Davidson - Rust and bone: stories

RUST
AND
BONE
STORIES

CRAIG
DAVIDSON

To Mom and Dad

Ladies and gentlemen, in the blue corner, one of the most creative and dark and bitter and funny new talents to have come along in years. I recommend Rust and Bone without reservation. Craig Davidson is a wickedly good storyteller who weaves worlds out of blood and magic and humanity. Our Great Northern Hope.Joseph Boyden

There is a strikingly original tone to Mr. Davidsons stories. The prose is spare yet elegant, the insights are fresh and real, and best of all there is a boundless humanity in Mr. Davidsons writing: a love of life that is beautifully woven with an acute sense of its darkness. This is in every way an extraordinary book.Clive Barker

Davidson... is a fine young writer with a keen sense of the absurd and a bracing, biting wit. Publishers Weekly

Davidson matches his stellar, energetic descriptions of physical confrontation with subtle, quirky explorations of human motivation.

Joanne Wilson, Booklist

This collection of stories by Canadian Craig Davidson sears the senses on contact.Steve Woodward, Bloomsbury Review

Davidsons writing is powerfully visceral.

Paul Zakrzewski, Washington Post Book World

Stories

TWENTY-EIGHT BONES make up the human hand. Lunate and capitate and navicular, scaphoid and triquetrum, the tiny horn-shaped pisiforms of the outer wrist. Though differing in shape and density each is smoothly aligned and flush-fitted, lashed by a meshwork of ligatures running under the skin. All vertebrates share a similar set of bones, and all bones grow out of the same tissue: a birds wing, a whales dorsal fin, a geckos pad, your own hand. Some primates got moregorillas got thirty-two, five in each thumb. Humans, twenty-eight.

Bust an arm or leg and the knitting bones sealed in a wrap of calcium so its stronger than before. Bust a bone in your hand and it never heals right. Fracture a tarsus and the hairlines there to staylooks like a crack in granite under the x-ray. Crush a metacarpal and thats that: bone splinters not driven into soft tissue are eaten by enzymes; powder sifts to the bloodstream. Look at a prizefighters hands: knucks busted flat against the heavy bag or some pugs face and skin split on crossing diagonals, a ridge of scarred Xs.

Youll see men cry breaking their hand in a fight, leather-assed Mexies and Steeltown bruisers slumped on a corner stool with tears squirting out their eyes. Its not quite the pain, though the anticipation of pain is theremitts swelling inside red fourteen-ouncers and the electric grind of bone on bone, maybe its the eighth and youre jabbing a busted lead right through the tenth to eke a decision. Its the frustration makes them cry. Fightings all about minimizing weakness. Shoddy endurance? Roadwork. Sloppy footwork? Skip rope. Weak gut? A thousand stomach crunches daily. But fighters with bad hands cant do a thing about it, aside from hiring a cornerman who knows a little about wrapping brittle bones. Same goes for fighters with sharp brows and weak skin who cant help splitting wide at the slightest pawing. Theyre crying because its a weakness theres not a damn thing they can do for and itll commit them to the second tier, one step below the MGM Grand and Foxwoods, the showgirls and Bentleys.

Rooms the size of a gas chamber. Wooden chair, sink, small mirror hung on the pigmented concrete wall. Forty-watt bulb hangs on a dark cord, cold yellow light touching my clean-shaven skull and breaking in spears across the floor. Cobwebs suspended like silken parachutes in corners beyond the light. Old Pony duffel between my legs packed with wintergreen liniment and Vaseline, foul protector, mouthguard with cinnamon Dentyne embedded in the teeth prints. Ive got my hand wraps laid out on my lap, winding grimy herringbone around the left thumb, wrist, the meat of my palm. Time was, I had strong hands nutcrackers, Teddy Hutch called them. By now theyve been broken so many times the bones are like crockery shards in a muslin bag. You get one hard shot before they shatter.

A man with a swollen face pokes his head through the door. He rolls a gnarled toscano cigarillo to the side of his mouth and says, You ready? Best for you these yahoos dont get any drunker.

Got a hot water bottle? Roll my neck low, touch chin to chest. Cant get loose.

Where do you think you are, Caesars Palace? When youre set, its down the hall and up a flight of stairs.

I was born Eddie Brown, Jr., on July 19, 1966, in San Benito, a hardscrabble town ten miles north of the Tex-Mex border; somewhere between nowhere and adis, my mother said of her adopted hometown. My father, a Border Patrol agent, worked the international fenceline running from McAllen to Brownsville and up around the horn to the Padre Island chain off the coast. On a clear July day youd see illegals sunning their lean bodies on the projecting headlands, soaking up heat like seals before embarking on a twilight crossing to the shores of Laguna Madre. He met his wife-to-be on a cool September evening when her raftuneven lengths of peachwood lashed together with twine, a plastic milk jug skirtbutted the prow of his patrolling johnboat.

It was cold, wind blowing off the Gulf, my mother once told me. Mo Dios . The raft seem okay when I go, but then the twine is breaking and those jugs fill with water. Those waters swimming with tiger sharks plump as hens, so many entrangeros borricos to gobble up. Im thinking Im seeing these shapes, her index finger described the sickle of a sharks fin. Im thinking why I leave Cuidad Miguelwas that so terrible? But I wanted the land of opportunity. An ironic gesture: shoulders shrugged, eyes rolled heavenwards. I almost made it, Ed, yeah?

My fathers eyes rose over a copy of the Daily Sentinel . A few more hours and youdve washed up somewhere, my dear.

The details of that boat ride were never revealed, so Ill never know whether love blossomed or a sober deal was struck. I can picture my mother wrapped in an emergency blanket, sitting beside my father as he worked the hand-throttle on an old Evinrude, the glow of a harvest moon touching the soft curve of her cheek. Maybe something stirred. But I can also picture a hushed negotiation as they lay anchored at the government dock, maidens hair slapping the pilings and jaundiced light spilling between the bars of the holding cell beyond. She was a classic Latin beauty: raven hair and polished umber skin, a birthmark on her left cheek resembling a bird in distant flight. Many border guards took Mexican wives; the paperwork wasnt difficult to push through. My sister was born that year. Three years later, me.

I finish wrapping my hands and stand, bobbing on the tips of my toes. Tug the sweatshirt hood up, cinch the drawstring. Half-circle to the left, feint low and fire a right cross, arm cocked at a ninety-degree L to generate maximum force. Torque the hips, still bobbing slightly, three stiff jabs, turning the elbow out at the end. A lot of people dont like a jabby fighter, a pitty-patter, but a smart boxer knows everything flows off the jab: keeps your opponent at a distance and muffles his offense, plus youre always in a position to counterpunch. And hey, if the guys glass-jawed or thin-skulled, a jab might just knock him onto queer street.

My father once took me on his evening rounds. August, so hot even the adders and geckos sought shade. We drove across the dry wash in his patrol Bronco, past clumps of sun-browned chickweed and pokeberry bushes so withered their fruit rattled like hollow plastic beads. He stopped to show me the vents cut through the border fence, chainlink pried back in silvery flaps.