Six Lean Pork Chops

by

Wayne F. Burke

He knew his wife was cheating on him. Knew it. Knew it knew it knew it. Like he knew the time of day (2:23 PM). Like he knew his name: Raymond P. Peck. “Raymond” not “Ray.” Don’t call me Ray; it is Raymond to you. Pal.

Concerning his name, Raymond P. Peck had straightened out plenty of wise-asses down at the plant where he worked, and elsewhere. Told them to their faces: “Raymond” not “Ray.” Don’t like it? Then “Mister Peck” would do. For you. Punk.

He knew that because of the straightening the punks did not like him. Knew it like he knew his wife was stepping out. Like he knew the punks at the plant called him “Peckerhead” and “Pecker.” He’d heard them use the names, the other machine operators, ones whose lockers were in the first aisle, opposite him. The guys in his aisle did not use the names—not within his hearing. They would not dare use the names to his face. They knew, and he knew they knew, he kept a gun in his locker. A Smith & Wesson .38 cal. Double-locked by two stainless steel combination locks. They knew he’d use it. He knew they knew. Knew it for a fact. Like he knew his daughter’s age: eighteen. Sally Peck, a cute little package. As prettily packaged as his holstered revolver. So pretty, people gawked at her. Where Sally got her looks, Raymond sometimes wondered. The wife was no beauty, and although Sally had his brains—she was at the State University—she did not resemble him. The mystery of Sally’s beauty led Raymond to ponder uncomfortable-type thoughts, thoughts that ate at his brain like his ulcer at his stomach.

He pitched his cigarette butt out the pickup truck window. The smoldering butt bounced once in the dirt and came to rest beside a pile-up of previously discarded butts. The butts made a little graveyard of tiny toppled grave stones. The dashboard clock read 2:33 PM. He knew he’d have to drive like a bat out of hell to make it to work on time. Knew he could do it. Like he knew that sooner or later he’d catch the guy, or guys, putting the boots to Irma.

A brown box-shaped UPS truck rolled to a stop in front of the Knowlton residence, Laila & Buck, 13 Prospect Street. Raymond stared at the driver. Was the driver making it with Irma? Was Buck Knowlton? Raymond watched the driver walk to the Knowlton’s front door. A tall prick with a swagger to his walk, a slight strut like a wary rooster. Watching for the fox, Raymond thought.

The driver returned to the truck. The truck lurched ahead, growling like a beast. As it approached 15 Prospect Street, home of Mr. & Mrs. Raymond P. Peck, the driver turned his head toward the façade of the gray ranch style house. The driver’s lingering glance was like a kiss bestowed upon the lips of Irma Peck. The duration of the glance, coupled with an obvious hint of possessive scrutiny the glance contained, confirmed all Raymond’s thoughts about the driver. No doubt, Irma was signaling from the house and that was why, on this occasion, the driver did not stop, go into the house, and put it to her. A curtain pulled or left open. A shade up or down. A light on or off. Easy and workable. Simple but expedient.

The truck bucked north, past Raymond, parked alongside a billboard.

SLICK’S WORRY FREE CONDOMS! Buy ‘em by the box!!

Raymond trailed the truck up onto Upper Prospect Street. Stopped beneath the overhanging branches of a roadside oak and slumped, eye-level with the steering wheel. The driver plodded across a lawn, moving through bright late afternoon sunshine, arms cradling a stack of packages. A sturdily-built youth, curly-haired with blunt features. The kind of guy, Raymond thought, women would go for. The macho-type. Plus the uniform thing. An image of the driver running his prick in and out of Irma flashed through Raymond’s mind like a porno film. A gust of wind ripped through the oak, and tree branches creaked like rusty hinges. The uniformed whoremaster jumped into his brown truck. The wind hissed through the leaves.

“Shut the fuck up,” Raymond said.

He slammed his truck into gear and swung the vehicle across the road in a screaming U-ey. 3:10 PM. It was unthinkable, to him, that he would be late: He had not been late even once in twenty-two years on the job. He drove a hundred miles an hour along I-69, passing every prick and cunt on the road. He was a bat out of hell.

Ten minutes into the second shift at Combustible Tectonics Inc., Ball-Bearing Manufacturer, the shop foreman joked to an operator that Raymond must be either dead or in the nut house. The operator guessed nuthouse.

Raymond punched-in thirteen minutes late. He ran from the time-clock as from a fire. His brown low-cut Hush Puppy’s slapped the cement floor of a long gray corridor. Like a halfback running downfield, he navigated through a maze of machinery. Sweat rings the size of softballs stained the arm pits of his button-down short-sleeved shirt. His scrawny chest heaved. He moved down his aisle in a controlled frenzy, putting the machines into motion. Sixteen machines, eight each side of his aisle, each shaped like an outboard motor, only motor’s upside down and capped by a spinning bicycle tire-sized wheel.

The machines wailed, screeched like gravelly-voiced babies adding their complaints to the roar of the shop, pungent with the odor of oil and carbon and warmed to a mephitic toastiness.

Raymond plucked a clip-boarded stat-sheet from a steel guard rail, glanced at the stat-sheet like a man looking at a parking ticket. He let go the clip-board, punched a button on the rail and waited for the bicycle tire-sized wheel to stop. He unclamped the top half of the wheel and peered at two dozen golf ball-sized silver ball bearings lying in the runnel of the bottom half of the hollowed wheel. He picked out two balls. Warm slickly oiled bearings, like a pair of nuts. Like his; like any man’s. He imagined the nuts in a sack. Weighed the sack in his hand. Heard the sack whap whap into his wife’s crotch.

He flung the bearings to the floor; the balls bounced off the concrete and into a pan of oil beneath the machine. The black glossy pool stirred like the rippling skin of a waking panther.

Who was banging her? Besides the UPS guy and the grocer? The butcher? The baker? The mailman? Salesman? TV-repairman?

Out of the gnashing steel mayhem a voice came into Raymond’s head. Raymond turned and gazed into the unhappy face of the shop foreman.

The foreman’s mouth opened and closed in paroxysms of speech. Raymond studied the face, viewing each feature separately, merging the features into a single image. Like focusing a camera lens. The foreman’s words flew like flittering birds past Raymond. He wondered if the foreman, Roger Gizzum, was screwing Irma; wondered how many of the guys in the plant she was putting-out for? Raymond watched the foreman backing away, becoming smaller, becoming a blur. The ball-grinding machines grunted like animals rutting. Uncontrolled orgiastic yelping. Ecstatic moans. Feverish crescendo of climactic cries. Screwing their brains out. Irma spread-eagled in the center of the fuck-fest … Snickering gargoyle faces peered above the machines. Leering faces with mocking grins, watching Irma …

Raymond came to in the locker room, standing before his locker. How he had arrived there he did not know. He opened his locker, reached and took his gun from its holster, plugged the gun into the waistband of his polyester pants.

Thirteen minutes later he was home.

Fading sunshine dappled the drive, front lawn, and house. He stepped from the truck, swung the door shut. Birds fed noiselessly at the feeder outside the kitchen window. Insects hovered silently in the humid air. He could not hear the sound of his footsteps on the walkway as he approached the front door. He felt as if he were moving underwater. Felt as if the act of walking was foreign to him, something he was repeating by rote. Everything seemed unreal, as if he were inside a waking dream. Was he real, he wondered, or part of the dream? He felt the weight of the gun tugging at his waistband. The gun was real.

Holding onto the butt of the gun, Raymond pushed open the front door and entered. The living room was dark as a cave. Light from a small window lit a path for Raymond through the room. A path like a trail through the woods.

The hallway leading to the back bedroom was tunnel-like in darkness. The bedroom door at the end of the hall was illuminated in white light. The light hurt Raymond’s eyes; he stared at the carpet as he walked. A doorway on his right, the door to Sally’s bedroom, was filled with shadow. The shadow stepped into the hall across Raymond’s path and disappeared into the gloom ahead.

Raymond stood in the back bedroom door: “So! Where is he?”

Sitting beside her sewing machine, Irma Peck frowned at the sock she held in her hand. “Where is who?” she said distractedly, drawing a needle through the sock.

“The guy you have been fucking!”

Irma swiveled her head; her frozen beauty-parlor hairdo shivered. Her dark-rimmed eyes, accentuating her look of frazzled fatigue, opened wide.

“DON’T DENY IT!”

Irma’s hands dropped onto her lap.

“I have proof!” Raymond dug into his pocket, reached and slapped a scrap of paper down on Irma’s sewing desk.

Irma read her handwriting from the scrap: “Please send six lean pork chops and one pound ground beef.”

“It is a note,” Irma offered, looking up. “To the grocer … For pork chops,” she pleaded. “For ground beef!”

“PORK CHOPS,” Raymond crowed. “And what else? IT IS CODE!” he shouted, spit flying from his lips. “Code between you and the grocer! You and the truck driver! You and Buck Knowlton! Yes, Buck Knowlton! And you! And Roger Gizzum, and you! And everybody, and you!”

“Oh Raymond,” Irma cried, blanching. “Raymond, you are crazy!”

“I am crazy?” Raymond stabbed a finger to his chest. “You were the one thought you could get away with it!”

Raymond pulled the gun from his waistband.

Irma’s mouth opened. Wide as a dinner plate. Wide as a manhole cover. Wide as a cave entrance. Wide as a canyon. Wide as the sky on a night black as ink.

She fell backwards, flopping like a rag-doll onto the carpeted floor.

Birds outside the bedroom window peeped like a frenzied bird-orchestra. Raymond tucked his gun away. He knew his wife would never cheat on him again. Knew it like he knew the time of day. 4:19 PM. Time to get cleaned up and go back to work, he thought. Start the day over.

Bio:

Wayne F. Burke’s prose and poetry has been widely published in print and online. He is the author of eight published poetry collections, one short story collection, and three works of nonfiction, most recently “The VAN GOGH file: POTATO EATERS, PREACHERS, and PAINTERS”, Cyberwit.net., publisher. He lives in Vermont (USA).