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rabarrington@hotmail.com
...in and out of here...I can't get them out of my hair."
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Dear Jane,
The painters arrived early Sunday morning. They set about the job right away. First they scraped down the old paint that had begun to peel away from the wood. White paint chips littered down onto my flower borders. By 9 a.m., the sun glistening off their skin, they had removed their shirts. Tattoos…whooohoo!
I told them I had leftover lasagna and if they were hungry I could heat it up. They liked that idea. For the price they quoted on the job it was the least I could do. I kept them in beer too…filled up the blue Coleman with ice and Blatz…”have at it.” They finished all of the prep work and one side by 11. We all had lunch on the glass-topped patio table. I served the lasagna with ready-toss Caesar salad, French bread, and fresh peaches.
We talked mostly about food.
Both of the guys are 30ish.
The handsome fellow with dark hair and fewer tattoos was from this area. He was smarter, sharper, and a bit more reticent. I wondered why he was a house painter. He thanked me for the food before he even sat down. “Usually one of us just runs over to a fast-food joint. This is rather special.”
The other dude, the one with high cheekbones and camouflage pants, said he grew up in Mississippi. He dug right into the food. “My ex-wife would fix me beanie weenie. I’d work twelve, fourteen-hour days and that was the best she could come up with. At least three, four days a week…beanie weenie. And I had to do the cleaning too.”
I was feeling some sympathy for him.
“I know how to cook almost anything. Back in Mississippi my father set up our garage as a slaughterhouse. We raised our own food. Rabbits, now that’s good eatin’. You just hold them up by the hind legs and swat them in the head.”
“You mean you just swat them and they die?”
“Yep. One time a rabbit was scratching the hell out of me and I hit him so hard his head went flying.”
“Tore completely off?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the weirdest thing you ever ate?”
“Do ya mean killed myself?”
“Yes.”
“Well, one day my dad and I were just sitting there and we were thinking about dinner and my dog Lightening, a German Shepard/Lab mix, went by. My dad just picked up the .410 and boom! Dog meat is tough and stringy.”
“You killed your dog? You ate your dog? You ate your pet?”
“Yep. The ribs were good. The rest was horrible.”
“Are you fucking with me? No one eats a named pet!”
“We did. You ever go to the state fair? Those 4H animals are named. The kids sell them for food and if they don’t sell they eat ‘em.”
The other three days of painting, I let them go to McDonalds.
I can barely eat meat now.
Do you think this is true? Or were they playing me?
B.
