Charlie Huston: Every Last Drop

Me, if I had the gun, I'd definitely shoot him. A lot.

— You see, yes, you see how they task me, yes? This, this is what they bring me. This paltry offering. This soupcon. And out of this I am to feed us all? How, I ask you, how?

He takes one of the bags of blood from the TV tray and unzips the top a little, places his mouth over the opening and tilts his head back and sucks and swallows and the blood runs too fast and wells over his cheeks and down his chin and onto the collar of the robe and the pleated front of his wilted tuxedo shirt.

He finishes and tosses the bag aside and lifts his chin. -Miserable.

Do-rag takes a crusted square of linen from the TV tray and wipes the man's mouth and chin and neck, careful not to pull on any of the long strands of oily reddish hair that hang to the mans shoulders. -Yes, good, enough.

The boy steps back.

The man lifts the second swollen bag of blood.

— And this to last for how long? How long until they can find some other feeble and crippled runt that they might manage to bring down? Barely worth keeping. Pathetic.

Police Cap takes the bag from him, to a fridge wheezing in the corner, and slips it inside onto shelves loaded with bags of pig trotters and chicken feet.

The man picks up the last and smallest of the bags, the dregs of the dealer the girl drained in the vacant lot.

— Since you still resist the concept of industry, this will have to serve for all of you.

He holds the bag out at arms length and the girl reaches for it. -Not you, Meager.

He points at the empty bag on the floor.

— Scraps will serve for you.

He offers the bag to Moustache, a grin cracking around the teeth that still trap a bit of my toe between them. -For you, Low, to share with Miserable and Pathetic.

The boy reaches for the bag and the man pulls it back. -And you say what?

Low touches his moustache. -Thanks, Mr. Lament.

Lament smiles again. -Such a good boy.

He gives him the bag. -And all of you?

The kids chorus. -Thanks, Mr. Lament.

He nods. -Yes, manners. When prompted, I know, but some manners, nonetheless.

He flicks his fingers at them.

— Away now. Go feed your disgusting faces away from me.

They scramble for the door, the boys clustered with their half-full bag, the girl trailing, looking at the red residue inside hers.

The door closes.

Laments kinked neck bends toward me.

— Children. One can do little with them short of stuffing them in a sack and tossing them into the river like kittens.

I bleed, eyeing his scalp.

— It was a misstep on my part. I will admit to that much. But the blame is not entirely my own. If I had been listened to, left unmolested in my methodology, I might have avoided the conflict utterly. As it was I had no choice but to confront the rabble.

He wheels himself to the fridge and takes out one of the bags of trotters. -I had operated in admirable discretion.

A gnarled finger pokes into the bag and comes out with a trotter. He holds it before milky eyes and studies it. -Until they manifested.

He digs a bit of meat from between the pig toes and sucks it from his yellow nails. -Mungiki savages.

He rotates the trotter, finds more sinew, tears it loose with his teeth. -It would be almost comical. Their pretensions. That is to say, not only are they not from Kenya, but most of them are not even negroid.

He licks the trotter, sucks a last twist of gristle from it, and tosses it aside, plucking another from the bag. -Skag Baron Menace.

He spits on the floor. -Filthy child. He read about the Mungiki in a magazine article.

He waves the fresh trotter at the moldy magazines and newspapers heaped along the walls, barricading the windows. -An article from my library, no less. Yes, this is ironic.

He pops the whole trotter in his mouth, rolls it about, the sound of cracking cartilage loud, then opens his mouth, dribbling the stripped foot onto his hand then dropping it to the floor. -Kenyan gangs that thrive on kidnappings and protection rackets. Political

party enforcers that cultivate legends of their own brutality. They keep oil drums of blood. And drink it. So the stories go in backwater Kenya. If it is not redundant to use the words backwater and Kenya together in a sentence.

He holds the bag up, shakes it, doesn't find what he wants and puts it back inside the fridge.

— Menace thought it was clever, naming his little litter of hyenas after the blood-drinking gangsters. Clever? As if cleverness is a thing that ever happened inside Menace's feeble head.

He rolls to a small shelf of books, pulls down a moisture-swollen Webster's and flaps it open in his lap.

— Not even his own name is his. Menace. Something that threatens to cause evil, harm, injury, etc. I gave him that name. I had hoped it might instill some sense of pride in him, some modicum of self-respect. Something for him to aspire to. Better if I had done as I originally planned and named him Insipid.

He slaps the dictionary closed.

— Perhaps it did inspire him. Sent him off to new territories. Queens. Indeed. As if that was my fault. They act as if it was my fault. His adventurism of my making. But it was meddling in my methods that caused the problems. They have bred their own complications, not I. Little hairy monkey with dreams of his own empire. Skag Baron. The pretension of it. That little scrap of half-nigger

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

and his delusions of nobility.

He places the book back on the shelf.

— Skag is a word I know not the meaning of. Nor do I deign to seek it out. So sure am I that it is some foul slang for vagina or penis.

His chair creaks close and he butts me with the wheels. -And you, were you in my charge at an early age, what should I have named you?

His lips purse, dry flakes of blood, and grease from the trotters, mingle in the whiskers on his chin.

— Shiftless. Yes, Shiftless. Lazy and contemptible. Placing yourself outside the structure of things. Imagining yourself better than your place. Adding nothing to the common good and weal.

He reaches behind the chair and comes up with a short cat-o-nine-tails and prods me with the wood handle.

— You are a burden on us all. We strivers, we reachers and dreamers, without us, without our mighty efforts at forward progress, you and your slovenly kind would perish in your own filth.

He dangles the knotted leather cords of the whip in front of my face; I can see the dry blood clotted thick.

— Parasites. Sucker fish. Tapeworms. Reveling in the bowels of the citizenry. Living off our wastes. Upsetting the smooth functions of the body politic that we nourish with hard labors.

He raises the whip and lashes it across my face. -Shiftless. Useless. Leech.

I flinch, draw up my shoulders and duck my face into my chest.

He prods me again with the handle.

— Yes, huddle and hide from the light and truth, Shiftless. Is that shame? No, I think not. Fear. Simple fear of pain. Well, fear is a good forge. We can work many a useful tool with fear at hand. I have done so for years. In good service.

He shoves the end of the handle under my chin and forces my face up. -Sharp tools I made. Even if they have never been appreciated. Good tools and able. Suited to their task. And I would have made more and better. But for interference.

He pulls the handle away and bangs it against the floor.

— Had I been left to my own methods, Menace would never have shunned his conditioning and reverted to his nature. Under my own auspices and left unmolested here, the Mungiki would never have manifested.

He throws the cat-o-nine-tails, upsetting a pile of newspapers that sloughs to the floor.

— Skag Baron Menace! With no Mungiki he was nothing. I told them, Leave off and let me attend, yes? But they would not listen. Insisted in meddling. All but created the Mungiki with their own hands. Intrusions. Invasions.