“Hey!” Junior shouted again, then revved the saw three quick times to get my attention. “It ain’t break time, Archie. We got some butcherin’ to get to, you hear me?”
I nodded and finally looked up.
“Drag that old tub over here,” he yelled, pointing the chainsaw at an ancient bathtub with claw feet. It was wedged between a stack of bald tires and a tangled mound of barbed wire. “Toss them forelegs in there. We’ll dump everything else in there, too.” He killed the saw, and in the sudden silence I could hear Bert still half singing the tune from Hawaii Five-O. Junior continued, “No sense in letting good meat go to waste. The hogs are gonna think Christmas came early this year.”
I walked slowly to the bathtub. The bare bulbs behind me sent a long, distorted shadow across the tub and I couldn’t see what was inside. I didn’t care what the hell was inside of it; all I wanted was to get home, to get to the shower, to scrub the slime of the pit off, to boil my skin until I felt clean, and then to sleep for a week. I didn’t want to think about what the Sawyer brothers were going to do with the meat. It didn’t matter. Getting away from these lunatics was the only thing that did matter. And that meant the faster they finished with the steer, the faster I could get home.
So I grabbed the cold, pitted edge without looking inside and pulled. The tub jerked forward, claws scraping the grime on the cement floor. An angry explosion of flies rose into the air from the tub, swarming about my head, and crawled through my hair, across my face, into my ears. I jumped back, swinging wildly at the buzzing black static that surrounded me.
When the cloud of flies had settled back into the tub, I took two careful steps forward and peered inside. The porcelain was covered with a thick coat of what looked like dark rust, and I realized with a fresh surge of nausea that it was dried blood. I swallowed, waved away several flies, and grabbed the tub again.
As I dragged it toward the table, Junior forced the steel hook with the cable through the two narrow bones in each of the steer’s back legs. He had looped the cable through a series of pulleys hanging from the ceiling near the rest of the dangling meat hooks, and in this way could hoist the thousand-pound steer up over the table. He yanked on the hook, grunting with the effort, testing the strength of the tendons.
But the hook held and Junior seemed satisfied. He started the winch and we watched as the carcass, lifted by the hook pinning both of the back legs together, slowly rose off the truck’s bed. The front hooves slid back off the truck and onto the table, leaving trails of mud and slime. The bones in the hips popped and snapped as the full weight of the body hung from the hook, but the tendons and muscles held. Junior smiled and patted the ribs affectionately as he followed the steer off the truck and onto the table. “Good steer,” he said and shifted his snuff from one cheek to the other. “Good strong steer.” He nodded at me, “You got us a good one.” I almost felt proud.
The steer dangled stiffly. Junior circled the carcass and patted it affectionately, like it was a big, sleeping dog. “Bert,” he said, “you gonna get those knives out or you just gonna keep jerkin’ off all night?”
“Holy shit!” Bert exclaimed, freezing with a sudden, electrifying realization. “I broke my arm,” he said as if he had just noticed. “How’m I gonna … What …” He let his voice trail off, horrified at the thought of life without masturbation. He tilted his head to the side, almost resting it on his right shoulder, considering other possibilities. “You ever try it with your left hand?” he asked Junior.
Junior ignored him, concentrating on the steer. He smoothed out his pompadour with both hands, rotating his hips ever so slightly, dancing in slow motion with the carcass, seducing it. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it into the back of the truck. The center of his chest was full of scars; the pattern almost looked like the design of a star or sun, but I couldn’t figure out what kind of injury could have caused them.
Bert wouldn’t give up. “You ever try with your left hand, Archie?” he asked, shoving his left hand down the front of his pants and trying it out.
I shoved the bathtub closer to the table.
Junior shuffled around the steer and caressed it. He said very evenly, almost quietly to his brother, “Quit fucking around and get those knives over here. It’s time to get down to business.” He patted the carcass one more time and bent down to grab the chainsaw. It started on the first pull.
I took a step back.
Junior looked up and grinned. “Wanna see something neat?” he shouted over the roar.
I shook my head.
Junior solidly planted his feet shoulder-width apart, one foot on the table, one foot on the back of the truck. He raised the saw, right hand on the handle, finger on the trigger. His left hand gripped on the cross bar and turned the saw sideways. He hit the trigger once. Twice.
I took another step backward.
Junior sank the screaming teeth into the steer’s neck, just above the ears. The high-pitched whine dropped into a growl. A fine mist of blood and tissue sprayed straight out from the saw. The steer’s head began to slowly separate from the neck, splitting a deep valley into the flesh.
The head hit the table at the exact same time Bert dumped the contents of a small cardboard box onto the table. Long butcher knives, hammers, chisels, and meat cleavers clattered across the dark wood as the steer’s head bounced off the table and landed on the floor next to the bathtub.
Junior nodded at the severed head and shouted at me, “Grab it. Toss it in the tub. We’ll boil it down later.” He squeezed the saw’s trigger, sending another spray of bloody mist into the air.
I kept a close eye on the chainsaw and scurried forward, grabbed the steer’s ear, and dragged the head back to a safe distance. The ear felt surprisingly soft and smooth. Without looking at the head, I tried to lift it, but was unprepared for the weight. It must have weighed at least thirty pounds, and the ear slipped through my fingers causing the head to land with a dull thud on the cement floor.
I got a better grip on the ear and dropped the whole thing into the bathtub. Another black explosion of flies burst out of the tub, but they quickly settled back, covering the head. I turned away, not wanting to watch the flies begin their feast.
Bert suddenly shouted, “Think fast, Archie,” and a meat cleaver came shooting across the table toward me.
I jumped out of the way as the cleaver sailed off the table and landed in the coils of barbed wire. Bert giggled. Junior stood back and eyed the steer’s stomach. He hollered at Bert, “Grab that push broom. When I open him up, we can just push all the innards off the table here into the tub.”
I bent down and carefully plucked the cleaver from the barbed wire, turning back just in time to see Junior splitting the steer’s abdomen open. The results were instantaneous.
An ocean of blood and miles of grayish-blue, ropy intestines spilled out onto the table. A surging flood of rotting meat and fluids washed over Junior’s cowboy boots. “Goddamnit,” Junior said. “Shouldn’t have worn my good boots.”
The stench of spoiled flesh and fecal matter slithered up into my nostrils and nested there. Jesus, I thought, trying not to gag. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse.
And then things got worse.
CHAPTER 12
In the swamp of blood and intestines, something moved.
Several somethings moved.
“What the hell!” Junior shouted, jerked his bloody cowboy boot out of the mess and brought it down hard, grinding meat into the table. Ripples in the blood caught my eye, flashes of a pale gray amidst the darker gray of the intestines.