Hog Butcher: 2nd Edition

by Andrew Sutherland

  “Sure, Sweetie.” She turned and tried not to look at Eric Bannerman as a person. He really wasn’t anymore. He was a heap of worm food with two large, circular dents in his head. He wouldn’t be going to the hospital. There was a cart in the corner that was surfaced with wood. After calling Sunny and making Al perform some foul and painful contortions, she got him on the wagon and out the door.

  Al was half-sitting, engaged in small talk with Edith. It seemed neither of them were interested in any deep conversations. He did say one thing, though: “I need you to bring me a safe phone in the hospital for after I’m out of surgery. Make sure I’m not too dopey, then let me make two calls.”

  “Who you gotta call? Your other girlfriend?” She said this with a smile. Al could hear sirens in the distance.

  “I gotta call my parents, and I gotta call my business partner and arrange to pay some people for a week or so of hiatus time. Can’t open the show, but I can’t let the theatre close.”

  “Why not?”

  “I promised you free tickets to see me play Macbeth. After what I saw you do tonight, I figure I better not leave you hangin’.” The red and blue lights were everywhere.

  “Alright, baby, relax. They’re here. I’ll wave them in, get your ID out of the car, take the tape off the lights and license plates, then I’m lawyering up until you come out of this.” She kissed his forehead. “You went the distance on this one, Al. Now close your eyes, and we’ll fix that unattractive piercing you have.” She smiled at him. He smiled back.

  Then he passed out.

  79

  Al was having the strangest dream. In it, he was laying down on some sort of bed. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was a bed, for sure. He could feel the roughness of the sheets on his skin. His shirt was ill-fitting, and he felt like he wasn’t wearing pants. There was some kind of seaweed on his face. It stretched across his face, tickled his cheeks, under his nose, and above his ears.

  He didn’t feel like he was asleep, exactly. Occasionally, he would start to gargle roughly. A snore would erupt, suddenly beginning respiration, then he’d be floating again, breath not a necessity, floating, flying, sailing through the currents.

  “Mr. McNair. You need to breathe. Breathe, sir. You aren’t breathing. You need to breathe.”

  “Call him Al. When people call him Mr. McNair, he thinks they’re talking to his dad. Al, honey, breathe.”

  Another gasping, gargling, rasping pull of dry air through his nose and mouth. He could feel some pain in his left side. And the side of his face was a little sore. He decided he’d have a look around, but he couldn’t walk. He couldn’t see. He tried to open his eyes. He managed to get them open a crack, then another.

  The light had a cold antiseptic quality, like the halls of academia. Fluorescent lights. What a trip. He heard a voice to his right. It was an older woman who looked like she might have been a Native American. She was wearing a purple shirt that wasn’t form-fitting, but tightened and strained slightly at her bust.

  “Who are you? Are you Nehwas? Is this the water world?” he looked to his left and saw a face he recognized, but his head was clogged. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself. You have any idea where you are?” Edith asked. Her eyes were sparkling, and she looked tired.

  “I don’t really think I know. Seems like underwater, but like school.” He could hear himself slurring. He panicked a little. He had a momentary thought that he had gone on some colossal bender, a good three-day drunk, and was in a rehab somewhere. “Tell me I’m not in fucking rehab.”

  “You’re not in fucking rehab. You’re in the hospital. You just came out of surgery. They have you on some pretty strong drugs, and you’re coming out of the anesthesia. You gotta remember to breathe. You keep forgetting to breathe.” She smiled and kissed his forehead. She was unbearably beautiful. Edith. It’s Edith.

  “Enchanté, Edith.”

  The other woman said, “You need to rest and breathe. You’re fine and safe as a clam. Now, close your eyes, and try to keep breathing.

  Al closed his eyes. He could feel Edith’s small hands on his arm. He drifted back, down, and under the waves. He was soon sleeping soundly.

  80

  Al was in a modest single room. There wasn’t much of a view, but he didn’t need much of one. His room had flowers and balloons. There was a little teddy bear next to his bed. He could see Edith curled up on a pull-out sleeping contraption. He’d slept on one once when his wife had given birth to their only child. A stillborn boy. There was no reason he had died. Just part of the big, hard world. He didn’t remember much of that experience. His marriage had never been the same afterward. It was like the relationship had died along with the boy. His ex had named the boy “John.” She would refer to him as such, but to Al, he would always be “The Boy.” The one clear memory he had of that time was sleeping on one of those single pull-out beds. They were beyond uncomfortable.

  “Hey, Edith? Sweetie? You awake?”

  She stirred and looked owlishly around, getting her bearings. She turned and saw Al with his eyes open and questions running wild across the landscape of his face. He needed a shave, but she jumped up and kissed his cheek in spite of the sandpaper quality.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Al said. He tried lifting an arm to her face, but he was wearing an IV in each arm, and the muscles in his right arm all felt too sore and too heavy. Instead, he found her hand, and she clasped his when it found purchase on her fingers.

  “You’ve been asleep for a while. The surgery went well. They think you can probably get out of here tomorrow.”

  “I remember a lot of it. I’m sure more will come, but tell me what happened. I remember fighting with Bannerman. He was too good. He was better than me with a blade, and I’m pretty good.” He paused. “He stabbed me, right?”

  She was on his right but pointed toward his left side. It was where the pain was coming from. “He stabbed you right there. He ran you through. The doc should be here in an hour or less to check in, but yeah, he stabbed you. He was gonna kill you.”

  Al suddenly remembered everything clearly. He looked toward the door of his room. It was closed. They were safe to talk. “No one’s listening, right?”

  She knew he was referring to bugs in the room. “Nope. They’re still trying to figure this out. Besides, anything you said right now would be thrown out of court because you’re on drugs. Anything I incriminated myself with I’d blame on shock, although I must confess, I don’t feel shocky. Confused? Sure, a little. But nothing a little healthy introspection won’t take care of.”

  “I was nose to nose with him and I saw you crouched low, coming into the barn.”

  “Yeah, I was a little freaked out. The guy I love and the guy we were hunting, the guy who was a stone killer, had a sword through my lover’s side. My ‘momma bear’ side came out hard. I saw that big fuckin’ knife on the ground. I remember you saying it was as sharp as a laser beam. I picked it up. I rarely even slice meat. I mean, I’ll open a cantaloupe once in a while, but I usually have premade stuff delivered from the natural foods co-op. I’ve been afraid to tell you I detest cooking.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s not a mortal sin. Venial sin? Yes. You can be forgiven. Continue, please. I feel like I went and peed during the best part of the movie.”

  “Well, I knew you’d seen me. I could, like, feel it, if you can dig that.” She’d picked up the phrase “if you can dig that” from Al. He could dig it. He could dig it to bedrock. “You started to provoke him. You were mentally tearing him apart. It was like you’d found the deepest, most wounded part of his psyche and were driving your thumb into it without mercy. I kept closing distance. You yelled at me to cut his Achilles tendons. Half of me was like, ‘Ew. That’s gross. You don’t do that to people.’ And another deeper voice, one I’m not real used to hearing in my head, said, ‘This guy ain’t people. Do it.’ And I did it. I punched forward with that knife. That is one big sucker. Heavy, too. It had enough iner
tia from me punching it forward that I think it chopped straight through his first Achilles tendon. Then I got an image in my mind from this bad samurai movie I’d seen with Scott Glenn in it. In one part, he cuts through a piece of bamboo or some shit, but he really just cuts for all he’s worth. So I dragged that knife hard, fast, and as deep as I could.”

  “Jesus. That’s the best usage of that movie ever. It’s horrible. I think it’s called The Challenge or something. Real piece of crap. Go on.”

  “Well, I saw his muscles kinda jump up to a place behind his knees. He was holding onto you, and he had a lot of his weight on the blade in your side. You yelled at me to cut his arm. I think you just wanted him to react to some pain. I stare at you a ton, you know that?”

  Al thought that was a strange transition. “I stare at you, too. What does that have to do with…”

  “You have incredible forearms. I love your calves best, but your forearms are sexy as hell. I remember when we were out with your Marshal buddy Ted…

  “Deputy Marshal.”

  “Shut it, McNair, or I punch you in the side.” He shut it. “Well, at one point in the night, you grabbed your wine glass of seltzer water, and I saw these long individual cables in the back of your forearm, and I could clearly see that each one was responsible for one of your fingers. I thought of how amazing the human machine really is. With that in mind, I stepped around Bannerman--who was gigantic, by the way--and I swept the knife through those cables on his arm. His arm went limp, the advantage was yours. Then you held the sword in your side and…dispatched Mr. Bannerman.”

  “I remember that part. You didn’t watch. I’m glad.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t watch. I wish I could get that sound out of my head, but no, I missed that part. I’m happy about that.”

  “How did you know to come to my rescue?”

  “You guys were making a lot of noise. I wanted to check out the action. I’d never seen a real sword-fight before.”

  Al thought about it. “Neither have I. I think that one will last me a long time.”

  “I have a question for you. When I was in the recovery room with you, you were talking to the nurse on the right side of the bed. Do you remember?”

  He thought of the woman in the woman in the recovery room. He was glad he hadn’t imagined her. “Oh, yeah. I thought she was someone else.”

  “You asked her if she was, it sounded like Nehwas. What does that mean?”

  “I went through a period of time a little over a year ago where I had an unhealthy obsession with the ocean. Nehwas is a water spirit from Algonquin mythology. The oxygen tubes on my face and the sledgehammer drugs they had me on, I thought I was under water. I saw her, and I guess because she looked Native American, my mind just connected the dots. I didn’t say anything else personally incriminating, did I?”

  “I’ll never tell.” She smiled and kissed his dry lips with a tenderness that made him remember baked bread in his parents’ house. Sitting on a high stool, four years old, knowing he was, indeed the most important and loved little boy on the planet.

  There was a brisk knock at the door and then the door swung open before he had time to protest. Why do doctors even knock?

  “Mr. McNair?”

  “Al. You the doc that stitched me up?”

  “That’s me.” Al thought he was probably old enough to start shaving soon. “Here. I brought you a gift.” The doctor held out a small brightly colored rectangle. It was a lottery ticket.

  “What’s this for?”

  “You should scratch it. I bet you win. You’re one lucky son of a gun.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You came in with a sword through you. Sword wounds are fairly rare. I think they are a little more common than werewolf attacks, and slightly less common than being cursed by a witch. The paramedics couldn’t transport you so with the whole sword, so they cut the blade off in front and back, wrapped the sucker, and transported you. You were smart to not pull that thing out, though in retrospect, it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”

  “How do you mean, Doc? I don’t quite get you.” Al was interested. The doctor obviously had some information that was of interest to all involved.

  “Here look at this.” He pulled a computer screen that was on a retractable arm as close to Al as he could, which, in all honesty, wasn’t that close. He pointed with a pen. “This is your CAT scan. I almost did an MRI until I asked again what had caused the injury. They said sword. They even brought in the sword’s mate, or whatever you call it. The other of the set. MRI stands for magnetic resonance imagery, you know. You can’t put metal in them, so we did a CAT and an ultrasound. I thought for sure you would have at least a nicked intestine or an injury to one of your mesenteric arteries. I thought the placement of the blade must be resting on any arterial bleed or bowel nick. When I went in, I searched. I even ran part of your bowel, that’s when we kinda take it out and check it, like a snake. No nicks. No arterial bleeds. The surgery you had theoretically could have been done as an outpatient. The stab wound even removed some old scar tissue. This might actually heal better.”

  Al thought that made sense. The bullet wound had been taken care of in less than ideal conditions. But the same place? Weird.

  “I think the hospital has a policy about doing sword injuries as outpatient surgeries, though. The odds of that sword not hitting anything important? All I can say is, scratch the lottery ticket. I get half.” He turned off the computer.

  “That’s it? No long-term problems?”

  “Nope. You can resume your normal activities as soon as you want. Pain will be your limiting factor. Ms. Fiske let us know you were in alcohol recovery. We can send you home with hydrocodone, or you can tough it out with ibuprofen or naproxen. Up to you. I’m not gonna ask how you got in a sword fight. I guess that’s none of my business?”

  “You’d be right. It’s US Marshal stuff.”

  “Far out, man. Rest. Enjoy. Eat whatever you want. The lasagna is really good here, and they made it today. It’s always a safe bet here. I won’t be back this way unless you have problems.” He stuck out a professional but equally companionable hand. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Al. You’re a lucky man.” He headed out. At the door, he turned and said, “Remember, I get half. I gotta pay for med school.” And he was in the wind.

  Edith was now perched on the edge of Al’s bed. They’d found him a surprisingly wide and comfortable bed. It even adjusted up into a giant chair position. “Hey, lady. There’s room in here for two. Why don’t you join me? Those chairs suck. Just no intimate action for a day or so. I’m sore.” She climbed daintily in with him. Her hair smelled like shampoo. “Did you take a shower?”

  “Yeah. Nehwas hooked me up with a towel and some soap. I had a change of clothes in the car.”

  “I hadn’t noticed the clothes change. You’d think I was on drugs.”

  “Speaking of which, do you want the codeine or not? I don’t care either way.”

  “I’ll take them with me, but probably won’t use them. Can you hold onto them and make sure I use them as prescribed?”

  “Sure. Good thinkin’.”

  “I’ve been putting this off long enough. How’re Bud, Shrek, Sunny, and Frieda?”

  “In order of smallest to largest: Frieda is a little freaked out, and she’s worried about the theatre’s finances. Oh, call your folks and your business partner. I have a clean phone you can use after we talk.”

  “Good remembering. Go on.”

  “Sunny wants to know when she can come in and visit. You can call her or I can. Since you won’t be in long enough for her to visit, you should probably call her yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “Al.” She slapped him gently but firmly on the chest. “For a smart guy, you can be kinda dense. She has a huge crush on you.”

  “I thought maybe that was the case. I was ignoring it and hoping it would go away.”

  “Ignoring wom
en is a fucking aphrodisiac. When guys ignore women, it just sucks them in.”

  “Oh. Alright. She’s on the call list. Shrek?”

  “Our friend Shrek is one tough SOB. He’s home. He left the hospital against medical advice, but his partner, Carlos, used to be a medic in the army and is a nurse now. Shrek’ll get better care at home than anywhere else. He had a small puncture in his right eardrum and a moderate concussion. Gill saved his life. The little guy absorbed most of the blast impact and the shrapnel from the car.”

  “What was the explosion about? What happened?”

  “They don’t know. The FBI is sniffing around. I heard someone say something about fertilizer bombs, but I’m not allowed to know such things. I’m just a civilian.”

  Al paused. He didn’t really want to ask the next question. “How’s Bud?”

  “I don’t know exactly. He fucked himself up pretty good fighting to get free. His leg broke cleanly, but his back is pretty hashed. He has two cracked lumbar vertebrae, one ruptured lumbar disk, two herniated lumbar disks, and he dislocated his hip. He had a bad hip on that side anyway; they may have to replace it. He’ll live, but he’s got a long road of rehab in front of him.”

  “You talk to Betsy?”

  “Yes. She said for you not to worry. Bud got into this jam by himself, and you are not to blame, so don’t sweat it. You won’t receive the wrath of Betsy. Buster may be a little pissed. I guess he wants a horsey ride. There won’t be any of those for a long time. Maybe no more till the next kid, if there is another kid.”

  “Shit. Well at least he’s alive.” He was silent for a moment. “Anyone heard from Marty?”

  “Frieda said he was holed up in his apartment. She had to go over to talk to him because he’s not answering his phone.”

  “He’s lucky I’m sore, or I’d go over and kick him around the block a few times. I may go over with a bat…”