Charlie Huston - Half the Blood of Brooklyn

He closes the door and they drive away, the right front tire grinding against the crumpled fender when they turn at the corner.

The ice air off the river burrows into the wound in my ribs and the holes in my leg and arm. I pull my coat closer around me and walk a block to Cadman Plaza West and limp across it in front of some traffic and follow a path around a little park and hit the sidewalk on the other side and walk down it and find the staircase cut into the stone footing of the bridge and I go up and stand on the wood planks of the walk and look at downtown Manhattan about twenty minutes away. At the other end of the bridge somewhere is a yellow cab waiting for a fare, waiting to take me the fuck home.

I turn around and go back down the stairs.

Jesus loves me and I find a 24-hour deli on Henry Street.

A crackhead skips from foot to foot in front of the door. He skips a little farther to make room for me.

– Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?

I walk inside.

– Catch me on my way out.

He skips and smiles toothless.

The beer cooler is locked. I look for the clerk, see that no one is in the store. I think about breaking the glass, remember the precinct house we passed as we came off the expressway just down the street. I smell something and walk to the counter and lean over it and see the guy on his knees, curled over, his forehead touching the prayer mat that covers the floor. I wait a minute while he chants.

He stands, rolling the mat and putting it and a copy of the Q’uran on a shelf above the condoms and hangover cures.

– Sorry. These hours. I have to sneak it in when I can. My imam would shit.

He looks up and sees my scab-crusted face and the blood-soaked shirt stuck to my chest and his eyes drift down and he sees the hole in my pants and the bloody denim.

– Uh.

– The cooler’s locked.

He looks up.

– Uh.

– It’s not mine. The blood.

– Uh.

– In an accident. Driver got messed up bad. Most of it’s his.

– Uh.

– I could use a beer.

He nods.

– Right.

He comes from around the counter.

– Sorry. Have to lock it while I’m at prayer.

He unlocks the cooler.

– Chester out there would come in and try to clear out every forty in the place if I didn’t.

I reach in the cooler and grab a six of Bud and a 40 of Old English 800.

At the counter he bags the beer and tosses in the two packs of Luckys I ask for.

– That it?

There are some odds and ends hanging on wire hooks above the candy racks. Scotch tape, blunted scissors, notepads, sewing kits, playing cards, a spatula, toilet plunger, screwdriver. I take down a sewing kit and a serrated kitchen knife shrink-wrapped to a piece of cardboard and he rings it up.

– Thirty-seven, eighty-nine.

I dig the crumpled bills from my pocket and give him two twenties and he gives me the change.

– You OK?

I pick up the bag.

– I’m gonna be.

– You live around here?

– I live around.

– You need a ride, there’s a car service up the street.

– Thanks.

I go out.

– Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?

I pull the 40 out of the bag and show it to Chester and tilt my head up the street and he follows me away from the storefront. I hand him the 40 and watch while he unscrews the cap, gives the mouth of the bottle a wipe with the greasy XXL sweatshirt that hangs off his skin and bones, puts it to his mouth and watercoolers half of it.

I put one of my beers down my throat.

Chester swirls the beer at the bottom of his bottle.

– Lookin’ fera rock?

I nod.

He tilts his head back, goes at the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing, drops the empty on a littered patch of dirt at the foot of a sick tree and skips toward the corner.

– C’mon.

I follow him onto Orange Street and in the middle of the block I punch him in the back of the neck just at the base of the skull and his head snaps forward and he takes another step and then his feet stop moving and I fist a wad of his sweatshirt before he can face-plant on the pavement and drag him to an iron fence and hoist him up and throw him over into the small churchyard it encloses.

I drop the plastic bag between the bars and climb over and jump to the ground, the holes in my body bitching at me. I grab Chester and my bag and drag them into the darkness at the foot of a statue of someone who was probably really important once, but now he’s just dead.

I crack a beer and take a sip and set it aside and get the kitchen knife from the bag and tear it from the plastic and cardboard and thumb the serrated edge. It’s dull. Sharp enough for bread, but little else. I pull up the sleeve of Chester’s shirt and spill a little beer on his wrist and mop it away with the paper napkins the clerk tossed in the bag. I open the sewing kit and thread a needle and set it close by.

And I pick up the knife and put it to his skin and cut quick and deep, the blade sharp enough for this.

My mouth is over the wound, and Chester’s diseased and ravaged blood is pumping into me and the Vyrus goes into it and feeds on it and I don’t feel the cold anymore and I don’t feel my wounds and the hairs on my stomach and chest stand up and my eyes roll up in my head and I almost laugh at myself for buying the sewing kit.

He’s not empty when I’m done. Not for lack of trying. But after I start gagging up blood for the third time I drop his arm and find more of the napkins and wipe my mouth and rinse my face with beer.

I look at Chester. There’s still blood in there, but none of it’s coming out, his heart having stopped pumping after the first three or four pints ran down my gullet.

I pick up the knife and hack his arm with it a couple times, creating something that might look enough like stress cuts to make the cops shrug and say junkie suicide and not give a fuck. I wipe the knife handle and wrap his fingers around it.

I squat there and drink another beer and smoke and try and remember if there was a video camera in the deli. If there was, I should go back and make the clerk show me where the recorder is and take the tapes and kill him. But I don’t think there was.

I collect my empties and butts and the sewing kit and stand and look at Chester again and put my foot on his chest and pump it a few times to force more blood from his wound so there will be some pooled on the grass when he’s found.

It looks like shit. Looks like a shit kill by an asshole who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Fuck do I care? I’m a new fucking man.

The holes in my body are sealed tight and they flush warm and tingle as they heal. I can smell the crisp night in every detail. I can see the stars that were invisible before. I can hear the tics and fleas that infest Chester’s clothes start to suck at the blood I’ve left for them. I can feel the vibrations of the cars climbing the ramp to the bridge blocks away.

I leap to the top of the fence and perch there.

I’m a monster in the city at night. And I can do what I fucking please.

It’s Brooklyn. Burn it to the ground and see if anyone pisses on the fire.

Two drivers and the dispatcher at the car service sit behind a Plexiglas partition playing dominoes on a card table with a crooked leg, filling the office with smoke.

The dispatcher looks at me and the mess I am and shakes his head.

– No cars.

I go in my pocket and come out with more of the Society’s cash and put four twenties on the counter and slide them under the partition.

He shakes his head again.

One of the drivers calls domino and slaps down and they total their points and the other driver curses and looks at my money.

– Where?