Little Bill Cubs [D8] (complete)

William Windsor Cubs II, or Little Bill
18 years old
District 8


I never wanted to be a butcher. At six years, I told Her I wanted to sew. She grabbed my wrist faster than the flick of a lamb’s tail, pulled it taut, and dragged Her dull blade across the then-blank canvas of my arm, taking Her sweet, sweet time, sweeter than honey and slower than molasses dripping from a spoon in the dead of winter. Without wiping the blood away, She went back to skinning the goat that hung before us. That was the most motherly affection She’d ever shown me, and I knew I couldn’t speak my mind to Her again. A few days later the butchering was left to me. She’d shown me the ropes, and it was time to resume Her duties as the face of our family in the marketplace each miserable morning. Was fine with me on every account. She’d be gone all day, wouldn’t return home till dark and asleep within a half hour, every day for the rest of however long it took for her lungs to dry up and her heart to give out.

Big Bill, tongueless and egotistically self-loathing, sat in his same rocking chair, the same creaking and squeaking back and forth on the same endlessly monotonous loop all day, with nothing to do but face the same inner demons he did every day, nowhere to look but straight ahead, down the barrel of his paranoia’s shotgun, and if I ever heard silence I knew to run to that damn porch and check on the poor bastard, see if a stroke finally claimed his empty vessel or if a beetle’d distracted him from creaking. Usually, it was a ploy to throw a stick at me as I rounded the corner, or to shout a vaguely threatening bluuugh, unable to articulate much beyond disgruntled stutters and whining moans, but I checked regardless, always hopeful the reaper’d finally sewn more than he could thread.

She nor Big Bill loved me, but to Her, I was a business asset, an employee at best, and far from the best at that. She never wanted me, and that was clear; She laid me with the newborn twins of a seasoned ewe to nurse, refusing me Her own milk, thinking a sheep’s nutrients were good enough, would make me strong and ready to work. It did do something or other different than most babies, I reckoned, since I grew in size at an astronomical rate, a beefy big-boned baby boy with the thickest tangles of hair, unsure if my mother was covered in a coat of wool or wearing one, Her best trade back from the family She sold our hides to, a primped and primed furry mess that had for a hundred percent certain been the leftover scraps stitched together as a “gift” She ate up like fresh fruit cobbler. Sometimes I saw myself in Her, Her stoicism and silence, Her broad shoulders and matted brown hair, filled with dirt that almost blended in if it wasn’t so obviously not hair. Her cheeks, chunky, like She stored nuts year-round in those pouches, just in case. In those ways, She was a mirror of me, or I of Her, but She was not my mother. I didn’t have one of those.

Big Bill made me who I was more than She did. He wasn’t much of a father, but he spoke to me before the whole cutting out of his tongue thing, anyway. And when he did, he was meaner than the meanest, darkest, devil-goat I’d ever seen. His words started wars that plagued the landscape of my brain for years on end, trampling down the pastures, the great grazing greens, and leaving nothing but apathetic old me to try and defend myself best I could. The best I could was to stand still and not show fear. Every now and then I told myself that’s what it was all for, those first six years of him. The fear of his harsh and haughty hell was to toughen me up, pulverize me not into submission but manhood. But that’s ascribing him much more credit than is due. In reality, Big Bill hated me and never wanted me to begin with. There was nothing physically similar between us, and the first time he told me I wasn’t the fruit of his loin I was three. I didn’t know what he meant then, but I knew it hurt him enough to hurt me always, so I hugged him around the knees. He followed suit by making me fetch the twins I’d nursed with, the goats I’d grown up with, the only friends I’d been allowed, and he slit their throats, the both of ‘em, seas of red dying their snow-white wool before my tiny, unassuming eyes.

I had them both then. It wasn’t until he’d come home three years later from the town square after a particularly drunk afternoon without his tongue, no longer able to criticize, to terrify, without the venom-tipped thing he so desperately needed to feel whole, that he decided to even the score a bit and pluck out my left eye. Pain was far from a foreign experience in my world, but pain like that was a much different story. The words cut deep inside, but the release of pressure as his thick, grubby fingers forced themselves between my ball and socket was sensational, almost melodic, entrancing in its destruction. The pop itself sent me into an immediate state of shock, and I blacked out for what seemed like days until She woke me with a firm, unloving shake and began showing me how to cut the tendons from the back of the goats’ legs before hanging them, how to tie up the rear with whatever string or wire is available. No beats missed. No doctor visits. Just an angry, bitter drunkard who couldn’t even explain what happened to him, squeaking and creaking on the porch while She showed me his former duties.

The eyepatch I fashioned from a lamb’s ear was pretty neat, though. And it complimented my already menacing appearance of tall, broad butcher boy, wielding a cleaver and ripping animals to shreds. I wasn’t anything like that, though. Not that anyone ever got to know me enough to find out. Free from the watchful eye of Her and Big Bill, I showed my flock decency and respect as they crossed over from our world to the next. I held them, fingering through their thick wool, massaging their necks and their limbs, keeping them close to me and warm, happy into their final moments, before pulling the trigger on the nail gun I held behind their heads. It was instantaneous. They never suffered, never went through the things I did, never saw the world as the dark and uncomfortable place I saw. The thought of inflicting pain on an animal made my skin crawl, my scabbed arms prickle, my heart sink lower than the bottom of the well up the hill.

Thinking about Her made me feel differently. Thinking about Her made me want to hurt something, someone. I craved stronger than all else to pull that same blade she’d used on me years ago across Her skin, across the veiny neck her head perched upon, to spill a tapestry of blood out of Her and paint the walls with its color. I was strong, and I was resilient, but there was always a buzz in the back of my mind like a bee that crawled in my ear, or maybe under my eyepatch and straight inside, trapped and trying to escape, ringing to remind me how much I hated Her. Still, I didn’t act on it. I couldn’t act on it, since I knew they might found out and cut my tongue out too, and send me away. I didn’t wanna be anything like Big Bill. So I used what he taught me to get my fix. That blade couldn’t touch her without it all ending the second she didn’t show up to market, but it could navigate my body, explore all my nooks and pierce whatever part of me was bare and able. I learned who I was through the sharp side of an old cleaver, let the younger lambs lap up the trickles and build their defenses, secure their wool walls. I had the best defenses in the world, there was no doubt about that, and with this gesture the lambs grew stronger. They trusted me, bearing all of me to them and to them alone. My one eye, brown and duller than I ever let my blades get (unlike Big Bill, who showed no concern or passion for what he did to those sheep before me, and let his tools grow foul), locked with theirs in a way it never met a human’s. My head, bushier but matted and dark like Hers, clumped with dirt, remained level with them when I spoke, and I never raised my voice to them. In fact, I really rarely spoke beyond reciting the one poem I knew, which I recited during labor, during illness, or during death.

The peace that follows all of pain, and follows farther on
Is rarely met without disdain or without stirring fawn.
I promise thee there is no end to pain on this frail earth
One must let go first to mend the scars and find his worth

I told myself that every night, too. Like nuts in my chubby cheeks. Just in case.






I'm older now, and things haven't much changed. A few years back, when I noticed the silence, I raced to check on Big Bill, fingers crossed he had keeled over after all this time, but the porch was empty. Nobody sat in that rocking chair creaking and hating himself. I figured he went inside, retired early for the day, but when I returned to my work shed, where I'd left some sheep skin pants half sewn on the table, I found him with the nail gun still in his hand, his lifeless form crumpled on the floor. She didn't even notice he was gone when She returned that evening, so I buried his body in the field and never thought about him much again. When I finished sewing those pants, with the leftover bits of skins we didn't sell to the tanners after removal, I decided I didn't want to sew after all, and I prodded the needle into my index finger. With one quick push of my thumb the needle hit the inside of my nail and I knew. I didn't want to sew. I wanted to feel pain.