The Art of Disposal Read Online Free PDF

your second toe is longer than your big toe.”
    “Don't apply here I guess,” Dan the Man said. “If he had any smarts, he'd pay up. And I mean quick.”
    The muffled cry called out through Dan's fat hand, and he uncupped it real quick and said, “don't you dare scream out for help again. Now… you got something you'd rather give us?”
    “Tell Eddie I'll pay him an extra grand if he just gives me another week,” Gideon Cash said between gulps of fresh air.
    Dan the Man shook his head. He pulled out a roll of duct tape and wrapped a piece around Gideon's face so that his mouth was fully sealed.
    What most guys don't understand is that we don't want to hurt anybody. It's better to have a guy like Gideon Cash alive, placing bets, digging his own financial grave. That's our bread and butter. But there has to be some kind of retribution. There has to be fear. Otherwise, they'll walk right over you. It's not easy busting knuckles. I get no pleasure breaking knees. But Eddie says I've got to learn if I want to earn.
    “This little piggy went to market, this little pig went home… this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none…” Dan the Man said. He motioned for me to come over.
    “He's gonna snip it fast. You won't feel a thing,” he said to Gideon in his warmest tone. Then he looked at me again. “I like Gideon,” he said. “Don't take the second toe. Take the littlest piggy.”
    I knelt down and studied the pinky toe. Slid the cool blades of the shears around it. I made the mistake of looking up at Gideon's face. He didn't even look like a man anymore.
    Once, when I was a kid, my foster dad cornered a raccoon that had been stealing our trash. He towered over it with a shovel. At first the raccoon was all hisses and claws, but then he got the shovel blade right under its chin and pinned it to the garage floor. The raccoon stopped struggling and its eyes turned glassy and desperate. Pure fear. Then my foster dad pushed the shovel.
    Gideon was wearing that raccoon face.
    “Come on,” Dan the Man said to me, “this little piggy's gonna go wheee, wheee, wheee , all the way home, back to Eddie's desk. Snip it!”
    And I did. Bone crunched, and the little toe dropped to the floor. It must have just bounced a few times, but I swear it looked like the tail of a lizard, squirming and pulsing with a brain of its own. I almost expected that bloody stub to run away across the carpet. For some reason I fixated on the nail, the tiny nail, ugly and yellowed and calloused. Then I could hear Gideon Cash flopping around like a Mexican jumping bean.
    Dan the Man was wheezing he was laughing so hard. He was literally smacking his hand on his knee and doubling over like they do in the movies. He ripped the tape off of Gideon's mouth and told him not to make a peep if he liked the idea of keeping his other toes. Then he held the clipped pinky toe up in the bright light of the window, and dropped it into a Ziploc baggie.
    “I'll ask Eddie what he thinks about this. Maybe you're square. Maybe you ain't. But I think you should do what Eddie says, okay?”
    Gideon nodded, huffed and puffed, and bit his bottom lip. A tear ran down his face and came to rest on the crest of his upper lip, and his tongue lapped it up like it was a sweet drop of wine. He held his foot and rocked back and forth.
    I had to pick up Marcia in an hour. My shirt had a blood stain on it, and there's nothing worse than a bloodstain. They don't come out. I decided right then that the shirt had to go, so I took it off and threw it hard. It wrapped around Gideon's head with a crisp snap. He looked like a kid at Halloween dressed up as a ghost.
    Dan the Man busted up again. You would've thought he was at a stand-up comedy club.
    “Wrap it around your foot,” I said to Gideon. Then I asked him if there were any extra shirts around in the locker room. He stood up—I tried to stop him, said I would go and look myself. But he said, “no, no, I got it, I