a novel by Leo McKay, Jr.
EXCERPT
ZIV'S FIRST THOUGHT had been the same one he always had when some unidentified disturbance awoke him in the middle of the night: nuclear war. He'd waited in Bundy's bathroom for the light to blink off. He knew that just before the heat blast vaporized you, radio communication and electrical service would black out. The shadows in the tiny space beneath the stairs danced and skidded about as the bulb that cast its light onto the walls rocked at the end of its wire. Water in the toilet made waves against the sides of the bowl. He put a hand to the bulb to stop its swinging and awaited the loss of electricity. He wondered whether he'd have time to feel any heat before he was turned into a little steam and smoke and ash.
The house had stopped moving and a profound silence had set in. He stood looking at the worn pattern in the linoleum of Bundy Burgess's bathroom and felt the pressure of his hangover pushing in at his temples. Whatever disturbance had wakened him, he seemed to be the only one to notice anything. He began to doubt that a nuclear war had begun. He would have been dead before now. He stepped out of the little bathroom and looked at the walls of the Burgess house. To his drunken, half-asleep eyes they looked fairly straight and sound. Subsidence, a fall of earth from the cave-in of an abandoned mine shaft, sometimes swallowed up a house. But it had not happened in the Red Row in his lifetime. Several homes had given way in Westville, and there was an area near Bridge Avenue that had sunk by several metres when he was a kid.
He flipped on the kitchen light and filled a glass from the tap. He drank it, filled another and downed it. He put on his boots and coat at the door and made for his parents' house. The brisk air of morning caught in his lungs and in his nostrils. His head cleared a little under the street lamp on Rutherford Street. The light in the kitchen of his parents' house burned white against the black row of spruce trees at the edge of the graveyard beyond. There were days when the old man might already be up at five-thirty, but not on a Saturday morning, not hung over. There were a few other lights on at this end of the Red Row, more than there should have been at this time. He became aware of his breathing and watched the ghost of his breath rise up into the dark air.
"What the hell else was it?" his father was bellowing. Ziv was in the cold porch, undoing his boots and taking off his coat. Even through the closed door to the kitchen he smelled coffee brewing.
"It could have been anything," his mother was saying. "It could have been anything."
Ziv opened the closet door to the kitchen. "I was down at the Burgess's," he said when he came in. He heard the fear in his own voice. "The house shook."
"Your mother felt it, here," his father said. He was bent slightly forward, prodding carefully at his tailbone with one hand. "I didn't feel it, but we came out here and it knocked a pitcher of orange juice right out of the fridge. Must have banged the door open first. I don't know how the hell it could have done that without waking me up." He paused. "Bundy Burgess do that to you?" He pointed at Ziv's bruised face.
Ziv touched the bruise. Pain that had evaporated in drunkenness and sleep began to reabsorb into his face. "Some arsehole," he said. "I don't even know."