VICTUALS

Victuals
by Kelvin J. Wade

Rooster Fallow had been driving for hours. His red 1970, 426 Hemi-powered Plymouth 'Cuda streaked down the searing hot blacktop. The two lane road split the desert on either side. Nothing but hot sands, tumbleweeds, cacti and distant rock formations. He'd left L.A., streaked through Arizona and was now charging through New Mexico, the engine banging away, eating up the miles. The fat orange mid-afternoon sun hung hot in the sky scorching the desert earth below.

He had to get out of dodge. He hadn't expected the argument with his girlfriend to get physical. He didn't even remember what they were arguing about. The only thing he recalled after slapping her across the face was the sizzling pain of hot scrambled eggs that a second ago were in a skillet and then they were suddenly dripping down his neck. He'd pounced at her as she tried to run and slammed her head against the wall. When she crumpled to the floor, he added a swift kick to her midsection for good measure. He hated having to get physical with her. He'd been good about not putting his hands on her. Well, at least ever since that time three years earlier when he'd choked her. But he'd swore to her that he'd never touch her again.

As she dialed the LAPD, he was hightailing it out the door.

Rooster pushed his sunglasses up higher on the bridge of his nose and then pushed an ejected cassette tape into his tape player. The Steve Miller Band's Abracadabra exploded over his speakers. He air guitared a bit across the steering wheel and then slid a half crushed pack of Pall Malls out of his shirt pocket and slid one of the cigs in his mouth. He pushed in the cigarette lighter.

He lit the cigarette and then cracked his window before inhaling.

I heat up, I cant cool down
You got me spinnin round and round
round and round and round it goes
Where it stops nobody knows

Every time you call my name
I heat up like a burnin flame
Burnin flame full of desire
Kiss me baby, let the fire get higher

Abra-abra-cadabra
I want to reach out and grab ya

He reached for a bottle of Budweiser in a cupholder. There was only a swallow left in the bottle. He swallowed it and immediately wished he hadn't. It was warm and bitter. He flung the bottle out the partially open window and was hundreds of feet down the road before it shattered.

He was hungry. And thirsty. The only thing he'd had to eat in the last eight hours was a king size Three Musketeers bar. His stomach did flip flops. His throat was dry and his lips were parched. The cigarette wasn't helping. He flicked the cigarette out the window.

Then he saw it. On the horizon. It was an establishment of some kind. He started braking and came to a stop in front of a dilapidated wood diner with a sign that read "MA'S KETTLE." To the right of the ramshackle eatery was what appeared to be a used car lot with multicolored flags and streamers. There was about twenty cars, all with stickers on them at ridiculously low prices.

Rooster stepped out onto the gravel parking lot in his snakeskin boots and into the blazing afternoon sun. There was still a cloud of dust drifting over the parking lot of cars. He looked down the roadway and could see vibrating, writhing unfocused heat waves rising from the blacktop on the horizon. When he inhaled, he inhaled dry heat and dust. He slowly walked towards the door of Ma's Kettle, his boots crunching the gravel rocks.

Once inside, he had to say he was impressed. There were booths along the front wall and a long counter with red vinyl stools. One half of the eatery was taken up by what looked like a flea market. There were watches, rings, earrings, shoes, belts and money clips laid out on tables for sale. There were clothes hanging on racks. The prices looked very low indeed.

There were no other patrons in the restaurant. He walked up to the counter like a gunslinger and sat down on a stool. He tossed his sunglasses on the counter. A rotund lady with a gray beehive hairdo appeared through a doorway holding a wooden spoon. She wore a light blue dress and a bright white apron over it. Her face was nothing but lines upon lines. Her glasses sat at the tip of her nose.

"Welcome to Ma's Kettle. I'm ma. You can look up one side of God's creation to the other, over hill and dale and hither and yon…but you will never find more tasty victuals than mine…you will eat them til they're gone."

Her voice was soothing, like music.

"Never seen cars so cheap out there. You must do a lot of business. …Well, I'm starving. Can I see a menu?" Rooster asked

"No menus. We only serve my victuals here."

"Okay, give me a plate of that. And a tall glass of 7Up."

The woman filled a big plastic tumbler with ice and used a spray hose to fill the glass with clear, cold bubbling 7Up. She set it down in front of Rooster. While Rooster began chugging the beverage, he noticed with one eye open that the woman reached down and hoisted up a heavy metal container. It was about the size of the holiday popcorn containers he'd seen at the Wal-Mart.

The woman grabbed a heavy cast iron skillet and set it on an old stove. She turned on the burner. Orange and blue flames licked the bottom of the skillet. She pried open the lid of the container and used her wooden spoon to scoop out a heaping spoonful of a brownish-beige powder. She dumped it unceremoniously into the skillet.

Rooster set his half empty glass down and watched her work.

She used a measuring cup to measure a cup of cold water and slowly poured it into the pan. Then she adjusted the flame beneath the pan and began stirring. As she stirred she hummed a little tune. It was catchy and Rooster found himself tapping his foot.

Soon the restaurant was filled with a wonderful aroma of what smelled like beef and gravy. Rooster's stomach rumbled. He finished his drink. Ma slid a wide round plate out from under the counter and used the wooden spoon to scoop up some kind of chunk of meat and ladle some gravy over the top. She set the steaming plate in front of Rooster and wiped the counter down with a hand towel.

"There ya are!" she sang.

Rooster chuckled. She took his glass, refilled it with ice and soda and placed it back in front of him.

"This is just some kind of powder and water," Rooster mused, picking up a fork.

Ma walked away from him to the end of the counter. She slid a cigarette from behind her ear and lit it.

Rooster took a bite of the meat like substance. He chewed. It was something akin to beef but much richer. It was sweet and seasoned perfectly. He could almost feel and taste the consistency of creamy, buttery mashed potatoes right along with the meat. It was scrumptious. It was delightful. He began eating it faster and faster.

Ma smoked her cigarette and smiled down at the end of the counter. She used the hand towel at her waist to dab her forehead of sweat.

When Rooster was finished, he felt like licking the plate. Instead, he downed his 7Up and sat back with a hand on his belly.

"Whoa doggy! I ain't never tasted something as good as that. And how you made it was just dang amazing," Rooster said, standing from his seat.

"How much I owe ya, Ma?" he said, opening his eel skin wallet and thumbing through bills.

"All of it," Ma laughed.

The wallet fell from his fingers and plunked down on the counter, bills fluttering down around it. Rooster's eyes bulged and he clutched his stomach and shuddered. His face turned bright red and sweat broke out across his forehead. He tried to steady himself by standing and holding onto the countertop but his knees wobbled and his fingers trembled. His eyes shut tightly and a thick vein snaked up the right side of his head, pulsing wildly. He tried to take a step but collapsed into a heap of dust on the wood floor!

Ma set her cigarette in an ashtray and came out from around the counter. She picked up the wallet and put all the money in the cash register. Then she set Rooster's watch, rings and wallet over on the table of trinkets for sale. She shook out his clothes and hung them on the racks with the rest of the clothes for sale. She poured the dust out of the snakeskin boots and set them prominently on a middle table and set a fair price for them.

Then she went to the back of the kitchen and returned with a broom and dustpan. She swept up the dust that was Rooster and carried it back behind the counter. She once again pried open the big metal container and emptied the contents of the dustpan into it. She closed the lid, put the container back under the counter and walked over to the end of the counter.

She started smoking her cigarette again.

A family of four, a man, his wife and two teenaged sons came walking through the door. The man used a bandana to wipe the sweat from the back of his neck.

"It's hot as blazes out there. Those are some of the cheapest car prices I've ever seen, " the man started.

The family sat themselves in a booth. Ma came walking over.

"Welcome to Ma's Kettle. I'm Ma, " she smiled.

"Well, I'm famished. Can we get some menus?"

"We only serve my victuals here."


The end
Victuals by Kelvin J. Wade Copyright May 2010
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NOTES: This is a story I wrote a long time ago. I don't know where the story is. So I recreated it from memory. The only things I may have changed is I believe in the original story, the diner was called, "Pa's Kettle." Also, the Rooster Fallow character didn't have a back story in the original story. i just thought I'd tack on a little back story to the Rooster character to at least explain why he was barrelling away from home without eating all day. Its just an absurd little Twilight Zone type story that I thought of years ago. And I liked the title because most people don't know that "Victuals" is pronounced "vittles."