I was talking to the superintendent of the pipefitters.  Shithead had been giving Neal a hard time, and that was unforgivable. He was big and gruff, and had the lovely name of Boris. It was 8:00 am, and I should have been getting high with Spence, but there I was, suicidally sober, trying to communicate with a fucking idiot.

     “I don’t like the way you electricians look,” he informed me, drooling stupidly.

     Goddammit, I thought, I’m missing Oprah for this.

     “Look like a bunch of dopeheads to me.  My men, none of them do drugs.  I hire family men, Mister Wirenut, not derelicts off the street like Dertz Electric!”

     Where was Bubba when I needed him?

     “Look you,” I put my finger in his face, “you watch your mouth, you Russian cocksucker, or I will fucking destroy you.” Your unreliable narrator was about to serve a complimentary helping of the old Conroe whoop-ass, cold.

     “If you want a fight,” he was breathing fire at me, “then buddy, I’m your man.  I was a boxer in the Navy!”

     “The Russian Navy?”  I stomped on his foot, crunched it, then double-punched him right on the heart.  The big bastard went into shock.  He keeled over, making little gurgling noises that reminded me of a most pleasant babbling brook I had once drunkenly passed out in, and I smiled at the unexpected memory.

     It’s hard to find a good fight these days but I do try. Lord how I try.

     When Boris regained what little consciousness he possessed, he went into a rage.  He got all his family-men pipefitters together, and surrounded me and Neal.  One of them had a rope.  All of them had heavy pipe wrenches.

     It looked as if all had been lost.  Was I to have my fabulous sparkling life ended here on the job, my semi-legendary existence snuffed out at the hands of an ex-Russian Navy boxer, who could not even spell his own name?  Think again!

     A shotgun blast filled the air.  Then another.

     Those pipefitters split quicker than Joletta’s legs on payday.

     Bubba emerged from the smoke, coughing and spitting and laughing at the same time.  I had never heard such welcome retching. He held a twenty-inch double-barrelled shotgun in his hands. It was just a little varmint-shooter, but it did the trick. “You owe me a six-pack, Travis old boy.”

     He’d have it by nine o’clock break.

2026 R.M. Reliable Electric