Guignoir
Christian Loche

 

The world is full of broken people, lonely people, hungry people.
 It's part of the natural order of things. But, splints, casts, so called miracle drugs, or even time itself, can't mend broken hearts, wounded minds, or spirits torn asunder, let alone a perpetually empty belly.
    As Charle Chaplin once said, ''In the end, everything is just a gag.'' He apparently was an optimist by nature. Me?
  Not so. I'd always had alot of trouble finding a silver lining in every cloud, or a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. In other words, I may have read fiction, or watched it on the screen, but, I didn't live it. I tried my best to remain in a virtual state of reality, no matter how hard times were to deal with.

    That's why the day that the railroad derelict passed through my quiet little town, I handled the situation as as I always handle unpleasant situations; with a straight forward, I- don't- take- any- crap, realistic approach.
   I'd been sitting in the town Cafe, Mabel's, drinking coffee and nursing a hangover, when she'd stopped wiping down the counter and pointed him out to me.
     ''There he is again,'' she said, pointing a greasy finger at the front window. The railway depot was right across the street. ''That's the third time in the last fifteen minutes. He damn near looks... familiar.'' The other customers paid us no mind, just went on eating, reading their morning papers, filling their minds with all of the bad news of the day.
  I cocked my head around, and looked out the window through bleary eyes. Another battle with the bottle lost. It had begun happening once too often since my wife had passed away. There he was; about six feet two, a hundred and eighty pounds, greying hair, scraggly beard. Dirty, tattered clothes. He had that hungry look about him, like all the railway derelicts do, like he wanted something from you, and just knew you'd give it to him.
  Like he knew you were an easy mark, you'd give it up in a heartbeat.
       He saw me eyeballing him, and quickly faded away back into the early morning shadows of the depot's ticket alcove. But I knew he was still there.
     I knew he was waiting.
     Waiting for me.

     They always did; that was one of the hardest parts of my job as a lawman, the waiting.
       I lit a cigarette, saying, ''Hell, Mabel, he looks harmless enough to me.'' I said this to put her mind at ease, make her feel better. But I knew better, knew what he wanted.
  ''Well,'' she said, placing her beefy hands on her wide hips, ''I don't like his looks. I want you to go out there, tell him to hit the road, Milo. Last time one of them come through here, they dug through my trash out back, had it strung out from here all the way down the alley. It took me three hours to clean that damn mess up.''
     ''Calm down, Mabel. I'll take care of it. Don't I always?''
    ''Well....yeah, but you usually wait until the damage is done to run them off.''

''Can't run a man off or arrest him for standing there, Mabel.'' I told her, then sipped my lukewarm coffee. No matter, I'd had enough anyways.

   ''Well?!'' she said, looking at my almost- empty cup, and not offering to refill it.
''Okay, Mabel, you win. I'm in no shape this morning to argue about it.'' I stubbed out my cigarette, and stood up on shaky legs. ''Be back at lunch.''
      She cracked a smile of victory as she walked back into the kitchen.
    I walked out into the early morning heat, which was stifling already, and across the street to the ticket alcove, dreading a confrontation that early in the day. I'd already had to confront a hangover, which had been bad enough, without having to confront some scaborous, gap toothed inbred who smelled like roadkill. Most of the railway derelicts smelled that way; like living, walking, talking death.
   Most of them, however, couldn't help it. Alot of them that passed through here in the summer were just poor folks looking for honest work, not a handout, but a hand-up. They had no place to live, so they couldn't bathe regularly, unless it was in a backwoods stream or with a garden hose in somebody's back yard. It came along with the territory, when you were poor. You did the best with what you had.
  Just like I did.
        As I rounded the corner of the depot, I could smell him; it was an odor of rot, decay, like a huge bouquet of putrefied flowers mixed with sweat and cheap wine.
   As I slowed down my pace, peeking around the alcove door frame, he suddenly shot out of his hiding place like a rocket, and I had to grab him by the arm to stop him. Grabbing his arm was like grabbing a rotten twig, thin, easy to break. Skeletal. Lack of decent food and a normal lifestyle had taken it's toll.
    ''I didn't do nothin'! I didn't do nothin'!'' he began screaming at the top of his lungs, his voice high pitched, shrill, like a hyena. ''I swear...I was just...just...-''
   ''Looking for me, maybe?'' I said, flashing him a sly grin, sneaking him a wink.
 He looked bewildered at first, then shot me a look of ....recognition? ''You him?'' he said, looking at me apprehensively. ''You the man who takes the.''- he looked around for any potential witnesses -''the stuff?''

       ''That'd be me,'' I told him, lighting a smoke. I offered him one, and he looked at me as though I were a leper. ''Go ahead, take one. I don't bite. ''
    He took one, lit it with a pocket match. ''I wasn't told you was a cop,'' he said, puffing away at the cheap cigarette as if it were ambrosia.
    ''That's Sheriff, to you, my odorous friend. Now, what do you have for me? I've been waiting since last week for another delivery. Folks around here, you know how they are by now, they start getting ants in their pants, and cramps in their bellies, the chowline don't come through on time. By the way, what happened to the regular deliveryman?''
   He shot me a wink now. ''This way,'' he whispered, and motioned to me to follow him around the back of the depot to a traincar that was sitting there with it's doors slid open halfway. I could smell the meat had already begun to thaw out, because of the heat. Hazards of the job.
   ''How many?'' I asked, pinching my nostrils shut and grimacing.
     ''About three dozen, give or take one or two.''
      ''What's that supposed to mean?'' I asked. ''Is it three dozen, or not? I only pay cash money for exact headcounts.''
   ''Three dozen on the nose,'' he said then, grinning like a pig in slop.
    ''Uh-huh,'' I said, pulling out my wallet. I dug out three one hundred dollar bills, forked them over. ''Better be good ones, this time. Last time, those porkers I got were a bit ripe.''
     ''It's summer,'' he said, pocketing the green quickly. ''Can't be helped. Besides, in the summertime, you get alot more meat in, more folks travelin' around lookin' for work, too.''
     He was telling the truth, I had to look at it realistically. ''Okay, friend. Just haul em' around back of the Cafe as always, and I'll tell Mabel you're coming.''
     ''Will do, hoss,'' he said, giving me a mock salute, and scurred away into the traincar.
       As lunchtime rolled around, and the heat index climbed into the triple digits, I drove by Mabel's to see if she had liked the porkers she'd had delivered.
    I parked out back, as Mabel came waddling out the back door. I rolled down my window. ''Well, Mabe, how was the quality of this batch?'' I asked her, shooting her a big smile.

 ''Well, not bad,'' she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with a handtowel. Her apron was bloody and stagnant. ''But, there's one I want you to take a look at, I think you'll get a kick out of it.'' She managed a smile.
 Curious to see what could have possibly made a woman with Mabel's temperament crack a smile, I followed her inside and into the meat locker.
      ''That one,'' she said, pointing a chubby finger at the plastic tarp at my feet. I leaned down, pulled the tarp back, and almost couldn't believe my eyes. He was a big porker, that one, about six foot six and weighed in at about three hundred. A mohawk hairdo, a tattoo of a snake on his forehead, pierced eyelids, ears, and nose. Black leather clothes that reeked of about three months worth of body odor. You found some real strange porkers on the railways, you did.
   I stifled a laugh, as Mabel said, ''He's a funny lookin' critter, ain't he, Milo?''
    ''Yeah,'' I said, cracking a sly grin, ''but as I've always said, it takes all sorts of funny lookin' critters, to make Mabel's famous pork fritters!'' Even she managed another smile, as we exited the locker.

         Hell, the way I look at it, I'm doing the world a favor, getting rid of all the riff raff, and helping to feed other folks at the same time. As I said earlier, I take a realistic out look towards life in general; you can't heal all wounds with time or drugs, but you can make some folks lives more bearable, while at the same time help those who are hopeless find eternal peace. The world is too full of broken people, so I try to break the monotony of it all now and then. Since the bomb dropped back 2013, the whole world has become a totally different place. It�s hard enough just to trust somebody, let alone get through another day out here in the wasteland. I think I perform an invaluable service; if it wasn�t for men like me, the whole damned desert would be full of brain-dead zombies looking for handouts, and some of them wouldn't ask so nice about it, either.

    I went home that night, still a little hungover, but feeling better about myself. I'd helped the folks of my own town fill their empty bellies in hard times again, and I knew how much they appreciated it.
  As I sat down at my kitchen table to eat a piece of Mabel's famous brain pie, I thanked the Lord almighty for my good fortune.

 

                                               

 

 

Copyright © 2010 Christian Loche
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"