My clever disguise when he walked by was to turn my back and act like I was staring off into the distance. It apparently worked, because he just kept on walking. As soon as he was out of sight, I ran like mad down to the harbor, pulled off my shoes, and waded right in. Being summer and all, this was not that heroic of a thing to do, though it meant I’d be drenched to the bone on my walk back to my place under the railroad tracks.
Like before, I couldn’t find a thing, which didn’t surprise me, thinking that meat might be heavier than water, sinking pretty quickly. But I also had my feet, which I used to scrunch around the seabed, like I’d do to find clams. That’s how I struck gold, if you want to call it that.
My first thought was chicken. The flesh was slippery, and full of crunchy bones and cartilage. I’m okay with chicken, though I was disappointed, since I’d been hoping for filet mignon or a nice boneless pork cutlet. I took it anyway and searched some more, but that’s all I found.
When I got back to the beach, a little sorry that I was now soaking wet with only a hunk of chicken to show for it, I was able to take a closer look. This wasn’t any cut of chicken I’d seen before. It had no recognizable shape and the bony stuff was way too big. When I unsealed the bag, it didn’t smell like chicken either. In fact, it didn’t smell like anything I’d ever smelled before.
I stuck it in a plastic bag I found in a trash can at the edge of the beach. I carried the bag up Church Street, wondering what to do. Making a meal at this point was off the table, so to speak. Partly because my hunger was getting edged out by curiosity. Biology wasn’t only my major at Yale — I’d loved it since I was a kid. I’d absolutely be hunched over a lab counter right now if I hadn’t had that little hiccup with the voices in my head and the collusion of the Yale Board of Trustees, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and the Satanic Monks of Aquitaine to deprive me of my undergraduate position.
As usual, Harry had a great suggestion: go to the post office and send the bag of meat to my old faculty adviser in the Yale Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
It was a major hike to the post office, which was on the Yale campus. But when we got there, I realized I needed a box to put the bag in. And an address to write on the box, and the money to pay for postage. I had none of these things. Harry berated me, saying any normal person would have no difficulty managing this situation. The more he yelled at me, the harder it was to think, so I started yelling back at him, which is always a mistake.
I’m a guy people try to ignore, so I can tell you this is a surefire way to get a little attention. Definitely the wrong kind.
This got me pretty anxious, so I clamped my hand over my mouth and just kept walking. Pretty soon, I realized I wasn’t all that far from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology itself. Part of me, I admit, just wanted to chuck the bag full of slimy meat into a trash can and walk back to my house under the tracks. But something else pushed me along. Maybe to prove to Harry that I was capable of completing a project even if I hit a snag or two.
When we arrived, I thought about the lady at the desk near the faculty offices who scheduled time with the professors. I was hoping she didn’t remember me when I handed her the bag and told her my old adviser might find the contents interesting. I prayed she wouldn’t say something like, he’s in his office, just go on back and say hello. Especially after that last class when all those insects were jumping out of the specimen containers and trying to eat my flesh.
No worries there. She took the bag, dropped it on her desk, and told me in so many words to hit the pike. I didn’t give her my name, but I had a plan. Wait about a week, then call the professor. Surprise! It was me that brought in the sample. What the heck is it?
And that’s what I would have done, only I never got around to calling, because a few days later the New Haven Register had a headline that said, “Homeless Man Delivers Human Remains to Yale Professor.”
I was freaked out of my skull for a few minutes, too freaked to read the newspaper article. But when I did, I learned that neither the chopped-up person nor the chopper-upper had been identified, though an anonymous source close to the case assumed both were homeless people who got into a conflict while drunk, drugged-up, or crazy — or all of the above. Street people driven to unofficial body disposal was not unprecedented, apparently, especially when somebody ODs and panic sets in.
The question of who would pass along a chunk of said chopped-up person to a Yale biology professor was still open to conjecture.
I looked up and saw a transit cop approaching with his German shepherd. When they kept on walking, I glanced at the giant train schedule on the wall, wondering how far I could get with the little money I’d hidden away. Then I wondered if they’d even let me on the train, or what I would do when I got to wherever I was going. It had taken me a long time to find and perfect my house under the tracks and establish my activities of daily living. How was I going to start over?
Maybe I could just tell the cops what I knew, I thought for a brief second. No way in hell, said Harry, without hesitation. He said, you’re the guy who talks to invisible people, and now you’re going to accuse a fancy chef of serving selections of vacuum-packed Homo sapiens to our local sea life?
These are the kind of debates I get into with Harry all the time, and I have to admit, he’s usually right. But before I could concede to his argument, there was the guy again coming into the station from an arriving train.
I tried to disappear into the wooden bench, but he saw me and stalked right over. He didn’t have what you’d call a happy face. He sat on the bench, holding his Jamaica tourism bag in his lap.
“I’m terribly disappointed,” he said, watching the busy parade of train passengers.
“About what?” I asked.
“I can hardly promote a revival of the crustacean population if people are going to tamper with the food stock.”
“I get that.”
“Our work must remain confidential. I told you that. I thought you understood.”
“Absolutely. Understood,” I said. “Nobody’s gonna hear anything from me.”
Those lifeless blue eyes suddenly seemed very much alive. “Too late,” he said softly. “There will be consequences.”
That was when Harry decided to whistle for one of the German shepherds. The dog came over to us, dragging along a transit cop. The cop started to give me his usual polite but firm request that I vacate the premises, but the dog had different ideas, sniffing like crazy at the Jamaica tourism bag. The gray-haired guy tried to sneak away, but the hair along the dog’s back stood straight up and it lunged at the guy.
“What’s in the bag, sir?” the cop asked, pulling back on the leash.
Harry, by this point, was getting a little shrill and, despite all his talk about keeping our own counsel, started screaming about hacked-up people and sous vide bags and crab food, sounding about as looney as a person can sound.
People around us began to scatter and another cop rushed over. The gray-haired guy said something like, “Enough of this nonsense,” and tried again to walk away, but the German shepherd clamped his teeth down on the bag and held on.
By now, the transit cops were shouting things into microphones mounted on their shirtsleeves, and other cops were appearing out of nowhere; one of them grabbed my upper arm, even though I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. He unfolded a sketch of someone’s face and compared it to mine. It must have been a good match, since he wrenched both hands behind my back and stuck on a set of handcuffs.