THUD.
The cleaver came down in a blur, slicing through flesh, cartilage, and bone.
THUD.
It came down again and its razor edge was not slowed nor turned aside by the knot of tendon, but came to rest in the chopping block below.
THUD.
It was Monday and in Con’s, the best and only butcher in Nara, that meant ribs. Not just any ribs, mind you. Con carved only the best ribs from local cattle and he chose the best cattle early every Monday morning up at the Henry place. He loaded two into his trailer to make the short drive to the walled in yard behind his shop.
His usual procedure was to back the trailer through the gate into the yard behind the butcher shop, unhitch his Land Rover and pull around front, and then walk back through the shop to entice the cattle, sheep, or pigs off the trailer and onto his customers’ plates, with a short stop in the yard to meet his long, wickedly sharp knife, before they made the rest of the journey suspended by a meathook hanging from a track that ran from the covered veranda out back, through the back door, into the walk-in fridge inside.
There weren’t too many people brave enough to go walking through Con’s back gate on a Monday morning, but everyone was happy to walk through the front door, Monday to Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., to pick up a couple of T-bones for the barbie or a package of Con’s finest sausages.
Con had been in a bit of a rush this morning, and had left the Land Rover hitched to the trailer and parked just beyond the gates of the back yard. He already had dispatched one heifer. Most of her skinned, trimmed remains had made their way into the walk-in at the back of the shop. A sizeable portion, however, had made its way onto the chopping block behind the counter and was even now being sliced, diced, minced, rolled, and filleted under the careful hand of Dizzy, Con’s young apprentice.
Dizzy, as she was called by all but her nanna, who continued to call her Diane despite all protestations, was a sweet and gregarious lass of twenty three. She’d been working for Con for the past four years, during which she’d learned most every cut of beef, pork, and roo, as well as how to part a chicken, dress a rabbit, and make smiley face fritz. Her deftness with the foot-long cleaver that she wore hung on her belt belied a gentle soul who was liked by all about town.
Con was in the yard sharpening his long knife and preparing to lead the remaining heifer out of his trailer and onto a well-drained and freshly hosed square of concrete by the back door. He had not yet opened the door to customers that Monday morning, so Dizzy was inside by herself, which was probably a good thing because anyone who knew and liked her would have been horrified when she brought the cleaver down and sliced off the tip of her finger.
To her credit, an expertly-sliced rib lay on the block, but next to it sat a small, perfectly circular piece of flesh with a small slice of finger-nail still attached. Dizzy stared at it for a moment, then looked down at her left pointer-finger. It was slightly shorter than she remembered and much flatter at the end. The exposed vessels seemed suddenly to realise that something was expected of them and they began to bleed.
“Oh blow.” Dizzy said. Blood ran down the side of her finger, pooled in her palm, and dripped on to the block below. She grabbed the towel hanging at her waist, wrapped it tightly around the abbreviated digit, and placed the tip off her finger in a bag of ice, before walking out back to ask Con for a ride to the hospital. Con was happy to put down his knife and give her a ride, but he pointed out that a substantial obstacle lay between them and getting Dizzy quickly to the hospital. In fact, it sat between them, and was currently connected to, Con’s Land Rover—the obstacle was a steel-framed cattle trailer currently occupied by 500 kilograms of grass-fed heifer.
“Give us a hand getting the trailer unhooked, Diz,” Con said, “and we’ll run you up to the hospital in two shakes.”
Con squeezed between the gate and his Land Rover while Dizzy twisted the trailer-jack. He’d made it into the driver’s seat and started the engine by the time she’d lifted the trailer halfway off the trailer ball.
The sturdy diesel chugged loudly.
Dizzy turned the jack handle again and the coupler cleared the ball. She began to fiddle with the quick link that held the safety chain between Con’s Land Rover and the trailer. Her left hand was still wrapped in a soft white towel across which a bright red stain was spreading. She tried to hold the chain link steady with her left hand, but it was clumsy and slick with blood. The frayed edges of the towel were getting caught in the chain links. She fumbled with the nut but could not begin to loosen it.
“Con!” She called out, wondering why it had only now occurred to her that, of the two of them, she wasn’t the one to be moving a heavy trailer while Con sat comfortably in the truck.
“Oi Con!” She called again, over the sound of the happily gurgling diesel.
Con heard her. Apprehension is not comprehension, however, and he mistook her call for help for a pronouncement that she had detached the trailer. He put the Rover in first and took his foot off the clutch. The truck began to roll forward.
Dizzy, still bent over the quick link in the back, watched the chain draw tight as Con pulled forward. She tried to straighten up but the towel was now caught tightly in the links of the chain as it pulled against the trailer.
“Stop!” She yelled out, but Con didn’t seem to hear. The Rover strained against the weight of the trailer, held in place by the jack, and Con pressed a little harder on the accelerator. The jack shifted slightly in the dirt, and then began to tilt as the trailer moved forward.
“Oi Con, ya daft cunt!”
That Con heard. He stepped on the brake not quite quickly enough. The jack had tilted far enough, now, and the slow momentum of 500 kilos of prime heifer pushed it up and over. Dizzy watched in horror as the trailer shifted and rolled slowly toward her. She tried to step back but the towel wrapping her hand was still caught firm in the links of the chain, held against the hitch. The trailer lifted higher over the tilting jack, like a wave building as it approaches the shore, curling on the ocean bottom below, and curling over before it crashes on the shore. The jack creaked, then twisted free of the steel frame and the trailer came crashing down against the hitch.
Con jumped from his truck and hurried back to see what had happened. He was relieved to see that Dizzy had not been crushed between the trailer and his Land Rover. She was standing a good distance back from the trailer, in fact, the tongue of which had ploughed into the rear bumper and wedged itself there in a tangle of metal. Dizzy was clutching her injured hand, which seemed to be bleeding even more profusely than before. The towel with which she had wrapped it, however, was lying on the ground under the trailer hitch. Con bent down to grab it and stopped, his hand in mid-reach. There, nestled in the middle of the towel like the world’s most distressing Easter egg, flattened at one end by a neat cut and rather more mangled at the other by the blunt edge of the coupler, was the top half of Dizzy’s finger.
“Oh,” she said, staring at her rather shorter finger, “blow.”
Now it was some luck that old Bill Bunson chose that moment to come driving by on his tractor. Con wasn’t going anywhere fast with a trailer inextricably intertwined with the rear of his Rover and Dizzy’s ashen face and truncated finger suggested that getting to the hospital had taken on a greater urgency.
Con placed the detached digit in the bag of ice with its little brother and helped Dizzy up on the tractor beside Bill. The hospital wasn’t too far up the road and, Bill happily explained, his new tractor could put on quite a spurt of speed when called upon. Dizzy, perched on the wheel-arch to Bill’s left, held on to the back of his seat with her right hand and clutched pieces of herself in a bag on her lap with her injured left.
The tractor roared to life and sped, just as Bill had promised, swiftly down the road to the hospital. Bill cheerily explained the merits of the great motorised beast. It could pull twice as much as his old tractor, he explained, easily enough to move the largest of Shankey’s legendary hay rakes from sun up to sun down. Not to mention the creature comforts.
“Look at this seat,” Bill sat, thumping the side of it and speaking over his shoulder. “The old girl didn’t have more than a battered piece of sheet metal. Worked bloody hell on my piles, I can tell you. Look at this, though. Foam rubber, integrated lumbar support. And it’s got this bloody great big spring underneath it. Any bloody pothole or ditch I hit, up and down she goes on the spring like a bloody pogo stick. Saves my arse, I can tell you.”
Dizzy nodded groggily at this, the combined loss of blood and pieces of her finger now starting to take its toll on her usual cheery disposition.
“It’s a bloody good thing, too, because I’ll be spending all day out there next week cutting that hay. We’ve got the back field ready for cutting now. I’ll be taking out Shankey’s newest, the Cut-Pro, and cutting hay all day. Cut, cut, cut. Just cutting it right down to the stump.”
Dizzy’s head swam and she turned slightly green. Her clammy right hand gripped the seat-back tighter, and she gestured with her left for a little quiet. Unfortunately, the small gesture left the icy bag temporarily unrestrained, and it fell from her lap underneath Bill’s seat. Seeing the hospital fast approaching, Dizzy reached desperately for the bag with her free hand. It was just under the seat, beyond the rails and tucked up against the bloody great big spring Bill had mentioned. She strained to reach it.
“Here we are, love,” said Bill as he turned into the hospital. The tractor bounced roughly into the driveway of the hospital and Bill smiled as his seat, saving his arse, bounced up and down like a pogo stick.
“Oh,” said Dizzy. “Blow.”
* * *
To be fair, it was rather an unusual case, even for the most experienced doctor. The docs in Nara have reattached their fair share of fingers severed by hay rakes, circular saws, and pruning shears, but not one among them had ever seen someone come in to have one finger reattached three ways. Dizzy, in a testament to her craftsmanship, had made the only clean cut of the lot, which helped in the end. The doctors managed to attach the small, almost perfectly circular piece of flesh more or less neatly on top of Dizzy’s first knuckle on her pointer finger. She won’t be wearing any rings on it, of course, and she can’t hardly use it to point, but it’s got a tiny slice of fingernail for when she gets them done. Of course, Michelle down at the salon give her a discount.
“Wouldn’t seem fair, really,” she says, “charging her full price. She’s only got five fingers on one hand, and the regular six on the other.”
Welcome to Narangong 