Salted Beef

The poor rancher William Salinger solemnly paced the porch of his farmhouse, dousing the weather-stained boards in kerosene. As he strode back and forth along the front of his homestead ensuring that every last drop was swallowed up by the thirsty wood, his eyes were drawn to an additional thicker liquid pooling out from under the storm door, glassy and black in the silver light of the full moon.

The sickness had begun a week before with the cattle. William found the first on the outskirts of the modest grazing lands a mile from the Salinger’s dilapidated homestead. The cow had an unhealthy bloated corpulence, its swollen stomach brushed the ground. The animal wavered on spindly legs, its bony hips protruding skyward in sharp angles. William could count the notches in the cows’ spine! The skin on the poor creature's face was drawn, its eyes bloodshot and glassy. William moved to comfort the distressed animal by stroking her nose. As he passed his hand down the jutting brow, the cow’s nostrils that flared in discomfort and William felt an unpleasant sensation, a sponginess he could only relate to the feeling of wet bread. He pulled away and found a sticky sheet of flesh that had peeled off in his hand. The animal shrieked, her eyes bulging in pain and terror. William found the flesh stuck to his hand with membranous phlegm as he tried to wipe it away. William was disgusted, and mercifully ended the pitiful creature’s life.

After dinner that evening, William ruminated on his predicament while puffing his customary evening pipe on the front porch. His three children were sleeping peacefully and his wife was occupied writing a letter to her family back home in the candle-lit dining room. They had no idea how dire their circumstances had become. If they knew, maybe they would have a better understanding of William’s decisions as of late. The truth was, over the last few years William had been living under the thumb of the bank. The returns on his cattle were not enough to put food on the table, and the upkeep of his decrepit ranch was putting him in a deep hole. His children were still too young to be of much help, nothing more than mouths to feed. They should thank whatever disease had saved that cow from the market, it had put meat on their plates! The flesh smelled rancid and had an unpleasant discoloration, but once it was fully cooked William found it preferable to the monotonous meals of moldy potatoes and worm-eaten onions which had gotten them through the long winter. His family need not know about the sick animal, and the smiles that graced their faces as they ate was all the justification he needed. The distant hoot of a barn owl interrupted his thoughts. He peered into the night, and in the light of the moon and stars, thought he spotted the night hunter gliding effortlessly across his land. The winged creature circled back around, its attention clearly drawn to something. Losing interest, William took a final draw from his long pipe and retired for the evening, his secret buried with the cows flayed remains in the field.

Two days later, William noticed that some of the other cattle were beginning to show horribly distended stomachs, identical to the first. He could not afford to lose any more of his herd, and tried to drive the animals out of sight from the farmhouse, towards the nearby sheep paddock that lay abandoned (yet another of his costly failed ventures). As the cattle formed a rough line, moving clumsily towards the paddock, William witnessed fetid sheets of mucousy skin sloughing off from the friction of their bulbous bodies rubbing together. Before long, the cows began to collapse, their atrophied legs no longer able to move their considerable bulk. The air was rife with agonized moans that were more akin to the croaks of bull-frogs. By the next evening, all 21 of the Salinger cattle were bloated masses, croaking unnaturally across the expanse of his property. The sound was maddening and it forced William to dejectedly pack away his pipe, unable to enjoy his evening smoke.

The next morning, he set off into the nearby town of Brighton to send an emergency telegraph to the medical examiner for assistance. His financial struggles were well known amongst the local businesses, and they offered no tab to the poor rancher. He was forced to trade in the only wealth he had; two sides of beef, coated in salt to hide the gangrenous flesh afforded him 25 rounds of ammunition suitable for his large caliber rifle, and a tin of kerosene. He shrugged off comments concerning his unwell appearance and returned home, preoccupied with the grim business ahead.

The mass extermination of the croaking behemoths surrounding the property brought no comfort to the Salinger family, despite having fired a round into the softened skull of each and every ghastly mutation on the property. William’s family wouldn’t touch the food William had so generously provided for them, a side of salted beef! He could see the worry on his wife’s sallow face. He noted that and she seemed to be losing weight along her limbs, despite eating better in the last week than they had in years. His youngest son began to show a distended stomach, similar to starving orphans he had witnessed on his travels to larger cities. William looked down at his own plate, and found he too had lost his appetite.

That night William sat in his familiar chair on the porch, struggling to light his pipe. In the silver moonlight, dark mounds stood silently across his property like tombstones. The night air dragged the stench from the crude graveyard and William was glad for the acrid smell of tobacco. A fluttering from the nearby ravine drew his attention away from the sight. A silhouette of a large bird in flight was not quite picturesque against the background of the full moon. William misliked how the bird flapped in a jerking motion, as though guided by a clumsy puppeteer rather than gliding on the cool night air. Suddenly, the extraordinarily fat bird landed with a damp splat on the porch to his right, where it remained unmoving along its girth. William was able to identify the creature as an owl by its curiously long and dirty talons. He wondered whether it had survived the impact when it rolled into a slumped sitting position, wavering unsteadily. William drew a steady pull of smoke as he rose from his rocking chair. The owl thrashed, getting to its feet in a hurricane of loose feathers. It emitted an unnatural croak that made William fumble his pipe, which clattered noisily to the ground. The owl’s head swivelled and its eyes met William’s, twin ochre fires burning menacingly. It took William a moment to discover what was wrong with the owl’s face, but as it croaked again, he realised that it was missing a signature feature. It was missing the normally tiny beak, and in its place, dark fluid oozed out of a ragged maw. The wretch took two unsteady hops before vaulting into the air with a shrieking hoot. It mushed clumsily against the wall of the house as it took unsteady flight. William’s eyes followed the creature’s jerky flight path, where it landed on one of the shadowy mounds on the lawn. A moist suckling could be heard coming from the pile of diseased flesh, and William was struck with a dreadful realization.

The poor rancher found himself alone now, on his kerosene soaked porch in the moonlight. He watched the tobacco in the end of his pipe curl into bright embers as he inhaled, the matchstick still burning in his hand. His thoughts were with his family, piled in the kitchen beyond the storm door. William wished his grotesque side of beef would have scored him a 26th bullet, but all the same he burst into croaking laughter as he let the match fall to the floor.