The Wing Man
from The Fruitcake Empire
Originally published in Dear Bear Wolf Magazine
The man stood inside of the trailer frying chicken. He held a fry basket in one hand submerged in the hot oil and filled to the brim with plump, juicy wings. He was whistling quietly to himself, curling his tongue behind his teeth and pushing the air out between his lips, but you could not hear it, for the fan was on, and all that was heard inside of the trailer was the sound of chicken frying.
The arms of the man were covered in grease, from the tips of his fingers and the backs of his hands to where his shirt sleeves hung down to his elbows. You could tell the tale of the man from the burns on his skin, like rings inside of a felled tree. As the oil popped out of the fryer in spits, he did not yank back his hand or flinch, not even once.
When they were ready, the man pulled the wings out of the fryer. He shook the basket three times, allowing the excess oil to drip from the chicken back into the grease. Then, he dumped the wings into a stainless steel bowl and began.
Reaching above the fryer in a cabinet and grabbing the huge jug of hot sauce off of the shelf, he brought it down and unscrewed the lid. Turning the container upside down, he doused the chicken in it, covering every single wing in the thick, orange sauce. Then, he screwed the lid back on and returned the bottle to the shelf in its place.
The man tossed the wings. Holding the bowl firmly in his right hand, he slang the chicken around in the basin in quick little jolts away from his body, so that the wings slid against the steel and flipped into the air, kicking this way and that before flying back in his direction and falling down into the bowl again, the hot sauce splattering all over the front of his shirt and apron.
“THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO TOSS WINGS,” his father had told him. “AND THIS HERE’S THE WAY.” But the man had tossed so many wings at this point in his life that he could not imagine doing it differently anyhow.
When the wings were wet with sauce, he dumped them into a styrofoam box lined with wax paper, closed the lid and put it in a plastic grocery sack. Turning around, he sat the bag down on the windowsill and tied together the handles into a little bow.
“20 EXTRA HOT, EXTRA WET, EXTRA CRISPY, ALL DRUMS SWIMMIN,” he shouted out the window.
“Now they swimmin ain’t they?” the customer asked, yelling over the fan blowing full blast inside.
The man reached behind him and flipped the switch off so that the trailer fell silent.
“You know how the boy is about his wings,” the man in the parking lot went on.
“Mike,” the wing man laughed. “I been fixin that boy his wings ever since he was a baby. Now if anybody knows how he likes em, it’s me.”
“Alright, Gene. Alright. I reckon you right. How much I owe ya?”
The man inside the trailer smiled. “Got any dinner rolls?”
“You bet your ass I do. How’s about a rack?”
“Shit,” said Gene. “That’ll last me more an a week. Bring em round back.”
Mike walked over to his bread truck and threw open the back doors. He pulled himself up into it and disappeared inside. In a few seconds, he was hopping out of the back of the truck onto the cement with a plastic rack in his hands loaded down with a dozen bags of bakery fresh dinner rolls.
At the back door of the trailer, Gene took the bread from Mike and slid it onto a shelf beside the freezer. He handed his customer an empty rack and stepped out of the trailer, leaving the door open behind him.
It was dark outside and the crickets were chirping now. The two stood under the only streetlight in the entire parking lot, mounted to the side of the abandoned building that backed up to the trailer. The cars sped by on the highway ahead, and the smell of rotten chicken and spent grease rose out of the dumpsters around back and blew around the corner of the building with the wind.
“How’s business?” the breadman asked.
“Shit. I ain’t had a customer in weeks.”
“That so?”
“You better believe it. Just can’t seem to keep up with the competition.”
“Competition?” he looked around the abandoned parking lot, confused. There wasn’t another wing trailer in sight. “Somebody tryin to put you outta business, Gene?”
“Shit. Ain’t that easy, Mike.”
“Whatchu mean?”
“Look here. You drive along this road here and whatdya see? WINGS. Everybody’s got em. Fast food joints got em. Sit down restaurants got em. Hell, even grocery stores got em.
“Funny thing is,” he went on, “they even got wings without any bones in em, Mike. People done got to the point where they don’t wanna eat wings less they ain’t got any bones in em. You ever seen a chicken without any bones in em?”
“Hell no,” he responded, shaking his head. “But I hear they got chickens without no beeks on em. No feet neither. Makes em easier to raise.”
The wing man’s eyes grew wide. “What the hell you talkin bout, Mike?”
The bread man laughed a little before responding. “Now I’m serious, Gene. Saw it on TV. Called up my buddy that works down at the processing plant and said it was true. Said the factory was just full of chickens with no beaks or feet on em. Hell, he said they’re all sittin up in cages, from down on the floor straight up to the ceiling.”
“Shit! How big’s the operation?”
“Based on what I heard, probably bout the same size as the bakery, maybe a little bigger.”
Gene couldn’t believe it. He had never heard of anything like this in all his life. The two men were standing under the streetlight in silence, trying to imagine the beakless, limbless birds, when the wing man finally shook his head from side to side to wipe the image from his mind.
“Well how’s the bakery?”
“Oh it’s fine. Just got bought out though.”
“Again? By who?”
“Aura Lee.”
The wing man’s eyes lit up as he began to sing, “Ain’t no body don’t like Aura Lee. Huh. I thought they was a lunch meat company.”
“Oh, they are. Got some pretty damn good lunchmeat, too. Now they’re branchin out to baked goods. Just got the inventory list in today. We ain’t just bakin bread no more, Gene. We’re makin twinkies. We’re makin peecan twirls. Hell, we’re even makin fruitcake!”
“Fruitcake?!” shouted Gene, slapping his leg. “Shit. Well look out Claxton.”
Silence fell on the parking lot again. They were staring at the cracks in the concrete when a semi-truck roared by on the highway below. They lifted their heads to watch it pass.
“How’s the lake?” Gene asked.
“Good. Striper’s runnin. Hybrid’s comin up down by the dam in the mornin and in the mouths of the river in the evenin. Shad’s schoolin in the backs of the coves. Largemouth is layin low in the roadbeds. Last Sunday, boy caught a lunker on a Slug-O in Pine Park.
“That little feller hooks em a monster every time you go out. How’d he get em this time?”
“Well, we was fishin the island. Boy casted out to the point and sat his pole down - you know how the boy is about fishin, always piddlin around in the tackle box, tryna figure out what kind of a lure he’s gonna use next. Now I’m fishin the bank, trollin along, when all of a sudden I look over and the boy’s rod’s bent double, that line just a flyin off that reel and headin out towards deep water. So I says, ‘BOY!’ And the boy leaps outta his seat and grabs that pole just in time and starts a reelin. He steadied the butt of that rod in his gut and cranked that reel like you wouldn’t believe.”
“How big was it?”
“After puttin up a fight, boy finally gets it to the boat and we saw we was gonna need the net. So I grab the net, bring her in. That sonna bitch came in at nearly five pounds!”
“Five pounds?!” Gene hollered. “Hot damn! What’d you say it was?”
“Well we thought it was a largemouth, but stuck our fingers in er mouth to pull out the hook and sure enough there was a spot on her tongue as big as a nickel.
“Pretty big for a spot. Say, you ever see any gar out there?”
“Better believe it. They like to hang out around my prop.”
“Sure do put up a good fight,” Gene said. “Well, if you can hook em that is.”
“Whatchu mean?”
“Well, thing about gar is, they got them razor sharp teeth. Mouth’s just full of em.”
“I hear ya can’t catch em with no lure,” Mike interrupted. “Nor with no line. Takes something else.”
The wing man’s eyes lit up again. “Steel wool,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You need steel wool to snag a gar.”
“A brillo pad, Gene?! You want me to go fishin with a goddamn soap sponge?”
“Hell no! Ain’t no brillo pad, Mike. Talkin bout steel wool.”
He went inside the trailer and grabbed a piece of steel wool out of his sink, then brought it back outside and held it out in front of the bread man.
“Ah,” said Mike, grabbing ahold of the little ball of metallic fibers.
“Now you just take that — that’s yours. Next time you go fishin, get you a pole ready. Make sure it’s a spin cast. Line it up with 20 pound test. Tie ya up a Texas rig, put ya a treble hook on the end instead a worm hook. Then wrap that steel wool round it, and you just go about fishin. The minute you see you a gar swirlin around at the surface or jumpin out in the distance, you pick you up your gar rig and cast. Twitch it along like you’re fishin a poppin cork, then wait. That gnarly sonna bitch’ll bite down so hard that he’ll get his teeth all caught up in the metal.”
“Hot damn!” hollered Mike. “That sounds fun. But wait. What’ll I do once I get it to the boat?”
Gene got a serious look on his face. He locked eyes with Mike and pursed his lips together tightly.
“Now that, I can’t tell ya. I ain’t ever caught no gar before.”
The two men looked at each other until they both bursted out into laughter.
“Sounds like somethin the boy would be into,” pondered Mike.
“You bet your ass he’d like it. Hell, he’d love it. Say, how is the boy, anyhow?”
“Boy’s good. Probably gettin hungry though.”
“Alright Mike,” said the wing man. He stuck out his hand.
“Alright Gene,” he responded, going in for the shake. “See you next week.”
“Shit. You plannin on eatin nothin but twinkies and peecan swirls every night? I’ll see your ass tomorrow.”
Mike laughed. “Alright, Gene. I’ll see ya tomorrow. Take care of yourself.”
The bread man climbed into the cab of his truck and checked his pager with one hand and started the engine with the other. He shifted into reverse and threw off the air brakes, backing up towards the trailer. Before taking off, he closed his door, hung his arm out the open window and drove out of the abandoned parking lot and down the two-lane highway that ran towards the interstate.
The wing man stood outside of his trailer and watched until the bread man’s truck disappeared. The moon was out tonight, a big fat spillin moon, and he knew that this meant that the fishin was good. “The moon would draw the shad to the surface and the shad would draw the striper,” he said aloud to himself.
The man turned around from the trailer and walked over to the abandoned building where the streetlight hung. Standing directly beneath it, he unzipped his pants and lifted out his penis to take a piss. He watched as his urine puddled up on the cement and ran into a little stream down towards the trailer, then cricked his neck back to stare up into the moon.
In the streetlight above him, there was a swarm of moths flying around. Their wings fluttered furiously as they threw their bodies into each other. They were eating the mosquitoes and eating the gnats that gathered in the warm pool of light that hung above the lot. Palmetto bugs crawled all over the surface and there were spiders in their webs watching as their prey tried to escape their trappings.
Suddenly, a bat swooped down into the light and snagged a moth. It swooped down again and ate another moth. The bat kept fluttering around the light eating the moths, eating the mosquitoes and eating the gnats, until the man thought about the time that he went fishing, and caught, with a net, a three pound largemouth bass eating another three pound largemouth bass, heads first, so that they were stuck together, their tails sticking out, so that all he had to do to catch them was skim the top of the water with a net and throw them both into the live well.
The wing man blinked and the bat was gone.