Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski

Author:Marie Rutkoski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Headline Tinder Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

RON

Ronald Needham had about an hour after waking before the pain began. At first it pricked up his back: rat claws mounting the cracked column of his spine. Then the pain settled in and ached, denting his hips and turning his stomach. He no longer liked his favorite foods. He had a healthy appetite once. Hard, round belly. Gone now. Since the accident, he ate a steady diet of buttered mashed potatoes. Each shit left him sweaty and shaking, as though he were passing rocks. He would swear off potatoes. Too starchy. But they looked so pale and golden he would lick his fork clean.

He possessed a cane, the knob shaped into an upside-down boot. He enjoyed the friction of the boot’s treads against his palm. He never took his cane with him into the Lovely Lady. He wanted the girls to see him the right way. He could be strong, sometimes. He was a big spender. His girls had never had it so good. He never got his money’s worth.

On the way, he stopped at the Day N’ Night to pick up a pack of Swishers to smoke at the club and a bottle of Jack for after. He glanced at girlie mags but considered buying one beneath him.

The kid at the register was pouchy-eyed and whiskery, built like a noodle. The kid didn’t look at Ron when he handed over the receipt and change. Ron stuffed the coins into his change pocket, felt them slip along the wedge of his trapper knife. The receipt was stamped with the date (8 OCT 99) and the cashier’s name (ASHLEY). “Is this a joke?” Ron said.

“Um?” the cashier said.

“You poor fucking kid.”

“The orange stickers?” Ashley said, looking at the receipt Ron held aloft. “On your products? Those are the prices. That’s what they cost. It all rang up normal.”

“It’s your name.”

“Oh.”

“Do you like your job?”

“Um?”

Ron wanted to tell Ashley to quit his job, quit his dewy name, quit everything. Ron could show him how. He could put the right tools in his hands and show him what work is. Pain climbed up him, strong as need. It was early yet. Ron shook his head and stumped out to his car.

Even when he was twelve, Ron worked. He hired himself out, illegally, for light industrial work at an Edam cheese factory surrounded by green fields. He wore rain boots, yellow rubber gloves, and a hairnet. The men wore beard nets. The factory smelled like an armpit. He manned a hose that sprayed curds and whey into a perforated metal box. He spun the box. Whey splooged onto the floor. The cheese inside the box was then pressed into hockey-puck disks and sent up a conveyer belt into a vat of brine. When he turned thirteen, he worked that end of the conveyer belt, fishing for cheese in the massive brine bath. Gloves made little difference. Salt water came in anyway, giving him washerwoman hands that wrinkled and later peeled. His mother held his hands and said, Aren’t you proud? as she rubbed in Vaseline.

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