Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash
The nightlight, drooping just above Duncan eyebrows, warmed his forehead to an uncomfortable degree. He found himself splayed across the thin, beige carpet of the hallway, contorted in a wild fashion, a throbbing forehead and what felt like carpet burns on the bridge of his nose. He didn’t remember how he got there, only that at one point in the night he had gotten up for a drink of water. This wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in a strange place, but the event seemed to be happening with more frequency. It’s something he should tell Dr. Burke, he told himself, but when it came time for his next appointment, he forgot to specifically mention it.
* * *
Duncan thumbed through a Highlights magazine in the passenger seat of his brother’s El Camino. He was a little old for Highlights, but he was interested in the Animals section. Some animals can live longer than humans, he read. The Bowhead whale can live for more than 200 years. Duncan wondered how big its heart might be.
“You get a girlfriend yet?” Roland asked between drags.
His brother usually drove him to school. His mother was an attorney in the city and often had client meetings or court dates that prevented her from being chauffeur too often. His father had left home long ago, and Duncan didn’t bring it up any more as it only made his mother sad and his brother angry.
“Hey nipplehead, I’m talking to you,” he said.
The morning sun had just crested the horizon and the branches, sheathed in ice, glistened in the new light. Roland drove with his right hand while the other pulled a cigarette to and from his lips. Duncan cradled his slate-gray backpack and brown lunch bag on his lap, staring out his window. His hair had been cut summer-short and his clothes were nearly warm enough for the season. Roland switched hands on the wheel and thumped Duncan in the head.
“What was that for?” Duncan exclaimed.
“I was talking to you dipshit. Don’t ignore me.”
“I didn’t hear you, ass,” Duncan replied.
Roland pulled his driving hand through his thick black hair that blended seamlessly into his worn black leather coat. Several minutes passed in silence, except for the wind ripping through a narrow opening of the driver’s side window. Duncan watched the scenery pass like paint washing down a drain. The houses in their town looked strange, he thought, like pill bottles if pill bottles had corners. He wondered what kinds of medicine each would hold. That would depend on the people living inside and what kind of sickness they had, he thought. His own house, fat brown bottle of pills, would have been filled with Digoxin.
Roland took another drag and spoke through exhaled smoke.
“That prick Shaffer bother you still?”
Duncan watched the dust cloud behind the car through the side-view mirror.
“No, not anymore. Coach heard he was messing with kids and made him do extra workouts.” Duncan shifted in his seat. “Of course, if he did start messing with me again, he’s just that much stronger, so I guess I’d be in trouble.”
Roland reached over to change the radio station, barely audible over the road noise.
“Well, you let me know if he’s being a dick. I’ll stomp a fire out on his face, I don’t care if he is only twelve.”
“Why are we going so early?”
Roland flicked his cigarette butt out the window and rolled it up.
“Because shut up.”
The scenery outside began to change and the sunlight illumined the surrounding countryside. The morning had settled across the fields in front of them in the form of a thick and murky fog, permeating the timber like tinsel wound around the pine branches. Duncan looked out over small clutches of trees coughing up wisps of steam like writhing, wrathful spirits. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears, slow and methodical. It fell nearly in sync with the turn signal’s ticking.
“You been feeling alright?” Roland asked.
“Fine.”
“You know, if I had a heart condition, I’d ride that bitch for all it’s worth. Make Mom and Dad do all kinds of things for me.”
Duncan didn’t respond.
“Just saying.” Roland added.
* * *
In the parking lot of the Brown Brothers’ Butchers, Duncan stooped, yelling into the open passenger window of Roland’s car.
“I don’t understand why you can’t take me all the way to school! It’s freaking freezing out here!”
Roland leaned out the car window, steam pouring from his mouth.
“I told you, because they’re not open for students yet. And I got somewhere I need to be and I can’t wait around until the sixth grade starts letting kids come in.” He grabbed a cigarette from the center console. “Also, it’s funny.”
“But I hate catching the bus here! It creeps me out.” Duncan wrapped his jacket tighter around his chest while his teeth chattered involuntarily.
“The bus will come by before too long, twenty minutes. It’s either drop you off at the school and you freeze your balls off outside for an hour or I drop you here and you wait inside the butcher’s. I’ll pick you up by four after school. You have that doctor’s appointment at four-thirty. Don’t be late.”
Roland rolled up the window and drove back out to the main county road with a bump, spraying gravel like buckshot.
Duncan surveyed the Brown Brothers’ Butchers and its weathered, white stone walls. Its roof seemed askew, like bursting from the inside. With pills, he imagined. He thought of the medicine that might fill a butcher shop. Warfarin, maybe. Lasix. Cherry flavored Rolaids. After four minutes, the door opened from the inside and a round, mustached face peeked out.
“I thought I saw your brother drive out of here. Why you waiting in the cold? Come in and get warm.”
Duncan looked to Milo Brown and nodded. He slipped in and let the door close heavily behind him. He had been inside before, though he avoided it when he could. The shop had a scent that Duncan could taste. He didn’t have a good description for it, somehow metallic and musky or sanitary and foul at the same time. The tile floor looked like it had once been white, on the first day of business, perhaps. But now it had turned a disturbingly faint pink, as if no amount of scrubbing could restore its luster.
Milo, a stocky and well-fed man dressed in a drab blue work suit, waddled away from the front door and back to a large cutting table behind the main meat case. Apron strings dangled from his back as he walked, and Duncan noticed red stains between his fingers, like brick dust ground in. His brother Lloyd stood at another cutting table across the room, hacking chunks from a cut of beef. He was taller than Milo and resembled that Frankenstein butler Duncan had seen on some old black and white TV show.
“Morning Duncan. Haven’t seen you here in a while. Why are you so early?” Lloyd said with a smile as he wiped the cleaver on his bloodied apron.
“My stupid brother had to get to school early for some stupid reason. Thanks for letting me come in.”
Lloyd smiled and nodded. “I know how brothers can be sometimes.”
“So now hang on,” Milo barked as he returned to the cutting table and picked up a knife, “you’re going to have to go back. You lost me somewhere there.”
Lloyd pushed the carved meat into a container and grabbed more.
“Alright,” he replied, “this was three days ago and it was in the morning, damn early morning. I’m asleep and for whatever reason I’m feeling real cold and kinda wet, and I’m thinking shoot, what did I do, piss myself again?”
Milo spoke up at this, “Again? What do you mean again?”
“But then when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in bed.”
“You were on the floor,” Milo interjected.
“I wasn’t on the floor,” Lloyd replied. “I wasn’t in my bedroom. I wasn’t even in my house! I woke up face down in the dirt outside!”
“How the hell you get outside in your sleep?”
Lloyd collected his slices of meat into rows. “I wasn’t even on my property. I woke up face down in the dirt at the Sellers’ place, over there by that mudhole they call a lake.”
“Why the hell you sleep out there?”
“I didn’t!” Lloyd exclaimed, “I went to bed in my own house, in my own bed, next to the wife, and I wake up in the dirt!” Lloyd paused in a prolonged silence. “What, you don’t believe me?”
“Oh,” Milo chuckled, “I don’t doubt that you somehow wandered out to the Sellers’ place and slept in the dirt. I just know what you’re going to say next.”
Lloyd’s eyebrows furrowed. “Well what the hell else could it be, Milo? I been telling you that visitors have been terrorizing my place, uprooting the crops and stealing the livestock. It’s obvious they’ve taken to abductions now.”
“Lloyd,” Milo began, “you ever consider animals may be tearing up your crops? Or maybe them two cows just ran off? Or that maybe you got too drunk and don’t remember stumbling out to the Sellers’ place? Aliens can’t be responsible for every bad thing that happens to you.”
Duncan continued staring at his shoes, trying to figure out just what kind of strange person Lloyd was—weird uncle strange or the sanitarium kind.
“They can be if they are!” Lloyd replied.
“If you’re so dead-set on thinking aliens are coming down to your place, messing up your crops and taking you on middle-of-the-night joy rides, why don’t you try and do something about it? Set up some traps or something. Sit out on the porch all night with that stage-coach gun.”
Lloyd didn’t take his eyes off the cutting board.
“Hell, Milo, and what then? If it is aliens then what chance do I stand? I can’t do nothing against something like that. They could come and destroy everything I got and I’m powerless to stop them.” He folded his arms and twisted his mouth in contemplation. “That’s just how it is sometimes, you know? Go to sleep in bed and wake up in the dirt. Like the world’s got something against you and ain’t nothing you can do but ride it out, hoping it’s better on the other side.”
Milo continued cutting meat in silence. Lloyd began wiping his hands on his apron, frowning.
As Duncan listened to the knives grinding on the cutting boards, he looked around the shop. Behind Lloyd and Milo hung a large sign. It identified several cuts of meat, organized by animal and parts of those animals, as well as prices for each. Across the room stood the meat case, filled with every kind he could imagine, Duncan noticed how the brothers arranged the meat as they cut it, funneling it into separated containers. Occasionally, one of the brothers would toss some mangled chunk of meat into a large, high tray between them.
Milo set down his knife and picked up a full tray. It looked heavy and dripped blood from one corner as he walked. He carried it through the main room and disappeared through a steel door. A few more minutes passed before Duncan heard some noises from the back. “Hey Lloyd, come give me a hand in the back.” Lloyd set down his cleaver, wiped his hands on a nearby towel, and followed.
Duncan sat alone in the show room. It seemed unnaturally cold there, as though he were being kept fresh along with the meat. Duncan heard grunting and clanging from the back room. There was a cow, probably more than one, which he was sure was just about to be slaughtered. Duncan stood to move as far away as he could get.
He walked up to the front of the shop, near the carving tables. He peered into the scraps tray.
There were strips of fat, pieces of bone and tissue hacked to splinters, some unidentifiable parts that Duncan wasn’t sure would fit inside any animal. Inlaid on a bed of gristle rested an enormous heart, valves and chambers and all. It looked like it belonged inside the chest of an elephant; if it were the heart of a cow, it would have been enormous. Duncan could feel the beating of his own heart again in his eyes, like it sensed kindred, convulsing in Morse code.
Three nights before, Duncan had huddled in his room, cowering up against his stereo trying to focus on the gravely voice of Ray Charles. His heart had beat hard then, too, fluttering in a way that it felt it wasn’t there at all, just a vortex of blood and pressure and fear.
In the butcher shop, Duncan heard the school bus pull up outside, its brakes squealing in the cold. He turned to spot the yellow from a window and as he spun back around he thought he might have seen that large heart convulse, if only once.
Sitting next to the window, near the rear of the bus as it rumbled up and onto the main road into town, Duncan clutched his backpack and lunch bag in his lap. The latter, heavier than before, felt cold and damp in his hands.
* * *
Duncan waited outside the main entrance of the middle school. Most of the other students had already left or been picked up. A school pill bottle would be filled with Ritalin, Duncan thought. Valium. Flintstones Chewable Vitamins.
He picked up his backpack and set it on his lap. The bottom of the canvas was thankfully still dry. He opened it and peered inside. His lunch bag rested at the base, wrapped in layers of paper towels. It exuded a smell he had been ignoring, but he was sure he couldn’t ignore it much longer. He pulled out the Highlights magazine and continued reading.
“The Bowhead Whale is a baleen whale of the family Balaenidae and can live more than 200 years. They means they probably have a lot of great-grand-whales!” It included a drawing of an enormous whale next to a tiny human diver.
Roland’s El Camino whipped into the parking lot, nearly swiping the EXIT ONLY sign.
“Hurry up, we’re gonna be late,” Roland called.
Duncan sidled up onto the passenger seat, closing the door behind him. He set his bag on the floor as he buckled up and braced himself. Roland sped through the parking lot and back onto the street.
“We’re gonna be late? You’re the one who’s late,” Duncan said as he positioned his bag in a safe cradle between his feet. Roland reached over and punched Duncan’s leg hard then flicked a cigarette butt out the window.
“So why can’t Mom take me to the doctor?” Duncan continued, rubbing his leg. “It’s usually her that takes me.”
Roland brought a hand to his mouth, chewing on a finger as he spoke.
“Big court date today. The judge refused to reschedule. She asked me to take you.” Roland smiled. “You probably know more than the doctors do at this point, huh? You can name just about any medicine, I bet. Quick, what’s Plavix used for?”
Duncan fiddled with a strap from his backpack.
“I don’t want to go to the doctor anymore.”
Roland returned his hands to the wheel, letting out a low sigh.
“Yeah, I bet you don’t.”
* * *
They pulled up to the clinic, a tall, fat rock building with green awnings and well-kept landscaping. Hydrocodone. Soma. Codeine. Azithromycin.
Roland parked near the door and stepped out. Duncan grabbed his backpack before he got out.
“You want me to go in with you?” Roland asked, stamping out a cigarette near the curb.
“No.”
“Yeah you do.”
The two entered the building, took the elevator to the fourth floor, and walked in office 403. The gold-plated sign set into the wall by the door read Dr. Burke, Cardiologist.
Roland checked in with the receptionist while Duncan took a seat in the waiting room. Empty seats to his left. To his right, a table with a lamp, and a plastic model of a heart. He pulled the Highlights magazine from his backpack and placed it on the table next to a faded copy of TIME magazine, “Baby Fae Stuns the World” written in bold font above a picture of a baby in a hospital bed on its cover.
Roland sat next to him and closed his eyes. It was only a few minutes before Nurse Sharon called Duncan.
“You want me to just wait here?” Roland asked.
Duncan stood up, slung his backpack over one shoulder and replied with a curt, “No.”
“You can wait out here, sweetheart. Your parents signed a consent form last time. You all are pretty much family by now, anyway. Dr. Burke will want to talk to you before you two leave though, so you can relay some things to your parents.”
Roland closed his eyes again, leaning his head against the wall behind him.
“I’ll just wait here.”
Nurse Sharon took Duncan’s vitals and other routine information, then left him in the exam room to wait. He fidgeted on the exam table, nervously glancing over at his backpack that by this point in the day had started to noticeably stink. It reminded him of wet dog food that had been left out in the sun.
Dr. Burke came in nearly ten minutes later. He was an older man, about his dad’s age he guessed. He had graying hair and a neatly manicured goatee. If it were green it would have matched the hedges out front, he thought. He wore the white coat that all doctors wear and Duncan thought that must be required to be a doctor, maybe something handed out to medical students when they graduate college. Dr. Burke set down a clipboard and pulled up a rolling stool.
“So, back again I see.”
Duncan smiled.
“Seems like you were just here,” Dr. Burke grabbed the clipboard and flipped up a page, “yesterday!”
“That’s because I was here yesterday, Dr. Burke.”
“So how are you feeling today? Any changes? Are you having any more of the flutters you told me about?”
“Yeah, a couple times.”
Duncan shifted on the exam table. He didn’t like talking about his health.
Dr. Burke placed a stethoscope in his ears and listened to Duncan’s heartbeat as they talked.
“Worse? Better? The same? Anything different about them?”
“About the same I guess.”
“How about blackouts? Have you passed out since the other morning? Your mother told me she found you in the hallway on the floor.”
“Sometimes. I’ll wake up somewhere I don’t remember going to. I don’t like it when that happens.”
Dr. Burke wrote something down on the chart. Duncan picked up his backpack.
“Dr. Burke?”
Dr. Burke continued writing. “Yes?”
“What do you know about whales?”
He stopped writing. “Whales? Well, it’s been a long time since I learned about them. Are you studying them in school?”
Duncan opened his backpack and took out his lunch bag, wrapped in paper towels.
“No, I read about them in a magazine in your waiting room. Did you know the Bowhead whale can live for more than 200 years?”
Duncan set the lunch bag on his lap and began to unwrap the paper towels. Dr. Burke’s face twisted as the smell filled the exam room.
“I was thinking about organ transplants, for people that might need them. But I was wondering if any organ might work. Like, can people get animal organs? From strong animals with strong organs?”
Duncan finished unwrapping the bag, which had disintegrated almost entirely, and withdrew the cow’s heart. It was cool and damp and showed signs of discoloration.
“I found this heart, it’s a cow heart I think, but it’s really big and I thought that maybe it would be better or stronger than my heart. I wouldn’t mind having a cow’s heart.”
Initially repulsed, Dr. Burke noticed the boy’s sincerity.
“I see. Well, let’s take a look at what you have there.”
He picked up the heart and looked at it, evaluating it closely. He turned it over, checked the integrity of the valves and chambers, measured it with his hands. He stood and walked to a poster of a heart diagram on the wall and held the cow’s heart up, comparing the size of the two. Then he returned to the stool and set the heart down on some fresh paper towels, trying his best to mask his discomfort with the smell.
“Well,” he began, “that is indeed a fine heart. Must have been a really big cow, too, to have a heart that big. And anyone who might get that heart would certainly be as strong as an ox,” he paused, looking at Duncan, “but, humans can’t live with animal organs. They’re just not compatible. If it was I’d get me a gorilla stomach,” he smiled, “’cause I love bananas.”
Duncan’s shoulders fell. Dr. Burke cuffed him on the arm.
“But don’t worry too much, we’ll get this all figured out. I’m not out of ideas yet.”
Dr. Burke stood up.
“I’m going to adjust your medicine just a bit, see if that helps. Nurse Sharon will come back in a few minutes.” He pressed his fist against Duncan’s head, in a mock punch. “Keep your head up kid. Oh,” he motioned to the heart, “you can leave that here. I’ll ask Nurse Sharon to throw it away for us.”
Nurse Sharon came back and led Duncan to the waiting room. Roland had fallen asleep in his chair but jolted awake when the two returned.
“Dr. Burke needs to see you, Roland.”
Roland followed Nurse Sharon back while Duncan sat down and began to read a copy of Weekly World News. He could hear them murmuring from Dr. Burke’s office and he thought he heard someone exclaim, “He has a what?” Roland returned a few minutes later.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
Roland took the long way, weaving through the back city streets instead of the main road out of town. Neither of them said anything, but only listened to the radio’s soft static. Duncan examined each house as they passed. At the intersection near the high school they stopped at a light, and Duncan looked over to the city fire station, painted beige with red accents. Nitroglycerin. Cyclosporine. Cardizem. Everyone took pills. At some point, for some reason. That made him feel better, if only a little, the rest of the world merely slaves to pharmacy.
“I’ve been reading, about whales,” Roland said as he turned onto their street. Duncan stared out the window. “Pretty interesting stuff. Some of them can live for like, 150 years—”
“200 years,” Duncan corrected.
“Oh,” Roland continued, “200 years. That’s a pretty damn long time.”
Duncan shut his eyes tight and fought against tears. His fingers dug into his legs as he tried to will his face to stay dry. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, slow and rhythmic, heavy like footsteps.
“Pretty damn long time,” Roland repeated, placing his hand on Duncan’s head and tussling his hair, “I wonder how big their hearts are.”
Matt Yeager writes sometimes. Most of the time he does other things, but sometimes he writes things down on paper. Usually other people are not involved. He primarily works in the energy industry, but also teaches English and Humanities at Oklahoma City Community College, which he enjoys with all of his heart beats, not just the spaces between the influx and the outflux. He shares a house with a family, Shino and Ellis and Jude (and Pepper and Mugi and Stella), all of whom do not write.