Sample chapter from The Disassembled Man by Nate Flexer

I was hunched over a trashcan vomiting an evening’s worth of burritos, whiskey, and misery, when this burly fellow reeking of sweat and two-dollar cologne grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, and slammed his meaty fist into my jaw. I performed a drunken pirouette, mumbled a pair of Hail Marys, and crashed to the alley asphalt. He stood over me and grinned. With pockmarked cheeks, a flattened nose, and a cruel mouth, he had a face that even a blind mother couldn’t love. Not that I’m one to talk.

“Scarlett told me about you,” he said. “She told me all about you.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m a good boy.”

He pressed a steel-toed boot into my chest. “She told me how you been showing up at the club night after night to watch her jiggle. Told me that one night you even followed her home. Said she spotted you climbing up a mesquite tree, trying to get another peak. You’re a sick fuck, ain’t you boy?”

I spit out a loose tooth and wiped off some blood with my forearm. “Scarlett is a goddamn liar,” I said. “I’m no peeping Tom. I’m an upstanding citizen.”

But the ugly son-of-a-bitch didn’t believe me. Without fair warning, he swung his leg back and kicked me three times in the side, causing me to fart and spit up bile. Then he squatted down next to me, patted my cheek with the palm of his hand, and said, “Listen to me, you freak. The name is Ponso Arguello, and Scarlett Acres is my property until further notice. So from now on, don’t talk to her, don’t look at her, don’t even think about her. ’Cause next time, I’m not gonna be so gentle. Next time they’ll be scraping your face from this here pavement.”

He got back to his feet, kicked me one more time for good measure, and strode slowly toward Main Street. With great effort I managed to pull myself to a sitting position. Then I shouted after him. “To hell with you. You’re not so bad. You’re not so tough. Next time you’re gonna wish you didn’t mess with Frankie Avicious. ’Cause I’m a mean motherfucker. I know Kung Fu. I know Tae Bo.” But Ponso Arguello didn’t turn around, didn’t even slow down.

Feeling defeated and more than a little bit tired, I lay back down on the asphalt, using a half-eaten rotisserie chicken as a pillow. I stared up at the bone moon and pictured Ponso loving my beautiful Scarlett. And as a filthy breeze washed over my face, I made a promise: one of these days I’d teach that boy a lesson or two.

I slept in my car that night—a monkey shit-brown Beretta with three missing hubcaps and a rusted hood. I woke myself up by hacking a pint of blood. I pried open my eyelids with my fingers. Everything hurt. I felt as if I’d gone twelve rounds with a hyperactive orangutan, then gotten kicked in the groin by a twelve-year old girl wearing soccer cleats.

I fumbled for a cigarette, found a soggy one still stuck on my lower lip, and lit it. I sucked down the nicotine, carbon monoxide, tar, cyanide, arsenic, ammonia, and the other 4,000 or so chemicals with great relish.

I rolled down the window. Outside, the desert sun was blazing and the air was still. Eight in the morning and it was already hotter than a fireman’s scrotum. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, hit the engine, and drove. I turned on the radio, but it was just talk, talk, talk, and that made me good and depressed. It was the usual topics: greed, drugs, and murder. And that was just the sports news.

The slaughterhouse where I worked was a sprawling concrete complex on route 95 called Sunshine Foods. Steam billowed from smokestacks like a modern-day sacrifice to God. Black ladders zigzagged up the windowless walls. Across the highway from the plant, tagged cattle were packed in the stockyard grazing, blissfully unaware of the savagery that awaited them. Everything smelled like manure, rotten eggs, and burning blood.

The parking lot was filled with beat-up pickups and worn-out cars. I drove slowly to the entrance, a familiar shroud of dread covering my skull. In the booth a fat man was reading a newspaper and didn’t bother looking at my ID card when I flashed it to him. He just nodded his head and opened the gate. I parked my car in the back of the lot and turned off the engine. Workers were walking through the parking lot with their heads down, carrying their lunch boxes and thermoses. I got out of the car and shielded my eyes from the sun.

Inside the locker room, a bunch of Sunshine employees were changing into their work clothes. They dressed in silence except for one poor son-of-a-bitch who sat on the bench rubbing his cross and praying in Spanish. Me, I never cared much for prayer. It always seemed an awful lot like begging, and I’d be damned if I was going to get down on my knees and plead to some Devil-God who got a hard-on by seeing me fail.

I opened my locker, and a few dozen cockroaches scurried out looking for a new crack to hide. Then I began dressing. I put on my gloves and chain-mail apron—metal armor that covered my body, gladiator-style. I stuck my hard hat onto my head and tucked my pants into my boots. The factory whistle blew. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go.

I walked toward my station. The disassembly line was filled with catwalks, conveyer belts, and pipes. Workers with knives and hooks were attacking dangling sides of beef, struggling to tear off as much flesh as possible, while our foreman, Pete Baxter, shouted at them in Spanish, telling them to work faster, faster. About twenty feet in front of them, a burly man with a Paul Bunyan beard stood at the ready with a power saw, waiting for the next skinless steer to chop in half. His goggles were covered with blood and brains. He nodded at me solemnly, as if we were at a funeral. I guess we were. Now the stink was getting bad. I dodged the carcasses swinging from the blood rail like Walter Payton avoiding tacklers. As I reached the next level, I could hear the drum-like sound of cattle being knocked unconscious. Electric knives whirred, peeling flesh off carcasses and decapitated heads, slicing tongues from mouths.

I approached my station, the “sticker” station. In technical terms, my job was to make a vertical incision along the carotid arteries and jugular veins, causing the cow to bleed out so the other workers could safely skin, eviscerate, and split the animal. In not so technical terms, my job was to cut the throat of each and every goddamn cow that set foot in Sunshine Foods.

The early-shift sticker flashed a grin when he saw me. “Okay amigo, now it’s your turn,” he said. He finished a final kill before stepping out of line. I quickly took his place. Within seconds the next steer swung my way. I gripped my knife hard and stuck the cow in its neck. Textbook. The blood splattered on my goggles, and I wiped it off with my sleeve. Then, a few seconds later, the next one arrived. I greeted it the same way. Its legs kicked in reflex, and I heard it groan. Eight and a half hours to go. I took a deep breath and looked down at the floor. My boots were submerged in blood.

A few days earlier, some Guatemalan immigrant had gotten pulled into the cogs of a conveyer belt while he was cleaning. No one there knew how to turn off the goddamn machine so they just sat there and watched as his arms and legs and chest and ass were shredded into a bloody mess. The plant was closed for a half day while they pretended to fix the machinery malfunction. This afternoon, Richard Richardson, Director of Operations, was coming to tour the plant and speak to the workers in order to allay any fears that Sunshine Foods wasn’t one hundred and ten percent committed to worker safety.

We had been warned about his arrival and given an updated protocol. While he was here, no cattle were to be legged or skinned alive. If meat dropped on the ground during processing, we were expected to rinse it thoroughly before placing it back on the conveyer belt. Workers were to report immediately if the sewers got clogged up due to coagulated blood or fecal matter. Additionally, there was to be no cursing, laughing, or loud conversation. The line speed would be slowed during Mr. Richardson’s visit to make it easier to follow these guidelines. This, they kept reminding us, was a special day.

So work was pretty trouble-free that afternoon. I only had to stick one or two cows per minute and most of them were even unconscious. Big Dick didn’t show up until the end of my shift. He was a short man with a large round gut and a red leathery face. His eyebrows looked like gray caterpillars, and his lips resembled bloated sausages. Baxter gave him rubber boots to cover his Italian shoes, but he refused the hardhat, choosing instead to wear his trademark white cowboy hat. A real man of the people.

For twenty minutes or so, he, Baxter, and a group of newspaper photographers walked around the plant, talking and joking with the workers. Dick even used some halting Spanish to speak with the Mexicans. They were undoubtedly impressed.

At some point Baxter led the group to my station. I had just finished a kill. I was about to open up my arms and give Dick a great big bear hug, but before I could, he quickly stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Richard Richardson, President of Operations of this here company. What’s your handle, son?”

I nodded my head slowly and returned the wink. “Frankie Avicious,” I said.

His sausage lips upturned into a grin. “And how long have you been working for Sunshine Foods?”

“Five short years,” I said. “Sped by faster than a cheetah with a firecracker up its ass.”

“Then I take it you enjoy your job?”

“Enjoy my job? That’s funny, sir. That’s very funny. No, sir, I don’t enjoy it at all. You see, here at Sunshine we workers are treated nearly as badly as the cattle. The supervisors spend their shifts sticking prods up our asses, figuratively, occasionally literally. The wages stink and so do the carcasses. But you already know that, Dick, and it doesn’t bother you one bit. Because for you and all the other sons-of-bitches sitting in your leather recliners, smoking your Cuban cigars, and drinking your fifty-year-old scotch, it’s all about the profits, isn’t it? Keep that killing line moving, meat is money, to hell with worker’s safety. Yeah, Dick, I’ve dislocated my shoulder, broken three fingers, ruptured my spleen, stabbed myself a dozen or more times, lost the will to live. And that was just this morning. You think that I enjoy working for your goddamn company? Well, if you believe that, then I’ve got a nice oceanfront property up my ass for sale.”

Or maybe I said, “Yes sir, I enjoy my job very much.”

Mr. Richardson patted me on the back. “Yes, Frankie, I’ve got a good feeling about you. I’ve got a feeling that you, as much as anybody, know what Sunshine Foods is all about. Sure, it’s about the wholesome products that we produce and package for this great country of ours on a daily basis. But that’s not all. No, Frankie, it’s about the people. Good honest hard-working folks, like yourself, working together to create a better tomorrow. You may not believe me when I tell you this, son, but we’re all in this together. I may have the fancy title, but I’m no different than you, Frankie. And I’m certainly no different than poor Lorenzo Sanchez, who lost his life so tragically yesterday. My heart goes out to him and his family, and I want to assure you and the rest of the dedicated employees that they will be compensated generously for their loss, just as your family would be if, God forbid, something were to happen to you. Because you’re the people I go to church with, the people I go to the grocery store with, the people I rub shoulders with. The people, Frankie. The people are the heart and soul of this company, and I aim to keep it that way. You keep up the good work. May God bless you, may God bless Sunshine Foods, and may God bless America.”

I nodded my head, thanked him sincerely. The cameras clicked. The next cow came down the line, and Baxter squeezed Big Dick’s shoulder and pulled him back. I grabbed a hold of the steer’s neck, reached around and stabbed its jugular vein. The blood squirted from its throat and splattered on Dick’s cowboy hat. For a moment he seemed stunned. He just stood there, his mouth slightly ajar. Then he removed the hat and tried wiping the blood off with his hands.

“Goddamn it, Avicious,” Baxter said. “You’re always fucking things up.”

But Dick just shook his head and laughed. “Oh, it’s no big thing,” he said. “I can pick up another one of these any old day. Besides, I think this young man has quite a future in the company. I consider him family.”

And I was. You see, Richard Richardson was my father-in-law.