Savage, Saltless
by Alex Littlefield
With an eye to their health, some people don’t eat meat; others forsake fast food, or large portions. Savage doesn’t eat salt.
His conviction isn’t swayed by living in one of the many zones of America where the diet is starchy, sticks to your ribs, and is only 
palatable when it’s been thoroughly dusted with sodium. Salt is a thing of evil, and Savage is a man of resolve.
As a young man, Savage decided that his family’s history of hypertension and heart disease could be blamed on a single gastronomic culprit, which had recently come under some scrutiny in the popular press. Overnight, Savage’s kitchen was purged. It was a life-or-death decision; better a bland, unappetizing existence than no existence at all.
Now in his eighties, Savage has successfully thwarted his family’s medical history, and his clean bill of health has only strengthened his resolve. No salt is allowed the household—a rule unbeknownst to one recent visitor, a friend of Savage’s granddaughter.
“Who’s hungry?” Savage had asked when the girls arrived. He dropped several paper towel-wrapped parcels into the microwave and, in a few minutes, presented each guest with a desiccated, raisin-ish potato wobbling in the middle of a dinner plate. Per custom, there was no butter in sight. A lonely peppershaker sat on the edge of the table.
Remembering a cache of single-serving salt packets she had seen in the car, the friend excused herself, and soon was liberally showering the stuff over her sawed-open potato. Her hand was mid-shake when Savage sprung.
“What… what are you doing?” he stammered, truly appalled.
“Putting some salt on my potato?”
“Well,” he continued, regaining some of his composure, “you shouldn’t eat that.” He eyed the potato as if it had teeth. “Everyone knows that salt kills.”
Chastised, the friend forked her potato into the garbage. In a way it was lucky, she ruminated; she had gotten out of eating the thing. But Savage—ever the gracious host—had gotten up to swaddle a fresh potato. Behind the friend’s back, the microwave chirped and blinked to life.
