Ad Nauseam

THE HAND THAT FEEDS



“Hey, Papa? Will you tell us the story about when you were in prison again?” The boy rested his elbows on his knees, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Now, Bud, I wasn’t in prison. I just worked there.”

“Yeah, Papa. Tell us the story about when you and Nana worked at the prison.” The girl set down the fashion magazine she had been flipping through and smiled. “It’s my favorite.”

“I don’t know. Your mama doesn’t like it when I tell that story.”

“Mama’s not here,” the boy stated sensibly.

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. We won’t tell.” The girl chimed in.

Papa leaned back in his chair and regarded his grandchildren with a look of playful consideration, bushy brows drawn together in thought and his lined face full of mock severity.

He knew he would tell them the story, but it was part of the game to draw it out a bit. It was tradition that the kids spent the last week of summer vacation with their grandparents ever since they started going to school, but he knew at ten and fourteen, they wouldn’t want to hang out with their old grandfolks much longer.

“I suppose we have just enough time while Nana makes dinner. I could tell it one more time. So you want to hear about how me and Nana met and fell in love?” He teased, smiling when his grandson groaned.

“No, Papa. Tell us about Fatty!”

“It’s Frankie.” The girl corrected her younger brother, earning a grimace that included both crossed eyes and a protruding tongue.

“That’s right, sweetheart. It was Frankie.” He grinned at his granddaughter before winking at her brother. “But he was a fatty.”

Papa made a show of leaning back in his chair, one hand rubbing his gray-whiskered chin as he looked off into space and composed his thoughts. When it looked as though both children were ready to pounce upon the old man, fidgeting in their eagerness, he began the story.

***

“Frankie Hanson was as much a prisoner of his own body as he was of the State. A victim of his own insatiable appetite and a doting widow for a mother, he hadn’t walked in over five years by the time he came to live at the state institution for the criminally insane. Now that’s just a fancy name for a prison for crazy people, but we also took in the ones that had what they would call “special needs” these days. Frankie wasn’t the first bedridden inmate I had ever dealt with. But at over seven hundred pounds (we weren’t really sure because he had to be weighed on a shipping scale and we didn’t have one of those) he was certainly the most memorable. Rumor has it that at the time of the murder he weighed around eight hundred, but he’d been on a special diet for several weeks before we got him, and he’d lost some weight. All I know is, he is still the biggest human being I’ve ever met.

“As I recall, it was quite a spectacle the day they brought Frankie in. I remember everyone who was able seemed to find a reason to be outside when the flatbed bearing the enormous, fleshy bulk of the new prisoner backed up to the doors of the loading dock. Before then, the dock’s only purpose had been to receive machinery and food for the kitchen, but it was the only door on the facility that was big enough to bring Frankie in.

“It was late summer, so the weather was nice enough for Frankie to ride exposed to the air, and exposed he was. There weren’t clothes big enough to fit him. Though his lower body was swaddled in massive sheets, he was otherwise naked, and I noticed that carloads of gawkers had followed him to the perimeter fence where they were prevented from coming closer.

“He sat upon a mattress that in turn sat on an extra-large shipping pallet like the kind they used in factories back then. I guess they still use them now, for all I know. It doesn’t matter, anyways. An industrial forklift lifted his heavy ass off the truck and in through the doors, but after that, we were on our own.

“Now usually the inmates slept on standard bunks bolted to the walls, but there was no way this big bugger was going to fit on one of those. We ended up having to order a specially made hospital bed with a reinforced steel frame and some heavy-duty wheels that would allow us to move him around the prison. It took eight of us guards, and I mean young, strong men, an hour and forty minutes to shift ol’ Frankie from that pallet to the bed, and let me tell you, there was a lot of groaning and cursing going on. But we got him there, and then three of us pushed him through the kitchen. I remember your Nana’s pretty blue eyes were round as saucers when she saw him as we moved him across the building to where we housed the prisoners who, for some reason or another, couldn’t be kept on death row at the state penitentiary. The whole time this went on, Frankie never said a word, nor did he even attempt to help us. He just stared straight ahead, his piggy eyes glaring at nothing and his thick bottom lip stuck out in a pout.

“Now, I don’t have anything against heavy people, Lord knows I’m not as slender as I was in my youth. And I reckon some of them have cause to be the way they are. Ordinarily I might have had some sympathy for the man, it must’ve been miserable being as big as he was and bedridden and all. We housed some really bad men, all manner of murderers and psychos, but sometimes they were just so crazy you couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for them. But not Frankie. I knew the second I looked at his face he wasn’t crazy. Oh no, that man wasn’t crazy at all. Pouting on that bed was nothing more than a huge slab of selfishness mixed with a generous dose of meanness to boot.

“He wasn’t crazy. He was just plain bad.

“Frankie was staying with us because he was just too big for death row. But that was where he belonged. Anyone who kills their own mama doesn’t deserve to live.

“I didn’t know the Hansons personally, but I knew the story. Father gone a month before Frankie was born, shot to death pursuing a robbery suspect. A good man and a good cop leaving behind a heartbroken wife and unborn son.

“I think in a way, it was probably Mrs. Hanson’s doing that her boy turned out the way he did, but you can’t blame a sweet woman like she was. She’d lost the man she loved with her body, so replaced it with loving her boy with food. Women used to take pride in cooking, but those days are just about gone. Hell, lots of women don’t even know how to cook anymore. But then again, most men don’t know how to fix a car, either, so I guess it’s a wash.

“Now, there’s lots of reasons a man might do bad things. Poverty, temper, craziness, or jealousy. But that wasn’t the case with Frankie. In the end, he was just a child inside. I don’t mean simple. I’ve known plenty of slow guys who do bad things. I remember one kid who got kicked in the head by a horse when we were teenagers who was never the same again.

“No, I don’t mean Frankie was slow. He was as smart as the next man, but he was spoiled by his mama. A full grown brat was what he was. Just a selfish, horrible person.

“I guess his mama finally had enough of waiting on him hand and foot, so she decided she was going to put Frankie on a diet. There wasn’t much he could do about it since he couldn’t get out of bed, but she had tried before and always relented. This time she wasn’t giving in. Frankie couldn’t exercise on account of the fact he couldn’t get up, but he spent a lot of time working his hands. Flexing and squeezing those little doodads they make to increase hand strength.

“The neighbors said they heard him bellowing for weeks on end, alternately pleading and cursing his mother. Begging for food and calling her all sorts of names when she didn’t give in. Back then people didn’t get involved in each other’s business like they do now, so they turned a blind eye on the Hanson’s house and tried their best to ignore it.

“Well, Frankie just kept getting madder about his mama withholding his food, and I guess one day they were arguing and she got too close. She wasn’t a very big woman and he had those strong hands. He snapped her neck like an old, dry branch and things got pretty quiet after that. It was almost a week before the neighbors got concerned and called the cops, but by then he had her mostly eaten.”

***

“Talk about biting the hand that feeds you, huh?” Papa winked and the kids groaned.

“Tell us about his leg, Papa.” The boy begged, but Papa held up a hand.

“Who’s telling this story, Bud?”

“You are.”

“I’ll get there.”

“Just ignore him, Papa. I want to hear the rest.” The girl glared at her brother before returning her attention back to her grandfather.

“Okay now. Where was I?”

***

“Working in the institution meant you had to get used to some nasty stuff on a fairly regular basis. It was just one of the things that came with the paycheck. You got used to it. You had to, or else you didn’t make it very long. Anyone who lasted longer than six months was considered a lifer, though not many did. It wasn’t boring, that’s for sure. Sometimes it was quiet for a while, but it never lasted long.

“Full moons were the worst. Believe what you want about it, but I can tell you for a fact that the moon affects people in strange ways. Anyone who’s ever worked in a prison, bar, or hospital will tell you the same. Man, would those loons howl at the full moon. They went ape-shit. Anything that could happen, did. In fact, it was a full moon when the riot happened, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

“So we were used to gross things. Nutcases crapping on the floor, and then finger painting with it. Or jumping on their beds, playing with themselves like monkeys at the zoo, but it was nothing compared to Frankie. Not that Frankie could’ve played with himself . Even if he could’ve reached for it, there was no way he could find it. I know because we went looking for it one day while we were cleaning him. Damn thing was so buried in the pad of fat covering his groin it looks more like a belly button than a pecker.

“We were used to the crazy stuff and as used to the gross stuff as we could be, but nothing we had dealt with could’ve prepared us for Frankie.

“This was a long time ago before prisoners had much in the way of rights, and we were overpopulated and under-staffed. There weren’t enough nurses to go around, so much of the day- to-day care fell to us guards. We were the ones who got stuck with making sure they got clean and didn’t allow their wounds to fester. It wasn’t such a big deal with most of them, a crazy man can take a shower and wash his own ass if you watch and remind him.

“But Frankie couldn’t do anything for himself. Every few days we had to bathe him, a chore that took up to two hours and two guards. One of us would have to lift each fold of heavy flesh, while the other scrubbed out the cheesy accumulations of sweat that had collected and doused the area with baby powder to prevent chafing. If I live to a hundred, I don’t think I will ever forget that smell. One time a bit of food got lost in all that fat and by the time we found it, maggots were teaming in the dark moistness. It was awful, but we did it just the same.

“Then there was the problem of the toilet. He couldn’t walk, so he couldn’t use one. That didn’t bother Frankie one bit, though. He just did his business where he lay, not even trying to help us when we rolled him from side to side to change the bedding and wipe his huge ass. Sometimes he would hold it, waiting until one of us held up the massive apron of flesh that hung between his legs, and whizzing on the guard who was unlucky enough to have to wipe inside his folds. Whizzed right in my face one time and oh, how that big bastard laughed. Now, I’m not a violent man, but I sure could’ve killed him that day.

“Anyway, Frankie’s legs were so fat, he had to keep them spread all the time, and he had these big, purple patches of growths on the calves. The skin there was as rough and pebbled as an old cobblestone path, splitting open and weeping a thick yellow fluid that constantly had to be wiped away. I know it pained him, but I couldn’t bring myself to care too much. Not after he pissed in my face, anyway.

“Twice a day we would wipe the slime off, wash the crusty edges of the growths, and smear a thick salve over the entire area. Was kind of like rubbing Vaseline on a gator. Just touching his legs made my stomach churn. I came to hate Frankie like I’ve never hated anyone in my life. When the other inmates misbehaved, we shot them up with drugs or put them in solitary. But there wasn’t much we could do to Frankie. We had to take care of him.

“The guards weren’t the only ones who hated him. He wasn’t there a day before the other inmates wanted him dead. It wasn’t his disgusting nature that offended them. It was the noise. We had our fair share of wailers there, and the nights were few and far between when you couldn’t hear the echo of someone sobbing himself to sleep or calling for his mother.

“But once again, Frankie was different. From the time he was secured in his cell that first day, he bellowed. Morning, noon and night it went on. I’m starving! Feed me! Good God, I’m wasting away! Where’s my food? And so on. You could hear it no matter where you went, the cell block, the showers, even in the kitchen. The men we kept weren’t compassionate on their best days, so it didn’t take long for Frankie’s whining to grate on already frazzled nerves. We had a kind of rapport with the prisoners. They acted up sometimes, but mostly we kept it under control. But Frankie’s constant wailing riled the others, and unable to take it out on the actual object of their misery, they took it out on us. Work went from merely hard, to almost intolerable. I can’t even blame them much. It was difficult for me to cope with, and I had all my faculties about me to begin with.

“After weeks of the commotion, we had all reached the end of our ropes. Like I said, this was back when prisoners were still treated like prisoners, not like now when they have more rights than I do. They didn’t get pampered like they do now, and I’m not proud to say that guards could pretty much get away with whatever they wanted back then. I myself tried to always treat the inmates with dignity, but I knew plenty who didn’t.

“I can’t justify taking part in what we did to Frankie that day. I’m not even going to try, but I was awful tired, and just plain fed up with the man. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but we did it anyway. And being sorry never undid anything.

“I’d been teamed up with another guard named Eddie something-or-other, his last name slips my mind, but we were partners when it came time to see to Frankie’s needs. Eddie wasn’t a bad man, but he had been dealing with the same crap I had for a lot more years than me, and it made him hard. Sometimes his idea of blowing off steam was to taunt the prisoners. I never condoned it, and had never participated until that day, but I never really held it against him, either. We weren’t exactly running a daycare.

“So Eddie gets it into his head that we’re going to screw with Frankie a bit and I go along with it, and we go to the kitchen and find the biggest, juiciest looking fried chicken leg they had. Then we went into Frankie’s cell and showed him what we had. I swear that man burst into tears when he saw it, having lived on nothing but average-sized portions of the blandest, healthiest fare we could provide. He begged us for that chicken. Sobbed like a child and literally begged, his big face folding up as he blubbered, but Eddie just held that meat up out of his reach and waved it around, making sure nothing but the smell got within Frankie’s grasp.

“Well, Frankie had been losing weight, and I guess he thought maybe he had lost enough, or maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. But I’ll be damned if that big man didn’t pull himself up from his bed. It took a long time and we both laughed at his struggling, but that stubborn fool got to his feet for the first time in five years.

“We weren’t really sure what to do. I was a bit scared when I saw the look of triumph that lit up his face, but it faded the second he took his first step. Those legs of his weren’t used to supporting any weight anymore, let alone his massive girth, and his shin bone split with a crack I can still hear, shooting out the front of his leg like a jagged, white sliver, all bloody and gooey on the inside. The worst part of it was—and just thinking about it makes me want to puke to this day—lumpy globs of fat splattered out of the torn skin and plopped on the floor. I heaved when I saw those yellow wads marbled with delicate red veins laying there on the gray tile.

“Frankie screamed and hit the floor, his leg still oozing fat and blood while Eddie and I ran for help. It took five of us over an hour to muscle him back into bed and push him to the infirmary, but by then he was unconscious from blood loss and shock. It was the first time he’d been quiet since he got there. I guess it nearly killed him, but no one ever asked why he had decided to stand in the first place. Eddie and I sure as hell weren’t offering any details. They kept him for two weeks, and it was the most peaceful two weeks of my life. Even the other inmates seemed subdued, just enjoying the silence without Frankie. I think maybe it was the silence of his leaving that made them do what they did when he came back.

“The riot happened that Friday morning, maybe a week after Frankie returned to his cell and started his caterwauling again. It’s a bit murky how it came about, but I can tell you those inmates held the institution for two whole days before they finally just gave in and got back in their cells. There wasn’t much damage done and no one was badly hurt, but when all was said and done, Frankie was gone.

“There was some blood on the floor of his cell, but otherwise not a trace of the big man. The guys from the State came swooping in, trying to do an investigation, but no one was talking and they didn’t have much science like DNA back then. To be honest, I don’t think they really cared all that much. A lot of interviews were done, and photos taken, but in the end they really didn’t try that hard. Frankie had no family left to complain, and his disappearance saved them the trouble of having to figure out how to execute him. They still used the electric chair in those days, and I’m sure those boys were sweating over how to fit that big tub of guts into it. Over the next few months, the prisoners were all transferred out to different institutions and the place was eventually closed, forcing all of us staff to look for other work.”

***

“And that’s the sad story of Frankie Hanson.” Papa sat back, folded his hands across his stomach, and smiled widely, revealing his ill-fitting dentures.

“Papa!” the kids cried in unison.

“What?”

“You didn’t finish the story. Tell us what really happened to Frankie.” His grandson complained.

“And tell us the truth this time.” His granddaughter agreed with her brother, a rare occurrence.

“Now there’s a funny thing about the truth, sweetheart. Sometimes it has just as many layers as a lie. Papa always tells you kids the truth, but sometimes when we love someone, we have to decide which layer to peel. Cuz believe me, the truth can be much uglier than a lie.”

“Please, Papa.” The boy steepled his hands.

“Papa!” The girl was exasperated.

“Okay. I’ll tell you the rest. But you have to remember, a lot of it is supposition. No one who really knows what happened during those two days has ever been willing to tell the facts.”

***

“Now, I should probably backtrack a bit and remind you just how hard life was for everyone who had to deal with Frankie. I’m not trying to justify what may or may not have been done to the man, but sometimes a person can understand what drives others to do crazy things. Frankie was a pain in the ass from day one and none of us had a moment’s peace from the time he came in except for when he was in the infirmary. Sometimes you can handle something until it stops, but after a reprieve, you can’t handle it anymore when it starts up again. That’s the way it was as soon as they took Frankie off the morphine and wheeled him back into his cell, and we all knew how bad it was going to get. Stress like that can make even a good man do bad things. A sane man can go crazy for just a minute. And let’s face it; most who were involved had been crazy for years.

“But there’s one more thing about Frankie you need to think about. It wasn’t just hatred we all felt due to his annoying nature. It was also fear. The kind of deep-rooted fear no one ever even realizes they are feeling until after the fact. You see, that sloppy, fat-assed killer represented something within us all that terrifies us. The loss of control of our own bodies, and a lack of self-control over our desires and needs. I think we all know that way down inside us all is a Frankie, should we lose grip on the ability to control ourselves.

“What I’m about to tell you may all be just ugly rumors. But I’ll tell you what most believe happened to Frankie Hanson during those two days, and you can do with it whatever you please.

“From the beginning, it was rumored the riot had to be a ruse, a set-up. One or more of the guards would’ve had to be involved for the inmates to all get free like that, with not even one escape attempt, but there wasn’t anything anyone could prove afterwards.

“They got out that morning and took over the facility in a surprisingly organized way (which also leads one to think the guards were involved). The truth of the matter is, the State was never notified until after the situation was taken care of, which probably had something to do with why they closed us down.

“But you have to remember everyone hated Frankie, and maybe the inmates just did what the rest of us wanted to do, but were too constricted by morals to actually attempt.

“The story goes that they gathered together in the shower room and hatched a hasty plan, a few of the inmates left behind to hold off the guards in whatever way they did so. I’m not going to tell you how because the ex-guard in me doesn’t want anyone to have that information. But after that, they went straight to Frankie’s cell and got to work.

“If the story is true, the crazies stole sharp knives from the kitchen and each took turns poking him and making him squeal like a pig. This could’ve gone on for hours, if it’s true, before he finally would have bled to death or died from the shock. That’s when the tale gets truly disturbing.

“Rumor has it that one of the inmates had the idea to cut him all up, dress him out kind of like a deer? And they did just that, hacking away and lugging all of the pieces back to the kitchen. It would’ve taken a long time to do, he was such an enormous man, but they eventually got him chopped up and delivered. Now the same people who think the guards were part of it (depending on who you talk to, it was either all the guards, or just a few) also believe maybe a few of the cooks took part as well.

“So as it’s told, those collaborators took what they were given and cooked up a mighty feast attended by the prisoners and staff alike. And they didn’t leave the table until Frankie Hanson had been completely consumed along with some baby potatoes and garden fresh carrots. Then the prisoners returned to their cells and someone, maybe a cook or perhaps a guard, disposed of the bones. The State was called and all they found was some blood in a cell. Frankie Hanson was gone.”

***

“Ewww Papa! That’s so gross.” The girl shuddered and grinned simultaneously.

“But I haven’t told you the spookiest part yet.” Papa leaned forward, his eyes wide with wicked glee. “Rumor has it some of those guards developed a taste for human flesh that day. You know there does seem to be an awful lot of people who go missing in the woods around town.”

“Dinner time!” Nana stepped into the room, a stained apron around her waist and long strands of gray hair escaping the tight bun she wore at the nape of her neck.

“Yep, dear. We’re on our way. Just have to get the kids to wash their hands.” Papa stood up, his knees popping loudly and making both his grandchildren giggle.

“You kids get washed up. I’ll be right in.” Papa headed down the hall to the bedroom at the end, where he and Nana slept.

Closing the door softly behind him, he looked at the ancient trunk against the wall. It took only a minute to find the small, straight key that unlocked the heavy padlock on the front, and he eased the heavy lid open. The object he sought was towards the back, buried under material samples from when Nana had made her own wedding dress. He found it without effort, and carefully unwrapped the tattered velvet encasing it. A smile played on his lips, but never quite touched his eyes as he traced the smooth lines and contours, spending extra time on the ridges above the empty eye sockets, remembering the deep-set eyes. The yellowed skull felt cool under his hand, boiled clean of the flesh so many years ago.

“Papa?”

Papa pulled his hand back quickly, dropping the lid and clasping the padlock in place before turning towards the door. He could rewrap it when the kids were asleep.

“What is it, Bud?” Papa asked casually as he met his grandson at the door and the boy backed up a step so they were both in the hall. He snuck in close to his grandpa as they walked towards the sink.

“What do you think we, I mean people, taste like?”

“Well,” said Papa with a wink, his voice low so as not to be overheard. “I suppose like Nana’s meatloaf.”