Grower's Market

by Michael Baughman

  On a rainy October night years ago a Ford Bronco left the Bird of Prey at closing time carrying seven deer hunters who had celebrated an eight-point buck one of them had killed, and three miles down the road the vehicle missed a curve and skidded through a guardrail and plunged into a rocky canyon. None of the men were wearing seatbelts and all seven were killed. Four were pronounced dead at the scene and three were helicoptered to the nearest hospital and soon died there.

  After that accident Sunbeam began serving free half-pound buffalo burgers to anyone who wanted them at midnight. The expense was insignificant and she thought it her moral duty to do what she could to see that her customers drove home safely after she closed the tavern at 2 a.m. She knew the burgers would help counteract the beer and liquor they drank. The prime lean grass-fed buffalo was delivered every Monday afternoon and Sunbeam cooked and served the burgers herself from a small kitchen next to the back door where a counter, a walk-in cooler, and a charcoal grill stood. The burgers were served in oversized whole-wheat buns with organic lettuce and tomato and imported German mustard.

  Sunbeam believed in sharing her wealth and a large white poster was nailed to the wall beside the serving counter:

  BIRD OF PREY BUFFALO-BURGER CHALLENGE!!!

  FINISH TEN BURGERS IN THIRTY MINUTES!!!!

  WIN ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS CASH!!!!!

  So far one hundred and eighty-seven customers had accepted the challenge and none had succeeded in finishing five pounds of ground buffalo meat in half an hour, but spectators always enjoyed watching people try.

  A tall lean middle-aged rancher from a neighboring county had come closest. He devoured eight of the burgers in just over twenty-six minutes but then had to hurry through the tavern and out the door and into the parking lot to vomit into the bed of his pickup truck.

  Tonight Shadow and Shrimp and their friend and colleague Toon sat at a table against the wall next to the serving counter with two burgers apiece and their pints of amber ale. They were saving places for Sunbeam and for two more coworkers named Shakespeare and Stones who would soon arrive.

  As often happened Shadow and Shrimp were arguing about food and the restaurant they hoped to open someday soon.

  “You heard that judge,” Shadow said. “That dude on Chopped said it twice. Italian food’s the best food there is. The finest! In the world ! You heard it! Day before yesterday! Right? That’s exactly why we got to make our place Italian.”

  “Yeah, I heard it, and it doesn’t mean shit.”

  “Well why doesn’t it mean shit?”

  “’Cause I heard that dude’s name too. Did you catch that judge’s name?”

  “What the fuck difference does his name make? He’s a judge on Chopped, an expert! A fucking big-time chef!”

  Shrimp swallowed beer and shook his head and smiled. “His fucking name was Antonelli. You didn’t hear it? Or Antolini. Some damn name like that. The point is it ended with a goddamn i.”

  “So what?”

  “So he’s an Italian!”

  “So what?”

  “So what the fuck would you expect an Italian to say? You’re Italian, right?”

  “Yeah I am, part at least, but so what, that doesn’t prove anything.”

  “It sure as shit does prove some things. You been brainwashed. I bet you grew up on spaghetti and meatballs. I bet you poured tomato sauce on your hotcakes.”

  “Bullshit. I’m not brainwashed. I never ate any hotcakes either.”

  “Listen. If that judge’s name was Goldberg he’d say kosher food was the best and if he had some German name or some French name then he’d say German food or French food was the best. That’s the way it is, man. That’s how it goes.”

  Shadow swallowed a bite of buffalo burger and drank some beer. “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Look at it this way,” Shrimp answered. “Do I look Mexican?”

  “No. Do I?”

  “No.”

  “So what the fuck?”

  “Here’s what the fuck. I don’t look Mexican ’cause I’m not Mexican. But I know Mexican food is the best fucking food there is. That’s because I’m objective.”

  “Bullshit,” Shadow said again.

  “Besides, there’s already Italian restaurants in the area, some pizza joints too, and there’s no Mexican restaurants for maybe a hundred miles. At least a hundred miles.”

  “That is bullshit. Total bullshit. There’s Taco Bells practically every place you look.”

  “I said restaurants, dude, not shit holes.”

  “Italian food’s popular everywhere.”

  “Mexican food’s more popular than Italian food in America now. Do your research, then you’ll learn the truth. What century you living in? Tacos are more popular than fucking hamburgers all over the country. I read a study on it.”

  “Who did the study?” Shadow said. “Some dude named Pancho? Who gives a shit about hamburgers? Who said hamburgers were Italian?”

  “What’s that you’re chowing down on right now? What’s that sitting right there on the table in front of you? Is it a fried chicken? A roast fucking duck?”

  “It’s no hamburger,” Shrimp said. “It’s a buffalo burger! Ever seen a buffalo? Does it look like a cow?”

  “All I know is, the last Mexican dude I saw on Chopped, the last contestant I mean, he did look like a cow.”

  “That’s ’cause he likes his own food. The last Italian contestant we saw on Chopped was the day before yesterday. Remember that dude? You could tell he couldn’t eat his own cooking. He was so skinny, even his head was so skinny, his brain must look like a fucking waffle!”

  As he ate Toon listened with little interest to Shadow and Shrimp. He didn’t especially like either Italian or Mexican food and he’d heard their arguments many times before. The only thing he’d ever heard the two agree about was their plan to sneak weed into their desserts so that customers would leave the restaurant happy.

  Toon had seen the television program Chopped once when he visited a cousin in his hometown on the Fourth of July. Four competing chefs had to prepare appetizers and main courses and desserts from “mystery baskets” of weird ingredients in a prescribed amount of time. Their efforts were tasted and judged by three well-known chefs and the winner won a $10,000 prize. Toon remembered the winner on the episode he watched because he had been a fat man with black hair and skin as white as flour who sported impressive colorful tattoos on both arms and his neck and forehead, and Toon was happy to see him take first place.

  Toon had been given his name because he loved cartoons and had carefully detailed tattoos of various characters scattered over his body. On his chest was an image of Elmer Fudd with a shotgun chasing Bugs Bunny and on his back was Yosemite Sam with a pistol chasing Daffy Duck. Tom the cat chased Jerry the mouse down one thigh and Popeye chased his nemesis Bluto up the other thigh and the Coyote sprinted across his forehead on the heels of the Roadrunner whose legs were a blur. All the tattoos were expertly done and rendered in vivid color. Now that Shadow and Shrimp had finally stopped arguing over food he asked them about an idea he had been pondering for days.

  “So tell me the truth,” he said. “Don’t shit me now. I got room on my ass for Dagwood Bumstead and Mr. Dithers. Maybe Mr. Dithers doesn’t chase Dagwood all that often, but he always gives him some serious shit, right? So would they look okay? Would they fit in or be out of place?”

  “If they’re on your ass, who’d see them anyway?” Shadow asked.

  “But I still figure maybe they’d look out of place because they’re people.”

  “What the fuck,” Shrimp said. “Yosemite Sam’s a person, right? So’s Elmer Fudd.”

  “Not real people though,” Toon answered.

  “You think Dagwood Bumstead’s real?”

  “He’s more real than Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam. Or Popeye. He’s got a fucking job.”

  “Popeye’s got a job,” Shadow said. “He’s a sailor. But go ahead, get Dagwood tattooed on one cheek of yo
ur ass and Dithers on the other one. Go for it, dude.”

  “You really think I should?”

  “Yeah, I do. I think you should. Maybe include Blondie too.”

  “Why Blondie?”

  “Why not? She’s pretty foxy. Go for it though, Blondie or not.”

  “I figure I might. Forget about Blondie though.”

  Shrimp looked across at the jukebox girl sitting at a nearby table. The huge asshole she was with looked drunker than ever. With his long black greasy hair and his black leather jacket he could have been a motorcycle gang member, and he noticed Shrimp eyeing his girl and sat up straight in his chair and stared at him and scowled.

  Shrimp stared back but just then Shakespeare walked up to the table carrying two buffalo burgers in a paper-lined red plastic basket in one hand and a pint of dark English stout in the other hand. When he put the basket down and pulled out the chair between Shadow and Toon, Shrimp looked away from the motorcycle asshole to smile at Shakespeare.

  “Hey, dude,” he said.

  “What’s up?” answered Shakespeare.

  Shakespeare had led a strange and nomadic life. The only traditional thing he had done as a youth was wrestle in high school and then college. At two hundred and sixty-two pounds he had been a heavyweight champion and he carried the same weight and remained solid and fit today. His name resulted from the fact that after his army discharge he proclaimed himself a writer. For more than three years now he had been working hard on a novel titled The Adventures of Superpenis. Like Shadow he kept his hair cut short but he wore a beard fashioned after illustrations representing William Shakespeare.

  It had been Toon who suggested to Shakespeare that he model his novel’s protagonist after the comic book character Plastic Man. In comic books Plastic Man’s success in combating evil resulted from an ability to extend his arms and legs to any desired shapes or lengths and Superpenis could do the same thing with his penis.

  “So where you been hanging, Shakespeare?” Shadow said. “What you been up to?”

  “Writing,” Shakespeare answered. “Ever since we got back from the woods.”

  “Going good?”

  “Damn good, man! Somehow I do my best work when I’m tired. When I’m fuckin’ wiped out in fact, like today. An’ guess what? Tomorrow I got an editor calling me up. Tomorrow, man!”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit! I been writing letters to publishers for months and I finally got me an answer!”

  “Congratulations, man. What page you on?”

  “I ain’t counting pages, but I bet I’m halfway through, at least. Three-quarters maybe.”

  “So what’s ol’ Superpenis up to these days?” Shrimp asked.

  “Did I tell you about him busting those bank robbers along the river?”

  “That happened right after he used his cock to fly-fish with, right? He tied a leader on his cock and landed a record steelhead. Sure I remember that. Yeah, you told us all about it.”

  Shakespeare forgot his burgers and stout and leaned forward with his arms on the tabletop to talk about his hero. “Okay, next I got a scene set at a big cowboy rodeo going,” he said. “Like one of those big ones they write about in the papers and show sometimes on TV. I had writer’s fucking block all week, but I finally got it figured out today. That’s why I’m late.” He looked around the table to make certain all his friends were listening. “So now he’s after this cowboy who’s head of a gang of redneck cowboy dudes who rustle cattle and he has to get the cowboys to trust him so he shows up at this big rodeo dressed up in western clothes and he enters the calf-roping contest. You know calf roping, right? When they ride on a horse after a calf and they got to lasso the calf and jump off the horse and flip the calf over and tie his legs up. So Superpenis wears baggy pants and a baggy shirt so nobody in the crowd can tell he’s using his penis as his lasso. He uses his penis to lasso the calf and his penis-lasso drags the calf right back to him while he’s jumping off his horse. Then he uses his penis-rope to tie the calf up and he breaks the world calf-roping record. Some cowboys get pissed off at him winning the prize money, and other cowboys think he’s cool. Most cowboys think he’s cool. He gets in tight with the ones who think he’s cool. So he’ll go on from there to figure out about the cattle rustling. Then he’ll figure out how the rustling is part of this huge crime syndicate in Chicago. Chicago’s where the slaughterhouses are where the rustlers sell the cattle. By the time he gets to Chicago I’ll figure out another cool way he can use his penis there.”

  “I still think you should call the dude Supercock,” Shrimp said.

  “I told you about ten times. Twenty times. Cock’s too crude. This is a sophisticated novel. Subtle even.”

  Shakespeare finally took a swallow of his stout and leaned back in his chair and looked around the table expectantly. Shadow and Toon smiled at him and Shrimp looked down at the table and shook his head. “Sophisticated my ass,” he said.

  As all four men began eating and drinking Stones arrived with his burgers and his pint of pilsner and took one of the two remaining chairs. Stones was bearded and long-haired like Shrimp and wore baggy jeans and a blue and gold sweatshirt. He had been a defensive end in high school and college and when he couldn’t make the NFL he joined the army and fought and lost his right eye. After the army he failed at professional wrestling and various other short-lived jobs. Now he wore stylish patches to cover the empty eye socket. He owned a collection of patches that came in various colors and patterns including a bloodshot eye on a black patch for the rare occasions he suffered hangovers. Tonight he wore a Scottish plaid patch in bright red and lime green. “Sorry I’m late,” Stones said. “I’ve been traveling. The lot’s so crowded I had to park out on the road. I’m hungry.” He bit into a burger and chewed and swallowed and drank some pilsner and took another big bite of his burger.

  Everybody went to work on the burgers. They all knew that Stones had been spending a lot of time on the road lately but nobody knew why and Stones didn’t want them to know. His life had begun to change six weeks back on a Saturday afternoon when he had been driving to the nearest town where he could purchase job supplies. That day he had planned to buy extra-tough work gloves and a flex-tine harrow and a new brush hoe. The town was one hundred eleven miles from Stones’s cabin, and eight miles out of town he picked up a hitchhiker.

  The hitchhiker jogged along the side of the road to the Subaru and opened the back door and tossed in his backpack. He was wearing Jesus sandals and dressed in threadbare jeans and a sweat-stained white T-shirt and a dirty green baseball cap. “Thanks, man,” he said to Stones. “I sure do appreciate it, dude.”

  “Climb on in,” Stones said.

  The hitchhiker slammed the back door and opened the front door and climbed in.

  “Where you headed?” Stones asked him.

  “The homeless shelter, man.”

  “In town?”

  “Yeah, in town. They got one now. It’s new.”

  “So you’re homeless then?”

  “Sure as shit am. They even got showers there at the shelter. They got a food bank too. They got this cute little girl works there most days. Prettiest little thing you ever saw. She puts in some hours, man. I mean she hangs out there morning, noon, and night. So I can get myself cleaned up and grab some eats. I could even stay there if I wanted. Overnight I mean. But I dig the woods. I got my tent set up by a nice clean spring. I got my Coleman lantern, my propane stove, my fire pit, a nice smooth log to plant my ass on. I dig my camp.”

  As he drove toward town Stones glanced at his passenger. It was hard to guess his age. He was pale and skinny and there were streaks of gray in the long brown hair that stuck out from under his cap and in his thick brown beard.

  “That a dog tag you got hangin’ on your car keys there?” the homeless man asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Don’t mind me asking you, man, but is the army what happened to your eye? Combat?”

  “Right again
.”

  “I threw my fucking dog tags away when I got out. I never even got wounded but I tossed ’em in a fuckin’ dumpster.”

  “I understand that,” Stones said. “Where abouts is the homeless shelter? I never knew there was one.”

  “Out by the grange. There’s this old gas station that closed down and they made it into a homeless shelter. It’s right out there past the grange. Half a mile. You know where the grange is?”

  “Oh yeah. That’s where I’m headed. The grange.”

  “Cool!”

  Stones drove past the grange to the homeless shelter and parked. The only other car out front was a Dodge Dart. He remembered when the building had been a gas station. Now the old place had been freshly painted bright green. “Here,” Stones said and he handed the homeless man a $50 bill.

  “Hey, man. You kiddin’ me? Is this motherfucker genuine? Is it real?”

  “Oh yeah, it’s real.”

  “Thanks, man! I mean thanks!”

  “No problema,” Stones answered. “I guess since I’m here I’ll take a look inside.”

  The homeless man retrieved his pack from the backseat and Stones followed him into the building.

  The first thing Stones saw was the small girl sitting behind a wooden desk. On the desk were a telephone and a computer and a small stack of papers anchored by a round river stone serving as a paperweight. Directly behind the desk were long shelves of canned and packaged foods reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Stones looked at the little girl and liked her at once and knew he wanted to help her. He wanted to be near her and he wanted to protect her if he ever could.