Forget who you believe. Forget which side you’re on. The real question is what do you want. Do you want a safe community, a safe country? Do you want to go to sleep at night without having to worry who’s going to break into your house? Do you want your kids safe at school? If you have a daughter, do you want her around boys culturally aligned with her ?
These are real questions that Americans face today. These are questions brought about by leaders who have no skin in the game that everyday Americans live in.
Last night you heard the president speak. Today the reports are that the fact checkers have found no real inaccuracies in what he said, particularly regarding the statistics on the crimes, the arrests, the drug deaths, etc. that he referred to.
After the president spoke, if you were watching TV and were tuned into it, you saw Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer speak. They said what they always say. They criticized the president, were wholly devoid of facts and spoke the hollow words of how they are for border security and a safe America. Such words are hollow coming from their mouths because they have completely reversed their course on the positions they used to have regarding border security so as to play politics. Their goal is only to deny the president any appearance of fulfilling one of his major campaign promises. The American people be damned!
That’s all this is from the left side. Politics. It’s mostly what it is from the right side too, and it’s very often what it is from the president, politics pure and simple. However, there are times when the goals of the politics and the goals of the people actually coincide. Perhaps, just perhaps, such is the case regarding the president’s positions on national security, the border, immigration, the economy and America’s standing in the world.
So there it is. Which one do you want?
Altogether, these questions don’t even scratch the surface. Last week, when Nancy Pelosi banged the gavel opening the new session of the Congress for which she is the Speaker of the House, number three in line to the presidency, her grandchildren were up there with her. So here’s the real question. Have her grandchildren in any one single one way been affected by the Democrats’ policies on immigration and border security she and Chuck Schumer so avidly seem to now support? She’s worth more than $115 million. What do you think? You think her grandchildren live in the same world you live in, go to the same schools your kids go to?
That’s the real issue. In today’s world in America the leaders lead but are not subject to the conditions they create or the laws they make.
So which one do you want? Do you want your government to protect you and do you want your leaders to be subject to the same conditions under which you live? Or do you want them to systematically divide you such that they can continue to live in “the gated cities” as depicted in movies like The Hunger Games?
Forget the left or the right. Think about what you want for America and figure out which America you want.
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By Peter Weiss
Turns out they were done. When Esserine asked her question about being finished, Bill stood close to Arlene a moment and looked at her. If they’d been alone in the kitchen, or if it had been Marie over on the pantry station, he might have reached for Arlene. He might not have. So he looked at her, studied her, then asked her to go out and ask Tommy if he could close up.
Arlene studied Bill a moment too. She was feeling him out just as he was feeling her out, and turns out they were both deciding whether or not they were going to do anything. At least for the moment it was a standoff, so Arlene turned from Bill and headed out through the front doors into the front dining room.
She came back two minutes later. She carried a beer and walked around the counter onto the line to put the beer down by where Bill stood.
“Tommy says we’re done,” she said.
“Okay,” said Bill. Then, to Esserine, he said, “We’re done, you can go down and change. I’ll come down as soon as you come up.”
When Esserine had left the kitchen, there they were again, Bill and Arlene standing together almost touching. Bill looked at Arlene, wondering if he should kiss her. After all, he thought, they were alone in the kitchen and had a moment, but only a moment because if Arlene stayed in the kitchen too long Tommy would come to see what she was doing.
“What?” she asked.
“I was wondering if I should kiss you,” said Bill. “That’s why I was looking at you. I was thinking.”
“You could,” said Arlene.
Bill leaned in toward her and kissed her once, a gentle kiss on the mouth. Then he put his arms around her and reached one hand down her back to her buttocks.
The second kiss was decidedly more intimate, a feeling-out of tongues. It lasted as a kiss would, and while it lasted Bill slid his hand up under her skirt.
“That okay?” he asked.
“Is it obligatory?” Arlene asked.
“Not at all,” said Bill. “All you have to do is say no. If you don’t want to be touched, I won’t touch you. If you want to be touched, tell me so.”
“I want to be touched,” said Arlene. She stepped in even closer to Bill and kissed him harder than they had been kissing. “But not right now, not right here. Let’s set a time and date.”
Bill fondled her a moment until they stepped away from each other, not hastily but agreeably. He took a sip of his beer and offered it to Arlene.
“You do drugs?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” said Arlene.
“Which ones?”
“Pot. Downers. Acid sometimes. Why you asking?”
“Just want to know what I should bring when we get together.”
“We going to get together?” Arlene asked.
“Maybe.” said Bill. “You’re going to have to be the one to make it happen.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I don’t pressure anyone into anything. I’m not like Drenovis.”
“You find me attractive?”
“You think we’d be having this conversation if I didn’t?”
“Okay,” said Arlene. “Understood.” She leaned in and kissed Bill on his cheek then turned and left the kitchen.
Alone, Bill finished his beer. Then he went around back to make sure everything was properly covered. Seeing it was, he put it away into the ice box.
Even before he was done doing this, Esserine came back into the kitchen in her civvies. She had her coat on and her purse draped over her arm. “I’m out of here,” she said. “Come let me out and lock the back door behind me.”
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By Peter Weiss
Man is by nature selfish and greedy. My father-in-law used to say this. He said it in relation to what he observed in the course of his life. It seems pretty poignant especially nowadays but it has probably always been poignant.
Selfishness and greed are only part of what has brought us to where we are. Another big part of it is the desire for power. It seems pretty clear that they all play in the sandbox together: selfishness and greed lead to acquiring wealth, and money is power. Sometimes power is power and that’s where politics seems to come in. Ask the Clintons about this one.
In our time, now, we have the advent of the political class in America, those lifetime politicians whose one and only goal seems to be securing reelection, hence Political Darwinism, survival of the fittest, the fittest being the most able to get reelection, most able to stay in power. Ask Andrew Cuomo about this one. Ask him about nepotism. Ask the Kennedys and the Bushs and Cheneys too. They are only some of the nepotism beneficiaries. Cuomo has it best, though, with his brother a shill for him on CNN.
And so it goes.
The truly powerful today are the very wealthy on the one hand and those in the leadership/law business on the other, the politicians, judges and even some lawyers, particularly the ones who become prosecutors, district attorneys and lawyers to the politicians. They are all people who have within their simple and sometimes singular discretion the ability to destroy many lives with a stroke of the pen and/or pass laws (or not pass them) which affect a multitude of people.
One spectacular image: John McCain’s thumbs down vote on repealing Obamacare.
Of course it’s all more complicated than any one way of looking at it, so surely there are others who could be put on the powerful list. But for here, now, the focus is Political Darwinism, the survival of the fittest politicians and political parties, or those who manage to keep power and wield it.
Political Darwinism.
For those of us who lived through it and/or those who studied it, we were forewarned about Soviet society in which only two classes existed, the rich leadership (the Politburo) and the poor people. You had to be born into that Politburo class. You couldn’t just work hard and get into it. We were taught that leadership class was inherently evil because it suppressed freedom and raped the very people it was supposed to protect of all their wealth.
So here we are some thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union. In our public schools and our colleges we are now taught that capitalism is evil, socialism is good. What’s more, beyond any sense of reason, we’ve allowed the American Politburo to rise to power.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Make no mistake about it! The only purpose of most, if not almost all of our politicians and of both the political parties in America today is to secure power and keep it.
The American Politburo is pure Darwinism at its worst, the survival of a class of people whose only value is to keep power at any cost, even if the cost is to disavow the very purpose for which it was created.
Divide and conquer. Keep them poor. Make laws for them from which we are exempt. These are their unwritten and unspoken mottoes.
In the old days, they used to say “keep them barefoot and pregnant,” which referred to women and meant keep them poor and tied down. This is the very same goal of the American Politburo today.
Political Darwinism!
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By Peter Weiss
originally posted in June 2016
Let’s not kid ourselves. The standards of ethics in America are greatly diminished if not just about gone. As it turns out, the greatest and richest nation ever, the one that promises freedom and the ability to “be all you can be” appears to be ending up like all other nations that made great promises to its peoples, a true disappointment. The reason is simple: man is by nature selfish and greedy.
l know most talk like this falls on deaf ears now, and this means the progression of the downward spiral which is our descent into oblivion, into the land of the Walking Dead, is so far under way that we may not be able to reverse it. Part of the reason so many of the ears are deaf is that in America now almost half of the people are on the take. These people, many of them, anyway, don’t need to be on the take and are scamming the government and at the same time abusing the hard-working, tax-paying citizens who are flitting the bill for them.
This is a simple fact and a sad one, one not even needing verification here since Welfare fraud, Medicare fraud and Food Stamp fraud is well documented. Sometimes it’s not even the people’s faults since in today’s lack-of-ethics America they’ve been taught they are deserving of their benefits, that those who have owe them their free ride, that they are entitled to anything and everything they can get. But they should know better. They should know that if you can’t afford it, you don’t buy it. It’s actually quite simple. Sometimes it’s a tough and bitter pill, but it is what it is.
Most of the people who have, by far the vast majority of them, only “have” because along the way they have sacrificed and made choices. They wore K-Mart shoes, not hundred-dollar Nikes, so they could save to buy a house. They went to State and City colleges so they didn’t run up terrible student debt. They worked two or three jobs and lots of overtime to get ahead. This is the reality of the majority of the haves. They are regular people who have worked their butts off and scrimped and saved to get ahead so as to live the dream. They didn’t get stuck on “things aren’t fair” or say “you owe me.” And they didn’t fall prey to selfish and greedy politicians who used them for votes by telling them they were owed something.
We hear it over and over again, how people have run up over a hundred thousand dollars in student-loan debt and can’t pay it back. First, if they’re smart enough to go through college, they’re smart enough to understand about finances and debt. But worse, the dishonest, greedy, vote-seeking panderer politicians tell them it’s the big banks’ faults and that they, the borrowers, are not to blame. They were entitled to go to college. And so they call for more government control and more regulation. But the government is comprised of people and man is by nature selfish and greedy. Therefore, the government is by nature selfish and greedy. And even if you don’t like the logic, just look at the government, and then look at the candidates, all of them, and the decline of ethics in America is as clear as purified water.
Man is by nature selfish and greedy. In today’s America our standards of ethics are on a rapid decline caused by the selfish and greedy leaders, what I call The American Politburo, and if we don’t work ourselves out of this ethical descent we will find ourselves in the end stages of what could have been the greatest country ever.
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By Peter Weiss
Everything is a salad. In all his years in the kitchens, Bill would discover that when it came to eating, everything was a salad. Shrimp salad. Chicken salad. Chef’s salad. He rarely ever ate a meal in and of itself, even after only a few months in kitchens.
Lunch at the steakhouse was usually a roast beef sandwich. He didn’t eat dinner except maybe to take a few bites of meat he cut for one of the waitresses. But when he did take a plate, it was usually a salad into which he put a selection of different things like a meat, a cheese, some olives, maybe some shrimp or chicken or tuna or any combination he felt like at any given time. Sometimes he would just pop cocktail shrimp into his mouth a half dozen at a shot, one after the next. He’d stand over by the pantry, pick a shrimp, dip it in cocktail sauce, pop it in his mouth whole, over and over until he’d had enough.
Bill would discover women were like salads too. They were mixed, mixed colors, mixed textures, mixed treasures. Like the meats or the shrimp, they were all the same but they were all different.
Arlene was his first redhead. She was a redhead all over, he would discover. Just another addition to his salad.
“Wow,” she said when all was quiet in the kitchen, when the remaining three dishwashers, Paulie, the hyperactive kid, Jimmy, the would-be pimp, and Andy, the one with the roaming eye, had finished and were gone off in the van to downtown. She had brought Bill another beer and she stood on the opposite side of the serving counter.
“Yeah. Wow,” said Bill.
“Bebe told me what she saw. Far out.”
“Much more than trippy,” said Bill. “Good thing I wasn’t too drunk or messed up on top of being drunk.”
“Were you scared?” Arlene asked.
“You asking me if I need a hug?”
“No. Do you?”
“You want to hug me?”
“Why would I?”
“Just checking it out.”
“You want to hug me?” Arlene looked at Bill from across the counter. “I’m very huggable.”
“I’ll bet you are.”
“I heard that downstairs some wild things go on.”
“Did you now?”
“I sure did. And I heard that many times you were part of those wild things.”
“How old are you?” Bill asked.
“About to be twenty.”
“You go to school?”
“I did, but I dropped out because I couldn’t afford the fees.” Arlene shifted her weight on her feet and looked down toward the floor then back up at Bill. “I plan to go back when I save some money,” she said.
“You got a boyfriend?”
“Not really.”
“How come you don’t work nights?” Bill asked.
“I have a sick mother. I like to be home with her as much as I can. During the day she gets help.”
“How come you don’t have a boyfriend?” Bill asked.
“Why does a girl need a boyfriend? Anyway, maybe I like girls.”
“Do you?”
“Nope.” Arlene smiled and walked around the counter. She sidled up to Bill and stood almost touching him. “I like guys,” she said. “But what makes everyone think a girl needs someone? Maybe some girls just like to be alone.”
“You like to be alone?”
“Most of the time.”
Bill didn’t say anything. He leaned against the counter and lit himself a cigarette. He understood that there must not have been any customers outside if Arlene, all by herself on the floor, were able to be here in the kitchen. He wanted to ask, but he didn’t bother.
Esserine had finished up all the work and double checked that her station was ready to close. The last thing she did was flip the stainless steel top down over her counter. She was ready to go downstairs to change.
“We done?” Esserine asked.
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By Peter Weiss
originally posted in November 2018
They can accept 32 different genders. They can accept that Elizabeth Warren is an Indian. Pocahontas! They can accept that a boy of fifteen is allowed to walk into a girl’s dressing room because he says he feels like a girl on that particular morning. They can accept just about anything, no matter how preposterous, as long as it fits in with their narrative, with their beliefs, with their vision of how America should be according to them.
But they can’t accept that maybe, just maybe, their vision of how America should be isn’t the vision shared by the mainstream, Joe Q Average American, that same mainstream Joe Q Average American family who voted for Donald Trump. In not accepting that “maybe,” they’ve become Election Deniers and are willing to challenge the very pillars of our democracy.
The Democrats simply can’t believe that America isn’t the way they say it is and want to force it to be. They simply can’t believe that most Americans, regardless of race and ethnicity, believe in simple, straight-forward old-fashioned American values, values like believing in God and being allowed to express such a belief, even in a Judeo-Christian God. They simply can’t believe that most Americans want safety, secured borders, good jobs and good education for their kids. They simply can’t believe that most Americans are tired of the PC police, are tired of the false narratives (Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, for one) they’ve been yelling at us for over fifty years, narratives that are belied by the results of their failed policies.
The Democrat story is that of that naked emperor whose subjects were too afraid to tell him he was naked though everyone could see it but him. He thought he had the most beautiful set of new clothes on and insisted everyone agree how beautiful they were.
The Democrats repeat over and over that they speak for America and that they are imposing their will on America because all America agrees with them.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
So they’ve become election deniers and disruptors whose only goals are to discredit the President, undermine his presidency and disrupt everything he does even if it means ripping apart the very foundations upon which America was founded.
For Obama, who has consistently shown himself to be petty and spiteful, maybe it’s payback for Trump’s birther-issue stuff even more than trying to protect his legacy, a legacy only he thinks, like that naked emperor, is a good one.
The more the Democrats hold to the moral high ground they assume they possess, the more lowdown they become and are seen to be. As election deniers and disruptors, the more they deny, the greater the chance they lose more and more of their support base and their power, precisely what they most fear.
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By Peter Weiss
This morning we had a little coating of snow. For us, it was really a little nothing, maybe at most a half inch, more likely about a quarter inch. Still, I spent about an hour shoveling it away so that when the temperature rose above freezing everything would disappear.
These days, whenever I go out to shovel snow I always wonder what it was like for my father when he was a POW in World War II. He was in Stalag III B Furstenberg for more than three years. He was a Jew in Nazi Germany.
So here’s how it goes. It was about 16 degrees. I put on two sweatshirts over my undershirt and T-shirt. I put on my boots, gloves and a ski cap. I went outside and chose one of the three different snow shovels I have and I went to work.
So far, so good.
But then I started to wonder what kind of work the Germans made my father do. I know the weather there was every bit as bad as the winters are here and so I suppose there was shoveling to do and other kinds of work outdoors. I started to wonder if he had gloves. I wondered if he had boots. I know the Germans stole everything of value from the Americans. I wondered if he had a hat. I wondered if he even had a coat. I wondered if he had a shovel or if he had to get down on his knees and scrape away the snow with his hands. I wondered if he got blisters on his hands if they went untreated.
Next, I wondered what happened to those who couldn’t work. The Germans didn’t care how the Americans felt and forced them to work. I know the POWs were treated better than the concentration camp prisoners because the Germans understood that the Americans had German prisoners too.
I only have imaginings for most of these things, wonderings. Of course there are accountings and studies of the plights of the American POWs, but even so none of them could tell me exactly what it was like for my father. And so I wondered as I worked. When one of my hands went numb, something that’s been happening to me lately, I shook it off and stood still for a moment. I wondered if standing still for a moment before the Germans meant some kind of chastisement or punishment, or even worse. In the concentration camps if you couldn’t work you were killed.
So then I started to think that the president is talking tonight. And I started to think of all the garbage from both sides of the aisle that has been going on in our country. I started to think of the Holocaust deniers, of the fact that certain factions of our country allow elderly Americans to have to eat cat food yet permit spending more than $70,000 a year on each and every illegal alien. I recalled that my own child was recently denied free lunch because where I live has been overwrought by illegal aliens such that the state had to change the standards for direct lunch certification which means I now have to pay not only for lunch for my special-needs daughter but I have to pay for lunch for the illegal aliens too.
Finally I wondered when the last time Nancy Pelosi or any of the members of the American Politburo, you know, that millionaires club our leaders belong to, had to do any yard work, had to shovel snow had or to worry about their children even being around illegal aliens.
And then I came inside to find out that the Democrats had already called the president a liar even before he gave his speech and that they had demanded equal time to rebut what he has to say.
Lastly, I wondered what my father would’ve thought of this, of where we have come to in the last 30 years.
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By Peter Weiss
originally posted in October, 2018
It’s not cool to look at history these days. Nowadays, it’s much easier to see something on social media and press a few buttons to post it as if it were fact. History is being revised and rewritten. This is one of the greatest modern dangers being pushed by the leftist Democrat supporters and being tolerated, hence accepted by the Democratic party. Not only is revisionist history a modern danger. It is a clear threat to America’s existence as a free country.
Another of the greatest modern dangers and threats to America is the readily apparent bias in the media. When more than the 90 percent of the stories about the President, like him or not, are negative, bias is pretty obvious. Then of course there are the narratives, quite false for the most part, that are continually pushed. You know, the racist narrative and the collusion narrative.
Most despicable is the comparison to Hitler and the overtly calling him Hitler-like. This is offensive to everyone who actually suffered through what Hitler did. It especially insults and belittles the actions of our WWII heroes and their remaining families. Here again is the demeaning and negative work of the Democrats and their blatant disregard for America and the American people.
The Democrats should be calling for an unbiased mainstream media. Their not doing so only underscores their lack of concern for the country and their acceptance of the support of a biased media hiding behind the First Amendment. Bias in the media is antithetical to what America stands for.
A third great modern danger and threat to America was played out in the Kavanaugh hearings. It was/is the disregard for innocent until proven guilty, the main tenet of the American justice system. As in the Russian collusion debacle, now, after the fact, we hear the stories of how NBC sat on definitive evidence that Avenati’s client—the one who made claims of Kavanaugh’s spiking the punch at the ten gang-rape parties—was not telling the truth. Yes, they had evidence to debunk those claims but held it back. Ring a bell? NBC has done that before, recently too.
A fourth great modern danger and threat to America is the continual attacks on America’s institutions. The Democrats now call for abolishing the Electoral College, abolishing ICE and disregarding law and order. They call for sanctuary cities. They advocate for allowing illegal aliens to vote, hold office and collect welfare and social security benefits. They hide the costs of these things to the American public and allow illegal alien criminals to prey upon the populace. The media assist the Democrats here too by perpetrating the false narrative that “those poor people” are all innocents. In fact, their very first acts in America are to break the law and then hide from it.
The Democrats would have us believe the real threats we face are global warming (now called climate change) and Russia. In fact, the real threats to America are their relentless disregard for the rule of law and the continual undermining of the very institutions upon which America was founded.
When the Democrats’ desire for power is so great they are willing to allow history to be rewritten, bias in the media to be perpetuated and the very institutions upon which America was founded to continually be attacked, we are in real peril.
Later Bill would remember his second night in the workhouse when the tough approached him. He would remember the tough asking him what he was in for. He’d remember his answer, the answer that rolled off the tip of his tongue without him ever thinking about it.
“Assault and battery.”
“Who’d you beat up?” the tough asked. “Your wife?”
“A cop,” Bill said, upon which the tough had looked at him, thought a moment then backed off.
Bill would remember that his first thought was God had put those words into his mouth. He could never have thought of them on his own. He would never have thought of them on his own. God had spoken. God was good.
Well, God had shown himself again and God had spoken for him again, only this time he’d spoken in the form of an action.
When things like this happen, time gets screwed up. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion but really only a few seconds transpired. The whole interplay between Jim and Bill lasted less than half a minute, probably more like fifteen seconds and a big part of those seconds was the pause when they stood staring at each other.
Even before the stare-down Paul, Mickey and Esserine were aware of what was happening. They were frozen. They’d frozen at the sound of Jim’s voice. Esserine thought to run for help, but she dared not move, afraid her movement would upset the balance. Paulie and Mickey stood still, the dish machine still working.
Expressionless, Jim took a step forward. Bill cocked the pot, preparing to throw the hot grease. Poker faced, Bill locked his eyes on Jim’s.
But God wasn’t finished with Bill just yet. At the height of the stare-down, Jim with the knife in hand, Bill with the heavy stock pot filled with scalding French-fry grease in hand, the grease about 350 degrees Fahrenheit, the automatic doors opened and Bebe stepped in with her dinner plate. She was about to put it by the dishwasher. She also held a pitcher of soda and she was starting to say “Hi all, I got you some…” But her last words trailed off because being as sharp as any of the knives, Bebe quickly assessed the situation and shrewdly turned and exited the kitchen.
Jim knew it was over now. He backed off slowly, dropped the knife to the floor, uttered incomprehensible chatter under his breath.
Bill watched the knife bounce up in the air off the rubber mats. When it landed, he set down the grease pot but stood by it waiting for Tommy. He did not relax until Tommy had taken Jim downstairs to change clothes, and then, with purpose, he went through the dining room to the bar, drank down two double bourbons which Bebe gladly poured for him.
Back in the kitchen, he picked up the knife, sheathed it, drank another beer then went to work on the second fryer, finishing it as quickly as he could. While he was working, Tommy came up and escorted Jim out of the kitchen through the doors to the side dining room. He was taking Jim to the office where he would keep him until a taxi arrived and he could send him off back to downtown Columbus.
“It was only a matter of time,” Tommy said later.
“I did my best,” said Bill. “I tried not to get him canned. God knows I know what it’s like to need a job.”
“Wasn’t anything you did or could have done. Don’t take it on yourself.”
Tommy drew himself a coffee before he left the kitchen. Standing over by the coffee urns, near to Esserine, he stood a moment and sipped his coffee. He took in the whole of the kitchen, all of which he could see from where he stood.
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By Peter Weiss
While Bebe’s steak cooked, Bill lugged that pot of hot grease out the back door where he dumped it into the grease barrel. He did it quickly because the grills were hot and the steak would cook in no time. For that reason he had it placed toward the front.
When Arlene returned, she came around again and put the glass of bourbon and the beer on Bill’s cutting board atop the meat reach-in. She stood there a moment not knowing what else to do, but then Bill told her go back around to pick up Bebe’s dinner. As she did so, he plated the steak, got her a baked potato and some veggies which he smothered in butter that quickly melted. Then he slid the plate up under the warmer lights.
“Anything else you need?” Arlene asked.
Bill took a good look at her and said, “What else you giving?”
Arlene flushed red. She was as young as Bill and maybe a little naïve. She shifted her weight as she reached for the plate, but before she could say anything, Esserine started talking bible talk about the fornicators. “Meats for the belly…,” Esserine started. She went on and finished with, “Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.”
Arlene flushed more red now and she wasn’t even fornicating. She bowed herself quickly, stepped away toward the automatic doors and on out of the kitchen.
“You’re cramping my style,” said Bill.
Esserine smiled a sly smile. “Don’t you have to finish that grease?” she asked.
Bill took a big sip of the bourbon and chased it down with beer. Then he went back to work, washed out the one fryer, placed the cube of grease inside and lit her up. Then he emptied the dirty water from the stock pot and shut down the second fryer. Carefully, he drained the grease from it.
That done, he finished the bourbon in the glass and brought the glass over to the dish machine. Then he finished his beer.
Lorraine brought him another beer a few moments later when she came in to say good night. She was supposed to be closing girl, but Arlene said she’d do it because she didn’t work nights much and she wanted to learn all there was about the shift. Tommy’d said he didn’t care if they switched.
Lorraine blew Bill a kiss from across the counter. If Marie had been there instead of Esserine, Lorraine would’ve come around the counter and kissed Bill good night. As it was, this had to do.
As soon as Lorraine had left the kitchen, Bill went back to work. He saw Jim moving out of the corner of his eye, but he’d gone down on his knees to clean up the bottom of the fryer where he’d spilled some grease. He was lining it with towels, pleasantly high from the bourbon and beer.
That’s when time stopped.
“You royal French Canadian cocksucker.”
That’s what Bill heard, clear as anything he’d ever heard before.
Hearing it, recognizing Jim’s voice, he stood up immediately and saw Jim by the knife sheath.
“Could have shared that whiskey,” Jim said. Then, “Punk ass, nigger-loving kid,” he said. He drew a knife from the knife sheath and knife in hand, he stepped on the line and moved toward Bill.
Bill reacted instinctively. Before he could think to do it, he lifted the big pot of grease and tilted it ready to throw. Staring Jim down, he said, “C’mon Motherfucker.” He waited, praying Jim would back off, praying he didn’t have to throw that grease.
Jim froze where he stood. “You wouldn’t,” he said.
“Try me,” said Bill.
