“Stunning with a Captive Bolt” by Seth Rice

Here’s what happened…I crept from my tent and took a walk…It really was pissing it down…Several branches had fallen in the night and the cars along the main road were speeding through the violence. I must have been some sight through their flailing wipers…right at home in the wind and wet mud…something worth speeding past…I was not at my best. Before reaching the high street, I took a left up some rotted, wooden steps…I could barely distinguish the church from the clouds of fog. A horse stood in the field next to me…its jacket slapping against its behind, while the others hid sensibly in the shelter…

This was all I had in my mind when I came across the building at the end of the path…that enormous crash of chimneys and shutters and beauty…The rain was starting to let up…It was wonderful to look at through the fog…It was wonderful to look at no matter what. The Drapers was the reason people stopped through our village…I had never paid much attention to it…we’d never eaten there.

The sound of cracking logs broke the day…a gorgeous, full whip-thwacking…I couldn’t help myself…I followed the noise right around the building, past that unforgettable French façade…where two men were splitting the wood.

“Young man! Lend us a hand…” I half turned away…“There’s a good man!” I shook hands with them and they asked what on earth I’d been doing in all this rotten weather…One had an awful cauliflower nose…I told them I’d been out walking and made no effort to make it sound normal…This they found hilarious…“Do us a favor and bring these logs inside, right through that back door, look…”

The rain stopped…the fog dispersed. We got a good amount of work done by not saying much…I’d stacked the logs just where they ought to go…they couldn’t have been happier with me. We sat down at the bar…They poured me a cider for my trouble…and we got down to it…who was who and whatnot…I couldn’t get over the smell of the outdoors on their wax jackets…really sublime…They were both chefs.

We ate thinly sliced ham and French cheese…Rovethym…the rarest of the rare…they were showing off, but my word! I relaxed into the conversation…high off the pig fat…asking whatever questions came to mind about the place. I learned The Drapers used the animal nose to tail…A few more chefs came in from the cold, rubbing their hands, shaking mine…slapping me on the back, observing the fine job I’d done with the logs…It was the talk of the room until we found new things to slap backs over. They’d be reopening with a new menu in two weeks…They were looking for a dishwasher…I said that sounded just fine with me…

***

Through the last few colors of the afternoon, we walked to a farm outside the village…they had something planned…We met the farmer at the gate. He stood close to us all…A real stiff bloke with plaqued breath. Over the fields, the sun was a blurry mess…I found it hard to concentrate with the feeling of the wind down the valley…cold, burning my eyes…almost moving me to tears…

The farmer drew our attention to a cage…housing a quarantined lamb…it had bluetongue…swollen coronary bands and ulcers…It would probably take two weeks to die. He unlocked the door and grabbed the back of its neck…it spluttered a little. There was nothing meaningful in its eyes. A chef said they had a surprise for me…something to bring me in to the spirit of things there…It took me a second…the farmer handed me what looked like a large screw…“Just behind the ridge between the horns…you’re aiming towards the back of the throat,” he said…The wind was picking up and moving little tufts below the lamb’s jaw…The horns were just sprouting…It was very still…“This ridge here…just one clean fwa-pah!” I noticed I wasn’t moving either…“Go on, lad! It wants to die!” “Look at it!” “Bring it home!” I stood above the sheep and observed the ridge…a sweet divot between budding horns…I pressed the bolt to its young head…it must have felt cooler on its fur than it did in my hand…I hit the captive bolt…the sheep fell breathing without a rhythm…looking very dumb. I felt a gasp somewhere in my lungs…that never came out…The farmer grabbed a knife. He pointed out the carotid arteries and sliced them…and deep purple leaked into the mud…Everyone clapped. I had found a job…

***

In front of me every night was a white tiled wall…there was a long stainless-steel bench where the dirty plates would go…a dishwasher to my left…loading racks…very bright lights. My hands found the bottom of the hot water and came out blotched…like the surface of a planet.

Good food, they said, was about reaching into the guts of everything. We served brains poached in red wine… tongue…cooked…peeled…boiled in saffron stock…hearts in cognac and ginger sauce…tripe with mint…roasted bone marrow. I tried whatever was left on the plates as they passed through my little room…I couldn’t help myself. I was alone…by the cupboard with rows of butterflied pigs…

When the first night was over…when all the dishes were accounted for, and the last surface was cleaned…I moved outside…to wonder at the stars beyond the wild hedgerow. I just wanted to take a breath of air for myself.

One of the chefs called me inside…There was a celebration…with leftovers…loins and tendons and red wine from the cellar. The waiting staff flaunted their tips…I got drunk and flirted with some of them…one in particular…her eyes were so big I had to remind myself where and who I was…her eyes were marvels. She pointed out some blood on my teeth. More leftovers were brought out…I couldn’t believe the joy…music…tender glands…Champagne was bursting in everyone’s heads…

I called mum on the restaurant’s phone…I would be moving into one of the rooms upstairs…they were taking fifty quid from my pay…I wouldn’t see her for six months. At the time though…at the time…she was just pleased that I had a job and that I was doing things.

***

The weeks passed…loading and unloading…It was all pretty simple. I couldn’t disappoint anyone yet…It was as though the ceiling of the job was exactly my height. Bookings dried up once the excitement had found all the expected guests. One afternoon we heard the news that the farmer’s sheep were all infected with bluetongue…he had eliminated our winter stock of mutton…The chefs described a bonfire of fur. We took brain off the menu…and replaced it with the intestines of another animal…

After the re-opening, I’d moved into the room upstairs…In the evenings I’d go out walking in the hills…never finding anything…never too far from anything. On days when the restaurant was closed, we’d go to the seaside…or to a pub in the village along. These were tolerable weeks for me…but the restaurant was already failing…People weren’t getting it…that was the feeling…That it was a step beyond their taste.

By November we had so few bookings that the prices were slashed beyond the possibility of profit…a temporary solution…I didn’t see any money for a while…but for the moment I wouldn’t have to pay for my room…everything would be sorted once things picked up…I could be sure of that. But I was cleaning fewer and fewer plates and getting lost in boredom…completely isolated with my thoughts. Nothing was more bizarre to me than the chefs’ collective denial of the ongoing failure…They became more obsessive…nothing was implausible…and the food became incomprehensible. To accompany them after end-of-shift clean ups, they started to invite friends from the villages nearby…awful characters with wealth…We didn’t have much going on…but it no longer seemed reasonable to spend so much money on excursions out…We started drinking by the bar until morning, every Saturday…Sunday…and Monday.

At around eleven each night, one of the chefs would bring a meal to me. The food was rarely any good…spaghetti with garlic and chili…nothing like the little scraps of flesh I was pilfering from the customers’ plates. The silence from this routine became unbearable…At some point…I forget when it happened…I started to keep myself entertained by reliving the moment with the lamb…replaying its fall…the coolness of the captive bolt…I was caught in a stupor many times…even the very few plates that came my way tended to pile up on the steel bench. I was finally disappointing them…I was getting a reputation as someone to keep an eye on. All the while…the bluetongued sheep hit the ground in my mind…over and over.

There were good days…inexplicably some afternoons I’d wake up and look out upon the frost…the shades of blue across the distance…and feel that I should be nowhere else. That sensation usually expressed itself in the evening…the chefs had started to invite more and more people on the weekends…at least they’d buy drinks…any leftover food was open to all past midnight. With nothing else to do, I’d bare my thoughts in front of them…I was a point of fascination for everyone…But I could never remember what I’d said the night before…and that bothered me no end.

On some of those nights I’d go to bed with someone…one of our late-night guests…the waiting staff…We’d take a bottle of wine from the cellar… I’d always hope to see the one with the marvel eyes sitting at an empty table once I’d cleaned up…but no…she had left. She hadn’t been paid since the reopening.

Our bad luck with the restaurant continued into December. The farmer raised his prices across the board, and we could no longer afford most of the cuts…We resorted to serving stew. This did nothing for covers and disillusioned most of the chefs…One of them left…the ones who stayed, besides maybe a couple, regarded the place as fundamentally less serious…The lack of excitement had made everything absurd. Our working hours were ambiguous…the idea of being paid was too distant to debate…the menu dwindled into an increasingly conventional shape. The drunken nights I spent beside strangers were frequent and unenjoyable. If I’d known tenderness before…and at that point I believe I had…I wouldn’t have recognised it…Things became a real problem when, one morning, I woke up convinced that a cherub carcass was attracting flies under my bed…

***

The Sunday before we closed for good…the rector’s wife joined our little crowd of drinkers. She was an enormous woman…an enormous laugh. The rector died in spring and she was known to talk to herself…She’d patted me on the head when I was a kid…I doubt she remembered that. That night, every interaction had to involve her…and if it didn’t…she’d laugh so loud and so long that the conversation was hers again by the time she let up. She kissed my cheek to cheers from the table and felt up my crotch…she poured me wine and yelled into nothing when the bottle was empty. We’d be together in my room when the moment was right…I massaged the thickness of her thighs through her tights. People were too drunk to notice when we eventually left the table…which I suspect bothered her a little.

In my room, a new morning was waking up the dark wooden beams. The rector’s wife pushed me onto the mattress…she slipped off her dress at the foot of the bed… “They tell me about you dear boy…They say you brag about murdering baby sheep…poor, poor innocent lambs! Imagine that!” I stayed quiet… “You’re totally insane young man…such a shame!” I stared into her folding body…she whipped down to the floor and threw her purse…the buckle struck my eye…I saw a universe of aching stars…and flicked the lamp…“You fucking cow!”…“No no…that won’t do…absolutely not…shush now…dear…dear young thing…” Through a squint…I watched as with one tug she pulled my trousers to my ankles…she took my prick in her hands and began kissing it…exclaiming between motions with high squeals…warm phlegm was pooling below my testicles…she started to jerk me… “This is it little one! This is the end of the line!” I squinted still through the pain…the swallowing pleasure…warm syrup commanded the veins down my legs…I writhed in her hands…a thrill shot from me…“You’ve covered me you little swine! Beast! Chimp!” and then…that horrid laughter…and while she laughed…she fell to her knees and raised her behind to the beams…leaving me to gaze forever into her.

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