It was the 80s and wood chippers were everywhere. Woody Wood Chipper had his own cartoon. In the first episode, a man in an orange safety vest explained that Woody was a "whole-tree crane-fed shredder." He accommodated even the most unwieldy animals into his mouth, giraffes most spectacularly. The last time the cartoon featured a giraffe, Woody consumed him hooves-first. The giraffe's facial expressions grew more pained, his eyes more bugged-out and panicky the closer his head came to the hopper. The elongated neck of the giraffe as it entered the shredder contrasted with the fountain of bloody animal mulch Woody sprayed into the ether.

#

            Wilbur Tompkins' latest morning cereal was called Woody's Wood Chips. On the face of the box, Woody spat pellets of cereal out of his discharge chute like a bursting oil derrick.

            Thunder shook the little ranch house where Wilbur lived. Tom Allyson turned on the lights in the brass fixture dangling over the dining table.

            Lynette Allyson set a plate of chicken fried steak and baked beans in front of her son Wilbur.

            "Can I have cereal instead?"

            She said nothing but took a hard plastic dinner plate and put a mound of meat patties on it, and a mound of beans, and she set it before Tom.

            "Eat your dinner," Tom said to Wilbur.

            Wilbur stared at the brown beans covered in orange goop and the shredded gray edges of the meat patty.

            "I can't eat it."

            "Eat it or I'm gonna bust your ass," Tom said.

            "Mom!" Wilbur pleaded.

            Lynette sat slack-faced and non-committal under the orange glare of the gently swaying lights.

            Wilbur began to cry. "Mama!"

            Tom said knock that shit off and then he got up and grabbed Wilbur by the back of the head. He ran his hand across Wilbur's plate and he pushed his fingers past Wilbur's lips and teeth and packed his mouth with food.

            Wilbur couldn't breathe through the sticky blob lodged in his throat. His stomach rolled and squeezed until he vomited a mass of undigested food onto the plate. His head dropped to the table.

            Tom gorged on steak and beans. He wiped up the sauce with white bread and stuffed the whole slice, an oxymoron, into his mouth.

#

            Wilbur woke up. He lay curled in a shelter pose in front of the entertainment console, a television girded by two speakers.

            Everything was dark beyond the cone of light emanating from the TV tube. Wilbur didn't know if it was the dark of the morning or the dark of the night.

            Woody Wood Chipper was judging a dance contest between a team of squirrels and a toucan.

            The toucan nods his head to the beat, sullen and awkward. The squirrels breakdance, pirouette, gyrate. One squirrel juggles the other three squirrels. The toucan loses the dance-off. Woody looms. The void of Woody's mouth fills the TV tube as the toucan meets the whirring chipper blades. The camera zooms out to show Woody spewing tropical confetti from his discharge chute.

            Woody turned toward Wilbur and asked the boy why he let Tom get away with that.

            "With what?"

            "Jamming a bunch of food down your throat."

            "He's bigger than me."

            "So what? You have to breathe out of that hole he clogged up with beans. You could have choked to death, you know that?"

            "I'm sorry," Wilbur said.

            "You know what you should have done?"

            "What?"

            "Challenged him to a dance contest."

            "I didn't know I could do that."

            "Well now you know."

            "Is it too late?"

            "I don't know. You want him to kill you next time?"

            "No."

            "Then it's not too late."

#

            Wilbur climbed onto the kitchen counter and opened the cabinet above the stove. He grabbed the box of Woody's Wood Chips and jumped down.

            Wilbur dug his fingers deep into the cereal box until he felt something sharp. He pulled out a tiny die-cast wood chipper. A circular hole on the front of the toy was Woody's mouth.

            Lynette got out of bed wearing her long teal nightgown. She walked to the kitchen to pack Tom's lunchbox and fill his thermos with hot coffee. She ordered Wilbur to turn off the TV and go to bed, and she disappeared into the sewing room.

            Tom walked down the hallway in his white underwear. He showered, noisily hacking the morning phlegm out of his throat. He walked back to the bedroom and came out wearing his brown coveralls. Grabbing his lunchbox from the kitchen, he sat down in the chair next to the front door and donned his steel-toed work boots. He walked back to the sewing room, kissed Lynette goodbye, and left without saying anything to Wilbur.

            Woody said, "Hey Wilbur, why’d she let him cram food down your throat?"

            "I don't know."

            "Think about it."

            "'Cause I'm a picky eater?"

            "You're not picky. My cereal's garbage and you eat that."

            "Then I don't know."

            "Because Lynette’s a cold bitch."

            Wilbur didn't answer.

            "She watched him almost kill you. And she didn’t do a thing about it."

            Wilbur's cheeks reddened. His eyes teared up.

            "Lynette’s a cold bitch. Say it."

            "My mom's a cold bitch."

            "Don't call her that. Call her Lynette."

            "It sounds funny."

            "She's not a mom. Moms don't let anyone treat their kids that way."

            "She's my mom and she loves me."

            "Challenge her to a dance contest, Wilbur."

            "Why?"

            "So you can get your house back."

            "My house?" Wilbur asked. Ever since Tom moved in, he called it his house. Whenever he wanted to stop them from complaining he would say, It's my house and if you don't like it then get the hell out.

            "Damn right it's your house, Wilbur. Who lived here first? You or Tom?"

            "Me and my mom."

            "You mean Lynette."

            Wilbur pushed the aluminum power button and Woody shrank to a tiny blue dot.

            He raced into the sewing room and said, "Mama!" and he hugged her around the waist, pressing his cheek against the silky folds of her nightgown.

            She took a pin out of her mouth and stuck him in the arm.

            "Ow!" he said.

            "Don't grab me like that!"

            Wilbur ran into his bedroom. He heard Woody say, "Told you she's not your mom. She's a woman named Lynette who lives in your house."

#

            The tiny wood chipper bounced inside Wilbur's pocket. He bolted past the magnolia and the weeping willow and the dogwood and the pear and the bean tree and the mulberry bush. Reaching the driveway where the school bus stopped, he saw Jeannie Burkholder standing in her vegetable garden. He mistook his neighbor for a life-like scarecrow. She stood so still she looked fake.

            "Morning, Wilbur!"

            He wondered how a scarecrow knew his name.

            "Who are you?" he asked.

            "Wilbur, I've known you since you was little. The first time I seen you, you was this tall and you came running down the street and your mom was running after you and she was hollering, 'Don't make me get a switch!' I seen you hiding in the mulberry bush, but I didn't tell her where you was."

            "I don't remember that."

            "You was wearing a western shirt with mother of pearl buttons and little blue pants and cowboy boots. I could have eaten you up!"

            He wanted to show her the wood chipper in his pocket, but just then the school bus arrived.

#

            Mrs. Sprouse moved from desk to desk checking the way her students gripped their pencils.

            "You're not supposed to have toys out," she said to Wilbur. She picked the tiny wood chipper up off his desk and drew it close to her eyes.

            "It's a pencil sharpener," Wilbur said.

            "It's sticky," Mrs. Sprouse said, making a face.

            She dropped the pencil sharpener into the metal waste basket, where it landed with a thunk. She wiped her fingers with a tissue.

            A sheet of lined paper lay before him. Gently she manipulated his fingers and repositioned his pencil over the paper.

            He scratched the center of his scalp where his hair parted, digging into a scab. He lowered his hand onto the desk, his middle finger sticky with blood.

            "Filthy!" She said. "Go to the nurse's office. Now!"

            The nurse plucked a live insect off Wilbur's scalp. She stuck the insect to a small square of scotch tape and pressed the tape onto a sheet of Xerox paper. The louse's body flattened and expanded, visible to the naked eye.

#

            Lynette picked Wilbur up from school. She drove him to the Ben Franklin and bought a lice shampoo. The instructions on the box said the shampoo killed lice and their eggs on the scalp, as well as crab lice.

            "What's crab lice?" he asked.

            "It's something adults get. You don't have to worry about it."

            "Have you ever had crab lice?"

            "No."

            "Has Tom ever had it?"

            "Probably."

            At home she told him to get his clothes off and get in the tub. Lynette stripped the beds and put all the bedclothes in the washing machine. Yanking all of Wilbur's clothes out of his closet and drawers, she stuffed them in a black garbage bag and set the bag by the washer. She poured the lice shampoo into the tub. Dipping a plastic tumbler under the surface, she poured the hot smelly water over Wilbur's head.

#

            Tom called and told Lynette he'd be late.

            "Are you at the rest stop?"

            "Honey, I am waiting out the storm."

            "You said that before."

            "There are a lot of storms in Oklahoma. I'm surprised you don't know that."

            "You drive through bigger storms than this one all the time."

            "Honey, these clouds are something."

            "They don't look that bad from here."

            "Well up here they are something."

            "Well don't touch me when you get here."

            "You listen to me. You are living in my house and you are my wife and I will do whatever I goddamn please."

#

            Tom walked through the door, his coveralls slung over his arm. The empty thermos rattled inside the lunchbox.

            Wilbur said, "Guess what? I got lice."

            "Good for you."

            "Mom said you had crab lice."

            Tom set his things down on the chair next to the door and then he turned and slapped Wilbur in the mouth.

#

            Woody asked him how he was feeling. Wilbur said he was mad at everyone. He was mad at Tom, Mrs. Sprouse, the school nurse, Lynette.

            "Lynette?"

            "Lynette!" Wilbur confirmed.

            "What do you want to do to them?"

            "I don't know."

            "Challenge them to a dance contest, Wilbur."

            "But they'll beat me."

            "Listen, you can dance circles around the old folks."

            "No, I mean they'll beat me."

            "If you can beat them, I can eat them!" Woody said in his sing song TV voice. "Besides, nobody can beat you when they're inside my belly. What are they gonna beat you with?"

            "A belt."

            "Nobody can wield a belt inside my belly."

            "But I don't know how to dance."

            "Just do what the squirrels do. You saw the squirrels, didn't you?"

            "Yeah. But there's four of them."

            "You saw the rabbit, didn’t you?"

            "Yeah."

            "And the raccoon?"

            "Yeah."

            "Haven't you noticed the little ones always win?"

            "What about the toucan? He was little."

            "The toucan was lazy."

#

            Lynette sat on a stool in front of her sewing machine. Wilbur lay on a bed of cotton ticking on the sewing room floor. She was making him a stuffed animal, a blue cotton giraffe. He had asked her to make a Woody Wood Chipper for him but she had decided instead on one of the characters Woody consumed.

            The giraffes on the show weren't blue, so Wilbur was unhappy about the color, but he kept quiet about it.

            "Mama, what would happen to me if you died?"

            "I'm not gonna die for a long time."

            "But what if you did?"

            "You getting ideas?"

            Wilbur looked down at the blank cotton ticking. Lynette studied his expression.

            She said, "Maybe Tom would keep you."

            "But I don't wanna live with him!"

            "It's either him or the State home, take your pick."

            "What's a State home?"

            "You know what an orphanage is?"

            "No."

            "It's where they send you if there's nobody to take care of you. It's where they sent me when my mother died."

            "Why couldn't you live with your dad? Was he dead, too?"

            "No, he was in prison."

            "What for?"

            "He shot someone."

            "What about Granny Lyda?"

            "She couldn't take me. She wasn't old enough yet."

            "But she's your grandma."

            "She's not really my grandma. She's my cousin."

            "How'd your mom die?" Wilbur asked.

            "The wood chipper got her."

            "Really?" He asked, his eyes agog.

            "Uh-huh. She was working at an egg factory. They used a wood chipper to get rid of all the male chicks. 'Cause the factory already had plenty of roosters. She was dumping the male chicks out of a bucket into the hopper, but her head got too close and she got dragged in by her hair.”

            Lynette returned to her work, putting the final stitches in the stuffed animal.

            "That's why I ain't gonna make you a wood chipper no matter how many times you ask," she said, tossing the blue giraffe over Wilbur's head into the hallway.

#

            Black flies invaded the house in the afternoon heat. Lynette sat at the table working on her coupons, throwing away the expired ones, putting the best ones in a wooden box she kept on the kitchen desk. The rest of the coupons—thousands of them—she stored in file boxes next to the washer.

            Wilbur sat with his legs crossed in front of the entertainment console, holding a fly swatter. He watched Woody's show. The episode was called "Safari Showdown." The wood chipper was chasing a herd of giraffes.

            "The giraffes are blue!" Wilbur said.

            Lynette didn't react, but Woody turned to him and winked.

            Tom called from a gas station. He told Lynette he was on his way. The air carried bits of grass and gravel that struck like bb's against the window glass.

            "Ain't you gonna wait out the storm?" she asked.

            "Not this one. This is nothing."

            "What do you want for dinner?"

            Tom's stentorian voice carried from the receiver to Wilbur's ears. "Chicken fried steak and baked beans.”

            “Yum,” Lynette said.

            Wilbur began striking himself on the wrists with the wire handle of the flyswatter in rhythm with the cartoon drum music. He opened his jaws and gnashed at the air.

            Lynette was sliding the coupons off the table into a file box.

            Wilbur turned to her. "I challenge you to a dance contest."

            His mother's car keys jangled as she headed towards the front door.

            "Gotta go," she said.

            "Where?"

            "To get some chicken fried steak."

            "But it's lightning!"

            "Don't matter," she said.

            Outside the house the sky flashed like a strobe. Wilbur closed his eyes and felt the thunder vibrate through his chest.

#

            Tom's truck pulled up and the boy opened his eyes. The lightning had stopped. There was a hazy wet sunset but the thunder continued.

            Tom pushed the front door open with the steel toe of his boot. He set his things down on the chair and asked, "Where's your mother?"

            "I challenge you to a dance contest."

            "Turn that shit off," Tom said.

            Woody said, "Dance, Wilbur Tompkins!"

            Wilbur stood in the center of the crushed brown carpet and did a cartwheel and some jazz hands and other moves he learned from the squirrels, the rabbit, the raccoon.

            Tom shouted, "Knock that shit off!" He took a stride towards Wilbur.

            Woody said, "Dance, Tom Allyson!"

            Tom stood motionless trying to figure out who was speaking to him.

            "It's a default!" Woody declared.

            Woody's mouth filled the TV tube. Tom was sucked into the void by his feet. Woody tore him to pieces starting with his steel-toed boots. Tom's eyes were bugged-out and panicky until they disappeared into the hopper with the rest of him.

            The blue giraffes formed a conga line, the squirrels did a maypole dance around a birch tree, and Woody sprayed an endless fountain of red confetti into the bright cartoon sky.

            When Lynette got home from the grocery store she found her husband missing, another oxymoron, and she found Wilbur sitting in her recliner filling his belly with sticky golden cereal.

William Owen grew up in rural Oklahoma. He is a writer, and formerly he was an attorney for a federal program. He lives in Portland, Oregon.