Charlie Huston - Half the Blood of Brooklyn

I tell him and he takes the eighty bucks and gives sixty to the guy who just skunked him and pulls on a parka and the dispatcher buzzes him out of the booth and we walk into the cold and he unlocks his Lincoln.

I start to get in and he holds up a hand and gets a blanket from the trunk, spreads it across the backseat so I don’t get blood on his cracked and faded leather.

I get in and pull a beer from the bag and put a fresh smoke in my mouth.

He turns in his seat and looks at me.

– No smoking. No drinking.

I hand him my last twenty and a beer and he pockets the money and opens the beer and drives.

He drops me off next to the Field and I walk across it drinking my last beer and toss the empty can at the bottom of the fence and jump it and hit to the ground on the other side and weave through the headstones.

I find the freshly dug graves of Chaim and Selig and Fletcher and Elias and whatever parts of the Strongman that made it into the ground here. I have to dig with my hands, but the dirt is loose and I’m strong and it doesn’t take long. I get to the corpse I want and I take his long knife and his little axe. I brush dirt from them and test their edges and find them honed.

Cypress Ave. cuts through the cemetery. I walk along it and settle into some bushes at the base of a tree where I can see the end of 57th Street and the lighted upper windows at the rear of the house with the small temple in its backyard, and the young man in a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat walking back and forth next to the fence that separates it from the cemetery.

I think about Lydia and what a pain in my ass she is.

I think about Predo and Terry and the way it feels when they jerk my strings and my arms and legs jump and I dance dance dance to their tune.

I think about Daniel and things he’s said to me over the years about what Enclave is and what they want and how I’m one of them.

I think about Rebbe Moishe and what he had to say about love.

I think about love and what you sacrifice for it and what you do to keep it in your life.

I think about Evie.

I think about the only way you can stay with the person you love forever. How you have to die to do that. I think about how close Evie is to death. And what it will be like when she’s gone.

I think about what’s expected of me. How little.

I think about seven hundred left-handed warriors.

And I walk out of the bushes and use the long knife and the axe to kill one.

He fights quiet.

Mostly he fights quiet because I come at him from behind and he smells me too late and when he turns the axe cuts through his windpipe. After that his screams don’t do much except whistle and spray blood. He reaches for something riding on his hip and I stab the long knife through the back of his hand and into his gut. His right hand comes at my throat, but I’m bringing the axe back around and I imbed it in his shoulder and I know I cut something important because his fingers won’t squeeze when he gets them on me. I push him up against the fence and he gurgles and leaks all over the place. He jerks his left hand free of the knife, losing his thumb as he does it, and goes for my eyes. I pull the axe and the knife from his body and looks like I was the only thing holding him up because he slides down the fence and onto his back and his limbs pedal at the air like a dying bug.

I leave him where he is, close to all the other dead people in the cemetery, and go over the fence and the guy on the other side is waiting for me and I find out what the Rebbe was talking about when he said they can sling stones at a hair breadth, and not miss.

The half-inch steel bearing this guy whips from his sling hits me in the left kneecap and the bone turns to a fistful of gravel and I swing the leg out in front of me and step on it and it makes me want to scream but I won’t do that and I walk on the fucking thing and it makes me pay for it, and it looks to me like the problem with a sling is that after you fire your first shot you have to get another stone or whatever cradled in that little pocket and spin the thing up to speed and if the asshole you just nailed keeps coming at you and chops your arm off before you can do all that, you’re fucked.

So that’s what I do.

This one makes some noise, until I put him on the ground and stomp on his head a couple times.

My knee hurts like something my dad did to me once when I was too young to know that pain stops. But I’m older now. And one way or another I won’t have to worry about the knee much longer.

Two more boys come out of the house.

One has a spear. The other one is in his underwear and his yarmulke and doesn’t have shit.

I worry about the one with the spear.

He rushes me and plants his feet and thrusts just like someone has trained him to do and I drop the long knife and grab the spear shaft behind the point and it slips through my fingers and about three inches of steel slips into my stomach and I bring the axe down and the shaft splinters and the guy who had a spear now has a stick and I have the axe and the business end of a spear and I pull it out of my belly and flip it in the air and catch it and hold it out and the guy in his underwear has already leapt into the air and is coming down at me and can’t do shit about it and the shock of the impact tears the spear from my hand and he hits the ground and starts trying to pull it out of his chest but it’s in deep and lodged tight in his breastbone and he rolls around and dies and the guy with the stick turns to go back in the house and trips over the arm of the boy who had the sling and I limp over and swing the axe once and swing it a second time and the second time does the trick and I go inside the house with the axe in one hand and a head in the other.

The door leads into the kitchen. The boy in the kitchen is the head scratcher.

And he has a bow.

His hands shake as he tries to knock an arrow into the bowstring.

I hold up the head.

– Hey.

He flinches and the arrow slips loose and the string twangs into his forearm.

– Uh.

I point the axe at the head.

– Where’s the girl?

He points at the floor.

– Uh.

– Basement?

He nods.

I lower the head.

– You can run if you want.

He drops the bow and turns and runs through the doorway into the livingroom and I throw the head at his legs and he goes down and I walk over with the axe and put my foot in his back and raise the axe to get my second head.

– A message is meant to be heeded, yes?

The Rebbe stands halfway down the stairway in his trousers and slippers and untucked shirt, a prayer shawl draped over his shoulders, a Colt Defender in his hand. I notice a black cloth draped half over a mirror on the wall next to him. A basin of water at the end of the hall near the front door.

The Rebbe tugs the cloth over the mirror, but it falls away again.

– For my son.

He looks at the head scratcher.

– Coward.

He shoots the head scratcher and I throw myself up the stairs and swing the axe in a high arc and I crash into the stairs and the blade rakes his leg and hooks in the meat of his thigh and I heave and the leg folds under him and he’s falling backward, two rounds punching through the ceiling, and I pull the axe from his leg and put it in his stomach and pull him down the stairs toward me and the gun comes at my face and the barrel smashes my cheekbone and it goes off and the muzzle flash sears my eye and the bullet splinters the banister and I pull the axe free and put it in his chest and pull him closer and I’m on top of him now and his face is in front of me and I know what I love and what I’ll sacrifice for it and I don’t care when he fires again and the bullet tears my neck open and I pull the axe free and I bring it down and I bring it down and I bring it down.