Vegan

by Erin Lee

  “Wow,” I say, taking in the twenty-plus boxes of brownies stacked in her trunk. “You know what? Let me move the truck over. I have company coming over and want to get a lot. You know me. Clumsy. I’ll be right back. I’ll buy you out. You can get back to Tom. Ya’ll can have a night together.”

  I jog to the truck while Rebecca stands there, smirking and convinced she’s made her final sale. I imagine her running to the gym to tell her countless wrinkled workout buddies what a wonderful person she is and whatever next plan she has dreamed up for project graduation. They’ll praise her, of course, and beg for dates to get their nails done. All of it will be on Tom’s credit card. They’ll drink wine at noon and compare hair highlights. They’ll talk about me and how I’ve ruined Rancher’s life. No. Actually, they won’t. Not this time.

  I’m the one smirking as I pull the truck up next to her SUV. I catch her taking a selfie she’s likely planning to post of herself selling all the brownies. I laugh. All she’s doing is building me an alibi. If I can make this fast enough, it will throw off the entire timeline.

  I hop out of the truck and move quickly to the back. Acting like the tailgate is stuck, I ask her to help me open it. I tell her I know she’s in fabulous shape from all the running and working out she does. I inform her she’s much stronger than me, the frail one without enough protein. Of course, I don’t say it like this. I just say enough to give her the impression I’m exactly who she thinks I am—meek and helpless.

  “Oh, sure. Let me help,” she says, jogging over to the truck and reaching for the latch. In an instant, she has it open. She looks at me, “Magic.”

  “Must be!”

  “Yeah, it was probably just stuck.”

  “You know what? Check this out.”

  I climb into the back of the truck, motioning for her to join me. She hops right up, anxious to pull off another non-miracle. “What’s up?”

  “See this?” I shine my cell phone flashlight at the corner of the bed of the truck. “I think this is what’s been sticking. Does Tom’s truck have this too? I don’t want to bother my husband with it. He’s not feeling well.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard. Let me look. I bet I can get it, whatever it is.”

  “Thanks, Rebecca. You’re a saint.”

  It’s with those words that I plunge the tranquilizer in her back.

  “What the fuck?”

  Those are her last words, “What the fuck?”

  I don’t wait for her to say more—even if she could. Instead, I jump out the back of the truck and throw the tailgate up. I hurry to her car, wrapping my sleeves around my hands and slam her trunk shut. I move to her driver’s door, reach in, and pull the keys from her ignition. I lock her doors and return to the truck.

  She’s lying flat in the bed of it. I’m not sure if she’s dead. I know she will be soon enough. Quickly, I jump in and gun it out of the parking lot. I drive less than a mile to a dead end road where the town maintenance crew stores random shit like vehicles and street signs. Swiftly, I jump out of the truck, grab a tarp, and cover up her now-stiff body. It’s just that easy. As simple as getting milk and returning unread library books.

  Vegan

  Chapter Ten

  Blessed are ye that hunger now:

  For ye shall be filled.

  EVEN WITH THIRTY POUNDS on Ginny, Rebecca is so much easier. It might be that I’ve done it before and the hiccups, like cutting around tendons and trying to distinguish the meaty from the fatty parts isn’t so hard the second time around. It’s strange how human beings put so much focus on what a person looks like. In the end, we’re all being held up by some pretty creepy looking shit.

  I use a cleaver to tear into her chest cavity. I don’t worry about the mess it leaves for now. I got Ginny pretty well cleaned up. I can certainly do it again. In a long, hard stroke, I pull the cleaver through the rest of her, to her belly button. Tearing open her gut to find the liver—Ginny’s tasted great in stew and I’m never wasteful with food—I remind myself this may be the last time. It’ll all depend on the lab results.

  My stomach rumbles from having avoided eating as much as possible over the last month. It’s a chronic state of hunger at this point. I’ve taken to the habit of pushing my meat off to Rancher’s plate when he isn’t looking. While I have no problem killing human beings to save him, the taste of meat still sits wrong with me. I tell it to shut up.

  As I cut her liver out, I contemplate the irony that I’ve killed her to save another killer. Like it or not, my husband has the blood of more animals than most on his hands. Before this all began, we were one of the most successful ranches in the county—pulling a quarter million a year in profits alone.

  I can’t say there aren’t parts of it—the traditional ranching life—that I don’t miss. The auctions, the spending sprees, the vacations. I have no idea how I’ll make this month’s tuition payments. People aren’t as invested in spending their money at a sanctuary as they are the perfect cut of beef.

  Five hours later

  I SIT IN THE PASSENGER’S side of Rancher’s pick-up truck. He’s having a good day. His memory seems fine and he needs to get out of the house for something other than a four-hour date at the nurses’ clinic hooked to machines for treatments that likely won’t work. He turns the dial to his favorite country station. I pretend to hum along, as though I’m not thinking about the tribes in South Africa who participate in muti murders.

  I tell myself I’m no different than them. While they take the human parts and stir them into medicine, I prefer to think of myself as feeding Rancher right from the source. I’m doing this for nutrition, not ritual like the headhunters in Papua New Guinea, who eat rival warriors to maintain universal order.

  It’s strange, how we are all connected. While I want to think ill of them or judge them somehow, for what they do, they are healers looking to find cures. Is it wrong that they take the lives of innocents in a desperate search for cures? Of course. But who’s to say who is innocent or not? Only God should judge.

  If this life we live is about survival of the fittest—which, unfortunately, by the way He or She deemed it, it appears to be—then is it so wrong to use my freewill to do everything in my power to save the man singing off-key to Kenny Chesney like he has no problems in the world? I don’t think so. And in the end, it’s not my call.

  Truth be told, if I am judged harshly for these deeds, I’ll take it. Still, in this moment, as Rancher slides his hand to my thigh and again turns up the radio, I have no fear. If there is a god at all, He or She will understand.

  These are the things I think about when the days are right, and I have the most hope for his recovery. On days like today, I don’t worry about the life insurance policies we couldn’t afford to buy or how I’ll pay off the boys’ tuitions if the worst is meant to come.

  “Did you see in the Shopper?”

  “See what?”

  “You never read it,” he laughs.

  “It’s just coupons.”

  “Exactly,” he laughs again. “But seriously, did you hear about the festival?”

  “No.”

  “The farmer’s market up on Parker’s Street is going green. They hooked up with the Katy P.E.A.C.E. association. I’m thinking of calling and seeing if we can get a table for the sanctuary. It might be great publicity.”

  “Wow. I hadn’t heard.”

  “Yes. Three weeks. It’d be tight. But I think we could do it.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll work on that when we get home. The more people we can get to understand about the animals, well, the better. Maybe they’ll lay off.”

  He doesn’t speak for a moment. He rolls the window down, as if hoping his thoughts will fly out, and he won’t have to say what he’s thinking under his furrowed brow.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just feel like a hypocrite. No more meat.”

  “Are you kidding me? The table would be about green living. And animal cruelty. About the other herds and our
neighbors. No one even knows what we’ve been up to. I mean, it’s only temporary. It’s not like we’re killing our own herd. I just think it’s good for you while those proteins are low.”

  He shakes his head. “Just feels—wrong.”

  “Hon, it’s only until you’re better. I need you, you know?”

  “I do.”

  “I can’t do this without you.”

  “That’s what pisses me off the most.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not like we’ve had it all handed to us. It’s not like we haven’t worked for it or that everything’s been peaches and cream. We’ve put in our time. It’s bullshit, really. I mean, I’m fucking useless. I can barely help out.”

  I want to cry. A tear threatens to roll down my face. I turn and look out my window. Rancher’s always prided himself on how useful he could be—not only on the farm but also in the house. These days, I’m lucky if I can even get him to bring a load of laundry up from the dryer.

  “...I mean, why me? Why not someone else?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I hate it. All of it.”

  “I do too.”

  We don’t say anything more about it as we drive to our favorite outlet stores. We spend the day in quiet understanding, almost as if not talking about it will make it all go away, until we’ve had enough. When it’s time to go home—for a meal I insist he let me cook him, he doesn’t fight me. I spend the entire ride home choking on the guilt of lying to him. He still feels bad about the animals. Maybe I should tell him. We’re only eating humans. And it’s no different than what other people do, in other places. We are healers. We aren’t killers. We are the same as muti medicine men.

  Vegan

  Chapter Eleven

  Blessed are ye that weep now:

  For ye shall laugh.

  I STAND IN THE TINY butchering barn wondering how many more times I’ll need to use this place to get Rancher what he needs. Just last night, he asked me if I thought we should take the roof off and throw in solar paneling. He’s thinking of making it into a greenhouse for seedlings or even just a place to grow the herbs we use for seasoning.

  It pains me not to be able to encourage him. For now, that’s just not possible. I’ve blamed it on money, which isn’t a lie. We don’t have any. But at any other time, I’d love his plan. While the sanctuary is up and running just fine, it doesn’t exactly pay the bills.

  We charge $5 a person for families and groups from schools to come in and tour the place. In the chicken and duck pens, which is how this all began with Lucy, kids pay ten cents for an ice cream cone filled with grain we’d feed the animals anyway. They can walk in, feed them, touch them, and pet them.

  I’m not sure I like that. I know I wouldn’t want to be petted. But you pick your battles. Eventually, when we have our roots in deeper with the sanctuary, we will close down the petting gates and make the property more of a walk-through type place. Walking paths, greenery, that kind of thing. Just people who want to co-exist with the animals, rather than gawking at them. I think we can get there. Baby steps, I guess.

  Tonight’s plan is to work on a formal business plan. We’ve tried before and got down enough to shut the grant writers up. Funding has been trickling in slowly, but now we need to nail down the future of the sanctuary more than ever. Everything feels too uncertain. I don’t like it.

  Just last week, we had three calls for dairy bulls of no use to anyone. We agreed to take them on, of course, but feeding them in the best of hay seasons is quite expensive at $4 a bale.

  We’ve considered putting down a bid on property abutting the neighbor’s yard. I wish I could tell Rancher that Ginny’s property will be available soon. For now, I can at least keep it in the back of my mind.

  My eye catches on a dark brown spot in the corner of the barn by the cutting block. I thought I’d mopped it up. I can’t be sure if it’s leftovers from the pigs or Ginny. As much as it hurts, I hope it’s the first. A missing person’s report has gone out on her and police have been around her yard too much for comfort. So far, though, we haven’t had much more than general inquiries as to her daily habits and routines.

  I think, when they see Rancher open the door slowly and pale from his disease, they think nothing of us. We don’t exactly look like prime candidates to commit murder. I mean, Christ, everyone knows the crazy people at the end of Cypress Drive don’t eat meat. They call us freaking tree huggers.

  Vegan

  Chapter Twelve

  Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.

  RANCHER AND I HAVEN’T exactly advertised his illness. People have enough to talk about when our names come up with the sanctuary. But people know. Sue Anderson called this morning to inform me that the local union is kicking us out. We won’t be refunded on our yearly dues. I told her it was fine. It’s not great publicity for an animal advocacy sanctuary to be a card-holding member of a slaughterhouse group anyway. Still, it never fails to surprise me how human beings can be. One day, you’re invited to the square dance or bingo night. The next, you get the door slammed in your face simply because you refuse to follow the herd’s rules. It’s one of those unspoken rules, I guess: You unquestioningly do what you are told. I wonder what Sue would do if shit was happening with Murray. Whatever.

  I hadn’t been off the phone for three minutes before Marcy Sullivan calls me too with the same news.

  I SIT ALONE AT A TABLE covered in fliers on animal rights. The local animal rights association in Katy, Texas loaded me up with anything I might need. I wish Rancher would hurry up. He’s been gone nearly an hour. Sitting alone at a market downtown is not my idea of a good time—animal rights or not. He went to check out two pulling bulls known as the biggest in the state. Working animals, he says, are the coolest.

  I wonder what the animals think of that. Part of me thinks he may have a point. For working steer, life has purpose. At the same time, I think, if anyone asked, they’d rather be out in the wild. You take what you can get, I guess, which is pretty similar to me sitting here in 90 degree heat as people I once thought of as friends and neighbors walk by glaring.

  Not everyone is evil. They don’t all hate me on sight just because I believe in something different than they. It’s not like the entire town had something to do with the pig head on the stake outside our home. Some are more kind; they at least fake it. They stop in front of the table, pick up fliers and look at me with pity. I can’t be sure if it’s about my husband being sick or the fact that I don’t eat meat. The things they say and ask—as if I am a creature from another planet. “You only eat grass?” “Don’t you get hungry?” “What about bacon? How can anyone live without eating bacon?”

  There are times when I want to invite them to the barn and show them the sprays of pig blood all over the walls. There are other times when I want to tell them about Max and Moe—two friendly piglets I was too cowardly to stop from being killed. Abraham had begged me, telling me Moe was his friend. I hadn’t listened. My concern was getting them to school on time. I try to remind myself that I was once selfish with animals too. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

  They nod their heads and act interested. But I’m not stupid. I know they will leave and wait until Sunday of all days; they will head to church, thank the lord for all his grace, and then they will congregate in the basement whispering about the tree hugging grass eaters at the end of Cypress. They won’t ask where we are. Instead, the rumors will fly about how Rancher’s diet is what’s gone wrong. They’ll blame me, the crazy wife, for the illness they know nothing about. It’ll be my fault because, if I loved him more, I’d feed him back to health. If they only knew.

  Church: It’s another place we haven’t been for a while for obvious reasons. I doubt we are welcome there either. Oh well. Another loss. Animals have no souls.

 
“Well, speak of the devil,” the familiar voice of Murray Anderson chuckles in a deep bellow. “Sue and I were just talking about ya’ll,” he says.

  “Hey Murray, how ya’ll been?”

  “Good. Good. Busy with the herd. I suppose you been busy too. Whatcha got here?”

  I hold up a flier he’ll probably use as kindling for the next square dance bonfire if Sue doesn’t’ get to it first.

  “Just information. Trying to get the word out about the sanctuary,” I smile.

  “Good. Good.”

  I don’t know whether or not to believe him. At least he has the courtesy to act interested.

  He shakes his head, squinting at the flier. “I dunno how you had it in ya to convince him. Never thought I’d see it,” he says. “Must be one good woman. Ain’t no way Sue could pull me outta that union. Let me get kicked out either.”

  I smile. One thing I’ve always liked about Murray is that there aren’t guessing games with him. You either ask him, or he will tell you straight himself. Murray Anderson isn’t a bullshitter.

  “It took some work. It wasn’t so easy,” I say, laughing.

  I don’t tell him about Lucy or how Rancher let her live in the house. I say nothing about the night I caught him sleeping with her on the couch and how he has confessed to me that he’s worried about all the blood on his hands when it’s time to meet his maker.

  Murray doesn’t need to know that Rancher has gone soft. It’s not the kind of soft he’d understand. Murray Anderson is a lifetime rancher. To him, animals are property. In his world, humans are the superior species and animals are only put here for our survival. Murray is one who sits in church in the front row and nods his head when the preacher reminds us to do unto others and that human beings are God’s creatures. In many ways, it’s not entirely his fault.