"I Should Have beat the Crap out of Him"

My spirits always lift a bit when I see Robert Lindahl sitting at the bar.  He’s an exception among packing house foremen.  He refuses to lie to the workers on his line, sometimes much to the irritation of the company, and he treats his workers with a kindness and respect usually conspicuously absent in a packing house.  His background is a bit unique as well.  He majored in art, but an unplanned pregnancy and a sense of personal responsibility took him to Canterbury Meats to work.  A good living wage and his wife’s reluctance to leave the small town she grew up in, ended up with him stuck to a packing house career as firmly as an insect to flypaper.

 I could tell that he was agitated though, when I ordered a beer and sat down on the stool next to him.

His “hello” was taut with anger.  Noticing the surprised look on my face, he quickly
assured me that he wasn’t angry at me.  After a few moments of silence during which he turned and glared toward the back of the tavern, he began to fill me in about what had upset him.
 

“Did you see Maria standing outside the bar?” he asked.

 “Yeah, I nodded ‘hello’ to her.  Why?”

 “Was she still crying?” he asked, his voice rising an octave as he thought of her tears.

"I didn’t notice,” I had to confess.  “Her eyes might have been red, but it’s windy out, and I assumed that the cold might be affecting her.”

No,” Robert growled.  “It wasn’t the god-damned cold.  You know the low-life she’s married to, don’t you?”

I nodded.  Everyone knew Gorman, by reputation if not personally.  He was a loud-mouthed rail-trimmer.  Loud when sober.  Even more obnoxiously loud and abusive when drunk.  Which was often.  Even by packing house standards.  Robert pointed toward the back of the bar.  Gorman was leaning against the rear wall of the bar, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, holding a pool cue, waiting for his turn to shoot.

“He was sitting next to me when Maria came in,” Robert explained, “whining to me about the fact that he’d put in for a blue hat and didn’t get the promotion.  Wondering if I’d go to bat for him.”  His mouth formed into a sneer of contempt before he said “That would be a cold day in hell.

Anyway, Maria came in, and gently reminded him that it was Marisa’s birthday.  They’d promised their youngest daughter that they’d take her out for a pizza.  She wasn’t being a shrew, she reminded him about his promise I thought quite tactfully. 

Evidently he’d had just enough to drink to be quarrelsome.  He turned on her and unloaded venomously.  Called her a “Mexican whore,” “stupid bitch,” “nagging skank,” you name it.  If that wasn't humiliating enough, he finally stood up, grabbed her by the shoulders, and walked her to the door, telling her to stay the fuck out of his bar, and that he’d be outside to go home with her when he was damn good and ready.

I wanted so badly to grab him by the neck and bounce his face off the bar a few times.  I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so badly in my life. The trouble is,  I’m a foreman, and if Cargill got wind that I was in a bar fighting with an employee, I’d probably lose my job.  I’m supposed to know better than to be socializing with the employees and putting myself in that kind of situation.  I have to sit here and watch him shit on his family because I have to think of my own.  One of life's wonderful fuckin trade-offs," he added bitterly.

"It wouldn’t piss me off so much if she weren’t such a nice girl.  She’s soft-spoken and so hard-working.  I’ve never seen her turn down any overtime.  And you can depend on her to get the work done, too.  She’s not just there putting in hours.  How’d she ever end up with a piece of shit like him?”  Robert drained his beer, slammed the glass down on the bar, and stood up to leave.  He turned to glare at Gorman who was bent over the pool table now, cigarette still hanging out of his mouth.

“Suuure I’ve got time for annudder game,” we both were able to hear the intoxicated rail-trimmer loudly slur.  Both Robert and I must have been thinking of Maria waiting outside the bar for him, as I watched both of Robert’s fists clench.

I laid my hand on his shoulder, and whispered, “He’s not worth it.”

He sighed disgustedly, and turned to leave.  “I know,” he agreed, attempting a wan smile as he tried  to stifle the frustration that still held control of his voice.  “But there’s a less compromising part of me, the better part of me, which knows damn well that I should have beat the crap out of him.”