frag so hard his collar snapped — the impact knocked the blood through him in a wave, the vet told me, bulging his veins and snapping the collar. All I felt was a slight tug as the leash followed the movement of Frag’s body — like a big fish biting the bait off your hook before the line goes slack.”

I could hear Owe moving — had he stood up, was he stumbling around? I listened to the familiar squeak of the brace on his knee: an awkward contraption he never bothered to oil. Then came a crash, the squeak of shoe heels on linoleum and a tortured outrush of air.

“Jesus.” He hissed through his teeth. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

“You okay?”

“I’ll live. Unfamiliar surroundings.” His breathing calmed, then he said, “I didn’t see Frag go airborne. But when I close my eyes, Dunk, sometimes I do — Frag tumbling over and over in the air as if he’s rolling up an invisible hill before gravity inevitably takes hold. His legs tucked stiff to his body like he’s already dead, rigor mortis setting in. And y’know, I hope he was dead. I hope the impact knocked the life right out of him.