Charlie Huston: My Dead Body

I nod at Dallas, the pretty boy with the well-defined muscles and the gun.

– That what I am these days, grubby work?

There’s more gray in Chubby’s afro than when I last saw him. More fat being held in by the five-button vest he sports. More wrinkles around the eyes. It’s cold in the tunnels this time of year, our breath puffs out white. Even so, Chubby’s top coat is draped over the arm Dallas isn’t using to point his gun. The fat man has worked up a sweat coming down here.

He fingers a handkerchief, a plain white one, not the blue and white silk that fans from his breast pocket, matching his tie.

– I’m not certain I could say what kind of work you are these days, Joe. It’s been some time since we crossed paths. Some time since anyone has crossed your path. I’d hazard to say that the nature of your work these days is a subject for wild conjecture.

The place is lit by a fluorescent bulb Q-line Dave scavenged from a demo site somewhere up top. It hangs from a hook of coat hanger that’s been twisted around the scrap-wood beam that supports the sagging sheets of waterlogged Sheetrock over our heads. Power comes from a daisy chain of extension cords that snake and tangle through the shanties; little more than bare wires wrapped in electrical tape in some places, they disappear into the darkness, running to a source I’ve never bothered to explore. The head of our Nile down here. There’s a dozen blackouts a week from people tripping over cords in the dark. The lifers live in fear of the real thing: some city engineer noticing the drain and cutting the juice.

I wouldn’t miss seeing the surroundings, but I don’t have much to pass the time other than reading the moldy paperbacks that get passed around. Right now the light is bright enough for me to see that Chubby’s eyes aren’t just decorated by new wrinkles, they’re also cracked with red.

I move for one of the patch pockets on my Ben Davis mechanic’s jacket. I took it off a greaser who came down slumming. Clinking along the tracks with a sack of Thunderbird pints, looking for an experience he could impress his friends with. He left in his underwear and a pair of yellow plastic flip-flops someone with a kinder soul than I gave him so he wouldn’t shred his feet on the broken glass and ballast lining the tracks. I got the jacket mostly because he was a big guy and it didn’t look to fit anyone else. Which is to say that I got the jacket because I’m pretty much the biggest guy down here. I had another jacket, about the only thing I owned that I cared about. I left it topside.

Better not to think about that jacket. Or who’s holding it for me. It’s a distraction. Something I don’t need when Dallas lends a little more emphasis to the way he’s pointing that gun at me because he doesn’t like me sticking my hand in any pockets he hasn’t gone through first.

I put my hand in the pocket anyway.

Dallas wags the barrel back and forth a little, like the thing is shaking its head at me.

I nod my head at him.

– You go ahead and pop one off.

I fill my hand and it comes out of my pocket.

– I’d rather take the bullet than go another second without a smoke.

He flinches when he sees the fluorescent flash off what’s in my hand, but give the kid credit, he’s not half-cocked, gives himself enough time to see the light’s just reflecting off the cellophane on my pouch of Bugler. Truly, I’m grateful he’s a touch gun-shy. I want the smoke, sure, but I was just talking big about the bullet being a fair trade.

I pull a paper from the cardboard sheaf tucked inside the pouch and fill it with cheap dry tobacco. Given my choice, I’m a Lucky Strike man, like my father before me, may he and my mom both be suffering in a miserable ditch somewhere. Not that I want to introduce a note of bitterness to the story. In any case, store-bought smokes come dear, and I can’t make a pack last more than an evening. I can tease out a pouch of Bugler for a couple days. If anything might drive me to the surface and into the eye of the shit storm up there, it’s the taste of a Lucky.

I lick the strip of glue at the top of the paper, roll it up, strike a match from a pack with an advertisement for a phone sex line on the cover, and get the thing going.

Chubby pats some more sweat from the back of his neck.

I tear the spent match from the book and flick it into a corner littered with a couple thousand of them.

– Tell me, Chubby, who is it up there doing all this conjecturing about me?

He refolds his handkerchief and slips it into his pocket, smoothing the front to be sure no bulge shows to ruin the hang of the material. Not that is really hangs on him. Clings, more like.

– I’m not one to name names, Joe.

– Unless it’s a name you’d like to see dealt with.

He takes a moment to consider his manicure.

– I’ve never been one for spite or rage. Any dealings I’ve had with you have concerned business. And I don’t recall either of us ever expressing any squeamishness about how matters were closed. Not I when I asked for details. Not you when you’ve been paid.

I’m still sitting on the ground, a chunk of broken concrete digging into the back of my thigh. I reach under my leg to move it.

Dallas, a little more relaxed after the tobacco incident, doesn’t wave his gun around this time. Which makes me feel better about my chances when I whip the chunk of concrete at his head. It doesn’t bounce off his skull, more like it skips off it when his head is snapped back. Either way, he drops the gun without shooting me, and he drops himself immediately after. I don’t bother to go for the gun. Dallas won’t be making a move for it anytime soon. And if Chubby decides to make a play, I trust I can reach over and scoop it up a full minute before he manages to bend his knees to stoop.

I blow some smoke his way.

– Sorry, Chubby, I know he’s your boy and all. Just the gun was a distraction.

I grind out the butt end of my cigarette, get out the pouch and start rolling a fresh one.

– So about those people you’d hate to name, what were those names again?

He clears his throat, shakes his head.

– He was only doing as I instructed him to do, Joe.

– You should have known better.

He nods.

– Yes. Yes, I suppose that is true.

I light up.

– Never had guns between you and me before, Chubby.

He looks around the trash and debris in the shack for something he might sit on, but it’s all half-rotted, so he stays on his own two feet.

– That’s also true. But then you were always a somewhat known quantity. As I said before, your actions and intents are mired in uncertainty now. And these are dangerous times. I didn’t know what I might expect from you, having found you in circumstances such as these.

He waves his fingers at the place.

– A man could come to anything down here.

I scratch the side of my nose with a broken thumbnail rimmed with someone else’s dry blood.

– How’d you find me, Chubby?

He shakes his head.

– Joe.

– I need to know how you found me.

The shake travels from his head, his cheeks tremor, the roll of fat at the collar of his shirt, his whole body begins to wobble.

– Joe. If you could.

I push myself into a squat.

– Chubby?

Tears are starting from the red eyes, filling the wrinkles, washing down to his chins.

– I think I need.

I get to my feet and cross the space between us and catch his arm before his legs collapse.

Recently fed, I’m strong, I can break bones, shatter teeth; called upon, I could tear a healthy man’s leg from his body. But still I have to strain to keep from dropping Chubby when he goes limp. I manage to ease him to the ground, half-sprawled on his side, sobbing.