Slow Bones

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Sacha Bissonnette

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My daddy is my protector. He taught me that there are fast bones and slow bones and bones that will never heal. He taught me that in all cases, it’s always the bones that will give you away.

This is the last time, he said. He said it quietly, and angrily, watching me like a railroad foreman, worried that any one mistake will end in disaster. Faster and deeper, he said, reaching over me, ripping the shovel from my limp grip.

My earliest memory is of Christmas. I was five and happy. Ma was still in the picture and had been on a sober kick for a while. Like a month or so. I knew she was sober because she bought me a gift: pyjamas with these beautiful glow-in-the-dark green seahorses. I loved them. At night, if my room was pitch black, they would dance across the wall.

I figured out pretty quickly that my daddy was into something bad. He was making me breakfast one morning when we heard the sirens. He knew they were coming for him, but he still finished cooking my eggs. He said I could eat in my room this one time. That I had to be a big boy because the police were going to ask me all kinds of questions and it was okay to tell them the truth. He told me that Uncle Jay would come for me, then grabbed my plate in one hand and lifted me off my chair with the other. “Sorry kid, this one’s on me,” he said softly, and then spun me around twice. It was our first dance.

In my room, I locked the door. He didn’t ask me to, but I thought it was for the best. Worrying over me, he forgot that my bedroom window looked out onto the front lawn. I didn’t peek, though. Whatever was outside of my window wasn’t for me, not yet. I just ate my eggs in bed and stared at my seahorses.

Uncle Jay wasn’t really my uncle. He sat me in front of the TV and gave me pizza and chips. He even let me watch The Simpsons. My daddy never let me watch The Simpsons. A lot of people came in and out, but that didn’t bother me. They were all nice. They smiled and rubbed my head. Daddy picked me up three days later and took me for ice cream. I had never had so much junk food before.

The next few years were mostly normal. The police never came back and neither did Ma. I went to school, came home, went back. I liked learning but not as much as the kids that would hold their hands up high until the teacher noticed them. I liked biking home the most. Daddy got me a bike the same colour as his motorcycle, a deep and shiny navy blue. He said there was no need for a kid to have that much horsepower. There were two rules. I could only ride to the good park with the good kids, and I always had to be home for dinner.

It was a Friday and the weather was nice, so I guess Daddy wasn’t expecting me to show up before dinner time. I wanted to use some of the tools in the garage to fix my handlebars from moving too much, ’cause they spun around and almost sent me riding into a ditch.

When I got closer to the garage, I heard yelling. I recognized Daddy’s voice and Uncle Jay’s and another man’s. The man was saying things like “You don’t got to do this like this man.” He kept saying, “I have it at home, I have it at home.”

The garage door opened slowly. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move. I stayed by the front doorsteps hoping they wouldn’t look back, hoping they were too busy with the man that was now walking funny. Daddy and Uncle Jay were pushing him forward by his neck. The man’s arm was limp by his side like he couldn’t use it anymore. He was gripping his shoulder with his good hand. They dragged him in the passenger seat of Uncle Jay’s car and pulled out of the driveway real fast. My daddy knew my eyes were on him, but he didn’t look back.

I still needed to fix my bike, so I went it into the garage from inside the house. There was a tooth soaked in blood and some pieces of skin on the garage floor. For the rest of the year I didn’t come home before dinner.

Ma didn’t make it to my Grade 6 graduation. Daddy did. He got dressed up all nice, but he missed a spot. A tiny red speck on his pants. I pointed at it as we entered the school lobby, but I didn’t say anything. We didn’t talk about these things. He saw me and looked down but didn’t wipe it off. Like he was proud of what he had done and become. A big tough guy in a world full of pussies. He sat quietly but clapped big and loud when the principal called my name. “That’s my fucking boy!” I stared down at the little seahorse stickers I stuck to my sandals, mortified, wishing that it was Ma in the crowd.

On the drive back Daddy kept glaring at my sandals.

“You like those little seahorses, eh?” His hand was gripping the wheel hard.

“Yeah I like the colours and—”

“My old man hated that girly shit.” His right hand gripped even harder. His other hand ran across the scar on his cheek. Ma had said the bone got broken in a bar fight defending her honour. But Ma always lied. The ride was silent the rest of the way home. He just looked straight ahead.

Daddy bought me a leather jacket to wear to the Marlow fair. We’d gone every year since Ma left. Uncle Jay sometimes came too. We’ve gone to a lot of fairs, ’cause I don’t think my daddy really knew what to do with me, being so young and all. I think he bought me the leather jacket ’cause maybe it was his way of saying that I was older now and that this was the last one that we were going to go to.

Maybe he was expecting me to patch on some skull and bones, but I had just learned how to embroider in school. I wanted something with colour, something strong, and soft. I tried for a seahorse, but it didn’t come out too good. It looked like a sea cucumber with a snout and eyes, and I kind of liked it anyway.

From my room I heard Daddy and Jay laughing downstairs. They laughed so much louder when they had finished several beers. I went down to the basement ’cause it was time to go. Uncle Jay’s eyes scanned me, taking a long time to look me up and down.

“Look at that fairy boy of yours, your old man would be like what the fuck.” He chuckled and spat as he spoke. I could see my daddy was pretending not to hear. Like his best friend’s words could pass through and cause no damage.

“Tell him to take that shit off!” Jay went on. “We can’t be riding around with that gay shit on our bikes. You see your kid man, walking around all that way and talking that way, your dad woulda—”

“Drop it, Jay. Don’t talk about my dad.”

“Well he wouldn’t be too happy, lemme tell you that.” He pointed towards me, his finger all twisted and weird. I felt my eyes filling up, and I was going to hurl.

I didn’t get how Uncle Jay could be saying all this horrible stuff. He had moved in closer to me, so close I could smell the sweat off of him.

“Listen, Carson. I’m not leaving this house with a little queer like that.” It had been a long time since I heard my daddy’s name, the only other time was when Grandpa called asking for him, and it was the first time I heard it come from Uncle Jay’s mouth. It definitely didn’t make Daddy happy.

It felt like slow motion. My eyes were almost swelled shut from crying so much or maybe I started to black out or faint. It was like another dance, my second dance. Uncle Jay had tapped into to something else and now the three of us were spinning in that basement room. The last thing I remember was Uncle Jay pouring his beer out on my jacket and spitting more awful words onto my face. Then the crack of skull and bone, and I passed out.

When I came to, Uncle Jay was quiet now. The blood from the back of his head was leaking out and mixing in with spilled beer and brown shards of glass. It smelled sweet and stale and fresh all at the same time. I couldn’t stare at any wall this time. I couldn’t bury my face in my blankets. I was involved now, because even though maybe my daddy was reacting to something and someone else, everything was for me.

The car ride seemed to go on forever. We didn’t speak, we both just looked straight ahead. I tried to focus on slowing down my heartbeat, my chest was going to break open. My sleeves hung loose—I was still wearing my embroidered jacket.

We covered Uncle Jay with the last bit of dirt. I was shaking and gasping for air so I threw myself against a tree. Maybe now we could take a break. But my daddy wasn’t bothered. He wasn’t really moving, just kind of swaying. When he stopped, he looked at me. The moonlight covered his face. His eyes were the greenest they’ve ever been. I could see the damage that had been done. He whispered something to himself and then collapsed. Next to his old friend, mostly covered in cold broken soil.

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The first page of “Slow Bones” appeared in the Black Spring Press Group Crimebits: 100 Opening Gambits for Great Thrillers & Linked Mystery Puzzles.

Sacha Bissonnette is a reader for Wigleaf TOP 50. His fiction has appeared in Witness, The Baltimore Review, Wigleaf, SmokeLong, ARC poetry, EQMM, Terrain, Ghost Parachute, The No Sleep Podcast and elsewhere. He is currently working on a short fiction collection as well as a comic book adaptation of one of his short stories. His projects are powered by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa. He has been nominated for several awards including The Pushcart Prize twice and BSF thrice. He has been selected for Wigleaf top 50 2023, 2024 and for the 2024 Sundress Publications Residency and is the winner of the 2024 Faulkner Gulf Coast Residency. Find him on X @sjohnb9 or at his website sachajohnbissonnette.com.

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