Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“We just wanted to help you out,” the bearded man said. “If you’re going to be a bitch about it, we can just go somewhere else.”

Don Henley had booked Jamie for the morning shift on a Sunday. The store was cleanest in the morning, before the blood worked its way into the grout between the tiles and the dust from the bone saw filled the air with pink fluff.

“Just a long night,” Jamie said. “You want trim from the cans, or what?”

The other beard in the sunglasses nodded.

“I guess I can wrap it up for you, or we can—”

“We brought a bucket, we’ll just slop it in there,” the first beard said. “We know Don. Knew his brother too. Place looks like it’s gone to shit since he died. You guys really need to step your game up a bit. Chad always ran it like a pro. A real pro.”

“Got that right,” said the other beard.

“You feed this to the dogs?” Jamie asked.

Don had inherited the place from his brother after the older Henley forgot to attach his seatbelt on a rollercoaster in Gurnee, Illinois. Chad Henley had hit the ground at an advanced speed, fast enough to push his organs outside his body.

“A dog gets out of hand if you spoil it like that,” the one beard said. “Can’t teach it nothing. All it’ll do is get gut rot. You ever eat a whole roast and then just sit on your ass all day?”

Henley only hired Jamie after he was fired from the warehouse. After Harry “Colon” Collins caught him with Alisha in the bathroom, their faces pressed together and their voices muffled in each other’s mouths. Collins stood in the doorway and watched the bathroom stall shake violently, the sound of their breathing competing with the air conditioner. Hairy Colon. Jamie and Brock wrote it on everything. Some of the stores complained about drawings on their boxes, all of them signed Hairy Colon. Fuzzy asses and stick men bending over in front of one another. Harry found it on permission slips and doctor’s notes, and on the underside of his desk when he had to climb under there to grab a pen. Jamie was gone before the stall door opened.

“You should see the dog we got now,” the first beard said. “We call him Artax. Size of a horse, big white thing. Turkish or some shit. Got him from a farmer. Got nailed by a car the other day — just totally destroyed its headlight, but he lived. One eye is all black now, but he’ll get over it. You never want a dog that is taller than you when it’s on its hind legs.”

“You guys use the trim yourselves, then?” Jamie said.

“Nah, man. You gotta use it for bears.”

“Like…to kill?” Jamie said, drumming his thumbs on the counter to match the throbbing sensation inside his skull.

“Kill or catch. What you do is lay it out there for the bear and then—”

“You put it around your campsite,” the second beard interrupted.

“Am I telling the story or are you? And take off the fucking sunglasses. You’re inside. You aren’t blind,” the first bearded man said. “This is why I don’t wear sunglasses when I’m with you, because then we look like a couple of—”

“The bears, you were talking about?” Jamie yawned.

“Bears love to eat early. And they’ll eat any of this shit. Garbage, especially.”

“Just pass me the buckets. I’ll go in the back,” Jamie said. “You want the beef or the pork or what? I’m sure we got all kinds of shit back there.”

“We’ll go with the beef,” the beards said in unison. An older, sadder, ZZ Top.

“No pork? Got kosher bears now?” Jamie said.

“You talk more than Don does. This is why we miss his fucking brother,” the one beard said. “You come in and say I want three shanks, a butt, and a bucket of beef navel, and what does Chad do? He goes and grabs your shit, piles it all neatly in a box for you, asks for the cash, rings up the register, and watches you walk out the fucking door. He knew how to handle his customers. Customers got the word custom in it you see, so customate—”

The one in the sunglasses yawned out the right word. “Customize.”

“Shut the hell up,” he said. “But yeah, customize yourself to each customer.”

“Does it really matter, though?” Jamie said. “I thought bears would eat garbage.”

Jamie was tired. Make these two ZZ Top twins work for their beef trim. He wanted to study them — the scars on their hands and the tattoos riding up under the collars of their jackets. Their jeans had holes in the knees, brown and oily in places. No scent of detergent or deodorant.

“They’ll eat your ass and then the garbage you left behind the night before. Garbage and rotten meat, top of the menu for bears, and you got little Johnny Appleseed on the news telling me not to shoot it in the face?” the one said. Jamie couldn’t tell them apart anymore. “What happens when his kids are playing in the backyard and that thing just decides it’s hungry? If you go out in the woods today…you know that song? There won’t be no teddy bears. Just monsters. Furry, fast, tree-climbing buggers who can tear your arm off and eat it right in front of you.”

“Just give me a few seconds,” Jamie said. “I’ll get this set up for you guys, no charge. You’re doin’ me a favor. Getting rid of my garbage.”

Jamie grabbed the two buckets and headed back into the cutting room. Only four of the bone cans were lined up in the corner, their black lids firmly closed. One of them must have been pushed outside into the snow. Maybe to get rid of the smell. The meat would be frozen if the night was cold enough. Jamie couldn’t re member if last night had been cold or not, only that there was snow and that he’d run over someone’s bicycle, no, someone’s lion. One of the two. He’d been running over too many things. He could still feel it in his kneecaps.

He was all out of orange pills.

Jamie went through the cans methodically. Most were filled with stock that had gone bad — guts and entrails and chicken kidneys. The other cans were mainly full of blood and a few bits of yellowed pork. Some of the salted back fat had gone off code too and floated like icebergs around the surface. Jamie popped the receiving door open. A couple crows hopped away from the door as Jamie walked out into the melting snow and opened the bone can.

The face looking back at him was shriveled. It didn’t smile or blink and its toenails were far too long — a man should never let his toenails get so long. That was the first thing Jamie thought. The second had something to do with a body in one of his bone cans. Arms and legs and everything. He closed the lid slowly and shooed the crows away. The eyes didn’t follow him as he closed it. They were dead. They didn’t blink or move or say hello. Neither did the lion’s. The man’s eyes were hazel, they had gold flecks in them and they were dead, rotting somewhere on a cellular level, decomposing in real time. Maybe they weren’t here for trim after all. Maybe a pickup instead, something he never should have gotten into. Something Don forgot to tell him about. Jamie closed the door behind him and went back inside. His hands shook the buckets. The crows hopped back onto the dumpster when the door shut.

“Now a lot of it is just trim from steaks and a few whole eyes we cleaned up the other day. I hope that works for you two,” Jamie said. The one in the sunglasses was napping on the floor.

“Took you long enough.”

“Only the best for guys who knew the big man,” Jamie said.

“Man, if you really knew him, you’d know you’re always supposed to call him Chad,” the bearded man said. “Guy was a Nazi about that shit.”

“You don’t need anything else from here, I mean, you aren’t picking anything up for anyone?” Jamie asked. A new sweat broke out on his brow. “I can check for you in case.”