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Winesburg, Indiana: Beau Morrow

Authors

Robin Black

Abstract

"Blood is in our blood, son," my father used to say. He was the real butcher. I'm just a man who sells meat. He worked in the slaughterhouse at the north edge of town like his father before him and his father before him and his mother before him. My great-great grandmother, Lil. The way they told it, she was the sweetest girl ever raised until her young husband was gored to death by a crazed, escaped bull. And after that she was a snake. A picture of her hung on our kitchen wall when I was growing up, right between the crucifix and the clock. A tiny woman in a long black dress, a veil over her face, standing right up against a hanging side of beef. When I was little, I thought her hands were soaked in blood but at some point I figured out that was gloves. Then I decided she probably wore them to cover up the blood. I hated to look at her and I looked at her every chance I got. "You can't fight your fate," my father would say.

Cover Page Footnote

Note: "This story is exclusively available in the anthology, Winesburg, Indiana, published by Breakaway Books, an imprint of Indiana University Press, in the spring of 2015. Available wherever fine books are sold, borrowed, or used as dowry."

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