“Have fun?” he asked.
Connelly walked down to him. He gestured to the flask. “Give me a sip of that.”
“What, this? Sure.”
Connelly took it and drank. It was either vodka or half-decent moonshine, he couldn’t tell. He breathed in. The air was still
sickly sweet and the ghostly image of the match flame was burned into the bluegreen night.
“What’d she tell you?”
“A lot of things,” he said, then handed it back and walked away over the fields. The music had died and the people had stopped
singing. Somewhere a horn honked and a child began crying and would not quiet.
Mr. Shivers
He found the others seated outside of a tent watching the carnival workers break the show down. Tents deflated gracefully
around them to lie on the ground like the skins of some unworldly animal.
“What’d she say?” asked Pike.
“Nothing much,” said Connelly.
“It was a foolish thing. We shouldn’t have let her delay us. Still, we have something useful now.”
“Doesn’t seem to be money or brains at the moment. What is it?”
“That boy over there,” said Roosevelt, nodding at a young man helping the workers. “He seen him.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“Asked a few folks. They knew of him, said one person had talked to him. That boy right over there.”
“I guess they were right,” said Hammond. “The man did come here.”
Connelly could feel the anxiety washing off of them like smoke.
“You may not understand,” said Pike, his voice quiet. “This is the closest we’ve come in months and years.”
“I understand plenty,” said Connelly.
They sat in the road and watched the tents topple and flounder and waited on the boy. He was a skinny thing, no older than
thirteen, overalled and sandy blond and barefoot. When the carnival workers had given him his pay he came over and said, “You
boys the ones looking for the ugly fella?”
“That would be right,” said Pike.
“Why you looking for him?”
“He stole something from me,” said Hammond smoothly.
“Huh. I’d believe it.”
“Why do you say that?”
The boy didn’t answer. Instead he said, “My brother owes me fifteen cents, still hasn’t repaid it.”
“Bastards the world over,” said Hammond.
“Watch your language in front of the boy,” said Pike, but the boy seemed pleased to have men casually swear in front of him.
“Come and sit with us, if you will,” Roosevelt said.
“I will, thanks.”
“What’s someone your age doing out so late?”
“Working. Getting what I can. My folks is going to head west. We’re going to pick fruit out there. They need what they can
get. Maybe I can get me something, too.”
“They going to California?” said Pike.
“Or New Mexico for cotton, they haven’t made up their minds yet. They argue a lot about it.”
“Times are tough,” said Hammond.
“They are. Everything in the whole state just dried up. Like the dirt just decided it didn’t care for plants no more and just
cut them loose.”
“Where did you see the scarred man?” asked Pike, impatient.
“Why?”
Hammond said, “I already told you, he’s stolen something from me and—”
“Ain’t what I was talking about. I meant why would I tell you?”
“Tell us?” said Pike, frowning.
“I ain’t telling you what I know for free. Why would I do that?”
“Why you little scum!” snarled Pike. “How dare you talk to your elders this way? If I was your pa I’d whale you raw.”
“But you ain’t. You’re just some hobos off the road, like the ugly fella was.”
Pike started to stand to his feet. The boy sprang up and began dancing away, wild-eyed and frightened.
“Here,” said Roosevelt. “Here. I got a nickel. Let’s all sit down now, I got a nickel.”
Pike glowered but sat. The boy looked at Roosevelt and the nickel in his hand. He came over and tried to take it but Roosevelt’s
hand snapped shut.
“You get it after you talk to me,” said Roosevelt.
“You’ll just keep it.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“I may be a hobo, but I ain’t a bastard,” said Roosevelt.
Hammond smiled. “Bastards the world over, like I said.”
The boy sat down, keeping his distance from Pike.
“Now,” said Roosevelt. “Where’d you meet him? Where’d you meet this scarred man?”
“Over at my pa’s.”
“First of all, what did he look like?” asked Connelly.
“Fair question,” said Pike.
“He was a tall man,” said the boy. “Tall with tired eyes and he didn’t blink much. And he had big scars all over his face
and around his mouth that made it look like his mouth was three times as big as a normal man’s. Here and here,” he said, and
drew the lines on his cheeks that they all knew so well.
“How’d you meet him?”
The boy hesitated, like he was about to impart a terrible secret about himself. “You won’t tell no one, will you?”
“Why? What’s he done?”
“I just don’t want anyone to know. I just don’t want anyone else to know what I saw him do.”
“What did he do?”
“You promise you won’t tell no one? I don’t like them even knowing I talked to him.”
“Tell us,” said Hammond. “We’re only interested in the man.”
The boy shuddered in the wind and said, “We was slaughtering a pig.”
And he told them.
The boy has been to slaughters before but he has never gotten used to the screams.
It is impossible to say exactly why the sow screams. They have done nothing to harm it or scare it, not yet, and yet somehow
when the animal turns and sees the men in the doorway bearing a rope in hand it understands. There is something wrong. It
looks at the men and even with its primitive mind it recognizes murder in their movements.
The men subdue it and the boy helps, trying to keep it in the corner, and they tie its neck and lead it out and bind its legs.
It is a dangerous task. Its hooves are sharp and hard as stone and its teeth can crush and tear through fingers. But the men
have done this before. They know the animal better than it knows itself. When it bites at their hand they snap back and when
it lashes out or thrashes they are already there to restrain it. The men complete their lethal dance with a lover’s care and
the boy’s father turns to him and says, “Watch.”
The boy watches.
The creature trumpets and screams, its chest heaving and strings of snot and spittle running from its snout. The men loop
a cord around its front two legs and pull the legs away to expose the throat and the boy’s father steps forward, knife shining
in his hand and his eyes shining in that strange dull way, and he looks at the animal for a moment and the arm stabs down,
quick and sure, and punctures the animal’s throat. The movement has no doubt, no question. It knows where it is going.
The spray of blood is terrific, as is its hue. Never would a man think that so much blood could come from an animal, and so
red. It is a geyser bursting forth, a stronger and more violent flow than urination, more sporadic than any assault or sex.
It pumps with the beast’s heart, whipping out, and still the creature screams. The blood mixes with the clay dust, red on
red, and it is hard to tell where the earth starts and gore begins.
Still it screams, bellowing in its death throes, an ancient sound. The men keep the animal subdued but now they all watch,
letting the seconds tick by. Its cries weaken. Soon it is wheezing, breath whistling through its slackening chest. The pool
of blood spreads, and still the tiny aperture in its throat dribbles blood, gentle spurts becoming arrhythmic.
The flow ceases to a seep. When the animal dies is difficult to say. The men do not consider it. They gather hay and pile
it over the creature and set fire to it to remove the hair.
The boy watches the fire and wonders if the animal is dead. After all that screaming it may still be screaming on the inside.
“It won’t take much,” says a voice at his side.
The boy leaps and turns and looks. A man is standing beside him. He is tall and lank and the skin hangs loosely from his neck
and chin. Wild tufts of white-gold hair form messy peaks on his scalp. A dusty black coat hangs from his shoulders, gray in
some places and leathery in others, and his mouth has the curious feature of seeming almost distended, like melting rivers
pouring out its corners and across his face. He watches the fire with distant eyes.
“What?” says the boy.
“It’s not a particularly hairy animal,” said the man. “I doubt if it will take many burnings.”
The boy wonders where he came from. The man seems to have come from nowhere. Then he looks at the man’s feet and sees his
tracks leading away to the road. He came, thinks the boy, but came silently.
“Can I help you, sir?” says the boy’s father, suddenly aware of the man on his property.
“I heard the screams,” says the man. “I came to see. I’m sorry, I thought there may have been trouble.”
The man speaks like he has only recently learned that words exist. Not English, but all words. The nature of speaking is foreign
to him.
“Oh,” says his father, disturbed. “Well, there’s no trouble here, sir.”
“No. I can see that.”
The men and the boy look at him awkwardly, waiting for him to leave. He does not. He stares at the form of the animal slumped
in the bloodclay, flames licking its sides.
The man becomes aware of them again. “I can help,” he says.
“Eh?”
“I can help. I’ve been in slaughterhouses before. Many times. I can help.”
“We don’t need no help.”
“No, I suppose not. But many of you have more work to do, I would think.”
This is true. Today is the beginning of a busy day. They must salt the meat and then prepare the rest of the farm for their
departure. The man has arrived at a difficult time.
“We don’t have much to pay you,” says his father.
“I didn’t expect much. Nor do I want it.”
“Fair enough,” says his father, and hands the man the scraper. “Help him,” he says to the boy, and most depart to other work.
Once the fire dies the boy helps the man hold the carcass down and the stranger straddles it, flipping the scraper over and
over again in his hand with an easy grace. He looks at the body with a doctor’s care, then takes the scraper with both hands
and begins to scour the body, making piles of burnt hair and scooping them off with the curved blade and flinging them away.
The other men watch him, impressed by the surety of his movements. When he calls to them to flip the body over they and the
boy react quickly. But again the boy notices his unfamiliarity with words. At first the call was not even a word, just a bleating
noise that called for aid. Then the stranger seemed to remember and changed it as it tapered, adding in some vague command.
Yet still they obeyed.
They flip the body over and the man takes handfuls of hay and sprinkles it on the other side. The boy looks down and sees
rust and crimson streaks on the man’s coat.
“You’re getting blood on your coattails, mister,” he says.
“It’s of no matter,” says the man, and lights a match and begins the next fire. They stand back and watch it burn once more.
“You have seen a slaughter before,” says the man to the boy.
The boy nods.
“That is good.”
“Why?”
“Some places don’t know of such things. They don’t want to, either. They pretend they do not exist. But it is good to remember
what we come from and what we go to,” says the man, watching the body burn.
“I killed a pig once,” says the boy.
“Did you?”
“Yes. It was a wild boar. I shot it.”
“Hunting?”
“No. It come into our barn. Started eating the piglets.”
The man nods, still watching the fire. He may not be listening.
“It was night and my pa was away,” says the boy. “I heard screaming. I thought it was people, just as you did. I came out
and it was eating them and I shot it in the head with the shotgun.”
“You did well,” says the man. “Most would have run, or missed.”
“I know,” says the boy quietly, but he does not feel like he has done well. He does not feel proud of that night in the barn
with the screams and the musk and the breathing of the thing in the darkness, or the lightning flash and thunder of the shotgun.
And the way the floor was soaked, soaked in blood.
They both look at the dead thing on fire and watch the hay blacken and curl. It burns out. The boy steadies the carcass once
again and the man cleans it of all hair, and they flip it and burn again and flip it and burn again until it is smoked and
smooth. Its ears are crunchy and they break them off and toss them away and peel the hooves off like old fruit. They brush
it down to remove the rest of the hair and soon it is hairless and raw and pink, just as it would hang in the butcher’s shop.
The man stoops now and removes the eyes and they begin to flush out the blood, again and again. They set up the butchering
plank, an old, thick door that once hung in the front of the house. The stranger and the boy and some of the other men strain
to lift the animal and set it up on the door, and still they flush out more of the blood. They step back to catch their breath.
“How’d you get those scars, mister?” asks the boy.
“I have always had them,” he says.
“Since you were born?”
A queer look comes into his eyes. “Since I was born, yes.” He looks back at the animal hanging on the door. “I cannot even
remember the first slaughter I attended.”
“Been doing this for a while?”
“Oh, yes. But then, everyone has, in a way.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Everything needs to feed. And, in doing so, it must kill. Perhaps not with a knife or with a gun, but all things strive to
learn of more ways to eat, and consume, and live another day, and so they learn of killing. Even those with no mind such as
corn in the field and trees in the forest rejoice and grow stronger with more to consume. And always in sating hunger, in
some form or another, one can find death.”
“Huh? Like, killing something?”
“Yes.”
“Trees don’t kill nobody. Unless they fall on someone.”
“No. But if a man buys a steak, did he kill the cow? He did not kill it himself, certainly, but it died for him and so he
eats it and is satisfied for a day or more. Just as a tree’s roots eat the decaying bodies of animals and other trees, even
if it did not choke out their life. And we eat the fruit of these trees, or the corn or the wheat or the animals we have raised
from these fruits.” He begins to approach the animal’s body, hatchet now in hand. “All that lives kills. All that breathes
murders. Prays for it, even. It is simplistic, yes, but so is life and death. All living things are friends of death, whether
they know it or not.”