The Convalescent

  I tried to stand up. “Really,” I gestured. “I’m fine,” but Dr. Monica pushed me back. She took the oxygen container from Mrs. Himmel and began strapping on the mask. I smiled up at her, grateful, and then looked at the receptionist, leaning on the doorjamb, her arms folded over her swollen, domesticated bosom—

  “Faker,” she mouthed.

  It’s pouring out. Only one customer has come to the meat bus. I’m about to roll up the awning and pack it in when someone pulls up in a rusty sedan and parks at the edge of the field. It’s a housewife. She’s been to the meat bus before, but she only comes when no one else is around. She crosses the wet grasses in the rain, dragging two pallid-looking boys behind her. They’re soaked, and cling to her arms and legs as though someone is about to take them away from her. When she reaches my lawnchair, she unfolds a wet five-dollar bill from her purse and gives me a tired look. “What’ll this get me?” she says.

  Up close, her cheeks are heavy, laced with white pimples. Her hair is wrapped in a kerchief in the exact manner that Janka used to wear her own kerchief, cinched tight at the neck. I motion for the boys to stand under the awning, out of the rain, and then hustle inside the bus. I reach underneath a seat for the cardboard box holding the Carly Simon cassette tape, load it up with hamburger, four steaks, and two pork chops, and then lower it down from the window.

  The housewife takes the box. “That’s too much,” she says. “The Big M would charge me sixty dollars for all that.”

  For second I think she might refuse it, but the boys grip her tight— She lifts up the bill, limp as a leaf. I take it, and she does not thank me.

  Which is fine.

  When things do not belong to you, it is so easy to give them away.

  But then the woman looks into the box again. “Boys, go back to the car,” she says. They shuffle off across the wet field obediently. The woman reaches in and holds up the Carly Simon. “Cain’t eat this,” she says, and hands me the tape. Then she holds up one of the domes of hamburger. Squeezed into the far right corner is a bright red label: BIG M.

  I accidentally left it on.

  The housewife steps out from under the awning, into the rain. She gives me an angry, bracing look. “Why don’t a butcher cut his own meat,” she says.

  There happens to be a very specific reason why.

  A few hundred years ago, on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the Dodo bird had lost its ability to fly. It had lived undisturbed on the island for so long, eating the fruit that fell from the fruit trees, that there was simply no need. So when a Dutch penal colony invaded the island, bringing rats, pigs, and monkeys along with the convicts, the flightless Dodo was the first to go. On November 22, 1681, at 12:29 p.m., the last of the Dodo, sick and alone, lowered its curved beak, coughed pitifully, and then expired.

  Go east to the United States, all the way to the eastern seaboard, and over to Martha’s Vineyard. On November 22, 1932, the last remaining heath hen, a sickly looking, wood-colored bird that resembled the prairie chicken, stood on the beach at Aquinnas, the wind ruffling his feathers. He was looking for his friends, but there were no friends left. At 12:29 p.m., he stared out at the great blue expanse of ocean.

  “Gaw,” he said, morosely, and then fell over.

  Also on November 22, at 12:29 p.m., a motorcade turned the corner of Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, making an easy left-hand turn past a school-book depository. Seconds later, some other bloodsuckers winked at each other, cocked their rifles, and took aim at the motorcade. It was 1963.

  That was another kind of extinction.

  And then there’s the boy. The skinny, obeisant boy. The apodictic age of ten. The morning of November 22, 1985, Ján enters his room and pulls him up from the cot with one arm. “Go get that thing you write on,” he says, and hiccups.

  János Pfliegman has decided that it’s time to begin educating his son in the ways of meat. He brings the boy out to the barn, where he’s lined up pictures on the outside wall, one for each of the animals: Cow, Sheep, Pig. Each picture is covered in lines that map the bodies into trapezoids of standard cuts of meat. The boy is supposed to be homeschooled. There was once even rumor of a social worker, but the social worker never came. At her own desultory, apathetic whim, Janka shows him letters and numbers, and every year she fills out a form for the school. She licks the envelope and mails it. “You’d get killed over there,” she tells him, as though school is a distant, foreign war.

  This morning Ján points to the butchering pictures and explains each of the trapezoids in long and slow syllables, occasionally tripping over the Hungarian like a crack in the sidewalk. He starts with the cow, gesturing to all of its parts, stern to bow: “This is the Round,” he says, “and this is the Hind, Shank, Rump, Loin, Short Loin, Flank, Rib, Plate, and Brisket.” He hiccups and points at the pig. “In the disznó, it’s the Ham, Fat Back, Loin, Szalonna, Ribs, Plate, Boston Butt, Picnic, Jowl, and Foot.” He gestures coolly to the lamb. “Now you.”

  The boy picks up his writing tablet. János watches him. His eyes squint. His face looks amused, but there is always the possibility for anger. The boy’s throat feels tight; he can barely breathe for fear of getting it wrong. He may as well be in a war, he thinks, and holds the pen steady. He writes Leg, and then Rump, Loin, Rib, Breast, Shoulder, Shank.

  Ján checks his work. He’s pleased. He even smiles a little. “That’s good. That’s right,” he says, and kicks opens the door to the barn.

  János Pfliegman sells his meat out of a small shop on Back Lick Road near the Queeconococheecook River—very near, in fact, to the field where I live now. The shop is a fragile mish-mash of boards and nails. Like a house made from a deck of cards, it is purely for display, and one month before János dies in a horrible car accident, the river will flood and drown it. The Queeconococheecook is a beautiful force, the lifepulse in this neck of Virginia, and wide masses of land will drown in the deluge. People will lose whole farms. Without Grandfather Ákos’s assistance, the flimsy meat shop is Ján and Janka’s only means of income, but the Queeconococheecook does not care about means of income; at the first mild pressure, the shop will collapse. The water will lift it up and deposit it in several incongruent pieces a few furlongs down the river, erasing any memory of their first and only commercial venture.

  The shop is where the selling happens, but all the butchering, the beef/lamb/pork-chopping, always happens in the barn. Half of the barn is a regular, barn-like barn with splintery wooden rafters. Sheets of sunlight slide in through the cracks, and Ján keeps the pigs, cows, and sheep in this half. Today, using easy language and a gentle hand, Ján selects one of the pigs from its pen. He walks it though a narrow linking passageway which leads from the pens into a separate area. This part of the barn is floored with a peeling, floral linoleum. Iridescent track lighting hangs above in long, tragic bulbs. It zuzz es randomly. In the corner is a white box-shaped unit. Sensing that this barn-place is something very different than the other barn-place, the pig kicks its hooves outward and bucks up and screeches. The screeches are loud, as loud as the turkeys that roam the Virginia shrubbery in molting packs, but Ján says no one hears it. “Soundproofing,” he says, and raps his knuckle against a wall of the white box. He assures the boy that the animal feels nothing. He fingers the metal knobs. “They’re placed into the squeeze,” he explains. “The squeeze holds them tight, forcing them to walk into the center of the white box. Cain’t move that way,” he says.

  The boy stares at the white box. It looks like a refrigerator, turned on its side.

  Is that a refrigerator? he writes.

  “Carbon dioxide unit,” says Ján. He turns the dial and flicks a switch and the large pig ambles into the box. From somewhere around the back, a generator kicks in. Vents start running. They only have to wait forty-five seconds.

  Ján lifts the heavy lid.

  Half of a pink tongue lolls at the chin, but the rest of it, the head and feet, the belly-mound, look normal. It looks lik
e it’s sleeping. On its face, a chilling, sordid grin. Ján reaches in, picks up the carcass, and holds it in his arms like firewood. “Start draining immediately,” he says. “Right now the meat still has élet, the life, in it. Are you with me?”

  The boy nods.

  Ján places the carcass on the chopping block, then moves to the back corner, where a tall, three-legged structure nearly ten feet high is leaning. It looks like a gigantic tripod. The skeleton of a teepee. The legs are made of a creamy, pinking wood. Wood the color of white people. Nailed onto one of the legs is a handle and a reel. A thick strong wire runs up to the peak over which hangs a large and frightening hook.

  “This,” he says, “is the real secret. It’s called a Coat Rack. You can’t buy them in the United States. Clint Eastwood has one.”

  János Pfliegman beams at the prospect of sharing something with Clint Eastwood.

  “You hook him to the wean, then crank the winch,” he says, spinning the reel and handle. “You hang him on the Coat Rack, then you stick him. Pigs drain easier that way.”

  Ján removes his expensive Italian loafers. He brings out two pairs of rubber boots. The boy slides his feet in and the stale boot-air puffs out. His father goes back to the butcher block, and with both hands he carries the pig, upside-down, to the Coat Rack. The ears flop like fins over its eyes, covering the whole face except for the rubbery, can-shaped snout. The boy watches as his father cinches a rope around the feet, and hangs the pig from the hook. The little legs stick outward, straight as sticks. Upside-down, the convex belly spins.

  “Crank him up,” János says.

  The boy grasps the winch and turns the handle. The body slowly rises. His father hands him a six-inch knife.

  “Now stick him.”

  The boy closes his eyes and, with a lame thrust, he sticks the pig. Immediately the barn is filled with the rich odor of overripe fruit. He feels slightly nauseous and does not want to open his eyes. When he does, he sees blood spurting from the cut, ebbing in thick intervals.

  “Thickening,” his father says. “Another benefit of the carbon dioxide. You don’t want blood going all over the place. Blood’s oily. Stains. Hard to clean. This way it all lands on the dropcloth.”

  Ján unhooks the carcass and carries it back to the butcher block next to the white box. He gives the boy an apron and a small knife, looking at him with excitement, if not, the boy thinks, a little pride. “Hold on to that tool,” he says. “Get used to the feel of it. I’ll do most of the cutting today, and watch me do it. You can practice in a minute. I’ll get you started on a smaller cut.”

  The boy watches his father cut the meat, explaining which meat-parts are which. He watches his father’s fingers dance briskly around the meat and bone, making the job look easy. His hands fly over the animal quick and neat, like he was put on earth to do it. But as he works, the boy grows tired, so he glances over at the white box. The cold metal. He looks back at his father hunched over the meat, working the offal, and then with both hands, he lifts the heavy lid to find another life extinct.

  One of Janka’s glass jars, full of cloudy, pickled water, is tucked into the far corner. The masking tape long ago faded, but the boy leans in and reads the label: Hal. (Fish.) He looks closer at the jar and makes out something that looks like a fish floating heavily inside it. The body of the fish is narrow, small and blue, with a larger head. The skin, furried from the pickling, seems to hover around its own body. The boy wonders what it’s doing there; why Ján keeps it in the white box. He lifts the lid all the way up and light shines in. He notices a face: thin openings of what look like mouth and nose. Two large round eyes, gray in the water. The boy knows that the hal is dead, but there is also something about it that is living. He stares at the eyes and swallows nothing down his throat. He tries to figure out how to feel. He wants to know why the fish is there, but he also knows that looking at the fish makes him sick, so instead he looks at János Pfliegman, at his father’s hands flipping the meat parts—tossing the leaf fat, the cracklings—and then he turns and vomits all over the peeling, floral linoleum.

  “Useless!” Ján yells. “Szanálmas idióta! Close that lid and get over here.” He tosses a piece of meat on the block. “You cut the meat now.”

  A lump grows in the boy’s throat. He coughs, but the coughing does not relieve it; it feels like his lumpy head, and then he feels horribly lumpy everywhere. He does not know which is worse, to cry or be sick. He bites his cheeks.

  “Cut it!” his father shouts, and whacks him on the head with a fist.

  The boy doesn’t move.

  So Ján jumps over and forces the knife into his hand. He squeezes, hard.

  The boy looks at the white of his father’s hands, wrestling, and then with his little teeth, teeth as sharp as lemon seeds, he bites them. He runs out of the barn, into the horsefields. He stays away for two days, hiding in the long grasses. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t drink. Which is fine. As long as he never has to cut another piece of meat again.

  (Which, as it turns out, he doesn’t have to.)

  When he returns to the farmhouse early on the third morning, the kitchen light is on. He peeks in the window, and sees both of them inside. They are sitting hunched over the table by the stove, not moving or speaking or eating. They do not look up when he walks in.

  “Where you been,” Ján says.

  The boy reaches behind his back and holds up Grandfather ákos’s violin.

  His father begins laughing. It is a wild laugh. Unleashed. He bolts from the table and runs out to the front porch, where the laughing turns to violent sobs—

  The boy looks at his mother, her own eyes dry as bones.

  “It’s too late,” Janka says. “He’s dead.”

  XVI

  TROUBLE IN PARADISE

  Tonight, after all the meat has been sold, I settle into my Reading Center, put on the Bach cassette, and the fugues begin trickling. It’s cold, with a soft, unremarkable rain outside, but the inside of the bus is snug. Mrs. Kipner hops out of his tin can and lands on my bed. His bad eye is still white and low, but the good eye is healthy as ever, black and shining. The rest of his body is healthier too: the white spots have almost completely vanished, and he’s slimmed down considerably. Now he hops in and out of the tin can with no trouble at all.

  I unwrap an Evermore and leisurely pick up Your First Hamster. The small, apricot-colored hamster looks at me in a mischievous manner.

  “Oh you,” I want to say.

  It’s a cozy scene, everything as it should be, until a fat drop of water splashes onto my blanket. I look up.

  The diamond-shaped crack in the ceiling has gotten bigger. I’m certain of it. It looks like the entire panel needs to be patched, if not replaced. Come fall, I’m thinking of redecorating. Nothing like the busses in This Bus Is Your Home, with the chrome wheels, fresh paint, full-size beds, and abundant electronic devices, but I can imagine a few small but meaningful improvements: perhaps a new burner for the stove, a lamp for my Reading Center. I look at the corrugated rubber flooring and wonder if I could get away with a primal sort of carpeting—

  Then two headlights appear across the field.

  Cars very rarely drive on Back Lick Road at night, so I turn off the lightbulb and the tape-radio, and climb on top of one of the seats. I peer out the window. The car pulls itself slowly along the road, crunching pebbles with its enormous tires, shuddering to a stop at the edge of my field. Wide beams illuminate the grasses. Moths hurtle toward the lights as though drugged. Three men spill out, hoisting a fresh sign out of the backseat.

  They produce mallets.

  When they’ve finished pounding the sign, I think they’re about to get back in and drive off like usual, but instead they turn toward the bus and start crossing the field. The headlights throw long shadows and their enormous chins swell. They’re all wearing the same dark suits and carry important-looking manila folders in their hands. They curse in the distance. Their trousers are soaking wet, the
y complain, from all the rain.

  I crouch down at the back of the bus.

  “Hsss,” rattles Mrs. Kipner.

  Seconds later, they bang on the door that isn’t really a door. It doesn’t lock, but you’ve got to pull the lever from the driver’s seat to make it open. The Subdivisionists don’t know this.

  “Mr. Pfliegman! May we speak with you?”

  “Jesus, this is creepy,” another whispers.

  “Who lives like this?”

  If only other Pfliegmans were here. Hair and teeth falling out, eyes squinting. They would quietly encircle these men. They would kidnap them and drag them behind the bus and, axes raised—

  “Mr. Pfliegman, we have a document for you, and we think you should read it.”

  Something is wedged beneath the door of the bus.

  I hold on to the floor, cold and wet, with my palms. Next to me are two cardboard boxes, one of which contains hundreds of crumpled up, gum-size Big M labels. The other contains the Carly Simon cassette tape. The picture on the tape is a woman with long blond hair that hangs away from her face as if freshly blown. A large, terrifying mouth. Looking at her, a sharp pain appears on one side of my abdomen. My lungs compress and my throat scratches and it’s everything I can do to keep from coughing.

  Helpless, I emit a suffocated sound:

  “.”

  The Subdivisionists don’t notice. I could be a squirrel, perhaps. A chipmunk. I could be a dying bird.

  “It has to do with your bus, Mr. Pfliegman,” one of them says. “We know you’re in here. We really think you should speak with us.”

  “Before this becomes a matter for the authorities,” says another.