Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  So now, here are the Sena men. What is happening here? What is in this shed? Who are all these new people? There are complaints and we want to know.

  The biggest one has a gun in his pants.

  A column of one hundred Sena men weaving through the tight alleys and lanes of the slum. Few of them are much older than thirty. Young, jobless, uneducated; the Thackeray dynasty has a way with these materials. They stomp and scream, wave their swords and long bamboo sticks. They push and shove until they are at the doors of #1 Shed, where Raj’s father stands with his arms folded, looking up at the night sky.

  The big one, his head looks like it was caught in a vise when he was a baby. Big dents on either side and strange tip poking up. Like a condom, Raj thinks. Condom Head.

  Condom Head is slapping the door of the shed.

  “What is this, then, eh? This is a factory, eh bhenchod? Open always in the bhenchod heat. Closed now, eh? And what is this people, eh? New people. Congress, eh bhenchod? Bhenchod Congress men coming here and stealing votes, eh? What did they bhenchod promise you, eh bhenchod? We hear they bhenchod promise to stop redevelopment and this is a new bhenchod tune they are singing. Eh bhenchod, you listening to me, eh bhenchod?”

  His thick hand flies from his hip and smacks Raj’s father on the side of the head. He takes a half step, finds his balance, stands, arms folded. He’s been hit before.

  Condom Head raises his lathi, waves the length of bamboo in Raj’s father’s face.

  “Bhenchod next time you get this, eh. Bhenchod and after that, you bhenchod get this bhenchod.”

  He touches the gun tucked in his pants.

  Raj’s father looks up at the sky.

  “Where have all my neighbors gone, eh?”

  From his spot overhead, peeking out through a split seam in the corrugated facing of the shed’s loft, Raj looks at the alleys around the shed. Only the Sena men are left. The real people have disappeared into their hutments.

  Condom Head raises his lathi, puts his other hand on his gun.

  “Eh?”

  A mob of Congress men is what he’s thinking. Political foes, street forces of the Congress party. Swords and lathis, he’s thinking. Ambush, eh? That is what he’s thinking. And he is correct, but it is not Congress thugs come to riot over who will reap the windfall votes in Dharavi in the coming open election. Not another battle in the endless saga of lafda, strife. Controlling Dharavi will be like plugging a tap into the great pipeline of money that is going to flow through Redevelopment. Of course there must be lafda. But that is not what is happening now.

  Condom Head dies first. A single bullet that perhaps goes in one ear and out the other, like a complicated idea quickly dismissed for the effort it requires. Then more Sena men die. Raj is surprised that only eight of the fighters from the jungle can do this so easily. On the second floors and roofs of hutments, shooting down into the column. Single rounds. He thought they would rock ’n’ roll on full auto. Like a movie. No. They choose targets and shoot, one bullet at a time, some working the edges of the column, some the middle. Dismay in the ranks. There is flight, but, if Raj understood Sudhir’s plans, men will be waiting for them at every turn in the alleys. Dharavi men. Lathis and swords. Waiting for the panicked Shiv Sena. Raj will not be surprised to hear later that there were jars of gasoline. More than one Sena burned.

  The gunfire slows. Stops.

  He crawls back from his view, turns, moves to the edge of the loft and looks down at the shed floor.

  Progress.

  The jackhammers are silent after opening the foundation. The Hitachi 66MW steam turbine generator has been lowered in, dropped the final half meter when one of the winches gave out under the weight. The ship breakers have been pouring concrete, hand mixed by the potters, a pre-welded cage of rebar will reinforce the new foundation. The welders have been at work on the steam fittings. A web of pipes and catwalk rises from the floor of the shed to the roof, consumes more than half the space, arc torches flaring from its depths. Outside, more pipe, running from the shed, through hutments, to #2 Shed. Under the roof of that shed, the cooling towers have been raised over the water basin. The entire #2 Shed is a swimming pool now, with giant smokestacks mounted on a low steel gantry. Raj has not been to see it since they flooded the pool, but David says all the boys and girls have been swimming. Now is the time to get wet, before the water boils at 82 degrees Celsius.

  The PHRS tank here in #1 Shed is not nearly so big but much deeper. The sappers dug a ramp into the earth, just wide enough for the trailer, opening into a wide, deep pool. The trailer was rolled down the ramp, the motor on the repaired winch complaining as it played out cable, easing its load into the empty pool. Once it was on level ground, rolled into place, it was jacked several centimeters into the air before being allowed to rest on stacked railroad ties. Then the welders crawled underneath with their torches and cut away the axles, everything except for the truck bed itself. Jacks again, lift the load, removing ties, lowering, settling, lifting, removing ties, lowering again. Until it rested on the freshly poured concrete floor of the PHRS tank. Then more concrete was poured, locking the trailer’s load in place, the ramp filled in, a pre-poured slab used to close the final notch in the wall of the tank.

  There it is now, the primary module, in the dry tank, set in concrete mixed in fifty-gallon drums by the potters and their wives and their children. The secondary module has been connected above it, and soon the web of pipes filling the rest of #1 Shed will be hooked up. Then the water.

  Then, his father says, it will be ready to be fired.

  “Raj.”

  His father, down on the floor, waving him out of the loft.

  Raj climbs down the ladder. His father will want to talk about why he is up there. Already knowing that Raj must have watched the massacre of the Sena men. He will have a lesson to impart. Raj is so full of lessons these days. The change is constant. First his father starts holding meetings in their house, meetings with men from all castes, all regions, all religions. Then they start looking at plans. Buying buildings like the shed, hutments, streets. No one but his father seems to know where the money comes from. Then Sudhir appears. Then his Naxalite fighters. The ship breakers arrive. The truck comes. All the work in the sheds. First it is only people from their chowk. Then from all over Dharavi people are coming to work even as many old neighbors leave the chowk. Then the other trucks, and #2 Shed. And Raj must work and never play. And lessons with a gun. His mother with a gun. Now the Sena men are killed in the streets. And Raj is not where he is supposed to be, watching the Internet and waiting for a message that never comes on classicsteelbikes.com. And all he wants now is to play with his soccer ball.

  “Raj.”

  His father has broken his glasses. Was it the slap from Condom Head? As he talks, he is wrapping black tape to attach the left arm where the hinge has been ruined.

  “The Sena men.”

  “Yes?”

  His father bites the tape, it tears, and he inspects the repair.

  “We tried to talk with them weeks ago.”

  Satisfied, he tucks the roll of tape in the breast pocket of his filthy, sweat-stained workshirt, takes a handkerchief from his hip pocket, and rubs the lenses of the glasses.

  “They didn’t understand. I spoke to them about independence. The cost of it. Power. They didn’t understand. They wanted to know what I was asking for. They thought I wanted a toilet, hookups to the water, electricity, a TV. They wanted to know how many votes I could bring them.”

  He stuffs the handkerchief away and puts on his glasses.

  “Then here they come, as I knew they would. Because something they do not understand is happening. So it must be a threat. And they are very dangerous, Raj. More dangerous than the police or the army or the United Nations. Because they are here. So many of them live here. Our neighbors. What they could see, tell. The secret is too big here. Number One Shed. Everyone will know. Very soon. And then we will see. But what if they saw? Yes
. Number Two Shed. So now it is too late for some secrets. The policemen have died. The water goons have died. Now the Sena men have died. Next, we will start to die. But here in Dharavi, everyone knows now we will fight. And fighting, we will protect our secret until it is too late for anyone to stop us.”

  The lights flicker in the shed, go dark, come back on, go dark again.

  Raj looks up.

  “How much longer?”

  His father rubs his thumb on the smeared face of his Timex.

  “The transformer is done, I hope. Soon. Then the tap.”

  Lights flutter.

  “We will balance the load in an hour.”

  Raj nods.

  “India Standard Time?”

  His father smiles, wobbles his head on his neck, shakes his finger; suddenly a bureaucrat booster of all things Bombay.

  “No and no, we are most modern and extra up-to-date in this operation. All things regular and in the businessway. On time means on time and no other thing. We must not be waiting always for these lazy wallahs to fix things up and making the toilets to flush after the shit is on the floor.”

  He lowers his finger, looks again at his watch.

  “One hour. I will see to it.”

  He turns, stops.

  “I will never be clean of those deaths, Raj. I did not pull the trigger, but they are all mine.”

  He shrugs.

  “Destroy to create. I did not come into the world thinking this was the law. But it is. All the same.”

  He puts a hand on Raj’s shoulder, pushes softly.

  “You should be at the computer. Yes. When the tap is finished, you will have no excuses. Oh, there was no power. I had to reboot again.”

  He pinches Raj’s earlobe.

  “And there will be more help after the tap. Turn on the lights, and many will come to help. I know.”

  He looks at the floor.

  “Where is your ball?”

  Raj points toward the far end of the shed, the computer stations where he works with the other kids.

  “Under the table.”

  His father scratches the growing bald spot on top of his head.

  “Do not lose it. I want to have a game later. When we take a break.”

  He looks at the watch again, doesn’t like what he sees, and hurries off.

  Raj sees two of the jungle fighters join his father, walking just ahead and behind him, watches as the welders and the potters and tanners, wallahs of every kind, tinkers, vendors, barbers, all nod to him as he passes. Under guard, his father walks into the street where the dead are being cleared away in his name.

  At the computer there is still no reply. But there is something new. On the blogs for the Times of India. Comments section. People asking about what is happening in Dharavi. Rumors circulating. And now, as he refreshes the screen, a report of gunfire. Twitter. He searches #Dharavi. There, yes, a new rumor. Someone asking if anyone has heard about a terrorist attack. 26/11 again? And someone laughing. LOL! ISI terrorists attckng slums. Mks sens. ;).

  Terrorists.

  Raj thinks about his father and Sudhir and the jungle fighters and his neighbors and David and his mother and Taji and himself. Then he thinks about the bullets hitting the Sena men. Funny that it didn’t bother him watching it. But thinking about it now he can’t stop crying.

  inevitable

  THE CEMETERY AT Montmartre.

  Skinner and Jae are standing in front of the mausoleum of the Lazarous family. Skinner kicks a rock.

  “Terrence.”

  Jae is rubbing the back of her neck.

  “Skinner. Is there any chance?”

  “No.”

  Skinner turns his back to the mausoleum gate.

  “Terrence is dead.”

  He sits on the top step of the mausoleum, thinks about Lentz, the man he shot in the face on these steps seven years ago, and begins picking at the double knot on his right boot.

  “It was Terrence’s idea that I should meet my mom. Talk to her. After all those years. He told me that he knew where she was. On faculty. A girls’ school in Canada. Outside Thunder Bay. Her office walls were covered in drawings by her students. An exercise she did every term with every class. Draw yourself alone. She pinned them to the walls, layers of them. She cracked the window to smoke and the wind came through the crack and rustled the drawings.”

  Skinner knows that he has lost his prosody. He’s talking like a robot programmed to mimic human conversation. To make himself sound like everyone else he has to think about conversations he’s overheard, or movies or TV. Everyone tries to talk like movies or TV. When they talk about important things, they use the tones of one-hour dramas. Just as they use the inflections of sitcoms when trying to be light. Skinner doesn’t sound like TV, he sounds like Morse code.

  “I had been acquiring assets. Do you know what that means?

  Jae nods. She knows what it means.

  Skinner studies the knot in his laces.

  “I was good at it. Which was a surprise. For me. Not Terrence. He’d recruited me, scouted me, thinking I’d be an unusual analyst. Not unlike you. An eye for data. Side effect of the box, I think he assumed. But Terrence saw me kill the first time. It was. Not as big a surprise. For him. He’d already met Haven. Recruited Haven. And Haven was good at killing. Some talents do run in families.”

  He’s having trouble with the knot. Trouble talking and undoing the knot at the same time, and Jae sits next to him, moves his hands, and starts to work the laces herself.

  “Haven.”

  Skinner thinks about her gift for seeing the next thing, the connection. And wonders if she sees through him.

  “Haven. He’d gone into the military. Marines. Very traditional. Foster children and the military. Many orphans fight our wars. And he was good at it. Force Recon. Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team. Signed with Aegis Private Security. Where Terrence found him. And recruited him for the CIA. Terrence knew one of his kind when he saw us. He saw something in Haven’s work that suggested gifts. And then Haven told him about me.”

  The knot comes undone. Jae starts working on the other one.

  “Haven knew about you? That you were his brother?”

  Skinner’s eyes skip back and forth, find the middle distance, tombstones blurring in his vision.

  “We’d never met. But he knew I existed. When the experiment was in progress. He discovered it. Me. In the basement. And he watched me. On the monitors my parents had upstairs. A locked cabinet. He was curious. Found the key. Saw what was on the monitors. A boy in a box in the basement. Then sneaking into the basement when I was asleep. But my parents never knew. He never told them.”

  Jae has the second knot untied.

  “Who did he think you were?”

  Skinner doesn’t move.

  “I was the boy in the basement. The one his mom and dad spent all their time with. I don’t know what he thought. But he was a child. So it probably scared him and made him angry. And it struck me, when I did finally speak with Mom, how naïve, ignorant it was of her, never to have realized that it was Haven who told the people about me. After Mom and Dad gave him over for adoption. It never occurred to them that he knew. And that he told someone. But it seems very obvious to me that he did it. And then they came and took me away, too.”

  He takes off his right boot, turns it upside down and shakes a pebble from it and then puts it back on. When he shakes the left shoe no pebble falls out.

  “Childhood is a fraught time.”

  He puts the left shoe on. Jae begins retying them.

  “And he told Terrence about you?”

  “Yes. He directed Terrence’s attention to me. Thought my history would interest him. And of course it did. If not for Haven. I would never have found out. What I’m good at. As I said before. His life entangled with mine. He was the one who told Terrence where our mother was.”

  “Terrence wanted you to talk to your mom?”

  “Wanted. Yes. Put that way. I think he did
. It had become apparent that my gift for acquisitions was limited. I was. Eroding. Unhappy in my work, someone might say. I didn’t feel any different about the killing itself, but it was making me feel something different as a whole. I started using certain conditioning techniques on myself. Negative reinforcements in the manner they are popularly misunderstood. Punishing myself for inefficiencies. There were levels of empathy, unexpected, creeping into my work. I used a taser. On myself. When I felt those things. Poor technique. My parents would have been horrified. Something complicated was happening. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. I wasn’t human. Raised in a box. Copying behavior. Inhuman. Inhumane. Very little differentiation. Killing people. Well. I was a monster. That made sense. More sense than pretending to be like other people. The Thing Under the House. That made sense. Every day it made more sense, but I couldn’t seem to live with it anymore. I don’t know why. I was very close, I think, to killing myself. That was when Terrence told me about Haven. I knew I had a brother. I had been told sometime after I was taken from the box. I had never met him. And I knew of Haven, as a professional. And now he was my brother. I felt, if I can use that word, like I was in a Dickens novel. A modern adaptation. My secret brother was the asset specialist Haven. Terrence said that I should try protection. Like Haven. Maybe that would work. I did. But I wasn’t good at it. It was. Passive. I’m not. My, talents, are specific. Not applicable to the care needed to protect. Terrence told me about my mom. Suggested she might help. And. Going to visit Mom in Thunder Bay seemed logical enough in the circumstances. Who else might understand what was happening to me?”

  He turns his head and looks at the door of the mausoleum, thinks about going in, but doesn’t get up.

  “I told her. Everything. It was. Easy. And. Comforting.”

  Jae has finished retying his laces. She moves on the step, into a patch of sun filtering through the branches of the horse chestnuts.

  “My mom was killed by a bee.”