Skunks Don’t Drink
By: Anto Rin
Tags: Home, Growth, Fiction, Alcohol, Short Story

Gibson stands up to leave, his bones crackling awake after the uneventful bus ride, but is held down by someone. It’s his friend, Ambrish, a guy he knows he can trust his life with, but not to let him go without one of his stupid punchlines — one that will eventually make leaving an embarrassment and staying a shame. Ambrish wears a silly grin and says, “See you around, fuckface.”

Gibson considers this for a moment. He feels entitled to say something back — it’s his friend, after all — but finds that he can’t. He’s still two years' testosterone short of actually taking offense, and two years past finishing the degree on How to Take a Joke Like a Nerd. Besides, his Christian upbringing has made him believe in all the gruesome things that might happen to him if he lives a life of sin. He’s at least five years from abandoning faith and living a life of I-don’t-give-a-fuck-whatsoever, but now it’s all too real.

He convulses his tongue in a knot, says, “Counter-Strike at 6,” and then gets down from the school bus. Certainly, he heard someone mutter, “Get a load of this guy,” as he walked down the aisle, but doesn’t think too much about it.

He walks to the side of the road where a small group of people stand in a row. He hates this part of the journey more than anything in the world. He’s supposed to take a share-auto. It’s a kind of auto-rickshaw where ten people sit together in a tight space, each paying ten rupees for the trip (it would take a loner upwards of a hundred on a normal auto), holding on to each other like in a capsizing boat.

He sits in the back and holds his johns as people start piling into the cramped space. One overweight lady sits on his hand, instantly flattening his knuckles. Two guys who are as drunk as drunk can get take the seats opposite him. On the other side of the road is a wine shop, and it’s not really uncommon to find people he solemnly calls “les inebriated” (when all he wants to say is “drunk sons of bitches”) wander into the share-auto once in a while.

The stink is bad, the stink is always bad. Even as the auto begins to move and wisps of air find their way into the space, the smell of alcohol is so huge that it feels to him like a slap across his face. That and the smell of sweat — of sweaty, hairy armpits (he can almost see it), the customary scent of the 9–5 population. The lady on the other end of the seat has a cell phone in her one free hand that is not buried under the general assortment of human limbs and butts, and she’s barking into it — “Hello, can you hear me? Can you now? What about now?” — and no, she won’t be heard, not above the roar of the engine. The road is not good, it’s full of potholes, and as the share-auto weaves around knobby rocks, she tumbles forward and back like a puppet played awkward and wild.

At least as long as my hand is under this lady’s butt, I can be sure I won’t be thrown out.

Through a small gap, Gibson sees the world as it zooms by in a blur. It’s a sunny evening, and he sees the light reflected in the gutters that are still swollen with last week’s rain. The murky fluid flows unchecked, almost laughing at him in its own twisted humor — making him imagine Drink Me! placards placed by the side of the road. The alcohol, the sweat, the gutter. Nice. Gibson feels his lunch (button-sized rice mixed with spinach as green as grass) stir in his stomach, and he swallows hard as some of it reaches the edge of his throat.

When the auto halts at his stop, he literally dashes out. He is sweaty himself, but his sweat, at least, is not so bad.

His dad is supposed to pick him up from here, so instead of waiting, he starts to walk along the way in tiny steps. He walks under an unfinished overpass that has been under construction for close to ten years now, its steep slope jutting out towards the sky on one side, but not even off the ground on the other. On one of its pillars is a poster of a politician in a white shirt and a white dhoti, smiling the politician’s smile, and the picture is captioned with words that praise him for initiating its construction. The poster is new, and Gibson can’t for the life of him understand why the MP’s people would go out of their way years after the construction began to make a poster like this . . . to remind people how long it’s been, or perhaps to remind people who the MP is?

He sees his dad coming down the muddy track on the rusty motorbike, and he climbs on behind him. He likes to imagine that everything is okay now, sweet, this is the last leg of his journey home, and finally, he can get on his computer and play some true Counter-Strike. But as he sits holding on to his seat, the bad smells are back, and they are coming back in horrid waves. His dad’s shirt is drenched with sweat, but that is okay; who’s not sweaty during a sunny evening, riding the congested streets of Coimbatore?

It’s not just the sweat, however. There’s no sugarcoating it. Gibson feels dizzy as the reeking stench of his dad’s afternoon exploits clogs his nose; is it the same stench from the auto, or is it much worse?

His dad works his clumsy fingers on the throttle and the motorbike picks up speed, swinging left and right as Gibson feels it rightfully should in the hands of . . . les inebriated. He feels it’s the right time to say something, but of course, he doesn’t say anything. That’s not the way of the Christian boy Jesus eventually feels proud of to have created. I just want to play some Counter-Strike, Jesus, please!

His dad speeds over a huge bump, and the next thing he knows, they’re on the ground, Gibson on the edge of the road, his dad under the motorbike. A rod from the twisted chunk of metals is sticking out of his dad’s thigh, but he doesn’t seem to mind, he has closed his eyes and comfortably passed out. A guy who was walking along the road comes running to Gibson and asks, “What happened, boy?”

Gibson thinks about it for a moment and says, “What the fuck do you think?”

The man is shocked, and he walks away from the scene immediately. As he goes, he says something like, “Kids these days, man,” but Gibson, for once, does not truly give a damn.