by Barry Rachin
“Don’t make no trouble, Frankie,” the waitress spoke with mock severity. “I got my eye on you.”
“It’s Christmas,” he returned in a soft, even tone. “I ain’t in no trouble making mood.” She took his order and went off to the kitchen.
Jekyll and Hyde. The Vietnam vet with his elbows resting easily on the counter was not the same wild man flailing about in the Brandenberg Library. His flannel shirt and Docker slacks were perfectly clean if somewhat wrinkled, and the only disagreeable odor emanating from his body was stale tobacco. “I remember you from somewhere but can’t put a time or a place on it.”
“The Brandenberg Library last Friday night.” Ronda sliced a piece of turkey breast, dipped it in the brown gravy and raised the fork to her mouth.
The man groaned and ran a calloused hand over his face. “Not one of my better nights.” The waitress returned with coffee. “As I vaguely remember, a friend had to help me home.”
“Scotty Bergeron.”
He gawked at her in mild surprise. “You know him?”
“We work together at the market.”
The man nodded and sipped at the coffee. The waitress returned and placed his dinner on the counter. Hunching over the steamy food, Frankie Manning turned his full attention to Christmas dinner and didn’t say another word until the plate was empty, the last streak of gravy wiped away with the remnants of a buttered bun. “Too bad about Scotty’s wife,” he said shaking his head with a somber expression.
The casual remark caught Ronda off guard. “He’s widowed but I’m not familiar with the details.”
“Hit and run. Some joker in a half-ton pickup ran her down like a stray dog.”
“How awful.”
“DUI. It was the guy’s eighth offense. After the funeral, Scotty took a leave of absence from the university. Hardly ever left the house except to pick up a few things to eat.”
“The college sent a chaplain over to visit. God’s appointed servant was spouting some moronic nonsense about how it was divine destiny that the poor woman got mangled and how Scotty ought to come to terms with the senseless tragedy.” He cleared his throat and fixed Ronda with a malicious grin. “Then the chaplain began preaching some gobbledygook about being washed in the blood of the lamb, and that’s when Scotty sort of lost it.”
“Lost it?”
“Went ballistic. Postal. Wiped the living room floor with the Catholic cleric.” Pulling a wallet from his shirt pocket, Frankie peeled several bills from a clump and placed them on the counter next to his plate. “When he got out of the hospital, the priest didn’t press charges. A month later Scotty sold his three-bedroom colonial and moved east.” He gulped down the last of the coffee. “Don’t you just love a story with a happy ending,” The vet rose and turned to leave.
“Merry Christmas,” Ronda finally blurted. “And all the best in the New Year!”
“Ditto.”
*****
On Wednesday of the following week a woman from the deli counter announced that she was pregnant and going out on maternity leave the middle of June. There would be ample time to recruit and train a replacement. In the late afternoon one of the part-timers, a high school girl, had an anxiety attack, hyperventilating and sobbing uncontrollably. On Christmas day shortly after passing out presents, the girl’s parents announced they getting divorced. Happy Holiday! Ronda made her lie down on a sofa in the employee lounge and breath into a paper bag, while she called the girl’s mother.
At dusk snow started falling. The weather channel was predicting a little over a foot of heavy white stuff by midnight. Ronda had just renewed the contract with the plowing company. They would wait until closing when the parking lot emptied out to begin the clean up.
Dwight Epstein stopped by “Any news?”
Ronda, who was typing up some notes for an administrative staff meeting, withdrew her fingers from the keyboard. “Last Wednesday you didn’t showed up for work,” she replied icily. “Never called in your absence. That’s the third time in as many months you’ve dropped off the radar screen with no reasonable explanation.”
“Grandmother died,” he mumbled with a hurt expression.
“Which one?”
“What?”
“Was that your father’s or you mother’s parent?”
Dwayne began to fidget, rubbing his hands on the side of his hips. His features clouded over. He poked his tongue in the left side of his mouth causing the cheek to bulge freakishly. “Mother’s.”
Ronda tapped the snooze button on the computer keyboard and watched the screen fade to black. In no great hurry, she rose and drifted over to the file cabinet, extracting a manila folder. Pulling a half sheet of paper from the folder, she waved it in front of Dwight’s nose. “Says here you took bereavement time on February eighteenth of last year because your mother’s mother passed away.”
“Not so!” he muttered indignantly. “Someone must of screwed up the message.”
“Last Wednesdays, we had to pull Trudy Rabinowitz from dairy to help Scotty keep his shelves stocked.” What she didn’t bother to mention was that Scotty was so impressed with the girl that he asked if Ronda might consider transferring Dwight elsewhere and letting him keep Trudy permanently in produce.
Yes, Ronda would do just that!
With an inch-thick wad of letters of reprimand in Dwight’s folder, the assistant manager could ‘transfer’ Dwight straight to unemployment, tell him to clear out his locker and vacate the premises without the least concern that he would ever collect a penny of benefits from unemployment.
*****
“That nice Jewish girl, Trudy, is moving to produce the middle of next month.”
Scotty ran his pricing gun over a row of prepackaged sliced mushrooms. “Then you found another job for Dwight.”
“A position that uniquely suits him,” Ronda confirmed. “Got any plans for Christmas?”
“I think you might be off by the better part of a week.”
“Not necessarily.” Ronda stepped closer and tapped him on the forearm. “According to Wittgenstein, facts exist in ‘logical space’, which is the realm of everything that is logically possible.”
Scotty, who was holding a blue carton of mushrooms, put the vegetables aside and didn’t respond for a good long time. “Yes, that’s so.”
“For instance,” Ronda continued, “though it is not true that Toronto is the capital of Canada, there is nothing illogical about supposing that it might be at some future time.”
“I think I can see where this is going.” The words tumbled from his lips in slow motion.
“If I were to cook a teriyaki pork tenderloin roast with baked potatoes, an apple, cranberry and butternut squash casserole along with bourbon glazed panettone topped with whipped cream, then January second - not the twenty-fifth of December could be the bearded fat man in the red suit’s special day.”
“Christmas in January.” There was a look in his eyes she had never seen before. A subtle relenting, like when the vise grip slipped effortlessly to the left and the unnerving task was done. Scotty picked up the price gun and slapped a barrage of ivory stickers on the next row of packaged mushrooms. “I’ll bring the wine.”