When you’re feeling a might bit hungry and rabbit food won’t pass.

When you’re needing the finest cuts of something that eats grass.

That’s when you come to The Meat Store.

 

We’ve got pork, cow, and chicken.

Pretty much anything but kitten.

Why don’t you come down to the Meat Store?

 

The Meat Store, your local butcher, the name in meat. Open 24 hours a day for your, meat, emergencies.

 

The deep bassy voice of the narrator ends with the commercial. A faint click sounds. Perhaps a mistake in editing. The Meat Store hardly has the money for a professional help, whether that be writing or editing: it isn’t a chain and never will be. The only commercial they’ve ever filmed plays on public access, late, late at night.

But within the thirty-mile radius of San Mattiu Nevada that the commercial does play, there isn’t a soul who hasn’t seen, or at least heard, about the store. The pig that sings the commercial-- standing upright on two legs and dressed in blue overalls— looks like an effect out of Hollywood.

The store’s notoriety is also boosted by the fact that they really do have some quality bacon.

###

Abraham Kerkullah’s wife Adelina loved to cook, God save this tale from the misguided Bechdel enthusiasts. There were certainly other things we could point out about her: she was a competent, albeit somewhat under achieving attorney; she had a passion for making one-foot-tall sculptures made from local hobby store clay; and she was an even tempered, stress-free woman—normally. On this day in particular, she was scared to death of spending time with Abraham’s parents.

On Abraham’s side, he knew a good thing when he saw it. Their courtship was a whirlwind resulting on him getting down on one knee six months in, with the ring he ordered still not arrived. A month later and they were married. Adaline was also scared of meeting his parents on their wedding day, but luckily for her that’s not the type of thing the bride has time for, not in any appreciable way.

In truth, they probably overdid it. She had a decent job working with a small boutique firm, he had an. . . okay job as a radiologist; not at a hospital, just a small clinic in a strip mall store front where you could get some extra tests done when the insurance company felt generous. Despite finances that would otherwise put them in the middle class, they were eight months into paying off that marriage ceremony.

The alternative was to not give Adeline everything she ever wanted which was pretty much out of the question by their second date.

So Abraham worked late on the day before Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve Eve, if you will. He closed shop at seven. From there, he stopped by the jewelry store just as they were closing. He didn’t feel like starting an argument when they told him to come back: “Don’t worry, we’re open until two tomorrow.”

He’d fine time on his lunch break; he didn’t have a choice.

With the commute, it was 11:00 at night when he finally crossed the threshold back into the comfort of his own home. The lights glared at this hour, a waft of steam and smoke held on the ceiling clawing its ways upstairs. A shallow sniff told him something was burning.

“Abraham!” Adaline yelled from the kitchen.

He bent down and pulled a shoe off. “I’m here baby. Give me a sec.”

“I got distracted with the hors d'oeuvres and the ham got burnt. I’m going to need you to get me another.”

Abraham braced himself on the couch, used his socked toes to remove the second shoe and re-ran those words through the old mental processor. “Right now?”

“I’m not taking tomorrow off and your parents are going to be here. Has to be right this very second, honey.”

“Momma can help you tomorrow.” As the words left his lips, Abraham knew his fate was sealed.

“Hell no. Either you go get a honey-soaked ham, or you come finish the sweet potato casserole and green beans while I go. Everything needs to be cooked, or ready to be cooked, the second I get home.”

Nothing to do but get it done. “I’m on it girl.” Abraham looked out the window at the slow snow drifting through the blur of colored lights. He couldn’t deny the cool air would do him more good than this stuffy, burnt end bits house. “Shit. I haven’t been to the gym in three weeks. I’m going to walk it. The Meat Store is only a mile away.”

Adeline glided in from the kitchen. Or maybe she flew. Whatever she did, she didn’t walk, because no angel Abraham ever heard of walked. She kissed him on both cheeks and returned to her work, disappearing with that same awe-inspiring radiance—hair wrap, lotion plastered under the eyes and all.

 

As much time as he had spent indoors this past month, the walk was just the thing Abraham needed. The crunch of crystalline snow under his loafers was music. The noise started low and bassy, and right as the full weight of him came down, the final pop of the ice was sweet and high.

            The lingering burning evacuated his nostrils and his soul danced at the prospect of getting out of an hour of kitchen drudgery. The mile short walk to the Meat Store delivered as promised. Abraham could feel the tension in his shoulders melt away.

            The smell came first. Built on the north end of the city, the Meat Store was equal parts urban and rural, with the fetid smell of swine hammering home the rural to the surrounding housing market.

Those that lived around adjusted. A couple hours around any barn and the smell becomes undetectable—the human brain/nose combination is a deliverance in that one instance. And if the prospect of the Meat Store was still too much for homeowners, that’s okay. The Meat Store was here first, so they knew what they were getting into.

            Coming up along Poplar Street, Abraham walked passed the silos and barn that stood tall as monuments across the fenced in yard behind the store. In warmer months, pigs crowded the yard, oddly respectful with the noises they made, respecting their neighbor’s sleep cycles. Maybe some cows and chickens joined them. Adeline had once sworn she saw an emu driving home for work. They did sell emu after all.

            With a whistle on his lips, Abraham strutted across the parking lot and inside to be bathed in the yellowed fluorescent lights what bore the aesthetic of a locally owned international grocery store. Find one near you, you’ll get the gist real fast (and better food than your used to, to boot).

            Abraham took a spin around the aisles inspecting the slabs, balls, and bits of meat from every animal he had ever heard of. He knew what he was here for and didn’t plan to keep his wife waiting for more than he should, but there were only three aisles to peruse—no harm in that. Sliding up to the counter, he slapped his hand down, snapped his fingers, and pointed at the Jew working behind the counter.

            “Give me your best ham soaked in honey, my good man,” Abraham said, genuinely respecting another man away from his home.

Abraham’s father was a dual citizen who spent half his time in Liberia. Abraham wasn’t. The man behind the counter certainly belonged nowhere else; he only left Nevada three times in his life.

            “All out of stock.”

            “I’m sure you are, so close to Christmas, but could you go check anyway? We could make do with something else, but I’ll have to coax my wife down.” Abraham grinned. “And I’d rather not do that.”

            The man behind the counter with a clean butcher’s apron grunted. He glanced sideways to the strips of plastic that divided the store front from the butchery. “I’d rather not. I’m sure we’re out, and the butcher deserves a break this close to the holidays.”

            “Your boss is working this late, huh? Good to hear, good to hear. If we gotta work, so do they. But, hey. Can’t hurt to check right?”

            The clerk’s posture slackened, yet he did not acquiesce. Abraham saw he was the smallest of pushes away.

            “Please?”

            “Fine,” the clerk said through gritted teeth and shaking his head. “Wait here.”

He disappeared through the flaps and Abraham watched for him to pop up through the window, walking through the hanged meats, but that was apparently not his path. Further up, further in.

            The minutes ticked away, each plowing a line onto Abraham’s forehead. He was going to be away from home later than he meant. Could of driven, dammit. Pacing happened next. Already having scouted the aisles, Abraham crossed the line that divided customer from employee to get a better look at the butchery windows. Up close, he could see the appeal. Give him some boxing gloves and an afternoon here? Woo. He could work out some frustrations.

            Abraham looked at the plastic flaps. It’s only meat, right? He stuck two fingers in and pulled the flaps sideways, just a tad. He saw nothing new, nothing he couldn’t see from the window. Just meat. Meat on tables, meat on hooks.

            Abraham retreated back to the floor, vaulting over the counter for the sheer style of it. Right as Abraham cursed the minute and hour hand meeting for their salacious midnight rendezvous, the clerked trapsed back through the gateway. In his hands? A hock of ham covered in white paper.

            “You’re lucky the boss doesn’t like to turn away a customer.” The clerk began weighing the meat. “I told him to not fulfill any orders like this until after Christmas but—” The clerk sniffed. “That’ll be $38.82.”

            Shee-it. I’m supposed to be grateful now because they let me spend my money here? Abraham railed internally. He slapped two twenties on the counter and left without waiting for change.

            The wind outside had picked up, as much as it could for a city buffered by desert mountains. Abraham cursed and tucked the ham under one arm as he checked his phone. “Fuck.” He wanted some time alone together before his parents arrived. The house wasn’t big enough for sex with guests around, bless his mama’s heart. At least not with the sounds Addi made.

            “What-ya got there?”
            The voice rocked Abraham out of his swelling imagination. He double checked and saw that he was past the pig pens now, in the neighborhood, just past the Barbara Mahony realty billboard. “Aww here we fuckin’ go.” They were kids, but the big kind. Three that Abraham could see immediately: not that they would need more than two.

            Only one of the boys was bold enough to speak, he asked again: “What. Do. You. Have.” He took a pause to look to his fellows. “There?”

            “Ham. I bought it with my credit card. Let’s tell each other Merry Fucking Christmas and be on our way.” Abraham pulled the ham from under his arm pit, flourished it like a club, but the boys still crept closer. San Mattieu was not a town known for violence and Abraham had never been mugged in his life, but that didn’t stop him from recognizing the situation.

Before the first boy and his goose-stepping ass came another step closer, Abraham closed the gap in three strides and brought his weapon, helter-skelter, against the boy’s head.

It was a solid lick-- a commendable effort.

            The rest happened so fast it was the only point he scored. The first boy staggered and the other two pounced on him. The beating did not stop until Abraham was on the ground, arms thrown over his head and curled into a ball. As he heard them running off, he waited for another thirty seconds before sitting up, splitting blood out of his lip cracked in two places.

            Phone? Gone.

            Wallet? Yeah, that was gone too.

            They didn’t take the ham, not that it mattered. His weapon got thrown to the side and the wrapping had fallen off. He could have taken it home, washed off the mud and dirty snow, but ole Abraham was not a man with half an ass. Raging, absolutely fuming to the point that the heat of his anger could melt the snow as it fell, Abraham jogged back to the Meat Store, using the sleeve of his jacket to clean as much blood as he could before he stepped through the swinging doors.

            The clerk was still there, along with another that looked just like him. Just older.

            “Ehh. You need the police?” This new man asked.

            “It’s okay dad, I’ve got this,” the clerk said. The older man shook his head and sat down.

            “The police, the army, the goddamn salvation army,” Abraham started. “Nobody is going to help me tonight. I’ll file a report tomorrow. What I need from you, right this very second, is a ham.” Abraham wrapped his ring finger on the counter twice. “I’ve paid you once, you know I’m not a dead beat. I will be back tomorrow and pay you twice whatever the ham is worth.”

            “Ehh. You sold him a ham? Tonight?” The old Jew said.

            The clerk grimaced, waived the old man off. “There is no way we’re selling you a ham tonight. We’re out, it just can’t happen.”

            “You were out before.”

            “We were out before. The butcher wanted to give himself and the pigs a break before Christmas, but well you see: he’s not good at saying no.”

                 “You know what the alternative is? Do you?” Abraham paced along the length of the register table. “None of the other stores are open this late. I would have to leave work early, or wake up an hour early. I already have to pick up my wife’s gift for the love of Jesus Halifax Christ.”

                 “We have plenty of other choices,” the clerk interrupted. “You’ve had a hard night, it can be on us.”

                 The old man stood back up, put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “He wants his meat. The boss sells meat. It’s his choice to sell it or not.”

                 The clerk threw his hands up and over his head. Untied his apron and tossed it to his father. “My shift is done. Breakfast is at nine and the kids would love to see you, Avi. I’m picking up extra hours at the WinCo though, so hurry by.”

            The new clerk smiled and he said he’d be back, and he was. The old man passed through the flaps shaking his head. “Sorry. No ham. My son’s offer still stands.”

            Abraham’s mouth slackened as he looked around the store. There was a turkey right there, but he wasn’t asked to get a damn turkey; he was asked to get a ham. Tomorrow, he’d just have to get that ham.

            He pulled his coat tighter and double checked the zipper was all the way up as he left the Meat Store. The clock above the doorway read one. It was ten degrees colder than the start of his odyssey. His feet beat the same rhythm into the asphalt as he crossed the lonely parking lot, the distant glow of rainbow colors his personal yellow brick road home.

            As he came to the edge of the parking lot, he stopped. Abraham turned around.

            Abraham burst through the front door, their frames clanging against the walls. The old clerk said something but it sounded the same frequency as the electric hum of the lights. Abraham pushed by him and barreled through the flaps face first.

            The room was colder, damper than the outside. Abraham marched past a group of hooks with a thin layer of frost on their tips. He made it to the other end of the meat locker and out into a hallway. There, a back door opened to the pig pens, a small office lay with door ajar, and a stairwell plunged down into what had to be a basement. The office space was crammed with an early 2000’s Windows computer, receipts, and filing cabinets half closed with protruding manilla folders. The tiny cube was balmy hot with a space heater working on max to absolutely turn the work space into hell.

            As Abraham closed the door, the shit dropped out from him (metaphorically) as a pitter patter assaulted his eardrums. He cursed, violently, and jumped as something brushed past his leg. Through the crack of light from the office, he saw a baby pig waddle to the end of the hallway and disappear through the doggy door and into the yard.

Abraham laughed at himself and realized what a great guy he was. He wasn’t going to report such unsanitary food handling to nobody—neither snitch nor bitch. Even if the Meat Store wasn’t the most respectable establishment anymore in his eyes, he would take his ham and leave without issue.

Now this is where it got complicated.

            Normally, Abraham was no fool. He’d seen the movies, knew about all those meta jokes about a black man walking to some dark place in a strange location, fooling around where he did not belong.

But the stairwell wasn’t dark. It was brightly lit—clean even. And there was nowhere else for the butcher to be, so he followed the path downwards.

            The basement wasn’t under the butcher shop directly. Abraham felt like he was walking under the yard now. He stopped at a giant metal sliding door, shut tight. Abraham tapped it with his foot, impressed. “Is this how all butchers store their meat?” He adjusted his jacket zipper again. “Can’t be colder than outside.”

            The door wasn’t the test of his manhood like he hoped it’d be. It disappointed and slid like a greased pig on an iced floor (forgive the pun). Before it opened all the way, he heard clatter, voices inside. He had been preparing his speech since coming through those flaps:

            “How much does a brother have to pay, to get some god damned—” His words fell on the floor. “Shut your mouth.”

            The room was similar to the meat storage upstairs, but here, at the very center, were the butchers. Two pigs swayed heavy and hairy on two feet. They both wore aprons, splattered in blood and guts, as they lumbered through the hanging meats: A pig with a cleaver held tight between its two. . . hands took a swing and hacked off a sirloin from a cow. This butcher had a crutch shoved under one of its arms and a torniquet rounding off their stump leg. Hardly sanitary, the stump bled slightly through the bandage.

            Somehow in the madness, Abraham noted that the clerks did not lie. There were pigs here with legs, at least not dead ones, and thus no ham to be found.

            Abraham was already beating a cool retreat, his feet not needing the slickness of the ice to slide his ass on out, but the pigs were faster. The pig with all his legs intact and grizzle along his jaw that looked like a beard swooped in with one arm on Abraham’s back, corralled him forward, and slammed the meat locker shut behind them.

            The one-legged pig had pulled out a cheap foldable metal chair and placed it squarely in the center of the room, in the forest of meats.

            “Hey now,” Abraham chuckled as he was forced into interrogation position. “What even are you fine fellows?” If it was a mite bit hotter, he would be sweating now.

            “Pigs,” the one-legged pig that Abraham had decided was the butcher grunted.

            “Talking pigs!” Abraham’s laugh was hollow and oh so forced. “But not like those?” He pointed to the legless pigs hanging from their hooks. As the pigs followed his finger, he attempted to spring from his position and make for the door again, but he was immediately forced down by two piggy hands from behind.
            “Pig is pig,” the non-butcher said, holding him down. “All pigs are working pigs, even if these pig rest now.”

            “You’re telling me, you’re going to be food?” Abraham asked, eyeing the butcher pig’s missing leg.

            “You won’t be?” The butcher got back to work, clearing a shank in three slashes. “I work.” Shling. “I make money.” Slice. “I feed the little pigs.” Shlang. “How did you even get back here? Must be for something important. Hope you didn’t do anything to the workers upstairs? Hm? Good people; manning the storefront for generations.”

            “Your commercial says the store has only been here for sixty years.”

            “Five of our generations.” The butcher’s next swing sprayed stipples of blood onto Abraham’s face.

            Abraham said a prayer under his breath-- only a religious man on special occasions.

            “Can’t hear you.”

            “I came for some ham, but as you clearly sold out, my brother, I’d like to be going now.”

            The not butcher oinked and grunted. The two went back and forth in a flurry of pigsty chorus. Abraham couldn’t tell if it was anger, fear, or laughter. The butcher pointed to his leg.

            “You cut your leg off an hour ago then?” Abraham asked.

            The butcher’s eyes narrowed and Abraham could envision that next swing of the cleaver going through the soft sinews of his supple neck. It didn’t; it buried into the cow.

“You were the one insisting on ham? Yes? Don’t look at your feet like that. This is America. We have product, we sell product.”

            “I wouldn’t have asked if I knew. I mean, obviously I wouldn’t have asked that of you.”

            “But you did know. You knew the basics. What you didn’t know is how often we have to skip feeding the children. You didn’t know how often we pay the rent late. Thirty bucks for a leg. Keeps the light on, you know? Want some more?”

            “Don’t put that crazy shit on me. I’m not asking now. Hell man. I’ll never ask again.”

            The butcher laughed in his piggy, snorty way. “Don’t do that. We go broke. Ask me to cut my brother into bacon?” Chop. “A sisters rump skinned clean?” Slice. “Yet you won’t ask me to cut off my leg? I don’t understand you.”

            “You’re a working pig. I’m a working man. What’s not to understand?”

            “That is the question, isn’t it?” The pig set down his cleaver, leaned heavy on his crutch. “Are you a pig, or are you a man?”

            Abraham ground his teeth and leaned back. “Well we can both see that I am clearly not a pig, so that makes this back and forth a bit of a time waster doesn’t it?”

            The butcher shrugged. “Man cannot leave here. Pig may, if they choose.”

            “Well in that case,” Abraham gave his chintzy grin, “I’m as pig as it gets.” He stuck his nose up and tried to snort, the effort resulting in some mild sniffling.

“The difference is not always clear. Would a pig make demands? Would a pig force his way down here to take? No.” The butcher pointed to his leg, to his fellow.” But would a man put other above himself? Would a man bleed for his fellow man? We pigs think not.”

            “That’s the rub, ain’t it? I gotta convince you I’m pig enough. If not, you’ll chop me up and sell me as some exotic meat upstairs?”

            The butcher pulled back. “Absolutely not sir. We have standards to enforce here. Inspections by the United States government—your F.D.A. But let’s resolve the question: Where do you work?”

            “Where do I work? I—Uh. Medical field.” Abraham answered, a little too used to the vagueness that puffed up his ego, let others believe he might be something more than he was. The pigs conferred with grunts and Abraham saw the misstep. “Just as a radiology tech—not a doctor or anything. I don’t even work at a hospital for Christ-sakes. I’m a small guy. Pig kinda guy.”

            “Radiology?” The two pigs sniffed and oinked to each other. The conversation was lost on Abraham, but he could sense the confusion. “We don’t know radiology, but it doesn’t sound very piggy.”

            “Oh it’s piggy. It’s hella piggy. I help people. I make them better. You understand that right? You’ve got vets?”

            “The disparaging remarks aside, go on. What do you do?

            “I take X-rays. Pictures of bones so the doctor can decide if you’re sick or not.”

            “Pictures? Like magazine?” Abraham could swear the butcher was raising an eyebrow. “How much do you charge, for a picture?”

            “I’m a little confused about what human things you understand and what you don’t? You do understand magazine and F.D.A., but you don’t understand x-ray.”

            “This is a meat house. Small children have come by to sell magazine, which I asked Daniel upstairs to buy for me so I could look at pictures. But I have not been to a hospital. When pig gets hurt, pig cannot afford such things. When pig gets hurt, pig provides.”

“Unless there’s a sickness, then we call vet,” the pig behind added.

            “Okay so—”

            “No, no,” the butcher said, picking up the cleaver again. “You answer my question first. How much do you charge for picture.”

            Charge? Abraham didn’t know what he was hearing. “Hell, man. It goes through insurance, and they pay. You gotta get an order from the doctor or maybe you don’t have one. In network, out of network. The charges are variable?”

            “Variable?” the butcher asked.

            “Not piggy,” the not butcher oinked.

            “Not piggy at all,” the butcher concurred. “We all eat sir, but it seems that you do not supply.”

            A banging at the meat locker caught the pigs’ attention. The butcher crutched his way there. “I’m coming. Shift change couldn’t have come at a better time.”

            The pig behind Abraham tightened his grip, pancaking him to the chair.

            The butcher didn’t need to open the door, Abraham already knew it was just going to be more pigs. And if the butcher left, there went any repour he had managed to build thus far, not that he felt he had done a particularly good job pleading his case. Edible or not, it seemed like there was only one way this would play out.

            So he showed no hesitation.

He spun in his seat with his elbow out, catching the not butcher in the gut. The pig’s grip loosened as an almost human squeal filled the room.

            Ignoring that travesty, Abraham went for the door. Two more pigs stood on the other side; the Meat Store never closes. The butcher pig stood between him and the door, but he was clumsy on one leg and easy to get past-- the other two weren’t ready for a human. Abraham knocked the butcher down and slammed his full weight into the other two pigs.

            All four fell in a heap together.

            Amid shuffling and screeching, Abraham somehow found his footing and started for the stairs. His hands caught the second and third step as a pair of paws latched onto his foot. He shook his lower half violently which lessened the clamp-- fingers, or lack thereof, making all the difference. Free, Abraham rocketed up the stairs on all fours.

            He slammed into the door leading to the yard and wrenched at the handle. The door wouldn’t budge. So much for the easy way out. He swung past the office and into the hanging meat section of the butcher shop. It was dark, far too dark. The kind of darkness where time slips away, evades any natural senses. Abraham couldn’t say how long he’d been in the meat locker, but he should have found the store front already, dammit.

            He should have at least been able to see the lights from the salesfloor, unless the Meat Store took a break for the first time in its existence.

            In the misty, meaty air, Abraham bumped into a hanging rack of lamb. He cursed and tried to feel his way around the room. Somewhere behind—or maybe to the side—he heard the scurry of pig feet on tile: heavy, heavy, pig feet.

            Abraham’s gut hit a table. He looped around it tracking the pigs on the other side on sound alone. He heard the skid of their hooves on the slick meat locker floor, desperate to get at him.

They split, coming at Abrham from both sides, once again proving they were smarter than the average pig—not that much confirmation was needed after they spoke. But Abraham was a human in not just mind but body too—fast, agile. He popped up onto the table and rolled over as the pigs crashed in that indeterminable dark.

Out of that room-- thank you Jesus-- he saw a faint light. Skidding back into the hallway with the office and the stairs and the door turned that praise into a curse. He looked down the stairs and saw the one legged pig hobbling up, from the meat locker behind the pigs came. He had no choice.

Abraham attacked the door viciously, throwing his shoulder at the center. Kicking, slamming the sides with his fists.

He heard cracking. Another assault and it full on creaked. But he was out of time. The pigs were on him and took the last avenue that he could think of.

Abraham dove like an Olympic swimmer and hit the doggy door (or piggy door in this instance) at full force. His head breached. His shoulders caught. The distant glow of Christmas lights beckoned him, the pricking winter air teased the tip of his tongue.

            His feet scraped against the tile, tried to shrink his broad chest, get his shoulders to touch. He could fit. And if not, he would break through the damn door. An arm joined his head outside and he used it to claw at the dirt. His manic imagination won out over the cold voice of reason that observed and kept saying that he would die: his second arm burst through. His body was sliding into freedom.

            “Fuck you pig. I am a man!” Abraham shouted into the open air, and screamed again as his ankle—the last 5% of him yet to make it through-- erupted into pain. A thousand little nubs ground against bone as pig teeth clamped down. He put his entire being into it. If he was an Olympic diver before, he’d be a fucking Olympic swimmer in the dirt. Another piggy mouth clamped down as he did the breast stroke.

            The rush of adrenaline and endorphins gripped him for another five second before he realized he was being pulled back inside. There’d be no gold medal tonight.

            Adeline Kerkullah woke on Christmas Eve to an empty bed. She went to sleep trusting her husband. Wherever he went, whatever he was up to, he’d be fine. He was a good man, once you got past all the eccentricity.

            Adeline paced through the house, calling her husband’s phone five times and checking every room for a sign. By the time she was circling the outside of the house in her night gown, she was on to checking on his friends—checks his social media as she fought back tears. Finally, she skipped calling in to work to let them know she wouldn’t be there, and jumped right to the one phone call no human being ever wants to make.

By the time the in-laws arrive much earlier than they said they would, the house was bathed in the blue’s and red’s of police lights. Abraham’s mother found Adeline sitting on the couch, shaking, giving her account.

            “He went to the Meat Store. We needed a ham. And he should have been back in an hour.”

            Adeline didn’t even realize that he walked; she was busy enough last night. Abraham’s car out front throws the investigation off for a couple hours because maybe he did come back.

Eventually, the police investigate. They talk to the Meat Store clerks, hear how Abraham Kerkullah came in half past 11, bought a ham and left.

            In a couple days, the police would be tipped off and find out that Abraham was mugged on his way back from the Meat Store. The interrogations were lengthy and one of the boys even admits to murdering Abraham. One of them goes to prison, the second one is found not guilty, and the third hung himself before he ever saw the inside of a court room: Adeline knows enough to not be satisfied with such a result, but she’s also a smart enough woman to realize that she’ll never truly know what happened to her husband.

And as the years go on, that knowledge hurts less and less but never truly goes away.

As for Abraham, he found a new life. The butchers put a collar around his neck with a chain that slid along the rafters. Abraham spent the rest of his days feeding, watering, and mucking the silos behind the Meat Store. Sometimes through the blind hate, the suicidal desperation, or the sheer numbness of it. Just sometimes as his muscles groaned and became utterly focused on the work, he would acknowledge that there was something to this life, something he didn’t have before.

In either case, his coworkers were happy to finally call him pig.