Free Ballistics by D. W. Wilson

can find him, but I can’t leave Linnea here.
    She breathed a slow breath, a calming breath. We’ll head over. Then, to Cecil: Get your fucking clothes on, man.
    I set the phone into its holster and pressed my forehead to the wall. Linnea wanted to wash off and I wanted a drink. She slipped past me, favouring her right leg maybe, and I stared after her until she’d shut and locked the bathroom door. I poured myself whiskey and sat in the kitchen with only the draining, grease-caked bulb of my range hood to keep the place lit, and I listened to Linnea’s feet creak on the enamel tub. That’s how Nora and Cecil found me. She let herself right in. I had the whiskey under my nose, elbows on the table—portrait of a pensive man.
    Cecil had his hunting vest pulled over a plaid shirt, wore his blue ballcap and patched woodsman pants as if ready to track a buck. With her red hair frizzy and unkempt around her shoulders, Nora looked like a mother. She had one hand on Cecil’s back, right between the shoulder blades. Linnea’s in the shower, I said. You ready, old man?
    What happened? he said.
    There was a fight. Don’t know much else.
    Is Jack hurt? he said. He looked worried.
    I don’t know, Cecil.
    Right, then.
    I downed my drink and placed the glass on the counter and turned to follow Cecil out. Nora hadn’t moved, and my eyes caught hers. Thanks , I mouthed, and her fingers brushed my knuckles as I shifted past. Outside, Cecil climbed in his truck and motioned for me to do the same, but I didn’t head for passenger. He cracked his window.
    Well?
    I’ll take my truck, I said. Split up, check his hiding places.
    Oh.
    Take the park, check the playground. I’ll check the bridge.
    Cecil lifted his ballcap straight up, mopped a hand through his hair. He’s more likely to be at the park.
    That’s the point.
    What the hell does that mean?
    Better all round if you find him.
    Don’t give me one of your lectures, Cecil said.
    Trust me on this, I said.
    He screwed his mouth into a cringe. This isn’t the time.
    Playground, I told him again, and patted the side of his Dodge. With a curse he started her up and gunned down the street, and by the time he rounded the first bend he’d already torn a beer from the sixer under his seat. I let myself have one last look at my house, at the orange glow flickering from the kitchen and the small, frosted bathroom window. I’ll probably never know exactly what went down at that beach party, at that cursed fort, exactly what was done and said. But Jack sure made an impression on my daughter. He saved her, somehow.
     
    DURING THE MONTHS I’d been in Invermere, town council had erected a four-foot concrete barrier on each side of the road bridge, because of an oil tanker that careened off the edge when its clutch seized in third. People expected a bloody, fiery mess out of that one, but the driver crawled from the cab, doused in oil, while the engine hissed. He had to shower with dish detergent to wash himself clean. Traces of the spill remained on the tracks and the gravel—now stained gold—and the plant life, but the town couldn’t afford to mop it all up and didn’t really care to.
    With their backs to the barrier, kids could dangle their legs over the lip and share liquor and stay out of traffic’s eye. Between the barrier and the edge of the bridge, you had about four feet—enough room to walk comfortably in a line or for a young, hormonal male to test his chivalry alongside the girl who’d caught his eye. The tracks were a forty-foot drop, where deer moved in small groups among the trees. A man could survive that distance if he landed right, or if he was stubborn enough. A stubborn enough man can survive anything.
    I parked on the shoulder before the bridge and began to walk the length. On the wrong side of those barriers, on a dark night like that Halloween, you’d have to nearly trip on a person to find them. I didn’t want to run into Jack there, because that job