Trish Terrell worked in the meat packing plant that was part of The Facility out north of town. The plant wasn’t as large as the big packaging houses of Armor, or Hormel who ran three shifts around the clock. The plant processed the animals that were raised at The Facility to test animal production methods, vaccines, cosmetics, and reproduction cycles in order to maximize profits in the animal husbandry arts.
None of what they butchered and processed was for human consumption, although packages were often smuggled out in employees’ lunch boxes or rubber boots that would wind up on barbecue grills all over Fort Stockton. Most of what was processed was packaged as pet food and sent to other countries whose standards might not have been as high in terms of what was allowed to be eaten.
Trish was a hard worker. Of course that was early due to the fact that she had to be. The vast majority of the workforce in the processing plant was male. They tended to frown on females in the workforce and did nothing to make life any easier on the young girl. It would seem that most men did little to ever make life easier on her. Despite her sunny disposition, a string of men she’d dated had found new ways to cheat on her, disappoint her, or go out of their way to make her life more complicated.
None more so that her last boyfriend, Dusty Thurber. Dusty had promised her the world as he swept her off her feet. He worked his way into her heart and then into her pants. It was shortly thereafter that she found out that she was with child. “Dusty hated to wear protection,” she told Lucinda later. “Said it ruined the whole sensation for him. Said he just figured that I’da done whatever it took to keep it from happenin’. Said it was my responsibility.”
Lucinda and Sister Thelma had a baby shower for her at Lucinda’s home and there was a good turn out. They helped set her up in a place she’d been able to rent out at Modern Manor Mobile Home Village. Pastor Peterson and his wife donated everything she needed for a nursery, their boys being way past the age of needing it and Pastor Peterson having been convinced to get snipped to avoid having any more.
Despite the prospect of raising a child alone, Trish kept her sunny disposition, just like she kept the 1974 Camaro she’d had since she turned 16 and got her license. The car was finished in Cream Beige over Medium Saddle vinyl and powered by a 350ci V8 mated to a three-speed automatic transmission. Features included a Saddle vinyl-covered roof, the Style Trim Group, 14″ Rally wheels, power-assisted front disc brakes, a center console, an AM/FM/cassette radio, air conditioning, and front bucket seats with an adjustable driver’s seat back.
Folks said the car fit Trish like a glove. Rusty, from over at the hardware store, said Dusty Thurber apparently fit her like one, too. Lucinda slapped the back of his head with a stack of menus when the words came out of his mouth. She has no use for girls getting bad mouthed, even by one of ‘the regulars’.
Despite its age, the Camaro looked pretty good. Sure, the driver’s seat had been repaired utilizing vinyl-based adhesive products and there was a tear on the outer side. The fuel level gauge only intermittently functioned and the seat belt buzzer had been disconnected. But those were things people could have complained about or done when the car was only a year or two old.
A year or two back, at nearly the end of her shift on Friday afternoon, Trish stepped into the meat storage room, wheeling in a cart full of drawn and quartered West Texas short-haired prairie oxen. They had been used in creating a new lip balm The Facility was testing for Mayor Goodman. He was hoping that if the salve could pass the initial safety tests it could be marketed and sold to his staff and followers so that they could continue to kiss his ass, but not have the nasty aftertaste.
Of course, Trish didn’t know any of those details. She was simply wheeling the carcasses into cold storage for the weekend so that when the plant reopened on Monday they could be processed into alpaca food and shipped to Peru, Cambodia, Ohio, and other third world locations.
Trish was startled when she heard the door slowly close and lock behind her. She thought she’d propped it open to keep it from latching. She always did that, knowing the thing couldn’t be opened from the inside. Fear quickly gave way to panic, as she knew everyone else had left at the end of the shift. She knew if she screamed nobody would hear her, even if the plant was full of employees. The cold storage rooms were soundproof due to the layers of insulation involved in making them hold the frigid air.
Within an hour she was shivering and knew her situation was hopeless. Her thoughts turned to her daughter, and how much she would miss the little girl. She had said something once to Lucinda about taking the girl if anything ever happened to her, but nothing had ever been formalized. She kicked herself for not taking the time to make the arrangements legal, to be sure that Dusty Thurber never came back to claim the child.
After an hour and a half, Trish was laying on the cold floor in the fetal position, her legs drawn up tight against her chest trying to conserve what little body heat she had left. She laughed to herself, “The heater in the Camaro never worked worth a damn, but I wish I had it now.” She began to drift off for what she assumed would be the last time.
That’s when she heard something behind her. The door had opened.
Darnell, the security guard for The Facility, pushed the big heavy door open and ran over to Trish on the floor. He grabbed Trish and drug her out of the cold storage room, taking his thick coat off and wrapping it around her. Trish was coming in and out of consciousness. She looked up at him.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I’ve been working here for 35 years,” he said. “In all that time, you are the only one who works here whoever made it a point to tell me ‘good morning’ every time you came into work. You’re the only one who ever told me goodnight every time you left to go home. Most folks acted like they never saw me. But you saw me every morning and smiled. You saw me every evening and told me good night.”
Trish looked up at him and smiled faintly.
“You told me ‘good morning’ this morning. I never got a ‘good evening’. I knew you had to be here somewhere,” Darnell looked at Trish and smiled.
He waited till she was warmed up, then took her to the employee break room and made her a cup of hot coffee. He asked her if she needed him to take him to a medical facility to be checked. She declined. She needed to get home to her daughter.
“Let me walk you out to that ol’ Camaro, anyway. It’s the least I can do.”
Lucinda says “Most times it feels like kindness is never repaid. But that’s not true. It’s repaid every time, but most times we just don’t realize it. And then sometimes we realize it in ways that can’t be missed.”
I suppose she’s right.
6 responses to “COLD FACTS”
That was THE most common build Camaro I saw back when it was newish . . .
Universal joke where I live..
“How do you know that the toothbrush was invented in [insert State here]? If it was invented anywhere else it would be call a teethbrush.”
I’m going to show my “Social” side here – but my comment about certain areas, states, countries, is that “they are were they are because they have more kids than teeth!”
The Parasite Class!
The smallest act of kindness may seem to go unnoticed, but like a seed carried by the breeze, at some point, something will grow – and while it may or may not impact the origin, like the story of the pregnant waitress whose husband changes the flat tire on the Mercedes-Benz and declines payment – it is the “cast your bread upon the waters”. Ultimately there should be more than soggy bread.
That Peru and Ohio comment made me laugh out loud, Cappy.
I would have expected West By-God Virginia.
Or Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana