Slaughterhouse Blues by Nick Kolakowski

Author:Nick Kolakowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

IV

AFTER FIONA LEFT, Bill retrieved the pistol from atop the boxes in the hallway and returned to the kitchen, where he leaned against the cleanest-looking wall. No way in hell will I open that fridge, he thought. No matter how hungry I am. The fungus inside has probably built a complex civilization, complete with nuclear weapons.

James squinted at Bill. “Gimme my gun,” he said.

Bill shook his head.

James gripped the handles of his wheelchair. “Don’t fuck with me, son. I will come over there and take it from you.”

“Not if I tip a chair in your way.”

“C’mon, Dad,” Don said. “Just chill.”

“When my father was sick, I took care of him.” James jabbed a gnarled finger at his son. “To the bitter fucking end, no matter how much it cost me. It was the least I could do. I’m sorry I raised a piece of shit who couldn’t do the same. Where’s your brother?”

Don took a deep breath, held it, exhaled loudly. “Nicaragua.”

“Is he still a fat fuck?”

Bill’s stomach growled. “Speaking of fat,” he said, “I want takeout. Anyone want in on that?”

“Good Chinese place a couple blocks away,” James said, nodding at the phone attached to the wall near Bill’s head. “Number’s written there.”

“Should you be eating that?” Don asked. “Too much sodium?”

“During the War, we had C-rations,” James said. “It tasted like cold rat assholes. Don’t tell me what I can put in my body. I’m your fucking father.”

With a theatrical shrug, Bill picked up the cracked handset and dialed the digits scrawled in faint pencil on the paint beside it. The voice that answered, over a cacophonous din of crashing pots, told him it would take ten minutes to deliver an order of sesame chicken and some wonton, okay? Yes, that was very okay. Fat and salt was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Hanging up, Bill turned to James, who had steepled his hands beneath his chin, looking almost professorial as he studied his son. Don fixated on the table as if the world’s most fascinating object had suddenly appeared there.

“Where’d you find that gold, anyway?” Bill asked.

“Told you, during the War,” said James, ever the conversationalist.

“I picked up on that part,” Bill smirked. “But what actually happened? We got nothing going on right now, man. You might as well tell me a good story.”

James cleared a gallon of phlegm from his throat. “My unit was in Germany,” he said. “We raided a house occupied by a group of Nazi officers. Bad men, the kind who had overseen the camps. Upstairs we found some bags filled with gold teeth, gold coins, bits of jewelry. I remember how heavy those bags were. My memory’s been going the past couple years, but what sticks with me is how much muscle it took to drag all of it down the stairs.”

Bill shivered. “You brought the teeth back?”

James chuckled. “And not just those from the house. Yanked a few out of some German mouths. My family’s Polish, it was payback. My buddies who worked supply, they snuck the loads back into the States.

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