The Journey Prize Stories 25 Read Online Free PDF Page B

us, an unreal painted backdrop. The last of the sun was honey oozing between the peaks, and through it we moved slowly, lazily. In the middle distance the foothills burped up from the prairie, little practice runs, junior topography. That’s where we were headed, to a place called the Starlite, located nowhere in particular, just a sign, a parking lot, and a roadhouse.
    We stood in the parking lot, Marty and I, feeling – what? Apprehension? Excitement? It’s likely, given what transpired later, that we were not feeling the same thing at that moment, though it felt for all the world that we were comrades, men linked by uneven pasts and a hope that the near future, namely this night, would prove to be a kind one.
    We leaned against the truck and did some damage to a six-pack liberated from my fridge. The light disappeared and the night came on and we watched two or three trucks pull in, their drivers making their way to the Starlite’s steel door with their heads down.
    My hair plastered down and my boots newly polished, I felt like a handsome devil. Maybe there’d be women inside, I thought. That’s why I had come, for drinks and whateverinteresting faces this evening might invite in. The usual things. I assumed that’s why Marty had brought us out there, an assumption I’d find to be false in due time.
    Marty specialized in broken women: those who’d known bad men, bad times, those who’d become familiar with the youth justice system. That’s what drew him to my sister, of course. She hadn’t yet gone off the rails, but he saw something in her. Marty would ride their momentum for a time, have some laughs, then jump off before things completely fell apart. He had a knack for it. When you were riding alongside Marty, you would meet women who quickly began to tell you all about themselves – everything, in one sitting – and you’d hear some crazy things. Then they’d want you to commend them on their strength, given all they’d endured. Sometimes I’d say something along the lines of, “Well, we’ve all got trouble, sweetness, but we don’t necessarily go blabbing it to the first person we meet in a bar.” This stance had, on more than one occasion, hurt Marty’s chances with certain women, and he openly discouraged me from adopting it, or at least voicing it. I’d try to comply, if only because part of me felt that I owed Marty something.
    An explanation on that one: while duck hunting with borrowed guns three years earlier, I broke my tibia galloping down a slope toward the spot we’d selected, on the rim of a broad marsh. Marty tied a stick to my leg and then put me on his shoulder and carried me three kilometres back to the truck. He let me drain the vodka from his flask while he drove me to the hospital. An episode like that can endear a person to you, even in the face of their obvious shortcomings.
    I was remembering all this as we stood outside the Starlite.I could hear the wind, which had taken on a coolness I didn’t welcome, and I could hear the bar’s sign buzzing. Far out in the night I could hear traffic on the highway, transports moving between Calgary and the mountains, and Vancouver beyond that, though at that moment the road in front of us was empty.
    “Don’t see his truck,” Marty muttered, lifting his bottle to his lips.
    “Whose truck?” I asked, but Marty was pitching his bottle across the gritty parking lot and striding toward the Starlite’s front door. If he heard me he ignored the question.
    Inside it was dark and musty with a checkerboard linoleum floor that might once have been black and white, but had gone grey and yellow many years ago. There were about a dozen patrons scattered about, most of them in high-backed booths, while three men in plaid shirts and leather vests slumped over the bar. The walls were wood panelled, but the chintzy variety of wood panelling, the kind your dad might have installed in your basement. It was warped in several spots. It had been a