Chapters (56)
- Cover
- Dedication
- 1.1 [close to the bone]
- 1.2 [and introducing...]
- 1.3 [half-split]
- 1.4 [the Semple challenge]
- 1.5 [Brickpower]
- 2.1 [shaker up]
- 2.2 [heavyweight]
- 2.3 [♀]
- 2.4 [hired hand]
- 3.1 [wheels and deals]
- 3.2 [don’t cry over spilled ...]
- 3.3 [three’s a crowd]
- 3.4 [“If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” or “Night of the Long Knives,” take your pick]
- 4.1 [all the comforts of home]
- 4.2 [white knight]
- 4.3 [pay dirt]
- 4.4 [book learning]
- 5.1 [AQ]
- 5.2 [kihon, kata, kumite]
- 5.3 [pride and prejudice]
- 5.4 [hurt and humiliation]
- 5.5 [“King of the Road”]
- 6.1 [“Father and Son”]
- 6.2 [nothing succeeds like success]
- 6.3 [naked]
- 6.4 [nakeder (I know, there’s no such word)]
- 7.1 [42 km/hr]
- 7.2 [first aid]
- 7.3 [interest is mounting daily]
- 8.1 [kiai]
- 8.2 [kumite (sparring)]
- 8.3 [white knight II]
- 8.4 [Hope is the thing with feathers—that perches in the soul ... Emily Dickinson. American poet, 1830–86. I’m showing off.]
- 9.1 [white knight III]
- 9.2 [“Dead Man Walking”]
- 9.3 [tattletale]
- 9.4 [scat]
- 9.5 [painstaking]
- 10.1 [buzzed]
- 10.2 [amethyst: spiritual calm and healing]
- 10.3 [self-defense]
- 10.4 [self-disclosure]
- 11.1 [self-respect]
- 11.2 [guerrilla warfare]
- 11.3 [Sensei (teacher)]
- 11.4 [“The Razor’s Edge”]
- 12.1 [man to man]
- 12.2 [Tully]
- 12.3 [Hockey Night in Hilchey Bay]
- 12.4 [“If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)”]
- 12.5 [rerun]
- 12.6 [“the end is the beginning ...” Japanese koan composed by Brickson MacAvoy]
- [author’s note]
- [acknowledgements]
I feel like I just ran five marathons. But the wall actually looks like a wall.
10.1 [buzzed]
SUNDAY, WHEN I deliver Cassie to Marigold’s, Tully is outside with Caramel. I wonder if she had a good time in Halifax with Glenn and why I give a rat’s ass. Hard to believe I ever had my hands wrapped around her ankles.
“I’m working on Della’s stone wall,” I say.
“I saw you mowing her grass the other day,” she says, her voice zero on the friendly scale.
So that’s the end of that conversation.
Because I’m sore all over, it takes a while to get moving at Della’s. But then I find the right rhythm; just after midday, I lay the last stone on the top course of the wall. Carefully I replace Wendell’s boots on the shelf in the shed. What a major waste, to die in a stupid accident when you’re buzzed.
Neatly I tuck the laces inside the boots and leave them on the shelf. Outside, the garden is a riot of scent and color—blue, pink, orange, and yellow.
As I walk back down the slope, a hummingbird zips toward a shaggy red flower. I stand and inspect the wall. Rocks overlapping nicely, no vertical fissures to weaken it, corners as square as I could make them, and flat stones lined up along the top.
Della is pleased, and says so. In the envelope she passes me are six red bills, fifty-dollar bills, plus thirty dollars for the lawn.
“That’s too much,” I say. “I was learning on the job.”
“If I thought it was too much, I wouldn’t have given it to you.”
“Oh.” Which is my fallback word whenever I don’t know what else to say.
We part the best of friends.
Best implies comparison, which implies more than one.
*
TULLY’S IN the yard again when I arrive to pick up Cassie. I wish she’d get lost.
She walks up to me, her face sober. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Cassie has bruises on her knees. I saw them when she was in the bathroom. I asked her how she got them, but she wouldn’t answer ... clammed up the way she does when you’re around. Did you have anything to do with it? Because if you did, I have to tell Dad.”
A huge tiredness settles on me, as though someone’s piling rocks on my shoulders and doesn’t know when to stop. Year after year of living a lie, of living in terror of the man who’s my father ... and now Tully thinks I’m responsible for the bruises on my sister.
Moving like a machine, I walk around Tully, pick Cassie up, put her on the seat, climb on the ATV myself, and we drive home.
*