Chapter 15 #2
“Actually.” Myles drew a deep breath and managed a faint grimace as he pulled out his wallet, once again leaning the cane against his leg to free up his other hand. The thing was such a necessary pain in his ass.
“I don’t need your charity.”
“Calm down. I want to show you something.” He poked around until he found a photograph.
It depicted himself, Ozzy and Lucky, grinning—a bit manically, maybe—at the young woman who had taken the picture.
It had been just after Christmas, and she’d been trying out a new instant camera she’d received, and Lucky had dragged them all over to pose for her. He held the photo out.
“Who’s that?”
“Me. And a couple of my friends. It was taken—” He stopped to think. “Six or seven years ago, I think.”
“You look like shit in it.”
Myles snorted and turned the picture to look at it himself. They all looked dirty, unkempt, clearly as homeless as they’d been at the time. “Yeah. We all did. I was probably drunk too. But we’re none of us those guys anymore.”
“So what? You carry it around to remind you?”
“Something like that.” He went to put it away, but his companion snatched it from him to look again. “For a while, I carried it to remind myself they’d made it out, so I could too. To not forget who I was. Who they’d managed to become.”
“You had each other.” All the challenge had vanished from their voice, and they sounded younger than ever.
“Who are you?” Myles asked gently.
“No one.”
Instead of taking the picture back, Myles wrapped his fingers over their hand and squeezed, beating back the wave of unpleasant revulsion at the dirt.
That was the last reaction this young person needed from him right now.
“Not true. You’re the one who just stopped me falling on my ass in the street. That’s not nothing.”
“It’s not much.”
“It is to me.”
For a long moment, they stood, staring at Myles. Then, in the same soft, too-young voice: “Wyatt Jones.” He lifted an arm, hesitant, hand outstretched.
Myles eyed the black dirt ground into every wrinkle and crease.
“Sorry.” Wyatt drew back, scrubbing his hand on his coat, which did neither his hand nor the coat any good. “I’m filthy.”
Myles gritted his teeth. “It’s… shit. It’s not you. This is a me thing. I, um.” A clammy chill broke along his shoulders and bubbled up from his gut.
“You have a phobia,” Wyatt said.
“Aversion,” Myles corrected.
“That you can’t control and that makes you break out in a flop-sweat.”
“Come on.” Myles gripped his cane hard and ploughed forwards, twisting sideways to get past Wyatt.
“Where?” Wyatt spun to watch him hobble along.
Myles pointed across the drive to Tim’s. “I could use a blood-sugar hike.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Please let me. I’ve been where you are.”
“They won’t like me being in there.”
Myles pulled back his shoulders and puffed out his chest, gripped his cane with purpose and started walking. “Too fucking bad.”
Wyatt cackled. “You’re pretty bad-ass, there, grandpa.”
“You have no idea,” Myles replied. Because for once in he couldn’t remember how long, he had a handle on something. Maybe it was a small thing in the grand scheme of it all, but buying this young vagabond some food? He could do that.
Over hot chocolate, chili, a sandwich and two doughnuts, Wyatt Jones confirmed his age—way too young at seventeen to be out here alone—and gender, but didn’t offer a lot of information about where he’d been or what had led him to where he was now.
Myles didn’t push. It wasn’t any of his business.
He left the younger man with a few twenties and directions to Lucky, though if he took the chance or not would have to be up to him.
Sitting in his car after their meal, Myles debated going back to offer him a ride. But Wyatt had no reason to trust him. He’d put the car in gear and prepared to pull out of his parking spot when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Mr. McCreevy. This is Daniel Giroux.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He threw the car back into park and turned it off. “You got my message.”
“I did. Unfortunately, I don’t have any more information to offer you. I received the letter at the office with the request to forward it on to you.”
“He never wanted anything to do with Jet before now. Natalie didn’t seem bothered by that. Not that she had anything against him, she just didn’t care to be bothered with him if he wasn’t willing to step up.”
“I wish I could tell you more.”
“Right.” Frowning, Myles twirled the small stuffed hedgehog dangling from his rearview mirror.
“If you want, I can reach out for you. Try to see what he wants.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Getting the lawyer to make contact wouldn’t be cheap, but the hit to his wallet would be worth it if he could avoid Jet taking another emotional hit.
“Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course.”
After he’d hung up, Myles rested his head back and closed his eyes.
Behind his lids, images of his friends swam in and out of focus.
Lucky now, grinning and happy, but Lucky from before, too, face bruised, lip split.
Ozzy, face grim and eyes cheerless, the backdrop indistinct.
He knew Ozzy had served in roughly the same part of the world he had, though he hadn’t met him until they’d both been discharged and forgotten by an inadequate system.
Faces of men he preferred not to remember floated through too.
Some dead in a war that wasn’t even theirs, some dead trying to defend their homes and families.
After one tour, he’d no longer remembered why he’d thought joining up was a good idea.
He’d spent a lot of time, and a lot of drink, wishing he never had.
And when the dead soldiers faded, they were replaced by too many people who’d passed through his life on the street. Lucky and Ozzy were the ones he’d been closest to, but by no means the only ones.
Now he had Wyatt Jones’s face to add to the mix, and he wasn’t sure he liked that. Historically, this montage never led anywhere good. Usually to the bottom of a bottle. He’d spent a lot of time, done a lot of work, in Calgary to change that pattern.
Natalie had been there to hold his hand, but now she too was gone, and his memory of her was one of a too thin, too tired, too wasted face painted grey with wishes for her children she’d never see come true.
He knew if he didn’t open his eyes, the spectre of the liquor store couldn’t loom up, all too real from across the street. He also wouldn’t be able to drive home. Back to Lucky. Back to the slim barrier of comfort the B and B provided.
Back to Jet, and his attitude.
Shelly, and her meltdowns.
Or Steven.
Now there was an idea. Shelly was happy where she was for the moment. And Jet would only come around when Jet felt like it.
Mind made up, he was about to start the car again when a ruckus from across the street drew his attention.
He saw Wyatt hit the ground first, then the two men who’d put him there approach him with menace.
Myles was out of his car in a flash and across the street faster than his dodgy hip should have allowed. “Hey!” He felt like the grandpa Wyatt had called him, limping over the cracked pavement and waving his cane in the air as he shouted.
“Gat the fuck up, you little faggot,” one of the men yelled at the prone boy.
The other turned to face Myles and let out a guffaw. “What’re you gonna do, old man?”
Myles didn’t slow, but pulled back his cane, feigning a wind-up the man braced to deflect. At the last second, Myles lowered his shoulder and ploughed into the guy’s middle at full speed, bearing him back into his fellow bully.
The men almost caught their balance, but Myles managed a roundhouse to one of their jaws and both men went down in a heap.
It was all Myles could do not to follow them to the pavement.
But then Wyatt was there, a hand under his elbow, shoulder to shoulder with him. “What the hell, dude? You trying to wreck the other leg?”
“Get your stuff,” Myles told him, watching as the two men tried to sort themselves out and get to their feet.
“Bruh—”
“Go!”
“Yessir!” He scampered out of Myles’s view after his backpack.
Before he was back, the men had regained their balance and came at Myles.
He blocked one punch with his forearm, landed one of his own, though he paid for it with a fist to his own face.
Then he tangled his cane between the legs of one of them.
All it took, though, was a mighty shove at his back and his bad hip crumpled, sending him sprawling over the end of the knee wall and into the lane of drive-through traffic.
Car breaks squealed.
The shine of a chrome bumper filled his view.
Doors slammed, and a young, ladylike voice asked if he was okay. There was shouting, and as Myles rolled to his feet, he found three burly youths backing the two bullies into the wall of the LCBO.
The short whoop of a police siren froze everyone in their tracks.
When the two men tried to bolt, the younger men blocked their escape, and then Wyatt was again at Myles’s side, handing over his cane.
“Are you okay?” he asked, breathless.
Myles shook off his hands. “I’m fine.”
“Dude—”
“I’m okay,” Myles said, more calmly. He turned to the person on his other side. “Thank you.”
“I’m Lidia.” She held out a hand. “That was really brave of you.”
Myles snorted. “Stupid of me.”
She grinned. “That too. Are you really okay?”
“Nothing as damaged as my pride.” He turned to the scene in the neighbouring parking lot.
Wyatt’s assailants were cuffed, and the three young men were all talking and gesturing at once as one of the cops tried to take notes and the other tried to shut them all up.
A horn honked in the take-out line.
“Oh!” Lidia glanced at the truck that had almost run Myles over. “We should move that.” She glanced at her companions, now—finally—all listening to one of the cops. “Oh dear.”
“You move it,” Myles suggested.
She sighed and hugged herself. “It’s a stick-shift.” She waved at the three men. “Those are my brothers. It belongs to the blond one.”
“Keys in it?” Myles asked.
She nodded.