The following Monday morning, I was treated to a glorious sight.  Standing out in front of the Dertz Electric trailer was none other than Robert “Bubba” Wade, talking to Big Daddy “Suit” Legurch himself.  Why, me and Bubba raised hell together back in the good old Houston boom days, when work was so easy to find you didn’t even have to work to keep a job.  Man, when I think about those days, I am transported!

     “Bubba!” I yelled, getting his attention.  He looked up, saw it was his good buddy Travis “Hog Eye” McKluskey, and waved and hollered and stomped a loud, “Hi, how do you do?”

     Legurch gave me a hateful stare.

     Fuck you, Legurch, I thought.  Frankenstein-looking pansy bastard.

     It worked out perfecly.  Scary Barry assigned old Bubba to Yours Truly, and what do you know, Bubba even came with his own private helper!  This was fantastic!

     After all the festivities died down, and we were all (presumably) back at work, Bubba’s helper came trotting up to where me and Spence were shooting the shit.  His name was Dave West, and he looked like he pretty much knew what was going on.

     “Excuse me, y’all,” he said.  “Bubba says he needs some crayons!”

     “You know, Bubba,” we were staring out at the Dallas skyline.  “I was on this job one time…”

     Bubba was a veteran at this game.  “Do tell.”

     “Alrighty.  I was working for this two-bit Mom and Pop service company here in town, what was their name?  I think it was Fuck Me Electric or something like that.  Anyway, I got this call to go to a restaurant.  I get there, and the cook tells me he keeps getting shocked by the damn hamburgers!”

     Bubba laughed it up.

     “Not many folks can say they’ve been shocked by a hamburger, right, Bubba?”

     “Bad ground on that grill,” Bubba diagnosed.  He lit up a fat boy. “You know,” Bubba allowed, “I was on this job one time…”

     “Do tell,” I encouraged.

     Bubba the Electrician classically struck the Pose.

     “Alrighty.  I was digging a ditch for some underground pipe on this hard hat job.  Well, my hard hat kept falling off, so I threw it on the ground.  The damn foreman comes over, and says, ‘Put your hard hat back on!’                                                                               

     “So I looked at him, looked at my hard hat, thought about my mortgage payment, and figured, what the hell.  I put the hard hat back on.  I start digging, and right away it falls off again!  I tossed that bitch one more time.

     “Here comes that pussy foreman: ‘Put your hard hat back on!’

     “I pick up that fucking hard hat and throw it as hard as I could at some fuckin’ messkins hauling bricks.  I was breathing real heavy.” Bubba demonstrated.

     “That foreman just walked away and left me alone.  Smartest thing that pantywaste ever did, I reckon,” Bubba said.

     “Yeah, Bubba.”  It was time for me to leave.  “You’re an animal alright.”  I flicked my smoke at tiny Legurch’s wasted figure fourteen stories below us, and popped my two-hundredth sunflower seed of the morning as I turned to depart.

     I can only take so much of other people’s lies.

2026 R.M. Reliable Electric