Illegal Meat by Susan Gerry

“Hey, Shay, how’s about a rabbit? Got a great recipe for rabbit stew and enough veggies to stretch it for your family an mine.”

       “Shay, s’pose you could bag me a turkey? We’re fresh outta cash. I’ll bake ya a cake to die for.”

       “Still wet behind the ears, my Shay, an already the best shot in the state,” his father, Eugene, boasted to anyone who’d listen.

       Their words of praise soared through Seamus O’Reilly’s head as he slouched his way through special-ed in holey jeans and too-small tees, waiting to turn sixteen. School made his head hurt. Back when they winnowed his mom out from the rest, they sent her to “resource room.” In Grammy Moira’s day it was “remedial” something or other. Now they dressed it up and called it “special,” but you could call it “pot o’ gold studies,” everyone knew what it meant.

       Slope-shouldered and thin as a weasel, Shay was not even a blip on the radar screens of the jocks and brains and shop kids of Rocktide High, but in Porker’s Trailer Park, where times were hard, the mills and factories all moved to China or India or Alabama, he made a difference. Hunting was his claim to fame, but unlike most all the men he knew, he didn’t love to hunt. He thought he might like it better if he could hunt people, so he was considering “joining up” as soon as he came of age. He never liked people that much. But he was soft on animals, which was why he practiced his aim up to the gravel pit, day after day, until he could drop a squirrel from a branch or steal a duck from the sky before anyone else shouldered their rifle.

       “It’s better’n eatin’ from those factory farms,” Shay reminded the neighbors. “Healthier and more humane. When Shay O’Reilly shoots something, it don’t limp or flutter away, wounded and sufferin’. It never knows what hit it. Just buy my ammo an’ share what I bring ya and we’re good to go!”

       The women from the Park, mostly single mothers, had learned to cook up whatever unusual thing Shay brought down. Raccoons were fatty but tasted okay. Porcupines were easy to shoot. So slow. But dressing them out was a bitch so he only shot them when he couldn’t find anything else. Squirrels were good, only you needed at least three for a stew. But now it was summer and things got tricky. Animals had babies. Babies everywhere you looked. Poults, fawns, tiny little partridge babies.

       Shay’s ma, Gert, had the depression, which wasn’t just being sad. She’d sink so low she couldn’t get out of bed. That’s why part of the deal with the meat was the family he brought it to had to cook it up and share with the O’Reillys. Every time Dad got back from a job-hunt with his pockets full of temporary cash, Ma got all glad to see him and pretty soon – Bingo – out pops a new little O’Reilly with a new, proud Irish name. So far, besides himself, there were Liam, Malachy,

Brian, Patrick, and Margaret, also known as Peggy, (the only one who never saw the inside of a special-ed room,) and now Rosemary, the new baby girl.

       Once the money ran out and Dad’s feet got itchy, he’d liquor up, gather them all around the green, kidney-shaped, formica table in the kitchenette, and all sentimental and teary, tell them to mind their mother and Shay and not necessarily in that order, ha ha! Then he’d take Shay aside and, man to man, their cigarettes lit from the same match and cupped in equally sweaty palms, he’d tell him again, so there was no mistake about it. “Take care of ‘em, Shay. They’re in your hands.”

       So Shay tinkered on other people’s old rust-buckets in exchange for hand-me-downs, and he hunted. In season and out. So far he hadn’t tangled with Cyrus Russell, the game warden, but he was always just one step ahead of Fat Cyrus.

       Sunday mornings Shay didn’t tinker or hunt. That was his time to clean up the O’Reilly place now that Ma was down again. All morning he’d have it to himself, his mother and younger brothers and sisters headed out on foot before six to make it to Holy Mass on time. They stayed for both masses offered up Sunday morning at St. Michael’s. Shay refused to go. Sitting under a bleeding Christ, a weeping virgin, and saints riddled with arrows or otherwise tortured for their beliefs was his idea of a piss-poor morning. Ma said it did her good to hear the priest talk about how God loved everybody the same. That was a major crock.  Just looking around was all the proof Shay’d ever need that there were some folks God just didn’t give a royal shit about. 

       A gazillion dust motes danced in the rays of early morning sunlight streaming through the window. The trailer was an oven. Shay opened a side window to let in some fresh air. It was too pretty to stay inside, but once Mass let out the place would fill up with people again, and it would be harder to clean with the chairs all full and the TV blaring. He stared out the front picture window through resentful, unblinking eyes into the bone-dry, grassless yard. Jumbles of headless dolls with torn-off limbs lay strewn beside roofless houses and overturned cars and trucks, as though a mini-tornado had blown through and devastated the lives of an entire toy community.

       Just before he turned to face the tees and pjs strewn across chairs and sofa cushions and the counter tops piled high with unwashed dishes, he caught sight of Aunt Louise’s old Suzuki shitbox barreling up the lane in a cloud of dust. Aunt Louise, his mother’s older sister, married a man from up-country and moved away to St. Agatha, so they didn’t see her near enough, but she had her ways to let him know he was really special to her. Whenever anything went seriously wrong in his life, something deep inside him cried out to her, as though she could fix every bad thing in the world.

       Aunt Loo was not fat like her sister, Gert. She was a stringy, childless woman with frizzy, alarming hair. She dressed in Levis and yellow, lace-up, work boots and said she had to be the man of the family because real men, including the worthless dumb-cluck she’d married, weren’t all they were cracked up to be. But she knew Shay was different from other men. He could be the Savior of the O’Reilly family if he just stuck with school. It would be really hard to tell Aunt Loo he’d  kissed-off special ed. in June.

        Aunt Loo pulled the Suzuki right up to the O’Reilly door, not even considering all the toys she’d just busted up under the tires. She didn’t notice stuff like that, but she had a sixth sense when it came to Shay’s mother. She probably knew Gene was gone again, and Gert would be sinking fast and not caring properly for the new baby.

       Shay opened the door and was instantly smothered in the grip of arms much stronger than his own.

       “Shay, Honey, I am so-o-o-o hungry for a taste a venison I couldn’t stay away another minute. What ya got good in the freezer?”

       “No venison. It’s summer. Babies all over the place.” Shay headed for the kitchen to put on the kettle for Aunt Loo’s tea.

       “Got to be mor’en babies out there. Something’s makin’ those babies.”

       “Yeah, but I get nervous. How’s about a big ole tom turkey?”

       Aunt Loo shook her head. “I didn’t drive all the way from St. Agatha for a tough ole tom. Drive nails with one a their drumsticks. Come on. Get your gun an we’ll bag something good. I’ll go with ya.”

       “Aunt Loo, I gotta be careful. It’s outta season.”

       “Never stopped you before.”

       “It’s also Sunday.”

        “And…? You ain’t at Mass. Let’s pretend it ain’t.”

        He sighed. “Truth is Fat Cyrus been watching me. So far I been gettin’ away with it, but my luck can’t hold forever.”

       “You gonna make me drive all the way back to St. Agatha without the taste a meat pie I come for? You gonna make me change my mind about how clever you are? So-o-o much smarter than Fat Cyrus.”

       He knew Aunt Loo had come for her sister, Gert, not meat, but once she got an idea in her head she wouldn’t let up. Shay reached for his long-billed cap and his thirty-ought-six, turned off the burner under the tea kettle, and followed her out the door.

       “We’ll take my car an’ drive around to the other side a Reliance,” she said. “If Cyrus is gunnin’ for ya, he’ll be somewhere here in the vicinity a the park since he knows you ain’t got a car.”

       They drove halfway to East Amity before they felt sure they were out of Cyrus’ range. Shay’s spirits began to lift the minute they hit the woods. He might lurch and stumble around the classroom, but in the woods Shay glided. He knew all the woods for miles around. It wouldn’t take long on a day like today. Especially in this area known as the thicket, he’d be in and out and done by supper time. They’d go home and hang the buck (it’d have to be a buck) in the tool shed next to the trailer. Aunt Loo would stay until they dressed it out and cut it up into steaks and roasts and deer hamburger, then she’d make up a bunch of mince pies and make sure their freezer was well-stocked with ready to eat stuff before she left for St. Agatha. The savory aroma would muscle out the smell of stale cigarettes and damp, old furniture. It would be great to have Loo around the place. Nowhere to sleep but the living room floor, but Loo wouldn’t fuss. She’d help clean the place up. Drag her sister out of bed. Make her go some place besides Mass, and talk her back to health – at least for a while.

       The early morning wasn’t so hot once you were outside. Shay and Aunt Loo slipped through the whispering evergreens on a spongy carpet of fragrant pine needles. They didn’t talk or smoke in the dappled sunlight that flickered through the trees. When they came out into the meadow, a sea of daisies and red paint-brush, there he stood, as though God put him there just to satisfy their need. A good-sized, six-point buck.

       The buck lifted his delicate muzzle. His nostrils quivered. He sensed them coming towards him through the woods, but they were downwind of him. They froze and he went back to grazing.

       My family needs you, my aunt needs you. You’ll become part of us. You’ll live

on in our bodies, Shay chanted inside his head, like a mantra. He took aim. Fired.

The buck shimmied for an instant, then dropped.

       “Woo-hoo, you’re something else,” said Aunt Loo. “He never saw it coming.”

       This was the part that made the rest bearable. The praise that thrummed through Shay’s body like a drug. How he craved it. How hard it was to come by, except when he was hunting.

       The buck lay on his side, his legs in running position. Shay took out his hunting knife, squatted, and slit the belly, carefully avoiding the sight of its moist, startled eye. He slid his hand into the warm abdominal cavity and scooped out the long curls of intestines to leave for scavengers. They had to live too. Once they got the buck home, he’d cut the internal organs free, fry the heart and liver for supper, and boil up the lungs as a special treat for the dogs. He’d hang the deer for a while, then butcher it. Aunt Loo would stay until she could get going on the meat pies.

       Suddenly it occurred to Shay – they had no way to get the deer home. They couldn’t very well strap it on top of the old Suzuki. No way it would fit in the trunk, and it’d make an awful mess if they cut off the legs. They’d have to hide it, go back to the park, and get Porker to loan them his dump truck. They could settle him down into the truck bed where he wouldn’t be seen. Come night they’d hoist it out and hang it.

       He felt such a fool. It was as though the very sight of Aunt Loo made him feel so good every other thought flew out of his head. “I’ll drive back to Porker’s for the truck,” he said, like he’d had it all planned out right along. “You stay with the deer.”

       Once again he crossed the meadow and walked back through the thicket. From the edge of the woods he caught sight of the familiar tomato-red pick-up gliding slowly by. Cyrus! Shit! What was he doing way out here? On Sunday. He waited for the game warden to pass, then tore back to the place at the edge of the meadow where Aunt Loo had dragged the buck.

       “That damn fool Cyrus is out cruising,” Shay gasped. “We gotta hide the buck under some branches or something, an hope nothin’ gets to him ‘fore we get back. Go back for the dump truck together. Cyrus sees me alone, he’ll know for sure I been huntin’.”

       Loo and Shay raced down the path, through the thicket, and back to the Suzuki. Before they could move it out and away, Cyrus had doubled back down East Amity Road and was driving straight towards them. He pulled his tomato-red Dodge Ram to a stop, nose to nose with the Suzuki’s front fender. Shay prayed he wouldn’t open the trunk and see the rifle. Cyrus’s dog, Baby, was riding shot-gun. If Cyrus let him loose, the dog would follow his nose straight to that buck.

       Sweat flooded Shay’s armpits and coursed in rivulets down his sides. He wasn’t sure what the fine was for hunting out of season. Maybe there’d be jail time involved if he didn’t have the money to pay. He couldn’t go to jail and leave his family for any length of time until Dad got back.

       Cyrus slid off the high seat of his Ram and waddled towards them. Suddenly his eyes widened. His mouth went slack as he stared into the passenger side of the car, where Aunt Loo had shed her plaid, short-sleeved work shirt and was rapidly unhooking her bra. She lunged for Shay and wrapped her arms around him, fiercely nuzzling his neck. Cyrus rattled the door handle. Shay was a speechless, vibrating nerve.

       “What the fuck?” stammered Cyrus. His cheek twitched. His big, hard knuckles punished the window. “What in Hell’s going on in there.” Suddenly he recognized Aunt Louise, who he’d rather fancied before she married that loser and headed off for St. Agatha.

       “Louise O’Brian? Jesus Christ! Coming on to boys young enough to be your son? Kids? Relatives even? Jesus!”

        Loo pulled her shirt modestly across her bony chest and rolled down the window. “Mind your own business, Cyrus Russell. Get outta here fore you stroke out.”

       Cyrus threw his hammy hands into the air and stalked back to his truck, his face the deep red hue of the fresh deer liver they’d have for supper.

Susan Gerry, after graduating from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, moved to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, where she worked for Servicio Linguistico Empresarial as a translator and ESL teacher. She now works for the Department of Human Services in Rockland, Maine, helping families transition from welfare into the work force.

She has recently completed a Literary Mainstream novel, Carnival Mirrors, and is working on a second novel, Rogue Waves, and a collection of short stories. One of her stories will be published in the February issue of the on-line literary magazine, Amarillo Bay.