Grinder Read Free

chowder and an order of fish and chips. The chowder came fast and it was hot and creamy. I had to search for the advertised pieces of crab and lobster until I finally found a piece of each on the bottom of the bowl. The fish and chips arrived minutes later in a red plastic basket. The oily fish and fries lay atop a piece of waxed paper printed to look like old newsprint. The fish was good; it settled deep in my stomach and made me immediately bone weary. I dropped a twenty down and left the restaurant without waiting for the almost nine dollars in change I would have gotten back.
    I went to my room without my bags and went to sleep on the bed. I woke fourteen hours later and spent the following week in a painkiller haze. After the seven days at the motel, I felt good enough to travel away from the city deeper into the heart of the island. An hour out of Charlottetown, I stopped at an Atlantic Superstore to look at the community bulletin board, and found a house for rent minutes away from the ocean. Nellie, the old woman renting the house, was pleasant and inquisitive. She gave me directions to the house and met me there in her apron. I put her in her sixties, but her hair still had much of its youthful red. Her face was worn but tight; she was a woman who would age well until she finally could no longer age at all. Nellie fought the urge to ask questions about my long stay for fifteen whole seconds. I told her that I just had to get away from the city, and she instantly understood me as though I had just spoken some immutable truth. She told me five minutes worth of big-city horror stories that I was sure she had never learned first hand before we agreed on the evils of big cities and a price for the house. I paid her up front for four months, in cash, and she left me alone in the house holding the keys.
    I hadn't lied to Nellie. I did have to get away from the city. I had made enemies of both sides of the underworld — Italian and Russian — making my presence dangerous on a good day. Add to that the condition of my mangled left arm, and I wouldn't last a day in Hamilton. I needed to start over where no one could find me. I needed to rehab my body. Most of all I needed to find a new way of life; something different from my parents' way, and most important different from my uncle's way. I needed to find a life all my own and shape it myself.
    I spent days walking the long road in front of the house to the local beaches and wharves. Each day I tried to swing my left arm more and more to bring back its range of motion. After a month of walking, I could swing my arm to shoulder height making my walks awkward to look at. Once I looked sufficiently stupid swinging my arms, I switched to running in the forests that surrounded the house. I used my arms to pull myself over fallen tress and up hills. I lost my grip often and fell at least ten times a day at first, but after another month I could run for hours unimpeded.
    My left arm began feeling normal, but different angles brought with them immense pain. On one of my trips into town for food, I found a gym overtop of a local hockey arena. I ran in the mornings, using the forest to bring my arm back, and used the gym in the evenings. Slowly, I began to be able to move dumbbells off my chest. It took two more months before I felt in shape. I was better, but I wasn't what I was. I knew I didn't have to be like I was anymore, but I couldn't let the wound be what changed me. The wound was like the city holding on to me — letting me know I couldn't escape. I had to get its hand off me. I doubled the workouts and used the stairs at the house to do angled one-arm push-ups. At first, the strain on my joints caused me to scream, but I built up from less than one to sets of ten. By the summer, when my seventh month at the house ended, I could do fifteen one-arm push-ups reversed on the stairs with my feet elevated above me. I pounded out rep after rep, hardly feeling the strain on my