STFU

“Ok now just walk up to the top of that mound so I can get a reading,” Dean was telling Boomer. It was the end of a long hot stinky day at the Oscar Mayer in Perry Iowa.  I was leaning up against the blue Suburban that carried the crew and all the equipment.  I was smoking a cigarette while Dean and Boomer finished getting the last couple of measurements.  There was a rise in the earth that graded at about 10 percent and went to about 4 feet high next to the big pen area.  It looked like a ramp of packed dirt.  As boomer carried the rod to the top so Dean could get a measurement he started complaining.  With each step, he said “Ew”.  I looked down at his feet and saw the problem.  That rise wasn’t packed dirt at all.  It was packed shit.  But not too packed.  Boomer’s boots were sinking in deeper with each step.

By the time Boomer reached the top, his boots were completely submerged.  And since being a smartass is much more important to either one of us than keeping shit off of our boots, Boomer somehow managed to turn and face Dean.  He set the rod atop the pile of shit and started waving it back and forth like any professional rodman would.   “Ok funny man, let’s get the hell outta here,” Dean said, not measuring. 

“Oh c’mon man, at least read it,” I told Dean, his face reddening with embarrassment and rage.

Dean said, “It’s beer-thirty anyhow,” and walked back to the truck to wait for us to load up all the gear.  Boomer was still precariously standing on top of the squishy stuff when I flicked my cigarette aside and went over to the instrument.  I looked into it and boomer started moving the rod again so I could get the read.  “1,3” I said out loud and waved him off.  I expected him to step up onto the concrete platform right next to where he was standing and start cleaning off his boots.  But no.  He just walked right back down the way he came.  Because it’s funnier that way.

After we put all the stuff away and Boomer got done scraping his boots off with a lath (a thin strip of wood about 3 or 4 feet long that we’d pound into the ground for the marking of boundaries and such), I asked Dean what the ground level was next to the mound of shit.  He told me it was 6 and 2.  That meant Boomer was standing in a pile of poo 4.9 feet tall.  We figured it had to be some kind of record and made sure to brag about it to the hotties back at the Best Western lobby.  Whoops, looks like I misspelled ‘fatties’ back there in that last sentence.  Oh well, too late to do anything about it now.

As Boomer jumped into the passenger seat of the Suburban, Dean looked down at Boomer’s boots with a certain disdain, “Can’t you get them any cleaner than that?”

“I don’t smell anything.  Do you cube?”  The truth was we hadn’t been able to smell anything since before noon.  Well, we could smell everything except pig poop.  So when I cracked open a PBR from the back seat, Dean forgot all about Boomers boots, “Toss a couple of them up here, Cube.”

“Yessah Massah,” I said, thinking I was funny.  Dean ignored me.  He’d had just about enough of me today.  I could tell he was still a little pissed off at me from when he just about killed Robert Duvall at lunch time.

We had gone into the Pizza Hut to get some lunch.  “Looks like we have the place to ourselves,” Boomer noted as people started packing up and leaving upon our entrance.  One female patron, who frankly could stand to skip a couple of slices of supreme, if you know what I mean, was dragging her nose picking 4 year old behind her while she said to me “You guys could take a bath before going out in public, ya know.”  At that, I shrugged at Boomer who chose that moment to let go of the fart he’d obviously been saving for a special occasion.  Disgusted beyond belief, miss nosy shouted, “Bunch of pigs,” as she slammed through the Pizza Hut front door.

The manager guy told us to sit wherever and he’d bring us some menus.  “You guys working over at Oscar Mayer?”  He asked, swaying and clutching at the table for balance as the full force of our day’s accomplishment slapped him right in the face.

“That’s darnright observant of yuh,” Boomer said, trying out what we perceived to be the Iowa parlance.

“Heh, heh, lucky guess,” said the manager guy, his eyes watering from the sheer emotional gravity of the scene.

“Yeah – no anchovies,” I said, wanting to move this along. 

After we figured out what kind of pizza we were getting, Dean said, “You boys might wanna wash up for dinner.”

“What? This?”  I said, looking down at my mud encrusted hands and forearms, “Surely it’s just a little dirt,” looking out the window casually, pretending to be bored.  Dean kept staring at me, trying to figure out if I was going to eat Pizza with pig crap all over myself. I wasn’t.  I was just messing with him.

On the way back from lunch to the work site, I got into an argument with Dean.  I’m not sure how it all got started.  I don’t think Dean liked talking about his past or something because all I said was, “So Dean.  Tell me.  How is it that you came to be such a huge fucking asshole?”  - note this part isn’t true.  Everything else so far is, I swear, but I need to get a fight going here because I’m in the back seat and Dean is driving.

“Why you little,” Dean said as he reached a skinny, wrinkled, purplish, frail looking arm back, trying to swat me.  I effortlessly batted those gross long yellowy fingernails away.

“Um guys,” Boomer said, looking down the road.  But neither of us paid him any mind (Iowa parlance). 

Dean was too old to do me any physical harm, so he went with the old “time travel” threat.  He was looking back at me, pointing a spindly index finger, yelling, “Why you little punk.  You’re not half the man I was at your age, blah blah blah, etc. etc”

“We’ll see about that,” I said, thinking I know a guy who could send me back to when Dean was my age so I could go kick his ass.  Then I reconsidered, realizing Dean might be right.  It’d be a drag to travel through time just to get my ass kicked.

“Dean,” Boomer was saying with more urgency, “Stop the car!”

Then I saw it.  Standing right smack dab (parlance) in the middle of the highway, cutting a lean figure against the horizon, was the familiar sunglasses and sharkskin suit of our old pal, Robert Duvall.  Dean was going too fast.  No way he could stop the Suburban in time, even if he was looking.  Finally, the old man turned his head to get the faintest glimpse of Duvall as the truck passed clean through (parlance) where he’d been standing a moment earlier.  Boomer and I were shocked.  I was sure the movie actor’s blood and guts were about to be spattered all over and through the Suburban.  But no.   He just disappeared.

Boomer said, “Never mind.  I thought I saw something,” as he slid down in his seat a little, resting his knees against the glove compartment and pulled out a cigarette.  Reaching into his shirt pocket, he asked me, “Cube.  You got my lighter?”

“Fuckin’ Duvall,” I replied.

“Fuckin’ Duvall, indeed,” said Boomer, pressing in the coil cigarette lighter in the Suburban’s ashtray.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”  Dean asked.

“Well, for one, it means now we don’t get to find out how much of a man you used to be,” I mumbled to myself.

“Nothing boss.  It’s just that Robert Duvall stole my time machine again,” Boomer explained.

“You boys been smoking something,” Dean asked.

“Don’t change the subject.  Jinx,” Boomer and I said.