Giving Back

When Henry Wentworth died he left some of the strangest instructions that anybody had seen in Swan Quarter having to do with disposal of the body. Henry was a lawyer and single, having been married three times without success. He had no children, only nieces and nephews survived him. He took care of them financially, so when it came to his instructions about the body, no one objected, they just figured it was something Henry had given a lot of thought to and really wanted to do, so they did it.

Henry had made a lot of money in real estate on the outer banks and he invested well in the stock market, but when it came to his love life, it was terrible. He had three wives, each one worse than the other, he couldn’t have children, so he did not have that burden. The one thing that he derived the most pleasure from in his life was fishing. He and a group of buddies went fishing religiously every year on the Core Banks, living in fishing shacks, taking their four wheel drive vehicles on the beach and living it up primitive. They drank, played cards at night, and fished by day. This group of fifteen to twenty men was the closest thing that he had to family in the world.

The idea came to him one time when he was fishing. They were catching a lot of blue fish, but they were all small, so they kept them, and used them as bait. Occasionally they caught some big ones, but most of them were small. The blues loved to strike the flesh of their own kind, better than any bait. Henry saw all those fish giving up their flesh so that he could have a great time fishing with his buddies. He figured when his time came it was time to give something back.

The instructions were neatly typed and given to the funeral home in a sealed envelope; his law partner of thirty years also had a copy. This is what they said:

“I wish to dispose of my body in the following manner. I want my executor to hire an experienced butcher to first open my body and remove all of the vital organs except the genitalia. He is then to remove the head, feet and hands. Next he will prepare the cadaver in the following manner. First he is to de-hair it, then fillet it, remove all of the flesh from the bones, making neat two to three pound packages of meat. He is to keep the liver but ground up the innards into mush. He is to remove the sex organs as a whole, the penis and its root, testis, and scrotum and make a separate package of them. The bones, head, hands, and feet are to be cremated with the ashes to be placed in my niche in the natatorium at St. Michaels Episcopal Church. He is then to deliver the packages of meat to my friend Mac Hardy to be kept in his deep freezer for use as cut bait the next time he and my friends go fishing on the Core Banks. The innards are also to be kept by Mac and used as chum before fishing. I want my friends to use my flesh as cut bait as long as it lasts and have a great time at the beach catching fish with it.”

When word got out about Henry’s instructions the town was abuzz. It was the talk of the coffee shop downtown, the drug store, the barbershop, all the beauty parlors and just about any place where two people were gathered together.

It all but eclipsed the gossip about where and how Henry died.

Henry was not as successful at love as he was with financial affairs, but affairs he had, and lots of them. He was no wallflower and had lots of women friends. The rumor was that he died just as he was coming to climax with Patsy Gaskill, the cute twenty something blond that worked the bar at Pops Bar and Grill. The EMS, the doctors and the hospital swore secrecy, but the rumor was started by one of the nurses in the ER. It was said that he died with a hard-on. Another rumor about Henry was that though he shot blanks, he shot them with a huge cannon.

Henry was an avid outdoors man. He was very active and in great shape for his fifty-eight years. He was slim, walked several miles a day, he could run a much younger man in the ground on the fishing trips, and he could drink more than any man in the county and stay standing. His only problem was that he had a bad heart. His doctor, Ted James, talked him into taking a physical in his mid-forties.

“Henry the tests show that you have very high cholesterol and your heart is a time bomb that could go off at any time. You are going to have to change your lifestyle, stop drinking, stop smoking, stop eating high fat foods, and start taking cholestral medication.”

Henry thought about this for about a minute and told the doctor.

“Doc, you only live once, I would rather live well and die young than to live a long life and live miserably. I thank you for your advise, but I think I am going to continue doing exactly what I have always done and have a hell of a time doing it, thank you.”

“Suit yourself, Henry, but I am warning you. If you had a wife or children you wouldn’t be able to get by with this. I can’t make you do what you need to do, but I can tell you you ought to.” That was the last time he went to a doctor.

“I appreciate it Ted. The best I can say is that I will take it under advisement.”

Dr. James was one of his fishing buddies and a good friend, but he couldn’t get Henry to listen to him. Henry did great until his mid-fifties when he started to have occasional chest pains, but he didn’t tell Dr. James. It was at this time that he wrote his will and wrote out the instructions for the disposal of his body.

None of his friends knew that he had heart problems, they all thought of Henry as being as strong as an ox, and someone who would outlive them all.

It struck Jim Waxman as odd when Henry waxed philosophical on the beach one day at Core Banks. It wasn’t like Henry. They were slicing the flesh from living blues to use as cut bait to catch more blues. What they didn’t use they fed to the sea gulls who stood waiting for a piece to fall to the ground. When they got a piece the gulls would fluff their wings and puff up their chests, and stream line their necks in an attack mode, sometimes the biggest bird would get it all, and the others just watched, other times two big birds took the piece of meat and ripped it to shreds as they fought over it.

“You know that little guy just made the supreme sacrifice,” Henry said looking at the filleted blue fish, “so that we could have the best fun I have ever had in my life. When it comes my time I would like to give something back.” Now Jim knows what Henry meant.

After the memorial service at the church where Henry’s ashes were interred, the butcher called Mac Hardy to come pick up the neatly wrapped packages of meat. Henry was a big man, six feet one inch, he weighed about two hundred pounds, not an ounce of fat - all muscle. But after the butcher had taken care of his duties the meat weighed a total of about a hundred pounds, not including the bucket of innards which were to be frozen too. Henry died in August and the group went fishing in November. Henry knew Mac had the biggest freezer and could handle it. Mac was also one of his best friends and Henry knew he could trust him to carry out his wishes.

The group crossed the ferry at Atlantic and took several four-wheel drive vehicles to the primitive cabins where they would stay for the week. Before they left Swan Quarter Mac divided up the packets of meat between the twenty men who were going this year. There was more than usual interest this year, maybe out of curiosity. The men put their packets in coolers filled with ice. Mac took the bucket of ground up innards, which were frozen solid. The family who operated the ferry rented to cabins and would keep them stocked in ice for the week. The cabins were lit with kerosene and Coleman lanterns. Mac waited until the bucket of mush thawed out to use it, but the men true to their friend Henry began using the bait as soon as they got there. The meat was so neatly butchered that very little of it resembled human remains. The men mostly forgot it was Henry as they cut strips of flesh and muscle and ran their hooks through it. It fished very well, catching strippers, sea bass, puppy drum and a few blues. On the third day when the bucket of innards had thawed the men saw a huge group of birds over the ocean and under them the ocean was churning. It was a big school of blues. Blues love blood, so the innards were ready just in time. Mac through it into the waves and the Blues went wild. The men baited their hooks and threw them into the waves catching blues two at a time, as soon as they cast, they would catch them. These were big blues, too, keepers, ten to twenty inches. It was a shame Henry wasn’t there to see it, Mac said, he would be proud. The men agreed and cut up more and more of the bait as they pulled more and more blues in. It was a regular frenzy.

Jim Waxman finished one packet of meat, and pulled another out of the cooler, this packet was smaller than the rest, was long and thin, but didn’t have the bulk of the others. It also didn’t weight as much. He wondered why the butcher made this one different from the others. When he opened it he saw why.

In it were Henry’s genitals. He called Dr. James who was fishing beside him to come look. Clearly the rumors were true. Henry died with a hard on and it was still hard. His penis was also much larger than any Jim had seen. It was easily ten inches from the top of the scrotum to the end of the glans. What surprised Jim was how long it was below that, the part that included the root of the penis. It was fully another six inches long. The scrotum was still attached roughly in the middle. The testes and about a foot of spermatic cord rested in the scrotum.

“Looks like the rumors were true,” Doctor James said when he saw what lay on the brown paper on Jim’s bait box.

“Does it always stay hard like that?” Jim asked.

“Only if you die with a hard-on.” The doctor said with a smile.

“I didn’t realize it is so white under the skin, and what is all this other part,” he said pointing to the root of the penis which ended in two points separated like the forked tongue of a reptile.

“That is the root of the penis, the crux penis where it attaches to the pubic bone. Under the skin, the penis is white because it is surrounded by a tightly woven sheath of muscles and ligaments so it will keep its cylindrical form and not damage the two chambers of the corpus cavernosa which fill with blood and keep the penis hard during erection.” The doctor said, pulling out a measuring tape to see just how long it was.

“What do you suggest I do with it?” Jim asked.

“Well before you cut it up, lets see if anyone else wants to see it. The doctor called out to his closet fellows who called out to the others until all were gathered round to admire their late friend’s exposed private parts.

“I always heard it was big, but I had no idea it was that big.” Bill Hankins said, vocalizing the thoughts of most of the men. After the men had looked at it, touched it, and measured it – one even took a picture - they went back to catching blues.

“Well it seems a shame to cut it up, but that is what Henry wanted.” Jim said. “Doc you know how it’s put together, do you have any suggestions about how we should do this.” He said picking his freshly sharpened fishing knife.

“Yes, I do. Let’s first pull the testis out and cut off the cords and put them aside.” He then pulled out the fat white testicles and cut the thick cords with his fillet knife.

“I would then cut off the glans like this.” He then cut off the thick purple glans, still swollen from its night of pleasure. Then he pulled the skin of the penis which was still attached to the scrotum off like a sheath. He cut the scrotum from the skin of the penis and set them aside. “The penis is made up of two large chambers filled with blood. I would suggest divided it in two, trying to maintain the integrity of the chambers as much as possible. They hold a lot of blood, which the blues will like. He then took the white headless shaft of the penis and carefully divided it down the middle from the top to the middle of the fork at the end of the crux penis. There was blood, but he largely kept the two chambers of the corpus intact. The two long chambers could then be cut into one to two inch sections that could easily be placed as bait on the two hooks of Jim’s Blue rig. Jim cut the pieces and began to fish with them. They were filled with blood - though it was coagulated - the fish loved them. He caught several large fish using the pieces cut from the corpus cavernosa. He also hooked the glans of the penis and saw it quickly devoured by a hungry large fish. What the fish did not eat, but masticated into mush, Jim threw to the birds who quickly devoured it. He also hooked the testicles which were fat fleshy morsels that the fished loved. He did not know what to do with the skin of the penis, the scrotum and the cords, so he threw them to the birds. Two large birds fought over the scrotum stretching it between them, then quickly ripping it to shreds then devouring the torn strips of flesh. They did the same to the tube of skin from the penis, and got into a tug of war with the cords until the larger bird won, swallowing them in one gulp.

At first Henry was squeamish as he watched his friends privates being devoured by the wildlife, but then he thought that was what Henry wanted, it was his way of giving back some of what he had been so richly rewarded with during his life.

That night the men feasted on blues, the biggest catch they had ever had of the fish. Mac check to see if any of the bait provided by Henry was still left. It had all been used up.