He came riding into Montrose, Iowa in a painted wagon. Red frame, mustard-yellow wheel-spokes, iron rims, his name splashed in gold letters: Professor Scratch’s Patented Marvels.
I didn’t like the look of the professor the moment I seen him, him and his coal-black beard, blacker eyes. His face had a ruddy cast like the rouged-up cheeks of a Kansas City pretty.
“I’m looking for one Jerimiah Boggs,” he announced, grin all twisted a’skitter-like.
I spat a gob of chaw on his fancy wagon wheel. “Peddle yer snake-oil elsewhere, friend. Too hot a day fer nonsense.” Sweltering hot and business was slow. I was more than a mite onery. The cloud of pesky river midges flittin’ about my face didn’t help my calm none.
His grin widened. “Mr. Boggs,” he said, tipping his high gray hat. “How do you do? Reverend Caswell said you’re the man to see about putting paid to those Mormons across the river. Must hurt having them steal your river trade, Mr. Boggs, them and their instant city.”
Didn’t recollect ever meeting any Caswell, reverend or otherwise, but it was true enough: my once-bustling freight landing stood empty. Across the Mississippi, now, the paddlewheels that used to dock with me now sat tied up at Nauvoo dropping off cargo. One was chivvying out its load of cattle into a stock pen. Shoulda been my freight load. Woulda been, ’cept for them blasted Mormons.
I looked Professor Scratch over, trying to figure his angle. I like what he was hintin’ of sellin’, but didn’t trust him or his fancy clothes. If he thought he could swindle me, well, no city sharper born had ever got the better of me. “What’s in it for you. friend?”
Yellowed teeth glistened. “Let’s just say folks will be more inclined to buy my services after they see what happens to the Mormons.”
Scratch climbed down from his wagon. He held a small lacquered box in kid-gloved hands. I could hear a tiny thumping sound coming from inside.
Opening it up revealed a tiny chicken gizzard, small as a thumbnail and pink as a newborn babe. Dang me if the fool thing weren’t alive without the rest of the chicken.
Alive and beating. Thumpthump. Thumpthump.
“Lost secrets of Ancient Egypt ensure it lives eternal and can never die.” Scratch pronounced. “Observe!”
He snatched a flitting midge slick as any frog tongue could and pressed the captured insect against the tiny chicken gizzard. Blamed if the gizzard didn’t swallow up the bug and then grow in size after doing so.
“How’d it do that?” I asked.
I made to prod it with my finger, but Scratch warned me off. “Careful. It ingests any living thing that comes in contact.”
“People, too?”
“Humans most especially,” Scratch said with a knowing nod towards Nauvoo where lived a whole city of humans I’d like to be shut of. “Grows each time it feeds. Get it big enough, it’ll smash whole cities hunting down prey.”
“Do tell. Whole cities, huh?” I scratched my chin all sly-like. “Whatcha asking for it, Professor?” I inquired causally, like it was only a passing thought.
The man with the wagon smiled, all teeth and cunning.
“Oh, I’m lending you the gizzard free and clear, friend Boggs. I don’t sell the gizzard,”
“You’re selling something, friend Scratch.”
His shark’s smile widened. “Indeed I am. What I sell is shrinking the gizzard back again afterwards.” He named a high fee, like I cared. Why should I pay to shrink it back once unleashed on that hated city? What did I care if it ate the whole of Illinois afterwards? Montrose lay on the Iowa side of the river, safe as houses. Save as innocent babes.
“And you’ll let me sic it on the Mormons, free of charge?”
“Free of charge.”
“Even if I don’t pay to shrink it back?”
“Even so.”
I spat out my baccy and wiped my hands on my britches, fixing to handshake to the deal.
“I see we have a bargain, Mr. Boggs.” Scratch purred. He ignored my offered hand, like his word was good enough he didn’t need to seal it with a handshake. Instead he pointed down the bluffs to the river landing.
“Shall we take a boat ride across the river? You, myself, and the gizzard?”
***
Ol’ Dan Danford had the only steam barge on the docks with pressure up. Not much cross-river traffic goes on at Montrose. Nauvoo folk don’t cross over to our side and we wouldn’t be caught dead crossing over to them.
I bullied drunk Danford into ferrying us across on his clapped-out vessel. We wuz a veritable floatin’ menagerie, what with the chicks and chickens and pigs and goats and such Scratch said we’d need to prime the pump, as he put it. The gizzard may’ve been free but its feeding and upkeep shore weren’t.
Anyway, we started across and Scratch he placed the gizzard at the bow end and we stood huddled astern inside a chalk circle Scratch drew, one he said would keep the gizzard out.
The gizzard needed growed some before it took on Nauvoo, so I started out tossing baby chicks at it. When it ate all the chicks, I tossed grown chickens, and finally finishing up with two fat suckling piglets.
The beating gizzard slurped all of them down, growing each time. Thumpthump. By the time I’d fed it the piglets, we was reaching the Nauvoo side and that gizzard was so huge the barge was like to capsize. Thumpthump.
Danford nosed the barge agin the tie-up next to the feed pen, and dang if that gizzard didn’t slither ashore. It slithered right through the fence like some pulsating jellyfish and start gobblin’ up the terrified cattle. After it had finished them off, it stood the size of a barn.
The chicken gizzard began oozing down the streets of Nauvoo. smashing every house and storefront and outbuilding in its path to flinders as it chased down its two-legged meals: the Mormons themselves. Thumpthump.
Mormon wimmenfolk screamed and scattered, calico bonnets a-flappin’ like chicken wings. Menfolk blasted away with their rifles to no effect. I even seen Porter Rockwell himself empty both his Colt Patersons at the thing. Might as well spat peas at it fer all the good it did.
Up on that big hill of theirs overlooking the city, that big metal triangle they use to summon their Nauvoo Legon jangled an alarm, but that weren’t going to do no good neither. Lining up the militia in neat rows would be like setting up a church picnic table for that hungry gizzard.
But it weren’t the militia I was hoping to see git ate.
Any minute now I knew White Hat Joe Smith himself would show up. Most like he’d start trying to Mormon-pray that gizzard away and I was lookin’ forward to seeing Joe git swallowed whole. That’d learn him to write his gold Bibles! That’d learn him to preach his heathen talk! That’d learn him to steal my river trade!
But then, just as the gizzard smashed its way from the landing down Young Street, turned the corner on Wells, and started heading uphill towards that heathen temple, just as Joe Simth had stepped down from his wagon to face the gizzard—that dad-gummed fool chicken gizzard suddenly turned around and reared up like a skittish colt and threw itself in reverse. Gizzards don’t have a front or back the way critters do, so if it wanted to run away, it didn’t ever need to turn around. It just slithered itself backwards to the riverbank at a speed that’d put the Wabash Cannonball to shame.
The gizzard splashed into the river—thumpthump—swam right past us watching from the barge, durn near capsizing us in its wake—THUMPTHUMP—sped across the whole Mississippi to the Iowa shore—THUMPTHUMP—and proceed to eat up Montrose instead!
That Professor Scratch had cackled like a hen to see Nauvoo git ate up. Now he cackled just as gleefully to see me and mine git ate up. He repeated his price to shrink the monster. “Cash money,” he cackled. “No credit.”
Well, what else could I do? And I was nearly too late at it, besides!
By the time I could shove every cent I had in the world to the professor so’s he’d stop the monster by shrinking it down, there weren’t nothing left of Montrose but kindling and carnage. Thems few what was left alive of my neighbors staggered around, dazed as I was.
“But why?” I wailed, standing in the shattered remains of my landing dock. “Why’d that gizzard reverse course like that and swim back?”
The professor smirked, then he answered me.
Oh, he answered me, all right.
And from the exact words he used and the exact way he uttered them—with no trace of remorse or shame—I knew then and there he weren’t no professorial medicine man but the devil Jack Scratch Himself, fer who else could be so diabolical?
“Why did the chicken gizzard cross the river?” he asked, “To get to the other side, of course!”
Lee Allred has published other stories in 2025: “Schroedinger’s Dog,” “One of Our Plutos Is Missing,” “Death Takes a Zeppelin,” “Two If by Seekrieg,” “To Purr and Purr Not,” “The Eel Tail of Science,” “The Fighting Cats of Mars,” “Else Inglorious Tomb,” “Spats Tut.”
