Welcome Page
Bio
Background
Books
Other work
Bibliography
Interviews
Essays and Academic
Free Classics!
Links
Agent and representation
Mail this site
The Meat
The carcass hung in the shop for nine days till the edges congested and turned brown in the air.
People came and went. They bought wafers of beef, pale veal, ham from the slicer, joints, fillets, mutton chops. They took tomatoes and brown eggs, tins of fruit cocktail, cherries, handfuls of green parsley, bones. But no-one wanted the meat. It dropped overhead from a claw hook, flayed and split down the spinal column: familiar enough in its way. It was cheap. But they asked for shin and oxtail, potted head, trotters. The meat refused to sell.Folk seemed embarrassed even to be caught keeking in its direction.One or two made tentative enquiries about a plate of sausages coiled to the left of the dangling shadow while the yellowing hulk hung restless, twisting on spike. These were never followed through. The sausages sat on, pink and greasy, never shrinking by so much as a link. He moved the sausages to another part of the shop where they sold within the hour. Something about the meat was infecting.
By the tenth day, the fat on its surface turned leathery and and translucent like the rind of an old cheese. Flies landed in the curves of the neck and he did not brush them away. The deepset ball of bone sunk in the shoulder turned pale blue. There was no denying the fact: it had to be moved. The ribs were sticky and the smell had begun to repulse him, clogging the air the already clammy interior of the shop and he could detect its unmistakable seep under the door to his livingroom when he was alone in the evening. So he fetched a stool and reached out to the lard hook, seized the meat and with one accurate slice of the cleaver, cut it down. It languished on the sawdust floor till nightfall when he threw it into the back close parallel to the street. As he closed the shutter on the back door, he could hear the scuffling of small animals and strays.
In the morning, all that remained was the hair and a strip of tartan ribbon. These he salvaged and sealed in a plain wooden box beneath the marital bed.
A wee minding.