This is why they dragged Francois Villon to the gallows.<\/p>\n
Prodigious Savings banned Glenda two years ago. She may or may not have outlawed one single spicy sausage with her then boyfriend, Terrence. Her long-ago face hangs in the manager’s office, Prodigious\u2019 Most Wanted. Gangly hair, greasy and dandruff moist from weeks of not using any shampoo. Narrow eyes that gave up on life a decade earlier. Lips so thin they paper cut her forearms.<\/p>\n
In defiance, Glenda has resorted to walking over to the store one to two times a day and asking to speak to a manager to see if she\u2019s still banned. Each of the three managers knows her, and with a sigh, a roll of the eyes, one of them goes outside the doors to let her know that she is, in fact, still banned for being the hungry bandit. Starving to die, hungry to live, all of us.<\/p>\n
I take my breaks outside the store. A strip mall with Prodigious Savings at one end, and a Dollar General at the other end. In between a Suboxone clinic, barber shop, Hispanic church, and several empty stores that had gone bankrupt back in 1991 when the strip mall flourished. A time when the shoppers of Lexington, Kentucky, drove out of their way to get whatever they needed. Cars packed with happy children and loving parents who bought them a candy bar for being good boys and girls while shopping, has turned into a tiny free prison sitting next to Legend\u2019s Field baseball park. Since the death of unions due to companies like Wal-Mart, Target, and AutoZone, the strip mall and its brick front have become a place where drifters, looters, killers, addicts and the mentally ill congregate. And if you are one of the lucky bastards like me who sit outside to get out of the meat locker for a few minutes, then you\u2019ll hear many stories from living ghosts who sit alone most of the day. The itch to speak is tremendous. The need for love is colossal.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou work here, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I tell Glenda again.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think I\u2019m still banned? I\u2019m still wondering because I didn\u2019t even do what I am accused of.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am just a butcher. I\u2019m not a manager. I can\u2019t say.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you ask for me? I\u2019d like to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Standing there, scarecrow gaunt, Glenda hovers. Her jeans six years unwashed, the same jeans she wears every day. Her oversized T-shirt reads, Hello Hawaii. A tiny green palm tree covered in assorted stains hangs over a sandpile with a plastic shovel and matching pail.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you ask?\u201d She asks again. And she\u2019ll stand there until you go inside and ask, staring, fit to kill, in need of recognition.<\/p>\n
Every day, all day, I always cater to those who live on the other side of the glass. I go inside to find Judas, Lauren, or Odin, and tell them, \u201cHey, someone wants to speak to a manager. She wants to know if she\u2019s still banned.\u201d None of them worked at Prodigious Savings when she was banned. They yawn, roll eyes, say something about wishing harm on Glenda for pulling them away from a daydream. The last bastion of the violently underpaid. The only thing separating us from those outside the store, a couple of paychecks. If a daydream calls it is the place to live, float, and survive. If pulled from it, rage collides with depression.<\/p>\n
There are others, mostly unknown with names given to them by employees. Forever haunted inside their own skin. Red, a young twenty something comes into the store daily to buy a frozen Hungry Man meal. After his purchase he asks one of the store employees to microwave it. Red drinks a handle of cheap vodka daily, then passes out in a tiny blue beach folding chair next to a garbage can. One afternoon, I found him with his head in the barrel with a pile of vomit next to his feet.<\/p>\n
Ancient Reggie\u2019s better days were spent at a Curtis Mayfield concert in the 1970s. He walks like a question mark obsessively pulling up his pants and dropping them and pulling them up before he can shop. \u00a0Grandpa Scooter with backwards camo hat, drives up on the walkway of the strip mall with grey beard and long grey hair flowing. A duct-taped scooter that makes loud sounds from the Medieval torture period, and a boombox bungee\u2019d to the back cranking rap music. Grandpa Scooter tries to sell his suboxone to anyone sitting outside for “scoot scoot gas,\u201d because \u201cthe president sucks nuts hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
On quiet breaks, breaks I don\u2019t have to help the ghosts, the parking lot resembles George Romero\u2019s Dawn of the Dead<\/em>. They roam bumping into one another. A weird humming noise gathers above them. I can’t tell if it\u2019s the sound of their hungry bellies, a message from the gods, or music they create when they rub up against one another. The sounds of lives clinging to the last bit of dignity they have to offer before they\u2019re put six feet under in a pauper\u2019s grave. Or left in a hospital basement on a rack. Little shoe boxes full of ashes no one claims. In life alone. In death, the fading ink on a piece of tape stuck on a frayed box.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a butcher for twenty years. Seen it all, from a man losing a finger on saw, to a coworker having a stroke on a box of eye round, to a woman taking off her top to make her husband jealous. Depending on where I was working, I\u2019d seen every type of customer. The sick, the mentally ill, the greedy, sports stars, the rich, the hateful, the full of shit, new agers, assholes, cunts. All of them. I had seen it all until the other day.<\/p>\n Same day as always: turning down Grandpa Scooter\u2019s suboxone. Finding a manager for Glenda, cooking for Red, in between it all cutting meat for people on food stamps and low-income families. No one seemed to notice, until a customer shouted \u201cdisgusting.\u201d On the carpet in front of the sliding doors to enter the tiny grocery store that looks like the 1970s inside and plays 70s one-hit wonders; we found a giant pile of shit. Heaping and steaming, full of confidence, shouting, \u201cGo ahead, put on that latex glove, and pick me up you under paid prick!\u201d<\/p>\n Alison, a cashier who loves Jesus because he saved her after a stint in hoosegow for stealing panties from Target while on a meth binge, said, \u201cMaybe it was someone\u2019s dog?\u201d<\/p>\n Vincenzo, a stocker, and store kiss ass to the store manager, Judas, \u201cI didn\u2019t do it!\u201d\u00a0 Everyone looked at him, \u201cI\u2019ll text Judas and let him know on his day off.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have Judas\u2019 personal cell number?\u201d Lauren, the tatted and lanky assistant manager, asked.<\/p>\n \u201cJudas is my buddy. Who else will listen to me about sobriety and my giggling ice cream dreams?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBoot licker!\u201d a voice from the ether shouted.<\/p>\n There was a collective sigh standing over the giant pile of cocky shit, \u201cLet’s go see what happened on the camera,\u201d Julio said.<\/p>\n We gathered over Julio at the office computer. Bodies piled up and bumping into one another as if we were all watching a torpedo hit a Japanese submarine in a thriller movie starring Harrison Ford. Julio clicked on the greying and fuzzy footage.<\/p>\n The black and white man walked into the store. Unknown. Thin as a rail, passing through the sliding doors, thin as starvation would allow. Our eyes grew around Julio. The secret shitter walked up to the rolled tobacco rack and grabbed several boxes of Old Duke, each box holding twenty pouches. He made his purchase.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does his hat say?\u201d Lauren asked.<\/p>\n \u201cWildcats, that\u2019s everyone,\u201d Julio replied.<\/p>\n The black and white man picked up his bag and walked around the corner to the carpet, then looked around. At no time did he ask for a bathroom. He didn\u2019t stagger drunk, nor did he clinch his belly due to a sickness. He simply unbuckled his pants, dropped them, half squatted, scrunched his face, and took a massive duke of his own on the carpet. There wasn\u2019t any looking around for other customers or workers. He nonchalantly pulled his pants back up and buckled them, looked inside his bag at the boxes of Old Duke, and he walked out like it was any other sunny day.<\/p>\n When the shit hit the floor there was a collective, \u201cewww,\u201d then for being a championship brown-noser, Lauren sent Vincenzo to claim the giant duke with a grocery bag wrapped around his hand. The secret shitter eventually collected the moniker of Old Duke.<\/p>\n After an hour of running into one another and retelling the story in the back of the store, I went outside for a break. I lit up a butt, and like mosquitoes descending on summer flesh, the parking lot of pinball zombies formed a line in front of me, each one asking for a cigarette. \u00a0I swatted each one away with my own shouts of poverty, then Glenda arrived.<\/p>\n \u201cThink I am still banned? Can I speak to the manager? Because you know, I didn\u2019t steal spicy sausage. It was Terrence.\u201d<\/p>\n There was nothing left in my tank, I blew out the last drag and went inside, found Lauren stocking a box of candles with a picture of a Latino woman wrapping a chain around a man, the candle read, \u201cI dominate my man.\u201d Where do I work? <\/em>I thought. Is this a grocery store? A fever dream I can\u2019t wake up from? <\/em><\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>There\u2019s a customer outside. She wants to know if she\u2019s banned,\u201d I said. She rolled her eyes. We both sighed, refusing to say the name Glenda, fearing it somehow conjures the gangly scarecrow into the store.<\/p>\n Our side of the glass or their side of the glass, the only thing that separates us are two weeks of lost paychecks; a divorce; a broken heart; a new addiction or the resurfacing of an old one. Our faces hold a tad more light than the other side of the glass because we had vegetables, or someone told us, \u201cI love you.\u201d It could easily be Lauren, Judas, Julio, Vincenzo, Odin, or Alison in the parking lot following the strange sounds in the sky.<\/p>\n None of us own a home. Our cars are beat up, our bus passes bent, our shoes covered in blood, pain, and grease. There\u2019s no money in our pockets after our bills are paid. None of us have been on a trip for a century. Our parents were broken and that broken and poor lifestyle passed down to each one of us. Ex cons, the religious, drifters, the hungry, the broke, the damned. All given a name tag, a weekly paycheck that couldn\u2019t afford a trip to the gallows. The dismal paychecks that go to everything, other than a peaceful lifestyle, keeps us on our side of the glass, keeps us from shitting on the floor. \u00a0Be grateful for the early death that\u2019ll come for us all, at least we can wash your clothes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I listen to the sounds of lives clinging to the last bit of dignity they have to offer before they end up little shoe boxes full of ashes no one claims. In life alone. In death, the fading ink on a piece of tape stuck on a frayed box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":25138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4069],"tags":[502,4898],"class_list":["post-25136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moans-from-the-condiment-fridge","tag-homelessness","tag-old-duke","writer-frank-reardon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25137,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25136\/revisions\/25137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}