Page 89 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“Of course.”

After he’d hung up, Myles rested his head back and closed his eyes. Behind his lids, images of his friends swam in and out of focus. Lucky now, grinning and happy, but Lucky from before, too, face bruised, lip split. Ozzy, face grim and eyes cheerless, the backdrop indistinct. He knew Ozzy had served in roughly the same part of the world he had, though he hadn’t met him until they’d both been discharged and forgotten by an inadequate system.

Faces of men he preferred not to remember floated through too. Some dead in a war that wasn’t even theirs, some dead trying to defend their homes and families. After one tour, he’d no longer remembered why he’d thought joining up was a good idea. He’d spent a lot of time, and a lot of drink, wishing he never had.

And when the dead soldiers faded, they were replaced by too many people who’d passed through his life on the street. Lucky and Ozzy were the ones he’d been closest to, but by no means the only ones.

Now he had Wyatt Jones’s face to add to the mix, and he wasn’t sure he liked that. Historically, this montage never led anywhere good. Usually to the bottom of a bottle. He’d spent a lot of time, done a lot of work, in Calgary to change that pattern.

Natalie had been there to hold his hand, but now she too was gone, and his memory of her was one of a too thin, too tired, too wasted face painted grey with wishes for her children she’d never see come true.

He knew if he didn’t open his eyes, the spectre of the liquor store couldn’t loom up, all too real from across the street. He also wouldn’t be able to drive home. Back to Lucky. Back to the slim barrier of comfort the B and B provided.

Back to Jet, and his attitude.

Shelly, and her meltdowns.

Or Steven.

Now there was an idea. Shelly was happy where she was for the moment. And Jet would only come around when Jet felt like it.

Mind made up, he was about to start the car again when a ruckus from across the street drew his attention.

He saw Wyatt hit the ground first, then the two men who’d put him there approach him with menace.

Myles was out of his car in a flash and across the street faster than his dodgy hip should have allowed. “Hey!” He felt like the grandpa Wyatt had called him, limping over the cracked pavement and waving his cane in the air as he shouted.

“Gat the fuck up, you little faggot,” one of the men yelled at the prone boy.

The other turned to face Myles and let out a guffaw. “What’re you gonna do, old man?”

Myles didn’t slow, but pulled back his cane, feigning a wind-up the man braced to deflect. At the last second, Myles lowered his shoulder and ploughed into the guy’s middle at full speed, bearing him back into his fellow bully.

The men almost caught their balance, but Myles managed a roundhouse to one of their jaws and both men went down in a heap.

It was all Myles could do not to follow them to the pavement.

But then Wyatt was there, a hand under his elbow, shoulder to shoulder with him. “What the hell, dude? You trying to wreck the other leg?”

“Get your stuff,” Myles told him, watching as the two men tried to sort themselves out and get to their feet.

“Bruh—”

“Go!”

“Yessir!” He scampered out of Myles’s view after his backpack.

Before he was back, the men had regained their balance and came at Myles.

He blocked one punch with his forearm, landed one of his own, though he paid for it with a fist to his own face. Then he tangled his cane between the legs of one of them. All it took, though, was a mighty shove at his back and his bad hip crumpled, sending him sprawling over the end of the knee wall and into the lane of drive-through traffic.

Car breaks squealed.

The shine of a chrome bumper filled his view.

Doors slammed, and a young, ladylike voice asked if he was okay. There was shouting, and as Myles rolled to his feet, he found three burly youths backing the two bullies into the wall of the LCBO.

The short whoop of a police siren froze everyone in their tracks.