Wilbur

Content warning: references to cannibalism

Leeds – population seven hundred and seven, the sign says.

Another shithole town? My son Michael sniggers from the backseat. His little sister Andrea tattles on him for saying the “S” word, as if we couldn’t hear it in the front seat, and my husband shoots the kids a warning look in the rearview mirror.

To Michael’s point, we have been hitting small towns every ten miles, or so. While the others were as quiet as you’d expect from tiny dots on a map, even on a Friday afternoon, the streets of Leeds are absolutely swarming with people. Bright yellow signs line the front yards, and when we creep toward the center of town, a sign strung across the road reads: 10th Annual Leeds City Sale and Brat Fry.

Should we stop? I ask my husband. Andrea’s been whining about being hungry, which has made the last ten miles without a fast food drive thru feel like fifty. She kicks the back of my husband’s seat. He’s visibly annoyed and hates crowds, and I know he’d rather keep driving—we’re still over an hour from the cabin we rented for the weekend and burning daylight on the meandering county highways that Jake insists are quicker and more direct than the highway.

I reach over and squeeze his leg, and he loosens his white-knuckle grip on the wheel. Andrea begs for food again—as if we never feed her and didn’t start the four hour trek from Illinois to Northern Wisconsin with ample car snacks—and Michael says he has to pee, so Jake relents and pulls down a side street, parking near a church where people are funneling for the brat fry.

We get out and look around. The connecting streets are closed off to traffic to make room for a bounce house, a dunk tank, a clown making balloon animals, and a woman dressed like a princess painting faces.

All this for a brat fry and garage sale? I mutter to my husband.

A woman walking by holding a brat loaded with onions and mustard, stops and says, Isn’t it great? We come every year.

Tourists, like us. It makes sense…a town this small must be flooded with tourists to be this busy.

Andrea pulls at my shorts and urges us in the direction of the tables in the church parking lot that are lined up in front of grills. Michael heads to a bank of porta johns and Jake goes with him. I pull out my wallet and ask how much for a brat, and a woman in a 10th Annual Brat Fry shirt smiles and hands me a plate with a bun.

She says, They’re free, honey. We always have a surplus of meat this time of year. That’s why we do this!

I nod and ask, Is there a big pig farm, or something?

Something like that, she says, and one of the men manning the grill puts a steaming sausage into the bun on my plate, and grabs another for Andrea.

I ask the woman what this is all for, and she says it’s to commemorate another year with zero crime. In a town of only seven hundred residents, I can’t imagine what kind of crime there would be, but ten years without a single robbery? No drunken bar fights or domestic disputes? No teenagers spray painting bridges or smoking under the bleachers at school? I ask her as much, and she proudly shakes her head and says Leeds is totally crime free.

She doesn’t elaborate how or why, even though I’m looking at her with obvious skepticism, and she urges me along to the sale, which occupies another corner of the parking lot where tables aren’t lined with buns and condiments, but clothing and accessories. I thank her and tuck into the brat after I squirt on a line of ketchup.

The first bite is…odd. Growing up in the Midwest, I’ve eaten brats my whole life, but never any that tasted quite like this. The texture is softer, almost the quality of a hotdog. Grease coats my tongue when I swallow, the meat leaving behind a distinctly off taste, and I wonder if the meat sat in the sun too long before hitting the grill. I’m about to stop Andrea from taking a bite when I see she’s eaten half of hers already—maybe she really was starving—and doesn’t seem bothered by the distinctly rancid flavor that still lingers on my tongue. Maybe it’s something in the fat, something the animal ate, or…something else. I take another bite to see if the second is any better.

It isn’t.

I drop my brat in a trash can and steer Andrea through the crowd to the yard sale tables and start sifting through the offerings. Most of it seems to belong to men—clothes, boots, belts, half-used bottles of cologne—and all priced to sell. Fifty cents for a flannel shirt or pair of pressed pants, a dime for a leather belt, a bin of balled up socks under a FREE sign.

Andrea begins whining again—this time because there isn’t anything in the sale for little girls. And she’s right. There’s nothing here for children at all. I only find one table with anything for women, and all the clothing is size twelve, all the shoes size nine, and all the jewelry thick, tarnished gold. If this is a town yard sale, it strikes me odd that there isn’t more variety, and aside from some stacks of fishing magazines and tattered paperback books, there isn’t anything for sale beyond what would fill a person’s closet. No dishes or other housewares. No garden tools or lawn ornaments or potted plants or toys or any of the common items I’ve seen at other yard sales.

I’m checking the size on a three piece suit for a dollar when I see the name Wilbur stitched into the lining.

Wilbur, that’s funny, I hear my husband say as he comes up behind me with a brat. I just heard a couple guys outside the porta johns talking about how Wilbur probably tastes like shit.

Wilbur, like the pig? I ask as he takes his first bite. His face changes as he chews, and I ask if it tastes off to him too. I think he’s going to be sick when he reaches two fingers into his mouth and pulls a long piece of black hair out from between his teeth.

My mouth falls open and I try not to gag. Michael comes up and slaps his dad on the back. Chewing on his own brat, Michael asks, What is long pig?

Long pig?

Yeah, he says. Someone was telling their kid they couldn’t have any food because they don’t eat long pig. Is that, like, different from regular pigs?

I slap the rest of the brat out of my son’s hands. He starts hollering at me, but his protests aren’t as loud as the man two tables over, holding up a gold locket from the table with the gawdy women’s jewelry. I pull Andrea into my side and Jake steps protectively in front of Michael. The man is absolutely hysterical, crying out about someone named Charlene, and how she wasn’t so bad. Why did they have to pick her? What had she ever done to anybody? And he hoped they all rotted in hell.

Two burly men come and take him by the arms and begin hauling him away, but the man isn’t done. She was a good woman, he screams. You had no right. Spit her out you fucking psychos. Spit her—

One of the burly men punches him in the face and he falls slack in their arms and is finally dragged away. The same woman who served me and Andrea our brats waves her hands to the crowd and says not to pay him any mind. Just the town drunk, she says. Slowly people go back to shopping and eating and getting their faces painted.

My eyes trail from my husband’s pale face and the black hair still between his fingers, to the name Wilbur stitched into the suit I’m still holding. I make the connection the same time that Jake does, and we take our children by the arms and hurry back to the car. He drops the rest of his brat in a trash can along the way and I try not to throw up.

Wilbur really did taste like shit.