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Show Chick Sales 18 "And this will soon be a man?" Ben laughs, s t i l l approaching. Herman's stomach rises, the morning's scrambled eggs returning. Clabber spills onto the slaughterhouse floor and speckles his father's brown shoes. Herman's father holds his son's head up while Ben gathers the hide into his hand, skinning i t from the pinkish skull, leaving the eyes standing alone, three dimensional on a f l a t plane. Herman wants to sink to the ground and rest his ear on his father's shoe. He wants to escape to the meadow where he can splash in the creek and where he can yell his password to sunlight-"Chick sales. Chick sales." But the eyes hold him, those strange eyes that stare at him from the place where the skin has been scraped away by Ben's knife. They are f i l l e d with white and black and arranged as any normal eyes would be. "Daddy," he whispers, s t i l l holding to his father's leg, "why does Ben leave the eyes like that?" " I don't know, son." Alf pats the top of Herman's head. "Maybe nobody wants to buy them." "How long w i l l they stare like that?" "They'll shrivel up pretty soon, unless he lances them." This time, without insistence from his father, Herman watches Ben raise his cleaver and hack the bull's head from the body. He watches him l i f t the head and carry i t under his arm, almost as i f i t were a knight's helmet carried for a presentation bow to the Queen. As Ben hangs i t on a metal hook, the eyes s t i l l stare at Herman. He remembers something his |