Mr. Radley

David Krutzman, an old man who lived down the street in a small square house painted baby blue, was retired from the bologna plant. For 18 years he’d operated a machine that minced meat into a grayish pink paste. If you looked at the machine from the side, it was only vibrating sheet metal and oily pipes. But if you stood over the machine and looked down into it, the way David had to to operate it, you saw a blur of long silver blades attacking large hunks of meat.

The bologna plant had slowly strangled the town. When the wind blew from the north, as it often did, a terrible stench settled over everything and reached into every enclosed space. As long as the plant was in operation, no one moved to the town. So it shriveled up as its people died or left.

David hadn’t married or had kids, and he never talked to anyone in the neighborhood. The only light that was ever on in his house at night was the television. When he retired, the only times we saw him were in the mid-afternoon when he’d stand by the big bay window at the front of his house. He wore nothing but a ratty, navy blue terrycloth robe that was open in front, and he furiously stroked his long, thick penis with his three-fingered right hand. His silver Timex blurred in the shadows of his living room. The teenagers called him Spew Radley.