Brothers and Bones by James Hankins Page A

what I needed to know.
    “You been looking for me,” he said. It was a statement, not a question, but he was waiting for an answer. I nodded. “Why?”
    I relaxed a little. He didn’t seem like he intended to hurt me, at least not right away. He, too, wanted answers. Still, I’d have felt better up in my cozy little apartment than down in that dark alley.
    “Why don’t we go back upstairs and talk?” I said. “Have something to eat.” My mind raced. Did I have any food to give him? There was the leftover Chinese takeout. At first I worried about having only leftovers to offer, then I remembered once seeing him eat something out of a subway-station trash can. “Would that be okay?”
    He took a long time to consider my offer. He looked confused. I realized he probably couldn’t remember the last time anyone had invited him into his or her home. He seemed tempted, but then he blinked hard, shook his head sharply, and the confused look was gone, like he’d physically shaken it from his face, replacing it with an intense scowl. It looked to me almost like, by shaking his head, he’d changed channels in his brain, causing his face to display a new station. He said, “Not inside. Shouldn’t have gone inside before. They probably listen inside.”
    I smiled and nodded and wondered if that was how I sounded to Dr. Fielding. I had forgotten for a moment that this man’s train had jumped the tracks long ago. I became more resolved to get out of that alley, at least, try to get him to a public place.
    “Well, can we go somewhere else then? I’ll buy you a sandwich. We can talk.”
    He thought hard about it again. He gave his head another shake, but his face retained the scowl. “You mean, like, a restaurant? A diner? A place with a waitress? Something like that?”
    I nodded and his scabby lips shifted into that smile-like configuration again.

 
     
     
     
    TWELVE
     
    Years on the street obviously hadn’t adversely affected my companion’s appetite. I’d offered to buy him a meal. I was now considering, however, whether I should look into taking out a small bank loan to pay the tab. He’d eaten a club sandwich, a bowl of beef barley soup, a mountain of French fries smothered in thick gravy, a bowl of chili, another sandwich—meat loaf this time—and was working on a piece of pie as I sipped my hot chocolate and nibbled at my bagel. I almost reached for a French fry at one point, but decided it might be a terrible idea to try to take away even a morsel of his food. He ate loudly, alternately emitting groans of pleasure and feral grunts. Food that dropped from his lips caught in his beard. When he wiped his fingers, he did so on his sleeves, ignoring the pile of paper napkins I set near him. We drew stares from the two other sets of patrons sharing two-a.m. meals. The manager of the place, a rotund man with a fleshy, porcine face, stood behind the counter glaring at me, condemning me with his piggy eyes for contaminating his place with the presence of my companion. I sent him an eye signal of my own in return, telling him to bite me. I hadn’t forgotten his making me show him that I had cash before he’d seat us.
    As the man who called himself Bones ate, I watched him. He clutched his food with his nine slightly crooked fingers. When he raised his hands to his mouth, his sleeves slipped a little and I could just see old scars slashing across the exposed parts of his forearms. There were also what appeared to be numerous small, circular scars, like from cigarette burns. Every now and then he’d turn his head one way or the other and I could see similar marks on his neck behind his beard. I had a pretty good idea what I was looking at. When I was in law school I’d done an internship with a public-interest-law group focused on obtaining political asylum for worthy applicants. Some of the people seeking asylum brought photographs, evidence of what had been done to them by government officials in their home