Chefe (a short story)
In keeping with the premise, I wrote this one under bit of a time crunch. Note: my use of terms that don't quite fit the context, it's intentional. Hopefully it works.
They sent me to Lisbon in July, 1921. One train ticket, one number to call when I arrived, and as it turned out, one spot straddling the most wacked out bikie I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. If you could call it a meeting…
I extended my hand. “Hello, sir.”
His pencil moustache—the only visible section of his skin that wasn’t covered in machete length hair—briefly quivered and he thumbed towards his pack mule of a motorcycle. That was the extent of our introduction.
When he recruited me for this job, Master Clarence made it explicitly clear this was to be no leisure trip. No Pasteis de nata’s, no pausing to enjoy the street music, no local bela meninas, and definitely no side visits to seek out any at-the-time-obscure, but one-day-to-become-giant literary figures.
My bikie friend seemed to have received the same instructions. Before his harassed, pleading engine had even shifted out of third gear, he’d managed to turn my memory of the city into a dream. Hills upon hills of dead or dying grass, depressed looking goats and one possessed looking boar, whizzed past us—the swift departure of the lattermost, a relief for me!
Between my thin linen work-shirt and the headwind, I still managed to work up a sweat behind the bikie’s gorilla-wide back. This air-bending heat made it no joy to bid my driver farewell as I clutched Miguel’s front gate, though I did release a long exhale at having made it to my destination relatively painlessly.
On my way in, I passed Miguel’s trio of stud bulls—all jet black and ear-marked, though I assumed without a name to share between them. The one nearest to me would have caught my eye from a horizon ridge mind you. It donned a grand set of inward pointed horns like a mammalian pincer beetle, a set of shoulders that was simply unachievable in my part of the world without at least one steroid cycle. The world famous—or at least bovine-community-famous—Chefe. Perhaps the most well known stud bull in history.
Miguel appeared to be as mute as my bikie. But at least he offered me a grin.
I gestured into the paddock behind me where Chefe had just curled his tongue around a tuft of hay.“I’ve been told your bull there has mad cow disease.” I paused, hoping this claim alone would strike reality into Miguel.
He stared dumbly from his doorway. Squinting, but maintaining his grin.
I raised my sweat covered wrist before his eyes and allowed him the bask in the green pulsing Rolex I’d been gifted for this occasion. “Mad cow disease,” I repeated. Loud and slow. In the exact manner I make a point to scold tourists for doing about four times a day back home. I tapped the clock face. Click, click, click. “I need you to put down these three cattle before noon or we’ll have to send someone over to do it for you.”
Some part of this must have transcended language. His gaze shifted to the bulls beyond my shoulder. He bit his lip and raised his gaze to the cloudless sky. Seeming to search for words, then giving up with a toss of his hand.
A rush of energy flooded through me as he mimed the motion of a bolt action rifle. I nodded with every limb in my body.
His low crested brow closed into a frown. He stepped back into his doorway and shook his head.
I started to follow him but when he produced a real rifle from behind the door, I backed right off. A The Mauser–Vergueiro by my eye. Though if it was another local make, to this day I wouldn’t be sufficiently schooled to identify it for you.
My grease covered palms pleaded surrender as I stepped away.
This seemed to calm him. He lowered the barrel from the butoon line over my chest, keeping his finger inside the trigger guard. That set of cobalt eyes stayed on me, his chapped lips moving in a helpless struggle to place the words which found no expression beyond his mother tongue. A lock of his straight black fringe flew as he nodded a sharp gesture to his three bulls and finally came out with the singular vocalization, “why?”
The piercing tone of his voice took me off guard. Maguel’s neck was not unlike his bulls. Thick and hidelike. The type you’d expect a baritone to have.
Feeling I’d been thrown my last lob-pitch. I conceded a further step backwards and made my way over to the fenceline. Choosing a spot beside the mossy strainer post, I rested my forearms on the top wire.
Miguel followed me halfway across his yard, where he stopped and studied me with a soldier’s focus.
Clearing my throat I pointed to the famous Chefe, feeling a lump form as I locked eyes with at his iconic horns—a silhouette that would one day mark the Chefe Butchery logo. “These bulls have a disease.” I explained. “I know they are worth a lot to you. But they are nada de bom.” I made a cutting gesture with my hands. “If they aren’t slaughtered this morning, we risk spreading it the other farms. You. Have. To. Shoot. Them.”
Who knows what part of that message sank in. But something did. He raised the weapon to his shoulder and mumbled a pronged Portuguese string of words. Or perhaps it was one word? I’m not sure.
As I stood before him with hands raised above my head, I had little fear of being shot. Shit, knowing what I know now, perhaps I should have rushed him in favour of backing away. But no, in the moment, all my fears were of what was to come. How could I salvage this? What would my failure to communicate with this man do to my home?
There was no salvaging it. I backed out of his gate, he latched it with a jowly sneer.
In retrospect, it’s little use to blame myself, or Master Clarence even. He had a two hour window to prep me for this mission and I had a four hour window to execute. What was he going to do, teach me Portugese in that time? What man short of a charades champion is equipped to non-verbally communicate such a complex set of instructions when the personal cost is so high for the man you’re attempting to communicate with?
As it went. By the time the sun hit the centre of the sky, I remained on other side of Miguel’s crooked-hinged gate, my boots coated in dust and gravel. No one arrived to fulfill my bluff on doing the dirty job for the stock own. Chefe and the other two stud bulls remained grazing, no doubt closer to the fence than they would usually linger on an ordinary day.
Chefe bayed and snorted less than the other two. I admired his shining coat, the elegant manner of hoofing the ground. Even his dense, potent piles of shit stood out as remarkable among his circle. This beast was the ticket to generations of untold wealth for this part of the world, the ticket to untold horror for mine. I still think about his long-lashed eyes sometimes. Though these days it’s easiest for me if I just push the regret completely from my head.
Maybe if we had a time machine, things would have turned out differently. But that’s not how things work in the real world.
