Flies, Snakes, Fat Benny

her infidelity had been tolerated countless times--but even the most patient of men has a breaking point

It was Monday. Lunch break. August, and the heat was eating at the red-brick facing on the south side of the costume-jewelry factory. Fat Benny and I sat slumped against the wall near the loading dock, surrounded by pallets, crumbled masonry, twisted scraps of rotten metal and the Truk-Away garbage container. Nice place to eat lunch. Warrior flies occasionally attacked the wilted lettuce sitting in my lunch box.

Benny was studying the racing form, chomping at a sandwich. He ate with his mouth open. He was a great one for oxidizing his lunch. His weight hung about him like so much lard in an unheated pan.

"What you got?" I asked.

"Huh?" Looking up from the form, eyes squinting from the glare off the concrete.

"To eat. What today?"

"Oh. Frankfurts. I got frankfurts. Cold frankfurts and lots of ketchup. Leftovers. It's her specialty. Christ...." Pause. "I'll tell you, kid, I got a winner in the sixth. No way they're gonna stop her. Top dog. No questions asked."

"Tonight?"

"Right. Dr. Honey out of the eight box. She'll go off about five to one. Guaranteed winner. She loves the eight. Used to be an A dog. She's dropped to C. Guaranteed."

"Benny, tell me something."

"What's that?"

"When're you gonna stop feeding the dogs?"

"Jesus, kid, this one's as good as with the trophy now."

"She'll probably still be running about this time tomorrow."

"Benny laughed. "Dumb college kids, you don't know nothing, anyway."

"Dr. Honey sounds like she'd do better with a jockey."

"The trouble with you is you still think dogs is for fire engines!"

I smiled. Next day, next lunchtime, Benny would tell me how the fleet Dr. Honey had been bumped as she left the box. Always something. I was waiting for the day when his explanation would be that the dog had contracted premature arteriosclerosis while gnawing a contaminated dog biscuit before post time. It wouldn't have surprised me.

From inside, there was the vaguely muffled humming and clanking of the machines. The jewelry factory, like the Coast Guard, never slept.

It was a summer job. I was doing the romantic bit of working my way through school. And romantic as romantic was, I had rapidly learned that conveyer belts, hot steel, the incessant drone of foot presses, the bitching and hair-tearing antics of factory women (piecework pieces in knee-length colorless dresses, legs sculptured in varicose relief), these were all things best left to frenetic Trotskyites with Marxist delusions. The factory was hell.

Benny continued to chomp at the sandwich and flip through the pages of the program. His enormous body (300 or so flaccid pounds) was all sweat and grease. His hair had matted like a wet animal's. He looked up, almost cautiously, again squinting.

"Kid."

"Yeah." I had a boiled-ham-and-lettuce sandwich. I was tired of separating the fat from the meat.

"I ever tell you about my buddy, Tony DeLuca?"

"I don't think so," I grinned. Benny had an inexhaustible supply of buddies. Everything from Christian Brothers to hit men.

"He drives a trailer. A trailer driver. You know, up and down from here to Florida mostly. Well, I mean, that's all that's important about him; but he's got this friend named Willis. Funny name, huh? And Willis, he's a snake tamer."

"Snake tamer?"

"Yeah. Snake tamer. He raises snakes, catches snakes. Plays with them, teaches them tricks and everything. I mean, he ain't weird or nothing. It's his job. He does it for a living."

Benny stopped. He gobbled the last of the sandwich, wiped his chin with the back of his hand, then wiped his hand on his pants, leaving a bloodlike stain on the thigh. He pointed to the garbage container.

"Flies. They oughta do something about them. It ain't right to eat with flies in the area. Unsanitary."

"And ..." I said.

"And what?" Benny looked puzzled.

"What about the snake tamer? This guy Willis?"

Benny looked at me, took a meaningless swat at an imaginary fly, a ghost fly, then looked away. Obese and sweating in the midday sun, he seemed as if he no longer had the energy to continue. It was the first time I had seen him this way, not as a kind of cheerful lunchtime clown but as a lumbering animal with a bullet buried somewhere deep in his gut, trying to find some sunless place to rest, to crawl from the light, to maybe even die. Like a patchwork bison in a city zoo, blinking in the heat, confused. He looked at me again, then picked up the racing form and, with a strange determination, began to tear it into thin strips.

"What're you doing?" I asked, surprised.

"Christ, kid, the dog'll get bumped. They always do. You know that. They always get bumped. Out of the box. Bumped."

I said nothing. Benny sat against the wall amid the shreds of program. From inside, there was the persistent hum of lifeless machinery. Conscienceless flies attacked the garbage bin, zigzagging between metal and wood, landing, darting away.

"Dr. Honey ain't got a prayer...." Benny's voice drifted.

"Scratch ..." I said.

Then, very seriously, "You know this guy Willis I was talking about; well, he's got coral snakes. You know what that is?"

"Poisonous," I said.

"Almost instant."

"Yeah."

"And then, bang! You got yourself one dead mother!" And Benny laughed.

The lunch whistle blew. Exquisite timing. It always gave me that peculiar feeling of déjà vu: of eighth-grade civics class, girls with tangled braids, scratched blackboards with ageless notices concerning gumchewing and the clicking of pens. But now it was just a shrill signal to return to work, as if the rhinestone wonderland would atrophy without us. I had developed an entire philosophical system based on the diverse mysteries of costume jewelry. It was a sign of premature madness.

Benny and I lifted ourselves, grabbed our lunch boxes and started to go back. When we reached the door, he stopped me. He smiled slightly.

"Kid, you like me, don't you?"

"Sure, Benny."

"Huh?"

"Sure," I said."

"Well, listen to me. You listening?"

Nervously, "Yeah."

"Look, I'm going in there now, in that hole in there, and I'm gonna do something that you're gonna think ain't right. I mean, you ain't gonna approve. You're gonna think I'm crazy or something. You know, like I lost all my marbles." He chuckled self-consciously. "So I just want to tell you now that I got a reason. A good reason. And since you're my buddy and all, I don't want you to think that I'm crazy or nothing. All right? You understand?"

I nodded, confused.

"And later on, I'll tell you all about it, what it's all about and everything. So trust me. You gotta trust me, OK?"

"Well ... I mean ... what...."

"Trust me," he said, his smile broadening, large hand extended.

"Sure, Benny. Sure." We shook hands. Benny gave me a hearty uncharacteristic slap on the back and we went in.

Rows of pale-green machinery sat waiting. Others were returning to their work, some still chewing tuna salad or gnawing an apple. Benny and I walked silently side by side. Dull conversations about the fate of the Orioles, menstrual bleeding and Johnny's third tooth were mercifully suspended. The whistle had blown.

When we reached our section, Benny put his lunch box down and, without a word, began walking toward the north end of the factory.

"Where're you going?" I asked.

No response. Benny lumbered his way between the machines. He smiled and waved to a few cronies and continued. I watched from a distance, more fearful than curious. He stopped and talked briefly with Eddie Miller. Eddie ran the numbers. Benny handed him a few dollars, laughed, then moved on.

When he reached the small squared-off area where they boxed necklaces, he stopped. And then it happened. Benny reached into his back pocket and pulled out a switchblade. One fluid practiced move. Zip, and the knife, designed for the cleaning of dead fish, was there. He clicked the blade (steel and serrated) into position; then, moving more quickly than (continued on page 175) flies, snakes, fat benny (continued from page 88) I'd ever seen him, he stepped behind a small wiry man I didn't know, grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him violently against the crumbling plaster wall and put the blade to his throat.

All the abrasive clanking and humming suddenly seemed suspended in that one shrill moment. The fish knife, a fraction of an inch from flesh, was a signal for quiet. At first, only a few people in the area noticed. Then more. Then finally, almost everybody on the floor was watching, more with curiosity than with concern. It was as if hours of late-night TV, first-position ho-hum sex and the dregs of countless six-packs had dulled their senses. Nobody tried to interfere. They watched, transfixed, as if by a deodorant ad.

I ran toward the north end. My impulse was to stop it; but somehow that seemed a betrayal of our lunchtime trust. I stood there, helpless, wondering whether Benny would slash the man's throat and send small rivers of factory blood down his chest. Whether Benny (a quiet, unassuming killer) would then lumber away, take huge chunks of another sandwich, scrawl pencil notations in the racing form, yawn, go back to his machine, then greet the police (guns drawn) with a hearty handshake and a broad smile.

The two men were statues. The little man was balanced precariously against the wall. One elbow, tense as wire, was buried in an indentation in the plaster. His head tilted back, just above the blade. He said nothing. Large beads of sweat slowly streamed down his face. The sweat, mingled with the grease from the machines, made awkward patterns of dirt from forehead to chin. He tried to avert his eyes from Benny's, tried not to blink (as if the light might never return). He made a small whimpering sound, muffled by the noises of untended machinery.

Benny said nothing. He held the man and the knife, both firmly. His mouth twitched occasionally. The knife blade glistened when struck by the glare from the overhead fluorescents.

Somebody had called Hank, the foreman. When he got there, the people surrounding the scene stepped back a little, as if Hank's sudden presence would change the angle of the blade, would miraculously break the tableau. Hank screamed for Benny to stop. There was no reaction. Benny's huge body, strangely powerful and determined, was not about to move. The little man squirmed occasionally, but Benny would only clutch more tightly. His knuckles were white around the knife handle.

Hank, sensing the futility of forcefulness, tried to be gentle. He spoke softly but rapidly, short bursts of monolog that went unnoticed. Benny did not move.

Then, after what seemed a small and dirty eternity, Benny relaxed his grip on both the blade and the man. He pulled the knife back a little, allowing his victim to rock his head downward. The two men looked at each other, both expressionless, both somewhere far beyond the machinery and plaster and grease, both tangled and confused with contempt. Then Benny, innocent beyond innocence, smiled. His teeth, though dull, glistened. He spit in the man's face.

The little man stood there, still awkwardly posed against the yellowing plaster, his muscles strained, his body wet with fear, his face streaked from the sweat and grease and spit. There was an involuntary shivering. The glob of spit slowly moved down the side of his nose, caught itself in the corner of his mouth and sat there. He remained expressionless.

Fat Benny, still smiling, watched as the spit pooled itself near the man's mouth. He looked on with a childlike curiosity; and then, duty performed, he backed away. The blade, no longer a threat, was still extended.

The onlookers breathed deeply, their anticipation frozen somewhere amid the dirt and rumbling. Benny gave a quick look about him. His smile was masklike. Then, still silent, his smile sculptured, he turned and walked toward the south end. When he passed me, he winked. I had not betrayed him.

When he got to our station, he carefully folded the knife and returned it to his pocket. He picked up the lunch box, looked down the long aisle to where his soft violence had been performed; then, lunch box held tightly, he went to the door and walked out.

Nobody followed.

At the other end, the small man, grayfaced and now openly crying, slumped to the floor.

Hank and the others watched. The man crawled to his feet, fell against a pile of packing crates, then collapsed to the concrete.

It was a long time before they picked him up.

• • •

Benny didn't return to work for several days. I ate lunch alone, still near the garbage, still studying the erratic patterns of flies. Rumors swept their way around the factory. Midday speculation about Benny ran from the absurd to the sublime: Benny'd quit, left his wife and three kids (an orphaned poverty-stricken quartet) and had fled to Bermuda; Benny'd taken a job as a TV repairman in New Jersey; Benny'd hit a long shot on the twin double and had celebrated with a colossal bender; Benny'd gone mad and could be found in the elevators of one-night hotels pimping for wet-thighed ladies of the night. The factory was slowly lobotomizing its help; their imaginations were clogged.

I talked with Hank the day after Benny had left.

"Is he fired?" I asked.

"No," Hank said.

"Is he coming back?"

Hank shrugged.

"What about the other guy?" I said.

"Mike?"

"That his name?"

"Mike Jacques. A Frenchman. Loner type."

"Is he still around?"

"Quit." That's all Hank would say. He walked away.

And despite all the gossip, all the whispered intrigue, nobody really seemed to know what had happened. There had been a fat man, a small sweating Frenchman with a blade at his throat, a welcome break from the usual grind. First Floor Factory Information Central came up with hushed zero after zero after zero.

On Friday, Benny returned.

It was as if nothing had happened. He greeted me in the usual way: a big smile, a joke about college kids and mansized machines. At one point in the morning, Benny and Hank spent a few minutes talking. But for all I knew, they might have been discussing a lame dog in the perfecta. Then, 1000 or so rhinestones later, the lunch whistle blew. Benny gave me the customary wave. We adjusted the machines, grabbed our lunches and went outside.

The air was thick, hazy; huge shapeless clouds covered the sky, motionless. Benny playfully kicked the garbage bin, scattering flies for brief seconds; then he eased himself against the wall and began to eat. In one hand, a sandwich: in the other, the racing form.

"Tonight I got the double," he said.

"Twin?"

"Daily," and he continued to read, occasionally making a random comment about the evening's bright future for one of his favorites. He was unusually quiet, though not unfriendly. Despite my curiosity, I was reluctant to mention the incident on Monday.

After finishing my sandwich, I tried my luck at catching flies in mid-air or against a knee or a foot or wherever else they'd decided to land. Helter-skelter, they outwitted me. Benny continued to read and eat.

And then, shortly before the whistle blew, Benny (awkwardly, haltingly, as if the violence were too ugly to reconsider) told me what had happened.

He told me how the Frenchman had been having an affair with Jean, Benny's wife. How he had to let the Frenchman know the game was up. How he didn't want to hurt anybody. How his kids had a slut for a mother. How the motel rooms were done in polished maple. How he loved his wife. How the neon vacancy signs glittered and reglittered night after night. How the two of them made it while he placed two-dollar bets on crippled dogs. How it made him ache. How she somberly promised it wouldn't happen again. How it had to be stopped. And he stopped it. And Mike Jacques, his wife's factory lover, quit. And he could have squashed that French bastard, squeezed his guts on the concrete floor. How it couldn't go on. And, a knife blade later, it was over. Finally over.

"And, well, you, you're just a still a kid. I mean, these things, they don't mean much to you. You ... you don't know. But me. Me, Benny. Me, it hurt me. Deep. I mean, I love that broad. I do. But now it's over. She said it. Said so. And he quit. And ... and it's all over now. You know what I mean?"

I nodded, avoiding his eyes, listening, feeling like some unintentional voyeur.

"You know what I mean?"

"Yeah ..." I mumbled.

"Good."

"Yeah...."

"It's all over."

I was never so happy to hear the whistle.

• • •

Two weeks passed. Benny and I continued to battle the legions of insects, to eat lunch while trying to ignore the stench and the heat. Benny's mood changed from day to day. Unlike the weather or the factory routine, he was unpredictable: at times playful, then solemn; at times talkative, then silent; at times vulnerable, at others, a valiant factory knight, brutalizing flies, slamming the Truk-Away, expanding on the "gum-in-the-dog's-toes" theory of race-track intrigue.

But deep beneath the skin, he was bothered. Wounded. He never talked of Mike Jacques, of motel rooms, of his children, of his wife.

He was losing at the track. A bookie mysteriously known as Big Frank had made a visit to the front office. Eddie Miller, the numbers man, had given Benny the word, "No more ten-spots ... just deuces .... Open a bank account ... friend ... do yourself a favor ...." I knew because Benny had told me. A kind of whispered conspiracy, wincing on the edge of laughter. He said he was waiting for the men with the gloves.

"Gloves?"

"Yeah, they always wear gloves. Like in those old movies."

"I don't get it."

"They knock on the door and they're wearing these gloves, see. Then they come in. Polite as rats. They have a cup of coffee, maybe a doughnut. They tell you how great it is that everybody's healthy and all. They smile a lot, pat the kids on the head, then they leave. They never take their gloves off."

"Gambling?"

"No. They sell vacuum cleaners! What the hell they teach you at that college, anyway?" Benny rocked back, laughing convulsively. I, a virgin to gangland, wasn't sure of the joke.

Then, on a Thursday, Benny didn't show up for work. I didn't think much of it until the next day. Benny was back but strangely silent. He worked through the coffee break, pushing himself, inspecting triangles of colored glass and cheap iridescent metal, placing and replacing them, greasing the machines, dragging his enormous body from task to task.

It was about five to 12 when he first spoke.

"We gotta talk," he said. He was leaning against a machine, reading and rereading the fire-exit sign, deliberately looking away.

"Sure," I said.

"At lunch. We'll leave here. There's a little spot down the road. A park. They got benches."

"We have to be back by twelve-thirty," I said.

"At lunch ... we'll talk." He grabbed my arm. "It's important. I'm counting on you."

"Sure," again.

He turned back to the machines.

When the whistle blew, we went out to the parking lot together and got into Benny's car (a nondescript Ford, dice dangling from the rearview mirror, an exiled Saint Christopher riding the dash). We drove a few blocks. "This park, it ain't much, but there ain't flies all over the place."

"Just ants," I said, hoping for a chuckle.

"I just can't take them flies anymore. Make me sick."

We stopped at a light. I started to say something but thought better of it. The light changed, but Benny sat silently at the wheel, staring blankly forward, apparently oblivious. A horn beeped. Benny glared into the rearview mirror, then started again.

He pointed to a shopping cart somebody had left in the gutter. "Slobs," he said.

"Yeah."

"It ain't far now."

Again we rode, saying nothing. The car was loud. A crack in the muffler. I mused about the chances of being found dead, body choked, organs mangled and mutilated by carbon monoxide. Visions of having the dread poison pumped out of me with a two-dollar bicycle pump.

After we'd driven ten minutes or so, Benny asked, "You remember how one time I told you about this guy Willis who had them coral snakes?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I. ... You worry about me yesterday?"

"Worry? No, I just wondered if you were sick or something, that's all."

"Well, I wasn't. I had to take care of some details. Things, things I had to take care of...."

I nodded, waiting for some further explanation; but none came. He was silent again. I was beginning to feel that I'd made a mistake, that my confidence was being kidnaped. Kidnaped, I thought (theatrical visions dancing in the cerebrum), by a 300-pound man! Was it obscenely absurd or absurdly obscene? I weighed the question. The car rumbled.

Then, with the same intensity he had had while silent, Benny began to talk. Short, sudden sentences punctuated with expletives, sighs, groans. It was as if he could no longer contain the violence and the hurt. He was sweating, his knuckles were white on the wheel. He watched the road while he spoke, turning only to make sure that I was attentive. I nodded now and then, but for the most part, I felt stunned, like the most secular of priests hearing the whisper of "murder." The car was hot, uncomfortable. I opened a window. Air circulated. I didn't notice. Benny continued to drive and talk. And sweat.

He told me how the incident at the factory had not been enough. How his wife and Mike Jacques had continued to see each other. Clandestine meetings in truck stops and bowling alleys. A rendezvous in the bleakness of some anonymous lover's lane (high schoolers in the next car, fiddling with bra straps, trying Trojans, trying). It had to stop.

And so Benny, befuddled and driven by rage, had finally decided to end the affair. To murder the lover or the wife or both. To suffer the consequences of bread and water, of shame.

He'd made connections with the snake charmer from Florida. For an even $100, he'd had two coral snakes shipped north via his truck-driver friend. He'd found out where Jacques lived, a colorless rooming house not far from the factory. Clean sheets. Wallpaper: pale flowers with mud-brown stems.

And after doing the research, the planning, the thinking and rethinking, he'd come upon his plan. And on Thursday, he'd finally negotiated the perfect killing. Tab a into slot A. And that was that. Except for the suffering. Except for the grim detail.

He informed his wife that he was going to the track. He had a sure-fire winner in the sixth. She, not to be outdone by river-boat trickery, told him that she was doing some shopping. A birthday had conveniently been unearthed. The kids would stay next door watching TV, tormenting the cat, eating Fritos.

But Benny, a stalking 300-pound detective, had stood in the early-evening shadows near Jacques's rooming house and had waited. A sharp pain went from throat to ankles as he watched his wife and her lover touch lips on the porch. The lack of secrecy tore at him. No discretion. No shame. On the porch. He faltered. Why? he kept asking of the shadows. No answer. Why and why and why?

When Jacques and Benny's wife had left (in Benny's second car, to twist the knife), he went to the rooming house. He had already been there twice before. Jacques lived conveniently on the first floor. Rectangular simplicity. The bed was made. A toothbrush rested on the night table beside a year-old copy of the Reader's Digest.

Benny carried a wooden box, geometrically patterned by small air holes. Inside: two coral snakes. Hungry, he hoped. Fangs dripping with the blood of his wife's lover, he visioned. He quietly opened the back window of the room, protected by a dying lilac bush, an old saw-horse, some rubbish. He placed the box on the floor of the room, breathed deeply (sucking enemy air for the sake of memory?), then lifted the chain mechanism that allowed the snakes their belated freedom.

He waited for what seemed a very long time for the snakes to begin their explorations.

A small head, dominated by large piercing eyes, emerged. Benny watched carefully, fascinated. The snakes began to move, to negotiate the darkness. They resembled the line drawings in dictionaries. "Poisonous and Nonpoisonous Snakes of the Western Hemisphere." Cold-blooded? Warm-blooded? Benny wondered. He took one last look. The snakes moved slowly, their heads occasionally swiveling. Menace, pure and simple. They responded to light, to heat, to noise, to what? They slithered, somehow harmless, curious and (unlike the linear scrawls in the dictionary) deadly. Benny closed the window.

Benny didn't think of fingerprints, recriminations, the third degree or much of anything. His only thought was of the quick, sharp, stabbing pain. Of something disappearing under the dresser. Sliding into a cluster of dust. Pinpricks in a man's leg.

It was Benny's lucky day. He drove to the track, making it in time for the sixth race. He won $32.50.

He went home after the ninth race, even though he had a dog just waiting for a bet in the 12th. Discipline. His wife returned shortly thereafter. They didn't speak. There was nothing to say.

Nothing at all.

We finally reached the park. I was stunned, exhausted. Benny seemed relieved.

"Just a matter of time," he said.

Benny dropped a nickel in the meter and we walked to a small picnic table.

It was a grim city park, misplaced and scattered with skeletal trees. An acre or two of burned grass and sand, a few tables that seemed out of place (props left behind by a mindless D.P.W.) and too many litter baskets. It was the kind of place where old men read the obits on their way to light a candle for a dead wife. Few children. No birds. Dirt and amorphous lumps of tar.

I sat down, still speechless, and Benny slid in across from me. We looked at each other for a long time, saying nothing. Benny was no longer sweating. He was grinning. Somehow, the very telling of the story had relieved him. I was reminded of how, while I was a kid growing up catholic, I'd ride down the center line of the highway on my Columbia bicycle just after confession. I was safe. Absolution.

"What you got?" Benny asked.

"Huh ...?"

"For lunch?"

"Oh...." I opened my lunch box. "Boiled ham and lettuce."

"You get that a lot, huh?"

"Yeah," I said, still unsure of myself, shaking inside. "How about you?" I asked.

Benny opened his lunch box. A note was sitting on top of a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. There was also an apple.

Benny looked at the note, gave a strained smile, then handed it to me. It was a distinctly feminine scrawl. Slender and slanted. The paper was pinkish:

Dear Benny,

Enjoy your lunch. When you get home, please pick up the children. They'll be next door.

Love, Jean

I handed it back to him. His eyes were watery, but he still gave a small forced grin.

"Only one sandwich today, huh?"

"Guess so," he said. "She always leaves the lunch box in the refrigerator. I just grab it in the morning. You know, gives her a chance to sleep."

"Yeah," I said.

Benny lifted the sandwich from the lunch box. "Hope to Christ it ain't frank-furts." He removed the wax paper, then lifted a corner of the bread to see what was inside.

And there, in mindless repose, resting on a slice of white bread, like in some grotesque and macabre painting or out of an inexplicable nightmare, were the severed heads of the two coral snakes. Triangular and lying in a bed of graying moisture, they had been carefully placed, carefully cut off at the neck, carefully prepared for this one mad instant.

They were almost colorless. Two dead snakes. Two heads. Eyes glazed in death. Skin slightly iridescent, picking up small glints of light. Fangs no longer bared.

I thought I'd be sick.

Benny gasped but didn't move. He couldn't take his eyes away from the snakeheads. He began to cry, openly gagging and choking. He stared at the snakes.

It didn't know what to do. I was stunned, frozen. I watched Benny, no longer the snakes. I waited.

I seemed a very long time before Benny looked up. He had stopped crying. The tears had formed long streaks down his face.

He grinned.

The snakeheads, surreal and threatening, sat before him. Prepared especially for Fat Benny, factory slob, once upon a time would-be killer.

He tried to speak but couldn't quite get the words out. He made a soft gurgling sound. He looked back to the snakes. He placed the other piece of bread back on top. He was trembling.

He smiled. I watched him, dazed.

He spoke very softly. "You know what ... What ... they say in Florida?"

I couldn't speak.

"What do ... you ... you do if you get bit by a coral snake?"

"I don't know ..." I said, unable to hear my own voice.

"Light up a cigarette."

And then, quickly, deftly and thoughtlessly, Benny took a large bite from the sandwich.

I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

A thin stream of gray liquid dripped down his chin. He was almost grinning. His eyes were full of tears. He chewed, then swallowed.

He got up, still holding the sandwich, and walked to a nearby tree. He sat down, leaned against the tree and let the sandwich drop to the ground.

The remaining snakehead, as if still holding a breath of impossible life, separated from the bread and slithered to the ground, eyes wide.

Benny reached into his pocket.

He smiled.

He lit a cigarette.