Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

Bert brought his short-handled sledgehammer to the party and smashed at the worms. Every blow sent a moist cloud of blood into the air. The sounds of harsh grunts, wet thwacks , and the idling chain-saw echoed through the barn. I kept hacking away at the worms and the meat, bringing my cleaver down on anything that moved. Junior had taken to holding the chainsaw above his head and jumping on the worms with both feet.

Finally, after several frantic minutes of hacking, stomping, and pounding, it was over. I sucked in great ragged breaths while scanning the finely chopped meat in front of me for any signs of life. I couldn’t tell where the chunks of worms ended and the chunks of intestines began.

“C’mon you little fuckin’ wrigglers,” Bert said in a high, strangled voice and brought his hammer down at random. His pounding rhythm faltered, slowed, and stopped. Junior shut the saw off and in the sudden silence I could hear only the whispering rain hitting the tin roof. Junior nudged the dangling carcass with the tip of the chainsaw, making the steer sway slightly. Nothing else, no other worms, came out of the long, jagged slit. He shoved the steer again. Still nothing.

“See? See?” I asked, still breathing fast. “I told you there was something down there in that pit. I told you.”

Junior ignored me and gingerly pushed the sharp, blood-soaked toe of his cowboy boot through the crushed intestines. “Huh,” he said finally. It wasn’t a question, or even an acknowledgment of me.

“I told you,” I repeated.

“Shut up,” Junior said tiredly, and hawked a thick, wet ball of chewing tobacco into the tub. It didn’t bother the flies much. He dropped the chainsaw into the meat on the table and smoothed out his pompadour with both hands.

I turned my blade sideways, so it was parallel to the surface of the table, and gently slid the edge under a worm. It was dead, but wasn’t as severely sliced and diced as some of the other worms nearby. This one had only been cut in half. I eased the flat cleaver under the worm’s head but couldn’t find the other half. The elastic barbels had shrunk to short nubs in death.

“What are these things?” I asked, more to myself than expecting any answer from the Sawyer brothers.

Junior stared hard at me for a moment, like the way an amused cat might watch a mouse with a broken back struggle across the floor. “Who cares?” He shrugged. “Steer had worms. Big fucking deal.” He half snorted, half chuckled, and spit into the tub again, then squatted on his haunches. He looked me dead in the eye. “Welcome to the farm, city-boy.”

Bert cracked up, his high-pitched hyena laugh bouncing off the tin roof.

Junior smiled. “I bet you think all them hamburgers just come out of a factory someplace far away.” He snapped his fingers. “Something clean like that. Or maybe you just thought there was this magical hamburger tree out there under a sparkling rainbow somewhere. No muss, no fuss.”

I dropped my eyes to the worm and carefully rolled it back andforth on the blade. The mouth was sunk into the flesh under the head; twin rows of tiny, curved teeth came together at the back of the mouth in a V shape. I couldn’t figure out how the teeth worked. I looked back up, met Junior’s stare and said, “Yeah, but have you ever seen anything like this?” I held up the cleaver.

Junior never took his eyes off me. “Shit. I’ve seen lots of worms. Worms ain’t nothing.”

I thrust the cleaver closer to Junior’s face, pushing my luck. Then I flashed back to my biology class, trying desperately to remember when we dissected earthworms. “These things aren’t your regular parasites. These things aren’t heartworms, or blood flukes, or goddamn tapeworms, night crawlers, or … or … These things are different!”

Junior still wouldn’t look at the worm. “So what? They might be a little bigger maybe, but so what? It’s not like they’re gonna hurt anything now.” He stood suddenly, looking back to his brother.

“Hey, Bert, you remember that time you had worms? Back when you was in junior high? ’Member? Ma kept telling you, but you just wouldn’t stop playing with the dog shit. You couldn’t keep your hands out of it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember.” Bert nodded, grinning hugely in the cold glare of the bare white bulbs. Flecks of fresh blood were drying on his yellow teeth.

“So you got worms. They bother you any? I mean, did they hurt?” Junior asked.

“Nope. Can’t say they did much of anything. The only time I noticed ’em was when I got all cramped up and, boy”—Bert gave a warbling low whistle—“you shoulda seen the toilet. They were everywhere.”

I tipped the cleaver sideways, dumping the severed worm head back onto the table.

“So what happened? How’d you get rid of ‘em?” Junior asked.

“Ma took me to the vet. He gave me some pills.” Bert shrugged. “And that was it. They all came out dead.”

“Yeah, you showed me.” Junior turned back to me and grinned triumphantly.

A few quiet seconds crawled by.

“What are you gonna do with this meat?” I asked quietly, not meeting Junior’s eyes.

But Junior ignored me and asked Bert. “So it wasn’t no big deal, right? I mean, the worms didn’t affect you permanently or nothing.”

Bert thought hard for a moment, wrinkling the flaking, spotted skin on his forehead. He finally shook his head spastically, like a dog trying to shake water out of its ears. “Nope.”

Junior stepped back and kicked the steer, a solid kick that made the thousand pound carcass jump slightly. It gently swayed back and forth. “I dunno. I figure we got two choices here. We can go all pussy and act like a bunch of scared old ladies, and just feed this big bitch here to the hogs. But then …” He swept his gaze back down to me and slowly advanced across the table. “Then we don’t get paid. We don’t get nothin’. On the other hand, we just make sure we kill all these goddamn worms and we keep our mouths shut.”

I tried again. “Where’s this meat going?”

Junior turned back around and kicked the carcass again, harder this time, asking Bert, “You think there’s any more of them in here?”

I raised my voice. “Where’s this meat going?”

“Nah. I’d say we got ’em all,” Bert said.

“That’s what I figure too.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted, and slammed the cleaver down on the table. “That steer was sick! There’s something wrong with it! These worms, they—”

“Easy, Archie. Don’t forget, you’re the dog around here.”

I backed away from the table, still clutching the cleaver tightly. “Where’s that meat going?”

Junior sighed, rolled his eyes. “Okay. Okay. If I tell you, you gotta promise not to say nothin’ to nobody. If Fat Ernst found out, hell, he’d have my balls for breakfast.” He lowered his voice.

“Fat Ernst has got some deal where he supplies a little meat to this small outfit that makes cheap, generic dog food. He only does it once in a while. And only when he’s got some extra meat that he can’t sell to customers anymore, ‘cause the meat has gone past the … whaddya call it? The expiration date or something. Better than throwing it away, right?”

I wasn’t sure if I had ever seen Fat Ernst getting rid of anything that happened to age past its expiration date, but I had to admit, it did make sense. It fit Fat Ernst’s do-anything-for-a-buck attitude.

Junior continued. “He wasn’t planning on doing it again for a while, seeing how he was getting low on meat. But since he needs some quick cash, he figured it wouldn’t hurt nobody if me and Bert just picked up a dead steer from Slim. It’s not like that cheap bastard was going to use the meat or anything. So you see? Fat Ernst told us to do it so he could snag a little cash, pay for some booze and better meat and so he could pay you. That’s the only reason, I swear. But don’t tell him I told you, okay?” Junior spread his arms and shrugged.