Alice Munros Best

doing any one job at a given time, so much of the time he did nothing. He would start sweeping up, leave that and mop the tables, leave that and have a cigarette, lounge against the table bothering us until Herb called him to help load. Herb was very busy now and spent a lot of time making deliveries, so it was possible he did not know the extent of Brian’s idleness.
    “I don’t know why Herb don’t fire you,” Marjorie said. “I guess the answer is he don’t want you hanging around sponging on him, with no place to go.”
    “I know where to go,” said Brian.
    “Keep your sloppy mouth shut,” said Marjorie. “I pity Herb. Getting saddled.”
    ON THE LAST school day before Christmas we got out early in the afternoon. I went home and changed my clothes and came in to work at about three o’clock. Nobody was working. Everybody was in the gutting shed, where Morgan Elliott was swinging a cleaver over the gutting table and yelling. I couldn’t make out what the yelling was about, and thought someone must have made a terrible mistake in his work; perhaps it had been me. Then I saw Brian on the other side of the table, looking very sulky and mean, and standing well back. The sexual leer was not altogether gone from his face, but it was flattened out and mixed with a look of impotent bad temper and some fear. That’s it, I thought, Brian is getting fired for being so sloppy and lazy. Even when I made out Morgan saying “pervert” and “filthy” and “maniac,” I still thought that was what was happening. Marjorie and Lily, and even brassy Irene, were standing around with downcast, rather pious looks, such as children get when somebody is suffering a terrible bawling out at school. Only old Henry seemed able to keep a cautious grin on his face. Gladys was not to be seen. Herb was standing closer to Morgan than anybody else. He was not interfering but waskeeping an eye on the cleaver. Morgy was blubbering, though he didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.
    Morgan was yelling at Brian to get out. “And out of this town – I mean it – and don’t you wait till tomorrow if you still want your arse in one piece! Out!” he shouted, and the cleaver swung dramatically towards the door. Brian started in that direction but, whether he meant to or not, he made a swaggering, taunting motion of the buttocks. This made Morgan break into a roar and run after him, swinging the cleaver in a stagy way. Brian ran, and Morgan ran after him, and Irene screamed and grabbed her stomach. Morgan was too heavy to run any distance and probably could not have thrown the cleaver very far, either. Herb watched from the door way. Soon Morgan came back and flung the cleaver down on the table.
    “All back to work! No more gawking around here! You don’t get paid for gawking! What are you getting under way at?” he said, with a hard look at Irene.
    “Nothing,” Irene said meekly.
    “If you’re getting under way get out of here.”
    “I’m not.”
    “All right, then!”
    We got to work. Herb took off his blood-smeared smock and put on his jacket and went off, probably to see that Brian got ready to go on the suppertime bus. He did not say a word. Morgan and his son went out to the yard, and Irene and Henry went back to the adjoining shed, where they did the plucking, working knee-deep in the feathers Brian was supposed to keep swept up.
    “Where’s Gladys?” I said softly.
    “Recuperating,” said Marjorie. She too spoke in a quieter voice than usual, and
recuperating
was not the sort of word she and Lily normally used. It was a word to be used about Gladys, with a mocking intent.
    They didn’t want to talk about what had happened, because they were afraid Morgan might come in and catch them at it and fire them. Good workers as they were, they were afraid of that. Besides, they hadn’t seen anything. They must have been annoyed that they hadn’t. All I ever found out was that Brian had either done something or shown something toGladys as she came out of the washroom and she had started screaming and having hysterics.
    Now she’ll likely be laid up with another nervous breakdown, they said. And he’ll be on his way out of town. And good riddance, they said, to both of them.
    I HAVE A PICTURE of the Turkey Barn crew taken on Christmas Eve. It was taken with a flash camera that was someone’s Christmas extravagance. I think it was Irene’s. But Herb Abbott must have been the one who took the picture. He was the