by Ron Currie
“I think Claire would be pleased with that,” I said.
“Undoubtedly,” Theodore said. “Listen, K.: the precise moment.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said.
Up until that point, my only acquaintance with the life of food service professionals came from television programs like Steely Chef and America’s Next Basting Star, shows that portrayed working kitchens as an environment only slightly less exciting and dangerous than the battlefield. By contrast, washing dishes at Diner’s Delight turned out to be a dull, sweaty, hand-scalding affair. Within minutes Claire and I were drenched sternum to shin, bits of congealed oatmeal clinging to our forearms, smears of egg yolk and pork grease on our clothes. As she loaded the dish machine, a stainless steel behemoth more than loud enough to warrant hearing protection, Claire plotted aloud the vengeance she would take upon me, Theodore, the whole of Texas. With the parade on, Diner’s Delight had no customers, and given the lack of newly soiled dishes Raylene moved us to dry storage, a dark and malodorous space that, owing to near-total sensory deprivation, turned out to be even more mind numbing than the dish area. We rotated and replenished stocks of flour and sugar, gallon jars of mayonnaise and hot sauce, innumerable canned fruits and vegetables, and bag upon single-serving bag of pork rinds.
“How often do you have to do this?” I asked Robbie, who’d been assigned to direct our work.
“Get a shipment twice a week,” Robbie said. “I only do it once, though, ’cause I have Fridays off.”
“My goodness,” I said. “You must feel lobotomized when you go home.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Robbie said.
“That’d be a ‘yes,’” Claire said, hoisting a massive tub of Crisco onto the top shelf.
“Was this what working at Total Foods was like?” I asked her.
She looked at me. “Didn’t you ever have a shitty job? McDonald’s in high school? Anything?”
“Not really,” I said. “I had a work-study in college as an attendant at the campus bowling alley.”
“How exactly was that work-study?”
“I wondered the same thing, at the time,” I said.
“Anyway,” Claire said. “Certainly when you’re stocking shelves, Total Foods is a lot like this. But it’s not the donkey work that gets to you.”
“What gets to you?”
“It’s the sense—the certainty, really—that most of your life is spent doing something that doesn’t matter one goddamn bit. To anyone. At all.”
Robbie, absorbed in picking at a callus on his right hand, nodded without looking up. “That’s true,” he said.
“But Robbie, you cook people’s breakfasts, help them get started with their day,” I said. “And Claire, you know better than I do that Total Foods customers count on the shelves being well stocked with wholesome, organic, cruelty-free, sustainably sourced foods. And also on cheerful, knowledgeable staff who can help find what they’re looking for.”
“Total Foods customers are idiotic yupsters who think they’re saving the world because they vote Democratic and buy fair trade coffee,” Claire said. “There’s no satisfaction in serving the desires of people you loathe.”
“What’s a yupster?” I asked.
“Yuppie-hipster hybrid,” Claire said. “Close taxonomic relative of the trustafarian.”
“I don’t know what that is, either,” I said.
“Never mind.”
“I probably should have told you this before,” Robbie said to Claire, “but the Crisco goes down there. You know, with the rest of the oils.”
“For Pete’s sake,” Claire said, looking up at the dozen tubs of lard she’d already hoisted to the top shelf.
Robbie rose from the stack of soda syrup boxes he’d been sitting on. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I’ll take them down.”
“Sounds fair,” Claire said. “And while you’re doing that, I need to find some more mother’s little helper. Is there a liquor store nearby?”
“I don’t drink,” Robbie said, lifting a tub of Crisco in each hand and moving them to the bottom shelf on the opposite wall.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Claire said.
“I don’t think Raylene wants you to leave,” Robbie said.
Claire put her hands on her hips. “I’ll be fine. Where’s the liquor store, Robbie?”
After a moment’s deliberation, Robbie decided his fear of a present Claire trumped his fear of an absent Raylene. “Go out the service door. Fifty-four feet, take a left. Six hundred thirty-two feet, take a right. Three hundred eighteen feet, there’s a Sigel’s at the four-way stop.”
“How the heck am I supposed to count out feet?” Claire said.
Robbie looked her up and down. “You’re five feet one, and your legs are five eighths of your body length. Which means your stride should be about 24.1 inches. Round down, if you like, to make it simple. Two feet per step.”
“How do you know all that just from looking at her?” I asked.
“I can measure distances with my brain,” Robbie said. “It’s how I get around.”
“Really,” I said.
“Really,” Robbie said.
“And you’ve always been able to do this?”
“Long as anyone can remember,” Robbie said.
“Were you ever diagnosed with any autism spectrum disorder?” I asked. “Asperger’s, maybe?”
“Nope,” Robbie said.
“You boys carry on,” Claire said. “I’m going to find this liquor store.”
With Claire gone and Robbie and me trying to determine what neurodevelopmental tic enabled him to accurately measure distances by eye, work in dry storage came to a halt. Empty boxes lay strewn about, waiting to be broken down and deposited in the recycling Dumpster; still others sat unopened on the tile floor. This disarray, however, was not what upset Raylene when she came back to check on our progress.
“Where did she go?” Raylene asked.
“To the liquor store on Twelfth Street,” Robbie told her.
“Jesus Christ, Robbie,” Raylene said.
“She told me she’d be okay.”
“She’ll likely go unnoticed,” I concurred. “I’m the one people are angry with.”
Raylene rubbed her temples with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. “I hope you’re right,” she said.
“I have to say,” I told Raylene, “I’m surprised, given everything, that you’re at all concerned with our safety.”
Raylene peered at me. “You really don’t understand what they would do to you if they had the chance, do you?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“I mean, don’t get sentimental, mister,” Raylene said. “I’m not your friend. But I’m not a monster, either. I don’t need to see you hanging from an oak tree.”
“They still hang people down here?” I asked.
“Not often. But they keep the rope handy for special occasions.” Raylene gazed around at the mess we’d made of the dry storage room. “How long she been gone, anyway?” she asked.
“Half an hour, give or take,” I said.
“Thirty-eight minutes,” Robbie said.
“That’s a ten-minute walk,” Raylene said. “Even with the crowd, she should be back by now.”
“You can do that with time, too?” I asked Robbie.
“Yep,” Robbie said.
“I’m going to look for her,” Raylene said. “You two finish with the shipment and clean up in here.”
“Okay,” Robbie said.
“Okay,” I said.
In my pocket, my phone began to vibrate again. I pulled it out.
“Wait one minute,” I said to Raylene.
She turned. “What is it?” she asked.
“Claire’s calling.”
I put the phone to my ear. “Raylene is worried,” I said. “She’s getting ready to come looking for you.”
“No need,” Claire said. “I’m at the service door. Back entrance. Whatever
you call it.”
“She’s apparently right out there,” I said to Raylene, pointing at the door across the hallway from the dry storage area.
“Thank goodness,” Raylene said. She went to the door and pushed the handle, whereupon we discovered that Claire had neglected to mention that she wasn’t alone. She stood flanked by three men with a decided uniformity about them—ratty Van Dykes, skin the color of boiled ham, short-sleeved plaid shirts. Together they formed a sort of East Texan Cerberus. For her part, Claire appeared too drunk and irritable to be frightened.
“You,” one of the men said, pointing at me. “Let’s go.”
“What happened?” I asked Claire.
“I said let’s go,” the man repeated.
Raylene pulled a phone from her pocket, dialed a very short number, and put the phone to her ear.
“What are you doing?” the same man, evidently the leader of the trio, asked her.
“Calling the police,” she said.
“Hang up the phone,” the man ordered.
“Shoot me.” Raylene turned away and stuck a finger in her free ear to block out noise from the parade at the end of the alley.
Apparently our abductors were unwilling to go so far as to call Raylene’s bluff. Instead, they grabbed me by the upper arms, one to a side, and repeated that it was time for us to leave.
I was not inclined to resist, so off we went, walking briskly up the alley toward the crowds. I looked back once and saw Robbie watching us from the doorway. He raised a hand. I returned his wave, receiving a jab in the back from the barrel of an AR15 for my trouble. Then we turned the corner, and Robbie and Raylene and the Diner’s Delight were gone.
We headed north on Houston. I could feel now, out in the midst of the celebration instead of merely observing it through plate glass like a visitor to the zoo, that the crowd had entered a collective fugue state, a trance of patriotism, regionalism, and tribalism, fidelities like nesting dolls. These people were Americans, they were Texans, they were free men prepared to defend their perceived liberty with violence, and they had gathered today to celebrate these three things they held in common. For them, Memorial Day meant something other than just extra time off from work—which was, frankly, more than one could say for most of the liberals in the East Coast’s urban centers, Claire’s yupsters, who were waking up in tents on mountain ridges that morning, too engaged with conspicuous consumption to attend their local parade and spend an hour actually memorializing on Memorial Day. I knew this because Sarah and I lived among the yupsters, there in our grossly overpriced house on the hill, and when we attended the Memorial Day parade—which we did every year except the one in which she died—we saw very few of our neighbors among the crowd. The people who did attend the parades at home looked a lot like the people surrounding us there in Fort Worth—minus the guns. And it was this fact, rather than a lack of patriotism, that ultimately explained my neighbors’ absence. They didn’t go to parades for the same reason they didn’t go to monster truck rallies or state fairs: because those events were filthy with people beneath their caste, people they did not understand, people they feared and disdained in equal measure.
Though being good progressives they’d sooner eat fifty boiled eggs than admit this, even to themselves.
In any event, despite my personal circumstances at the moment, I found beauty in the fellowship of those gathered for the parade and the rally to follow, even though this fellowship was precisely the same psychosocial phenomenon that inspired the Holocaust, radical Islam, and unwavering devotion to Apple products.
Claire, for her part, didn’t seem to be discovering anything of beauty in our surroundings, but this likely had to do with her displeasure over being kidnapped at gunpoint, about which she was far less sanguine than I.
“Where are you assholes taking us?” she asked the men.
“Someone needs to teach you some manners, lady,” their leader told her.
“I’m pretty sure,” Claire said, “that when a man says someone should teach a woman manners, what he actually means is someone should kick her ass and rape her.”
“Don’t give me any ideas,” the man said.
“I’ll ask again: where are we going?”
“That’s for us to know.”
“Fine,” Claire said. She came to a dead stop on the sidewalk. “I’m going to start screaming bloody murder. What’ll you do then?”
“Murder you,” the man said, matter-of-fact.
“The hell,” Claire said.
“Look around, lady,” he said. “There are a hundred people who could put two in your chest and one in your head right now. You happen to end up shot, no one’s going to know who did it.”
“He’s got a point,” I said to Claire.
“Now get moving,” the man said. He poked Claire in the spine with his rifle barrel.
We trudged through the heat and noise. After some time we reached the end of the parade route, and the crowd gave way. Old vets, marching band members, and little girls in dance leotards milled about the street, directionless now that their portion of the parade had come to an end. We weaved our way through the dissipating mass until we arrived at a Honda CR-V parked a block farther north. A man not at all dissimilar in appearance to the three men who’d kidnapped us sat at the wheel.
“That’s your getaway vehicle?” I asked.
“What about it?” the leader of the group said.
“Well,” I said, “for starters, it’s a Honda.”
“What’s wrong with Hondas?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with Hondas,” I said. “I just would have expected a cargo van, or a pickup truck. Something made in the U.S.A., in any event.”
“Don’t stereotype,” the man said. “Gas is just as expensive down here as it is up in Priusland, smart guy.”
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, this was when they slipped a hood over my head.
• • •
“Kidnapped,” I repeated into my phone.
“How’s that, now?” Theodore asked. “This connection is terrible, my dear. Where on Earth are you?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “They put hoods on us so we couldn’t see where we were going. Actually, my hood turned out to be an empty family-size potato chip bag.”
“What are you talking about, my dear?” Theodore asked. “Why would someone put a potato chip bag over your head?”
“Well I think they would have used a proper hood, except they weren’t planning to kidnap anyone,” I told him. “They seemed fairly ill-prepared. Aside from the guns.”
There was a pause on Theodore’s end. “Did you say ‘kidnap’?” he asked finally.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’ve been kidnapped.”
“You and Claire both,” Theodore said.
“Correct.”
He absorbed this for a moment, then began to sputter and hack. “People warned me: Don’t hire Russians, they said. Unreliable, immoral creatures, they said. But I didn’t listen. And now this! Those cowardly fucks!”
“It’s alright,” I said. “We all have to learn the hard way, sometimes.”
“But how are you calling me?” Theodore asked. “Did you escape? Did you keister your phone so you could use it in a stolen moment?”
“Keister?” I asked.
“It’s a technique used by drug mules and convicts to hide contraband, my dear.”
“You mean did I put the phone in my rectum,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I did not put the phone in my rectum,” I told him. “They wanted me to call.”
“You’re breaking up again,” Theodore said, employing that slow, loud diction people use when speaking to foreigners or the deaf, despite the fact that it does nothing to help foreigners or the deaf understand any better.
“I said they wanted me to call,” I told him again.
“Who are ‘they,’ exactly?”
“Cold Dead Fingers Texa
s.”
“I believe,” Theodore said, “that part of the problem we’re having is a bad connection, and the other part is that when I can hear you, I have no earthly clue what you’re talking about.”
“‘You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers’?” I said.
“I thought it was ‘cold, dead hands,’” Theodore said.
“So did I,” I told him. “The gentlemen here explained that misinterpretation is due to Charlton Heston mangling the source quote when he was president of the NRA. The original phrasing is ‘cold, dead fingers,’ I am assured.”
“So what are we dealing with? A Southern fried Weather Underground?”
“They’re a gun club,” I said. “With ambitions to be much more, evidently. There may be a martyrdom reflex at work. I think they see themselves as the Branch Davidians of the gun rights movement.”
“Goodness.”
“Although given how heavily they were armed, one could say the Branch Davidians were the Branch Davidians of the gun rights movement.”
“I see,” said Theodore. “So these Cold Dead Fingers fellows are interested in making a name for themselves outside the provincial backwater that spawned them.”
“It would appear so.”
“And they intend to use us to achieve that end.”
“Again, appears to be the case,” I said.
Theodore sighed. “What are they asking for?”
“Nothing, actually. Except that you contact the federal authorities and let them know what’s happening.”
“The federal authorities?”
“They were explicit about that,” I said. “Actually, they asked to convey a very specific message to some very specific people. They want you to tell the FBI that they’re in possession of more than three hundred weapons that have either been illegally obtained, or modified in a manner that makes them illegal to possess.”
“Let me write this down,” Theodore said.
“And they said to let the FBI know that this is both a statement of fact, and a warning.”
After a minute or so Theodore read what he’d written back to me. I confirmed that he had it verbatim.
We were quiet for a moment. Then Theodore spoke. “God in heaven,” he said. “These fellows are spoiling for a Second Amendment showdown.”