Denson couldn’t put on weight. He was tall and wiry but his pie plate-sized belt buckle weighed nearly as much as he did.
“My brother told me I got worms Doc,” he complained. “Maybe from the elk jerky I made last fall. It sorta tasted funny.”
“How long have you been skinny?” the doctor asked.
“Forever. I was a damn twig as a kid, got stuck on the pee-wee rodeo team all the way through junior high ‘cause I couldn’t make the minimum weight. And now they only let me rope and barrel race — they never let me ride a steer. ‘You got no meat! They’ll snap you like a matchstick!’ That’s what coach told me.”
“So you’ve always been skinny then,” the doctor said, hoping the idea would register with Denson. “Is your family skinny?”
“Hell no! My old man is six feet five and built like a damn freight train. My brothers, even my little brother – they’re tall and beefy. They could pick up the back end of a half-ton truck and keep the tires from touching pavement. But look at me, skinny as a ten-year-old girl.”
“Have you tried eating more?” the doctor asked.
“I eat like a damn horse doc! Fast food three to four times a day, plus protein shakes. I eat pie and doughnuts and steak and anything else I can get my hands on. I lift weights five days a week but no muscle with grow.”
“We’ll run some tests, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have worms. In the meantime, be glad you can eat whatever you want. Most of my patients would love to have your problem.”
Walking back to his truck, Denson thought about what an asshole the doctor had been. “Lucky my ass.” Denson reflected on the beatings he’d suffered since grade school. Now in his senior year he was still a punching bag.
***
Denson grew up on his family’s ranch, with three brothers and two sisters. Long days, hard work and no complaining. Back in the day they worked to raise as many heads of cattle as they could but now the money was in semen. They bred bulls or sold their semen over the internet. This meant wrangling lots of moody animals every day. You had to be strong enough to get them in and out of the corrals, into dip tanks, render their seed, load them into trailers, and separate them when they started to fight. It took a firm but gentle hand to ensure they didn’t suffer any injuries — a lame bull no matter how good his breeding was only good for steaks.
From the time they could walk Denson and his brothers followed after their father into the bull pit. They grew up shoving, wresting or dodging the monsters. Depending on their age the bulls weighed up to half a ton, and despite Denson’s desperate efforts he was tossed around like tissue paper.
“The Lord gave everyone a purpose boy,” his father told him, “and yours ain’t wrangling bulls.” His father and brothers all had injuries from the work — broken ribs, arms, legs, cracked pelvis, punctured lungs and one crushed kidney. A bull stomped and then jumped on his brother Jacob. He pissed blood for a week before going to the doctor. They wanted to hospitalize him to try and save the mashed organ, but he figured it was a waste of time. “Ain’t that why we have two kidneys? In case one goes south?” he asked. Years later, during a CT scan to check on some cracked vertebrae the doctor told him his kidney had shriveled up like a raisin, but his other was still good. “See, what did I tell you?” Jacob asked. Denson had never broken a bone nor even had stitches and felt like the family failure.
***
“Go collect up the chicken eggs with Estelle,” his father told Denson.
“Go mind the calves, they’re close to weanin’ and will be hollarin’ for their mamas,” his oldest brother Jabin said.
His family gently teased him about his slim build but the kids at school did not hold back. His days were filled by being shoved, tripped, punched, grabbed around the neck or mocked for his girlish form.
“Sadie Hawkins dance is comin’ up, who you gonna ask Denson?” laughed Stan, the thick-wristed captain of the high school rodeo team. Nick-named Stan the Man he could grow a full beard in a week and had arms and legs as thick as Denson’s waist.
Denson mostly shook it off, but occasionally had to fight when someone wouldn’t leave him alone. Over time, he became a good fighter, had no fear about taking a punch and used that skill to get in close to deliver blows with his fists and feet. Despite his fighting talents, he was still used by many boys to prove their mettle. Receiving a beating from Denson was a badge of honor for the loser, a rite of passage. Beating him was an even greater achievement. All Denson got out of it was the chance of being left alone for a few days.
He didn’t have any friends since associating with Denson put your health at risk. His brothers wouldn’t help him because “we don’t wanna make you into a sissy.” Denson felt cursed. Unable to participate in the family business, an outcast at school, and no matter what he tried he couldn’t get the one thing he wanted – bigger muscles.
His parents had enough land and money that they were able to build a house for each of their children on their property as a graduation gift. They hoped to keep the family together as they all coupled up and raised their own families to take over the breeding business. All of them except Denson happily moved in and prepared to take their role in the family empire. Denson’s house was left empty. “It’ll be here if you want it,” his father told him.
***
Denson moved to the city, and found work as a waiter and eventually a bartender. He wanted something far away from bull breeding and farm life, and his work ethic allowed him to rise quickly. Soon, he was named one of the top bartenders in the city’s annual cocktail competition. He had come up with a variation of an Old Fashioned that proved wildly popular with college kids and grey-haired businessmen alike. His name made the local paper, and he was proud he had cut his own path and put his fighting days behind him. He had a decent apartment, a sweet girlfriend and never mentioned the four-bedroom home waiting for him on his family’s estate.
Denson didn’t smoke, but would often to hang out in the alley with the other restaurant staff on their smoke breaks and regale them with stories of farm life. On such breaks, he often noticed the building next door that appeared vacant with plywood covering all the windows. It was a brick building, probably a hundred years old, and was at least five stories tall. On the second story near a drainpipe, a hole had been chewed through the plywood. It was about the size of a dinner plate. It stood out to Denson because it looked like someone had made a hole, then added tooth marks after to make it seem like an animal had done it.
He was happy, until one night when four cowboys pushed their way into his bar.
“Well lookit here. Little Denson the celebrity! Make me a drink Denson, like what you serve to those pussy lawyers and college boys.” Stan the Man had heard about Denson’s success, and brought some thick-necked friends to Denson’s bar. The bouncer gave Denson a look, which meant he could remove the cowboys if he wanted. Denson waved him off, laughed and told Stan he was glad to see him. He proceeded to make top shelf cocktails for his high school bullies, having secured their credit cards in order to run a steep tab. The night rolled on and the cowboys threw back drink after drink, growing louder and leaning on the bar more and more for support. When one of them slipped and fell, Denson suggested, “Maybe you boys have had enough.”
“Bullshit!” slurred Stan. “We’re just gettin’ started. Keep ‘em comin!” In the days before Uber, it was encouraged to cut off drunks so they wouldn’t be a hazard on the road. But now the sky was the limit.
They stayed until closing, looking sleepy, slurring, and weaving as they walked back and forth from the bathroom. Denson closed the bar and their tab, adding in a generous tip they didn’t notice. The bouncer led them out the door and locked it behind them.
“What a bunch of assholes,” he said. “You know those guys?”
“Used to. Went to high school with them.”
“I hope they don’t become regulars. They’ll chase everyone else off.”
“I think this place is a little beyond their means. They’re going to wake up with a hangover in their wallets as well as their heads tomorrow,” Denson said.
Denson locked up the liquor and went out the back door, looking at his phone as he texted his girlfriend.
“Whatcha typing?” Stan asked.
Denson froze. Stan and the other cowboys surrounded him.
“Pretty steep tab you charged your friends asshole. Think you’re really the shit, servin’ drinks to all these faggots!” The cowboys rushed Denson. Because they were drunk, their punches often missed their mark but they were able to drag him to the ground and started kicking him with their sharp-toed boots. Denson blocked their kicks and puched their groins, slowing the assault enough to get on his feet. Unlike in the movies, they did not come at him one at a time but as a swerving gang that could feel no pain. As they continued to land occasional kicks and punches his fighting experience told him he was in serious trouble. When they fought as boys these cowboys would stop once his face started to bleed or he stopped fighting back. But now they fought as angry men, looking to teach an uppity bartender a lesson. As drunk as they were, Denson worried they might kill him.
Punching and kicking for his life, he remembered the hole in the building and thought it was his best escape. He made a run for it, launching off a trash can, up to the pipe and jumped to the hole. The cowboys were at his feet, trying to grab or trip him as he went. Denson pulled himself into the hole, just barely getting his narrow shoulders through. He fell twelve feet to the floor, wrenching his ankle as he landed. The cowboys kept after him, working their way up the pipe, trying to fit their bear-like bodies through the hole, but only able to swing an arm or poke their head in to curse the darkness. They tried to tear off the plywood but couldn’t hang onto the pipe long enough to get any leverage. They threw garbage at the hole, and yelled for Denson to not be pussy and take his beating like a man. Denson chose to stay put. He checked his phone so he could let his girlfriend know he was ok but there was no signal in the building. The building smelled musty, like fresh compost. He also heard a faint slithering sound. He turned on his phone light to explore the darkness.
“Please turn off the light,” a voice echoed.
Denson jumped, “Who’s there?”
“Please turn off the light.” Denson turned it off. “Thank you. Please come up to my office.” Tiny LED lights popped on lighting a dim path up a large staircase to the second floor and down a hallway. Denson knew he couldn’t go back outside, so decided to see what he’d stumbled into. As he walked, his ankle throbbed and he limped a bit.
“Make sure to grab the railing on the way up, we wouldn’t want you fall.”
Denson followed the lights to a closed door. He knocked. He heard the door being unlocked and a pale face appears
“Please come in, and take a seat. That ankle seems quite painful.”
The office was dimly lit. There was a large desk in one corner piled with papers, drooping bookshelves overloaded with books lined the walls. Several large boxes in the middle of the room sat on heavy tables, and the earthy smell was even stronger.
“Here, put this ice on your ankle,” the man offered Denson an ice pack.
“Thanks,” Denson said cautiously, “what is this place?”
“My laboratory, and my home, at least temporarily.” The man wore a blue lab coat over a tweed jacket and khakis. “I’m an inventor.”
“What do you invent?”
“Well, let’s see, the most famous ones are the salt water battery and jellybyte.”
Suddenly, Denson recognized this man in the blue smock. His salt water battery could hold tremendous amounts of power, and allowed computers, cars, and even factories to run for months without recharging. They had replaced every other battery on the planet and if they ever wore out, you could pour out the salt water, replace it with fresh and it was as good as new.
The jellybyte was a computer processor that was grown instead of manufactured. They could take on any size or shape, the bigger they were the more computing power and memory they had. They worked similar to brain tissue, but were grown as modified mushrooms, so required very little energy to operate and could process data far faster than conventional silicon chips. They were called jellybytes because they were rubbery and translucent. Also, they were biodegradable and edible, tasting like apricot jam.
“You’re Erdo Tusk.” Denson was shocked. What was this billionaire inventor doing in a boarded-up building in the dark?
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here in this building,” Erdo said. “As you can imagine, many people would like to know what I’m working on next. I tried conventional labs, but they drew too much attention. I bought this building because it looks abandoned, which is good cover. The inside has been covered in fine copper mesh to protect from any signals coming in or going out. The basement is filled with my batteries, so I don’t have to connect to any land lines. All the toilets are composting, so there’s no water lines coming in or sewer going out. I also have large tanks of mineral water in the basement hooked up to water pumps to run all the showers and sinks and the like. Every comfort of home really, but totally self-contained and hidden in plain sight.”
“Sounds pretty slick. But what about that hole I came through?”
“That’s for my micro-drone surveillance. They need a way to get in and out of the building. There are about fifty of them guarding the hole at any time and they can form a mesh to block it unless I tell them otherwise. You looked like you needed some help so I opened the door, so to speak.”
“Thanks,” Denson said.
“I saw what was happening out there. You fought well and the hole was a clever escape. Risky though if you couldn’t fit through.”
“I was pretty motivated.”
“Well, I’m Erdo, what’s your name and what do you do?”
“Denson. At the moment, I bartend but I used to work on my family’s ranch.”
“What luck! You may be able to help me,” Erdo said. “Let me show you what I’m working on.” He flipped on the lights and as Denson limped to see, the boxes on the table appeared to be filled with black soil. As he watched he noticed that they were teeming with worms.
“Working in a restaurant as you do Denson, you know how much food gets wasted every day,” Erdo said. “My idea is to collect all that wasted food as well as any other organic waste, feed it to the worms which turn it into compost. Additionally, I’ve been trying to breed worms that can be used a food source palatable to Americans. Other parts of the world happily eat worms and insects, but Americans are fussy. They’ll swallow a live oyster but worms somehow cross the line.”
“Sounds like a great idea,” Denson said. “What’s the problem?”
“The worms are very lean, which makes them somewhat dry and flavorless when they’re cooked. I need to fatten them up a bit.”
“That’s right up my alley. We breed cattle to have just the right amount of fat-to-meat ratio. Show me what you’ve done so far.”
“Do you need to sit? That your ankle appeared quite swollen.”
“It’s nothing. My family has a high pain tolerance. So what kind or worms are you working with?”
Over the next months, Denson and Erdo worked to breed a worm that was hearty, tasty, and thrived when raised in a box of garbage. Erdo hired celebrity chefs to come up with recipes, the worms became trendy and after a few years were as common as hamburger in the supermarket. Erdo split the profits with Denson and he became a billionaire. He married his girlfriend and never moved back to the family compound, but did visit. He realized his father had been right, the Lord did give everyone a purpose.
“It’s funny, I used to think worms were causing my problems,” Denson told his father over dinner, “turns out they were the solution.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways, son. Now pass me some more of them red wigglers.”