The ill will of a man with too much hair
"When someone fucks you over that hard, you've got to get revenge."
This is what the man with jet black, wavy, and long hair had said to his co-worker as they waited for their fast food at Extreme Burger. They stood on the back of their heels—resting—with arms crossed and eyes scanning the kitchen. They both wore the same uniform- a denim shirt with writing on the back and jeans that were stained a dark brown. Frank didn't see if their shoes were the same because he was too busy looking at the ceiling—pretending not to be listening in on the conversation. He hadn't really been listening to what they were saying. Up until he heard the wavy haired man speak of revenge he only heard sounds coming out of the two. Sounds like the sound of pigs going into a freshly filled trough that mixed with the chomping of meat in a booth by a family of three—who all three had a knack for smacking. There was a hard of hearing conversation by a couple sipping their discounted coffee in the back and that combined with the sizzling of meat and the continued wrapping of burgers. Frank tried to remember what he had ordered as he blocked out all the other noise that was going on to hear more about the revenge. An uncomfortable silence with his ears strained. The conversation was over- he thought. Though conversations while waiting for food sometimes take long pauses in between talking- maybe the man with the hair was thinking of another ancient proverb. Frank didn't hear anything else from them.
The two workers ticket was up. The Extreme Burger employee was very nonchalant about their pickup and didn’t look to make sure that everything was in it. He flinched as the hair man snatched the bag from his grasps. They were off. Frank was glad. They had been blocking the drink dispensing machine and he was afraid to ask them to move. He filled up his drink and waited for his value combo meal to be made. It had to be a value combo meal that he ordered because that was all they ever served. Each day he would say a number and ten minutes later, after paying, he would get his meal. The hair man probably got the number 8. The number 8 consisted of a Double Extreme Burger, Extreme Fries, and extra pickles. The hair man only ate burgers that were undercooked. They had to be dripping of red juices and pink throughout. The pickles were stacked in threes all across the surface of the burger. It was a combination that fueled his need for revenge. The fries were saved until after he finished his burger. They also required extra pickles. Frank imagined that the hair man would come storming in, hair wind blown and off his back as he raced forward to the counter. “Where’s my pickles,” he’d say as he pounded his fist down on the purple counter, knocking over a tower of cups. With his other hand he’d grab the nonchalant one by the collar until he got his extra pickles. He didn’t come back in though. He probably ate his value meal, combed his hair again, and went back to his work.
The hair man probably worked in a tough business. A business where he was used to being fucked over and occasionally when it was hard he would seek revenge. Maybe he always had a golf club handy and would use that as a means of exacting revenge. But then again the hair man wasn’t someone who a person would want to fuck over on purpose, especially at his job, where he earns his money and the respect of his chums. For one the hair man was a man who, when you looked at him, was very menacing. His hands were constantly in fists and he made an effort to look everyone he passed square in the eye. And secondly he didn’t seem like he worked where he would have to deal with people. The septic truck, outside the Extreme Burger; which Frank had parked next to must have been in the possession of the jet black, wavy haired man. His plight which made him seek revenge must have been caused by something else. It's possible that he started thinking that way on one unsuspecting night as he returned home.
The man with the jet black, wavy, and long hair had sped home from a night out drinking at the local tavern. He spent the time at the bar spouting with his co-worker about the decline of the moral fabric of a society in which a sporting event could end with a man chomping at another man's ear. “Why would you want to bite someone’s ear when you can punch them? It just doesn’t make sense.” After five beers and two bowls of pretzels he gave his goodbye to his co-worker, who never did say much-- he actually didn’t say anything in all the time the hair man had known him, but he nodded frequently, grunted occasionally, and always met the hair man’s gaze fair and square.
He came home to his wife that evening. He parked his jeep on the gravel road in front of the house and walked across the wet grass of the lawn while crickets droning came from the back yard. His wife was kissing the long hair man's brother. The brother had always had his eye on the wife. Before the brother's brother, that hair man, had gotten married to the wife he had tried desperately to be with the wife. The brother, whose name could have been Cooper thought Frank, had evidence that his brother was unfaithful to the wife. He had planned to show it to the wife but lost the evidence in a fire. A fire that had been set by a couple of teenage arsonists, Cartwright and Lou, who were never caught and soon after realized that they were mistaken in thinking that arson was fun. The fire torched Cooper's apartment but was stopped from spreading by the Maseline Volunteer Fire Fighting Crew. The evidence was lost, burnt and left in the gray embers, but it was never really evidence because that wasn't Cooper's brother in the picture. It was definitely a picture of a man kissing another woman. Same jet black wavy and long hair, but it wasn't the same hair man, the same man who was the brother of cooper and husband of the wife. It was an actor named Tex Phelps. His real name was Ricardo Lupe De Los Santos but after heading off to Hollywood he was convinced that his name lacked a certain amount of brevity and that it needed to be changed if he were to make it big. He had made a movie downtown around the same time that the hair man had proposed to the wife, lets call her Jolene, and Cooper knew of this. That is when Cooper with his camera stood behind a barricade as he watched Tex kiss his leading lady on a crowded street. Cooper didn't know that Tex would be kissing a lady, which from his angle looked like his brother kissing someone other than Jolene, but he did know that he liked him as an actor and enjoyed taking pictures of actors as well as people that he liked.
Without the evidence Cooper had no chance of getting Jolene to stray from the hair man, or so he thought. Jolene, who worked in a salon, had grown tired of the hair man. The way he acted, in all of his bravado and self-righteousness, was really annoying to her after awhile. He was also too needy and he had an inferiority complex she thought. When she had first met him, he was kicking his boot into the ribs of her fiancée. A crowd had formed to watch, and she, being short in stature, was left standing on the outside of the crowd watching the silhouette of the hair man and his waves of hair flowing back and forth on the side of a Big Rig. Jolene had been looking for a way out of her engagement for awhile, by then, and the hair man gave her that opportunity.
Cooper on the other hand was the complete opposite of the hair man which attracted Jolene. It’s possible that in another world, another story, another perception, Cooper would be known as the Yul Bryner look alike with the prominent forehead. He kept it shined and the moment Jolene saw him she felt inclined to rub her hand on his dome. She had never seen such beauty without hair. So when Jolene approached Cooper, moments before the jet black hair man came home, they really went at it.
Frank had been waiting for his value combo meal for at least ten minutes and the number on his ticket had just now been called. Numbers after him had been called for people who had ordered meals and held tickets, but Frank didn't bother with those details because he was enjoying his drink and he wasn't really hungry.
The conversation that he had overheard was much unlike any he had heard before in Extreme Burger. Yesterday he overheard a lady talk in anticipation about a package that was in the mail. It saddened Frank when he thought of the pain the lady would go through after finding her missing pet's head in the package with a ransom note that demanded 15,000 dollars or else she could expect the rest of her pet’s heads the same way. Then there was the nonchalant one’s uncomfortable feelings towards thick dairy products and he would mask that feeling each time he would ask “Why can’t you do it?” when a milk shake was ordered. He had passed out once, from drinking a shake too fast, and as the coldness rushed to his head he collapsed and smacked his head the arm rest of a leather recliner. Moments after, he revived with a swollen lip and uncontrollable drool seeping out his mouth. There were always other conversations that were clearly inferred upon by Frank and it was long before Frank only inferred upon the ones that were most exciting.
What the hair man had said was golden, thought Frank as he picked up his meal--it turned out to be a number 8 at as well--and began to walk towards the exit. Frank just wished that he had heard the rest of the conversation because he couldn’t think of how the hair man would get revenge. Maybe there were two mounds in a secluded part of woods on the outskirt of town that held a secret. Or maybe he beat his brother up, boots to ribs, and got back with the confused Jolene. Or maybe he, himself, went off to Hollywood to be a stunt double for Tex. Or maybe…
“Are you even listening to me?” asked a woman to someone through her cell phone.
The hair man, along with divorcing his wife and disowning his brother, had taken up a vow to ignore and not speak to the two. He no longer felt any kind of emotion for them. It was an odd kind of revenge but he felt it served his purpose. He was to return the hurt that they gave him with no feeling at all towards them. If there was one thing about the hair man that both Jolene and Cooper liked it was the undivided attention he gave them and the reassurance in his words. The hair man always knew what to say and from then on he knew not to say anything to his former brother and ex-wife.
