Brothers and Bones by James Hankins

recognize it at all under all that gravel? Hard to tell with him speaking barely above a whisper. He’d called me Wiley again. Twice. Was it possible? Could it be…Jake? I still hadn’t gotten a look at his face, either in my apartment just now or in the subway station two days ago. I’d never looked at it any of the other times I’d seen him before, either. But if it was Jake, why not just say so? Why run away from me in Chinatown? Why attack me upstairs just now, for that matter?
    As we neared the bottom of the stairs, I wasn’t even sure I wanted this man to be Jake. I wanted my brother to be alive, of course, but would I have wanted him to have endured whatever could have turned him into the man in rags behind me, the man I had seen on the street mumbling incoherently at times, and loudly spouting gibberish at other times?
    When we reached the small lobby, I headed for the door to the street, but the man grabbed me from behind again and held me tight. He leaned over my shoulder to look out through the window in the door and I caught a terrible whiff of the pungent odor that cloaked him. I tried to see his face but his hair hung in the way again, a curtain drawn across his features. Apparently deciding the coast was clear, he jerked the door open and shoved me through it—not gently, but not too roughly.
    Once I hit the sidewalk, I began to turn to face him. He put a hand on my shoulder before I could do so and guided me toward the corner of my building, into a small, dark alley. A man lay on his side in a pile of discarded newspapers, apparently asleep. A homeless man, probably, though I thought he looked a little familiar. I might have seen him loitering near this alley before.
    “Turn around,” the man behind me said, then he cleared his throat, snuffled, and spit.
    I turned and looked up into his face, still unsure what I hoped to see. The alley was dark but I could see clearly enough.
    He wasn’t Jake.
    I was crushed flat.
    Up to that point I wasn’t sure whether I wanted the man to be my brother. Now that I knew he wasn’t, the disappointment was like a kick in the stomach. In an instant, Jake—or at least the imminent possibility of him—was gone again and I was left with the black void in my chest, the depthless hole in my heart that I’d lived with for so long. The pain was like bone cancer.
    Jake was gone.
    But surely this man knew something about that. He scratched at his head, which caused the tangled hair to pull off his face. It was a dirty face—what showed above the long, dark beard—with a couple of open sores and a number of old scars. The nose, which I could see had once been straight and strong, had been broken at least one time, probably more than that. The eyes were rheumy and red. The man had probably been handsome once, but if so, it was long ago.
    “How you doin’, Wiley?” he asked in his rough, gravelly voice. I doubted he needed to chew when he ate. All he had to do was swallow and let the rocks in his throat pulverize the food on its way down to his stomach. His lips cracked into something resembling a smile, exposing a set of teeth and gums straight out of Central Casting for a gingivitis warning poster. Then, inexplicably, he said the word “Bones.” It seemed so out of left field, such a non sequitur, that for a moment I couldn’t think of a thing to do or say. Then he stuck out his hand and I realized he had introduced himself. I hesitated only a moment before shaking his hand. The hand was callused and grimy, the fingers slightly gnarled, like several had been broken in the past and never properly set. But at least that hand had all its fingers. I recalled from the subway the other morning that his left hand, with which he was scratching his back, was missing its little finger.
    “I’m Charlie,” I said.
    He shook his head once. “Wiley.”
    I decided not to argue about it. I had questions for him. He could call me Betty Boop if he wanted, as long as he told me