Chapter 6: The Workbench

Arvid's truck pulled out of the driveway at ten past two, and I stood in the garage door and watched it go.

"Hardware store," Matti said behind me. "Forty minutes, if he talks to the man."

"He always talks to the man."

I turned around.

He was at the workbench with a circular saw and a stack of new decking, and sawdust was in his hair and on his forearms.

I'd come to stack the last of the church's chairs against the wall.

I had stacked eleven of them badly and hadn't noticed.

"You haven't called me in two days," I said.

"You told me not to," Matti said.

"I told you to stay away from my mother."

"I did."

He set the saw down on the bench and brushed his palms on his jeans.

The garage smelled like cut pine and motor oil, and there was one bulb burning over the vise.

I looked at the mark of my teeth on his neck, and it was already going yellow.

I was angry that I'd made it, and I was angrier that I wanted to make another.

"I taught you to skate," I said.

He didn't move.

"I was sixteen, and I had a boyfriend and a job and a car, and every Tuesday I drove you to the rink and froze my ass off on the bleachers."

"Kay," he said.

"I checked your math. I sat at that kitchen table till eleven at night so you wouldn't fail fractions."

"I know."

"I took you for pancakes every Sunday for four years. I let you have my bacon," I said.

His throat moved.

"And you took my father's money," I said. "You took the only thing he ever left me and you walked out of this house, and you didn't call. Not once."

My voice shook, and I hated it.

"Not one phone call, not one card, not a line from you. Your own father spent a night in the ER with his heart two winters ago, and you didn't come."

I was breathing hard.

"You were my brother," I said. "And you didn't even say goodbye."

He stood there with his hands open at his sides.

He didn't defend himself, and he didn't say that it wasn't true.

His jaw worked, and his eyes were steady on my face, and he let every word land.

That was the worst part.

I wanted him to lie so I could call it a lie.

"Say something," I said.

"You said it," he said.

"Say something, Kangas."

"You can hit me, if it helps."

I crossed the garage in three steps and shoved him hard against the vise.

His back hit the steel, and the whole bench shook.

I put both fists in the front of his shirt.

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