Picture the sight: Mavis Strayborn of the Olathe Strayhorns, seated at the south side of table station eight, facing her husband, Herbert, whose back is to the door. Their dear friends of many years, Dora Lee and Monte Brown (Monte works at the bank), are at the east and west sides of the table, so when Mavis sees the thing and her mouth drops open they all look—naturally—and the three of them see the beast come waddling over and flop down right there beside them, bold as you please, talking in a big loud voice and ordering six sides of ribs. My God!
Monte snickers and says something across the table, longways, to Dora Lee, and Mavis gets the giggles, and Herbert Strayhorn says, "What? What's so funny?" in that dry voice of his. Monte says something else and the four of them laugh, and Herbert kind of turns and tries to get a peek at this vision, which just about convulses Monte and Dora Lee, but which Mavis somehow manages to stifle. Pretty soon they go on about their business, and get back to eating their rib dinners.
The waitress who has his station hurries with the ribs, all seventy-two of them, a six-tier stack of delectable-smelling platters in hand, sits them on the table, and says, "Will there be anything else for you, sir?" But he can only shake his head slightly in response, or maybe that isn't even a shake-perhaps he is just moving that big head around in an involuntary physiological reaction to the smell of the barbecue. My God, he's hungry for meat! The waitress seems to sense danger and jerks her hands away the second the platters of ribs are on the table. She tears off a page from the pad she carries and places it surreptitiously at the far edge of the table, moving away from the station as quickly as she can, away from the implicit threat. Sharp teeth, brutal strength, fingers like steel cigars, knives that slice, forks with tines that pierce flesh—this table where the behemoth sits is like the dissecting table in a busy morgue.
The beast has no awareness of the waitress or the people around him, not at this moment. He is too busy eating, chewing, swallowing, too occupied now to speak or even nod as she thanks him in a faraway, fading voice. A faint red mist rises from the smoking, pungent meat as the beast tears at the ribs in a feeding rampage. How many writers have swiped the phrase "feeding frenzy" from Jaws? But that is what one sees—Chaingang over the ribs, crunching tooth against hard bone, devouring the food with ugly misshapen teeth meant to gnaw at chunks of flesh, cleaning each rib bone like a shark hitting bloody meat, or a starving carnivore over its kill. Ripping every speck of meat, gristle, fat, then sucking the tiny bones held in those huge, viselike paws. Methodical. Orderly and mad at once. Eating each beef rib in the same way, in a grisly, ghastly, gross spectacle of bestiality.
Picture what Mavis Strayhorn sees: the mountain of hard blubber and ugly muscle holds the rib just so, an expression on his dimpled face like an animal with its prey, taking the four sides of each rib in order, sucking the bone in a quick, wet, nasty slurp, throwing it onto the platter. Five, six, eight ribs. Gnaw. Suck. Slurp. Swallow. Gnaw. Suck. Slurp. Swallow. Cleaning the ribs bare. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. The pile of bones beginning to resemble a carcass plucked by buzzards and stripped by maggots.
Not a scrap of edible food clings to a bone. The feeding machine is an efficient one and leaves nothing. Four fast ripping bites in each series, the loud sucking, the sound of the bone hitting the pile. The routine punctuated only by an occasional cracking sound as those sharp animal fangs penetrate bone.
Mavis and Dora Lee and Monte have stopped eating now. Herbert is still valiantly chewing away, their humble family platter sits between the four of them, untouched. Herbert keeps craning back to get a look at this palpably horrible thing that has brushed up against their orderly and clean lives of genteel normalcy.
The slob inhales the seventy-two Heart of America Barbecued ribs, "hickory smoked in our famous Heart of America Barbecue Sauce—hot or mild," and as he swallows the last of the meat wrested from the final naked rib he looses a gassy, wet, explosive belch that causes Mavis to begin to throw up—the nausea rises in her throat but she manages to catch it before it escapes and she swallows.
Herbert has turned and they're all watching this disgusting beast now, genuinely disturbed by his vomit-making presence. Grease and vestiges of sauce drip from his face as he languorously casts his eyes toward Mavis, appearing to notice the people beside him for the first time. He eyes Mavis's thigh, something pleasant to consider while dining. A lethargic, amusing consideration plays through his weird mind as he sucks a morsel from a tooth: belching again, wiping his greasy face, dropping the filthy napkin on the floor between them, standing heavily, shoving himself erect, undressing Mavis Strayhorn—not for sex—but for cooking. Imagining how she would taste, barbecued. Imagining the sweet taste of Barbecued Mavis, Heart of America style.
But now he was moving toward them, and for a second Mavis thought Herbert and Monte were going to stand up and try and fight with him, but the huge fat man smiled, an ear-to-ear parody of a human grin, and a deep basso profundo voice rumbled out of him, his eyes fixed on Mavis's chest.
"Look at the mouse," he said, pointing, almost touching her.
"Hey," Herbert said, his voice raspy and full of fear, "listen—"
There was a pin in the shape of a tiny gold mouse affixed to Mavis's sweater. His massive fingers were near her, and the smell of him was in her nose, rank and fearsome, like the scent of a cave animal cornered in its den, but he was doing the cornering. She looked down where the mouse pin had been. He was astonishingly dexterous with his big hands, he had a thief's touch, and he'd somehow removed the pin with the fingers of his right hand and was holding it for inspection.
"Say goodbye to the mouse," he said, and popped it in his mouth and swallowed the gold pin, turning and leaving in a swirl of poisonous body odor and barbecued meat smells.
"Somebody ought to call the police and report him, my God almighty—" Dora Lee Brown sputtered. Everyone sat there stunned, shaking their heads. Rooted to the spot.
What do you do in a circumstance such as this? Mavis Strayhorn of Olathe, Kansas, would be thirty-eight in September, and in all those years no one had ever eaten any of her jewelry before.
Cindy Hildebrande lived in a cheap tract house, in a neighborhood full of identical, tiny frame homes, all packed shoulder to shoulder in a blue-collar section of the city. She was no housekeeper. Bobby could see that right away. Stuff was strewn around, dishes were in a sink, and it was not the best smelling home he'd ever been in either.
Bobby Price was fastidious and the way she'd come on to him in the bar, the ride over, and now—the crummy home—had made him sort of nervous and jumpy. He wasn't sure about this deal anymore. But she soon turned him back around.
"Just stand there, pretty cowboy," she told him, "while I slip into something less comfortable." She went into a nearby room while he stood there, trying to keep from inhaling any more than necessary. He could hear her rummaging around in a closet, and when she came out she was wearing these fabulous boots, slick-looking thigh-high boots with spike heels, and she was carrying something.