Three Square Meals
A short story from my collection: Underbelly
Around the time Clifford Oblonsky was removing a plastic container of beef stew from his black lunch pail, divers were recovering his wife Rose’s swollen body from the Pequabuck River. A newly married couple having lunch in a converted mill screamed when they saw Rose’s fully clothed body bob towards the spinning water wheel.
Clifford Oblonsky was a working man.
Even before he married Rose, Clifford never had to be told to remove girlie posters and calendars from his wall. Every summer when they visiting Rose’s sister in Florida, Clifford used his own money to buy motivational posters advertised in the in-flight magazines. This year he looked forward to collecting:
Change.
A bend in the road is not the end of the road
unless you fail to make the turn.
The company had been getting the best of Clifford and his posters for over forty years.
Clifford Oblonsky didn’t bowl on the company team; he didn’t go out drinking with the boys after work; he didn’t play poker on Friday nights; he never worked out at the gym; and he had no idea where to find the World Wide Web. Clifford minded his own business; refrained from gossip; and every day at lunchtime, he climbed to the top of the grassy knoll behind the factory’s corrugated steel walls and opened his lunch pail.
At the foot of the hill, his fellow employees sat around a picnic table management had installed outside the back door. What’s this world coming to? Clifford wondered, the day he had to scavenge around the crib for an angle-iron big enough to bolt the new pressure-treated wood table to a block of cement. For safekeeping, his supervisor had told him. For Pete’s sake, thought Clifford.
Clifford didn’t run a lathe or a drill press. He dispensed nuts, bolts, bushings, and grommets the way a pharmacist doles out pills and potions. Clifford was proud of the way he had arranged and inventoried each item in its own color-coded plastic drawer. There wasn’t a machine in the place that didn’t break down once in awhile and Clifford was pleased with his turnaround time. No one had to wait when they stepped up to Clifford Oblonsky’s window. Some folks liked to rest their elbows on the stainless steel counter and hang around to chat, but Clifford never encouraged socializing on company time.
Younger men and women spun out of the parking lot on motorcycles and souped-up wheels, wasting their paychecks on fast food and quarts of beer. Not Clifford. He sat a little straighter when he thought of the airline tickets stashed in a safe deposit bank downtown and the look of surprise that would dawn on Rose’s face. This summer, instead of visiting Florida, Clifford planned to give his wife the surprise of her lifetime. He would repay Rose for years of box lunches by taking her to Europe.
Rose and her sister could go on for hours, talking it up, whispering, sometimes halting in mid-sentence when Clifford walked into the trailer’s dinky kitchen. Of course, no one called it a trailer. Rose’s sister and her husband referred to it as a retirement community. Pig’s eye, thought Clifford. He wouldn’t trade his four-room bungalow for ten trailers.
A plot of land, an honest wife, three square meals a day. What more could a working man ask for? Clifford unscrewed the lid of his thermos and smiled.
Clifford had been back at work an hour or more when he looked up and saw three men stationed outside his crib. One of the men was his supervisor. Clifford didn’t recognize the suited gentlemen.
“Mr. Oblonsky?” asked one of the men.
Clifford wiped his hands on his denim apron and looked curiously at the man.
“Mr. Clifford Oblonsky?”
Clifford nodded.
“Mr. Oblonsky, could you step outside for a moment?”
Clifford’s supervisor nodded that it was okay for Clifford to step outside.