At stoopfoot, Benjamin holds out His newspaper scraps — necrology plus erroneous sevenday forecast — rustling, shaking, already drunk. Leeds tosses to them a generous flank, then revs again for himself and slices, serves to walk his meal back outside. Hope you’ve worked up an appetite. Dig in. But He waits for His host to partake, which is more fear than respect, or pleasantry, Hanna’s polite. Leeds’ head rears up, dinosaurlike, as if a raptor rapt for prey, this old, oddly carnivorous bird: nearfeathered facialhair, thin wrinkle mouth its lips dripping grease, undifferentiated gross, strands of sinew stuck askew from between remnants of fillingful teeth, stoops themselves, stumps, ruts amid gums, nubby rots, or just one of them, or half, and a tongue, or else none at all maybe and tongue forked, perhaps, no tongues that aren’t meat just hanging from the hole whose, He observes, dentition lacks entirely, lost or pulled it’s anyone’s guess.
Pork: Benjamin had never had it — who do you think He is, thank His parents, their rabbi, his insatiably parochial God — had never seen or smelled it, heard its own goddamned oink, never petted a specimen at the zoo, no, neither, but He anyway knew the restrictions, He’d been born knowing. He’d never not kept kosher, when and how the opportunity to pig out on forbidden foods? Wherefrom trefyheadedness, who would even think or ever could?
He knows that His virgin doesn’t serve Him, that first taste, it’ll sicken, it has to, poison even, has already without it, a lip, a mere sniffling lung. All in His head, His head’s saying: psychosomatic the symptoms, the parasitic signs, a worming, and Benjamin’s feeling them, too, wriggling up His fingers, down His throat, furrowing the burrows of brain — imagining small, generically animated pigs pink as sin, shvitzing hot as psychedelically napalmed, turning flips in His gut, rooting around down there in the bile colonic, dirty snouts flaring deep amid the gastric denature: His stomach, the trailer, piglets nosing evidence from off the westernmost wall. An estimable mouthful, a steaming morsel — such virginal schmeck weighs upon His tongue yet to be downed, the meat and not the lingual anatomy that if swallowed itself would choke and make bestially dead, which is why the drink, grained booze more and more of it He plunges, too much and profane of a Kiddush, it’s never enough: L’Chaim, L’Avram, L’Benjamin, too…come on down’s the idea, the digestion’s fine — the flow tasting like antiseptic, thousandflushed with a tinkle of blue chemical toilet deodorizer, potpourri sprinkle, faint hints of moldy potato peel, onion-skin, and low notes of musky piss vintaged last week; it washes past, and with it the hunk of pork flows down whole to gag swallowed, without bitten chew; it would’ve snuck up again and out if not for a slap, quick and feely from Leeds leaning over.
Perfidy, he says, you was hungry, then smiles, haven’t had anything, reckon, in a while.
It slithers, a raw pink leeching the animal’s parasite’s parasite slow in its own sleazy grease — to settle in His stomach, a fresh new infestation, this hosting warming Him wrong, an eating fever of fleischig, this meat shvitz and yet, amazingly, without guilt. Thus the squeal of revelation doth enter…pork! this stuff edibles incredible! It can’t be believed, what a ta’am, what a taste; Benjamin breathes. I’ve never had anything — what? Only a growl. He teethes into His next, tears at His meal with assenting nods of the head: one’s slob another’s primitive, and both He’s happy to be.
Pork, Leeds says finally satisfied, proud almost as if he’s responsible not only for this specific preparation, a recipe he’ll secret if only for the kooky thrill of it, but also for the existence of the species entire: it’s the universal meat, after all…you know this, closest animal to us humans, it’s like cannibalism without the threat of prosecution, incarceration, all that prison raping to death — hell, even the darkies agree, they love them their white meat, finish it off with a little watermelon, spit them seeds out, grow their own, if not for the weather. And then you got those people that just went and died, you know, poor souls, the Affiliated they’re calling them, they didn’t know what they’d been missing these however many thousands of years, I done lost count since Christ; too occupied making their retirements, too distracted making the world turn on time, beats me, I’ve been beaten before. I’m glad they’re all dead and gone, serves them right; I hear you got just the firstborns left…you heard the one about that lastborn kid they think survived — they need to find that kid and give Him the business, the what’s what, just deserts. There’ve been rumors, you know about this — former Treasury secretary or head of the Fed out on this nowhere Island, New York, hope of hopes that hole gets totally wiped out soon enough, hand of God or earthswallowed, it’s done enough damage; anyway, this Das they call him, don’t know what it stands for if it ain’t his name or title, he’s out for the firstborns: if he’d do what I’d do then I wish him all the luck in the world…cowering, Benjamin’s a lump, stumped for the saying at the end of the portable, semipotable table, pottydrunk, stuffed on seconds and thirds, more and still nude.
Jesus, my manners in heaven and Leeds gets up only half lucid himself, staggers into the trailer — you must be freezing, he says, ain’t no one yet used to a winter like this…scaring up on a kick, a flail rummaging, think I got an outfit around here somewhere, something from the good old days — he’s rooting amid slop, dripping, jars kept of offal, animal effluvia, raising his head to the wall of the trailer and its cross hung there, the crucifix for a scarecrow that’d never quite worked on the dogs, a scaredog, why not, frighteningly thin branches burdened with white; he rips the shroud off then crows out with the uniform of a Klansmensch — you’ll look just perfect in that hood, it’s very vertical, slimming, throwing it to Benjamin who shrouds it on over His naked; it’s way too tight, but it works. And you should definitely put on a new face, all excitement now, a little much fayg, what he hates — but something new, something different…stoops to grab up snow, under it a fist of sandy soil and below that, black, while with the other hand he frees Benjamin from the gagging peak, on backward, turn it around and try to find your eyes, the slits Orientaclass="underline" this is so they won’t recognize you; and he begins applying the stain as liberally as his politics allow, digging the thick frozen grime into His face with greasy, rough-wrinkled fingers. I should remember you are who you are, and not this minority reporting out and about, else you’d be in a hell of highwater trouble…lucky for you the more bowls I drink the better my memory gets; what in God’s name was I saying, who are you? he goes as if to punch His teeth, the only light visible, though just knuckles his guest a dark dimple, Benjamin’s wide cheek he shrouds again with the hood he then pyramids high by the tip, its pointy white foreskin: don’t worry, son, I’m kidding, that’s just me having your rib…