Уинстон Грум - Alabama Noir

Romy was still at their table when a muddied Bubba lumbered into the BBQ House, one arm behind his back.

“I was starting to think you found another frien—”

“I need your help,” he told her. “I lost something. Probably won’t change the outcome even if we find it, but I’m apologizing in advance if we don’t. I brought you flowers.”

He handed her a bouquet of landscaper flags.

West Jefferson County

Even over the deer’s intestines, Jimbo could smell her: green apple shampoo and Juicy Fruit. He felt himself harden. All those careful habits formed over the years like flossing every morning, keeping his knives on the magnet when not in use, washing with bleach between each kill, and doubling his condoms were suddenly in danger. Cassie DeBardelaiwin, he sensed, was that kind of girl.

Jimbo did, however, manage to decline her order. Some things could not be compromised. It didn’t matter if she wanted the Christmas sausage for her family’s millworkers or the queen of England, Jimbo Sutt did not process any animal that hadn’t been immediately field dressed and properly iced. No matter the season, Alabama heat advantages the maggots. Besides, Jimbo rarely took wild hogs because pork could be bought by the pound down at the Piggly Wiggly.

DeBardelaiwins weren’t used to hearing no, but Jimbo held firm.

“You see that sign out front? It says Custom Meats. Not spoiled. Not cheap. Custom. I don’t give customers anything I wouldn’t eat myself.”

Satisfied he’d made himself clear, he went back to finish the buck that had just been brought in. It was a beast of a specimen. Even with most of the blood drained out, it still felt warm to the touch. Large bucks required extra care around the neck, otherwise you could wind up having to quilt the hide together on the mount. Nothing ruined a trophy like patched trim. As a processor, he’d developed a reputation for the care he took, a trait seldom cultivated in an area now forced to survive through the short-sighted methods of strip-mining. Lately, though, Jimbo was achieving some renown for his white-tail testicle blend he sold in Mason jars that was said to be as potent as those little blue pills.

In the shop, Jimbo dressed and bled deer on a large slab of stainless steel surrounded by a drain his brother called The Moat and built right into the concrete floor. His new knife — the Jackal, according to the catalog from Zac Brown’s metal shop — had cost a small fortune, and the verdict was still out whether it was worth it. Before long it would feel like an old friend, but now, as he wrapped his fingers around the carved handle, it felt stiff and more than a little strange. Having a girl standing around in the shop also felt strange, but oddly tolerable, as long as she didn’t start up about the sausage again.

The scale read 212 pounds. This was what he called a jackpot buck because it would yield a twelve-point trophy plus a freezer full of quality venison. The girl gave no sign of leaving, so he steadied himself and tugged at the incision to widen it.

“You really set on giving out Christmas sausage?” he asked, tossing the question over his shoulder, wondering for the first time if she was jailbait.

She shrugged.

“Then I suggest Conecuh. It makes pretty good eating.”

“That so?” Cassie said.

Jimbo was imagining what she wore under her skirt. It was made of denim — the same color as her eyes — and had a zipper down the front. He didn’t respond to her question, if that’s what it was, nor did he notice the way her lips curled or how she strutted right up to him until she stopped with her crotch at his face.

“So what do you eat,” she asked, “besides meat?”

Jimbo pretended not to hear. He pretended to be engrossed in his work. He pretended not to wonder if her pubic hair also smelled like green apples. He pretended not to feel the jolt of electricity heating him up. Was she still trying to get him to take the hogs or was this something else? Was it some kind of game? Jimbo didn’t know chess but he’d played poker. He lifted the buck’s tail, revealing a thick stripe of white with a puckered hole of purplish skin in the center. He held the tail out of the way and suspended the Jackal’s serrated blade just above the anus. He let the overhead light bounce off the metal and reflect onto Cassie’s face. “It’s made from old sawmill blades.”

This was her chance to leave if she wanted to, before things got messy.

Cassie did not move.

Jimbo plunged the steel teeth about an inch deep and cut a circle around the anus. This was the point when most people left, or at least looked away. Cassie took a step back, but it was to get a better view. Jimbo pulled the rectum out a couple inches and closed it off with a rubber band. He reached into the belly — carefully, but firmly, so as not to puncture or damage anything — and pulled out the entrails with the intact rectum, like a magician with a scarf. Bowel leakage, like maggots, always ruins meat. With two fingers on either side of the blade, Jimbo reached inside, toward the deer’s throat, and threaded the lungs out from between the ribs, reading the bones like braille as he went. Even a single bump could signal TB. And with one case already reported this season by Fish and Wildlife, you couldn’t be too careful.

Cassie’d begun to breathe hard, but her color looked good. If she hadn’t fainted yet, he guessed she wasn’t going to.

“What’s next?” she asked.

Jimbo stood up and a couple strands of blood or something stuck to his forearm. Color bloomed across her cheeks — not the blush of embarrassment but the flush that comes from standing close to a fire. In heels, she’d be taller than him.

“Ice. Go roll that cooler over here,” he said. “It’s full.”

When she reached the Igloo, she hesitated and made sure he was watching, then she straddled the handle, slowly lifting it up until it disappeared beneath her skirt. Jimbo wasn’t sure whether to keep watching. She locked eyes and stared squarely at him, like she was lining up invisible crosshairs. It was impossible, at that moment, to tell who had whom in their sights. That her panties dropped to the floor without being touched or tugged didn’t strike Jimbo as anything other than good fortune.

“Maybe I need to cool off,” she said, and tossed her panties into the ice chest.

Her grin beat all he’d ever seen. And he’d seen his share of women. Having to raise his brother took certain sacrifices but it hadn’t turned him into a monk. Rather than wasting a whole evening on the rigamarole of dating, he preferred to buy off a menu, always glad they charged by the hour and not by the pound.

Cassie gave her hips a slow, final swivel, before she rolled the chest over to Jimbo. As she opened the lid, she bent over farther than Jimbo thought humanly possible and spread her legs. At that moment, it was Jimbo who was in danger of fainting. If Cassie’d asked him to reconsider making sausage for DeBardelaiwin Steel right then, he might have said yes.

The Jackal still lay beside the entrails. Not only did he neglect to put it up, he also didn’t wash his hands before he handled the ice. Contamination was the last thing on his mind, fear having vanished from his regular radar. In one seemingly fluid motion, Jimbo crammed the cavity full of ice and was done. It was the fastest he’d ever packed a deer, and probably the only time in the history of West Jefferson County that lingerie and ice had been thusly juxtaposed.

Jimbo hadn’t expected to see Cassie again. The DeBardelaiwins lived over the mountain. They did not associate with the likes of the Sutts. So when she kept coming back, he chalked it up to one of several flukes in a fluke-filled season: the albino doe with horns that Jimbo spotted on the way back from Medical West, where his brother Darrell took his regular treatments; the two-headed fawn found behind the sheriff’s woodpile; and Darrell graduating to the group home.