Free Slow Recoil by C.B. Forrest

biological, spiritual. He had been a boy once, yes, the little boy who worked and played at his grandfather’s farm. The smell of animals in winter, hay wet with the stink of piss. He remembered the boy sometimes, though rarely, and always within the distorted context of fractured memory. For Kadro was dead, the death certificate filed in a municipal office. He was dead, and his brother was an orphan. It was the irony of this strange arrangement—they had to die in order to be re-born for this.
    â€œLet’s go,” Kad said.
    â€œI’ll give you the directions,” Turner said. “Drop me off at the subway.”
    Kad gave him a look.
    Turner said, “What, do you want me to hold your hand? This is it for me. I’m done. Over and out. You reach me in the event of catastrophe, period.”
    Turner opened the garage door, and they both squinted against the flood of light. He slammed the door shut behind them, wiped his hands across his pants, and they got in the car. Kad turned the ignition and put the car in gear and said, without looking at Turner, “Your eye. What happened?”
    Turner sort of smiled and said, “Left it in Bosnia.”

    Kadro dropped Turner off a small parking lot kitty corner to the York Mills subway station in the north of the city. There was a brick building about the size of a large garden shed, stairs leading underground and connecting to the station across the street. Turner opened the door and stepped out. It was a good late summer day, warm enough for the diehard cyclists to wear their shorts as they careened in and out of traffic.
    â€œGood luck,” Turner said, his hand on the door.
    Kad looked over and gave a small nod.
    â€œGet back on the highway up here,” Turner said, pointing north.
    â€œI know how,” Kad said. The grid map of Toronto was burned into his brain like a cattle brand. The hours they had sat pouring over maps, being quizzed as though his life depended on it. And it did.
    Turner closed the door, walked to the brick building and slipped inside. Kad waited a minute then pulled out of the parking lot. He made it a block before pulling into a Petro Canada station. He bought a newspaper and four scratch-and-win tickets. He sat in the car and used a penny to slowly scratch each ticket. He blew the crinkled bits of foil from his lap. He didn’t think about anything when he was scratching these cards. Nothing. The world around him closed down for a few minutes. He won ten dollars on the last ticket and went back inside. He showed the clerk the card, and the kid took it and hit a few buttons. The lottery computer made a whirling and ringing noise as though he had won a trip around the world. The teenage clerk didn’t seem too excited over the windfall. He handed out two fives, and Kad flashed his first smile in a year. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was something.
    He drove east across the top of the city then south down to the woman’s apartment building near the railway tracks. Unit 801. He parked on the street and looked at his watch. It was going on four o’clock. He got out of the car and went into the building. He pressed the buzzer for her unit and waited. He pressed it again, holding it this time for fifteen seconds.
    â€œYes?” came a woman’s voice. “Who is it?”
    â€œKadro,” he said. “From home.”
    A pause. A long pause. As though she were thinking. This is what he thought as he stood there. It would be naïve to assume every facet and angle of the operation would roll out exactly as planned. People changed their minds. Soldiers talked with bravado and offered up promises of infinite courage while drinking on the eve of battle. When the bullets and the mortars started to fly, it was another story. He knew about people and their limits. This is why one had to be adaptable, ready to transform within the moment. He waited, looking at some flyers scattered on the floor