Page 38 of Shatter

Then I start to scrub.

Small circles, the way Walt taught me to polish his old work boots on the back porch on Sunday nights.

The water in the bucket turns rust brown.

I dump it and fill it again.

I turn the cut over to get at the lining, and the back panel stares up at me under the shop light.

The Raiders colors.

The helmet over crossed axes, the rockers curving above and below, stitched in thread I've spent months earning.

For a second, it isn't my cut on the bench.

It's a leather vest on a hook by a front door in Oslo, and a dead man grinning off the back of it, black holes for eyes and a grin of yellowed bone.

My father's colors.

I used to hide behind the couch so it couldn't see me.

My hands stop moving.

The rag drips onto the concrete, pink and brown, pat, pat.

Last night, I wrapped a bleeding woman in my colors.

Twenty years after I watched my mother bleed in a car because of a man in his.

The back of my throat closes up so tight I can't swallow.

I stand there with my wet hands braced on the workbench and my head down until I can breathe around it.

Then I pick up the rag and finish the job.

The leather's still damp, hung over the back of the chair by the door, when Tor comes to see her a little before ten.

I stand against the wall while she gives him nothing.

Katie.

Then silence.

When he walks out, I follow him into the hall to give her a minute to breathe.

Gunnar's coming up the stairs.

He's still in yesterday's clothes, and he smells like bleach and wood smoke.

There's a streak of soot on his neck he missed.

He stops in front of me, where I'm leaning against the wall outside my own door.

"Brother." Gunnar looks at my jaw, then my split knuckles. "You look like shit."

"Tor." I touch my jaw with two fingers.

"Figured." He leans against the wall beside me, shoulder to shoulder. "It's done. Sedan's ash. Your bike's in the lot."