Charlie Huston - Half the Blood of Brooklyn

– Here, let me make it easy on you, buddy. Let me get up close.

He comes close. I feel him first. The heat. He smells like the sewer. And the Vyrus. Burning.

– How’s that, buddy? Better? Want to take a shot?

Water dribbles out of my hair and into my eyes. I wipe it away.

– No.

He shifts.

– Yeah, right. Good thinking. Sharp. You’re a sharp one, buddy. So?

– What?

– You got a smoke or what?

I reach in my pocket and find the Luckys.

– They’re soaked.

– That’s OK, buddy. I forgive you. Pass ’em here.

– I can’t see.- Can’t see. Can’t see. ’Course you can’t fucking see, buddy, it’s darker than a nun’s virgin anus down here. Just hold the fucking things out.

I hold out the pack.

– Filterless? Hell, buddy, what you trying to do, kill yourself?

He gurgles.

– That’s a joke, buddy. Ah, never mind. These’ll do. These’ll do.

He shuffles. - Can’t see. Right, right. Well, we’ll see if we can do something about that.

Light explodes.

I cover my eyes, a purple burst on the inside of my lids.

– Whoops. Got you by surprise there. Sorry ’bout that, buddy.

I take my hands away, crack my lids.

He’s across from me on the shelf of brick that juts from the mouth of a dry spill tunnel over the river of shit below us. Hunkered on spider legs, white to the point of transparency, bald and huge-eyed, he thrusts his face into the beam shooting from his flashlight and bares his teeth.- Gollum.

He gurgles.

– That’s another joke, buddy. Another joke. Read that in a book. That one kills ’em. Kills ’em every time, buddy.

He tucks the wet pack of Luckys into one of the pockets of the vest that hangs open over his withered torso and waves the light down the tunnel.

– C’mon, buddy, I ain’t carrying you this time.

I keep close to the jet of hot air blowing from the louvered slats at the bottom of the switch-room door.

– Cold? Sure you’re cold, cold as hell down here, ain’t it? Not that I feel it. Not that I feel it a’tall, buddy.

He reaches over and moves the cigarettes around, rotating them in the hot air, helping the tobacco to dry.

– Yeah, just about right, yeah. Just about there.

I rotate myself, straightening my bad knee in front of the vent. The bone is knitting, it grinds when I move it.

He plucks at my damp slacks.

– What’s with the getup?

– Dead guy’s clothes.

He strokes his neck, his skin reflecting the blue of the light above the switch room.

– Didn’t ask from who, asked what’s up. Where’s your whites, buddy?

I look at his own clothes, the soiled cargo vest and painter’s pants. Both were once white, I suppose.

I rub my knee.

– Never wore whites.

– Never, huh?

His arm snaps out and he lays a finger along my chin and turns my head.

I don’t flinch.

He looks me over.

– Yeah, but you’re Enclave. Way you’re looking at me, you’re too fucking mean to be anything else.

He drops his hand.

– Didn’t take to the warehouse, huh, buddy?

– Never tried.

He fingers the cigarettes.

– Good call, that. Yeah, sure, sure, good call, buddy. This one’s done. That thing working?

He points at the open Zippo next to the smokes.

I pick it up and flick the wheel and sparks jump, but no flame.

– Still too wet.

He digs fingers into one of his pockets and comes out with a folder of matches.

– Hate to waste these things. But the need is urgent, buddy.

He tears out a match and lights it and brings the flame to the dirty, bent cigarette in his lips and inhales.

– There you go, that’s it, sister, come to papa.

He drops the match and holds the smoke for a second and blows it out.

– Well, tastes like shit, but that comes as no surprise, buddy. Here.

He offers it to me and I take a drag. He’s right, it tastes like shit.

I take another drag and pass it back.

– Daniel went out in the sun this morning.

His hand freezes. He takes the smoke, looks at it.

– He make it?

– Fuck do you think?

He sucks smoke.

– I think he got burned and died, but a man can hope, buddy. Even down here, a man can hope.

A train blasts past just beyond the alcove that hides the door, and I watch the real people flick past inside.

– They got me off the street. Long time gone, long time, buddy. Know how long?

– Nope.

– Neither do I, buddy. Neither do I.

He puts a hand out and we drop back between girders and wait as an MTA service crew in orange vests and helmets crosses the tunnel dragging tool bags over the tracks and cursing and telling dirty stories.

He waves and we start walking again, following the line of the third rail.

– Saw I was Enclave one of them did, buddy. Saw me wandering out of a saloon down the Bowery and saw it in me. Well, Vyrus don’t lie. So I was told.

He stops and points at the tunnel where the service crew disappeared.

– That’s a dead tunnel. Probably, buddy, they’re scrapping something down there. That or goin’ off to get high. Bums live down there mostly. Couple of ’em will get scared out by the crew. Crew loves to shove the bums around. Bums, buddy, bums in all the dead tunnels. ’Cept mine. Nothing lives in my tunnel but me and the rats, buddy. Me and the rats.

He starts off again.

– Daniel was the one bled into me. That meant somethin’. Not to me. Did to him. Tried not to make a big deal of it he did, but it mattered to him, buddy. All us he put the Vyrus in, we were kind of special to him. Didn’t make much difference. I never took to it.

He stops again and squats and I lean against a girder, not wanting to bend my leg.

– The quiet’s what got to me, buddy. Ever notice how quiet it is in there?

– Yeah.

– Too fucking quiet. Everyone meditating. Pondering. Thinking on the Vyrus. Fuck. I wanted some chatter. Buddy, I tell you, it drove me just about out my fucking head.

He spreads his arms.

– Now look at me. Know how often I get to have a conversation, buddy? Just about never. Talk to the rats, buddy. Tell them everything on my mind. Know what’s on my mind?

– No.

– What’s on my mind is the fuckers finally drop someone down that hole doesn’t kill himself first chance he gets, someone a man might expect to have a word with, and I end up with a monosyllabic son of a bitch like you, buddy. That’s what’s on my mind.

– Huh.

– Yeah.

– I was a discipline problem, buddy. Same way I was in the army. Know how many times I got the stockade? One time, buddy. Just the one time after I got drunk and cut my bunkmate’s ear off with my bayonet. When I got out of the stockade it was just in time for me to get kicked out. Buddy, that warehouse, it’s a fucking miracle I lasted a day. As it was, I made it a couple years. But only because of Daniel. You know the old man well, buddy?

He climbs up on a dead platform and reaches down to me.

I take his hand and he pulls me up.

– We talked some.

– Riddler he was, wasn’t he?

– Yeah.

– The sun, huh?

– Yeah.

– Crap.

He leads me to a rusted gate and yanks on it and it scrapes open.

– Down this way.

I follow.

He looks back at me.

– You need the flashlight?

The blue and yellow and red lamps of the tunnels fade behind us.

– Yeah.

– Here.

He passes it to me and I point it straight down, the reflected light more than enough for my eyes.

He kicks a pile of rags from his path.

– If the old man hadn’t had a feeling for me, I never would have lasted. Tell ya, buddy, sure seemed as though he liked the trouble cases. Seemed to have a taste for the ones that didn’t fit right in there. What would he make of me now, huh? Tell ya, he wouldn’t recognize me at all, buddy. Not at all.