KINFÉS

Alfredo loved his kinfé, probably slept next to it too. When we pulled up outside of our house, he was standing there, playing with it. We don't call them knives here because they're so much more than knives. For one, they're smaller. Two, they're sharp on all four sides, sort of like an awl but longer and with a different blade. Always homemade, but not like a prison shiv that's just made out of anything hard enough to sharpen. It takes a whole lot more to make a kinfé and you got to pronounce it right too. Kinfé, like kin-fay, right? I've seen kids beaten up for saying it all wrong: ka-nee-fay. You ever hear someone call it that, it's usually followed by a good smack.

When making one, you got to find the right metal, or the right knives. The easiest ones to make come from just stripping four knives of their blades, cutting them in half and then taking the cutting edges and welding or fusing them together, edges out, so that the whole thing looks like an extended tip of a Phillips head screwdriver and sharp all around. It takes skills to make good ones but there's plenty of crap out there. I heard some guys in the Whips make theirs to be disposable and just put them together with sharpened plastic and superglue, then they use duct tape for the handles. The Hunters though, they take theirs real seriously. Most take about a week to make and

FIGURE 5. HOW TO MAKE A KINFÉ (BLADE)

FIGURE 6. HOW TO MAKE A KINFÉ (HILT & SHEATH)

even have a special name. Their type of kinfé is called the fleshhook.

"What's wrong?" Cue got out of the car and left the door open. He was all business when he walked toward Alfredo. I could see seven Hunters in various positions overlooking the house. They didn't move.

"We were guarding," Alfredo said. "We got a buzz that the Blades was coming after you tonight because of what you did to Karl Fuck-Head. You know we got your back."

"What's going on?" Jimmy asked me. All three of us had been squeezed into the front seat of Remo's 1962 whatever-it-was. Nobody knew what make or model it used to be. It had had so much bodywork done over the years that it didn't have the tailfins it once had because they got knocked off when Remo backed into a garbage truck. It didn't have the logos and insignias and writing either because all of that had been stolen. There was a trend a couple years ago when the coolest thing was to have the rarest hood ornaments and names off of cars, so Remo's didn't last long. But it was a good car. It had a big couch of a front seat and I liked that I stayed pressed up against Jimmy even after Cue had got out.

"Looks like fuckin' Alfredo's got some news. He does this all the time. Shows up with some Hunters and makes a big deal out of something. If I had to guess, he's talking about Blades wanting to kill us because of Karl." I said it, then I yawned.

But I could see Alfredo talking and making everything real dramatic but we couldn't hear him, so I just watched his mouth and put on my best Alfredo voice for Jimmy and just dubbed over him: "Blah blah, yeah, Karl got worse at the hospital today so a bunch of Blades decided it was time to nil you for jumping in on that fight with Jimmy but we showed up and they must've decided not to mess with us blah blah blah."

Jimmy only laughed because he was surprised how well my made-up words fit in with Alfredo's flapping mouth. Cue's back was to us. They were both standing in the headlight glow, just to the side, not quite lit up all the way. The conversation looked to be over because Alfredo nodded and the Hunters started leaving.

"It's okay," Cue turned and said. He motioned for me to pull the keys out of the ignition. We were pretty much parked on the curb in front of the house anyway. Remo'd just grab it in the morning.

Cue was walking toward me and then he stopped, fell forward. He made a sound like he usually does when he's kidding. Like a thud in the lungs. Like UHH! He makes that sound by hitting his chest with his fist so it sounds real. I swear I thought he was just playing because Cue doesn't do that stuff unless it's for a laugh. And I laughed. I leaned over, took the keys out, popped the lights off with the push of the extended knob. Like pushing in the shooter on a pinball machine. I looked to my right and Jimmy was getting out of the car so I shifted over in the seat and got out on the driver side, through the open door.

"Ayight, stop playing, I get it," I said. It was late. I really wanted to go to sleep on the couch, or feign sleep and pretend that Jimmy was next to me. I'd raid the laundry basket and grab one of the shirts he wore and I'd put it over one of the cushions and then scrunch up against it fetal or just hide it under the blanket.

I slipped. I was walking toward Cue, who was still on the ground but no longer hamming it up, and I slipped but I didn't fall.

"Fuckin' ice!" I didn't say it that loud. Natural reaction. Then I realized it was definitely cold enough for ice to be forming on the road but it wasn't wet enough. Too dark to see. I put my hand down on it. It was warm, wet. I could smell it. I licked my finger to make sure. It wasn't quite blood but it was close. Later, the coroner told me that it was part blood, part spinal fluid. 'Fredo and the Hunters were long gone.

I just sat down right there next to him. I couldn't breathe so good. He was still warm, everywhere but his ears. His big old ears that he'd had to grow into were freezing so I took my hat off and put it on him. He had something sticking out of his lower back. 'Fredo had shoved the kinfé between vertebrae and severed his spinal cord right above his hips if I had to guess. Really, I had no idea how he got that much force up without rigging some kind of air-powered gun to sling it, but that's possible and I wouldn't put it past 'Fredo. Just to make sure though, the next kinfé had gone right through my brother's temple, shattering that greater wing of sphenoid that pokes out along the coronal suture of a border like Switzerland squeezed in next to the frontal bone of France and the parietal bone of Germany and the temporal bone of Italy. Remo explained it like that to me once when I had a slight fracture of the frontal: your skull is Europe, he had said, your temple is a landlocked country.

Funny what kind of shit sticks in your mind at moments when control goes right out the window for good. My brother died before he hit the ground. There was no way to bring him back. And there never would be. Not with screaming ambulances and hyper paramedics with needles and drooping bags filled with see-through fluid, not with paddles to shock his heart into beating again, not with bandages to stop the bleeding. It didn't matter if Jimmy got Remo or Vanez or anybody. Nobody could put my big brother's spine and his brain back together again. Kyuzo was still warm under my hand. Maybe his soul was still inside. Tidying up some papers on its desk before it jetted for good?

I don't remember what Jimmy said. But Remo's car sped off. So he must've been in it. That big old land boat.

"Oh, Cue," I said, and it was so quiet around me. "Oh, Mister Cue. Baldhead. Baldy..."

I pushed my hat hard against his scalp, held my hand there on the woolly ridges, fingers spread out where his cowlick was, and with my other hand, I yanked the kinfé free. It took two tries, as hard as I could, to get it all the way out. I tried not to move it much, tried to pull it clean. More bone broke off though, chips maybe. But I didn't look down, looked at my window in my house as I heard the dripping, the splash, and felt something drop warmly onto my calf and slide into the puddle growing under us. My peripheral vision told me it looked like a fig in the dark. A big fig. Mom used to love those. I flattened my hat down over the hole in his head, covering it. Because it was too cold out and I didn't want him to get frostbite. Ever.

"This is all going to end badly now. You know that, right? So don't go tripping off to heaven with that soul just yet. I need you to watch over me. Watch over Jimmy. We'll see you soon enough." They weren't my words but they came from my throat, pushed by my lungs, sounds carved out by my tongue.

It must've just been wind in the trees, but I'm sure I heard an "okay." It nestled in my ear. So I just kept sitting, smoothing the hat down, stroking his bald head through it, imagining Cue's spirit in the trees of Mrs. Johnson's yard, waiting for a moment before it went to wherever spirits go, just to watch me and see how I reacted to this change, this shock. Maybe he would stay a little longer and keep watching. Maybe even follow.

And then the car was back. Ground yacht docking. Headlights so bright in my face it might as well've been daytime. Then Remo was next to me and he was checking my pulse. He must've thought I was hurt too, from all the blood on me. But it was my big brother's. My big invincible brother spilling out vincible all over my splinterless hands and khaks and soaking me to the bone, getting me colder as I held him. It was changing in the night air, his blood. On me, it was freezing to solid. We were crystallizing together on our street. The one we truly grew up on.