Street Meat

Jake Sopreny, proprietor of Jake’s Street Meat, holds an elongated bun, as puffy and innocuous as a cartoon cloud, splayed open across his pink palm. “What’ll you have?” he asks the person on the other side of his cart.

Colton Brinkwater, a youngish man in a rumpled security guard uniform, stares at the bun’s light-yellow foamy interior. He straightens his posture. He’s stooped and shoulder-saggy from a twelve-hour shift spent mostly on his feet. He tucks in the shirt of his uniform, frowning slightly, thinking twice whether he can afford to splurge with his second paycheck. The upper layer of the grill already has three buns, their plump forms nestled against the heat like a row of off-white doves getting cozy on their roost. “Sure,” he says. “Spicy Italian.”

Jake tucks the bun on the upper grill and puts a sausage on the lower. “Five bucks please.”

Colton pulls out his black leather wallet, so tired it’s nearly a reflex: pay for this, pay for that, pay for everything in the city. He barely registers the flashy plastic and the screen-lit numbers as the transfer of funds imposes its own jarring rhythm on the minuet of man-gets-street-meat.

The spicy Italian sausage lies glistening, stretched out beside three other sausages on the grill like the chopped-off fingers of some klepto giant punished for thievery. Four customers stand in silence, contemplating the grill as intensely as a theosophical problem. The noontime sun, on the hottest day of the year so far, does some of its own grilling on their uncovered heads. Colton wipes the sweat from his hairline.

His order is the latest on the grill. Marbled pink and white, a conglomerate of fat and meat and proprietary spices, it awaits the gods of cookery to be transformed, Dots of black pepper and flecks of Scoville-enhancing capsicum coyly peek through the translucent casing. Colton once heard that casings were made of pig guts: can this be true? Remarkable and yet gross, like so many delectable things tend to be. Like the act of procreation itself. His salivary glands stand at attention.

Heat radiates from the charcoal. Beads of oil coalesce on the casing, dribble down the sausage, coating the grill’s blackened rods, dripping on the glowing red and white embers underneath. From each drop, smoke spirals upward amid the sizzle that rushes and hisses and shushes.

Colton runs the thick wet muscle of his tongue over his teeth. The heat, the hunger, the an-ti-ci-pa-tion. Three other faces focus on the grill, oblivious to other pedestrians milling by, some slowing to look. Three faces—but not four. Not Jake’s.

Jake is watching. Watching everything, everyone. Up, down, left right. He clicks his tongs, scanning for the next customer. Preparing to smile and say again, “What’ll you have?” Always ready to throw new meat on the grill.

Most people out here in the street appear to be going somewhere, but some are clearly intrigued by the carts. They slow their steps, planning an easy purchase or—perhaps, for a few—a quick theft. Sugar packets pilfered from Koffee Kart, soda stolen from Chow Wagon, grated cheese taken gratis from Jake’s generous array of condiments—the cart owners must always be alert.

Aha, at last. The first of the four sausages is ready and the grill-watchers stare as Jake pincers the brownest sausage. Customer One receives her order, accepting it from Jake like a practiced nurse taking a newborn swaddled in a white receiving blanket.

The other customers gaze longingly at the cuddly bundle placed on the limp white napkin, the toasted bun like a crunchy mattress for the delicious fat-bellied miracle inside. Customer One re-opens the bun, positions the spout of the mustard container, and doodles MWMW over the sausage.

Colton steps back on his left heel, and for the first time truly notices Customer One. She’s dressed in a pale satiny blouse and a lightly creased teal-blue skirt: an office worker, he guesses, who wouldn’t normally risk staining her fine clothes or breathing chopped onion odors on her colleagues. He predicts she will forego all other toppings. A second later, she presses the bun-halves together and proves him right. Colton smiles, quickly turns away so as not to leer. Why did she even risk the mustard? She must crave the taste, the burst of flavor—she secretlyyearns for excitement, he guesses. Yep, only four weeks here but he has learned a thing or two working the downtown.

She quick-steps to a nearby bench, her small purse, also teal-blue, suggestively bumping against her hip. Once seated, she begins nibbling at one end of her tightly held treasure. He is transfixed, wondering if he’ll ever find a girlfriend in this big unfriendly city. His stomach spasms.

He eyes the other two customers. Men with bellies. They’ll go for all condiments, he predicts, give or take the banana peppers, which float bright-orange in brine. Give or take the sauerkraut, which looks dry and stringy and brown.

He stands back to watch his predictions come true. Or not.

Customer Two loads up his wurst. Everything Everywhere All at Once—with extra cheese. Chopped onions scatter; sliced dill slides; ketchup drips.

Colton wrinkles his nose. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. He pictures Customer Two lounging, oblivious to his lunch-stained shirt, and suppresses a laugh. Customer Two shuffles away.

Colton leans closer to the grill and is rewarded with the appetite-inducing aroma of hot street meat, the air-borne grease invading his nose, his face, his hair. Ahhhhh. The street meat sizzles a message: stay solid, stay strong, stay safe! His nostrils flare, his nasal passages moisten, and his lips curve upward, a sausage-shaped curve, a parenthesis of promise, as the pinky-brown turns golden-brown turns umber brown.

Customer Three slathers sauces and heaps condiments including banana peppers on his sausage. Just as predicted.

Colton smiles smugly. Then, suddenly, it’s his turn.

Jake opens the halves of lightly toasted bun and settles the piping hot sausage on its new bed. “Spicy Italian!” he proclaims.

Hand trembling, arm extended, Colton accepts the precious package, a baton delivered. To you from failing hands we throw. His first street meat in his new city.

Suddenly, a shout arises from the crowd on the sidewalk. A shout, then another shout, from Customer Three as he clutches his sausage, recoiling from someone’s swinging arm. This stranger is dressed in a filthy, ragged, yellow T-shirt with a smiley face on it. Have a Nice Day, it says.

Ketchup bottle in his right hand, Colton frowns, mid-squirt, as he tries to process the what and the why of the shout. And the who. Who dons a smiley-face T-shirt while having a nervous breakdown? Who creates a disturbance under the blazing sun when the street is so crowded, and people are darting from one cool shelter to the next?

Smiley-Face’s head is red and sweaty, his eyes glaring. His arms are swinging like he’s conducting a band of ever-accelerating tempo.

Worse, his right hand has a hammer.

Colton steps back, hand gripping his longed-for lunch. Under a garish sun, on a day so hot the tree-leaves are browning at their tips, the phrase “heat-induced psychosis” flashes across his mental marquee. Textbook case?

People dart away, the circle widens, and soon there is only Colton standing deer-in-headlights within a ten-foot radius of Smiley-Face, who glowers at Colton’s chest, emblazoned with the pseudo-military crest of the pseudo-trustworthy security guard company that employs Colton.

“Greedy pig!” shrieks Smiley-Face. “Where’s my hot dog? Why can’t I get one?” he lunges and Colton, four weeks on the job without encountering a threat, must now protect what’s cradled in his left hand, armed with only a ketchup squeeze bottle.

Smiley-Face, a sheen of sweat on his head, his neck, gesticulates wildly as if he’s about to overturn Jake’s Street Meat cart.

In his peripheral vision, Colton sees Customer One, still on her bench under partial shade. She is still holding a half-eaten sausage and her cheeks deform temporarily with each chew. She fumbles in her purse with the other hand, Fumbling, fumbling.

“Cool it, man,” says Colton, willing his voice to stay calm, monotonous, resonant. Commanding. He wants to apply his training, but damn it’s still so recent and really hasn’t gelled. And things are happening fast. He wouldn’t fear a hammer—more visible than a bullet, right?—but he also senses that normal rules don’t apply. Smiley-Face could run at him from one direction, occupying all his attention, and maybe throw the hammer from a different direction, catch him off-guard.

But wait, back to basics, what’s Smiley-Face asking for?

Food.

His food—Colton’s food.

Why not give his food?

“Here, man, you hungry? You take it.” Colton holds out the sausage.

Smiley-Face starts to advance on him.

A pang of regret pinches Colton’s chest. He is so hungry.

But maybe sacrifice will solve the problem. Keep the peace.

Feed one hungry man. But it won’t be Colton.

Resentment flutters inside him but he ignores it.

“Here,” he says to Smiley-Face, holding out his sausage again. “Here, take it.”

Colton has only got eyes for Smiley-Face and Smiley-Face only has eyes for him. They are locked in one instant. Time stretches—and stretches. They stare at each other.

A woman’s voice emerges from the bench area. “…Corner of King and John. Right beside the line of lunch carts. … Yes, I’ll hold the line.”

Colton takes a deep breath. He keeps his eye on the hammer. On Smiley-Face.

Help is on its way.

The End