Weekly Drabble #246: Shop Keeping (Patreon)

With the prompt of 'butcher's bill' from uberdrops, we look at the bill of a butcher. Amazing how that works, innit? Enjoy!

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Shop Keeping

With a thunk, Betty Winnister embedded the heavy meat cleaver into the cutting board, turning slowly towards her visitor. ‘Butcher Betty’ as the locals called her was a towering, obese woman, equal parts muscle and flab. She was the City’s equivalent of Molly Pitcher, but instead of carrying the injured off for treatment like so many sacks of flour, she hauled them into the back of her shop to be cleaned, dressed and put out for sale. Food was a scarce commodity among the grounded in Horrak-Sarn. Cities weren’t known for being productive plots of land at the best of times and things like rooftop greenhouses were a signal to everyone that there was something to take, whether it was the plants themselves or the people that grew them.

Most agriculture was kept to a minimum, or indoors if at all possible but even then, energy spikes from tapped power grids and thermal bleed from hothouses could give you away as easily as a neon sign. Only the most fortunate inhabitants of the City got by with more than subsistence fare, living day to day on whatever they could beg, barter or steal. Some of the more organized communities and gangs knew where to find food, hunting the animals that had made Horrak-Sarn their home alongside the human captives, plucking wild-grown plants that clung to life under a pale, off-colour sun. They’d even go so far as to delve into the Beneath where the water supply could lead them to cisterns where edible mosses and fungi grew in clusters. No matter how you came by it, food for the residents outside the Masters’ districts was hard-found and hard-won. When it got scarce, many people wouldn’t look too closely at what was put on their plate.

Everyone likes lamb, but they don’t want to be the ones to put it to the knife.

“So,” she said to her guest, running her hands under the sink, pink-red water sluicing down the grate to the recycling pump. “What can I do for ye, Mister Bodega?”

“It’s Derrick,” the man replied. “Bo Derrick.” He was young with light brown skin and dark eyes and on the back of his left hand was the tattoo of a crown, the gang’s symbol. The right side of his face was largely covered with a clear bandage a thorny and as-yet unhealed tattoo splashed across his cheek. Young blood. Or fresh meat.

Betty smiled, her lips splitting wider than it seemed they should, with perhaps more teeth than a human should have glinting wetly in the cold white light of her shop. “’course it is,” she said. She looked over Derrick’s shoulder to the other man standing behind him with his arms crossed. He was in his thirties and his face and forearms were splattered with gang ink. Old blood. Most of the gangers here didn’t last that long. Those that did were ones to watch out for. They were smarter, stronger or just plain luckier – and in Horrak-Sarn, you couldn’t discount luck – then their younger comrades and a lot more dangerous.

That the Old Blood was standing back and letting the youth speak up meant one of a handful of possibilities. The Old Blood had pissed off someone higher in standing and this assignment was a punishment detail or Bodega here was an up-and-comer, being groomed for more than just rattling around with a gun on his hip like the usual bangers. Possibly even both. Or Bodega here had been the one to piss someone off and Old Blood was here to make sure he learned his lesson. One way or the other.

Betty didn’t think much more of it. Whatever happened, happened. Fresh meat was always helpful, but so was keeping on the gang’s good side. The Kinside Kings had made out the best in the recent turf war, though that was all relative. As one of her new boys might say, the entire district was now a PVP zone as the remnants of the gangs, mutant clans, local cobbled-together watch groups and even some of the Turner’s Men fought for control of the region.

The Kings were better positioned than most, but they were still holding on through the skin of their teeth. They needed help to hold onto the Kinside District, help that Betty was only too happy to provide, using her Trappers to gather food and help with security, freeing up more of the Kings for their own matters. “So what can I do ye for?” she asked. “Ye know I’m always happy to help.”

“Dark season’s coming,” Bodega said. Quick and to the point, despite how uneasy he was in Betty’s shop. “We got an algal tank blooming, but there’s a lot more people in Kinside than we can feed with just one tank.”

“Less now,” Henry, one of Betty’s boys laughed, but the massive woman raised a hand to silence him. The gang war had hit the locals hard, and not just in numbers. There’d been three algal tanks in the district. One had burned down during a fight for control of it, and some muties had poisoned the second. The Kings were holding onto theirs to not only feed their people, but starve their opposition out. Normally, they would have kept the people in the district well-fed, but right now they were looking to their own first and foremost. Their own and anyone who could bribe their way to a bowl of protein-rich gelatinous paste now and then.

People in Kinside were hungry, and that was why Betty’s business had taken off. She’d always been here, but the Kings had kept an eye on her, making sure that the bulk of her butcher shop’s offerings were from animals and she only offered long meat to select clients. Without them around, her employees had grown, men preferring to work for her rather than they and their families going hungry.

“When the dark season hits and a lot of the topside plants die off, things’ll get tight,” the young ganger continued. “Tighter than they already are and people are going to get desperate. We’re trying to do right by the locals, but we got our own problems and just can’t provide enough for everyone.”

“Ye know there’s a saying, don’t ye?” Betty asked Bodega. “Every society’s just three meals away from chaos. Ain’t know where I heard that, but I think it’s pretty true, don’t ye? Nothing gets people moving more than a rumble in their tummy. Moving and willing t’ overlook things they wouldn’t before so long as that rumble stops. Willing t’ do things, too. I had parents with too many kids come to me t’ sell long veal so that the resta their brood won’t starve. Making hard choices ain’t easy – that’s why they’re hard, but the City don’t give a shit ‘bout nothing but seeing another day.” She paused, looking up as one of her boys brought in a platter of cooked patties of red meat, filled with diced mushrooms. Bread was a luxury here. Betty didn’t offer any to her guests, and she didn’t hesitate to tear into the meal.

“Seems t’ me,” the women began. “That ye are asking if I can help pick up the slack before ye have an uprising on ye hands. Don’t think ye can handle angry locals along with all the other folks out fer ye heads, that it?” She chuckled. “Well, we can talk about it. I have some stores I could stretch a ways more t’ help the locals make it through the dark season, but I’ll need something from ye. Something t’ prove ye are serious about wanting my help.”

“What’s that?”

“I know ye aren’t best pleased t’ have ol’Betty’s shop in ye district,” she said as she wolfed down the remainder of the first patty and started another. “Ye can smile t’ a man’s face as ye stab him in the back or slit a woman’s throat after ye have ye way with her with narry a pause in ye step, but the long meat trade turns ye nose up, doesn’t it? Even though ye had use for me before and need my Trappers t’ keep ye people from turning on ye when they realize ye can’t keep ‘em safe like ye used t’.” She grinned as red juices dribbled over her lips and down her chin. “But hard choices ain’t easy, are they?”

“What do you want?”

“What I want, Mr. Bodega-”

“Bo Derrick.”

“‘course it is. Want I want, Mr. Bodega is a little somethin’ from ye Kings. T’ do what ye are asking means more trips and longer trips hunting for my boys, ranging further afield so as not t’ deplete all the local game. That’s dangerous work and more’n a chance some of my boys won’t be coming back, and that’s all on ye. Ye are asking a lot of a butcher and her shop, and I think ye know it. Trouble is, I know it too.”

“We can pay-”

“Save ye coin for now. There’ll be haggling and bartering over the cost of what ye need from me for when it gets  darker and game gets scarce and the plants shrivel up, but t’ get t’ that point, I need t’ see ye have skin in the game. I want ye hands t’ have the same kinda red ‘pon them as an honest butcher working her shop. Somethin’ t’ maybe take that sneer offa ye lips whenever ye boys look at me and mine.”

The young man looked a little queasy now. The old blood’s face was set and he spoke for the first time. “You want more bodies? We can get you all you need.”

“Plucked right from wherever ye drop ‘em in ye little fights, no doubt. And sure, that’ll be useful. When the cold closes in, even the picky eaters stop fussin’ quite so much once their bellies drop and their little ones are begging for any scrap of food at all. But that ain’t what I mean right now.”

“What do you mean?” the younger ganger said, taking the lead in the conversation again. “You’re dancing a lot for a woman your size, Betty.”

The woman slowly turned her mammoth head towards the man and when she grinned this time, it was not with any warmth, her smile seeming to stretch even wider than it had before. “Ain’t ye a ballsy little one. City oysters get served here on the weekly, boy. I like ye fire, but if ye whip ye balls out like that again, I might decide t’ keep ‘em. Now, as I was sayin’– bodies are one thing. Getting ye skin in the game so’s we can talk like equals – that’s where we’re at, my Kings.”

She started on the third large patty. “My boys are the best at catchin’ animals of any stripe out there, but some animals are harder to catch than others, ye know? There’s some vermin scuttling about, causing me and mine some irritation. Stealing things ain’t theirs, ducking my boys, graffiti’ng and sabotaging my carts. More problems than they should be able t’ do, ye understand? Ye take care of the little blighters, bring one an’ all here t’ my shop knowin’ full well what they’re in for and then we’ll start talkin’ about talkin’. Ye understand?”

“You want us to handle some thieves?” The young man thought for only a moment. “Sure.”

“Not just thieves, me boy. Not just thieves.” The massive woman leaned across the table towards her guest, the wooden creaking in protest from the immense weight on it. “This little pack o’ nuisances is all long veal, ye understand? Nary a buck or doe among ‘em, either. Long veal I intend t’ have cleaned, dressed and on my shelves before we go any further. That’ll get ye skin in the game and then we talk. Or are some alley rats worth more t’ ye than ye own people and holding onto Kinside?”

“I’ll have to... I’ll have to discuss this with Cicero.”

Betty waved towards the door to the front of the shop. “Ye go right ahead. I’ll wait here.” She watched him and the old blood leave, staying gone just long enough for a quick radio call to the gang’s leadership before Bodega came back in, looking like he was trying not to look ill. Probably a blooded man – no one got a gang tattoo without dropping at least one body – but even blooded men had limits. At least, until they got hungry enough.

“We’ll...” he paused, cleared his throat. “We’ll get skin in the game.”

“Good, glad t’ hear it. The little rats like t’ slink around the northwestern quarter, probably a right nest of them. Clean them out, bring them t’ me and we can have a nice meal and talk about the future of Kinside.” Betty grinned, extending her hand towards the ganger. He shook it, his hand swallowed up by hers,his palm cold and clammy.

After they had gone, Betty returned to work, picking up her cleaver and chopping up the day’s catch to get it ready for sale. Henry watched her for a moment. “You didn’t tell them,” he said at last, “about the Watcher.” There was a reason why the Trappers hadn’t been able to root out those little bastards. Part of Kinside’s north quarter was within the hunting grounds of one of those winged monstrosities. Maybe more; there were conflicting reports about what the mutie looked like. That was just what they needed, a nest of those killers to decide the district belonged to them.

“Did I not?” Betty hummed as she chopped and sliced with a delicacy and skill completely at odds with her size. “Time was, the Kings knew everything that happened here in Kinside. Even with ye boys helping them out, they still don’t have the men to cover the ground they did before things turned tits-up. Well, they’ll learn soon enough. They’ll either root out the rats, or the Watcher’ll thin their ranks and once they get thin enough....” she slammed the cleaver down into the cutting board and grinned at her employee. “Maybe ol’ Betty and the Trappers take a bigger slice of the Kinside pie.”