Peckerwood by Jedidiah Ayres Page A

uncomfortable being under Chowder Thompson’s microscope.
    “What do you do for a living?”
    “Jeez, Chowder, you know I got the grocery.”
    “Uh-huh. You carry beer at your place?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Imports and shit?”
    Ed looked to Tate for help. He was confused. Tate had nothing. “Not really. Not much.”
    “Coors Light? You carry that one?”
    “Sure. Of course.”
    “Then what the fuck do you need to be buying it from me for?” Chowder handed the receipt to the big man to inspect.
    “Uhhh.”
    Chowder crumpled the receipt and tossed it into the trash can. “You show your wife those receipts?”
    Ed Castro’s face turned red. “Of course not.”
    “Well, I hope not, Ed. Seems that might be the kind of thing that’s tricky to explain.”
    “Yeah, guess so.”
    Chowder turned to Tate. “No more receipts for customers. Some genius’s gonna try and deduct a blow job from their taxes.” Ed Castro looked at Tate.
    Tate winked. “You wouldn’t do that would you, Ed?”
    Ed stammered. “Huh? No. ’Course not. Hey.”
    Chowder turned his attention back to the fire outside while Tate reassured Ed Castro that he was a valued customer and ushered him out the door. In the lot a Chevy truck pulled in. There was a cramp in his gut. Maybe he was getting an ulcer.
     

    Chowder sat on the commode with a book trying to coax his stubborn bowels into some kind of truce. This sort of sneak attack worked sometimes. If he sat long enough, relaxed and concentrating on something entirely other, he might produce, but at the moment he was accomplishing exactly nothing.
    The door shook with a sudden pounding and Tate’s frantic voice shouting, “Chowder, you better come see!”
    He clenched his sphincter tight and knew it would take a professional safe cracker to open it again. His anger rose quick. “Get out!”
    “Sorry Chowder, but you’re gonna need to come out here quick.”
    “The hell, Tate?”
    “Irm’s gonna kill him.”
    He dropped his book and wiggled his jeans over his hips. He looped his belt and smacked Tate with the door when he flung it open. Tate just pointed to the window. Chowder went to it and parted the Venetian blinds. Tate was right. Irm looked like she might kill the shitbird bleeding all over the side of the trailer. Had the guy pinned against the aluminum side with her left forearm and was hitting his face repeatedly with her right. After a blow, which left a tooth embedded between her knuckles, she let him drop to the ground and began kicking his ribs in.
    Chowder looked at Tate and saw the beginning of a rising welt above his right eye. Chowder guessed it was from trying to interfere with Irm’s whuppin and not from getting hit by the bathroom door. “Told ya.”
    The front door crashed open and Chowder stepped out and across the lot in five seconds. He roped his arm around Irm’s midsection and she screamed and struggled as he picked her up off of the unconscious man. Chowder caught an elbow on the side of his head for his efforts and threw her against the wall of the trailer.
    With a yell of frustration, Irm launched off the dented aluminum back toward the man on the ground and Chowder put her down with a right to the left side of her head. His daughter was out immediately and farted loudly as the tension melted out of her. She looked fifteen years younger instantly. He saw her round-faced and chubby, wearing purple tights and a hooded sweatshirt in the principal’s office, sitting in the chair, sullenly swinging her feet while the flustered educator recalled the list of injuries she’d inflicted on boys during the school year.
    “I’m afraid young Irma has exhausted the last of our good graces, Mr. Thompson. She has no respect for the authority of faculty or the right of her classmates to an education.”
    He’d taken her for a root beer on the way home while he thought on it, trying to predict her mother’s reaction to the news she’d been ejected from school again. Irm had