The Old Town Butcher

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  Chuck chose to conduct the slaughter on Sunday, when the Administrators would be absent from Old Town's streets to spend the day with their families in the community's younger, healthier neighborhoods. Still, his preparations attracted attention he had not anticipated. Chuck sharpened his knife and cleaver in the middle of the small lot behind his residential cubicle as the lamb nibbled at sparse patches of grass. Perhaps it was the sound of the sharpening stone drawn across Chuck's blades, or the lamb's bleating, that drew the attention of the children who peeked from behind the white cubicles as the old butcher prepared for his purpose.

  One of the smaller, but braver children, stepped into view. "What you planning to do with those knives and that lamb, mister?"

  Chuck had hoped that those children who had gathered to spy on his preparation would have lost their interest in him and left on their own accord. He had worked slowly to give the children time to wander to another Old Town block. But the children had not drifted away from that small parcel of space behind his cubicle. The presence of an animal in their neighborhood was just too strange.

  Chuck didn't want to have to shout the children away. Cruel ailments had assigned those children residential cubicles of their own in Old Town. The children tended to be thin and pale. Cancer turned many of them bald. Weak hearts left many short of breath. Chuck knew many of those children whose ailments brought them to Old Town would not survive to return to the neighborhoods of their homes. And those who survived would face a future they did not own, a future where whatever they might grow to earn and collect would be handed over to the Administrators in order to pay for the care their radiation treatments and pacemakers accumulated.

  "Can you hear us, mister? You're not planning to kill that lamb are you? We can still see the yellow tag the petting zoo pinned on the lamb's ear."

  Chuck knew that the odds of attracting the Administrators' attention grew greater the longer he allowed the children to linger. He worried he lacked the energy to scare them away. He could not delay any longer in his slaughter. Chuck suspected the blood would be enough to scare those lingering children away.

  Satisfied that his tools held the edge he needed, Chuck grabbed the lamb by its mouth. A deft pull exposed its neck, and Chuck's practiced hands drew the knife across the bleating lamb's throat in a heartbeat. The children gasped as the blood poured from the gash and the lamb gave a short shudder. They bolted away from Chuck's cubicle as the lamb died upon the grass. Chuck sighed. Witnessing the first blood of the slaughter would make living in the Old Town no easier for those children. But Chuck had a purpose. He was trained to be a butcher; and in the end, he could rely only on the skills he knew if he hoped to hold onto any dignity as the end came to him.

  "Father?" A woman's tentative voice drifted from the cubicle behind Chuck. "What the hell is going on out there?"

  Chuck grunted. It was bad luck for his daughter, Marie, to visit him now of all times. She had not come to his residential cubicle for weeks, and so she arrived just as Chuck prepared to conduct his slaughter. He turned to greet her just as Marie walked around the corner of his cubicle to enter that small patch of land behind his box. He turned to face his daughter with red hands, and he was not surprised to see how her face pale from the sight of the lamb's blood. Daughters seldom wished their fathers to be butchers.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "What the hell are you doing?" Marie countered. "I got off my hospital shift a little early and thought I would pay my father a surprise visit. Good thing I did. What are you think you're doing with that animal? Is that a lamb? Is that a lamb from the petting zoo? What the hell, dad?"

  Chuck thought of placing his tools back into their cloth bag. He had never before showed his blades to Marie. He knew that to do so would only scare her. But the lamb's blood covered the blade of his knife now, and putting that implement back into the cloth would not bring the lamb back to life. Chuck was committed to move forward.

  "Do you realize how many laws you've just broken?" Marie stammered. "Do you know what the Administrators could do to you? Did you stop to think about how this could impact me? What were you thinking?"

  Chuck shook his head. "I'm thinking it's none of the Administrators' business."

  "Of course it's their business," Marie cried. "They house you. They care for you. And you steal an animal from the petting zoo and cut its throat behind your home."

  Chuck growled. "This white, plastic box is not my home, Marie. They have taken everything from me. But they can't take my skills. The business of the slaughter belongs to me, not to them."

  Marie rolled her eyes. "How many times do we have to go over this? When are you ever going to get an idea of how much it costs to care for people? When are you going to consider what it means to care for the sick and the old? Have you still not stopped to think about how much it will cost to care for you when the day comes when you are ill?"

  Chuck's eyes fired. "I think about it everyday, girl! Everyone in Old Town thinks about it! We give everything for the costs that will come. Nothing belongs to us anymore! What more would you have us give? I don't owe another cent!"

  Marie's eyes glimmered in tears. Her lips quivered. "I'm a fool to expect my father to show me a sliver of respect if he will not show me love. How would the hospitals and the Administrators pay my salary if they looked the other way when those who became ill failed to pay their bills? How would they pay me for all the hours I spend tending to the sick's bedside? How would they pay for my husband's salary after he sacrifices so much time to keeping all those hospital halls clean? How would we provide our family for a living if it were not for the Administrators and the hospital? How would we feed your grandchildren? Where else would could we go for work? Do you not think at all about us?"

  "I'm beyond feeling sorry for any of you," Chuck snarled.

  He had fought time and again through that argument with Marie since he had been assigned his residential cubicle in Old Town. He had lost too much time. He had slept too many nights in his crowded confines. He had stayed too long in that district reserved for the ailing and the old.

  "Maybe you could try to make your father proud. Consider a new career, Marie. Find a job that doesn't send me through the mill. A job that doesn't drain me of all of my blood so that you can feed. It's not my responsibility to sustain your livelihood. My sickness is not some crop to be harvested for paychecks and holiday bonuses."

  Marie's hands clenched. "There are no other jobs, dad! There are no factories! No store registers to stand behind! There is only the hospital and the Administrators! There is only the business of the sick and the dying! There's nothing else!"

  Chuck regarded his bloody hands. How long would the modern world draw out his suffering so that it could profit from his sickness? When would the Administrators judge him a shell emptied of commodity? When would the Administrators decide to let him pass from his discomfort? How could the Administrators know better than him when his time came to die?

  "I don't want to defend my life to you every time I visit. Look at me, dad."

  Chuck didn't flinch beneath Marie's stare.

  "I see faces like yours everyday," Marie sighed. "I shouldn't have waited so long to visit. You look terrible. How long have your hands been shaking? When did you start losing so much weight? You're foolish, but you're honest. You've never lied to me. How long have you known you were sick?"

  "I don't know for sure."

  Marie frowned. "You know. The pain is written across your face."

  "It's only a spell. Nothing that won't pass."

  "I'm coming back first thing tomorrow morning with the Administrators and a doctor," Marie continued. "You've escaped their notice for too long. I pray you haven't waited so long that we can't help you. Try to think about what's best for everyone. What good for others is also good for you, dad. Think about your grandkids. Think about how your family will support itself after you're gone."

  Chuck said nothing more
. After waiting for a response, Marie turned and stomped out of her father's residential cubicle. Chuck wondered if Marie would understand when the day arrived when she would be forced to watch the Administrators exchange her home for a clean and white cubicle. Maybe Marie would better empathize when the Administrators demanded she put down the first payment for her future sickness. Perhaps she would know when she had to watch the Administrators note all of her possessions in their small, black notebooks.

  Chuck believed she too would come to understand the motivations that had moved him to slit the throat of that bleating lamb. But for the day, Marie remained too young. She was still afforded the luxury of fooling herself into the belief that she provided a comfort to those ailing in the Old Town's blocks. For hopefully many years more, Marie might find the false pride in thinking those in the Old Town chose for themselves the medicines the Administrators forced them to swallow.

  "It won't be much longer now, little lamb," Chuck again turned his attention the working of his cleaver and knife. "It won't take very long now."