Cleaver Fever

The day after Christmas we aren’t opening until noon.

            I told Tommy I would meet him here at 8am to help with the post-Christmas Eve disaster cleanup. 

            Four whole hours without customers!

            I arrive a little early, and receive a text from Grace that she is running late, and Tommy is running late, so she’s on her way to unlock the shop for me; then she’ll turn around, pick Tommy up, and bring him here. 

Tommy doesn’t drive.  A few months after I started working here in 2012, he let the plates on his car expire and never renewed them.  It was an unreliable car that didn’t work very well anyways, and he doesn’t really go anywhere other than home and work.  He lives maybe ten minutes away from the shop. 

There are empty lugs in the cooler that need the blood rinsed out of them. 

Someone made blue cheese sauce at some point, and when they were done, instead of putting the bowl, ladle, and spatula in the sink, they tossed it inside one of the bloody lugs.

Tons of trays are stacked in the old cold sink water. 

There’s a pile of ground meat on the floor in the cooler that didn’t make it from the grinder into the catch lug. 

The case is exactly the way I left it three nights ago, minus all the orders that were picked up; none of the fresh meat trays were wrapped, and now everything is turning brown.

The box of 60-day-old tenderloins that our distributor gave us last week is still sitting on its side in the cooler; Grace wants to show it to them when they drop off their next shipment so they know she didn’t make it up.

I feel like I need a hazmat suit instead of latex gloves and an apron.

So I start cleaning up the best that I can.  The big stuff is easy to take care of, and I am a master dishwasher.  I haven’t had a dishwasher (the appliance) where I live for seven years.  Surprisingly, it’s not my least favorite chore.  Wanna know what is?  Dusting.  My apartment gets dusted maybe twice a year.  Fuck a bunch of dusting.

Once I wash all the trays, I see that I can’t put them away just yet.  We stack them by size underneath the tables that hold our scales and wrapping supplies, but everything is a mess down there right now, so I have to fix it up. 

When Tommy comes in, he tells me that all the trays are disorganized and messed up under the tables.  I reassure him that I literally just reorganized them all.  He tells me to stop what I’m doing and cut meat instead.

If there are no clean trays, I have nowhere to put any meat that I cut.

Plus, the case is still empty/a mess since ninety percent of it was being used to house orders for pick up.

I still have three hours to get this place ready for customers. 

Tommy goes and sits in his office.

Kyle and John are the next to come in.

“This place is a fuckin’ nightmare,” Kyle declares.

“Imagine what it looked like two hours ago, when I got here,” I retort. 

Kyle tells me that they worked through the night on the 23rd, and then all day Christmas Eve.  The shop closed at 2; they left around 3.  Some of the guys had to go straight to family gatherings, so they were up until well past midnight. 

So they started working at 6am December 23, and didn’t stop working until 3pm December 24.

I am so glad this is not my shop.

And since they didn’t buy enough rib roasts to fill all the orders, Grace had to go to Schnucks and buy a case of rib roasts for basically the same price that we sell them for. 

What an interesting concept:  when you don’t plan properly, you don’t make a profit.  Will that change how they do things next year? 

Frank’s words echo in my mind:  you’re gonna wind up running that place. . . .

I start prepping the case, but I can’t remember what order everything goes in, and the price signs are all moved around, so that’s not helping. 

The red non-slip mat that goes underneath everything is gross and covered in blood and old meat.  I ask Tommy if I should cut and lay a new one.  He says that’s Grace and Nicole’s department, and they usually re-do it after the holidays, so leave it for them.

If I know Nicole, she’ll probably be late today.  I can’t wait on her to get here, so I start laying trays on top of the mat.

First I set a tray in the cooler upside down.  The tray that displays the meat will go on top of this tray.  The upside-down tray makes it easier to slide the display tray in and out of the case.

We use those little green rows of fake parsley to separate each tray of meat.  I don’t think anyone is fooled into thinking this is real parsley, but it does the job of separating the meat and breaking up the monotone of reds.  Also, if everything is squished together all meat-on-meat-on-meat, it turns brown where things touch.  In addition, if meat touches metal it will turn brown, which is why we put green butcher paper down on the trays before any meat goes on them. 

Now I go through all the orders that didn’t get picked up on Christmas Eve. 

There are a lot.

It’s appalling.

One four-pound tenderloin, seasoned.  Two three-pound tenderloins, trimmed and tied.  Three three-and-a-half pound tenderloins, no season . . . the list goes on. 

At twenty bucks a pound, there is quite a cache of product here. 

Who just leaves two hundred dollars’ worth of meat?  Who does that?  If you ordered ten pounds of meat, you had at least twenty people to feed.  What did you eat?

Kyle explains, “The final count was fifty-five orders not picked up on Christmas Eve.”

“Probably three grand worth of meat,” Grace adds.  “But we found a whole box under the case of filled orders that we didn’t know was there.”

Oh god, it wasn’t all the filet orders I worked my ass off to—

“We were going crazy not being able to find all these orders that we knew we’d done.  They were right there the whole time.”

I left my box of filet orders in the cooler, though, not the lockers under the case.  I walk down to the very last locker door and open it.  It’s hinged on the bottom, so it drops to the floor with a thud.  I reach in . . . I pull the box out . . . I look inside. . . .

Not filet orders.

Whew.

I don’t have any problems filling today’s orders by re-tagging the abandoned ones. 

Except the ones that weren’t picked up on the 23rd.  Those are too old to re-use.  I cut the brown parts off and chunk them up for grind, of which we have about 1,100 pounds.  We sell it to a church at a discounted price.

Since there are only a few orders for today, I will trim up all the other leftovers and see if we can use them in the case. 

Kyle and John come out of the back room and approach me with guilty looks on their faces.

John asks, “So . . . hypothetically . . . if someone left chicken wings in the tumbler two days ago . . . those are still good to smoke, right?”

“Oh my god no, throw those away!”

Kyle counters, “But they’ve been sealed in an airtight container, so they should be fine, right?”

“We smelled them and they don’t smell bad,” is John’s appeal.

“. . . go ask Tommy.  I can’t even right now.”

Tommy’s hypothetical answer is:  “Hypothetically, yes.”

The boys take off running towards the back room like kids on the last day of school.

“You did say ‘hypothetically,’ right, so there’s no real-world situation here that I have to worry about?” Tommy calls after them. 

They don’t respond.

All I know is, I’m not trying any wings today.

I hear the door rattle.

Someone’s trying to get in.

“Let those people in!” Tommy calls from his office.

“We’re not open,” I call back, “and we don’t have anything to sell them.”  But oh yeah, our website hasn’t been updated this century, so how would anyone know what our holiday hours are?  It’s not like we have an email subscription service (like some butcher shops) so that we can let frequent customers know of changes or special events.  We don’t even have a damn sign on the door with our holiday hours. 

“I let everyone know that we wouldn’t be open till noon today,” Grace says.

“Everyone” means that she told the customers who were here Wednesday and Thursday—who already bought meat—about today’s hours. 

She adds, “I wouldn’t open at all if it were a weekday, but it’s a Saturday.”

She lets them in, along with a gust of cold air.

A group of three slips in behind them, and then another couple behind them.

They spread out.

They wander mindlessly, their eyes staring glassy at the empty unlit case.  They shamble from freezer to freezer, not quite registering what they’re seeing.

Something is wrong with these people.

Their lips struggle to form words.  A groan escapes one mouth, incoherent, barely a whisper.

“Fileee. . . .” the last syllable flops out and hangs, like a dog’s lolling tongue. 

Another mimics the sound, “Fileeet. . . ?”

The others take up the chant, their voices strengthening as they are joined. 

“Filet . . . filet . . . FILET!!!”

What the hell. . . ?

The man closest to Grace grabs her by the throat and bites down into her jugular vein, her blood splattering all over the register.  She never even screams.  Others now help the biter—his mouth glistening crimson—lay her on the front counter, face down.  With their bare hands, they lift her shirt and peel the skin from her back as if they’re opening a can of tuna.  I can only watch in horror as they reach inside her rib cage and rip out her backstraps.  Their clumsy clutching hands loft the raw red muscle skyward, like a NASCAR champion brandishing a trophy.  Then they all start fighting over it, like too many dogs with not enough bones.

I spring into action.  “Kyle, John, get out here and help me!”  With my right hand I grab the largest scimitar we have—a good fifteen inches long, two-and-a-half inches wide—and with my left I grab the rusty old cleaver.  I vault the front counter and Grace’s inert body, but I land in her blood and slip onto my ass.  Before I can get vertical again, Mr. Biter’s teeth are inches above me, so I shove the cleaver into his mouth and use it to hold him at arm’s length while I regain my feet. 

Then I start stabbing. 

I sink the scimitar into his neck until it pops out the other side.  Someone grabs my shoulders from behind, and I lash out with the cleaver and whack them in the nose.  The scimitar slides free as Mr. Biter falls to the floor.  One down, six to go.

Kyle and John join me, knives at the ready.  John is holding a plastic crate in front of him like a shield.  I kind of wish I had a shield.

“They’re beef-crazed!” I explain. 

While the savages demolish Grace’s innards, the three of us press our backs together and prepare for attack. 

Kyle nods to me, “You take the big one.”

I turn my gaze icily on him.  I’m about nipple-level to the largest brute of the pack.

“You have the biggest knife!” he contests.

“Ugh, fine.”  We rotate so that I’m now facing Big Boy. 

We eye each other up and down.  A string of red saliva dangles from his mouth and drips to the floor. 

“Fuck this,” I say as I thrust my scimitar upward into his chin.  It splits his tongue and lodges in the roof of his mouth.  I try to yank it out, but it doesn’t want to come.  Shit. 

I pull down, down, down.  Nothing.

Big Boy rears his hand back in a fist, aimed right between my eyes.

Wait. 

With all my strength, I push the scimitar further up.  It bursts into his nasal cavity, exploding his sinuses in a shower of snot raining down upon me.

Now the knife slides easily out of his face.

He tumbles backwards, knocking over one of his comrades.

Kyle and John raise their voices in a battle cry and rush the others, slashing wildly. 

I easily finish off the figure lethargically struggling to free itself from beneath Big Boy, then turn to help the guys, ducking as one of their knives comes flashing towards my face. 

“Hey!” I shout.

“Sorry!” Kyle responds.

John is having trouble.  The crate is awkward to hold onto, and his hand has slipped through one of the holes, imprisoning his wrist.  He seems to have forgotten everything else; all his attention is focused on extricating that hand.  As I make my way towards him to help, the door flies open, admitting another beef-crazed fiend. 

“Filet!” it cries, taking a step inside.

Before it can get any further, I bonk it on the head with the blunt side of my cleaver.  It howls and doubles over in pain, and I kick it back outside. 

“Kyle lock the fucking door!”

John is on his back now, the crate the only thing separating him from being consumed by the woman bent over him.  With both hands on the scimitar’s handle, I plunge its blade into her back and she collapses onto John.

Breathing heavily through my nose, I fling her body away so that I can start helping John get the crate off of his arm. 

Kyle lets his knife fall to the floor, steps over the two corpses he’s responsible for, and locks the door.

John is bleeding from his temple.

“Are you okay?” I ask, reaching out to touch him.

“I’m fine,” he says, brushing my hand away.

“Let me look.  If you’ve been bitten—”

“It’s not my blood,” he insists, standing up.  He limps to the counter, tears off an order sheet, and writes on the back of it:  “OPEN AT NOON.”  I help him tape it to the door.

Tommy comes out of his office, cigarette in hand.

“Guys, mop this shit up.”  He points to me, “You need to get to work we need filets for the case.”

He takes a drag off his cigarette, turns, and goes back to his office.

The door rattles.

“Let those customers in!”

This has been (partly) a work of fiction. 

I really fucking hate customers.