Cannibal 4H Chapter 13: The War Begins By Eurytion
THE AIR INSIDE THE LIVESTOCK EXCHANGE was pleasantly pungent, each breath rich
with the establishment's history. The yeasty bouquet of beers both past and
present communicated a sense of camaraderie while tobacco smoke fused with the
tang of smoldering hickory in a olfactory imitation of the comfort of the open
hearthside.
For close to 35 years the saloon had been the favourite watering hole for the
area's ranchers, farmers and hands. Here was a place to bitch to people who
understood what you were bitching about; who lived the same life that you lived,
one of hard work for uncertain results, your future always hostage to the
weather or to some bureaucrat in a cubicle with a pencil for a plough who
thought farming was a pretty easy way to earn a living.
Even when the weather cooperated and the government didn't get in the way, you
still had to worry about events occurring thousands of miles away that could
raise the price of your fuel and supplies to ruinous levels or drop the price of
your commodity well below the break even point so that every bushel or head of
livestock you sold cost you money.
The Livestock Exchange wasn't a private club. Anyone could come in and no one
was ever made to feel unwelcome. But, unless you were a tourist looking for a
bit of local colour, non-ranchers always felt a bit out of place there, subtly
excluded from many of the conversations that swirled around them, not out of
malice or even intent but simply because people who didn't farm just couldn't
understand that some days it just seemed easier to take all the seed money,
place it on 22 black and leave it there then to get up before dawn and fire up
the tractor one more time.
The lighting inside was subdued but not by design. It resulted from the failure
of a number of light bulbs made in Myanmar under the trademark "Decade Lamps"
and sold at Dawson's Five and Ten. Cavanaugh the bar keep had refused to replace
the bulbs, claiming that Eddie Dawson had sold him the damn things with a
guarantee they'd last for ten years so Eddie Dawson could just haul his damn
skinny old ass up the bar's rickety ladder and replace 'em his own damn self.
Anybody who thought it was too dark should stop complaining to him and start
complaining to that crook of a store keeper.
Eddie Dawson's standard reply was that no one else in town had had a single
Decade Lamp fail. The problem at the Livestock Exchange, he told one and all,
wasn't with the light bulbs but the faulty wiring that the whole county knows
Cavanaugh had bribed the building inspector to pass years ago. The bulbs were
perfectly fine; they just weren't getting any juice because of broken wires.
Mark his words, any day now a spark from the faulty wiring would send the whole
place up in flames and the customers would be even more well done than those
hockey pucks that simpleton of a tavern keeper tried to pass off as hamburgers.
And all this tragedy, which could have been avoided, would happen because
Cavanaugh was tighter with money than the bark on a tree.
So the standoff continued, each participant refusing to give way to the other,
preferring to grumble at each other like a couple getting too close to their
40th anniversary. Meanwhile the Decade Lamps continued to flicker out and the
bar continued to moved closer to stygian darkness. Joey's dad, who could often
be found on the premises enjoying a cold Momus lager, joked that in another year
or two customers would have to be given mining helmets just to find their way to
the tables.
Matters electrical were on the minds of several of the saloon's habitants but it
was unrelated to the illumination or lack thereof in their surroundings.
Instead, the current topic of discussion was the vandalism of Shea's Butcher
Shop done under the cover of the Friday night's storm.
Shea's was a small store out on rural route 27A which didn't get enough traffic
to stay open on the weekends. They didn't do their own butchering but instead
bought their meat wholesale from various suppliers, depending on the price.
Their trade was aimed at those who couldn't afford to shop at either Crenshaw's
or The Stockyard, the town's two premier meat markets.
Shea's had metal security shutters. These operated much like a roll top desk
sliding down from the top of the window on a pair of tracks until they reached
the bottom where they were secured in place with a lock. Being made of glass,
the front door received similar protection.
Jim Wickham, who owned Shea's, had arrived at the white block building Monday
morning to find that, no matter how hard he turned his key, the lock on the back
door wouldn't open. When he was unable to open either of the front locks he
called a locksmith.
The stench when the locksmith opened the back door was staggering, rotting meat
reeking like a bad embalming job and at war with the sour smell of spoiled dairy
products to be the first to cause a person to revisit their breakfast.
The investigation by the sheriff's office found that little squares of aluminium
foil had been inserted into the keyhole, probably with a toothpick. When
Wickham had placed the key in the lock he had forced the foil further back into
the cylinder. Turning the key pressed the foil into the tumblers and jammed the
lock.
The main electrical cable to the building had been cut, probably with an axe,
just below the meter box. The telephone line into the store had also been
severed to prevent the alarm indicating an electrical outage from ringing into
the security company. The words "stop the murder" had been stencilled in red
paint in a area underneath the eaves protected from the rain. More than two days
without air conditioning or refrigeration completed the rest of the sabotage.
"I'm telling you guys it's that Anneliese Dracon bitch and her bunch of human
cattle rights wackos that did this," said Dickie Peal pointing to the article in
front of him. "She said she was going to do something and then this happened.
Mutt, why the hell don't you just take and toss her ass into jail," he asked now
pointing over a plate of nachos at Stan Triplett.
The deputy just shook his head. "Dickie, we don't know if she did it or not.
There wasn't any physical evidence at the scene to indicate she was even there.
Wally talked to her and she said she was home during the storm and that she
didn't know anything about what happened. We don't have anybody who can say
otherwise."
"There's the letter," continued the farm hand. "She called us murders and told
people we had to be stopped. Can't you arrest her for libel or inciting a riot
or something like that?"
"It isn't a crime to write a letter to the editor. She didn't call on people to
break the law. She didn't advocate the armed overthrow of the government. She
told people they should stop raising and eating human cattle. You and I might
thinks she's nuts but she didn't do anything illegal."
"What about having her followed," interjected Ralph Levitt, who worked on the
same farm as Dickie. "Don't criminals always return to the scene of the crime?
And even if she doesn't go back you can follow her and catch her when she tries
to do it again."
"Jeeze Ralph, you've been reading too many of those mysteries from Bowler's Book
Store," Triplett replied gesturing toward Cavanaugh with a near empty beer mug
in hopes of snagging a refill. "First off excluding the sheriff, the dispatchers
and the jail attendants, there are only six of us to patrol the entire county.
That's two of us each shift. Following people is a lot harder and a lot more
labour intensive in real life than in fiction. There's no microminiature homing
transmitter that we can slip in her drink or inject under her skin to track her
with. If we did want to follow her we'd have to do it with real bodies and we
don't have nearly enough to do the job right.
"Second, we can't follow a person without a reason and we have no reason to
follow her.
"Third, and here's where the rubber hits the road, it isn't worth it. Jim lost
about five thousand dollars worth of meat and dairy products. It'll cost him
about another $800 to get the store cleaned up and aired out. He'll lose about
$700 in sales until he can reopen. The locksmith's bill was $400. The power and
phone companies are reconnecting him at no cost. Add in the dollar worth of
white paint he used to paint over the graffiti and his total costs are less than
seven thousand dollars, all of which is covered by insurance. The county is just
not going to spend the kind of money it would take to fully investigate what
happened. For the time being, it's just going to be written off as one of those
unfortunate things, you know like when bad things happen to good people."
"So that's it, shit happens and you're not going to do anything else," asked
Peal. "She's just going to get away with it?"
"Read my lips very carefully," said the deputy who was beginning to get a little
tired of the continuing questioning. "We don't have any proof that she did
anything. We can't do anything without proof, something that you two ought to be
very happy about on occasion. We're not going to arrest her. We're not going to
follow her. We're not even going to question her any more. This incident is
closed.
"Now just so you two pinheads can understand, that doesn't mean we're not doing
anything. The sheriff sent a letter around about what happened and suggested
folks keep a real close eye on things for awhile. We're rerouting our patrols
to pay special attention to businesses involved in human cattle ranching,
including ranches. And we're splitting the patrols up so we can cover more
ground. Wally & I will be driving in separate cars instead of together. So will
the other shifts. It may not seem like much but it's all we can do right now.
Hell, this might never happen again"
Mutt's lecture was interrupted, first by the arrival of his third beer of the
evening and then by Evan McAuliffe. The owner of the Rippled Ridge Ranch had
been sitting quietly at the table while the deputy had been peppered with
questions.
"Stan, you don't believe that any more than I do," he said dunking a chicken
wing into some extra blue cheese dressing. "Dickie might not be the tallest tree
in the forest but I'm afraid he's right about Ann. Either she planned what
happened or she did it herself and it's not going to stop with what happened at
Shea's.
"You were overseas while you were in the service. You know about these zealots,
the type that strap a bomb to their bodies or set themselves on fire. To them
the cause is everything and nothing is going to stand in their way. I'm afraid
Ann is one of them.
"I knew her Aunt Vi pretty well. Violet was a good woman with a heart as open as
the break of day. She didn't have to take on the responsibility of raising her
sister's kid. She could have just left her in that state home. Hell, if she had
even thought about it for a couple of days there wouldn't have been any kid to
go pick up. But to Vi family obligations meant more than exchanging birthday
cards and getting together at the holidays. She believed that everything started
and ended with family. I don't think it took her more than a half hour to load
up her car and drive away once she got the call from Ann's teacher.
"I used to go over to the house after she brought Ann back. Ann was polite and
friendly but even at that age, she was only about 13 or so, you could tell the
girl was different. Not bad different but different all the same. The girl
always reminded me of a dog that lost its tail, wondering why and what might be
next.
"It got worse when she went away to school. Vi used to worry about her; who she
was hanging around with; what she was learning. When Vi died last year, just
before graduation, well I think the girl's last link with the rest of us was
cut. Now it's as though she never lived here, she's a just a visitor passing
through."
"Or maybe a missionary to the cannibals," cracked Ralph. "I say we get the pot
ready."
" Ralph, you might be closer to the truth than you know," Ev admitted. "I'm not
very philosophical and I don't think much off all this psychiatric stuff but
whether its because of how her parents died and what happened to her afterwards
or when Vi died or just something that happened while she was at school, Ann has
given herself over to stopping human cattle ranching."
"OK Ev, let's say you're right," said the deputy. "Let's say Dracon is the
Moriarty of this county, 'the power behind the malefactor ... the Napoleon of
crime' and that at this very minute she's 'sitting motionless like a spider in
its web' sending her underlings to do her bidding, what am I supposed to do
about it?"
"Just don't fool yourself into thinking what happened at Shea's is an isolated
incident. And don't waste your time looking for other suspects. Ann is behind
this and these things aren't going to stop until she's stopped. I'd like to see
her stopped before things go too far. I don't want to see anything happen to
her."
"So go and talk to her. Maybe she'd listen to you, you being an old boyfriend of
her aunt's and everything."
"Don't you think I tried that? She stared at me like I was the fallen
archangel. I'm a cancer on society and she's the surgeon that needs to cut me
out before I metastasize though the rest of the community."
"If she treats you like a turd on the heel of her shoe why do you care what
happens to her?"
"Maybe because Vi was almost family to me and I feel I owe her something. Maybe
because I remember that little girl with the long brown pigtails who loved to
help her aunt in the flower bed and brought me a handful of daisies and some
lemonade every time I stopped by in the summer. Maybe because somebody needs to
care about what happens to her, because it might make a difference somehow.
Hell, Stan I don't know why.
"What I do know is that when I looked into Ann's eyes at the funeral they were
as empty as the fair grounds after Labour Day. The idea of dying for a cause is
attracting her the way bread crumbs attract pigeons. I don't want to see that
happen."
Dickie banged his beer mug on the table splashing a foaming cascade over the few
nachos left on the plate in front of him.
"And you say I'm not the tallest tree in the forest. I think you're the one
who's playing piano in the marching band. Ev, didn't you read her letter or
those handbills she's always putting under the windscreen wiper? You're an evil
cattle rancher. Old Scratch his own self couldn't be worse than you are. This
girl, who by the way is as crazy as a shithouse rat, wants you and me and Ralph
and every other mother's child that make their living from cattle run out of the
county on a rail and if a rail isn't available I'm sure she'd be glad to loan
everyone her broomstick.
"But just because she used to bring you milk and cookies when she was a little
girl we're supposed to ignore all this and feel sorry for her," the lanky farm
hand continued. "Well I don't feel sorry for her at all. I feel sorry for Joey
and his dad because of that letter and I feel sorry for Jim because she trashed
his store. But I don't feel sorry for her. And if I ever catch her pulling any
of her stunts she's the one who's going to be sorry, not me."
McAuliffe took a deep sip of his beer. Count to ten he told himself and then
count backwards from ten.
"Let me tell you something Dickie," said Mutt while Ev was regaining his
composure. "I don't care that we went to school together. I don't care that you
had your sister gave me my first blow job behind your barn. I don't even care
how good of friends we are. None of that cuts any slack right now," the coolness
in his voice mounting.
"I don't want to see you or anybody else in this county pulling any vigilante
crap. This isn't Gotham City and you're not Batman. And that goes for you too
Ralph. Spread the word around that if anyone sees anything they call us, they
don't try to handle it themselves. And don't even give me that citizens arrest
nonsense," he said forestalling another outburst from the farm hand. "Anybody
and I mean anybody who takes the law into their own hands is going to have
problems with me and you sure as hell don't want that."
"Sure thing Mutt. Hey, we were just talking here you know, blowing off a little
steam," replied Dickie apologetically, taken aback by Mutt's attitude. Maybe he
had gone a little too far and shot his mouth off when he should have kept quiet.
His mom always told him to think before he talked. Now look what happened when
he didn't listen to her.
"Ev, I didn't mean to insult you, you know that don't you", asked the abashed
hand repentantly. " I'm sorry if it seemed that way."
"I know Dickie. Don't worry about it. I'm sorry if I seem a little sensitive but
this whole thing has got me spooked."
"Yeh, that goes for all of us," said Ralph. "Hey, you know why the women in the
Ladies League don't like to have group sex," he continued trying to lighten the
mood. "Because they hate writing out all the thank you cards afterwards."
After a couple more beers and about a half hour of desultory conversion, Ev was
walking toward his SUV when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning, he found
himself eye to eye with Stan Triplett.
"Ev, I got the feeling back there that you know more than you're letting on.
Care to fill me in?"
"Stan, there's not much more I can tell you. Something happened when Ann was at
college. I don't know what, Vi never told me. But sometime during those last few
days when Vi was in hospital, Ann said she didn't care what it took, didn't care
who got hurt; she was going to end human cattle ranching in the county or die
trying."
"And that's what's got you worried, that Ann is going to die trying?"
"It's not just that."
"What else then?"
"I'm worrying about how many others she's going to take with her."
