You name it, he’d shoot it.

Most meat-eaters would gobble up whatever he skinned, butchered and grilled for the menu specials he wrote in white chalk on the blackboard above the bar at his unlicensed eating and drinking speakeasy.

Pandemic or no pandemic, Big Bob’s Booze and Burgers earned the reputation as the most popular place in town during the economic melt-down and the governor’s business restrictions. Ravenous unsuspecting customers loved his burgers best. Mostly Big Bob shot coyotes for “beef” steaks and chops, but also brought home bags full of fat ground hogs, telling patrons he only used the finest “ground” chuck for his famous BB Burger loaded with sizzling marmot parts.

Groundhog.

Woodchuck.

What’s the difference?

At Bob Bob’s bistro, it wasn’t the size of the hog in the bite but the size of the bite in the hog.

Most meat-eaters swear they love animals. Pampered family dogs and cats appear nowadays on social media videos more than grandma and grandpa. But how much can you love the little furry critters when cows, pigs and chickens live brutal lives until you eat them? Most people don’t think about their favorite choice cuts ever having been alive.

Big Bob gave the moral implications of carnivorism a lot of thought. He knew what he was eating. Matter of fact, he loved coyote steaks as much as cow steaks. He just loved the meat smell, the texture and taste. If push ever came to shove, in a pinch he’d even grill his neighbor.

That’s right.

Big Bob would turn to cannibalism if need be, but only if he had to. Nowadays, you never knew when society would completely crumble with food supplies drying up and vanishing. A good citizen survivalist had to be ready to eat thy neighbor. People forget humans are animals, too.

That’s why Big Bob kept that beast Capt. Jones in his sights long after he scoped him out at the prison protest riot. Who did Capt. Jones think he was stealing Betsy from him like she was just another carp at the volunteer firefighter fish fry? Turning her unfaithful to Big Bob constituted a mortal sin, an offense against decency, an uncivil act of disobedience. Maybe Big Bob would put Capt. Jones in the chili. Vic once told him about rumors that the local mob boss made sausage out of his cousin but Big Bob never gave the gossip much thought. Now that he had his own eatery, spicing up the sauce with a leftover enemy made perfect sense. Nobody would know. The shit kickers who all but swallowed their meat whole wouldn’t know the difference between ground corrections officer and groundhog. For now, though, Big Bob was content making a killing out of poached woodchuck and coyote.

Only one varmint existed Big Bob would never eat. Clancy served as Big Bob’s best buddy and, in turn, would never eat Big Bob. If Big Bob keeled over dead in the garage one night and nobody checked on him for a month, a starving Clancy would no doubt die himself rather than turn his teeth on his master.

Yes, they call it puppy love.

Poor Buck posed another problem. Big Bob meant well and look what happened. As soon as Buck could eat solid food again, he’d take over a couple of burgers to the total care nursing facility where Buck would live for about a year to recover from the car accident that broke every bone in his already fragile body. Big Bob wanted to share the gluttonous meat habit that provided him strength and energy. He’d go to his grave a carnivorous human beast and proud of it.

If the end days finally come and meat does become scarce, if his neighbor is nowhere to be killed and grilled, Big Bob figured he’d just eat himself alive. That’s the real test of a real man, he told himself, to hack off a hunk of his arm or leg, bandage up the bleeding gaping wound and fry up sustenance sufficient to weather the apocalyptic storm. A real man would behave just like that. Big Bob liked to believe he possessed guts enough to do that, like a wolf gnawing off his own leg to escape a steel-jaw trap.

Nobody and I mean nobody ever doubted Big Bob exemplified a cave man’s cave man. That’s what poor, floozy Betsy always said she liked best about him. “My muy mucho macho man,” she called him even though he didn’t speak Mexican. Betsy went gaga over a real he-man.

That’s why Capt. Jones had to go.

Big Bob came close to pulling the trigger on his hunting rifle at the riot rally when the coloreds went nuts. Black lives didn’t matter to him or to Capt. Jones, but at least Big Bob wasn’t out to exterminate everybody. Capt. Jones and Lt. Smith wanted genocide. Big Bob merely wanted to be left alone. He wanted the black people to go back to Africa, of course, so he could share his country with people like him although he didn’t really know many people like him. He didn’t want wholesale slaughter, though. Didn’t he always root for the Indians in the cowboy movies?  

Capt. Jones embodied pure evil. And this white nationalist militia business simply wasn’t working out. Vic jumped ship for the Mafia. And poor Buck would never be the same. At least the car accident knocked him back to normal, being a queer, that is, and not acting like a hypnotized chicken anymore. As for that insane black guy who showed up the other night calling himself the Hate-Eater and looking for hugs, well, that’s another almost too hard-to-believe story for another time.

In the meantime, Capt. Jones walked around like George Wallace on steroids.

Big Bob picked up the thick rope coil he bought at the hardware store special for the occasion. Learning how to properly tie the rope took time but after going online and watching a couple of YouTube videos he quickly picked up the knack. After a few hours alone in the garage, trying it out on Clancy, he had himself one fine noose. Clancy never blinked during practice. The dog actually seemed to like all the attention and sat there like he was waiting for his senior class picture at doggie obedience school. Time after time, Big Bob carefully slipped the noose around Clancy’s neck, making sure he didn’t swing his best buddy in the process.

Love meant never eating or hanging the object of your affection.

Justice is another story. Justice takes time. Even an execution takes time to execute. Now the time was right to string up a backstabbing, trouble-making white supremacist prison guard named Capt. Jones.

How would you like to attend a nice necktie party, Capt. Jones?

You would?

Ironic, don’t you think?

One lynching coming right up.