Foodchain

by Jeff Jacobson

  Sturm was pissed. “That freeloading sonofabitch. Taking fish outta’ my lake.” He spit. “You said, how many pills, four?”

  Frank nodded.

  “We’re gonna give him five pills,” he said.

  “I’ll crush ’em up now.”

  Sturm turned to Jack. “Go find this fuck. Find him and tell him I’d like a word. Sonofabitch thinks he’s going to take advantage of me, he’s got another thing coming.”

  * * * * *

  This time, the lot was full. The hunters must have called all of their friends; Frank counted over fifty pickups. Sturm opened the auction yard early, just to get the betting underway. Most everybody was inside when Girdler came walking down the highway in the twilight, face streaked with charcoal and holding a burning branch.

  Sturm, Jack, and Frank were waiting outside the front doors. Sturm had instructed Frank to keep the back door locked. “Fuck the fire codes,” Sturm said. He wanted only one way in and out of the building.

  Girdler got close. He waved the branch at the sky, sending a flock of sparks toward the first glimmers of stars, then tossed the branch onto the gravel. He strode up to front door and Sturm could see tracks of tears cutting through the smears of charcoal.

  “It ends tonight,” Girdler said.

  “Is that so? You haven’t been up in the hills chewing on peyote or some other hippy shit, have you?” Sturm asked.

  “It ends tonight,” Girdler repeated.

  “Heard you the first time,” Sturm said.

  “So it’ll end. Tonight. Right here. Now.”

  Sturm spit. He took his time, cleaning out the snuff. He pulled a new can from his jeans and thumped it with his thumb. “No. We got plans for that bear. He’s gonna fight for a few nights, at least. Gonna kill more than a few cats. Make us all some money.”

  Girdler shook his head vigorously, long hair flying. “No. You can’t put him through that…that torture. He dies tonight.”

  “I don’t know what kind of shit you got in your ears, but I’m gonna assume you didn’t hear me. That bear in there, that’s no longer your property. Your opinion don’t mean two shits around here.”

  “Please, listen to me—”

  “I ain’t listening to anything but the sound of the bell that starts the round. You want to, you come in and lay down that cash you just earned. You don’t, then you best hop in your goddamn RV and keep driving. Don’t you dare look in your rearview mirror ‘til you’re out of the state.”

  Girdler blinked soot out of his eyes.

  Sturm waited. “Your decision. I got business to tend to.” He marched into the auction yard. Jack gave Girdler a moment as well, then followed Sturm. Frank kept his eyes on the ground; he didn’t want to look at Girdler’s face.

  Girdler fingered the two bricks of cash, one shoved his right pocket, the other in his left. He looked to the burning branch, but it had gone out, and nothing was left but a thin trickle of smoke. The roar of the crowd as Sturm came into view made the doors reverberate.

  Girdler grabbed Frank’s wrist. “Will you help me? Please?”

  Frank looked into Girdler’s eyes. “No,” he said, shrugging off the man’s hand and going inside.

  * * * * *

  The sound hit Frank first, like a physical blow. The arena was packed; everyone shouted and screamed and clapped. Men sprayed beer over themselves. They ate beef jerky. Popcorn. Smoked cigarettes. Cigars. Spit chewing tobacco on their boots. Almost to a man, they carried bottles of some kind of hard liquor, along with a bottle or can of beer. And everyone, everyone had their rifles.

  Sturm got ’em quieted down enough to shout, “One thousand pounds of teeth and claws!” and the men roared again. They practically threw cash at Theo up in the office. Sturm shook his hat, “You men are privileged to see this, this offering to our God. The blood that spills is in his honor. He will drink the blood that soaks that earth.”

  Nobody seemed to know exactly how to respond to that so a few bowed their head and a few clapped. Frank didn’t remember that particular passage from the bible from his father’s sermons, but his father would have liked it. Frank suspected the only place it existed was written across the tumor in Sturm’s head.

  Sturm shouted, “Fifteen minutes ‘til the betting window closes!”

  Frank stepped into the cage and watched as Girdler came in the front door and made his way up the steps to the office window.

  Girdler slapped both bricks of cash on the ledge. Frank didn’t have to hear the conversation to know he was putting all of his money on the cats.

  “Twelve minutes,” Sturm hollered. He went up to the office and stepped inside. Girdler followed him before Sturm could shut the door. Frank took a long look around, making sure none of the shit that the men had been throwing at the cage at slipped through the chicken wire, then walked up the chute.

  He let himself out of the cage and into the back aisle and took a long look at the bear. Bo-Bo was fast asleep, flat on his back, legs splayed, leather footpads the color of milk chocolate in the light cast from a string of sparse bare bulbs. Frank gave Pine a hard look.

  Pine shrugged. He was sitting on a rickety office chair with wheels that he’d carried down from the office earlier. “Watch,” he said, jabbing at the bear with one of the long cattle prods. Bo-Bo just lazily slapped it away. “I been shocking him for the past half hour, solid. Got it cranked up to the max. See? See? Shit. Too much fucking hard work.” Pine sank back into the chair and the bear’s breathing evened out and it wasn’t long before he started snoring. “Didn’t want to go any farther, you know? Didn’t want to get carried away, not before the fight.”

  Frank said, “It’s time to get carried away.”

  “Fuck yes!” Pine said, clapping his hands together like it was Christmas. He yanked a bowling ball from a storage locker across the aisle and lobbed it into the cage. The ball bounced, thunked into the side of the bear, and settled against the fence on the right. The bear jerked away from the blow and shook the sleep out of his head making a surprised, barking cough.

  “Time to play, Mr. Bear,” Pine said.

  Bo-Bo snorted and rocked back and forth, keeping a careful eye on the ball. Now that he had the bear’s attention, Pine reached into a small cooler next to his office chair and pulled out a ball of ground mutton the size of a softball. He held it up, making sure Bo-Bo was paying attention. Pine kicked the door open and tossed the ball into the cage. The meat had been laced with all five pills, ground down into a powder finer than talcum.

  Bo-Bo ambled over and ate it without hesitation.

  * * * * *

  “Ten minutes!” Sturm’s voice echoed throughout the entire auction yard, amplified a thousand times over the loudspeakers. For a moment, everyone heard Girdler’s voice, high and thin, “This ain’t—” and there a brief, ear-splitting whine of feedback, then a solid click. The loudspeaker system went quiet.

  The back door to the office upstairs banged open and Sturm stomped out. Girdler was right behind him. “You’ve got to listen to me,” Girdler begged. “Please. Please don’t do this.”

  Halfway down the stairs, Sturm spun and grabbed Girdler’s beard and jerked the bigger man over the railing. Girdler went over sideways, legs kicking, arms flailing. He only managed to knock Sturm’s cowboy hat off before slipping over completely. A few feet down, he hit the storage locker, rolled off and landed heavily on his back in the aisle. Sensing a fight, the remaining dogs began barking.

  Sturm followed his hat down the stairs. “Warned you once, hippy.” He dusted the hat off, put it back on. “You keep pushing, you’re just gonna get hurt worse.”

  Girdler grabbed hold of one of the cages and pulled himself up. He laughed, but it sounded desperate. “I’ve been watching you, little man. Little bantam rooster, strutting around. You like to hit people when they ain’t ready. Then you step back and let your boys finish the job.”

  “You saying I don’t fight my own battles?” Sturm asked.

  �
�That’s exactly what I’m saying, you little turd. Come on. You got the balls, come on then.” Girdler pointed at Pine. “Tell this asswipe to step back and let’s see just how tough you really are.”

  Frank knew it wasn’t that Girdler had questioned Sturm’s ability to fight that made Sturm slowly take his hat back off and hang it on a nail. No, it was because Girdler had called him “little.” “Pine, you keep out of this. Frank, you too. Dumbshit here thinks he’s a big shot, won’t listen to sense when he was warned fair and square, well then, guess he needs a lesson.” And without any more words, Sturm launched himself at Girdler.

  His abnormally large fists popped through the air like a pair of sledgehammers. Girdler had just enough time to get his forearms up and in the way; all he could really do was focus on blocking Sturm’s punches.

  Sturm slipped one past and his left fist caught Girdler in the throat.

  Girdler made an urking sound and fell back against the bear cage.

  Sturm immediately slammed his left fist into Girdler’s solar plexus.

  Vomit spewed out of Girdler like a water balloon full of green bile and meatloaf landing on a thorn bush. Several gobs spattered across Sturm’s skull. This just made him more pissed off and he hit Girdler hard enough in the chest that Frank heard something crack.

  Girdler lurched off to Sturm’s right and stumbled over the office chair. Both of them went down. “Treehugger,” Sturm hissed and stomped on Girdler’s hand.

  Girdler screamed, but Sturm kicked him in the face a couple of times, breaking the scream off like a violin string snapping in mid-note. Girdler tried to roll over, gagging blood. Several of his front teeth had broken off and were imbedded in his bottom lip.

  Bo-Bo ignored all of this and settled back onto the pallet, yawning and pawing at himself, scratching at his belly.

  Sweat and vomit glistened on Sturm’s skin under the naked bulbs. But he wasn’t even breathing hard. “Some folks, you tell ’em something, they listen. But other folks, you talk ‘til your blue in the face, telling ’em what’s what, and they still just don’t get it.”

  Girdler crawled toward the bear cage.

  Sturm pointed to the office chair and told Pine, “Set that up right here. I want this dumbshit to have a front row seat. Frank, there’s some duct tape in that locker over there.”

  Pine and Sturm grabbed Girdler’s shoulders and threw him onto the chair. Sturm took the roll from Frank and slapped the end across Girdler’s chest and wrapped it around his back, again and again, taping him to the chair. Pine duct taped Girdler’s feet to the chair base, so they could roll him around easily.

  The sound of the tape ripping away from itself reminded Frank of tearing the baggie out from under the sink. He checked the clock. The pills should be working by now. But Bo-Bo was still lolling on his back and looked like he might doze off any minute. Frank patted his chest, feeling for the sixth and final blue pill in his shirt pocket. If the bear didn’t start to show signs soon, Frank would have to somehow slip him the last pill, but he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  Girdler whimpered something, but it was hard to tell what he was trying to say through a mouthful of broken teeth.

  Sturm patted Girdler’s shoulder affectionately. “That’s right. Glad you see things my way now.” The fight didn’t seem to have taken anything out of Sturm; it just fired him up even more. He checked his watch. “Holy shit. Time’s up.” He gestured towards the cage. “He gonna be ready?”

  Frank shrugged.

  “We’re counting on you, son. That bear dies out there tonight, it’s on your head.”

  * * * * *

  Sturm’s voice came booming out of the loudspeakers. “Two minute warning, gentlemen! Get your bets in now!”

  Pine was bored and idly spun Girdler in circles as he appraised the bear. “I dunno, Frank. I don’t think your pills did shit.”

  Frank shook his head. “You think we can get Sturm to stall for a while?”

  Pine just laughed.

  Sturm’s voice came over the loudspeakers again. “Window is now closed! The fight is ON!” He thundered back down the stairs. “Them cats ready?”

  Frank glanced over at the three cages and the pacing cats. “Yeah.”

  Sturm stopped in front of the bear cage, stuck his hands in his pockets, and rocked back and forth for a few moments. “You think that bear’s ready?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. But it’s showtime. You better figure something out.” Sturm started down the chute. “Soon as I shut that gate out there, you let this big boy out. Then you got thirty seconds and I want all three of them cats coming down this chute. Got it?” He locked eyes with Frank.

  “Yeah.”

  Sturm headed down the chute. Frank knew that he had no time, no time at all. He pulled the last pill and found a hammer in the locker. He put the baggie on the cement and rolled the head of the hammer over the pill, grinding it down until it was as fine and smooth as flour.

  A roar made the walls shake. Sturm was out in the auction yard floor.

  “You gonna feed that to him?” Pine asked. “I don’t think it’s gonna do much now, you know?”

  Frank shook his head. After sifting the powder down into a corner, he twisted the plastic, creating a plump little triangle, and tore the rest of the baggie away. “Do what you got to do, but get that bear up and moving.”

  Girdler made another noise, deep down, but Frank and Pine ignored him.

  Pine pulled a pitchfork from under the stairs and plunged the tines into Bo-Bo’s back thigh. The bear jerked away, uttering a surprised yelp of pain. Pine stuck him again.

  Frank swung the gate open and clicked it into place, sealing off the cage while simultaneously opening into the chute. He crouched and waited, the triangle of powder tight in his sweating fist.

  Pine jabbed at Bo-Bo a third time, and rather than face the source of pain and swipe at the pitchfork, the bear retreated, just as Frank had feared. Bo-Bo was no fighter. The cats were going to rip him wide open. Panicked now, the bear slammed his massive shoulders through the narrow gap, and in the split second it took for him to squeeze through, Frank brought up the triangle, letting the plastic fall away, and blew the powder into Bo-Bo’s nose and brown eyes.

  * * * * *

  For a moment, the bear just flinched and blinked, his fear of the pitchfork overriding his confusion. Bo-Bo padded down the chute quickly, anxious to get away from Pine. But then that great shaggy head shook once, twice. He stopped. A spasming quiver worked it was along his spine as if he had just stepped on a live wire, shooting 110 volts through his bones.

  The Kodiak howled, a sound that shook the dust from the cages and made Frank’s heart stop. Bo-Bo reared up, smashing through the top of the chute like he was breaking through the thin ice of a frozen lake. Paws bigger than hubcaps tore strips from the sides of the chute and the whole thing threatened to collapse. He twisted, and started coming back the other way and if anything, that awful, screaming roar got even louder.

  Frank leapt onto the closest cage and scrambled up as fast as he could. Inside, the lionesses had curled into a corner, her hissing moan lost under the bear’s terrible bellow. He heard Pine blurt, “Oh fucking hell,” just as the grizzly sent the gate crashing into the dog cages across the aisle.

  Pine needed a distraction, so he gave Girdler a kick that sent the duct taped, bleeding man spinning across the aisle in his office chair. The bear, drowning in a mindless, furious frenzy, swiped at Girdler and sent the man and his chair sliding sideways across the cement, leaving a trail of blood like the sheep back on Main Street. The bear followed and pounced, seizing Girdler’s skull between his teeth and clamped them together, working those jaws in a slobbering froth of saliva and blood.

  When the grizzly finally looked up, there wasn’t enough left of Girdler’s head to put in the plastic baggie of pills. Bo-Bo’s shoulders spasmed again, and he whirled, swatting at unseen demons. Frank hooked one leg over the rafter an
d pulled himself even higher.

  Gunfire exploded from inside the chute. Sturm, marching up to the where the shredded chicken wire blocked the chute, had both revolvers out, blasting away at the bear. Frank couldn’t tell if any bullets hit Bo-Bo, but it was enough to send the bear loping down the aisle.

  The Kodiak, in this state, literally could not feel the bullets, but the noise of the gunfire echoed like a thousand dreadful storms through his mind, spiking agony through every cell. He ran back to his room, but the door was shut. He smacked the door with the top of his head and bellowed.

  Sturm fired again and again, aiming for the knees. He didn’t want the Kodiak to go running out into the night. Men followed up the chute and everyone carried a gun. They filled the aisle behind Sturm.

  Bo-Bo turned, and gunfire erupted, knocking the bear back against the door. Blood flew, spattering the walls and cement like an abstract painting. The bear shivered, falling on shattered knees, and finally died. The men kept shooting.

  * * * * *

  Frank reached out to knock on the Glouck’s front door before he could change his mind. He’d slipped away in the chaos after Bo-Bo’s escape attempt; he didn’t want to face Sturm. Frank had a feeling that things were starting to get out of control, just a little, as if he was back on the carnival ride, the Wheel of Screams, and it wouldn’t stop, it just kept going fast and faster and Frank could feel his grip starting to slip.

  Frank knocked again. The light above the door flickered on and he felt like bait under the sudden glare.

  The door opened and Gun squinted out. “What?” he demanded.

  “I need to talk to your mom,” Frank said.

  “Which one?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Gun shut the door and left Frank standing in the pool of light. His night vision was gone and couldn’t see a damn thing beyond the concrete steps. Even the gas station sign across the street was off. He’d hid the long black car among the shadows of the station.

  Again, he wondered if he was doing the right thing.

  The door opened again. And there was Annie.

  * * * * *

  She was wearing shorts and a Judas Priest tank top and a hint of a smile. “Yeah?”