Hank Russell punches in a few minutes before ten. Punches out a few minutes after 6:30. He feels lucky that an online customer-centric conglomerate opened up a distribution center just a half hour drive from his hometown of West Prairie, Illinois because most of the good-paying manufacturing jobs for the menial left for Mexico decades ago. He didn't mind third shift–working when most folks slept or were up on meth paid a bump more than the daytime drones received. It was one of the few decent benefits the chintzy outfit offered its employees because the pool of eligible low-watt workers rotting away on the Mississippi River side of the Land of Lincoln was Olympic-sized. It was either tossing junk into corrugated boxes or dealing junk to losers without a future as a means of survival in God-loving/God-fearing, human-hating/human-fearing small town America where perpetually aggrieved semi-illiterates, bigots and racists, proudly donning bright red baseball caps, are still waiting, fifty years later, for the tax cuts to trickle down.
Hank’s off-kilter circadian rhythm routine is similar to those with normal regulated internal clocks: get home at seven, shower off the sweat and cardboard dust, relax with some beers, eat dinner around 8:30 AM, stream TV til early afternoon, then turn in for a good day's sleep, reaching REM right around the time first-shifters get off. Get up-and-at-’em for another nocturnal-sacrificing paycheck, the alarm set for 8:00 PM, breakfast a half hour later. The only irritation in his schedule is stopping to buy Modelos after work at the Square G, the only convenience store in town, where a few of the town’s arrested-development male residents gather every morning. They loiter around the stack of unstocked cases of warm soda by the cooler, more busybody than the only hairdresser in town and are there to harangue and comment on customers rushing in for a coffee and donut to go . . . and beer of all things so early in the day. Hank tried to ignore their sanctimonious taunts and putdowns yet they still had a way of getting under his skin. Like scabies.
Rod Anderson, one of the hanger-outs, could hit a pretty good free throw and his cheerleader girlfriend as rumors went, but apparently not the books at Spoon River College. He flunked out second semester, came back home and now relives his high school glory days while changing tires and oil for the only mechanic in town. “Iiiiiiii wanna rock and roll all night, party every day,” Rod suddenly belts out in offkey KISS just as Hank reaches the beer section. Hank knew the pithy lyrics were meant for him—”ha!ha! hilarious . . . rock and rollin’ all night to send out all the cheap crap your holy rollin’ wife orders,” he mumbled under his breath and kept walking towards checkout, shaking his head at the same juvenile putdown he has received the past six months.
Don Reo did hit the books–mostly financial ones–at Quincy University an hour away–earned his Business Administration degree and scurried back to town as the new general manager of West Prairie State Bank, a position he held until the town’s institution for a hundred years closed its doors for good back in ‘99. He started his own insurance business on Oak Street and pre-gossips here until 8:00 when he unlocks the doors and the regular work gossip begins.
“Want some cream and sugar with your morning ‘coffee’,” Don snarks, eyeing the six-pack in Hank’s hand, then gives him a look of pity for being, in his mind anyway, a chronic alcoholic.
Jim Olsen, a soybean farmer, is starved for company because sitting on a tractor all day is lonely so he stops in at the Square G nearly every crack of dawn to spew local lies and hate to complement the national lies and hate spewed by the AM radio loudmouths that he listens to all day. “Hey Bud, better save some of them Mexican brews for the illegals flooding ‘murica. They’ll be plenty thirsty after walking through Biden’s open border to destroy our values. And they'll go good washing down our pets they’re eatin’!” This ‘joke’ earns a trio of chuckles.
Hank slept pretty well with the help of earplugs and light-blocking curtains despite the hustle, bustle, and commotion of daytime life until one afternoon when he woke up in a panic, trembling in sweat over the daymare he had just suffered. Within weeks, these night terrors in the afternoon began to come more often, disrupting his sleep, work performance, and soon, his sanity. It was always the same horrific Wes Craven worthy dream:
He pulls into the Square G, the morning still dusky with a sun that has yet yawned itself awake. He’s still fuming that a conveyor belt broke causing him to push harder than his paycheck deserved and needs the calming influence of beer, but knows he has to run the MAGAt gauntlet before he can get home and imbibe. This morning he is not in the mood for their uninvited intrusion so he pulls his .45 from the center console of his F150. He has had enough. It is time for action.
Waving the pistol aggressively through the store like some folks in town wave the stars and stripes silk-screened with the president’s mugshot on it, he gets his beer then turns towards the toxic commentators. Hank reaches Rod’s soda pop leaning post first and puts the gun to his right temple. “Lay on your back on that stack of Pepsi and lean your head over the edge, asshole!” he demands. The high school sports star is then waterboarded with four Modelos, the last empty shoved down his throat so others in the store can’t hear him drown. He takes another empty, smashes it on the side of the cooler and uses the jagged neck to whisk his eyeballs into scrambled eggs. “A little too observant about my morning purchases, aren't ya, Gene Simmons?” His encore was a long jagged tear with the broken beer bottle to the larynx and a bullet through his forehead ending the bully’s singing career for good.
Next he forces Don at gunpoint to sit spread-eagle on a case of Mountain Dew while he slowly pours the entire carafe of scalding Bunn coffee on his lap. Then comes the entire carafe of scalding Bunn decaf. Then a splash of heavy cream and a smackdown of a ten-pound bag of sugar where it’s excruciatingly painful, then off goes his face. “I prefer my breakfast coffee black, Donald, drinking it while you're enjoying Hannity.”
“Buenos dias, hermano!” he greets Jim. “Drop your coveralls, bend over, and hang on tight!” He then vigorously shakes a bottle, pulls the cap, and gives the farmer a Modelo enema, the neck of the beer bottle jammed fully up his rectum. He then mincemeats his conjones with the jagged neck he used on Jim’s “America–love-it-or-leave-it” friend. “Hasta luego, pendejo!” he laughs, shoots his two heads off, and walks up the aisle. Before leaving, Hank looks back and sees what he has done. That’s when he is startled awake, sweating with tremors, ruining the rest of his late afternoon slumber, hurting his job performance, driving him crazy.
One morning after a bad night at work because of an equipment malfunction, Hank, still fuming, was in no mood for being hectored; he could see through the plate-glass window that the small-minded threesome were there all right. This was enough. It was time for action. He parked and grabbed his pistol, but just as he was making his way down the aisle preparing to put his ammo and anger to use, he was startled awake by the neighbor's revved-up riding lawn mower because one of his ear plugs had fallen out and the hellish scenario was only the recurring daymare screwing with his theta waves again. This was enough. It was time for action. Hank saw a therapist who prescribed trazodone to take at bedtime. He now sleeps like a kitten and in the early morning when he stops at the Square G he disarms Rod, Don, and Jim with a facetious “good morning, boys!” as he buys his seven o’clock-in-the-morning six-pack and goes home smiling as wide as one of the conglomerate’s corrugated boxes.
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