“Look
who finally decided to show up.” Today I
get to gloat about getting to work before any of the boys. Grace had me come in at 8:30, when it was
just her and Tommy here. Usually the
boys are here around 6 or 7am; I wonder why today’s different.
Tommy
tells me: Kyle and Gus were supposed to
drive down to Texas this weekend for a friend’s graduation. They rented a car, packed their bags, picked
up the rental car, and started driving south.
About three hours later, their friend called and told them that
graduation is next weekend. (Aww . . . they’re so pretty.) So even though we’re staffed extra this
weekend to compensate for their expected absence, now they have to work in
order to make up the money for the extra car rental. But, it’s also Easter Saturday, so we’re
expecting to be busy anyways.
The
shop looks unusually clean. Not
sanitized, just picked up—decluttered. I
guess they finally had time to recover from the holiday rush. I mean, they still need new floors and the
back room’s ceiling is water damaged and caving in, but all the empty boxes
have been cleared out (thrown away, not
recycled, ugh) and things have been reorganized. There are two new stainless steel rolling
tables in back by the smokers so that Burt and Kyle have more room to
work. And there’s a new shelving unit
back by Grace’s desk with all the backstock of non-meat food items (red beans
and rice boxes, barbecue sauces, pickle jars, etc.).
Burt
is nowhere to be found.
Grace
says he’s catching a ride with one of the boys.
Tommy
says, “I really don’t want to deal with him today.”
Apparently
they had to send Burt home yesterday.
They wouldn’t tell me the reason.
When
he does arrive, he seems extraordinarily happy to be here.
Nicole
texts Grace around 8:45am to say that she is on her way in and ask if we need
her to pick up anything for us.
Tommy
grabs Grace’s phone and replies, “Nicole we open in 15 fucking minutes.”
So
Nicole comes in when she normally does (10, 10:30), and the boys show up when I
usually do—9am—which means that as soon as we open the doors, we’re already two
hours behind on smoking stuff. Kyle gets
right to work. JohnJack is so quiet I
barely even notice that he snuck in with Burt.
Gus smiles at me in a fairly good humor, considering that the last time
we saw each other I wound up telling him to go fuck himself.
Let
me explain.
The
last time I worked was Valentine’s Day weekend.
They sent Tommy home early, I stayed late. Gus gave Tommy a ride home, and Tommy
compensated him the only way he knows how:
by getting him stoned. So Gus
came back to the shop and decided that the funniest thing in the world would be
to throw stuff at me while I tried to work.
And I decided that the appropriate response was to tell him to go
fornicate himself.
Anyways,
I’m glad he’s not mad at me.
A
stack of andouille sits next to the plastic wrap table, waiting to be weighed
and made into one- and two-packs for the case.
Burt must’ve run out of the old casings; these have white casings on
them instead of the usual red. Nicole is
having none of it.
“With
the dark meat, it just . . . it just doesn’t look . . . right.”
I
stare at the sausage for a few seconds before deciding, “It looks like a
wrinkled dick with a condom on it.”
After
a brief silence, Gus says, “We were all thinking it . . . you said it.”
(Peep!)
The
shop bought a few pre-packaged legs of lamb for the holiday, most of which have
already been sold.
Lame.
I
was hoping I’d get to do something different today.
Oh
well. I’ll start pulling
tenderloins.
Moving
heavy meat around has gotten much easier for me since I’ve been strength
training. I’ve gained about six or seven
pounds. My biceps have gotten noticeably
bigger. It’s amazing how quickly my
quads enlarged back to the size they were when I was playing competitive U18 soccer. All of my clothes fit tighter. Frank says it’s because my shoulders, traps,
delts, and glutes have grown muscle, but that’s all on my backside so I can’t
see any of it; all I see is my gut pushing against my belt. I suppose Frank knows what he’s talking about;
he’s the expert on my backside.
I
overhear two customers discussing lamb.
One suggests trying the real butcher shop up the street where I wish I worked. I’ve decided that’s what we’re going to call them
from now on: The Real Butcher. Where they butcher Real Animals, as opposed
to trimming up Already Butchered Animals to make them pretty for the case, like
we do at Burt’s.
The
customer receiving the recommendation is not sold on the idea. “That place is okay, but this place is
better.”
I
cock my head to the side and scrunch up my face in confusion, “Think so?”
He
hesitates, “. . . yeah.”
I’m
keeping my mouth shut on that one. I
guess he doesn’t know where our meat comes from.
A
few months ago, a guy came in and asked Burt if our beef is swinging beef or
boxed beef. Our beef is boxed. But it turns out that this customer and Burt
used to work at the same meat processing plant, but at different times.
They start reminiscing like old
war buddies, while I grab a small sheet of paper and write down the address for
The Real Butcher, and then “swinging beef” underneath it.
I
wait for their conversation to end, and Burt to go back to his smokers before
handing the paper to the customer. For
some reason, my hand is shaking.
Around
2 o’clock they are sending Tommy home.
“When
do you wanna start learning how to use the saw?” he asks me.
“Now,”
I say without pause.
He
looks surprised.
“You
know I’ve been trained on other bone saws.”
“Really,
where?”
I
tell him about the restaurant where I did my last Pig Day. “You wouldn’t teach me, so I found someone
who would.”
“I
just—this saw’s really old and it scares the hell out of me—”
“I
still want to learn, Tommy.”
“Well
I’m taking off, so not today.”
Obviously.
Around
three o’clock they decide we’re slow enough that someone else can go home. I volunteer, since I’ve been here the
longest, and I know that the boys need the extra hours.
Nicole
has been squirreling away several bundles of meat for me and the boys all
day: one-pound packs of ground steak,
bags of stew meat, a small pork tenderloin, and other odds and ends. We each have our own bag in the freezer. When I get through cutting a whole ribeye, a
wrap up the end of it for Frank. The
ends of primals are rounded and ugly and won’t sell in the case, but edible
nonetheless. If no one takes them, they
just go to the grind. Frank loves
ribeyes but is extremely frugal, so even the primal end is a treat for
him. He usually buys the discount ground
beef at Shop ‘n Save that’s about to go bad.
Today
is his niece’s fourteenth birthday party, which is where I’ll be heading as
soon as I leave here. She’s the oldest of
three, and her parents—Frank’s sister and brother-in-law—are even more frugal
than Frank. I asked him if they like to
grill.
“Are
you kidding me? For years they didn’t
have a working oven or microwave, so they had
to grill everything.”
Next
question: do they prefer pork or red
meat?
“Definitely
red meat.”
We’re
all out of flank steaks. I should just
grab a few ribeyes out of the case, I know this. But they’re all different sizes and small and
weird looking . . . and two separate customers just came in asking for two-inch
ribeyes, and the primal is still just sitting out on the board. . . .
I
grab my big knife.
I
cut off four steaks, about an inch and a half each.
The
boys stop and stare.
“I’m
just mesmerized . . . by the . . . cutting,” John says.
“Are
those for the case?” Kyle asks.
“.
. . Sure. . . .” I lie, terribly. I’m
not fooling anyone.
Then
I wrap the steaks in plastic wrap, and double wrap them in white butcher paper
so that they can be frozen.
“How
come all we get is stew meat and you get ribeyes?” Gus complains.
“Who
says you can’t have ribeyes? I’m not
telling you what you can take home with ya,” I reply, adding the steaks to my
bag from the freezer.
“See
ya later, kiddo,” I pat Gus on the back.
“Don’t
call me kiddo,” he demands.
I
raise an eyebrow. “You have no idea how
old I am, do you?”
“Thirty-one,”
a voice comes from behind Gus.
It’s Kyle. He shrugs, “Tommy told me.”
“Bingo,” I say.
Gus and John attempt—unsuccessfully—to
mask their shock.
“I guess we thought you’re so
young because you act like you’re fucking twelve,” Gus retorts with palpable
snark.
“Yeah you act like you’re like,
five,” John stifles a laugh.
I’ll go ahead and take those as
compliments.
And I’ll take my ribeyes to go.
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