So Here’s The Thing
So Here’s The Thing
by Martin Mundt
© 2007 by Martin Mundt
All Rights Reserved.
Episode 5: Live Poultry
So here’s the thing—I have discovered the two most terrifying words in the English language: live poultry.
The man entered my store, setting the bell jangling, and I knew instantly that there would be trouble.
“You sell live poultry.” The man did not ask, and he sweated, though it was not hot.
Nerves, I thought. The chickens, they make some men into women with the nerves.
The man looked at the wall of cages, each one holding a single chicken. “That one!” he shouted when his gaze settled on a chicken that looked, to me, like any other chicken. The man stabbed a finger at the cage, an accusation for all the world to see. “I want that one. Now!”
But I saw that the man’s arm trembled, barely in control. “Yes, sir; of course, sir,” I said, though I thought to myself, this is no man for live poultry. “And would you like me to…”
“I will…” The man started, then stopped. He glanced right and left, saw no one else in the store, then leaned over the counter, close to me, and hissed, “I will kill him here.”
“No, sir,” I said without hesitation. “That would be a health code violation.” But I thought to myself, this is a stranger gringo than most, who thinks these chickens are male. No good can come of this.
The man’s face twitched, a tic that winked his left eye and spread like a lightning bolt across his cheek. He pulled a .45 automatic pistol from under his jacket.
“I will shoot him. It will be quick, but that is unavoidable,” he said.
“No, sir. I cannot allow that,” I said. You fool, I thought, can’t you see that you have no cojones for this?
The man grimaced, holstered his pistol, then pulled out a switchblade and snicked it open, fully ten inches of gleaming honed steel. The blade shimmered with the love of a sharpening stone. “I will carve out his chicken liver, string him up by his giblets, slice him to nuggets. I will…”
“No, sir,” I said. “Haven’t I already said to you? I cannot allow that.”
The man spat on the floor. He sneered, hissed, almost leapt over the counter at me, but, in the end, controlled himself.
“I see,” he said, “that you are a man of delicate sensibilities. So…” The man closed the switchblade, making it disappear back into his jacket as if it had never existed.
A man of skill, I thought, but is he also a man of judgment?
The man produced a set of brass knuckles, slid them onto the fingers of his right hand, and gazed at his own fist with a terrible gleam in his eyes. “I will beat him to death then,” said the man. “Barbaric, yes, but surely not even you can deny me that small satisfaction?”
I looked at the gleam and the flexing fist and knew that the man’s satisfaction would by no means be small, and I also knew that no matter how many marvels this man could pull from beneath his jacket, judgment would not be among them.
“Surely I can deny you this, sir,” I said. “And most surely I do deny it. It is my store, and the inspectors, they would have my license for such a thing as you propose; but worse, the gods themselves would have my honor, were I to allow it.”
“Imbecile!” shouted the man. “Soft-hearted fool! Do you know what sort of monster you champion? Can you know?” He shot a glance at the cage, would have killed the chicken with a look if he could. It is…” His voice barely came out in a breath, “…a chicken.”
“No,” I said, and then once more, “no.”
“Bah!” The man strode to the door, then back to the counter, then halfway back to the door. He pulled out his wallet. “A thousand dollars. Two thousand. Ten! Name your price, you fool, but I will have that chicken!” The man’s nostrils flared. He pointed his chin at the sky. His eyes flashed.
I considered. “Why?” I finally said. “Why do you wish to kill this chicken? Tell me why, sir. That is my price.”
The man pulled himself up to his fullest height of dignity. “You have your honor to consider, sir,” he said. “And I have mine.”
Not dignity, I thought, but wounded dignity. A more dangerous proposition altogether.
I looked at the chicken, then at the man, then at the chicken again. I thought that the chicken nodded once to me, though surely that could have been nothing more than an illusion. I then looked back at the man, and finally I slid my hand under the counter, then brought it up again holding a meat cleaver. I sighed as I laid it next to the register. “I must go into the back room now,” I said. “But I will return in five minutes.”
I left, and barely had the door closed behind me than the screams began. The chicken shrieked and the man bellowed in rage. No words were uttered, just the primal sounds of the oldest struggle in the world: mano a pollo. I had once seen a cow vivisected by aliens in the high desert, and this sounded as that had looked. The cleaver rang off metal, sliced through wood, sang through the air like honor.
I closed my eyes, covered my face with my hands. Honor, I thought. Why were we cursed with honor?
Then, suddenly, the cleaver thudded deep into flesh, and after that—nothing but silence.
I waited—out of respect, I told myself, but perhaps even more out of dread. I waited until the bell on the door jangled, and I knew that honor had been served.
I walked into the store, and immediately slipped in a pool of blood. Blood, indeed, covered the walls, floor and ceiling. The room ran as red as the inside of a torn and broken heart.
I made the sign of the cross when I saw the man, broken and folded in two, stuffed into the cage, his face peering out from between the soles of his boots, the cleaver embedded in his forehead, and a look on his face that I took at first for shock, or perhaps terror; but that I finally realized, gazing into the dead eyes that had just moments ago softened my heart with their wounded dignity, was complete and utter failure. Indeed, I knew with certainty that the very fires of Hell burned just as the man’s face looked.
And the chicken, you ask? What happened to the chicken?
Ah, well, the door was open, and the chicken had disappeared.
Comment by SLIM on 15 May 2007:
That was a good recipe for chicken catchastory!
Do unto chickens as they would have done to you. SO SAID THE COLONEL!
Thanks Martin.
Comment by jpokela on 15 May 2007:
Muy excellante. Stories of female chickens and twitching sweating men in trenchcoats had fallen into a rut of trite truisms. You have opened up the genre for all of us!! Amen brother and a thousand new ideas of man-chicken relationships have flooded my head thanks to you!!!
Comment by Juergen Karle on 15 May 2007:
For some unknown reason I feel reminded to Gary Larson,but kind of over the brink.
Keep it coming ,Martin. I enjoy every single installment and I can’t hardly wait till the finished “So Here’s The Thing” book get’s into my hands.
Juergen
Comment by Scott Berke on 15 May 2007:
I think I’ll have salad tonight.
Comment by kresby on 16 May 2007:
now I’m really hungry.
Comment by Shane Staley on 16 May 2007:
Scott: I hear the Chicken Caesar Salad is good!