First Person Peculiar Read online

  “I’ll stay here anyway,” I cut him off.

  He shrugged. “As you wish.”

  “If you have no vehicles to bring them to the plant,” asked the Brit, approaching the entrance, “how do you move the … uh, the finished product out?”

  “Through a very efficient system of underground conveyers,” said Cotter. “The meat is stored in subterranean freezers near the perimeter of the property until it is shipped. And now …” He opened a second pen, offered them heaven, and got pretty much the same response.

  Poor bastards, I thought as I watched them hop and waddle to the door of the plant. In times gone by, sheep would be enticed into the slaughterhouse by a trained ram that they blindly followed. But leave it to us to come up with an even better reward for happily walking up to the butcher block: heaven itself.

  The Butterballs followed the first dozen into the belly of the building, and the rest of the pool followed Cotter in much the same way. There was a parallel to be drawn there, but I wasn’t interested enough to draw it.

  I saw Julie walking toward one of the pens. She looked like she didn’t want any company, so I headed off for a pen in the opposite direction. When I got there, four or five of the Butterballs pressed up against the fence next to me.

  “Feed me!”

  “Feed me!”

  “Pet me!”

  “Feed me!”

  Since I didn’t have any food, I settled for petting the one who was more interested in being petted than being fed.

  “Feel good?” I asked idly.

  “Feel good!” it said.

  I almost did a double take at that.

  “You’re a hell of a mimic, you know that?” I said.

  No reply.

  “Can you say what I say?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “Then how the hell did you learn to say it feels good, if you didn’t learn it just now from me?”

  “Pet me!”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, scratching it behind a tiny ear.

  “Very good!”

  I pulled my hand back as if I’d had an electric shock. “I never said the word ‘very.’ Where did you learn it?” And more to the point, how did you learn to partner it with ‘good’?

  Silence.

  For the next ten minutes I tried to get it to say something different. I wasn’t sure what I was reaching for, but the best I got was a “Pet me!” and a pair of “Goods”.

  “All right,” I said at last. “I give up. Go play with your friends, and don’t go to heaven too soon.”

  “Go to heaven!” it said, hopping up and down. “Go to heaven!”

  “Don’t get so excited,” I said. “It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.”

  “See Mama!” it squealed.

  “What?”

  “See God! See Mama!”

  Suddenly I knew why MacDonald was being treated for depression. I didn’t blame him at all.

  I hurried back to the slaughterhouse, and when Cotter emerged alone a moment later I walked up to him.

  “We have to talk,” I said, grabbing him by the arm.

  “Your colleagues are all inside inspecting the premises,” he said, trying to pull himself loose from my grip. “Are you sure you wouldn’t care to join them?”

  “Shut up and listen to me!” I said. “I just had a talk with one of your Butterballs.”

  “He told you to feed him?”

  “He told me that he would see God when he went to heaven.”

  Cotter swallowed hard. “Oh, shit—another one!”

  “Another one of what?” I demanded. “Another sentient one?”

  “No, of course not,” said Cotter. “But as often as we impress the need for absolute silence among our staff, they continue to speak to each other in front of the Butterballs, or even to the Butterballs themselves. Obviously this one heard someone saying that God lives in heaven. It has no concept of God, of course; it probably thinks God is something good to eat.”

  “He thinks he’s going to see his mother, too,” I said.

  “He’s a mimic!” said Cotter severely. “Surely you don’t think he can have any memory of his mother? For Christ’s sake, he was weaned at five weeks!”

  “I’m just telling you what he said,” I replied. “Like it or not, you’ve got a hell of a P.R. problem: Just how many people do you want him saying it to?”

  “Point him out to me,” said Cotter, looking panicky. “We’ll process him at once.”

  “You think he’s the only one with a vocabulary?” I asked.

  “One of the very few, I’m sure,” said Cotter.

  “Don’t be that sure,” said Julie, who had joined us while I was talking to Cotter. She had an odd expression on her face, like someone who’s just undergone a religious experience and wishes she hadn’t. “Mine looked at me with those soft brown eyes and asked me, very gently and very shyly, not to eat it.”

  I thought Cotter would shit in his expensive suit. “That’s impossible!”

  “The hell it is,” she shot back.

  “They are not sentient,” he said stubbornly. “They are mimics. They do not think. They do not know what they are saying.” He stared at her. “Are you sure he didn’t say ‘feed’? It sounds a lot like ‘eat.’ You’ve got to be mistaken.”

  It made sense. I hoped he was right.

  “‘Don’t feed me?’” repeated Julie. “The only un-hungry Butterball on the farm?”

  “Some of them speak better than others. He could have been clearing his throat, or trying to say something that came out wrong. I’ve even come across one that stutters.” It occurred to me that Cotter was trying as hard to convince himself as he was to convince her. “We’ve tested them a hundred different ways. They’re not sentient. They’re not!”

  “But—”

  “Consider the facts,” said Cotter. “I’ve explained that the words sounds alike. I’ve explained that the Butterballs are not all equally skilled at articulation. I’ve explained that after endless lab experiments the top animal behavioral scientists in the world have concluded that they are not sentient. All that is on one side. On the other is that you think you may have heard something that is so impossible that any other explanation makes more sense.”

  “I don’t know,” she hedged. “It sounded exactly like …”

  “I’m sure it did,” said Cotter soothingly. “You were simply mistaken.”

  “No one else has ever heard anything like that?” she asked.

  “No one. But if you’d like to point out which of them said it …”

  She turned toward the pen. “They all look alike.”

  I tagged along as the two of them walked over to the Butterballs. We spent about five minutes there, but none of them said anything but “Feed me!” and “Pet me!” and finally Julie sighed in resignation.

  “All right,” she said wearily. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “What do you think, Mr. McNair?” asked Cotter.

  My first thought was: what the hell are you asking me for? Then I looked into his eyes, which were almost laying out the terms of our agreement, and I knew.

  “Now that I’ve had a few minutes to think about it, I guess we were mistaken,” I said. “Your scientists know a lot more about it than we do.”

  I turned to see Julie’s reaction.

  “Yeah,” she said at last. “I suppose so.” She looked at the Butterballs. “Besides, MacDonald may be a zillionaire and a recluse, but I don’t think he’s a monster, and only a monster could do something like … well … yes, I must have been mistaken.”

  And that’s the story. We were not only the first pool of journalists to visit the farm. We were also the last.

  The others didn’t know what had happened, and of course Cotter wasn’t about to tell them. They reported what they saw, told the world that its prayers were answered, and only three of them even mentioned the Butterballs’ special talent.

  I thought about the Butterballs all during the long fligh
t home. Every expert said they weren’t sentient, that they were just mimics. And I suppose my Butterball could very well have heard someone say that God lived in heaven, just as he could have heard someone use the word “very.” It was a stretch, but I could buy it if I had to.

  But where did Julie Balch’s Butterball ever hear a man begging not to be eaten? I’ve been trying to come up with an answer to that since I left the farm. I haven’t got one yet—but I do have a syndicated column, courtesy of the conglomerate that owns the publishing company.

  So am I going use it to tell the world?

  That’s my other problem: Tell it what? That three billion kids can go back to starving to death? Because whether Cotter was telling the truth or lying through his teeth, if it comes down to a choice between Butterballs and humans, I know which side I have to come down on.

  There are things I can control and things I can’t, things I know and things I am trying my damnedest not to know. I’m just one man, and I’m not responsible for saving the world.

  But I am responsible for me—and from the day I left the farm, I’ve been a vegetarian. It’s a small step, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

  ***

  Marty Greenberg was doing an anthology of Robin Hood stories, and invited me to write one. I don’t write derring-do, but I knew Marty had a soft spot for Jewish schtick stories, so I came up with Mrs. Hood’s tsouris.

  Mrs. Hood Unloads

  Yes, Mrs. Grobnik, it’s a new set of tiles. My son the Most Wanted Felon gave them to me. Probably they used to belong to the rabbi’s wife.

  He just gave them to me last week. He’d been keeping them for me for three months. Two nights a week he can sneak into the castle and annoy the King, but can he come by for dinner with his mother more than once in three months?

  You think you’ve got tsouris? Well, God may ignore you from time to time, but He hates me.

  I don’t mean to complain … but what did I ever do to deserve such a schmendrik for a son? I think they must have switched babies at the hospital, I really do. 26 hours I spent in labor, and for what? You work and you slave, you try to give your son a sense of values, and then even when he stops by he gulps his food and can never stay for dessert because the army is after him.

  So at least you can write and tell me how you’re doing, Mr. Big Shot, I tell him. And do you know what he says to that? He says he can’t write because he’s illiterate. Me, I say he’s just using that as an excuse.

  You break the wall, Mrs. Noodleman. Can I bring anyone some tea?

  Well, of course he robs from the rich, Mrs. Grobnik. I mean, what’s the sense of robbing from the poor? But why does he have to rob at all? Why couldn’t he have been a doctor? But he says no, he’s got this calling, that God told him he has to rob from the rich and give to the poor. When I was fourteen, God told me that I was a fairy princess, but you didn’t see me going out and kissing any frogs. Anyway, I tell him that maybe he’s misinterpreting, that maybe God is telling him to be a banker or a real estate broker, but he says no, his holy mission is to rob the rich and give to the poor. So I ask him why he can’t at least charge the poor a ten percent handling fee, and he gives me that look, the same one I used to smack his tuchis for when he was a boy.

  Pong! Very good, Mrs. Katz.

  No, we’re happy to have you here, Mrs. Katz. I just couldn’t take any more of that Mrs. Nottingham. She’s so hoity-toity and walks around with her nose in the air, and acts like her boy is a lawyer instead of just a policeman. My son the criminal gives away more in a week that her son makes in a year.

  You heard what, Mrs. Noodleman? You heard him say that he moved to Sherwood Forest because he went off to the Crusades and came back to find out he wasn’t the Lord of the Manor? Well, of course he wasn’t the Lord of the Manor! Was my late husband, Mr. Hood, God rest his soul, the Lord of the Manor? Are my brothers Nate and Jake the Lords of the Manor? Probably ten thousand boys came home and found they weren’t Lords of the Manor—but did they go live in the forest and rob their mother’s friends?

  He was an apprentice blacksmith, that’s what he was. He probably made up all this Lord of the Manor stuff to impress that shiksa Marian.

  And while I’m thinking of it, what’s all this Maid Marian talk? She doesn’t look like a maid to me.

  Not so fast, Mrs. Noodleman. I have a flower, so I get an extra tile.

  Anyway, you work and you slave, and what does it get you? Your son runs off to the forest and starts wearing a yarmulkah with a feather in it, that’s what.

  And look who he runs around with—a bunch of merry men! I don’t know if I can bear the shame! Just wish I knew what I ever did to make God hate me so much.

  Thank you for your kind words, Mrs. Grobnik, but you just can’t imagine what it’s like. I try to raise him with proper values, and look how it all turns out—he’s dating this Marian person, and his closest friend is a priest, Friar someone-or-other.

  Oh, it’s not? Now his best friend is Little John? Well, I don’t want to be the one to gossip, but the stable girl told me what’s so little about him.

  Chow, Mrs. Noodleman. I lost track—whose turn is it now?

  So he comes by last Thursday, and he gives me these tiles, and he says he can only stay for five minutes because the Sheriff’s men are after him, and he gulps his gefilte fish down, and I notice he’s looking thin, so I ask him if he’s getting his greens, and he gives me that look, and he says Ma, of course I’m getting my greens, I live in a forest. So sue me, I say, better I should just sit here in the dark and never even mention that you’re too skinny because you never come by for dinner unless the Sheriff’s men are watching your hide-in.

  Hide-out, hide-in, what’s the difference, Mrs. Katz? At least your son comes by for dinner every Sunday. The only time I know I’ll see my son is when I go to the post office, and there’s his picture hanging on the wall.

  Oy! You’re showing four white dragons, Mrs. Noodleman! You see? I knew God hated me!

  And he says the next time he comes by—if I haven’t died of old age and neglect by then—he’s going to bring his gang with him. And I say not without a week’s notice, and that I’m not letting this Marian person in the house, no matter what, and even if I do, she isn’t allowed to use the bathroom. And he just laughs that Mr. Big Shot laugh, ho-ho-ho, like he thinks he can wrap me around his little finger. Well, I’ll Mr. Big Shot him right across the mouth if he doesn’t learn a little respect for his mother.

  Mah Jong!

  All right, so God doesn’t hate me full-time, once in a while He blinks long enough for me to win a game.

  By the way, what do you cook for seventy merry goys, anyway?

  ***

  I had just won the American Dog Writers Association Award for Best Short Fiction of 1977 with “The Last Dog.” I wrote “Blue” a couple of months later, submitted it to the same market—Hunting Dog Magazine—and won again. The secretary of the organization, who had expressed some distaste for science fiction or fantasy stories, asked me if I planned to do any more. I replied that I’d probably do one a year as long as they were handing out the award. They cancelled the award one week later.

  Blue

  I had a dog, his name was Blue.

  Bet you five dollars he’s a good one too.

  Come on, Blue!

  I’m a-coming too.

  They sing that song about him, Burl Ives and Win Stracke and the rest, but they wouldn’t have been too happy to be locked in the same room with old Blue. He’d as soon take your hand off as look at you.

  He wandered out to my shack one day when he was a pup and just plumped himself down and stayed. I always figured he stuck around because I was the only thing he’d ever seen that was even meaner and uglier than he was.

  As for betting five dollars on Blue or anything else, forget it. It’s been so long since I’ve seen five dollars that I don’t even remember whose picture is on the bill. Jefferson, I think, or maybe Roosevelt. Money just never matt
ered much to me, and as long as Blue was warm and dry and had a full belly, nothing much mattered to him.

  Each winter we’d shaggy up, me on my face and him just about everywhere, and each summer we’d naked down. Didn’t see a lot of people any time of year. When we did, it’d be a contest to see who could run them off the territory first, me or Blue. He’d win more often than not. He never came back looking for praise, or like he’d done a bright thing; it was more like he’d done a necessary thing. Those woods and that river was ours, his and mine, and we didn’t see any reason to put up with a batch of intruders, neither city-slickers nor down-home boys either.

  It was a pretty good life. Neither of us got fat, but we didn’t go hungry very often either. And it was kind of good to sit by a fire together, me smoking and him snorting. I don’t think he liked my pipe tobacco, but we had this kind of pact not to bother each other, and he stuck by it a lot better than a couple of women I outlived.

  And, Mister, that dog was hell on a cold scent.

  Blue chased a possum up a cinnamon tree.

  Blue looked at the possum, possum looked at me.

  Come on, Blue.

  I’m a-coming, too.

  Except that it wasn’t a cinnamon tree at all. I don’t ever recollect seeing one. It was just a plain old tree, and I still can’t figure out how the possum got up there all in one piece.

  It must have been twenty below zero, and neither of us had eaten in a couple of days. Suddenly Blue put his nose to the ground and started baying just like a bloodhound. Thought he was on the trail of an escaped killer the way he carried on, but it was just an old possum, looking every bit as cold and hungry as we did. The way Blue ran him I thought his heart would burst, but somehow he made it a few feet up the tree trunk. Slashed Blue on the nose a couple of times, just for good measure, but if he thought that would make old Blue run off with his tail between his legs, he had another think coming. Blue just stood there, kind of smiling up at him, and saying, Possum, let’s see you come on down and try that again.

  It was a mighty toothy smile.

  Baked that possum good and brown.