Hoosier Daddy

by Ann McMan

  “Oh, hell. Coincidence my butt.”

  “T-Bomb . . . just do me a favor and watch the store for a minute while I go unlock the door for her. You know how it sticks.”

  She sighed and snagged another Peppermint Patty. “Okay, but when you get back, we’re gonna have a talk about this self-destructive behavior of yours.”

  “Whatever.” I walked out.

  It only took me a minute to reach the bathroom. I didn’t see the hubcap, so I tapped on the door.

  “El?” I asked. “Are you still in there?”

  “No . . . I folded space and am now mining for spice on the planet Dune,” El said from inside.

  I heard a truck horn and turned around to see Buzz Sheets pulling in. Great. That was all I needed. It was turning into old home day at S&W. I quickly unlocked the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind me.

  El was leaning against the sink with her arms crossed and staring at me with an amazed look on her face.

  “Isn’t the idea for us to be on the other side of the door?” she asked.

  I sighed. “Just go with me on this . . . there’s someone out there I need to avoid.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “So you’re hiding in the bathroom?”

  I nodded. “He’ll be gone in a minute.”

  “Good plan, Einstein. Care to explain to me how we get out of here once he leaves, since I’m assuming that’s the spare key in your hand?”

  I looked down at the key. Shit. I tried to open the door. It wasn’t budging. This bathroom was built like Fort Knox.

  “Um . . .”

  El sighed and fished her phone out of her pocket.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Calling the fire department.” She looked at me. “I assume there is one in this town?”

  “Of course there is, but you can’t call them.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll all be getting ready for Buster’s funeral.”

  “Who the hell is Buster?”

  I rubbed a hand across my forehead. This wasn’t turning out at all the way I thought it would.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “I begin to suspect that there are no other kinds around here.”

  “Just give me a minute, okay? I’ll think of something.”

  El glanced up over my head at the transom window. “Does that thing open?”

  I followed her gaze. It had a latch at the top. “Maybe. Think you could stand on that trash can?”

  El looked at it. “Why me? You’re a lot taller.”

  “I’m also heavier, and the thing’s plastic.”

  “I don’t like heights.”

  “It’s barely three feet tall.”

  She shrugged.

  I sighed and looked around the dingy interior. There were some old Cordplast signs that fit the poster frames stationed out front, next to the gas pumps. They were stacked against the wall beside the sink.

  “Hand me some of those signs, and I’ll stack them on top of the trash can. Maybe they’ll distribute my weight better so I can stand on it.”

  El dutifully handed me four of the larger signs. I stacked them at overlapping angles across the opening of the big, Rubbermaid bin. I slid it over next to the door.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said as I raised a foot up and rested it on top of the signs. I put a hand on El’s shoulder and tried to grab the bottom of the ledge below the transom window as I pushed myself up. For a minute, I thought it just might work. I actually felt my fingers connect with the ledge before I heard a crack, and all the signs collapsed beneath me. I went down like a ton of bricks and ended up half in and half out of the toppling trash can. El tried to break my fall, but it was no use. I went over hard, and smacked the back of my head on the cracked tile floor.

  I lay there in a daze, staring up at the flickering fluorescent ceiling light. Then I saw El’s face at very close range as she knelt over me.

  “Oh, my god. Oh, my god,” she was muttering. “Friday Jill? Are you okay?” She tentatively touched my face. “Oh, my god. I’m so sorry. I’m such a wuss . . . I should’ve done it. I’m so sorry . . .”

  I couldn’t find my tongue or clear my head enough to reply. But only part of that was due to having the wind knocked out of my sails. El was really close to me, holding my face between both of her hands, and that was making me dizzier than the fall.

  “Friday?” She kept saying. “Friday Jill? Can you hear me? Are you okay?” She bent even closer.

  I opened my mouth to tell her I was okay. “You’re so beautiful,” I said instead. Where the hell did that come from? Clearly, I had scrambled my brain in the fall.

  El didn’t draw back. She didn’t let go of my face, either. That felt really nice.

  “So are you,” she said. Her voice sounded funny . . . kind of husky. Maybe my hearing got messed up, too?

  “I can’t do this, El.” Was it getting darker in there? Or had El somehow managed to block out all the light. Her eyes were boring into mine like laser beams.

  “Can’t do what?” she whispered.

  “Get involved with you,” I answered.

  “Are we getting involved?” she asked. Her lips were nearly touching mine.

  I ran my hands up her back and pulled her the rest of the way down. “Oh, god, I hope so . . .”

  We stayed there on the floor like that, kissing, for what felt like an hour. How much further we would have gone is anybody’s guess, but we never got the chance to find out. Just as I started to work my hands up under her t-shirt, there was a huge commotion outside. We heard alarms going off and the sound of voices shouting. Well . . . one voice shouting: T-Bomb’s.

  El drew back. She was breathing hard. Her lips looked wet and puffy and positively edible. “What the hell was that?”

  I was out of breath, too. “The drive-off alarm . . . somebody took off without paying.”

  She sighed and dropped her head to my chest.

  There was a loud banging at the door.

  “Friday? You still in there?” It was T-Bomb. The doorknob rattled. “That damn Buzz Sheets took off with the nozzle still stuck in his gas tank. Asshole. It’s pandemonium out here.” The knob shook again. “This dern thing is stuck. Lemme get something to force it open.” More rattling. “Friday?”

  “Yeah,” I called out. “We’re still in here. Go get help.” There was no response right away.

  “Is El DeBarge in there with you?” T-Bomb asked in a low voice.

  El gave me a hopeless look. “Yes. We’re both stuck.”

  I could hear T-Bomb snort. “You got that part right, sister. You two just hang on, and I’ll go get a pry bar.”

  El sat up and tugged her t-shirt down. I followed suit.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she said. It sounded sincere.

  “You are? Why?”

  I was feeling a lot of things right then, but sorry wasn’t one of them.

  She looked at me. “You’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that this isn’t part of my job.”

  “What makes you think I thought it was?”

  She shrugged. “I know what people say about us.”

  “What people?”

  She nodded toward the door. “T-Bomb. Luanne.” She lowered her eyes. “Everybody.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. Especially since it was true.

  “It’s okay. We’re not doing anything wrong.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  I smiled at her. “Not yet.”

  She leaned into me. “It’s not going to be good for you to be seen with me.”

  “I know.”

  “I have to do my job, Friday Jill.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  I put my arm around her. “You mean besides stuck in the bathroom at Fast Mart?”

  She pinched me on the thigh. “Smart ass.”

  “What I do outside of work is my own business, El. Nobod
y else’s.”

  “Uh huh. And you really think that won’t change if people find out you’re involved with a labor organizer?”

  “Are we involved?”

  “I thought we settled that.”

  “In that case, are you busy on Tuesday night?”

  She gave me an uncertain look. “I don’t think so . . .”

  “Good.” I tugged her closer. “I hope you like pot roast.”

  Before El could ask me what in the hell I was talking about, T-Bomb returned with her pry bar, and our conversation was at an end.

  Chapter 4

  Things were crazy at work on Monday. There was word that some of the Ogata people were coming in at the end of the month to meet with senior management about laying the groundwork for the transition. The rumors were spreading like wildfire. Buzz was all over the line supervisors to get things cleaned up and squared away—like any of us ever left things like that undone. We didn’t. The only problems we ever had came from him, and others of his ilk who thought they could slough off their responsibilities and ignore the serious safety violations that kept cropping up because they insisted on hiring and protecting guys like Earl Junior. Already, I’d had to move two skids of oil filters out of the way after Earl Junior decided to park them in front of the fire extinguishers next to the axle welding station.

  I’d had enough of this negligence. If management wouldn’t do anything about Earl Junior, I’d just have to take it up with Pauline. So what if I got creamed corn for the rest of my life? Things needed to change before somebody got seriously hurt.

  Buzz saw me heading for the cafeteria on my break and rushed over to cut me off the pass.

  “Just where in the hell do you think you’re going?” He was out of breath. But that wasn’t unusual. Even standing up from a chair winded him.

  I held up my arm to show him Grammy’s watch. “Lunch, Buzz. Heard of it?”

  “Not on my time.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize my break was classified as your time.”

  “It is when the Japs are coming to town. Nobody gets a break until everything is in tip-top shape.”

  Japs? Oh, yeah. Buzz was going to fare really well with the new owners.

  “Buzz . . . everything in my area is in perfect order. So go annoy somebody else.”

  I started to walk away from him but he grabbed hold of me.

  “Let go of me, Buzz.” I jerked my arm free.

  “Look, Fryman. Gettin’ your axle greased by that union bitch don’t give you any right to act all high and mighty in here. I’m still in charge.”

  I bit back my first response, which was to tell him to fuck off. I knew Buzz well enough to know that sinking to his level would just escalate his rude behavior.

  “I’m glad you mentioned axles,” I said. “Because your protégée left about two tons of stock parked in front of the extinguishers at the welding station.”

  Buzz waved a hand. “So what? We have backups for that. They’re called redundancies. Ever heard of those, Fryman?”

  “The only thing redundant around here is you. You’re worthless, Buzz.”

  “We’ll see how worthless I am when I write your ass up for insubordination.” Buzz was really getting pissed off at me. I could see that little vein in his forehead starting to pop out. It looked like a piece of angry clothesline.

  “Fine.” I’d had enough of his empty threats. I was his best line supervisor, and he knew it. “Then I might as well take twice as long on my break. I mean . . . if you’re writing me up, you can just add that to my list of offenses, too.” I walked away from him.

  “I’m not finished with you yet, Fryman!” he called after me.

  I waved a hand over my head. “Buzz off, Buzz.”

  He yelled something else, but by then, I was far enough away for the ambient noise of the machinery to drown out what he said.

  Asshole. I pushed open the door that led to the company cafeteria. Luanne was in there, seated at one of the blue-topped Formica tables, wolfing down a plate of . . . something. She saw me and waved me over.

  I looked down at her mostly empty plate. Tannish-yellow chunks of something unrecognizable were floating in a pool of thick-looking gravy.

  “What on earth is that?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “I blasted Pauline about Earl Junior parking his damn Pinto across three spaces in the lot this morning.” She lifted another spoonful of the gelatinous muck. “She didn’t much care for it.”

  “So I see.”

  Luanne glanced up at the big wall clock. “It ain’t like you to take a lunch break. What’s going on?”

  “Buzz is getting on my last nerve.” I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Now I’m not even hungry.”

  “Well,” Luanne ran the crust of a slice of white bread around the edge of her plate, “I wish you could’ve gone outside and had a smoke for me, then. I don’t know as I can make it another two hours ’til my next break.”

  “Why don’t you invest in one of those nicotine patches?”

  Luanne snorted. “Hell. I’d have to daisy chain about twenty of those damn things together to cover enough real estate to do my cravings any good.”

  “I don’t think they work that way, Lu. It’s more a timed-release kind of thing.”

  “The only damned timed-release I give two flips about is the one that’s gonna spring my son early from Branchville.”

  I nodded. Luanne’s son was serving a ten-month stretch for nonpayment of child support. The penalty was so stiff because it was his third offense. Luanne and Jay maintained that Jay Jr. was right not to pay off his scheming Jezebel wife because her kids didn’t even look like their son.

  “Jay Jr. doing okay?”

  “He was the last time I seen him.” She shook her head. “He’s just sick about missing Pork Day, what with Jailissa being such a contender and all.”

  “I bet.”

  Luanne sighed. “Well. It don’t pay no never mind to get all het up about things we can’t control.” She looked at me. “Just like you and that union agitator.”

  I blinked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, hell. Like you don’t know that everybody in six counties is talkin’ about you and that El DeBarge gettin’ locked up in the bathroom at Fast Mart yesterday.”

  I sighed. “How did you hear about that?”

  Luanne threw her head back and damn near bayed herself right off her seat. “You gotta be kiddin’ me? You don’t think that asshole Buzz Sheets burned rubber getting’ back to Hoosier Daddy trailin’ this tasty little tale, along with that gas nozzle?”

  I rested my head in my hands. “Oh, god . . .”

  Buzz blabbing about what happened was nothing compared to the way my parents reacted when they heard that their regular unleaded pump was going to be out of service for half the week.

  Luanne wasn’t finished. “And that was after he told everybody at Buster Collins’s funeral about it.”

  “Oh, god . . .”

  “I told you to stay away from her, didn’t I?”

  “Luanne . . .”

  “But you had to go and get yourself all hot and bothered.”

  “Luanne . . .”

  “And now you’ll be lucky if you don’t find your truck packed in cow shit every night when you leave this joint.”

  “Judas Priest, Luanne!” I raised my voice, and two-dozen other heads bent over plates of creamed corn pivoted to look over at us. “Will you just shut up about it, already?” I hissed.

  She was shaking her over-permed head. “I got nothin’ else to say about this, so I’ll just say that you need to watch yourself, missy. You might think these assholes around here are just dumb farmers, but they’re smart enough to know the signs of a fox rootin’ around in the henhouse. You don’t straighten up and fly right, you’ll be picking buckshot outta your backside.” She lowered her voice. “El DeBarge, too.” She pushed her chair back and struggled to her feet. “I got
nothin’ else to say about it.”

  I sighed. “She’s really not like that, Lu. Really.”

  Luanne collected her plate and silverware. “Not like what?”

  “Not like people think. She’s not using me.”

  Luanne looked at me like I’d just said I was the first person in the plant to carry on with Misty Ann Marks.

  “You just keep tellin’ yourself them fairy stories. I gotta get back to the line.”

  I got up, too.

  “See you later at Hoosier Daddy?” I asked.

  “You know it,” Luanne said. She dropped her plate and silverware into one of the big dish bins near the exit. Then she disappeared out into the plant.

  I still had a few minutes to spare, so I thought I’d go ahead and grab something to eat and try to talk with Pauline. I was sincerely worried about Earl Junior’s lapses. They seemed to be increasing in number. Whatever people thought about Pauline in general, it was clear that she loved her son. I knew she wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him, or, hopefully, to anyone else because of him. I decided that compromising the health of my digestive tract was worth the risk.

  I walked over to the steam table and picked up a tray.

  Pauline was back there, resplendent in her stained white apron and hair net.

  “Hey, Pauline,” I called out. “What’s good today?”

  She rapped the edge of a big aluminum cistern with a spoon. “Got some fresh S.O.S.” She jerked her platinum blond head toward a small side table covered with platters of white bread. “Got some sourdough for it, too.”

  “I think I’ll pass on that . . . I don’t do too well with gravy. Anything I can eat on the fly?” I held up my arm and showed her my watch. “I’m just about outta time.”

  “How about one of them potato empanadas, over there? They just come outta the deep fryer.”

  God . . . in for a penny, in for a pound. “Great. Nobody makes those as good as you.”

  She smiled and walked over to slap one on a plate. It nearly slid off, and left a shiny trail of grease in its wake.

  I figured I could always feed it to Fritz later on . . . he loved Pauline’s leftovers.

  “Anything with it?” she asked. “Tartar sauce or salsa?”

  “Um. No. That’ll do me.” I reached out to take the plate from her. “Pauline . . . I did want to mention something to you about Earl Junior. I’m kinda worried about him.”