Once You Break a Knuckle by W. D. Wilson

Author:W. D. Wilson [Wilson, W. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1408830299
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2012-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

WINDLASS

When Winch turned twelve, him and his dad and his dad’s friend Sampson – who his dad called Doc – and Sampson’s son, Dallas, packed into a ’60 Bronco and tear-assed to a cabin out at Brisco. His dad had taken the weekend off. He worked more and more and sometimes Winch wouldn’t see him for days at a time, or he’d shoulder through the front door before bed. Those days, Winch’s grandpa – his gramps – rose from the couch and zigzagged to the kitchen to heat food. Winch’s dad gamed with the cabbage-like smell of pulp, and rust, and he’d have pink-stained hands from the barium, but Winch liked the way he had scratchy whiskers. His dad would sleuth one eye sideways and he’d pretend not to notice, and his dad would start to growl, and if Winch smiled he’d get tackled and they’d wrestle a few minutes, until his gramps brought a plate and a beer in a giant ceramic mug with a picture of two guys tending a bonfire. —Awright you two, his gramps would say. —Don’t make me sepraychya.

Sampson and his truck smelled like mothballs. He had a jean jacket with hewn edges, worn open over a Black Sabbath sweatshirt. His cheeks were narrow and tanned and his nose jabbed forward with a hook. He habitually lifted his Coors Light hat straight off his head so he could swipe a hand over his matted hair. Winch’s dad filled the passenger seat in a checkered overcoat and jeans faded in swaths and a beaten blue ballcap. He had the kind of hard cheekbones that could absorb their share of blows, and Winch had seen them bruised and bloodied more than once over the years.

Dallas was a beaver-toothed kid with freckles who talked about rifles all day. Winch had never touched a rifle, but his gramps kept one locked in a fibreglass case above his headboard.

It was September. Rain clouds stirred over the mountaintops and already the peaks had whitened with snow. The morning smelled like winter, the scent of brick and pale sunlight. Winch and his dad flung supplies into the rear of Sampson’s canopied Bronco. His dad fished two granola bars from inside a backpack and flicked one over and they chewed on the bars while Sampson spot-checked. Winch’s dad mentioned the poor state of his treads and Sampson jerked a thumb toward the box, a milk crate full of chains. —I’m from the Prairies, he said.

While they drove, Sampson smoked cigarettes from a carton he kept in the glove compartment. He lowered his window and flicked ash over the glass and flecks of it whirled back into Dallas’s face.

—I saw yer girl, Sampson said.

—She’s not muh girl, Winch’s dad said.

—Even still.

—Don’t care to hear about it.

Sampson crushed his cigarette in a white foam mug taped beneath the radio.

—She’s gone and cleaned.

—Ya know where I stand.

—Maybe ya should give ’er a chance.

—Maybe you should keep yer fingers outta this pie, Winch’s dad said, and belted Sampson on the shoulder.

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