"The Deserving" by LJ Pemberton

You meet people—I call them meat people—who think riding the bus is quirky. They’ve got so much money that we bus people should eat them, but no one’s willing to take the first bite (yet). I bet Bezos tastes like stressed pork, best slow roasted on warm charcoal. Order it from Amazon for a good laugh. A good barbeque requires cooperation though and the first rule of being bus people is don’t talk to other bus people. Not because you don’t want to know them, but because you do know them. You know that ache they woke up with and how it feels to walk to the stop before your body wants to admit you’re alive. You know they don’t want to talk because you don’t want to talk because we’re all going to work to be talked at and through and tonight we’re going to take the same route home without talking while we carry what’s left of our humanity to our doorsteps. Bus people don’t talk to each other because meat people make the day hurt and talking won’t fix tomorrow. 

It doesn’t make sense, but it’s easier for bus people to imagine being meat people than eating the meat people like they deserve. Something about being people. People don’t eat people anymore, not unless they’re at church and the person volunteered to be a meal 2,000 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, church people don’t eat a 2,000 year old corpse on Sunday, but some eat bread that turns into corpse in their stomachs because that’s how things work with their god. They have a real taste for the body, I guess, or have a more developed sense of the miraculous than I do. I envy them that. The bread I eat stays bread in my stomach, and that’s a shame. I bet we could make bread out of meat people if we really tried, but I think most of us are trying to become meat people (unfortunately) instead. 

My bus route has one transfer, which means I can’t fall asleep for a reasonable nap—morning or night. On Fridays I fall asleep anyway and I often miss my regular switch stop, but I treat my mistake like a surprise instead of a problem. Inconvenience is like that; it can be an adventure if you have enough time to find your way home. When I stay on too long, I usually end up further east, which means bigger sky and low buildings. The tall buildings are to the south, near downtown, and I only go there on weekends. My home is west of the tall buildings but southwest of where I get off when I fall asleep. I decide to walk, because walking reminds me I am alive, and I like to be alive in the nighttime. 

There are few other people on the street. In the neighborhoods, the doors are closed. If the curtains are not drawn, I watch the inhabitants cook, eat, read, flip through television channels. Watching is better than being sometimes. It’s a way to discover new ways to live or not live. But they are also strangers and they mean little to me. I guess I believe in their right to healthcare (they probably don’t believe I have the same right), but I don’t feel warmly towards them. In some rooms, with insecure people obsessed with projecting love and light, my indifference would qualify me as a bad person, but they’re worse than I am. They feign care when what they desire is compliance. I don’t pretend to care and that makes me non-compliant.

It’s darker even than most nights. The fall cloud cover that usually reflects streetlights and other light pollution has blown out to sea. Overhead, a darkness caps the city. The black sky is new but still feels permanent because it is older than the night lights I so well know. I continue walking, alone. An ambulance passes, unseen, further west. Otherwise, this street is quiet. This street is mine.

My solitude is broken by a man who is walking his dog. He is a white man and his dog is small and scruffy. I do not know the dog’s real name but I decide to call him Bowser. I walk behind the man. He does not fear me because I am a woman and men do not usually fear women. The dog is captivated by the scents of dogs that have walked down this street before him. As we are all walking on the street, the man takes a phone call, and I overhear bits: no, go ahead and short it. Let’s hold off on that one. He is speaking about his investments. He is a meat people and I suppose I should have known that all along—this is an entire neighborhood of them after-all. You can tell by the size of the houses and the immaculately trimmed yards. You can tell by the brands of the cars parked in the driveways. He does not worry about me. He thinks I am one of him because I am white too and this fact enrages me. 

I pause a moment in my rage and reach in my backpack. My phone, the leftovers of my packed lunch, and my metal coffee thermos are there. I finger the thermos, have a fantasy of bashing him over the head with it, then get worried there might be surveillance cameras on the nearby houses. There are, surely, but it is also very dark here. I grip the thermos harder, imagine if I held the cap, I could hit him pretty hard with the butt. I don’t need to convince myself to do it. I need to convince myself not to. He is a fool, why should I suffer him? He is rich. He is a meat people. (I am not good at convincing myself not to do what I want.)

He doesn’t expect me. The bottle lands hard with a clanging metal thud on the back of his skull while he is still on the phone. I’ve done this before—experience has told me to make sure to hit hard enough to take him out with one blow. He falls forward and his call hangs up as his phone hits the grass. His broker tries to call back. He does not answer because he is out cold. Bowser lunges at me, but I am good with dogs. I back up and squat and then he approaches slowly and I pet him with all the gentleness I was able to save in myself by hitting the man. I look at the man’s body, splayed and dumb on someone else’s yard. He’ll wake up in twenty minutes, probably, with a rough concussion. Maybe someone will find him. I’ll be gone. I crouch next to him a moment and check out his skull. The skin has broken slightly and there is a smear of blood. It will congeal soon enough. His ear is ugly, and briefly, I consider ripping it off. I could take it home, put it in a box, tell no one. A small cut of gristle to season the year. Then again, he’d wake up from the pain. 

I put my thermos back in my backpack and walk two blocks over, back to the main boulevard. Catch the next bus and look on my phone to see which connection is best; I’ve never taken this route before. It’s full of other bus people, strangers and not, on their way to where they’re going. Closed businesses flash past my window. Graffiti, here and there, like an echo in the void. The driver taps the brakes too much. At my stop, I disembark and walk back to my apartment, keys in hand. A few minutes later I am home. 

He’s probably awake now, telling anyone who will hear it what happened to him. Seeking sympathy from other meat people. They will say the same things, wonder what the world is coming to. They don’t want to believe anyone hates them, THEM, of all people. I laugh, have some ice cream. Tomorrow he’ll still be rich, but now he’ll fear. On future dark nights when he takes his dog for a walk, he’ll wonder if the world will end him. For the first time in his life he’ll know what it means to be precarious, without surety about the future, the next minute. He’ll be nervous when he meets people. His home will never be enough again.


LJ Pemberton is a writer / artist / futurist living in Los Angeles, California. Her essays, poetry, and award-winning stories have been featured in the Los Angeles Review, PANK, Cobalt, VICE, Hobart, the Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. New work is forthcoming from LEVEE, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Drunk Monkeys. She currently reviews fiction for Publishers Weekly. Her (yet unpublished) novel, STARBOI, is a queer tale of obsession and heartbreak set in the recent past. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is formerly an assistant editor at NOON. You can find her on twitter @ljabouttown.