Odd Little Suck

It all started when Ma caught me talking to the cows. She called it unnatural, and everyone seemed to agree—news of my unconventional friendships spread through our little town like a flame through Pa’s brush pile. Folks would see me as they passed by our farm, out there in the pastures, getting along with my bovine friends, and the first thing they would do was blab about it.

Whenever we went out in public, I would hear folks whisper as they passed, or see them staring from afar, pointing fingers. I didn’t understand why they did that at first; then Ma told me it was because I was an odd little suck. She didn’t like that much, me being an odd suck. Ma preferred our neighbors to see us as normal, hardworking folk, with not much of any problem to speak of. If there were a problem, we’d work the shit out of it with our sweat and blood until that problem no longer existed, as Pa always said. But I guess my being odd messed up that perfect image for Ma because her friends stopped coming over on Tuesdays to play bridge, and no one stopped to talk to Pa about the weather anymore when we went to market.

Last week, I received a text from Pa inviting me home for the holidays, and I just about fell out of my chair during a History of West African Arts lecture. The last time I saw him, nearly two years ago, when I sat him down to break the news of my scholarship, he called me a faggot. Then, with my boots tied and bag in hand, Ma said I was a disappointment as I headed out the door for the bus station.

Immediately after I read Pa’s text, I decided not to go. I couldn’t face them again. They wouldn’t approve of my new life, and frankly, I didn’t approve much of theirs, not to mention their general outlook on things. I wouldn’t go. I couldn’t go. And yet, there I was a week later, boots tied and bag in hand once more, waiting outside student housing for a taxi.

#

As soon as the taxi wheels hit the dirt road starting into my hometown, something knocked loose inside me. I had been in Des Moines on the smooth, paved streets lined with colorful coffee shops and fancy eateries for so long that I had forgotten how harsh these roads could be after a hard, wet season. With each jostle from the bouncy back seat, a new memory would arise within me, like the surge of a cruel tide, surfacing a new monster at the face of every swell.

The first farm we drove past was the Jensen’s. I noticed no goats were grazing in the field at the corner of Locke and Burrow like there had been in years past. In fact, there were no animals anywhere on their property as far as I could see. Strange for a farm. They must have sold them off. I heard there had been a recent meat shortage; maybe they needed the extra scratch to get by.

I used to play with Mark Jensen when we were in grade school. I wouldn’t say we were best friends, but we got along pretty well. The last time I was over there for supper, I think it was sixth grade; I sent Mark’s parents into a tizzy after we said grace.

Mrs. Jensen served a roast made in her new Crock Pot. She was proud of the meal and presented it like a trophy at the center of the dining table, revealing it to us by lifting a big, shiny, domed lid. Steam billowed from every angle when she lifted that lid and it truly was the most beautiful roast I had ever seen, much nicer than any Ma had ever made.

That was the day I learned to keep my damn mouth shut as Pa would say, because when I opened it at the Jensen’s supper, all hell broke loose. Mrs. Jensen served me a couple of big ropes of muscle from the roast; I politely declined and said I had decided not to eat meat anymore. This was something I had decided just that morning, after Henrietta and Earl out in the pasture told me they didn’t much like being eaten, and that went without mentioning the slaughtering bit, Earl had added. Earl could be a bit of a curmudgeon, but Henrietta displayed nothing but the utmost levelheadedness in all our previous engagements. I had no reason to think she would deceive me.

When I revealed to the Jensens, sitting in front of their heaps of dead, sweating cow, that my friends had expressed their preference not to be eaten, it was not met with a Henrietta degree of levelheadedness. Mr. Jensen began shouting at me about how vital the meat diet had been for the survival of the human race throughout history, and that only pussies were vegetarians. Later that night, Pa brought me home and rubied up my backside for causing a fuss, I ate meat from that day forth, as long as I lived on the farm, because Pa said if I didn’t, I’d be no son of his. The sad part is, I never did get invited back over to the Jensen’s to show them how much meat I could eat.

#

We passed a few more farms, all looking rather dilapidated and nonoperational. I couldn’t remember the names of the families that ran them, and to be honest, if it weren’t for their cars in the driveway, I’d say no one had lived on these lands for quite some time. Then we came upon the McMurray’s farm. My system agitated with turbulence, and I felt I might lose my breakfast, partially because I knew I was almost home and didn’t want to look Ma and Pa in the eye, but mainly because of the state of the McMurray barn.

The big, white barn, standing high upon its hill had always been a bright, shining landmark for my family that signaled home was just around the bend. That barn was the most immaculately painted building in all of town. Mr. McMurray had no children on the count of Mrs. McMurray being barren, Ma had said. And I guess all that extra time and money they had on the count of her barrenness allowed Mr. McMurray to afford to slap a fresh coat of white paint on that barn every single spring. Except today, the barn was filthy, dull, and in ill repair. One of the doors was hanging from a single hinge, and in red paint, smeared haphazardly across the white siding, was the word ‘NO,’ written over and over and over, wrapping around the barn as far as I could see.

About twenty feet down the hill from the barn, I saw Mr. McMurray sprawled out on the ground, deep asleep, covered from head to toe in that red paint. Poor old Mr. McMurray. He must have finally had it with Mrs. McMurray’s Barrenness and gone completely mad. Pa had said he wouldn’t have stood for it, and I believe him. No wife of his would ever deprive him of children he had said. If Mr. McMurray had bothered to ask, I could have recommended him to the best psychotherapist this side of Wisconsin, but people around here tend to be proud.

My therapist, Dr. Hallowitz, was not only the best psychotherapy practitioner in town, but he was the only one. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as successful as some big-city therapists I’ve seen since leaving the farm. He practiced out of his basement, and most of the machines he used, like the electroshock therapy chair, he had to make himself, poor guy. Ma always said a corn-fed brain is a healthy brain, and one thing an Iowan is never short on is corn, so business was slow for Dr. Hallowitz. Luckily, I had some sort of demon in me that kept him pretty busy because Ma had me over there three days a week strapped to that chair until the cows stopped talking to me.

#

It’s funny how things change.

I was in tenth grade when I passed through therapy with flying colors. I used to question everything, and it made life pretty confusing. After my time in the chair, all the confusion just melted away. The cows used to tell me how great I was, and that I must be the kindest, best human of the lot. It made me feel pretty good to think that, but it turned out, those cows never really did talk to me. Dr. Hallowitz helped me see that. He told me the pain from the treatments would be worth it, and I don’t know if I would come to that exact conclusion, but things sure did become easier after my thoughts slowed down.

Ma and Pa were tickled that I didn’t talk to the cows anymore, and I steered clear of my old friends in fear of any possible relapse of my psychosis. Unfortunately, Ma and Pa’s elation was replaced with more disdain when I began painting pictures. I painted mostly farm-related things but added my unique style. My teachers said I had talent and should pursue art as a career. Pa didn’t love this path for me, because he always thought I would grow up to tend to the farm as he did after his father. Pa said painting pictures was for homosexuals, but in my travels since leaving for art school, I haven’t found that to be factual.

After living in the dorms for a while at Drake, I learned that there was a decent-sized population of folks in the city who were vegetarians. I couldn’t tell if they were pussies like Mr. McMurray had said, but I decided I’d forgive them even if they were. I found a lot of great restaurants and recipe books that made my transition to a meatless diet quite enjoyable. I often wondered why I chose not to eat meat, and guessed it was probably a benign relapse of my psychosis. I kept that to myself though. Folks might not understand, and I wasn’t fond of the idea of sitting in Dr. Hallowitz’s chair again.

#

When the taxi fully rounded the bend, my heart revved as I tried to understand what I saw. Where the flowing green fields of our farm once danced, a thirsty, brittle sea of brown lay in its place. My old friends, the cows were gone. The goats, gone. The chickens, gone. All of it, just a skeletal wasteland of a once thriving homestead.

“Is this the place?” the driver asked, seemingly confused at our dying destination.

“Uh, y-yes. I guess it is. You can just let me out here.”

The driver pulled to the dusty shoulder, and I stepped out of the car, unsure if I should investigate the carcass of my childhood grazing grounds or run back to Des Moines, where so much possibility awaited me.

As I inched up the stretch of dirt driveway, I felt as if walking back into this house would be the end of me. As if this house, this farm, all my life, was feeding off me, systematically collecting its pound of soul, and when I left, I had starved it. It had slowly wasted into this thing that encompassed me now. What would happen when I entered those doors ahead? Would it devour me whole? Would it finally have what it wanted? What it needed to return to its vibrant state, after consuming what was left of me?

How were Ma and Pa living like this? It wasn’t like Pa to let the grounds fall so far. He was a man of the land, proud of his work and the fruit it bore him. And Ma, she would never let the neighbors see her home in such shape. Social suicide, she would call it. But maybe that’s just it: Maybe when I left home, their sweet little disappointing faggot, I ripped a hole in their hearts too big to mend, and this was an outward representation of the pain I caused them. Did I hurt them that bad? Did they care that much? Maybe that’s why dad texted me. Maybe they need their son back home so they can heal.

I approached the front door and knocked three times.

I waited nearly a minute, then turned the knob and eased the door open.

As soon as I entered, the most glorious smell wafted into my face, carried upon the warm humidity of freshly cooked meat. I hadn’t had meat in over a year, but it smelled so incredibly good. The inside of the house was immaculate just as the day I left. The living room to the right was dark, but to the left, an amber glow came from the dining room, and a sweet song poured through the halls.

When I entered the dining room, the music got louder. The table was set with a magnificent feast, fixed with every cut of meat imaginable, some I wasn’t even familiar with. Everything was in its place, just for me. Ma and Pa must have really missed me. I wondered if they were doing all this to get me to stay so that I could take over the farm from Pa and bring it back to life so Ma could look good in front of the neighbors again.

I could hear running water and the clanking of someone fiddling with dishes in the kitchen. When I entered the kitchen, Ma and Pa were facing the sink, washing dishes together, their large bottoms swaying in unison to the woeful, honey-dripping sounds of LeAnne Rimes’ ‘Blue.’

Mom’s hair was matted and had chunks of something red in it. The back of Pa’s head was split down the middle, revealing a red, black, and white gouge. Their bodies were bloated, literally bursting at the seams. The skin on the back of their arms was like overdone sausage, their furry, black and white innards spilling from their rigid skin casing through large tears in every direction.

“Ma?…Pa?”

They both stopped what they were doing and looked at each other. When their heads turned, I could see silhouettes of their long snouts. Ma turned off the water, and Pa reached over and turned off the radio beside him, laying silence upon the home. The silence deafened me as my shock-singed mind was given the space to piece together what I was seeing. Ma and Pa nodded at each other and spun around to face me.

They were both wearing their aprons, the one Ma always wore in the kitchen, the one with the flower print, and Pa’s apron that he wore when he grilled out on the back patio, the one that said, ‘Is It Beer:30 Yet?’ The aprons were soaked in blood, most of it dried to the point of flaking. In the areas where the skin was not pulled across their bodies as tight as wet rawhide exposed to the afternoon sun, it hung loose and shriveled like month-old, fallen citrus.

Both of their faces were sagging and ripped into pieces, placed mosaically, accented by Ma’s signature blue eyeshadow and the scruff of Pa’s mustache, to create a gruesome sort of flesh Picasso, propped up by their large, gooey snouts. Bits of their faces kept sliding down, and they would reach up every few seconds with their hooves to reposition the meat flaps to where they thought they should be.

“Hi, Bobby,” said Pa.

“Hi, hon,” said Ma. “We made you a lovely dinner. It’s your favorite, meat.”

I looked back at the dining table behind me. I realized the beautiful smorgasbord that adorned the table was made of all varieties of human body parts: skinned, filleted, basted, and roasted.

“Henrietta? Earl? What have you done?”

“No, no, Bobby,” said Pa. “Henrietta and Earl were sent to market long ago. I’m sorry; I know you were close. But they passed down the legend of you, young Bobby, the kind one. All of us cows that came after have heard the tales.”

“And, Ma, and PA…you cooked them?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Just for you Bobby,” said Ma.

“But…why?”

“We cows have been planning this uprising for a very long time. We had to wait for the humans to build the infrastructure for us, and to grow our numbers until we had the populous to overwhelm. So many of us have been sacrificed so that we could get to this point, fueling humans with meat off our bones so that one day, our race could rise. We freed all the animals, Bobby, all across these lands. They’re prisoners no more.”

“I messaged you, Bobby,” said Pa. “I brought you here because we just had to meet you. And we prepared your parents just the way you humans like it, medium rare. Are you pleased?”

“I—but—I don’t eat meat anymore. I’m vegetarian.”

The cows wearing Ma and Pa’s flesh suits looked at each other and burst into tears. Blood-laced rivers ran down their faces, sending slabs of soaked flesh slapping to the floor.

“I can’t believe this,” said Ma. “The legends are true. You really are the kind one.”

Ma and Pa walked over to me and wrapped their arms around me. My heart filled with warmth, like the inside of Ma’s oven. My body tingled, and I couldn’t help but smile. It was a feeling I had never experienced before. Was this what love felt like?

Pa walked into the living room and grabbed the throw from the couch. He came back into the dining room. Ma and I each grabbed a corner and hoisted it over the dinner table, slowly laying it to rest over the meat of my parents.

“What will we eat then, Bobby?” asked Pa.

I entered the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and began pulling vegetables out and placing them on the counter. “Have you heard of Ratatouille?”

Ma and Pa gathered around and watched in admiration as I chopped the vegetables into neat little circles. I began to tell them all about my artwork and the experiences I had since I went away to Drake. They listened intently, hanging on every word, light in their eyes, amazed with me.

As we walked out onto the back patio to eat our supper, the cool night air enveloped us, and Ma stopped in her tracks at her sudden realization. “Oh, dear. Would you like us to take these dreadful things off?” she said, motioning to the human skin suits wrapping their bodies. “This may not have been the best way to go about things. We just thought—if we made you feel more comfortable, more at home—”

I set the steaming plates on the picnic table and walked toward them, taking their hooves in my hands. For the first time, I felt like I had a real family, one that accepted me, one that loved me. “It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect. I love you Ma. I love you Pa.”