The Butcher's Son

by Grant McKenzie

  “Nearby. We’ve recently found property to be a solid investment, plus when you own half the block, there are fewer complaints from the neighbors.”

  Gordo led Molly to a couch facing a giant, flat-screen TV.

  “I’ve got a surprise,” he said before turning his head and calling out, “Birdie! Bring TC.”

  A skinny brunette in tight jeans and a crop top that showed off her muscled stomach walked out of one of the bedrooms with a very large and very fluffy ginger cat snuggled in her arms.

  “A kitty!” screamed Molly as she leapt off the couch and rushed to the woman.

  Gordo chuckled with delight. “I know you can’t have one at the home, but he’s all yours. He’ll stay here and you can visit him anytime.” Gordo glanced over at Ian. “Or when your dog here lets you.”

  Molly lifted the docile cat from the woman’s arms and carried him to the couch. After she sat down, the cat curled itself in her lap and began to purr. Molly looked over at Ian and beamed. For a moment, her face was a child’s again rather than the adult she had been forced to become.

  “You can name him whatever you’d like,” said Gordo. “We’ve been calling him TC for tom cat.”

  “I’m going to name him Snap,” said Molly without any hesitation. “Like in Ginger Snap.”

  “Snap?” Gordo grinned again. “I like it.” He glanced over at the woman. “What do you think, Birdie?”

  The woman nodded in agreement, but her attention was more focused on Ian. Crossing the room, she took hold of his left hand and lifted it for closer inspection. Letting it drop to his side again, she reached out and gently stroked the area of his forehead that Jeannie had covered in concealer. Lightly placing a hand on his chest, the woman smiled ever so slightly when Ian winced.

  “Birdie’s a natural healer,” said Gordo. “I’ve seen her hold a man’s guts in one hand, while sewing up the gash in his belly with the other. Looks like she’s found a few cracks in your armor.”

  The woman took hold of Ian’s hand and led him to a dining room table near the kitchen. It was far enough away to give Gordo and Molly some privacy, while still allowing Ian to keep an eye on them.

  After sitting him down on a wooden chair, the woman started to unbutton his shirt.

  “There’s no need,” said Ian, grabbing the woman’s hands.

  With an unexpected gentleness, the woman slipped her hands from his grasp, slid the softness of her palms over the roughness of his skin and pushed Ian’s hands back onto his lap. She then finished unbuttoning his shirt before running her fingers across the mottled bruises on his torso.

  Her hands found a nasty protrusion in his ribcage that sent an electrical current of pain shooting through Ian’s body when she touched it. Ian winced again as the woman fixed him with a mesmeric gaze and began to breathe in and out, encouraging him to follow her rhythm.

  “You don’t talk much,” said Ian.

  The woman placed a finger on his lips to silence him as she continued to breathe with a hypnotic rhythm. Ian did as instructed and joined her rhythm. On his fourth inhale, the woman pushed her hand on the protrusion.

  Ian gasped and his eyes watered from the sudden attack of pain. Before he could recoil, however, the woman grabbed his right hand and placed it over the spot, indicating he needed to apply pressure to stop the broken rib from popping back out.

  Gritting his teeth, Ian did as instructed while the woman left the room. When she returned, she was carrying a large First Aid kit. After tightly bandaging the area to keep his ribs in place, the woman went to the kitchen to fill a bowl with ice.

  The crude bandage that Ian had wrapped around his left hand was removed before the woman plunged the discolored and swollen flesh into the ice. While his hand grew numb from the cold, the woman pulled a chair close to Ian’s and began cleaning the cut on his forehead.

  “Can you talk?” asked Ian.

  The woman’s eyes shifted to his and in their dark reflection he saw his own haggard face looking back. In the last two years, he had aged beyond the simple passing of days, and he hadn’t done it well.

  “Birdie doesn’t have a tongue,” said Gordo from the couch. “Her pimp cut it out for talking back. We made a trade.”

  “A trade?”

  “He give us the girl, and he got to keep one of his balls.”

  “You let him off lightly,” said Ian, his eyes still focused on the woman’s face as she tended his wounds. He wouldn’t call her pretty, life had sharpened every edge to a knifepoint and deepened every hollow to a pit, but with time and care she could get there.

  “Not really,” said Gordo with a throaty laugh. “We couldn’t decide which ball to let him keep, so we cut off both and then let him choose. He was still clutching it in his hand when the ambulance arrived.”

  Ian winced as another dab of antiseptic bit into his wound before the woman puckered her lips and blew on it to both cool and dry the skin. Her breath opened a drawer of childhood memories that held his mother’s smile from when he believed she could answer every question and solve every trouble — before the trouble robbed her of a daughter and a husband.

  After covering his scalp wound with a clear adhesive bandage, Birdie pulled his injured hand out of the ice.

  Patting it dry with a clean towel, the woman gently massaged the numb appendage to return blood flow. She watched the pathways of color return before reaching into her medicine kit and pulling out three wooden popsicle sticks. She placed one stick between the two damaged fingers, and one on each outside edge. She then bandaged the two digits together.

  “Thank you,” said Ian when she was done.

  The woman nodded without smiling before packing up her kit and leaving the room.

  Ian fumbled with his shirt, getting a few of the buttons in the wrong holes before finally getting it right.

  Gordo and Molly were laughing as they battled each other for Super Mario Kart supremacy on the Nintendo Wii, while the cat lay curled on the backrest of the couch, one paw resting on Molly’s shoulder.

  Watching them from the dining room, Ian suddenly felt incredibly alone.

  *

  As they were leaving, Gordo gripped Ian’s arm and leaned in close.

  “You owe somebody money?” he asked, his eyes roaming over Ian’s bandaged cuts and bruises.

  “No, just an asshole sending a warning.”

  “You need my help, ask. I owe you for this.”

  Ian nodded, deciding that a favor from a gang leader was a valuable chit worth hanging onto.

  9

  The block where Ian’s grandfather ran his butcher shop had once been a gleaming nugget of multiculturalism in the city. It was a cramped and noisy neighborhood filled with loud immigrant families from every corner of the globe where the Irish and Italians mixed with Spanish, Portuguese and a lone family from Ceylon.

  The city’s less-mottled families would flock to the neighborhood on weekends to shop for local produce, meats and fresh bread. As these were the days before the terms organic and free-range became part of the general vocabulary, all people knew was that it simply tasted better. As Mr. Capello, the green grocer, would tell everyone, “If it no taste like a tomato, it no a tomato.”

  Ian remembered his mother always forced him to have a bath on a Friday night to “wash the spuds oot’a’yer ears” so that he was “spic-and-span” for the weekend visitors. His job — if you could call it that, since there was no pay, not even pocket money — was to play on the street with the other kids to show what a safe and family-friendly neighborhood it was.

  If any stranger happened to ask where the best meat was to be found, Ian was naturally meant to point to the tin pig hanging above his grandfather’s shop and tell the good folk how it was the tastiest in the city and be sure to try the…whatever his grandfather had excess of that week.

  Ian enjoyed those weekends. Everyone was in a good mood — even, on occasion, his grandfather — and he was excused from chores in order to provide color for
the visitors. A safari park of poverty. Don’t be afraid, we don’t bite.

  The difficulty was that not all the kids got along. When Bo Kemp proclaimed himself the boss of the street, he expected everyone to fall in line — so long as they were light skinned.

  Except for a spatter of caramel freckles across his nose and cheeks, Ian was about as white as it got, but he wasn’t born to be a follower. He also happened to be smitten with Shanthi — a beautiful Sinhalese girl with the most incredible eyes, so deep they sparkled with bioluminescent strands of amethyst and sapphire, and long, ebony hair that always smelled of jasmine — and enjoyed hanging out with her younger brother, Dilip, who had the unique ability to find a joke in everything.

  Despite her father’s stern vigilance, Ian was positive that it was Shanthi’s face — and secret, stolen kisses — that triggered his early-onset puberty.

  After Ian’s father abandoned the family on the same day they buried his grandfather, Ian’s mother fell behind on the mortgage to their house in the suburbs. Ian was eight at the time when they moved into the two-bedroom apartment above the butcher shop. The move was exciting for Ian as it meant he got to play on the street every day rather than just weekends — or so he thought.

  But with a butcher shop as their only source of income and no men to run it, Ian’s childhood skipped past the store window on a daily basis while he mopped and cleaned and helped out where he could.

  Memories of his sister faded fast as there was nothing in the sparse apartment to serve as a reminder except for the lone framed photo his mom kept above the electric fireplace. No photos of his father were ever on display.

  *

  Standing on the street now, one of the keys to the front door biting into his clenched palm, Ian studied the tin pig that hung above the boarded-up shop window. Like the street it watched over, the sign had known better days. In fact, Ian was surprised that it had lasted this long — but only a little. That pig had fueled more than a few of his childhood nightmares and, even as an adult, he wouldn’t be overly shocked to discover it held some dark, mystical power.

  The rusted bolt securing its rump had snapped so that only one anchor remained at its throat. Instead of flying, it now appeared to be hanging. A stubborn blister of flesh-colored paint clung precariously to one leg in a final standoff against the overwhelming invasion of marmalade rust, while the faint outline of the butcher’s name could still be discerned in raised letters hammered into its metallic flesh. You had to look close, but painted beneath the raised letters was the proud proclamation: & Son.

  Unlike his grandfather, Ian’s father had never fully embraced the art of butchery and had chased Ian out of the shop at every opportunity. Thinking back on it now, what Ian had mistaken for bad temper could have been his father allowing him to choose his own path rather than following in the family tradition. But when Jack Quinn disappeared, whatever good intentions he may have had went with him.

  Directly across the street from Quinn & Son Family Butchers was a Chinese diner that had managed to survive the neighborhood’s decline with all-day breakfasts, fifty-cent coffee and a famous Wor Wonton soup. A few doors down, however, the Bed & Breakfast Hotel that Bo Kemp’s family ran had been turned into a halfway house. Interestingly, they kept the name: Raven’s Rest.

  Ian wondered if the current owners knew that it was named after Bo Kemp’s mother or that in all the years Ian had known her, she never once stepped outside its doors.

  With anxiety filling his chest, Ian unlocked the door to the butcher’s shop and pushed it open.

  *

  A familiar sound pealed from a brass bell hung on an iron hook above the door as Ian stepped across the threshold. Dust devils whirled upon the breeze, dancing as though in celebration of release. The decaying boards fastened across the front display window kept everything inside dark, but even with the lack of light, Ian could see the place had remained undisturbed for a long, long time.

  His shoes sunk into thick layers of dust, leaving powdery tracks to mark his steps as he moved toward the empty display cabinets that once held hand-cut steaks, pork chops, lamb and chicken. His favorite had always been his grandfather’s homemade sausage, seasoned with sage, onion, pepper and garlic. Occasionally, his grandfather allowed Ian to add the final, secret ingredient to the mixture before it was squeezed and twisted into links: Guinness stout.

  As Ian walked the cabinets’ length, he dipped one finger into the dust, leaving a snake-like trail across the curved glass, knowing his grandfather would have chased him out of the shop with a bloody cleaver if he had attempted that when he was a kid.

  His grandfather ran a tight ship, instructing Ian that when one dealt in blood in the back room, the front needed to be spotless. “The customers don’t need to see the slaughter to appreciate the meat,” he said. “We are the guardians of that.”

  Reaching the master light switch, Ian flicked it on and was disappointed but not overly surprised when nothing happened. The electric bill likely hadn’t been paid in decades.

  It’s your burden now.

  It made no sense to Ian that this building should still be in the Quinn family name. Even if his grandfather had owned it outright, who paid the annual taxes? And why had nobody sold it?

  Guilt still made his heart thump uneasily. When Ian left for college, insisting he needed to be something other than a butcher’s son, his mother told him everything would be fine. She had regular customers and a new manager onboard to run the store.

  Selfishly, Ian convinced himself that she was right. And even when she called late at night, her speech slurred and her logic broken, she would try to sound happy, assuring him that she was simply enjoying a glass or two of wine after dinner. Ian desperately wanted to believe her, and so told himself it was the truth.

  Less than two years later, the shop was out of business, the manager nowhere to be found, and Ian returned to Portland to bury his mother. At the time, he assumed the bank took over the building. It was never mentioned in his mother’s meagre will and, to be honest, he was happy to wash his hands of it.

  Ian glanced at the blue door that opened onto the staircase, wondering if the apartment above was still habitable. As he reached for the handle, the brass bell over the front door jangled behind him.

  He turned to see a giant of a man with two raccoon-like eyes and a large splint tented over his nose. He wore an expensive, custom-tailored wool suit that didn’t match his face.

  “Can I help you?” asked Ian.

  “What’s your name?” growled the man.

  Caught off guard by the man’s tone, Ian’s hands began tightening into fists, but relaxed immediately as pain shot up his left arm from his splintered digits. Swallowing the pain, he asked, “Why do you want to know?”

  “Don’t matter.”

  “It does to me. Why are you here?”

  “Wanted to see your face.”

  “Why?”

  “Makes it easier.”

  “Easier for what?”

  The man grinned, showing an army of teeth. “I know you.”

  Ian added iron to his tone. “You don’t.”

  The man’s eyes flickered in reaction and he reached up to touch the bandage on his nose.

  “You like my gift?”

  Ian thought for a moment. The only gift he had received recently was a plain black box containing a severed ear.

  “Who did it belong to?”

  “I reckon you know.”

  “My father?”

  The man’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “Depends. What’s your name?”

  Ian tried to swallow, but felt the phlegm sticking in his dry throat. He croaked, “Ian Quinn.”

  The man’s sneer deepened. “Now I know.”

  “Was it my father’s?” Ian repeated. “Did you kill him?”

  The man turned his back and pulled on the door. “We’ll meet again soon. Maybe I’ll tell you then.”

  “What the fuck do you want?” Ian snarled at his b
ack.

  “If I was you, I’d find it before I come back.”

  The door closed as the burly stranger exited onto the street. Rushing after him, Ian yanked open the door and yelled, “Find what?”

  But he was yelling to an empty street as the man slid into the passenger seat of a slick, four-door sedan and was driven away.

  *

  Ian cursed and returned inside the shop, his mind whirling like the dust devils but traveling nowhere.

  If whatever the stranger was seeking had been in the store, then he would have had years to search for it without Ian ever having a clue. Instead, he must have thought it — whatever it was — had been secreted away by his father. But upon his father’s death, the burden mentioned in his letter switched to Ian.

  The only trouble was Ian had no fucking clue what the burden was meant to be.

  *

  Climbing the stairs to the apartment above the shop, Ian wondered if he should call Jersey for some advice. He was still contemplating the idea when his phone rang. It wasn’t Jersey.

  “Hi,” said Ian, trying to make his voice sound light.

  “I was going to wait until you called me,” said Rossella, her smoky voice like a snake’s tongue in his ear. “But I’m a modern woman, so here I am.”

  Ian laughed. “I’m glad you called.”

  “You are?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You didn’t say much when you left.”

  “I know and I’m sorry, but…”

  “But?”

  Ian reached the top landing and opened the door to the apartment. It was like stepping back in time, except, like Gulliver’s Travels, everything was smaller.

  “I don’t want this to sound corny, but our…err, encounter…was…”

  “Go on,” she encouraged guardedly.

  Ian exhaled noisily. “So fucking good.”

  Rossella laughed in relief.

  “I was being selfish, but I needed to bask in it, you know? Wrap it around myself like a warm blanket. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that good.” Ian cleared his throat. “Sorry, that does sound corny doesn’t it?”