Wishing you all the best. See you all next year!
With love and care and thanks to all for following and reading.
Peter
Esserine was a married woman with two kids. But more, she was a Bible-thumper, a Bible-quoting woman who attended church every week and listened to Robert and his choir sing. Except she really listened and she really followed what the preacher and her Bible said. She was a God-fearing woman of character and morality, a woman who never stepped outside of her marriage and never would, a woman who would give the man robbing her everything she had along with a blessing from God, all the while telling him he didn’t have to rob her, that she’d happily give it all to him if he needed it.
Robert knew her and her family from the church. Alvin, despite his funkiness, knew of her in the sense that he knew she was a pantry woman at one of the local places at which he went to drink. Robert came to find out that she had been a pantry woman, that the place she worked in had gone under and she was unemployed. He approached her one Sunday, still in his choir robe, and that, as they say, was that.
So it came to be, nice and easy.
Esserine was gentle and quiet-mannered, a much lighter-skinned black than Mary or Alfreda or even Bea who was coffee and cream. She called Tommy Mr. Stevens and Lillian Miss Lillian. Whenever Bill flirted with any of the waitresses she was quick to rebuke him and remind him that God would have His way in the end, that Bill would have to pay for his indiscretions. If Bill went to play with her, she’d blush and tell him she wasn’t about to meet him in hell.
Tommy was so happy he could have cried. Gone was Marie who was corrupting everything. Well, not really. She was just actively participating in and exacerbating the corruption. Or, she was actively indulging herself with two of the key participants of the corruption.
For all her nastiness, and for all her feigned hurt, Alfreda was no better. She was just more quiet about her activities. She liked Bill from the start but had held off until she’d known he was available in the sense that he was messing around. Even sitting there in the church pews, Mary and Bea had told her about him. So, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Or, what’s good to you, as Robert always said, is good for you. Huh glory! And the meat wagon, the van they used to transport the meat from the east to the west, would never be the same.
After Marie was gone, they had some quiet times up on the kitchen floor, at least once Mary and Bea went home. Bill could not flirt with Mary if Esserine was there. It was like they were both shy, as if they felt they were being watched over and judged, which was the truth. If Bill touched Mary, Lord have Mercy. If he kissed her and felt her, Esserine would remind them there were two places in the afterlife and God was always judging.
Bill was fighting with Bea more and more. The more jealous she was of Mary, the more covetous she was of her position, the more Bill took control of the kitchen and was able to handle his position and all the others as well, the more Bea got on his case for any little thing. She yelled at him sometimes. She embarrassed him if she could. Then too, she increased her sexual demands almost becoming like a hussy. At any given time, for any ridiculous reason, she would summon Bill downstairs and make him… Well, at least, from his point of view, she reciprocated every time.
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By Peter Weiss
Strike two: Jim.
Mickey was incorrigible in his own way.
First, he continued collecting the leftovers of all the bar glasses that came in. He dumped their contents into his soda glass (they called it pop there in the Buckeye state) and when the glass, with just a tad of pop in it, was full, he’d drink it down in one quick series of gulps. Thus he was ever inebriated, or he was certainly high most of the time, which in and of itself was not such a terrible thing because it seemed to mellow him out.
But it pissed Jim off interminably. And Jim was ever one to be cross and wanting to fight. Then there was no telling when he would just go off since he was not right in the head.
Second, Mickey continued to try to pimp Bill with the two plump girls in his rooming house. He never went so far as to tell Bill that they wanted stud service and were willing to pay for it, but he came with glossies sometimes. The girls posed in different outfits. You couldn’t do nudies back then unless you had a Polaroid and Mickey couldn’t afford one of those, so he took pictures and had them developed. They were racy but not pornographic.
Sisters, not twins, the girls were usually made up and dressed nicely. They posed showing cleavage or thigh or both. Sometimes they were hugging each other suggestively, even kissing sometimes. In several of them they were fondling each other, or just about, but not quite, reaching up the other’s dress or skirt. In some they suggestively offered their derrieres.
To someone not knowing context, the pictures could have been construed as simple, innocent posing fun, two sisters messing around. Mickey passed them off to Bill as prospective pleasures to be had, the promise of a certain lasciviousness that also paid handsome dollar dividends.
Mickey’s drinking was a continual irritation for Jim. Jim wanted to drink but would never stoop to drinking someone else’s leftovers. A collection of them was even worse. A mixture was even more horrible as a concept. Unless he was desperate. So far he wasn’t that desperate.
Nevertheless, regardless of why, Mickey ticked Jim off incessantly. Maybe it was because Mickey was never unhappy unless he was strung out, and since there were almost always concoction mixtures, he was rarely strung out. Maybe it was because Jim was always ticked off anyway. He had been somebody once, a Derby winner owner-trainer who’d been kicked in the head by his horse, almost killed in fact and never right afterward. He’d been saved by a stable boy who was able to calm the horse down and steady him.
Jim always watched what Bill drank. He had gone off multiple times now, more times than you could count on one hand, each time telling Bill that he could sure use a beer, and when Bill, who could never give him one, didn’t, Jim went into a rant saying, “You really think you’re something, don’t you?” which actually couldn’t have been further from Bill’s reality since Bill really thought he was less than nothing. If Jim had only known that more than ninety per cent of what Bill did was just a cover-up for his insecurity, he might never have gone down the path he did with Bill.
Bill felt he always had to watch Jim, especially when he was hanging around the knife sheath. Those knives were sharp and dangerous, a fresh set professionally sharpened brought in every Wednesday. Marie had fallen victim to Alfreda’s haircut with one of those knives and Bill was ever making sure he didn’t fall victim to Jim who was, if nothing else, wholly unpredictable.
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By Peter Weiss
Jimmy slid off the line, out the door and down the stairs.
Bill said, “Come on, Alfreda, put the knife down. Let her be.” He stood less than five feet from them. “Come on, girl. You cut enough hair already.” He gently stepped closer, but Alfreda stared him down.
“Don’t you take another step. You come any closer, I’ll cut her skin.”
“Okay. Okay.” Bill put his hands up in front of him in the calm-down gesture and stayed where he was. “You don’t want to do this, girl.”
“Oh yes I do.” She laughed wildly and started cutting at Marie’s hair again.
A big mess of hair was already on the floor at Marie’s feet. “Skinny, skanky piece of shit,” Alfreda said. “He ain’t screwing you no more.”
“Come on Alfreda, calm down.” Bill talked softly. As he spoke now he saw Henry Lee out of the corner of his eye. Henry Lee was limping on his bad leg. “Let her go, sweetie. You know your man loves you like no one else. I have to hear him swearing it all day long down in the meat room.”
“Don’t con me,” said Alfreda. But before she could say anything more, Henry Lee stepped up behind her and snatched the knife from her hand. She turned to attack him but no sooner did she lift a hand than he smothered her so she couldn’t move.
“Thanks man,” he said to Bill.
Bill nodded. Then he smelled the burning steaks and ran to the Garland. He pulled open the drawer and looked at the mess. Every steak was gone, some of them already near ash. He took up the tongs and grabbed them one by one, tossing each one into the garbage.
By this time Tommy was in the kitchen. He knew better than to step between Henry Lee and Alfreda so he came over by Bill. Marie, freed from the clutches of the crazed wife, grabbed her purse, slinked out of the kitchen and downstairs to change into her civvies.
“You got it under control?” Tommy asked.
Bill was already replacing the burnt steaks on the grill. He put them all to one side where there was no char, took a side towel, placed it in his tongs, dipped it into the deep fryer and used it to wipe down the grills, greasing them where the steaks were not. Then he moved the steaks to the cleaned side, diamond-marking all of them by rotating them, and cleaned the remainder of the grills.
“See what messing around gets you?” said Tommy.
Bill shot him bull daggers. He was messing around with Mary, Bea, Marie and three of the waitresses. Alfreda had come on to him too.
“It never leads to any good,” Tommy said. “Now I’m gonna lose a salad girl and there’s gonna be all kinds of problems both here and out west.”
Bill had lined the burnt steaks up on the rim of the charcoal grill. After he flipped the replacement steaks and made sure all the steaks working on the grill were okay, one by one he took up the burnt steaks, examined them carefully checking out both sides of them as he held them in the tongs. One by one, almost as if it were spitefully, he conspicuously tossed them into the garbage. Then he took down all the dupes, handed them to Tommy and told him to start picking up orders.
While Tommy expedited and they worked orders, every now and then Bill checked to see who, if anyone, was coming up the back stairs. At one point, very quietly, Marie crept past the kitchen entrance and slinked out the back. Bill never saw her again.
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By Peter Weiss
A Happy Holiday Season to all.
See you shortly with new Bill Wynn and some new things.
The Bible says that to everything there is a season.
Marie came to work several more times with black eyes and swollen cheeks that were soon to turn black and blue and then yellow over her brown skin. On those days she slinked in and ran downstairs to change quietly. Then she showed up on the kitchen floor with dark glasses.
Bill and Henry Lee had several discussions about possible courses of action, but they decided to keep to themselves and not start anything which might lead to unpredictable consequences. They both felt her husband needed to get his ass kicked and they were willing to do it. But to what end? That’s what they couldn’t see. So they withdrew from Marie somewhat, waited for her to initiate whatever it was she wanted. Mostly with Bill it was talk, a camaraderie of sorts. But sometimes talk turned to more, the more shifting further and further toward the unusual.
Then came the fateful night when Alfreda decided she’d had enough. That was the night when the random factor entered in and things took their own turn. That was the night when about eight or so in the evening, right there in the kitchen, right there on Marie’s station in the midst of the dinner service, Alfreda helped herself to a chef’s knife from the knife sheath and walked through the kitchen over to Marie.
Strike one.
Sometimes, when you can’t see what to do, doing nothing is the best course of action. Other times it ends up that doing nothing is tantamount to doing something. This was not one of those cases. This was a case where Alfreda was the random factor and Alfreda did it all in one fell swoop.
She came in through the back door. Bill thought nothing of it since she came for the meat pickups sometimes and for other business as it happened. Sometimes she came just to say hello and to surprise her husband.
She said “Hi.” Bill said “Hi” back and kept on with working the steaks he had on the Garland. Alfreda said her “hi” like there was nothing wrong or unusual going on and maybe if Bill had taken the time to look into her eyes he would have seen that that was far from the reality. Maybe, if he’d looked he’d have seen her sidle up to that knife sheath and lean against it casually, as if she was gonna stand there and flirt with him like she did sometimes. But he paid her no mind, thought nothing of her being there.
Quietly, she took a chef’s knife from the sheath, went around the front of the line straight to Marie’s station where Marie stood fixing salads. Marie didn’t see her until it was too late. No one did. Alfreda was on a mission. Marie was the mission.
“You skanky bitch.” Alfreda was already behind the counter, ready to pounce. She pushed Marie backward against the wall where she pinned her and grabbed her hair. Marie didn’t scream. She didn’t even resist. She was in shock, caught wholly unaware. She was totally unprepared for the onslaught.
“Mess with my man? Here? Where I work? In my world? I don’t think so.” Piece by piece, Alfreda started cutting locks of Marie’s hair from her head and tossing them to the floor. “I’ll fix it so he never looks at you again.”
Marie stood still. The whole kitchen stopped. The dishwashers froze. Two waitresses were there. They froze. Jimmy and Bill looked up at the sound of Alfreda’s voice. Then they looked at each other. Bill started down the line toward where they were. As he passed Jimmy, he told him to go downstairs and get Henry Lee.
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By Peter Weiss
Re-posted in consideration of General Michael Flynn
In light of the Special Prosecutor and in consideration for those who are pleading guilty, here’s the anatomy of a guilty plea when you’re coerced into making one.
Ohio State University, 1970. More than six hundred would be arrested. Most of them would have their cases dismissed because of entrapment. I was the first person arrested.
The demonstrators were sitting on the gates to the campus. The gates were open and while demonstrators were hindering traffic, the road was not blocked other than by people. From inside the campus, in plain clothes, what would turn out to be undercover FBI agents entered into the crowd. They pulled one demonstrator from the gates and started beating him. They made no attempt to arrest him or identify themselves. They simply beat him.
I was standing there with one of my professors. We had met for lunch and he wanted to see what was happening. I pleaded with the crowd to help the kid being beaten but no one did. Finally I threw down my books and grabbed the guy nearest me who was beating the demonstrator. I was immediately knocked out from behind. I came to in the paddy wagon where an undercover cop started and led a conversation that showed up verbatim at my trial.
I was in a holding cell for about eight hours. I had no one to help me and no money for bail. Finally another professor of mime, a friend, bailed me out. He took me to the hospital where I was treated for a concussion and patched up. If not for this friend, I would not have had a lawyer. I had no money, no resources. I was hurt and in trouble.
I’ve told this many times in many contexts and written about it too.
A legal defense fund was started and my friend made some calls to find out if they would take my case. When I say I had no money, this means none, nada. I was on a work study program that paid my tuition and I received a meager SSI benefit for my deceased mother which paid my rent. This was my entire income.
The arraignment came. The judge told the prosecutor it was a ridiculous case, so outrageous that he should dismiss it outright. He then turned to me and said he wanted to dismiss the case but knew that if he did they would re-arrest me the moment I walked out the door. He said they would then file felony charges against me, my bail would skyrocket, and worse, they’d put me in the penitentiary for a year. So in my best interests, he said, he was holding the case against me over for trial.
Then came the wheeling-dealing, all of which was handled by my lawyer. We met in his office and he laid it all out. I was charged with three misdemeanors, assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. If I didn’t cop a plea, they would file a felony against me, Rioting One. The penalty for that was prison time in the penitentiary. As well, I had to face a disciplinary hearing in the university’s ombudsman’s office. If I didn’t cop a plea, they would try me immediately and if were found guilty, not only would I go to prison for a year, but I’d also be expelled from the university and never be allowed to graduate. I was a senior in my last quarter.
So what choice was there for me? In the end, what I did or didn’t do didn’t matter. Truth didn’t matter. Getting their conviction was all that mattered and they were willing to ruin my life for that.
This is the anatomy of a coerced guilty plea. Imagine what they did to General Flynn and so many others.
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By Peter Weiss
Fun and games don’t last forever and for all the things you get away with, sooner or later there’s a day of reckoning.
The basketball season went on, then pitchers and catchers reported for spring training. The winter concerts were long gone and UDC was busy rehearsing for the spring concert series. Bill’s fiancé was getting ready to graduate and she and Bill were getting ready to get married. Life was life.
Winter was dreary and long. If April was the cruelest month, February, for as short as it was, was one of the longest, dullest, bleakest periods of time. Everything plodded on. The days were bitter cold and the ever-present winds made them feel even colder. There was not much snow. Things were flat, barren and brown.
Seemed like day by day tempers at work were flaring more often and more intensely. Bea appeared to be outrageously jealous of Mary and acted out whenever Bill went off with her. She started playing power games with Bill, mostly about stupid stuff like laundry room and storeroom keys, both of which she coveted steadfastly. There wasn’t a single time when she would give up the keys without reminding Bill to lock the doors behind him. Most often and whenever she could, she would go down with him, not because she didn’t trust him but because she wanted to remind him that she was the boss.
Her extracurricular demands became more outrageous too. At the strangest times she would tell Bill to meet her downstairs and when he did she would be waiting for him, waiting for him to take care of her. He might find her in the storeroom sitting atop a stack of boxes with no panties on and her legs wide open. Or he might find her in the linen room totally naked just waiting for him. She always made sure to take care of him too, but she was relatively indifferent to whether or not he was in the mood. This too he realized was nothing more than a power-play.
Bill recognized power-plays. He remembered—he would never forget—that arrival at the workhouse, getting off the bus, the drama that the prison guards played on him and everyone who was there to see it and experience it. Then there were the times when he was sitting in his work-detail bus and from the bus window they watched the same guards play the same drama on the new inmates.
He had seen brutal things. Personally, he had been picked on, chastised, humiliated and had his head shaved. Or, it wasn’t shaved completely. Worse, they just chopped off all the hair he’d spent years growing.
In comparison, Bea’s power plays were inconsequential, even humorous. They were petty, small, evil-intentioned.
He and Mary had developed and were continuing a sensitive, caring affair. Once they had disclosed their feelings, once they had opened up about them, there was no turning back.
“I love you,” Mary had said.
“I love you too,” said Bill.
Those words were uttered, it was like the dam had burst and emotions were flooding out of each of them. They went to the Upper Room. They spent as much time as they could downstairs in the party room and anywhere else where they could be together. They even spent time at Mary’s house when Mary could get Alfreda to babysit.
Bill’s fiancé did not seem to notice much about his being absent. It was not that he was a great actor and was busy pretending he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. It was more that she was into herself, ever into herself, almost never looking much outside of that.
There would be a time of reckoning for Bill and her too. Anyone who was looking at them from outside their situation could already see everything, could already see that even before they were married they were growing apart. She had not signed on to be married to a cook.
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By Peter Weiss
Bill didn’t think of himself as a crazy white boy. He didn’t think of himself as crazy at all. Most of the things that were happening to him now and most of the things that he was doing did not seem unusual, crazy, or even unlike the things that other people in the kitchens did. He was, as it seemed to him, one of several cooks (and a meat cutter) doing exactly as they did.
Because his fiancé was not going to be there, Bill did not drive home. He asked Lorraine if he could crash on her sofa. She was happy to allow him to do so. She reminded him that her children were home and that they had to act accordingly. Bill, having thoroughly enjoyed himself with Marie in a way he’d never done before, was quite okay with that idea and happy to be able to simply get a shower and go to sleep. Lorraine’s girls were now somewhat used to seeing Bill crashing there sometimes, and since they’d never seen their mother and Bill together they thought nothing more of it than what their mother had told them, which was he had a long drive and had to be back again early in the morning so it was easier for him to say over out there.
He called his fiancé first thing in the morning and told her he’d spent the night at Lorraine’s, that he was heading off to work about nine o’clock. This would get him in early so that he could change the grease, set up the prime ribs that needed to be cooked and straighten up around the dish-washing area where a lot of dishes had remained unwashed from the night before. This would not have been tolerated on a regular day when they were opening for lunch and dinner. But because it was a Sunday, because they thought it was going to be somewhat slow, certainly compared to the last few days, Tommy had allowed it to happen.
As it worked out, Lorraine’s daughters went off to church before Bill had left for work. This left Lorraine and Bill alone together in the apartment. Lorraine seized the opportunity immediately. She jumped Bill’s bones the moment her daughters’ friend’s mother picked them up and drove off. They kissed, they petted, they played, then she invited him into her bed. Their activities finished with a shower together after which Bill dressed and got himself ready to head into work. Lorraine gave him a clean pair of skivvies, one of the few remaining in the pack her husband had left there when they’d separated.
Tommy was already in when Bill got to work. He had opened the back but kept the screen door locked so that Bill had to bang on the door and wait for him to come along to let him in.
“Mr. Bowman is going to be thrilled with the numbers from last night. He’s gonna be thrilled with the run we’ve had in both stores since Thursday.”
“He should be.”
“Well, he will be. But he won’t be pleased with all the bourbon missing from downstairs.”
“Call it a work expense.”
“You and Henry Lee can’t keep doing that. I’m gonna cover it this time. It’s easier for me than having to fight with Drenovis.”
“I have some choice words for him.”
“You need to watch yourself. Being good at your job will only carry you so far. Being tight with Robert will carry you even further. But everyone has limits.”
“Yeah, him too. And he better not overstep his.”
Tommy shook his head almost in disbelief maybe. “You’re incorrigible aren’t you?”
“I’m learning the trade,” said Bill.
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By Peter Weiss
Bill called home at quarter-past-one. He was surprised when there was no answer, especially after the way they’d left things this morning with his fiancé expecting him to hurry home after work. Only two reasons there could be no answer, he thought. First was she was asleep. Second was she was in the shower. But neither of these were the case. He would learn that Tim was having another crisis moment. He would learn this several moments after he’d called when Tommy came into the kitchen to tell him he had a phone call. That’s when his fiancé told him she would be staying over at Tim’s.
In the scope of things this wasn’t so bad because Marie made sure to hang out after she’d finished her work. She had called home and spoken with her husband, told him they were swamped and she would be home as soon as she could get there.
Bill did not change the grease. It wasn’t a change-the-grease night, but he still should have done it since the volume had been so great. He told Tommy he would take care of it in the morning and that he would come in early to do so. Instead, he spent his time making sure the line was perfectly clean and all the food that was left over—not much of it, to be sure—was well-wrapped and stowed away properly.
Everything done, everything settled, Bill rang the bell and asked Lorraine, who was the first waitress in the door, to ask Tommy if the kitchen were done. She returned a moment later saying he could close it up.
Marie met him down in the meat room. She jumped up on the counter and sat the same way Mary did with her feet crossed at the ankles. Bill brought down two bottles of beer and handed one to her. Then he went into the bourbon drawer and pulled out the opened bottle. He took a long pull and passed the bottle to Marie who sipped at it more genteelly. When she’d handed him back the bottle and he’d tucked it away in the drawer, he stepped up to her and forced her to spread her legs so that he could step between them. He leaned in aggressively and kissed her forcefully reaching up her legs as he did so.
Marie let him know in no uncertain terms that she liked him being forceful with her. Her kisses responded to his and she moved herself so that he could feel her the way both he and she wanted. Bill asked her if she wanted to smoke a joint. She said yes, definitely, and so they lingered only a moment more while they played with each other and kissed each other. Then Bill pulled away from her and helped her down off the counter.
“Let’s go into the ladies room,” he said. He reached into the bourbon drawer and pulled out a joint. He also took out two Quaaludes from a pill bottle he’d put in there, one for him, one for her. He handed hers over and she swallowed it with a sip of her beer.
“You better be able to drive home,” he said.
“It’ll be what it’ll be,” said Marie.
Bill swallowed his Quaalude with another drink of bourbon and then followed Marie into the staff ladies room. He locked the door behind them and made sure the fan came on. That’s when he lit up the joint.
Marie sat on the counter in the ladies room but did not cross her legs. Bill messed with her while they smoked. She helped him unbuttoned his kitchen pants. Bill was dead-set on doing exactly what she’d whispered to him upstairs on her station. That meant she would certainly need the clean, dry panties she’d brought along.
“You one crazy white boy,” Marie said.
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