I figured that I should include a little “(poem)” thing in my title from now on, as to allievate any idea that I might be posting something on here that's not.
This'll be the last one for the month, kids. Enjoy.
No Sudden Movements
Fat Johnny came
into work that morning in bright red sweatpants and his
company visor.
He pulled up a stool and turned to Fergal, the shift
manager.
My fucking Impala’s got a loose
timing belt, Fat Johnny said.
Fergal said something about Fat Johnny’s
fat ass and it was left at that until it
was lunch time and the snow was blistering the
rain spouting again.
Sparkling little cocaine
piles collected in the sewage ditches
and waited be sullied by
the salt trucks or melted, more humanely Fat Johnny thought,
by the midday sun. He was looking out the big, square-paned window
and sitting with the
Guys-on-Break at the lunch room’s only
table: a white and green plastic deal that one of the guys named
Smelly Chuck had bought for twenty-some dollars at a yard sale.
It was too small for four men of
usual size so of course it was too small
for three men and Fat Johnny.
Fergal was about to bitch,
but his eyes returned to his dark, flavorless coffee;
there were never any customers
when it snowed and he was too hungover
to keep up with the gruff pretenses of earlier that
day.
Ain’t it
beautiful, Fat Johnny said, pointing out at the little
white tufts and crunching
up
the two cardboard boxes that he had quickly
sucked the meat out of. He lit
a menthol.
After a few horsecoughs and a few drags he
said it again, Ain’t it fucking
beautiful, guys?
And nobody
said anything again.
So that was it.
Fat Johnny finally got it: he was
pissin them off. But
this time, nobody got
rough. Nobody
said anything about his fat fucking
neck or the fact that he wore a belt the size of
Saturn’s rings.
They only sat there like
greasy
unctuous statues.
Surprised and
strangely depressed, Fat
Johnny tossed his extra packets of mayo into the
big
dirty-yellow steel drum in the break room and returned to
the counter to flip through a TV Guide.
Outside the Go Mart, the salt
trucks were pulling in;
some drivers needed gas,
some needed
cigarettes.