Read Online Once You Break a Knuckle by W. D. Wilson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: W. D. Wilson
Ads: Link
like us.
âLike me?
âThatâs not what I said.
The day after we met, on that beach near Saskatoon, my wife showed me how to gather barnacles for protein. She shanked a pocket knife between the rock and the shell and popped the creature off like a coat snap, this grin on her face like nothing in the world could be more fun. I never got the hang of it. She has stopped showing me how.
âWeâre not unhappy, I tell my wife.
âDonât you ever wonder if you could have done better? she says, and she looks at me with eyes grown wise and disappointed.
Gaussâs first wife died in 1809, complications from childbirth. A number of people have recounted the scene at her deathbed â how he squandered her final moments,how he spent precious hours preoccupied with a new puzzle in number theory. These tales are all apocryphal. These are the tales of a lonely man. Picture them, Gauss with his labourerâs shoulders juddering, Johanna in bed with her angelâs hair around her like a skimmer dress, his cheek on the bedside, snub nose grazing her ribs. Heâll remarry, yes, and love his new spouse. Heâll father three devout middle-class sons unafraid to scull for their lot. Heâll become a mathematician scholars name when they talk about the Big Five.
But picture him, the Prince of Mathematics, as he closes Johannaâs eyes with his stumpy, working-class hands. Things he notices: her immaculate, cream-coloured fingers; the dint on her eyebrow from banging it on a grandfather clock; the wallpaper they installed themselves, herringboned and crooked near the ceiling where he had to balance on his drafterâs bench. And Gauss suddenly realizes the whole place smells like chamomile tea. Maybe itâs too much for him. He needs a drink, which will become a pattern â one or two gentlemanâs glasses while he idles, sometimes more when the missus takes the boys out of town. His face puckers at the edges, not tears, but fear. He canât know what will happen next: and what is more terrifying to a mathematician than the unknowable?
Itâs 1994, the International Year of the Family, but my wife is crossing the Rockies, or browsing a trade show in Calgary, or driving a 1969 forest-green GTO south to the American border. If sheâs in the Rockies, sheâs got her sister with her; sheâs fucking a twenty-four-year-oldcowboy, Gus, if sheâs in Calgary; and if sheâs on the way to the border then sheâs tucked my son beneath a yellow hotel blanket, because sheâs taking him away from here, away from the drudgery heâll suffer as a boy in a small town, from the hockey louts heâll fall in with and the mill job heâll get locked into and the girl heâll drug with Rohypnol in 2003. And Iâm in my backyard. Iâm building a heliotrope. And itâs well past dark and Iâve been drinking, I wonât lie. Iâve been drinking. See, I donât know where my wife is. I donât know where sheâs taken my son. But I do know I caused it, Iâve done something wrong â because Iâm a man, a mere math teacher, and I have certain specific inadequacies, none of which are the fault of mathematics.
RECEPTION
I spent the winter break of my graduating year alone with an aging tom. It was a year when Invermere suffered heavy snowfall in time for Christmas, and the city plows combed the streets in a way that left great palisades across the driveway. Each morning I chipped at this barricade with an aluminum shovel until Iâd carved a gap my truck could squeeze through.
Weeks ago everything had gone to shit. Lightning split a tree in the front yard and magnetized all the electronics in the house, including the clocks, so it was always one thirty-nine that December. Mitch Cooper, a long-time buddy, cracked his houseâs foundation when the clutch of his familyâs Jeep caught in first gear, and itâd be years
âLike me?
âThatâs not what I said.
The day after we met, on that beach near Saskatoon, my wife showed me how to gather barnacles for protein. She shanked a pocket knife between the rock and the shell and popped the creature off like a coat snap, this grin on her face like nothing in the world could be more fun. I never got the hang of it. She has stopped showing me how.
âWeâre not unhappy, I tell my wife.
âDonât you ever wonder if you could have done better? she says, and she looks at me with eyes grown wise and disappointed.
Gaussâs first wife died in 1809, complications from childbirth. A number of people have recounted the scene at her deathbed â how he squandered her final moments,how he spent precious hours preoccupied with a new puzzle in number theory. These tales are all apocryphal. These are the tales of a lonely man. Picture them, Gauss with his labourerâs shoulders juddering, Johanna in bed with her angelâs hair around her like a skimmer dress, his cheek on the bedside, snub nose grazing her ribs. Heâll remarry, yes, and love his new spouse. Heâll father three devout middle-class sons unafraid to scull for their lot. Heâll become a mathematician scholars name when they talk about the Big Five.
But picture him, the Prince of Mathematics, as he closes Johannaâs eyes with his stumpy, working-class hands. Things he notices: her immaculate, cream-coloured fingers; the dint on her eyebrow from banging it on a grandfather clock; the wallpaper they installed themselves, herringboned and crooked near the ceiling where he had to balance on his drafterâs bench. And Gauss suddenly realizes the whole place smells like chamomile tea. Maybe itâs too much for him. He needs a drink, which will become a pattern â one or two gentlemanâs glasses while he idles, sometimes more when the missus takes the boys out of town. His face puckers at the edges, not tears, but fear. He canât know what will happen next: and what is more terrifying to a mathematician than the unknowable?
Itâs 1994, the International Year of the Family, but my wife is crossing the Rockies, or browsing a trade show in Calgary, or driving a 1969 forest-green GTO south to the American border. If sheâs in the Rockies, sheâs got her sister with her; sheâs fucking a twenty-four-year-oldcowboy, Gus, if sheâs in Calgary; and if sheâs on the way to the border then sheâs tucked my son beneath a yellow hotel blanket, because sheâs taking him away from here, away from the drudgery heâll suffer as a boy in a small town, from the hockey louts heâll fall in with and the mill job heâll get locked into and the girl heâll drug with Rohypnol in 2003. And Iâm in my backyard. Iâm building a heliotrope. And itâs well past dark and Iâve been drinking, I wonât lie. Iâve been drinking. See, I donât know where my wife is. I donât know where sheâs taken my son. But I do know I caused it, Iâve done something wrong â because Iâm a man, a mere math teacher, and I have certain specific inadequacies, none of which are the fault of mathematics.
RECEPTION
I spent the winter break of my graduating year alone with an aging tom. It was a year when Invermere suffered heavy snowfall in time for Christmas, and the city plows combed the streets in a way that left great palisades across the driveway. Each morning I chipped at this barricade with an aluminum shovel until Iâd carved a gap my truck could squeeze through.
Weeks ago everything had gone to shit. Lightning split a tree in the front yard and magnetized all the electronics in the house, including the clocks, so it was always one thirty-nine that December. Mitch Cooper, a long-time buddy, cracked his houseâs foundation when the clutch of his familyâs Jeep caught in first gear, and itâd be years
Similar Books
