The Dark Country (12 page)

Avratin's wife threw up her hands, imploring the ceiling fan to do something, anything.

In the tiny bedroom, by a single small lamp with the crisp, yellowed cellophane still clinging to the shade, with the sound turned down on the Johnny Carson Show, Avratin and his wife were having an argument.

"... Twenty years in the retail meat business and you knife me in the back. Twenty years putting bread on your plate, only to have you—"

"Listen to this! He's too proud, too proud to admit a mistake. . . ."

"—Twist, twisting the knife!"

Reproach, recrimination, guilt, counter-accusation, self-deprecation. The old pattern.

And only to come to this: that at the end, the finish, before grumbling into bed, during the sermonette, Avratin raised his hurt face to the water-stained ceiling one last time to declare, before the gods and whatever other audience might be listening:

"All right, I take care of it, I take care of everything. No matter that Luttfisk tries to rob me, his own partner. I get a man can take care of the job. I promise you, the problem be fixed, once-for-all!"

At the Century-Cudahy Storage and Packing Co., the White Collar Butcher was a very important man. No one at the plant could say exactly why, though it had to do with the fact that he was the best butcher in the county, that he had the finest set of tools anyone had ever laid eyes on, and the obvious quiet pride he took in his work. It had to do with the way he picked his own shifts, coming in unpredictably and always with the attitude of a man who has already been at work for several hours. It had to do with the air of authority he carried with him into the walk-in, the indefinable look of knowing something that he would never tell on his thin, expressionless lips, his smooth, ageless face, his small steel-blue eyes that were perpetually set

on a place somewhere beyond the carcasses and the warehouse.

Alone at night, the White Collar Butcher stood motionless before the freezer, his eyes on the temperature gauge. But they were not focused there. Then, slowly, surely, he turned his back on the hook beam scales and stood over his meat block. He moved his hand from the evenly beveled edges to the guard at the right of the block. His hand was heavy, a special tool itself, quite perfectly balanced, smooth and pink and tapered ideally to the handles which he now allowed his fingers to play over lightly: the meat saw, the cleaver, the steak knife, the boning knife, below them the small scale, the aluminum trays, the spool of twine and, to the left, the blackboard. Then, with smooth, automatic, practiced moves he took down his tools one by one and washed them, wiped them and rubbed the handles, proceeded to sharpen them on the slow grinding wheel and then the whetstone, touched up the edges with the steel and wrapped them individually in soft, protective leather.

He set the pouches out neatly and then, by reflex acquired through years of practice, slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and withdrew a folded square of white paper. With one hand he opened it and read the name and address printed there with a grease pencil in straight block letters.
The name and address.

He refolded it and slid it back into his pocket under the apron. Another job.

Then, positioning in an easy, familiar stance, he reached for the wire brush and steel scraper and box of salt and began cleaning his cutting block, employing short, sure motions with his strong arms and shoulders, conserving his energy for the job to come. And as he worked on into the night, his tanned face and immaculately styled hair set off tastefully above the high, fashionable collar and wide hand-sewn tie that lay smoothly against his tailored shirt of imported silk, the whole effect suggesting a means far beyond his butcher's salary, was that perhaps the beginning of a narrow, bloodless smile that pinched the corners of his thin, efficient, professional lips?

For five nights Avratin hammered his pillow and spent more time than he should have in the cramped bathroom. Then the good news arrived.

Up went the noisy butcher paper painted with the proclamation he had kept rolled and hidden for three days now. He was nervous with anticipation as he tore off strips of masking tape and slapped it up across the plate glass windows. It covered the whole front of the store, right over the futile daily specials from the week past, as well it should have.

The first customers of the day were already waiting at the door when Avratin's wife finished dressing and joined her husband.

She stopped in the middle of the fresh sawdust floor, looking about as if by some transmogrification of sleep she had just walked into a strange, new life, or at least someone else's store. She smoothed her hair and gaped, turning around and around.

"This is a holiday? Or I'm sleeping still. Pinch me, Lou."

Avratin had pulled out all the trays in the meat case and was busy arranging his new, large display.

"Take it easy, take it easy, Rachel. You got your wish."

The last parking space in front filled up, and at last Avratin stood and leaned back and watched the women milling around on the sidewalk, pointing excitedly to the sign. He smiled a special smile .that he had not used in years.

"Lou! Lou! Lou! You didn't do nothing too drastic, did you?" Then what he had said seemed to hit her.

She clipped to the door, shook the knob, apologized to the woman with the gray bun who was first in line, hurried back to get the keys, almost ran to the door and opened it.

Avratin watched her outside, shading her eyes, holding off their questions until she could get a good look at it herself.

She stood with one hand on her hip, one hand above her eyes, reading and rereading the banner with disbelief.

The women scrambled inside, heading for the meat case. He leaned back on his hands, watching them over the scales, a bright morning chill of anticipation tingling in his blood.

They stopped in front of the case, staring for long seconds.

Avratin wanted to speak to them, but held himself in check a moment longer.

His wife was the last to enter the store. She pushed her way through the inert bodies, ignoring the still, dulled faces on a few of which was beginning to dawn the first dim, uncomprehending light of recognition.

"Lou, I saw the sign," she beamed. "Is it true? Is it? Where is he?"

Avratin leaned forward. He spread his arms behind the transparent case in a gesture of supplication, palms out. His eyes rolled up to the creaking, slowly revolving fan and then returned to the display, newly arrived from the man in the high white collar, which he had just now finished arranging so carefully under the glass, the whole length of the counter, to the new cuts, strange cuts, so invitingly laid out, preserved by the cold, here something red, there something brown and almost recognizable, there a fine shank, there an opened ribcage, there a portion of a face you knew so well you almost expected it to greet you.

"Here," Avratin answered, in a voice he had not used in years. "Here! Can't you read the sign?

"LUTTFISK IS BACK!"

Very shortly thereafter the short, muffled cries began.

Soot fell in a continuous haze that obliterated the sun over the freeway, leaving a gritty texture on the once-bright finishes of the variegated cars and trucks. For miles ahead they extended bumper to bumper in a snaking line, stretching on through infinite gradations of opaque smog, and if you let your arm hang down from the window and brushed the door with your fingertips, they would come away grainy and black-edged and imprinted with hundreds of microscopic lacerations.

It was five o'clock in Los Angeles on a July afternoon.

A short black van with the words E'MER-GEN-Z-INC stenciled on the sides was stalled in the far right lane.

"Jeezus," said the driver, wiping the sweat out of his eyes with a dirty sleeve. His face was bloated like a brown paper bag full of potatoes, his black eyes peering out through two torn, badly placed holes. "It's that fuel pump again—you know that, don't you?" He shook his head and glared outside lor confirmation.

"I thought the Company was supposed to put in a rebuilt one, after last time," said the other, a slight young man named Jaime who was new on the job, with exaggerated disgust. This was in fact only the end of his first work week, and he still looked to the fat man for direction, trying to limit his end of the conversation to a general swearing, bitching echo.

"Jeezus H. Christ," said the fat man, hunching over the wheel and shifting his huge buttocks. A horn started up behind them.

The fat man shook his head at the floorboard. "I
am
the Company, me and Raoul.
Told
that son of a bitch—but no, he's worried we'll miss some nice, juicy accident if I put 'er in the shop till noon. Man, I tell you ..."

"Yeah," said Jaime. "Well, hell, I'll get out and push the son of a bitch. There's a crashpad right up ahead. Thank God at least for that.''

He climbed down from his side and went around to the back. The driver got out and pushed at the door, straining to reach the wheel inside. There was a wide shoulder by the side of the freeway, only yards ahead. After a few nauseous grunts through carbon monoxide and bleating horns, the driver hoisted himself in and braked as the van rolled to a stop in front of the compactor.

"Far enough," he gasped, stumbling out. "Don't want to junk this baby yet. God
damn.
Get too close and the junker takes over."

Jaime stood around trying to look grim, kicking rocks off the blacktop.

"Now we just got to wait for it to cool. How much credit we got on the card register, kid?"

"Uh, the starting fund from this morning, plus that two-car we found. The digits we sold 'em. Not much."

"Great. All we need's a COPter to spot us right now." The fat man leaned on the magnetic grapple of the compactor and let a sigh whistle out through his small mouth. "The junk fee on the van would just about pay the breakdown fine," he laughed bitterly. "They got it figured so it comes out
exactly
even, that's what I think."

"Yeah. Except for the vacutract unit," said Jaime. "Right, Jesse?''

But the fat man was looking back over his shoulder, past the massive compactor.

He stuck a thick finger to his lips. He motioned to the kid, a rat-shrewd light coming into his eyes.

Jaime walked over, keeping behind the line of the automatic junking machine. He bobbed his head around the crane where Jesse indicated and saw it.

An '89 sedan with a selenium top was racked up at close to a 45 degree angle, the right side crumpled against the pavement from hood to tail. A man in a business suit with spider webs of blood spun from his ear and forehead was laid out on the front seat. A thin man with glasses was reaching up and in the opened driver's door, tending the wounds.

"Watch this," mouthed Jesse, trying to force his shirttails back into his belt under the light smock.

He stepped boldly around the compactor. "What happened here? He hit the rail?"

The man with glasses half-turned, startled. He quickly sized up Jesse and his partner—too quickly, thought Jaime, his heart dropping.

"I'm a doctor," announced the man. He started toward his own car, parked at the end of the pad. Just then the bottleneck ahead on the freeway unclogged momentarily, for the river of stagnating cars revved up and surged forward a few choppy feet. "Just—let this be," sighed the doctor arbitrarily, flattening his hands in the haze. "I've got him sedated right now."

Jesse ambled forward. "Looks like you're pretty near to having a dead man on your hands, doc," he said.

"Who are you people?" snapped the doctor.

"We were just passing by. Our unit's back there. Thought we might be of some—"

The doctor's cool gray eyes flicked between the two men. "You thought you might make a bootleg sale or two, eh? Well, you can just go on. Go on, now."

"We're in business to help people, same as you, sir. Now if this is an emergency, why, you know, we might be in a position to help you save this poor guy's life." Jesse stepped closer. "Any internal injuries?"

"Listen, you. I'm the doctor. I pulled off to assist, and I can only hope to God I'm not too late. I've already called for an ambulance. This man is going to Central Receiving. Go on now, get going, before I call for a COPter."

"Uh, your ambulance is close by, is it?"

The doctor fumbled with his stethoscope and shook it at Jesse. It flopped like a serpent. Impatient and indignant, he strode up to Jesse and almost struck him across the face with it.

Jaime looked down at his fingernails.

"Under the laws of the State of California I can have you arrested," threatened the doctor. "You realize that?"

"Don't know what you're getting at," said Jesse cordially. "Mr. Sandoval here and I were just returning from a two-car call on the Ventura Freeway and—"

"Not only your license to buy and sell," continued the doctor, "but my own license to practice. Oh, I know your game, all right. I know how you independents operate. I wasn't born yesterday. Moving in like vultures when you spot a quick touch, taking what you want with or without authorization, selling your wares to anyone fool or desperate enough not to ask questions! I'm going to call in a complaint right now." He turned and headed for the red phone box on the rail.
"What's the number on your van?"