We
just got in from Hawaii not 2 hours ago, and I thought I'd toss an update on this bad mutha real quick-like before I jerk off and head to slumberville. Many amazing tales to tell about our trip, but not now. Too tired. Hulk need SLEEP!
Instead, I thought I'd post one of my short stories. You know, since no one else seems to want to publish 'em, I figger I'll use all of the internets to my advantage. It's called "Down at the Slaughterhouse", and it's about a boy, an accordion, and a chicken. I think some of the formatting will be fudged up, so bear with me, please.
'night.
Uncle Gene wasn’t a bad man. A cheapskate, I suppose, but not downright wicked, no matter who says what. Besides, he employed 100 workers at the slaughterhouse in Menomonee Falls after The Great Depression hit Milwaukee. Heck, he even gave me work.
I remember that day he grabbed me by the neck, looked into me with those steel blue eyes, calm as June on Lake Michigan, and barked:
“Ronnie, how’d ya like a nickel a day?”
I chirped, “Sure, sure!”, cause my folks had died two winters earlier, hit by the steam train at the lakefront. The money they left had run dry, and the seasons were changing: Leaves popping off branches as cold winds kicked in from the northwest. The house was drafty and I didn’t know nothing about fixing drafty houses. So I went to work at the slaughterhouse.
Now, I wasn’t allowed to touch the sharp instruments: Axes, hatchets, cleavers, those were all for the slaughter men. I was just 16. My job was playing the concertina for old Uncle Gene. Every afternoon at 3 o’clock. “Lady of Spain”. Boy, I must have played it ten thousand times, and he’d just lean back in his rickety old office chair while I pumped the squeezebox and purr:
“Da dee da dum, da dee da daaa,” through the gaps between his teeth. Never learned the words. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still hear his gravelly humming, never quite reaching the notes. And every time I’d finish the final chord, he’d lean over me on the wood floor with his rotten onion breath, stick his bony fist in my dirty blonde hair and hiss:
“Ronnie, you play so damned good. Too bad you’re good for nothing else!”
So that was my job. Heck, it kept me warm, put scraps on my plate. And like I said, Uncle Gene wasn’t a bad man.
Now, this all started because of neckbones, chicken neckbones, Uncle Gene’s favorite. He’d suck all night on one. I saw him almost choke to death once at Thanksgiving dinner. He just coughed that hunk back up on his plate and screamed, “Hallelujah! That’s good eatin’!” and popped it back in his mouth.
I saw the Wyandotte Rooster cooped up in the slaughter yard when I was leaving one Thursday night. Tufts of midnight black feathers and a neck thick as a Coke bottle. My brain got working the three mile hike home, air shooting through me like nails, biting my nose ‘til it ran straight down to my overalls.
I was walking along at a decent clip, pounding the road with my worn boots, squeezebox slung over one shoulder, when I got the idea to treat old Uncle Gene. He’s been mighty good to me, I thought, taking me in, giving me 25 cents a week for practicing my accordion. Some nights, he’d even send me home with hunks of beef in my pockets. Proper cuts too, fit for a foreman.
“Here’s for your dinner, you little good for nothing,” he’d say, tossing the meat on the ground.
Every Friday night, Uncle Gene would call on me, spend an hour or two soakin’ in the refuse of the house chewing his tobacco, then leave. So I got it in my head that this Friday, I’d surprise him with the damndest rooster neckbone he’d set eyes on!
Swiping Freddie (I named the rooster after my Pop) without anyone noticing wasn’t so hard. Sneaking the hatchet out of the slop shed – that was where they’d pluck and skin the chickens and hang ‘em upside down to drain into the vat – that was the tricky bit. Lucky for me, Troy Williamson liked the pumping from my wheeze box, so he stashed a razor-sharp axe next to the wood fence by the highway as a favor.
It was dark as pitch and drizzling. The smell from the yard was God-awful, rain wetting all the dried innards and gizzards and guts from the day left out to dry. Freddie squirmed when I reached in the coup, gabbling and quacking, but I knocked him good on the noggin with the heel of my hand and that calmed him. I hustled that fat boy underneath my musty Mackinaw coat and dashed up Highway 45 toward home.
By the time I kicked open the door, rain had soaked me head to toe, washing away the caked pig’s blood and feathers from my pants. Freddie strutted around the living room, clucking full throttle as he pecked at the wood floor, setting his beak on finding something to eat. I scattered around some corn meal and popcorn kernels, but he paid no attention and poked holes in the sofa cushions.
I don’t know anything about fixing a drafty house, but I sure as hell could slaughter a chicken. I’d seen it hundreds of times at the yard. You know the saying about chickens running around with their heads cut off? Troy Williamson explained that because there’s still electricity shooting through their nerves, their body don’t know it’s dead yet. But they don’t really “run around”; it’s more like flopping on their sides, tossing their wings around and kicking.
So I got Freddie and laid him out back on the old oak stump by the shed. Rain was pouring out of heaven like God sprung a leak. I lined up the blade with that prime cut of neckbone. I was gonna chop as high to Fred’s head as I could get for a cut of meat Uncle Gene never even dreamed of!
Without thinking, I raised that hatchet high above my head and swung down with all my might. Thwap! Freddie zipped right up and started running. Not flipping around
on his sides, but running! He bee-lined to the back door, stretched his wings high to his sides, shook his tail feathers once or twice and settled to a sitting position.
Next to me on the stump, Freddie’s glazed eyes stared off towards the shed. I dropped the hatchet.
“Holy smokes!” I yelled.
Looking back, I feel bad for locking old Fred in the closet, but at the time, it seemed like my only choice. He kept bumping into furniture, pecking at the floor with his nub, and making that mess chickens make. Seemed like no matter how much I mopped and swept, Freddie’s droppings and feathers multiplied by the minute.
I knew Uncle Gene had a temper. Once I saw him jam a four inch blade in a worker’s thigh for taking an extra ten minute break. Then he barked:
“Get to work! I ain’t paying you to bleed!”
I suppose he was right. He didn’t pay him to bleed. But I knew finding out I swiped a Wyandotte from the yards would send Uncle Gene into a seizure, especially one whose neckbone he couldn’t suck on!
Friday afternoon at the yards, when I told Troy Williamson about Fred, he looked at me like I told him the Devil baked me an apple pie.
“No head? What’d he do when you took him inside?”
I heard Uncle Gene slam his office door and lowered my voice.
“Nothing. He just sat there on my Mackinaw, wadded up on the floor. I guess he fell asleep.”
Troy wiped off the hatchet blade with an oily rag and examined the sharp edge.
“Wow, Ronnie, I’ve never heard anything like that. What’s he eatin’?”
I snagged my concertina from the floorboards.
“Oh. Well, nothing, since he’s got no mouth.”
Troy stopped wiping, explaining he was sure Freddie needed something to eat.
“You could dice up some feed and drop it in his neck with a pair of tweezers.”
“Yeah, I guess, maybe. Or…I could mix up some corn meal with water and drip it in!”
Troy winked.
“That’s you, Ronnie -- always thinkin’.”
When I got home, I heard Freddie scratching at the inside of the closet door. Just the thought of him in there made my gut twitch, so I cracked it open and out he dashed.
I poured some corn meal in a glass and mixed it with water. While I stirred, Freddie kept pecking at the floorboards with his neck and scratching with his claws, digging for his feed.
“Hang on, Freddie, hang on.”
I kneeled down and wrapped my hands around his belly, stuffing him in the crook of my arm. I dribbled a little of the mix from the glass in the gray hole in his throat, but it sent Fred reeling around the kitchen, shaking his neck. Too much, I thought. So I went to the bathroom and snagged the eyedropper from the iodine bottle and rinsed it. After chasing Fred into the living room, I got my hands on him again and trickled in three drops from the dropper. He sat real still, gurgled in his throat and swallowed.
“Good work, Fred!” I hollered. “Who says you need a head to eat?”
Knock knock knock!
“Ronnie, let your Uncle Gene in! It’s freezing like the Bejesus out here!”
Usually by 8:15, Uncle Gene passed out on the sofa. For some reason that Friday night, he was wide awake, chawing on a tobacco lump the size of a baseball, chattering away about how much money he was losing.
“No one in these times is interested in meat, Ronnie. Men are standing in line three hours for a free crust of bread and a bowl of celery soup!”
He spat in his coffee cup. I grinned and started to whistle, but my brain kept wandering back to my bedroom closet.
“…but what are ya gonna do?” A stream of black juice shot from between Uncle Gene’s teeth into the mug. “Heh – lookit me, asking you advice, Ronnie! Now that’s a laugh!”
I nodded my head dumbly. Then I heard the crash.
Uncle Gene shot up on his heels.
“What the blazes was that?”
I jumped up.
“Oh, probably nothing. Maybe raccoons out back?”
Uncle Gene put his mug down on the coffee table real slow.
“Raccoons, nothing,” he hissed. “That came from your bedroom!”
He held up a scrawny finger to his lips and tip toed toward the noise.
“Uncle Gene, please!”
He whipped his head back and squinted hard, as if to freeze me in a block of ice. I watched his bony legs carry him through my bedroom door. A few seconds of quiet swelled into a full minute. Then I heard him yelp:
“Holy smokes!”
Freddie was asleep on my unmade mattress, his neck buried in the plump folds of feathers under his right wing.
“Well I’ll be…” said Uncle Gene as he scratched his hook nose. He looked haunted, the way he squatted on his knees and picked his own noggin’, gawking at Freddie.
“Lookit him, Ronnie. He’s just a big fat chicken who doesn’t know he ain’t got a head! What you feeding him?”
I picked up the eyedropper from the nightstand and held it to the light, still unsure of what was in store for me.
I’d seen Uncle Gene’s wheels spin a million times. His brain worked so hard and fast, steam shot out his ears. To him, everything was business, and the way his eyes washed over Freddie, he was scheming something, all right.
He stood up.
“Ronnie, you remember that show that came through town in September, Kulke’s something-or-another-carnival? The one with the rides and freaks?”
“Uh, yeah, Kulke’s Karnival Sideshow, I think. With that big, fat lady and the rubber man?”
Uncle Gene swiped a pad of paper from the floor and pulled out a pencil from his jacket. He was scribbling faster than a slaughterhouse pig runs on Easter Sunday; stopping a second, putting the lead tip between his skinny lips, itching his nose, saying things like “aha!” and “that’ll get him!”. When he was done, he creased the paper and held it arm’s length.
“All right, Ronnie. You want to do some good?”
I just nodded and sat next to Fred.
“Then you run this paper to the telegraph office down the highway and give this to Danny. You tell him to find these people pronto and your Uncle Gene’ll give him free chickens every Sunday for two months. And pack your bag when you get home.”
I stroked Fred’s belly.
“Am I going somewhere?”
Uncle Gene clapped his hands and rubbed ‘em together, rocking on the balls of his feet.
“I got a funny feeling you are, Ronnie!”
“One shrewd s.o.b..”
Those are the words Mr. Kulke used to describe Uncle Gene. I’m pretty sure it meant Uncle Gene was good at business, since two weeks after sending me running to the telegram office with that letter, Fred and I were on tour as feature attraction in Kulke’s Karnival Sideshow.
Jay Kulke was the fattest human being I ever laid eyes on, thicker even than our old farmhand Ed Hildebrand. And he sweated an awful lot. Soaked his shirt armpits thirty seconds after changing. But he was an honest man, and he paid Freddie proper respect. Probably ‘cause Fred brought in close to $500 a weekend in the freak tent.
“I’d pet your head if you had one, you little cluckless cock!” he’d cackle in his horse’s breath from behind his cigar, slapping down our weekly wage of $20.
Yep, a weekly $20 salary! I didn’t know what to do with it. Freddie’s feed only cost 50 cents for 10 pounds, and I didn’t need no new clothes, not with the flashy outfits Mr. Kulke gave me to wear: Sparkling shirts and bow ties, silver cowboy hats and alligator boots colors you never imagined! I’d pump my concertina and stomp my foot while Freddie paraded around a makeshift coup, pecking at the dust with his gullet, almost like he was dancing. And Mr. Kulke let me play whatever I wanted! Men would laugh and women would shriek and giggle, clapping their hands with the rhythm. The crowds grew by the dozen in every town: Fond Du Lac, Oshkosh, Marinette, then over the U.P to northern Michigan and Petoskey and down to Lansing. Two weeks later in Grand Rapids, Freddie and I attracted close to 1,000 people in two days!
Nights we weren’t riding the bus, me and Fred slept together in a pup tent. I wouldn’t have none of him sleeping in a cage. Fred’d curl like a ball under my right arm, kick his feet once or twice, and sleep straight through until morning. We’d wake up, and I’d take the eyedropper to his neck for his breakfast, then I’d practice my scales and exercises until afternoon when I cleaned up for the shows.
Most of the other acts steered clear of me and Fred, I think because we drew such big crowds. Newspaper writers and photographers chased us from town to town, snapping shots of the hundreds who paid a nickel each to watch us . Scientists across the country announced their theories as to what kept Freddie going. Only one that made sense was that I chopped too high on his neck and left part of his brain. A preacher from Nashville spread gossip that I’d made a pact with the Devil. Offers for Fred poured in from all over: One New York radio show bid $100 to let them cook and eat Fred during a broadcast! But me and Fred were a team. You can’t separate a team.
I wrote Uncle Gene every Saturday, telling him about our travels. I waited three weeks before figuring he wasn’t writing back. He’s a busy man, I thought. Running the slaughter yards is no easy chore. But I went to Mr. Kulke one last time and asked if I got any mail.
“Not so much as a postcard, Ronnie. Sorry.” He offered me a beer bottle and pulled up another stool, patting the seat. I sat and snagged the bottle neck. The night was crisp and still. I’d fed Freddie with the eyedropper early and he’d passed out in the tent. In fact, Mr. Kulke and me were the only ones awake in the whole sideshow. He was looking at the stars from underneath his knit wool cap, pulled tight over his squinty brown eyes. His breath puffed from his mouth in thick clouds of steam.
“Can I be honest with ya, Ronnie?” he slurred.
“Sure thing, Mr. Kulke.”
A funny look flashed across his face, like he had a stomach ache.
“Ron, you remember when I called your uncle one shrewd s.o.b.?”
I nodded and sipped my beer. It tasted moldy, the way pony piss stinks up a stable, but folks seemed to drink plenty of it, so maybe it took getting used to.
Mr. Kulke leaned far back on the rear stool legs.
“What I meant when I said that was, well…I haven’t been honest with ya. And you’re a decent kid. And damn fine on the accordion.”
That made me feel good, so I celebrated with another gulp.
“You know how I’m paying ya $20 a week wage?”
“Yep, Mr. Kulke, and I can’t thank you enough for taking me…”
“…truth is, Ron, I agreed to pay you $50 a week.”
I couldn’t figure out what he meant, so I slugged another mouthful of beer.
Mr. Kulke set the front stool legs on the grass and leaned in an inch from my nose. His hot breath made my face break a sweat.
“I mail the other $30 a week to your uncle. He wanted it like that. He’s taking a bigger cut than you get for working on the road. I’m real sorry for not telling you sooner, Ronnie.” Old Mr. Kulke’s eyes filled with tears as he looked back up, pointing his finger to the pitch sky and babbled about some constellation or another.
The tent flap was whipped wide open from the building northerly gusts. I hurried in and zipped it shut. Fred was twisted up in himself on my sleeping bag to keep warm. I slid in quietly beside him and sucked more suds from my beer bottle. My head sagged but felt light and fuzzy.
“Good for nothing,” I muttered. I stopped a second to make sure no one heard. After five seconds, I said it again.
“Good for nothing.”
Isn’t that what he called me? While I played my heart out on the road wearing blisters on my hands the size of nickels, Uncle Gene kicked his feet up on his desk, counting out his $30 a week cut. I drummed my fingers on Freddie’s heaving back. He shifted and settled deeper.
“Good for nothing!” My voice grew louder.
Two sets of footsteps crunched by the frozen grass outside my tent. I held my breath ‘til they passed, then reached in my duffel and grabbed the fold of bills stuffed in my wool socks. In the light trickling from the generator, I counted out 50 dollars on my sleeping bag. The beer bottle lay empty on it’s side under the bills, and I stared at them as I butted my head against my duffel as a pillow. As my eyelids flickered like lead window shades, my plan started falling together.
Flicker once, then twice, then black.
I washed up in a bucket beside the bonfire where the coffee pot boiled. My brain pounded inside my head. The water was icy and stiff, stinging my face something awful, but it helped cool the thumping.
I toweled my face and neck and patted the 50 dollars folded in my breast pocket. The train depot was in town, only half a mile away. Fred had grown accustomed to hiding in the breast of my Mackinaw. He’d be no trouble. But sneaking out of from underneath Mr. Kulke’s nose was different. He might have the body of an ox, but he’d been blessed with the eyes of a hawk. I couldn’t wait either. Already, the crew was packing for the Ohio leg of the tour.
“Hey, Ronnie. How ya feeling?”
I felt a thick paw on my shoulder and whirled around to face Mr. Kulke. I dropped the towel.
“Oh, a little bit of a headache, but fine, fine.”
He laughed and swabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.
“Keep a clear head for tonight, Ronnie. Don’t want you messing up Fred’s show now!”
He chuckled one last time and waddled to the fire holding his tin coffee mug and grabbed the blazing pot with the handkerchief.
I rushed back to the pup tent and crawled inside. Everything was in order: Freddie was still snoozing on my sleeping bag, and I’d jammed every stitch of clothing I had into my duffel, along with three apples, two cheese sandwiches, and a canteen. A train ticket wouldn’t be more than $25 to anywhere in the Midwest or Northeast, so who knows? I thought. Me and Fred might wind up playing the vaudeville circuit in upstate New York!
“Imagine that, Fred,” I whispered, “Hotel rooms and a sawdust stage. Bet they’d even put our names up outside!”
I slid my concertina and the duffel out the door and scooted them outta sight, behind the rear tentline. My fingers stung from the bitter cold. Cupping left over right, I blew in them, looking at the clearing on the other side of the campground, then the forest beyond that. Getting that fat duffel and Fred across the clearing without Mr. Kulke blowing the whistle was gonna take some doing.
When I was ready, I saw Mr Kulke squatting beside a heavy iron skillet perched across the bonfire coals, loaded up with five sizzling eggs, poking at the yolks with a fork. I peeked from the other side of my tent about twenty yards back, gulped three big breaths and charged to him with all my might.
“Mr. Kulke! Mr. Kulke!”
He jumped up faster than I ever seen him move.
“Jesus, what is it, Ron?”
I stopped and bent at the knees and gulped more air like I was sick.
“Mr. Kulke, some kids…they…they…” I pointed over my shoulder at his tent, a hundred yards beyond mine. “Some kids…”
“Calm down, Ron. Take a breath. What happened?” He had his sweaty hand on my head.
“Some kids, I saw ‘em run outta your tent with some crates!”
You shoulda seen his eyes. Like two volcanoes blowing hot lava.
“My beer?” he asked. He looked like he was in a trance.
Remember before how I said Mr. Kulke moved faster than I ever seen him go? Well, he broke his record, taking off at a mad dash toward his tent. I doubled-back behind him, grabbed my squeezebox and the duffel and scrambled inside the tent to get Freddie. Crawling over Mr. Kulke’s beer crates on the way in, I saw Freddie-boy sleeping through the action.
“Fred! We gotta hurry, so come on!” I whispered harshly. I heard Mr. Kulke screaming for help from the crew.
Fred woke up and shook his neck. I gathered him up and stuffed him under my Mackinaw, gripped my concertina and realized I didn’t have enough hands to grab the duffel, so off we went without it. My legs pumped so hard across that field I thought they’d split my pants legs! The icy, brown grass crunched underneath my boots as we thudded along. Over my shoulder, Mr. Kulke was still whoopin’ at his men, announcing a 50 cent reward to anyone who found the brats who’d swiped his beer. The woods were only fifty yards away…now thirty…ten…
My money bought one train ticket to Cleveland and a baloney sandwich in the station cafeteria. Sure, Cleveland ain’t New York City, but we were on our way!
I left Fred and my wheezebox in the bathroom corner, relieved myself in a stall and came out to wash up. Fred was back asleep on my coat.
“We should think about practicing some new numbers,” I told him, lathering up my hands. “Got any requests, Fred?”
He didn’t stir. I nudged him with my toe.
“One thing’s for sure: No more ‘Lady of Spain’.”
Nothing from him. I leaned down and tapped my knuckles on his backside. I noticed his body was leaning awkward, not comfortable for sleeping; his right shoulder wedged to the floor and his left leg sticking straight out.
“Aw, Freddie, no,” I said. “No, no, no…”
I brushed the backs of my fingers against Fred’s cold breast and whispered the Lord’s Prayer. Covering him with my Mackinaw coat, I wrapped my arms around the lump, sat on the bathroom floor rocking back and forth, humming:
“…Lady of Spain I adore you…”
The June heat is unbearable, bringing out the stink from the slaughter yards; a sweet but rotten smell that sticks to your clothes. The only thing to do after you get it on you is burn whatever you’re wearing, and now that I work in the slop shed, the stench follows me everywhere.
Since I came back, Uncle Gene put me to work in the yards, slaughtering chickens. He doesn’t want to even see my accordion. Fine by me, cause I don’t feel much like playing for him. And after a full day of his barking about my bein’ a good-for-nothing, sitting alone in my drafty house on my hole-poked sofa, I pump out a measure or two of “Lady of Spain” and see big, fat Freddie hopping and shuffling his dance, and the laughing faces on the clapping crowd, and I remember what Uncle Gene once said:
“Lookit him, Ronnie: He’s just a big fat chicken who doesn’t know he ain’t got a head!”
