Waste (13 page)

“Nah, man. You gotta use it for bears.”

“Like…to kill?” Jamie said, drumming his thumbs on the counter to match the throbbing sensation inside his skull.

“Kill or catch. What you do is lay it out there for the bear and then—”

“You put it around your campsite,” the second beard interrupted.

“Am I telling the story or are you? And take off the fucking sunglasses. You're inside. You aren't blind,” the first bearded man said. “This is why I don't wear sunglasses when I'm with you, because then we look like a couple of—”

“The bears, you were talking about?” Jamie yawned.

“Bears love to eat early. And they'll eat any of this shit. Garbage, especially.”

“Just pass me the buckets. I'll go in the back,” Jamie said. “You want the beef or the pork or what? I'm sure we got all kinds of shit back there.”

“We'll go with the beef,” the beards said in unison. An older, sadder, ZZ Top.

“No pork? Got kosher bears now?” Jamie said.

“You talk more than Don does. This is why we miss his fucking brother,” the one beard said. “You come in and say I want three shanks, a butt, and a bucket of beef navel, and what does Chad do? He goes and grabs your shit, piles it all neatly in a box for you, asks for the cash, rings up the register, and watches you walk out the fucking door. He knew how to handle his customers. Customers got the word custom in it you see, so customate—”

The one in the sunglasses yawned out the right word. “Customize.”

“Shut the hell up,” he said. “But yeah, customize yourself to each customer.”

“Does it really matter, though?” Jamie said. “I thought bears would eat garbage.”

Jamie was tired. Make these two ZZ Top twins work for their beef trim. He wanted to study them—the scars on their hands and the tattoos riding up under the collars of their jackets. Their jeans had holes in the knees, brown and oily in places. No scent of detergent or deodorant.

“They'll eat your ass and then the garbage you left behind the night before. Garbage and rotten meat, top of the menu for bears, and you got little Johnny Appleseed on the news telling me not to shoot it in the face?” the one said. Jamie couldn't tell them apart anymore. “What happens when his kids are playing in the backyard and that thing just decides it's hungry? If you go out in the woods today…you know that song? There won't be no teddy bears. Just monsters. Furry, fast, tree-climbing buggers who can tear your arm off and eat it right in front of you.”

“Just give me a few seconds,” Jamie said. “I'll get this set up for you guys, no charge. You're doin' me a favor. Getting rid of my garbage.”

Jamie grabbed the two buckets and headed back into the cutting room. Only four of the bone cans were lined up in the corner, their black lids firmly closed. One of them must have been pushed outside into the snow. Maybe to get rid of the smell. The meat would be frozen if the night was cold enough. Jamie couldn't re member if last night had been cold or not, only that there was snow and that he'd run over someone's bicycle, no, someone's lion. One of the two. He'd been running over too many things. He could still feel it in his kneecaps.

He was all out of orange pills.

Jamie went through the cans methodically. Most were filled with stock that had gone bad—guts and entrails and chicken kidneys. The other cans were mainly full of blood and a few bits of yellowed pork. Some of the salted back fat had gone off code too and floated like icebergs around the surface. Jamie popped the receiving door open. A couple crows hopped away from the door as Jamie walked out into the melting snow and opened the bone can.

The face looking back at him was shriveled. It didn't smile or blink and its toenails were far too long—a man should never let his toenails get so long. That was the first thing Jamie thought. The second had something to do with a body in one of his bone cans. Arms and legs and everything. He closed the lid slowly and shooed the crows away. The eyes didn't follow him as he closed it. They were dead. They didn't blink or move or say hello. Neither did the lion's. The man's eyes were hazel, they had gold flecks in them and they were dead, rotting somewhere on a cellular level, decomposing in real time. Maybe they weren't here for trim after all. Maybe a pickup instead, something he never should have gotten into. Something Don forgot to tell him about. Jamie closed the door behind him and went back inside. His hands shook the buckets. The crows hopped back onto the dumpster when the door shut.

“Now a lot of it is just trim from steaks and a few whole eyes we cleaned up the other day. I hope that works for you two,” Jamie said. The one in the sunglasses was napping on the floor.

“Took you long enough.”

“Only the best for guys who knew the big man,” Jamie said.

“Man, if you really knew him, you'd know you're always supposed to call him Chad,” the bearded man said. “Guy was a Nazi about that shit.”

“You don't need anything else from here, I mean, you aren't picking anything up for anyone?” Jamie asked. A new sweat broke out on his brow. “I can check for you in case.”

Jamie knew he should just shut up. The other brother got up from the floor and took his sunglasses off. One of his eyes kept staring at the floor, but the other looked straight at Jamie. It was alive, flicking eyelashes and yellow crust crumbling in the corners—alive and probing.

“We just came in to get our shit. You all right if we come by in a couple days? I assume you won't have as many questions next time.”

“I'll probably be more sober,” Jamie said. “Tell me if you catch any bears, eh? I hear there's all kinds of shit out there in the woods.”

“You wouldn't believe some of the shit we find out there, little buddy. If you go out in the woods today…”

The two bearded men laughed and turned to walk out of the store. One of them held the door for a grandmother carrying two baskets in her hands. Her knuckles were large and red, blisters about to pop and drizzle down her liver-spotted hands. Jamie watched the two men jump into a red pickup in the parking lot. It looked like they were cracking beers behind the wheel.

“I was wondering if you had any of the medium mince in today, dear?”

Jamie looked down at the lady in front of him. Cataracts clouded her eyes, but she seemed to have all her teeth. They weren't too straight and they weren't too white. He had a good eye for dentures now, the clacking noise they made when they were loose. Just like that guy at the hobby shop. Brock's mouth could learn a lot from this lady's. He wanted to ask her who her dentist was but instead he asked her how much she wanted.

By the time she'd left, the red pickup was gone. Jamie sat on the floor behind the counter. There were no other customers. Not much was open on Sunday. All his bones still hurt. And he knew that body was a warning, a sign. It had looked at him just like the lion had.

Behind the butcher shop, Mr. Chatterton's body continued to slowly decompose, the cold air maintaining the tight-lipped frown and wrinkles on his face. In the darkness, those eyes stared at nothing but white pork fat and floating chicken kidneys.

16

Moses threw the first stone.

“Yeah!”

The glass shattered, but no one came running to the window. It was noon and the street was deserted. Cars up on concrete blocks filled gravel driveways.

“You fucking suck,” Logan said.

Moses knew they should have knocked. He could have done it. Politely asked if anyone had seen a six-foot tower wearing a teal Japanese bathrobe, one of the cheap ones you find at Kmart.

The neighborhood was not the same, though. Plywood patched over broken windows. Piles of bloody carpeting sat outside Julie Brigham's old house, the white fluff looking stained and sad against the melted snow. She and Moses used to walk to school until the cops came for the dogs.

“How about you give it a fucking go?” B. Rex said.

“Do I look like a pussy?”

Logan whipped his rock at the pavement and ran up to the front door. His steel toes crunched against the flimsy frame, bending the chipped wood. It took three kicks to punch a hole through the door. No cars passed on the street. All the trees were almost bare, the leaves blackened and soaked. Moses and B. Rex stood and watched until Logan's feet finally busted the hinges and the door fell inside. The place still smelled like dog piss and split peas. The lingering taint of pine air fresh eners somehow made the smell worse, like some sad attempt to deny the stench inhabiting the drywall and the floorboards. Moses hadn't stepped inside yet, but he could feel it creeping down his throat to where the two-legged dogs and policemen fought each other inside his stomach.

“You guys going to come with me or just stand around with your dicks in your hands?” Logan said. “I don't really care either way.”

They searched every room and closet for Elvira Moon. Under the beds and behind garish purple curtains filled with tiny spider eggs. B. Rex pushed his head into the attic but found only a baby raccoon fossilized by time. Its teeth were barely formed. Crumbs gathered in the corners, and the floor was sticky around the fridge. There was a picture of the family on the metal door, the father's hands too tight on his daughters' shoulders, the mother's smile a little too crisp, a little too kind.

“First Da Nasty, now this place. My fucking Christ!” Logan said. “Moses, you ever live in a real house, or just shitholes with addresses?”

Moses was inspecting the old couch, the one the new tenants hadn't thrown out. His yellow fingers traced the cigarette burns on the cushions from the nights he'd fallen asleep with David Suzuki whispering in his ear, whispering about lions who eat their young alive to preserve their status in the pride. No new heirs.

“At least it's not a clown house, eh, Mosey?” B. Rex said. “Loogie, did you check the basement?”

“No, I didn't. Got other things on my mind here. These people have three blenders. Three. Excess and decadence for a shithole like this. The machines will definitely have our asses in a sling when the time comes. Skynet will blend us all into one giant shit smoothie.”

“I ain't going down there by myself,” B. Rex said. “Mosey, you're coming with me.”

No dogs ran up the stairs. The sound of squeaking wheels only echoed in the empty spaces between Moses's thoughts as they made their way into the basement. It was brightly lit and filled with homemade weights—cinderblocks and heavy car parts duct-taped together. Framed photographs lined the walls, the family of four flexing all their muscles in tandem, the two girls in front showing ripples of muscle where budding breasts should have been. Short black hairs were barely concealed by the tanning lotion on their chins. The mother's body was still smooth, the muscles toned and barely rising out from beneath her tiny thong, but the daughters looked like men. Their smiles came from their mother, but the enhanced pectorals and wide, ropey thighs came from the father, his own teeth artificially whitened like a streak of snow across his face, his head shaved and glowing like a bowling ball.

“Fuck, man, first time I ever seen this,” Moses said.

“Loogie, come check this out! You'll love it. Right up your alley,” B. Rex yelled up the stairs.

They heard his boots stomp across the kitchen floor overhead and trample down the stairs.

“I found a calendar on the fridge. They had all this muscle milk shit in there,” Logan said. “Looks like no one is coming back here until Wednesday—oh lord, what is this? You can't do that to a kid, man.”

Moses didn't say anything. He began to take the framed photos down from the wall. He didn't want to look at these prematurely aging faces, the wrinkles and stretch marks poking through the spray tan like fissures in the earth. He began to stack them on the floor in piles.

Miami Family Nationals, '86.

Corpus Christi Regionals, '87.

Alberta Premium Body Exhibition, '85.

The outfits changed with every season. Silver stripes on a black background during the summer of '88, maple leaves on white during a fall tour of the southern States in '86. The girls were probably only twelve years old now, their bodies pumped full of who knew what bubbling through their arteries, disseminated into young and impressionable cells. In some of the pictures, Moses saw sickly purple veins snaking under the flesh, waiting to pop up from the skin and linger in varicose lines until their hearts burst at thirty-eight, while off-label hormones choked off their natural development like nooses drawn tight around their throats, disguised as championship medals and garlands of plastic yellow flowers.

“What the hell are you doing, Moses?”

Bill Murray would never have done this to his children.

Moses grabbed one of the long poles used for lifting paint cans and stolen weights. With its sharp pointed end, Moses lashed out at the pictures, smashing the smiles and the faces into smaller pieces, tearing through the photographs and the father who was somehow something far worse than a man who ran away to Arizona. Far worse than a mother who couldn't tuck you in at the age of ten. Or a fake father who only existed on the screen, his voice lingering in your VCR to tell you it was all going to be okay, he had a plan to make everything all right. You might even get to meet John Candy, too, if you played your cards right. Moses stopped at the mother's smile—the complicity not quite full, the smile too kind to be faked. It couldn't be faked. It was real, and sad, and horrible, but by then Loogie was laughing and trashing the photos still clinging to the walls.

“See what I'm talking about?” Logan said. “You were right, B. This is sick, isn't it? This is what happens when you start trying to compete with the apes. You see the Easter outfit? The bunny tails? They've got bottles of shitty whiskey upstairs.”

“What about Moses's mom?” B. Rex asked.