Dial Mmm For Murder

By Ryan L. Covey

Ah, there you are, I’ve been waiting for a while now. No, no, don’t worry about it none. Have a seat, order anything you like, it’s all on me. No, I don’t mind if you record this, ain’t nothin’ I’m about to say can’t be said to anyone else.

I know the reason for this interview; pardon me a moment while I partake of this here steak. I do like me a nice juicy porterhouse, I like to get em’ extra rare, the more blood the better, you can practically taste the animal’s death.

And nothin’ tastes quite like death. That’s one thing them sumbitch liberal hippie environmentalists that keep hasslin’ me don’t seem to understand. Death is part of nature, one critter’s end is a nother critter’s breakfast.

Anyhow, you ain’t here to hear me going on about cuts of meat. Get straight to the point that’s what my granddad always said, God rest his soul, so I suppose that’s what I’ll do.

I remember when I was young, I’d say maybe four or five years old. I was an excitable little boy, always running around the yard hooping and hollering. My Mama always said I had eyes as blue as sapphires and hair blonde as fresh cut wheat.

But what I remember from those days was how I dressed. Ya see, I wanted to be a cowboy back in them days. I wanted to ride, and rope, live off the back of a horse and sleep by campfires every night. I wanted it so bad it hurt.

My daddy was my hero, the absolute picture of a farmer. He was a tall man, over six and a half feet. He had a big barrel chest and long legs, and big tree trunk arms, almost like a bear.

He looked like he could whup a mountain lion with one hand tied behind his back. He was big and strong, but the one thing that made him look this way to me was his eyes.

He had very deep light blue eyes, the color of the ice on a pond in the dead of winter. In those eyes I never saw any doubt or fear; they were brave and fierce like a hawk.

He’d learnt the trade from his daddy and him from his daddy before him. Oh sure a combine ride was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the hell out of riding in a tractor during haying season. But what really excited me… was the cattle.

My daddy was a cattleman; he had over 800 head of cattle, every single one of them a prime specimen of beef. Every few months he’d load a couple dozen up and send them off to sale.

That day was going to be the best day of my life, cause up till then I’d had to watch the operation from a distance. But this time, Daddy was gonna let me sit up close and watch the whole thing from right there.

I showed up decked out in my button-up cowboy shirt and blue denim vest. A red bandanna tied around my neck and neatly polished black cowboy boots on my feet. My black Stetson sat on top of my head. I practically slept with that old hat.

Daddy loaded up all the old cows and they walked through the chutes one by one. It was a small load so he didn’t have much help. We had our two farm hands with us.

There was Everett, he was an old man of fifty-seven, though you couldn’t tell to look at him. He was fairly short and round, blind in one eye, but he was spry as a deer and his hair was black as tar.

Then there was Brady, he was probably twenty-six back then, you’ll have to forgive me some of the lesser details of this story elude me, but anyhow he was a young feller, square jawed, blonde hair, blue eyes.

Daddy sat me on a corner post and then walked the cattle through. Now this herd had one trouble cow. Her name was Ruth, my Momma always told me that it was short for Ruthless. She’d never calved and she’d even gored a couple of bulls, they’d decided they needed to get rid of her.

As the cattle went through the chute one of them got her hoof caught in the hole in the particle board. She shook and sputtered and bellered something terrible, blood started smearing around the hole in the board.

My daddy hopped in, careful not to get trampled by that half ton of pot roast, he managed to pull her leg free and gave her a smack on the rear and sent her up the chute.

He looked up at me and smiled and I smiled back. It was about that time that the wind caught my hat and blew it off.

Without thinking I just hopped off the post into the chute to grab it, as I picked it up, I felt something hot on the back of my neck.

I turned around and looked into the eyes of Ruth. She looked crazed and mad; she snorted and rolled her head around, pawed at the dirt with her big hoof. I swear I looked into those eyes and I seen the closest thing to hell a feller like me can imagine.

I backed into the corner and that slobbering bitch followed me, kept moving her head around. It was just then that my Daddy threw all of his 268 pounds into that cow’s neck, knocking her to the side.

She hit the side of the corral and turned to look at him. He reached over the fence and grabbed Buford.

If you’ve seen the movie Walking Tall, the old ones, not the one with that wrestler feller in it, the sheriff was named Buford, and Buford carried around a club.

Buford was part of an old oxen yolk, made out of solid oak and sturdy as a piece of solid iron.

Dad swung Buford hard enough to bust a windshield and cracked Ruth straight across her nose. She let out this loud… it wasn’t really a moo, more of the sound you make when you step on a nail or stub your toe.

He swung again and the club slipped out of his hands and fell behind the big cow as she charged him.

She hit him square in the stomach and knocked him back against the particle board. He slumped to the ground, she’d knocked the wind clean out of him but he still managed to grab her by the ears and push her head back.

She reared up on her hind legs, I can see it every time I close my eyes. That moment as she reared up on her back legs. This picture always haunts my nightmares.

She came down hard on his chest. I heard a loud crunch and he coughed loudly, blood spilled out of his lips. He glanced over me and when I saw his eyes I saw something I’d never seen in them before.

I saw fear.

Ruth hopped up again and stomped down hard on his ribcage. He coughed harder this time, but not as loud, and he wasn’t moving near as much.

About that time Brady hopped the fence and grabbed the cow around the neck. She shook her head and flung him back against the side, he hit the back of his head on steel post and fell on the ground unconscious; his head was bleeding pretty badly.

Ruth shoved Daddy to the side and turned around and looked at me, huddled in the corner hugging my knees with my cowboy hat in front of me. I was crying a lot and pleading with her to just leave us alone.

She started to move toward me. Her nostrils flared, her eyes wild. That bitty was about to chew me up and spit me out.

Suddenly her face exploded. Fur and blood peeled clean off the side of her head and she bellered loud and painfully.

Everett stood at the fence, ejecting a shotgun cartridge, and pumping another one with a load of rock salt into the chamber.

You see, rock salt won’t penetrate a cow’s hide like lead will, it just skins ‘em and burns like you can’t imagine. And this old Bess had just taken a face full of the stuff.

Ruth made a horrible noise but she still came at me, Everett hit her again, blowing more skin and hair off. He shot her three more times but she didn’t run away and she didn’t drop.

Her face looked like I imagine the devil’s face looks. Both her eyes had been blown out, they were just dark circles now, oozing out blood and God knows what else. Not a bit of skin was left on her head, just bloody bone but she was still kicking and hollering.

Finally Everett loaded a slug into the action and pumped it up through her nose, blowing the brains out the back of her head. Even with no eyes I could see the hatred and the anger in those empty sockets as her head hit the dirt.

I bawled like a baby. Daddy was dead; God I still remember the look in his eyes as Everett pulled his ball cap down over his face then scooped me up and carried me to the truck.

Brady lived but the hit had severed his spinal cord, he spent the rest of his life in bed having his wife feed him with a spoon.

As for me… well I throwed away all my cowboy stuff. Burned it all and got into school, but oh I could still feel the hatred in my heart, all of the anger.

But I got into the cattleman’s business just like my daddy and now look at me, I’m a multimillionaire.

But I still feel that anger and hatred when people like them PETA or Greenpeace or whatever the hell sumbitches destroyed that slaughterhouse a’ mine in Waco. God I was so mad I felt like I coulda killed.

Fortunately I got my own little way of dealin’ with anger. Like I said, notin’ tastes like death. I love meat, nice bloody meat.

And let me tell you honey, nothing tastes more delicious than a fresh cut steak. I like em’ nice and rare so I can taste the animal’s suffering.

Every time I take a bite of meat, I just imagine that I’m eating a piece of that big bovine bitch and she’s suffering, burning, mooing like crazy down in hell as the devil roasts her furry ass on a spit.

What’s that? No, hell no I had nothing to do with the disappearance of those hippies that blew up my slaughterhouse. They’re probably cowerin’ under a rock like the littler vermin they are.

I don’t know nothing about that, I know they tried to shut me down but I had nothing to do with that. I ain’t the one to blame.

Here, have a bite of this. It’s new from my factory, I think this is gonna be a big seller. I guarantee it’s like nothin’ you ever tasted before.

What is it? Oh, now you know I can’t just be givin’ my secrets out to just no one, the chef never reveals his secrets. Besides, if’n I told ya, I doubt you’d try it.