“Sorry,” James panted, darting away, pressing one palm flat against the small cut on his forehead. The other boys did not hear him over the slap of their feet on the ground and their own laughing and taunting. Behind them all, the wind nudged the crumpled dollar bills across the sidewalk like scuttling crabs.
As he ran, blood wetting his palm, James felt a few sharp pieces of brick pelting his back. He continued around the corner to his row house. And as he stampeded up the shared steps to his own front door, he heard that stinging word again. He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and bit into it hard.
The corner boys followed James up the set of stairs, stomping like cattle, the entire building reverberating.
James shoved into the apartment, dashing past a surprised Mike and Delia where they lounged in the living room, and pushed through the door to his tiny bedroom. He barely registered Special Automatic, looming on the wall, still humming with power.
Diving across the room, James rolled onto his back just as the two boys kicked open the door. Laughing, they lunged into the hot twilight.
And something dark moved.
With electrical speed, Special Automatic clamped scuffed plastic fingers around Claudell’s neck, choking off a laugh. The robotic arm hung in the air, rugged and strong, fingers obscuring the greenish cursive tattoo that wrapped around Claudell’s neck.
Legs scrabbling, James pushed himself up against the wall, under the shadow of the machine. Over his own breathing, James could hear the wet, glottal noises of a compressed throat and the desperate, furious scratching of Claudell’s fingernails over the plastic casing of the robot’s forearm.
“Hey,” said the other boy, eyes adjusting to the gloom. His face had gone slack with fright, his skin jaundiced by the warm radiation emanating from the plastic blinds. “Hey, what the fuck!”
The other boy tugged on the robot’s fist. It did not move, though the motors droned insistently against the added weight.
“It’s fucking killing him!” the boy shouted again, this time with bright panic in his voice, tears springing to his eyes. “Tell it to let go! Please!”
Looking upward, James saw that Special Automatic was looking at him.
“Let go?” James asked.
Drawing back its arm, the machine launched Claudell’s semiconscious body across the room, his back denting into moldy drywall. The boy collapsed in a spray of mold and paint flakes, gagging, white foam on his lips. Crying outright now, his friend set to dragging Claudell out of the dark room and away from its terrible occupant.
And James rose.
Lowering his forehead, the boy allowed his lip to worm out from between his teeth. In the trembling shadow of the box fan, his eyes had become dark stars. He clenched his fingers together into tight fists and heard the grinding of plastic as Special Automatic did the same.
Things felt different.
Not blinking, James stared silently as the boys fled the room. Above and behind him, the machine shivered with its own pent-up power. The front door slammed shut a second later and the apartment was silent again.
James walked to the bedroom doorway. Alone and safe, his hands had begun to tremble. He was experiencing an unfamiliar feeling, a shift in the topography of his world. The electrical flash of another R-word had left its imprint in his mind.
Respect—
Skinny Mike lunged in from the hallway, spider-fast, and delivered an open-handed slap that connected across James’s temple, slamming the boy’s head against the door frame. Reeling, spinning and blinking, James saw his older brother’s gaunt silhouette canting over him as he fell to the floor.
“The fuck did you just do?” asked Mike.
* * *
—
James opened his eyes, leaning his head against the ratty, overstuffed La-Z-Boy in the living room. Mike crouched across from him, knees on his elbows, exposing the puckered veins of his inner forearms. Beside him, Delia lay languidly on the couch, a cigarette clasped lightly between her middle and index finger, one leg up on the coffee table, showing off her thin, bruised thigh and a glimpse of red panties.
“You little fuck,” said Mike. “You little fuck.”
Delia giggled, blowing smoke at the ceiling.
“Right?” asked Mike. “Why didn’t he tell me he had that shit? You trying to hide this from me?”
The boy pushed stiff hair away from his face, fingers pausing on the tender bruise spreading across his forehead.
“No, Mikey,” said James.
This was true. Until now, Mike had never shown genuine interest in his younger brother. James fundamentally did not understand how anything he did could be of concern to his older brother, or possibly to anyone.
“Okay, that thing is fucking amazing,” said Mike, half to himself.
“What is it?” asked Delia, scratching her thigh with gold-colored fingers. “It’s a robot, right?”
“Yes,” said James.
“Can it walk?” asked Mike.
“I think so.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I made it.”
“Jesus. What do you call it?”
James said nothing. After a long moment, Mike’s face darkened, and, like a snake striking, he snatched up the TV remote and threw it at James. It hit the younger boy in the chest like a stone. James’s hand flew to the spot of this new injury.
Quietly, he answered. “I call him Special,” he said.
“Special? Special what? Special ed?”
“Special Automatic,” said James.
Mike squawked a laugh. Reaching behind his back, he fingered out the black hunk of metal that lived there. Leaning forward again, he turned the snub-nosed pistol over in his fingers. James could smell sweat and cigarette smoke and gun oil.
“You named it like my gun? My .38?” Mike asked, a coat-hanger grin wedging into his flaccid, acne-scarred cheeks.
James nodded slowly.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” said Mike.
Delia pushed a palm lightly against Mike’s narrow shoulder.
“I think it’s sweet,” she sighed. “He wants to be like you.”
Mike ignored the placating hand, leveling his eyes on James.
“That thing in there ain’t a gun,” said Mike. “Nobody would be fucking stupid enough to give you a gun. That’d be like giving a gun to a monkey. Are you a bad motherfucker, Jimmy? You a killer?”
James shook his head.
“Fucking killer monkey,” murmured Delia, lips moving around the cigarette as she inhaled, her wheezing laugh pushing a haze of smoke toward the ceiling.
“No. You’re not,” continued Mike. “But I am.”
James watched his older brother with wide unblinking eyes.
Although the younger boy had never been interesting to his older brother, the same was not true in reverse. Even if just for survival, James had paid a lot of attention to his older brother, especially to the job Mike did for the bald man, flexing his wasted muscles as he attempted to extract drug money from the corner dealers. And James had seen the power radiating from the small black weapon tucked into the back of his brother’s jeans.
That was something James had paid quite a lot of attention to.
“How smart is it?” asked Mike.
James paused, lower lip twitching as he thought about the question. “Smarter than it looks, I guess,” he murmured.
“Can it follow orders?” asked Mike.
James nodded.
Mike grinned wider, his scarred cheeks collapsing into a wrinkled moonscape.
“Then get your Special Automatic ready,” he said. “And make sure it can walk and move its arms and shit. Make sure it does what you say.”
Mike stubbed out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and leaned back into the couch,
draping an arm absentmindedly across Delia’s crotch, thinking.
“Why?” ventured James, watching his brother closely.
“ ’Cause,” said Mike, turning to Delia and blowing a last plume of smoke out the side of his mouth. He smiled at her, and saw that smile reciprocated with nervous anticipation. “We’re gonna rob a bank with it.”
* * *
—
The next day, just outside the First Niagara Bank, James tugged lightly on Special Automatic’s arm. The machine paused, looking down at the boy. Although he had put on a ski mask, the boy’s eyes were dry and dull with fear.
“Protect me,” whispered James.
“Okay, James,” said the machine, its smooth mouth area glowing yellow.
“Now go inside,” added James.
Special Automatic turned and walked directly through the safety glass of the bank’s front door.
Mouth muffled by a balaclava, Mike exclaimed his approval. James followed them both through curling leaves of fractured glass in the twisted door frame. He walked alone to the middle of the bank lobby as customers scattered, his head down, feeling diminutive and silly—a little kid along for the ride.
To hide the robot’s true nature, James had pulled a matching balaclava over its head and duct-taped the remains of an old jacket and pants over its thin metal limbs. Wearing a ball cap cocked to one side, the machine looked like a gaunt, skeletal man, its movements unnaturally jerky yet surging with a terrible strength.
Mike’s gun was already out, and the bank lobby deserted.
“The counter,” James whispered, and Special Automatic staggered forward, crunching over cubes of glass, locking both hands under the teller’s impenetrable window and lifting. The bulletproof glass shattered immediately, and the entire marble countertop buckled and rose away from its wooden mooring.
Somewhere, someone screamed.
Shoving the countertop to the side, Special Automatic dropped the glittering mess across the tile floor, leaving a cringing employee exposed, her forearms crossing over her face like the narrow slats of a boardwalk.
Fluorescent light glinted from Mike’s drawn .38 special as he charged through the mess, an empty black duffel bag flapping in his free hand. Standing in the lobby, eyes on the floor, James could hear Mike laughing maniacally between shouted curses and threats, darting back and forth between tellers and registers, his sack growing as he filled it with bundles of cash.
Special Automatic waited patiently near the wreckage of the teller’s desk, not moving. The boy and the robot exchanged a look, the room silent save for the panicked breaths of a teller hiding out of sight. In that moment, James realized he felt safe. It was if he were watching a movie. Reaching up, he put a hand over his chest and felt that his heart was not beating especially hard.
Thirty seconds later, Special Automatic tore a metal security door open and the three of them loped across the parking lot to where Mike had parked a stolen car. Even with his incredible strength, Special struggled to carry the now bloated duffel bag. The robot, still dressed ridiculously, was barely able to fit inside the car.
“That was fucking sick,” said Mike, breathing hard, starting the engine with a crank of his wrist, eyes wet with excitement. “We should do it again tomorrow.”
* * *
—
Ever since the robbery that afternoon, James had felt strange. The usual haze of fear had somehow evaporated. It did not touch him, not even when he entered the crumbling apartment he shared with his brother. Normally, James saw each room as a series of escape routes or low places where he could be out of the way—places where he could be small.
But now he felt nothing. He saw only paint peeling.
Special Automatic stood in the living room like a statue. He had been stripped of the goofy clothing, but the residue of duct tape remained on his casing, and he was still wearing the sideways ball cap. The machine watched impassively as Skinny Mike upended the duffel bag on the couch and laid down on a pungent layer of cash.
He wallowed there for a while, a look of sublime happiness on his sallow face.
Finally, lighting a cigarette, Mike sat up, his freckled shoulder blades knifing out of a stained wifebeater. The balaclava had been pushed up onto his sweaty forehead, and he was wearing a ludicrous grin. A drug kit lay on the coffee table—made of greasy black leather with a golden zipper like clenched teeth.
James was kneeling on the carpet across from his brother, one arm resting on the scabby La-Z-Boy recliner, letting the mild heat from Special Automatic’s battery wash over him from above.
“Do you want a TV dinner?” he asked Mike quietly.
“No, Jimmy,” said Mike, glancing at him with annoyance. “Fuck, man. Can’t you knock off that pussy shit even for a second? We just robbed a bank!”
Mike burst into laughter, cigarette trapped between two fingers in his cupped hand, uneven coils of smoke rising in hiccups over his mouth.
“Holy shit, dude,” he said, croaking as he inhaled smoke. “Holy shit. Wait’ll I tell Connor. He’s gonna freak the fuck out.”
“Connor?” asked the boy.
“My boss, dipshit.”
James knew the bald enforcer was a real criminal. The man had never respected Mike, would never respect him, most likely. He would use him, instead.
A frown creased Skinny Mike’s face, the expression zigzagging where his nose had been broken and never healed right. His small eyes were trained on James, sensing disagreement.
“Yeah,” added Mike. “I’m gonna tell everybody. And nobody’s gonna fuck with me ever again. You got a problem with that?”
Placing his palms flat on his thighs, James was quiet. He understood now that the money was not important to his brother. It was the implication of having the money that was important.
It was the respect, of course.
The silence spun away from him, a blank canvas on which Mike’s diseased mind began to conjure unspoken insults.
“What are you thinking right now, dipshit?”
Feeling a tightness in the back of his throat, James stood up to leave, but Mike’s thin fingers lashed out in that surprising, quick way he had. With a jerk, Mike dragged James forward and hooked an elbow behind his head. He pressed James’s face hard against the coffee table.
Then harder.
“This whole neighborhood is gonna know that Skinny Mike has got a friend now. And he is one bad motherfucker.”
With that, Mike pressed a bony forearm over the boy’s cheek. In his cupped hand the cigarette still burned, inches from James’s face. Squeezing his eyes closed against the smoke, James swallowed a cough. He silently wished for the strength to put a stop to this. But it was an impotent wish, long unfulfilled.
“Isn’t that right, Special?” asked Mike, cackling. “Are you a bad motherfucker?”
In the acrid darkness, under the crushing pressure, Mike’s words loomed huge. James felt as though he were a small figure crouched behind his own closed eyes, gazing up at the black movie screen of his life.
“Put together by a fucking genius retard—”
The words stopped as the air seemed to shiver. The pressure disappeared from the side of James’s face. Eyes opening, he watched a last ribbon of smoke curl away. There had been a hard, wet sound—like stomping in a mud puddle with rain boots on.
James sat up and rubbed his eyes, blinking tears away.
Protect me, James had said before the robbery.
Okay, James, said the machine.
But James hadn’t said from what, and he hadn’t said when to stop.
James scrambled back from the coffee table, feeling a warm dollop of wetness sticking his shirt to his shoulder blade. With his back pressed against the La-Z-Boy, James pulled his knees up to his chest, saw the room, and focused on taking the kind of deep breaths that w
ere supposed to help when a seizure was coming. With one hand, he reached up and stroked the lump of smooth plastic that bulged behind his ear.
He tried, but could not look away from his brother.
Skinny Mike was lying upside down across the back of the couch, flung there when Special Automatic had planted a fist into the side of his face. The metal knuckles had pushed a fishbowl dent into the side of Mike’s head. Head cocked unnaturally, eyes and mouth open, Mike looked surprised—almost amused—as the ashtray-sized dent in his head pooled with blood. His jaw worked soundlessly.
Special Automatic’s plastic knuckles glistened.
The humming of the machine was comforting to James, especially over the goldfish-kiss sounds his brother’s lips were making as he gasped for air. Eyes rolling in their sockets, trying to blink, Mike’s unfocused gaze settled on James.
“Yuh…yoo,” he slurred.
James stared back. He put a hand over his heart and felt that the muscle was not beating especially hard.
Some intangible quality of Mike’s eyes had changed, a softened focus, and James knew his brother would never be the same. The boy did not think he would be crouching on the fire escape again anytime soon. He wondered what his mother would say.
“Special?” asked James, turning, his voice breaking.
The boy looked up to where the towering machine stood, silly cap on its head, arms hanging like meat hooks. James carefully circled around the kneeling coffee table. He faced the machine without expression, both of them dark and still.
“Thank you,” he said.
James stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the machine’s legs. While he hugged it, the soft yellow LEDs under the machine’s chin glowed. In a rumbling voice, it spoke: “You’re welcome, James.”
* * *
—
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The boy could not lift Skinny Mike on his own, despite the nickname, but he thought it best to leave Special Automatic out of view and do this part himself. So he was holding his brother’s limp body by the armpits, pulling him down the stairs step by step.