Red Meat Cures Cancer (8 page)

BACK IN ROCHESTER

Two days after I returned to Rochester from D.C., my big brother, King, arrived unannounced. I found him on my front stoop with his head resting on a beat-to-shit backpack, the only piece of luggage in sight. A longtime fan of the Hawaiian shirt, he looked and smelled like he’d been on tour with Jimmy Buffett for the past three years. Although he was thin and tan, his angular face was badly weathered by the sun. This, however, didn’t stop him from pointing out
my
physical failings.

“There’s my baby brother. My word, you look awful.”

King hugged me before I could voice my objection to the act.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, grimacing in the grip of my pungent sibling while trying not to sound too inhospitable.

“You invited me.”

“I know, but your job with FARC seemed to be going so well, I guess I didn’t expect to see you so soon. What happened with El Jefe?”

“I was working as his bodyguard and he sort of got shot on my watch, so I quit.”

“You quit?”

“Fled might be a more accurate word.”

“They chased you? Are you all right?”

“Of course. I’m fine.”

“Did they try and kill you?”

“Only for a while. Right until they ran out of ammunition actually.”

“My God, King. C’mon inside,” I said, opening the front door.

To say my brother had personal issues was a bit of an understatement, like saying Michael Jordan was a decent basketball player. Still, as hard as I tried, I could never stay mad at him. There’s something undeniably winning about a stark raving mad lunatic. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but King clearly qualified.

“Can I stay with you for a while?”

“Of course you can. (Pause) Those maniacs aren’t still chasing you, are they?”

“Highly unlikely.”

“This is not going to endanger my life?”

“Doubtful. Hey, they never got Rushdie, did they?”

By drifting all over the world, both literally and figuratively, on various political crusades and, alternatively, on luxury cruise lines, King had picked up bits and pieces of various Western and Eastern philosophies which he had blended together to form his life view. This would have been more than acceptable had he not insisted on serving this indigestible smorgasbord to every person he encountered, including his own brother.

“Wow. I hate to say it, Sky, but the corporate life and all those Tailburgers with cheese have taken a huge toll on you.”

King and I stood in the kitchen now, sizing each other up after several years of separation.

“You used to be the pretty one, but I’m afraid the mantle has been passed to your big bro.”

King decided to inventory the refrigerator.

“Look at all these processed meats. Do you have any idea what the sodium content is in this stuff? Where are the fruits and veggies?”

“There’s ketchup in there,” I said defensively.

King’s idea of healthy eating at this point in his life (subject to change at any time) was anything made of soy. His idea of healthy living (also subject to change at any time) was Qigong.

“After I left Carnival, I spent some time with the Falun Gong in Beijing and I’m telling you, those people have life figured out. Are you familiar with Qigong?”

“Chee koong? No.”

“Well, it’s this series of meditation exercises that channel your chi.”

“My chee?”

“Your fundamental energy. See, Falun Gong blends the best parts of Taoism, Buddhism and Qigong together. It’s like a spiritual juicer, but without all the cleanup. You’ve got to try it.”

“My chee is just fine, thank you. And I have no interest in having my spirit juiced.”

“Hear me out. See there’s this orblike miniature of the universe located in your abdomen called the Falun. And these exercises bring positive energy to the Falun, which improves your health and morality.”

“All that’s going on in my abdomen, huh? Hard to believe there’s room, considering that huge cheesesteak I had at lunch.”

“I think this could work for you.”

“I think you’re out of your fucking mind.”

“We’ve just got to harness the unseen natural forces in your body.”

“King, you’ve just described a fart. Leave it to the Chinese to build a philosophy around gas.”

“There are Qigong masters who can cure cancer with a jolt from their fingertips.”

“You’ve obviously spent a few too many days baking on the Aloha deck.”

“Will you at least try this?”

“No way. Why the hell should I try this?”

“To get in better shape. Physically and mentally. Do you plan on being alone the rest of your life?”

King’s question triggered thoughts of Muffet Meaney, and immediately I reconsidered.

“If I try this, will it get you to shut up?”

“For a short time,” King said, smiling.

“Just promise me I won’t end up like one of those freaks you see in the park karate chopping invisible people.”

“I promise.”

The thought that I could improve my morality by doing a series of exercises on a regular basis was laughable and, worse, irrational, like a belief in an all-knowing God. Still it was tempting to accept the premise and quietly work toward the kind of soul cleansing that seemed so necessary and elusive to me on the off chance it was true. I agreed to start that afternoon.

“Okay. Now the first thing you have to understand is that there are eight vessels that store the chi in your body. These are called Qi Jing Ba Mai.”

“All right. Eight vessels.”

“Yes, but they’ve got a number of different names. Some call them the miraculous meridians. Some call them the homeostatic meridians. Some call them the eight psychic channels.”

“Wait. Is Dionne Warwick involved with this stuff?”

“No. Dionne Warwick has nothing to do with this. Now listen to me. It’s important that you understand this.”

King was already getting frustrated with his student.

“You’ve got your governing vessel, also known as Du Mai, your conception vessel, also known as Ren Mai, your thrusting vessel . . .”

“I know where that one’s located,” I said, smiling.

King didn’t find me amusing.

“. . . also known as Chong Mai. Your girdle vessel, also known as Dai Mai. Your yin heel vessel, also known as Yin qiao Mai. Your . . .”

“Let me guess. Your
yang
heel vessel?”

“That’s right.”

“Martial arts always comes down to the yin and the yang. I remember that from those kung fu movies.”

“Congratulations. Your years with David Carradine weren’t wasted. So anyway, getting back to the point. There are the six vessels I’ve named as well the yin linking and yang linking vessels. That makes eight.”

“Is there a point to all of this?”

“Yes. These vessels protect the various organs in your body by guarding against the evil chi.”

“I thought chee was good.”

“Usually it is. But there are also bad kinds of chi. The eight psychic channels guard against these intruders.”

“King, this is ridiculously complicated. Can we just start?”

“All right. I’ll teach you as we go along.”

King went to his backpack and pulled out a piece of wood ten inches in length.

“We’re going to start with what’s called the sitting stage.”

“What’s the stick for?”

“This is not a stick,” King said, carefully holding his prized possession. “This is my Taiji ruler. You’re going to use it to meditate. Sit down on the floor.”

I slowly lowered myself to the carpeting in my living room and waited for further instructions.

“Take the ruler and hold it in front of you.”

“Okay. There it is,” I said, doing as told.

“Now, focus on the center of the ruler. Empty your head of all thoughts.”

“That won’t take long.”

“Focus! Breathe deeply and slowly.”

My spine popped in two places as I attempted to fill my tobacco-racked lungs.

“Ooh, that hurts a bit.”

“Shhh. Quiet the voice inside of you. Let the ruler absorb your negativity.”

“I’m trying!”

King left me alone for the next two hours while I stared at that stupid ruler. Maybe reaching a state of calm was the idea, but I didn’t approach that lofty goal in my first session. Instead, I felt the anger of a thousand years surging through my miraculous meridians. Every slight and snub I’d ever experienced in my life. Every rejection and failure. The very things I should have expunged, I had let lie dormant deep below the surface of my self, creating my own unending reservoir of evil chee. It sickened me to know it was inside my body, but it hardly surprised me. I’d been burying things there for a long time.

DALLAS, TEXAS

To begin our battle against SERMON and its impending lawsuit, the Link sent me south to see Traylor Hitch, head of the aforementioned National Cattlemen’s Meat Stampede, the largest organization of cattle farmers in the country. The Stampede was a powerful lobbying force and a longtime ally of Tailburger, and Hitch and the Link were old friends, sharing a deep love of military history, Matthew Brady photographs and NRA trivia.

Traylor Hitch was a farm boy from the hills of west Texas with a belt buckle the size of a waffle iron, cobra-skin boots, a bolo tie, a pickup truck with two gun racks and a license plate that read COONHNTR. Despite the vanity tag, Hitch wasn’t an overt racist. He actually shot raccoons for sport and had won several awards for this disturbing skill.

Hitch’s biggest accomplishment or brainchild, if you pardon the term, during his time at the Stampede was the erection of enormous billboards reading,
EAT MEAT,
all over America’s interstates. For that alone, he’d been elected president for three successive ten-year terms. Other than that, there wasn’t much to tell. Hitch hated vegetarians,
Dateline NBC
and women other than his mama, and was convinced that Ted Kennedy ran the
New York Times
editorial page from an underground cabana on Martha’s Vineyard.

Armed with my flight information, Hitch picked me up at DFW a half hour late. Having left his truck at home for the day, he wheeled his late-model turquoise Cadillac, its hood adorned with two steer horns, through Irving traffic and the sweltering heat on our way to his office in downtown Dallas.

“Damn good to see you, Sky. What’s it been, son? Two or three years?”

“At least.”

“Now wait, it’s all comin’ back to old Hitch. I think I remember. I do. I do remember. You came and spoke at the Cattlemen’s convention in Austin. Remember that? We went out afterward and you tried to eat that hundred-and-six-ounce rib eye just so you could get your name on the wall at Tilley’s Char-B-Q. What a hoot.”

“Well, actually Hitch, if I remember it correctly, you threatened to get me fired if I didn’t order
and
eat the entire thing.”

“I guess that’s right. You ended up gettin’ sick all over the waitress. Pretty little thing. That was a real hoot I’ll tell ya.”

“I swallowed a bone, Hitch. I nearly died that night.”

“I guess that’s right. Still, you gotta admit it was fun.”

Hitch fidgeted with his bolo tie before continuing.

“Anyhoo, let’s talk about this God-blasted SERMON suit. That Muffet Meaney has been a burr in our collective buttocks for as long as I can remember.”

“She’s got the media all stirred up on this, Hitch. We need the Stampede to commit its resources to the cause.”

“She’s bluffin’, Sky. She won’t bring the suit. All hat, no cattle.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What we need to do, Sky, is to buy up one of the major networks so we can stop the flow of lefty spew that’s being upchucked all over America. Look at the anchormen, for the love of God. Peter Jennings? The guy’s from Canada, a country that hasn’t produced a decent piece of meat in its entire sorry history. Yet he’s up there on the squawk box every night telling U.S. citizens what’s wrong with our food safety. He needs to go back to Moosejaw. And Brokaw? You’d expect a bit of loyalty from a guy born in South Dakota, but noooooo. He has to maintain his precious journalistic integrity and report the news regardless of content. It makes you want to cry in your mama’s lap.”

“What about Dan Rather? He’s from Texas.”

“Don’t get me started on Rather. We lost that boy to the lefties halfway through Iran Contra. Just another casualty as I see it.”

Hitch ran the Stampede from the third floor of the Sixth Floor Museum building in downtown Dallas, the same brick structure from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots on November 22, 1963.

“Gives me a good feeling every time I come to work, Sky.”

“I bet.”

We settled into his office, where a desk the size of a Buick sat with six phones spread out across it. On the wall, assorted victims of Hitch’s shotgun stared forlornly out into space. The furniture, well-worn and made of steer hide, sat quietly amidst several dying plants and a slew of black-and-white photographs showing Hitch with various luminaries including Newt Gingrich, Ralph Reed, George W. Bush and the San Diego Chicken. There was also a color picture of Hitch with the Swedish Bikini Team in front of his speedboat,
Little Miss Budweiser.

The Stampede collected dues from cattlemen across the country and acted as a representative body, lobbying on their behalf and promoting all things related to the consumption of beef and beef byproducts. It also used its funds to support the Corral Foundation, a research and development organization committed mainly to trumping up bogus scientific studies about the health benefits of red meat.

“Let me tell you what’s on the grill, Sky. There’s a study being done right now at the foundation that will prove, once and for all, that red meat, consumed in massive quantities, cures most forms of cancer.”

“Hitch, who’s going to believe that?”

“Everybody’ll believe it. People’ll believe anything that comes out in a study. You tell ’em it’s good to wash their faces in butter and by God, there’s a run on Land O Lakes the next day.”

“But what if it turns out this red-meat cancer-cure theory isn’t true?”

“Bite your tongue, son. Show me a study that says otherwise.”

“Hitch, with all due respect, another study from the foundation is not going to stop this SERMON suit from going forward. We’ll get positive press on it for a few days, maybe a shot on
Good
Morning America,
and then it’ll be forgotten like every other study ever done. We need to work together to find a long-term solution. This is serious business. We’re talking about Tailburger’s bottom line.”

Hitch sensed the lessening of my patience.

“Now there’s no need to get hostile with old Hitch here. I’ve got other ideas. You’re no doubt familiar with my ‘Eat Meat’ billboards?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Of course. What American driver isn’t?”

“Well, I’ve been working on a new campaign. All by myself. Sort of in secret. You want to hear it?”

“Sure,” I replied without the slightest enthusiasm.

“Well, you know that ‘Got Milk?’ slogan?”

“Yes. I’ve seen it.”

“I do a twist on it. Are you ready?”

“Fire away.”

Hitch framed my face with his fingers.

“Picture the whole damn country plastered with billboards saying, ‘Got Meat?’ ”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it. It’s perfect. What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I’m just not sure the slogan translates as well with our product. Nobody ever reached for a strip steak after eating a chocolate brownie.”

“I admit it needs a little work. But it’s most of the way there. Between the new study and the new slogan we’re gonna turn the tide, Sky. SERMON will be too afraid to fuck with us.”

“That’s not going to do it, Hitch. Together, we need to put pressure on the various attorneys general around the country to keep them from signing on to the lawsuit. Political pressure on them, as well as pressure on certain members of the House, is the only way to prevent a financial catastrophe.”

“Sky, you know we don’t have the financial resources we used to have. Membership is down, which means less money for us to take on these kinds of fights. I’ll do what I can, but times are tough. Cattle farmers are going under left and right. Per capita consumption of beef is at an all-time low, and every time I turn around somebody new is taking a potshot at red meat. Hell, there was a study the other day that said it could make you impotent. Now that dog don’t hunt. Just ask my six kids.”

“Hitch, I know things are looking a bit bleak right now, but we need the Stampede’s help. Frank is counting on you and so am I. Are you in this fight or not?”

Hitch stood up from his couch and walked slowly across the room to a window looking out on Dealey Plaza. He ran a hand through the few remaining strands of hair left on his head and let out an audible sigh.

“Ever feel like your best days are behind you, Sky?”

“Sometimes. Yes.”

“You wouldn’t recall it as well as I do, but there was a time when we called the shots. Back in the ’70s, the beef industry was king. It was a glorious ride. Per capita consumption hit a hundred pounds one year. Goddamn we were flying high. My ‘Eat Meat’ slogan was electrifying highways. Jimmy Buffett came out with
Cheeseburger in Paradise.
American housewives were scarfing up every box of Hamburger Helper they could find. Meat equaled success. Do you remember?”

I nodded at Hitch and let him ramble on.

“It was simple. The ultimate status symbol was a steak on your table at night. Chicken was for border wetbacks who couldn’t afford a decent meal. Tuna was something your kids ate at lunch. Hot dogs only came out at ball games. Pasta was for the Mafia. Turkey was for Thanksgiving. Duck for Christmas. But at certain times and places, all over this country, only American red meat would do. Family picnics, company outings, backyard barbecues. No questions asked. What happened, Sky?”

“I don’t know. I guess we got fat.”

“Fat and happy, Sky. Fat and happy. What’s so awful about that?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re goddamn right. Absolutely nothing.”

Hitch turned away from me and stared back out the window. The late-afternoon sun beat down on the streets of Dallas and cast a shadow across the faded wall of his office.

“My daddy gave me one piece of advice on his deathbed. (Pause) Do you know what it was?”

“Find a forgiving woman?”

“No. He said, ‘Tell the truth, Traylor, and you’ll always be happy. Just tell the truth.’ ”

“That’s good advice. I bet you’d like to thank him.”

“Hell, no. I’d like to kill him. That advice has been haunting me ever since the sick buzzard kicked off. Do you have any idea how hard it is to always tell the truth? That’s the damn recipe for misery. Every time we roll out one of these bogus studies, I cringe, knowing the old man is staring down on me from the great beyond.”

Hitch turned away from the window and looked directly at me.

“Hitch, you have
nothing
to feel bad about. Believe me, the Stampede hasn’t cornered the market on shady science. Those guttersnipes at SERMON put out false information about our industry every week. We have to band together and battle back. We’ve got to restore beef to its rightful place as the king of meats!”

“Maybe you’re right, son.”

“Of course I’m right. This is our red scare. Don’t go soft on me now, Hitch.”

The key to successful fishing is picking the right bait. I figured a veiled reference to Communism would do the trick.

“Soft? Are you calling me soft? Goddamnit, there isn’t a soft bone in my body! Tell Frank he can count me and the Stampede in on this fight!”

“Are you serious?”

“Would a mule skip a kickin’ contest? I’m serious as a summer drought.”

“That’s great.”

Hitch, suddenly energized, slowly let a smile come across his face.

“We’re gonna whup some ass, son.”

“There’s no acceptable alternative.”

“Whaddya say we go get a burger?”

“That would hit the spot.”

Hitch slapped me on the back and out we went into the waiting warmth and humidity.

“Do you know how many people the Dallas Po-lice shot last year?”

“No.”

“Forty-eight. That’s down from seventy-five the year before. And a hundred and twenty the year before that. (Pause) It’s a damn shame.”