Once You Break a Knuckle Read Online Free PDF

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    He set up his wire spool and plugged in a drill and bored holes through studs and the floor joists overhead. The way the bit curled into wood satisfied him, always had – that hint of heated spruce in the sawdust and at the tip of the metal. He never minded wood chips in his hair and never wore a ballcap to keep them out. Ray’d use sawdust-scented shampoo if such a thing existed. At lunch, Kelly brought him coffee from her thermos while Paul waited in the Bullet. She wore pink mittens over her work gloves that she kept hidden in her lunch kit next to her thermos. Half a sandwich dangled in her hand. She turned the wire spool on its side and sat down. Ray sipped the coffee. It was nearly white from all the milk and way too sugary.
    â€”You need any help over here?
    â€”I’m doing okay.
    She bit her sandwich and shoved the food to one cheek as she spoke. —You wanna come for beers tonight?
    â€”Floyd Flannerly’s Christmas party is next weekend. We can have beers then. And they’ll be free.
    â€”I can never take that guy serious.
    â€”Because he’s a plumber?
    He offered her the coffee and she washed her food down.
    â€”No. Because he actually wears flannel shirts, she said. She stood, brushed herself off, and saluted. —Too cold. Going back to the Bullet.
    He watched her pick her way across the cluttered floor. Her boot caught his extension cord and she had to kick it free. She saw him looking and stopped, her foot three inches above the plywood ground, one hand wrapped around a stud for balance. She looked like the girls on the front of tool magazines, brand-name drills held upright at their shoulders like guns. Except Kelly had a sandwich and not a drill, and heavy grey overalls instead of skimpy shorts.
    Tracey used to wear a massive winter coat, open so she could reach the tools in her chest pockets. She preferred wool gloves that left her fingertips exposed, with flaps in case it got too cold to bear. Her hair was blond and ear-length; she had pucker marks from years of smoking, a few wrinkles around her eyes – nothing unattractive. She had been raucous on-site. In the winter she packed a halogen work lamp wherever she went, for warmth rather than light. She was known for being terrible in finished houses, would carry things twice her size and mar the walls, damage the ceilings. It was the way she thundered around the job site that drew him, the way she moved antithesis to everyone else. She would stomp over a pile of debris rather than skirt it.
    Kelly shook herself free. She flashed a grin, bit into her sandwich. He dipped his head in a nod and she turned and disappeared.
    LATER THAT DAY HE damn near drilled a hole in his leg. Paul gave him a lift home because Kelly didn’t have a licence, and Ray couldn’t operate the clutch. The kid drove with the speedometer not wavering from one hundred, as though Ray would give him shit for going too fast. When they got to his place, Paul stood awkwardly at the passenger door, his arms half-extended.
    Ray limped out of the vehicle, turned and faced him.
    â€”You want a hug or something?
    â€”Was thinking a kiss, actually.
    Ray grinned. The kid knew how to throw shit after all.
    Inside, he opened a Kokanee and sat on the couch. It was times like this when he wished he had money for cable, but he barely had enough for shitty beer. He raised the can and drank half. It tasted like the stuff he used to drink in the States – real manly, real light – and it reminded him of raised trucks and shotguns, a twenty-year-old drywaller named Burt with a backward hat and a stomach that drooped over the edge of his tool belt. They hunted coyotes along gravel roads, so drunk they could barely see. Then Burt shot one and it didn’t die. Ray wanted to finish it but they left it with its final howls rattling in its throat.
    He pulled his pant leg over his calf. The drill had only glanced along the meat without