Teeth Bared, Knives Flashing

When my phone alarm buzzes Saturday morning, it reads, “Time to slice and dice.”  I have no trouble rising from my mattress.

I have a weakness for our beef jerky, and I’ve only had it hot out of the smoker.  I’m spoiled. 

As I spread the slices of marinated and tumbled eye of round out on a smoking rack, they look like the countries of Africa to me.  The process resembles fitting together the pieces of a puzzle; I try to get as much meat as possible per rack.  When they come out, they are left in a bucket to cool in the back room.  I keep sneaking pieces when no one is looking, happily munching while I scrub dishes.   

We are pulling pork today.  Burt smoked three butts overnight in our house rub; they are still warm when we start pulling.  And the meat is so  . . . soft . . . and . . . creamy . . . that it takes all my self-restraint not to utter indecent things like, “Oooh . . . ooh baby . . . oh yeah!” as the meat runs through my gloved fingers.  But that is definitely what is running through my head.  And of course, we must sample as we go.  Burt gives me bits from all the different parts; I even get to try the stuff they use in barbecue competitions—the juiciest dark meat.  Then . . . oh then . . . we coat the meat in our barbecue sauce cut with a bit of water (to prevent clumping) and mix it all together with our hands.  It’s not enough sauce for my preference.  I am a sauce person; I generally prefer more sauce than meat with my meat.   

*          *          *           

I came in one day back before Thanksgiving to find three unfamiliar faces behind the counter.  Two guys who looked like high schoolers but turned out to be only like five years younger than me, and a woman in maybe her mid-thirties, full of life and energy.  I walked in and she shouted across the shop, “You are cute; you are so cute.  I like your hair like that.”  My hair was pulled back under a bandana because it looked like crap when I woke up and I was unable to tame the curls.  Apparently the shop brings in extra help around the holidays; Nicole is a friend and former colleague of Grace.  The boys are progeny of friends of Burt and Grace.  Nicole takes to me immediately; she is sweet, if a bit overbearing.  She asks, “Do you need anything?  Want me to make you a soda?”  I say no thank you.  I’m just a lowly apprentice, undeserving of such lavish treatment.   

One day during my hiatus I stopped in to buy some chicken wings.  Tommy told me to come behind the counter, where I found another new face standing over Tommy’s cutting board, trimming and tying tenderloins.  (Nicole was also there, shouting, “So cute!  I love your earrings!”  I’d come straight from work, so I was “business casual.”)

Tommy throws an awkward arm around my shoulder.  “Cory, this is my bride-to-be.”

Whoever this Cory is looks quite surprised.  I smack Tommy in the stomach.

“Just kidding; she works here.”

Introductions made, we discuss our day jobs.  Cory is Pit Master at a barbecue joint in the county (“Pit Master” is officially the most badass culinary job title ever), now on my list of places to eat.  He’s been helping the shop seasonally for years.  We discover that Foster is a mutual friend, and yay now I have a new friend in the biz.  I tell him about Pig Day, and Tommy overhears. 

“Wait, you mean you’ve been doing what you do here at other shops?”

“No . . . at this place I was working with whole animals.”   

*          *          *          

It’s an unusually warm January day (well, it’s St. Louis . . . all the weather is unusual, so we’re used to it, which means that the unusual is . . . business as usual).  I am overjoyed when I come in and see Max.  Grace is out of town, so he’s back, on “limited hours.”

First thing he asks me:  “So the boy’s gone, huh?”

“Oh, he’s gone all right.”  The joy dissipates a bit; I don’t want to talk about it, but I do, even though it just pisses me off.   

I am not surprised when some random lady walks in the back door and calls out, “Burt?”  It is not an infrequent occurrence.  The crazy lady who owns the doll shop at the back of our parking lot does it constantly; I simply assumed it was her. 

Without looking up I reply, “He ran to the store,” thinking that would get her to turn around and leave.  When she doesn’t, I glance up to see Nicole, holding two pizzas.  She sets one down by the Dick Machine and says, “This one is ours.”  Ours?  I had no idea she was coming in, or that she knew I was here; I haven’t seen her in months.  Regardless, I devour a slice, and it is one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had, made better by the fact that I was starving, unsatisfied by my hors d’oeuvres of beef jerky and pulled pork.  “I’m not staying long,” she says, “had a rough morning with my guy.  Girl, there are a lot of things that can mess up your sex life.” 

Tell me about it.   

A little later I am surprised again when Cory comes in and ties on an apron.  I can’t seem to figure out what’s going on that we’d need all the extra help for, but then I realize:  Super Bowl . . . Mardi Gras . . . Valentine’s Day . . . St. Patty’s.  We’ve got our work cut out for us. 

As I finish up washing racks from the smoker, Cory comes back for a cigarette.

“So, you like washing dishes?”

I laugh, “Seems like that’s all I do:  cook and wash dishes.”

He raises an eyebrow, “And you’ve been at it since July?”

“Yeah . . . not as much meat cutting as I’d like . . . but I really like it here.”

“Do you know how to trim a tenderloin?”

“Yeah, I’ve done a few, but I’m slow.  I need more practice.”  In fact, this morning Tommy threw one at me again; I barely got started on it when the timer went off for the jerky and I never made it back to finish.  “I mean, Tommy gets mad when he sees me doing other stuff, but he doesn’t really teach me anything.  I want to do more.”

“I knew a guy who wanted to be a butcher, and his first day of work he asked what he should do.  And I said, ‘You see that broom? . . .’”

“I understand that.  I understand paying dues, and I don’t mind at all.  But I just . . . some days it feels like that’s all I do, and I’ve been doing it for months, and I just . . . want to do . . . more. . . .” 

I have no idea why I’m telling him all this; I don’t want him to think I don’t like it here.  But it occurs to me that if this place doesn’t even offer me the opportunity for me to achieve my endgame of being able to break down a whole animal from start to finish, it may be time for me to move on.

Well, he must’ve listened to at least some of what I said, because the next time I walked out front he asked me what I had going on.  We’d just loaded some wings in the smoker and I was going to wash out the tumbler. 

“Tumbler, huh?  Can you peel some ribs for the case really quick for me?” 

“Sure!”  I hop-to, almost military style, grateful to be doing something at least remotely resembling meat cutting.   

Cory is really friendly; he is a master of customer service.  Prior to today, I’ve been convinced that 90% of our customers come in merely because they like talking to Tommy.  Not because he’s particularly conversational, though.  They like “knowing” a butcher; they like thinking they’re friends with him.  However, friendship is always questionable when a person’s monetary livelihood is an intricate part of your interactions.  Customers like it when Tommy invites them into our mysterious meat world behind the counter so they can show him just how must brisket they need.  He is snarky, ill-tempered, and cantankerous, but not rude or mean (to their faces); so people think that they’re special if he’s nice to them.  “Nice” might be an overstatement.  The best way to describe Tommy at his friendliest is . . . tolerant. 

A young couple walks in and tells Cory this is their first time in the shop.  He launches into a lengthy explanation, “Well, we are a full-service butcher shop . . .”

Tommy laughs from back in his office, then yells to me, “Did you hear that?”

“I heard it. . . .”  I laugh a little, too.  “Full Service.”  Then I realize . . . this is something the shop is dearly lacking.  Some days Max runs around cussing under his breath from open to close about Tommy’s messiness, or Grace in general (they . . . don’t get along very well).  I can tell Burt gets annoyed when too many people come in and ask for him, taking him away from whatever he’s working on in the back.  A lot of customers want to feel important so they drop his name, when all they want is to shoot the breeze with him, while he’s got a lot going on.  Burt is also chronically exhausted, it seems, and always in some kind of physical pain; which doesn’t necessarily make him unpleasant per se, but it does make his smile appear strained at times.  Ten and twelve hours a day on his feet doing physical labor doesn’t do much to alleviate it, either.  And Tommy—with his frequent and lengthy trips to the gas station, and his half-serious flirtations with soccer moms in yoga pants—heaves a huge sigh every time a customer walks in and he has to hang up his cell phone and set his cigarette down for 15 minutes.  And then there’s me:  I don’t know what anything costs, I don’t know how to use the register, I can barely use the scales to print off price tags . . . and I just don’t talk to customers.   

They do enjoy spoiling us though:  one customer dropped off diabetic cookies for Burt and fudge for Tommy.  Later on another came in with a few boxes of popcorn, which Tommy proceeded to get all over the floor around his cutting board because apparently he has poor hand-mouth coordination, which prompted Max to yell at him. 

Cory steps in the back again, lights up another cigarette.

“So you lost your boyfriend huh?”

“That . . .” I sigh, “is a long story.”  And once again, I have no idea why I’m opening up to him, but I guess I figure he doesn’t know me, he doesn’t know the scientist, so fuck it. 

“. . . so I’m a big ball of rage right now.  I’m not thrilled with men in general, so if I’m pissy with you, don’t take it personally.”

In that moment I realize how I’ve been towards all the men in my life the past few weeks:  curt, annoyed, impatient—from good friends to colleagues to strangers to my own father.  If David’s leaving sent me down a seemingly endless rabbit hole of sadness and depression, this new loss is propelling me in a different direction entirely.  I am not plunging downward; I am barreling forward—teeth bared, knives flashing.  Because it was a deep hole I pulled myself from, made all the deeper by the fact that I scaled it alone.  It took a long time, but I emerged, dusted myself off, and I tried again.  And my kindness, my generosity, meant fuck-all, because the same thing happened all over again.  But this time I won’t crumble.  This is not sad.  This is downright comical. 

A while back a customer came in when it was just me and Max working—Tommy having run off on one of his mysterious hours-long gas station trips.  When regulars see an unfamiliar face, they ask; so Max introduces me.  The customer smiles, then turns to Max and says, “Well it’s always nice to have . . . eye candy around.” 

My nostrils flare, and I open my mouth ready to unleash hell, but the words not my shop, regular customer, and losing business flash through my mind, so I press my lips together and spin around to obstruct the caravan of profanities fighting to fly off my tongue. 

The customer mistakes my actions for flattery.  “Oh look, she’s blushing.”

I grab my work and stomp off.

After he leaves, I say something to Max about it.  “That was fucking degrading, and insulting.”

“Oh come on, he was just giving you a compliment.”

I growl through gritted teeth, “It’s not a compliment to an educated person.”

Later on I catch Max singing one of his made-up songs:  “Oh, my butcher-girl friend . . . she’s so smart. . . .”

I shake my head, I smile, and I let it go.

If that guy had said that to me today, there is no doubt in my mind, I would not have been so kind as to keep silent. 

The more Cory and I talk, the more mutual acquaintances we discover.  Not surprising; St. Louis has that incestuous small-town syndrome.  Unless you’re a complete recluse, things like this will happen more than once if you live here long enough.  He also plays in a band, and when he tells me the name I stop in my tracks.  It is the name of a band that was still in the practicing stages when I knew one of its members, so I’ve never been to a performance.

“So . . . you know Baker then?”  I don’t use his first name in verbal conversation; it dehumanizes him for me. 

Cory looks confused for a moment, then says, “You mean David?  Yeah he’s in the band.”

“. . . .We used to date.”

“Geez, how many of you are there?  Seems like every girl I meet dated him.”

He didn’t say it like an asshole, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it like an asshole, but my first thought is:  You asshole.  I’m not just some groupie that he hooked up with a few times.  We were in a committed relationship for over a year; we became part of each others’ families.  I don’t know or care how many randoms he’s run through since then; I was there before he ever decided to get back into music, before he ever had groupies; I was the reason he took up playing an instrument again.

You know that feeling, when you’re drawing a really big circle, and you come to its completion?

I try to make my point subtly:  “You know his other band?  The three-piece?”

Cory nods.

“I named it.”

“Oh.”
            Yeah.  How many musicians do you know that let groupies name their bands??
            Perhaps there is no sanctuary in St. Louis after all.

Quietly I say, “Please don’t tell him about me.”

“No worries.  I’m also a Mason; we’re pretty good at keeping secrets.”

“So it was your ceremony he played two years ago?”

“Yeah, how—?”

“We were still together then.”

“Oh.”

            Funny how when you start seeing someone new, at least one of your exes pops up and wants to get back together; and when you’re going through a heartbreak, it seems like all your past failures want to pop up for a reunion.
            I am well over it now (and have a fresh wound eclipsing the old scars).  I’m far enough removed from it that I’m able to back on it . . . fondly.  I can remember things like, we were each others’ best friends, we shared all each others’ inside jokes.  And yeah, it ended badly—bloody, shredded bits . . . body parts strewn across the highway.  But I made it through to the other side.  Surviving that . . . I know I can survive anything.   I no longer need the shop for its fringe benefit as an escape/respite from that part of my life.  I have moved on, and I will continue to move . . . teeth bared, knives flashing. 
 

           
I did eventually make those filets, but the photo upload tool on here hasn't been working, so here is a belated picture!