What Law Suits You

What are you learning in this moment? And I don't mean the words you're interpreting on the fly and which you're building sets of thoughts upon. I mean you. What are you learning about you? After all, I'm not here. You're alone with these words somewhere else, not with me. There can be only you. Despite our appearances, our socialness, we sense the world as one entity. No one was born at the same time and place as you, although your siblings may have emerged from the womb within a few minutes of each other. No one will die at exactly the same time and place as you, either. You are here for reasons only you know (although we can imagine reasons for being here).

Enough of the esoteric. I was just warming up my fingers and wrists for writing and wrote what came out of me, a random set of words and sentences in one paragraph, not intended to make sense.

Instead, I feel like telling you a quick story, a true story, or at least as true as the person who told it and lived it in front of me wanted it to look real.

Claude was a decade or so older than me. He was shorter in height but taller in stature. He wore thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses issued to him in prison. I met him while he stood in front of a gas burner, heating slices of meat and toasting hoagie buns in order to make sandwiches for customers at the Chicago Dough Company store in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Chicago Dough Company, if it still exists, started out in the little townships surrounding the Windy City. Three fellows, Mike Rose, Mike Feliu and Denny Rogers, had been running a few franchise stores for Pizza Inn and decided they knew enough about the Italian eatery business to stop paying franchise fees to a mother company and start their own. They converted their stores to Chicago Dough Company, using a few family recipes and twists on other recipes to create their own signature foods. Another eatery chain caught on to the success of Chicago Dough Company and opened their competitive business across the street from every Chicago Dough Company store so the three business partners decided to open another store far from this local competitor, using their research of growing regions around the country to open a small store in a tri-cities region in upper east Tennessee. The new store would serve as the flagship eatery, being a true restaurant, as opposed to the semi-fast food style shops of Pizza Inn and Pizza Hut, with a bar, a lobby and other "accouterments" that a fine-dining establishment deserves.

As a teenager freshly returned from his attempt at a freshman year in an academic career at the Georgia Institute of Technology, looking to put some spending money in his pocket while figuring out what to do with the rest of his life, I applied for a job at Chicago Dough Company.

During my interview, I toured the kitchen, where most likely the manager would place me in a job, should I qualify. That's where I met Claude.

"You're Rick? Well, how're you doing? I'm Claude." The short fellow stuck out his greasy hand and gripped rather than shook my hand. "Sorry about the crud. These damn sandwiches are a pain in the ass but hey, it pays the bills, ain't it?"

I nodded. I wondered if there was some other summer job I could get that paid me to work with a person who spoke something other than working English. But then again...if I wanted to be a writer, what better characters to write about 30 years later than fellows like Claude? Hmm...if only I was so forward-thinking!

Jerry Feliu, Mike's younger brother, continued the tour, introducing me to Kerry, Kayla and a few other shift supervisors who looked old and overworked, even though they were in their early 20s.

I got the job and was assigned to the sandwich station with Claude. "So, I guess ol' Feliu told you about me?"

I shook my head.

"He din't? Hell, I thought he warned everybody about me so's that's why I ain't never gotten a partner over on this side of the kitchen."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Sorry."

Claude's arms were like blocks of woods or legs of a table, smooth and solid, and pumped up, as they say. I stared at a tattoo on his right arm while he showed me how to take plastic-wrapped, pre-weighed pieces of meat from the cooler, place them on a frying pan and cook the meat while he threw a few hoagie buns over the gas fire to sear them.

"You like that one? I had that one made for my ma, the one reason I have to thank God for bein' here."

"What is it?"

Claude pulled the sleeve of his T-shirt up. "It's a rose intertwined with a snake that has thorns."

I nodded. "So, is that why Jerry was supposed to warn me about you?"

"What? Hell, no. That's nuthin. I murdered my wife and spent ten years in prison for it."

I opened my eyes in mock shock but a twist of mirth. Murder? Was this guy a joker or what.

"Yeah. Like I said, nuthin. You see, I was livin' up in Vermont, a manager for a liquor store, when one of my workers tol' me dat a strange car was sittin' in my driveway. He tol' me he wasn't pullin' my leg but hey, I never trusted my ol' lady so I checked it out. And make sure you turn the meat over after a minute or you'll burn one side. Customers don' like dat."

"Uh-huh."

"So's I drive back to my place and sure 'nuf, there was a beat-up ol' piece of shit car in the driveway. I figure it's a guy come to fix our stopped-up sink like I tol' the ol' lady to get fixed and just walked on in the house. Well, and this is the part that still makes me angry cause it ain't supposed to happen to no guy like me, our bedroom was in the front of the house so I hear my wife gruntin' and screamin' like she's fuckin' real good. I walked straight into...oh, and turn the buns over so you heat the tops just a little but don't scorch 'em. There. And now you flip the meat onto the bun and put the sandwich on this cutting board so's you can add the stuff on this order here. Mustard's in the bottle there. And over there's the onions. Some customers want pizza toppin' on their sandwich so you gotta... Hey, Kayla! I need some black olives. Just slap the stuff on top of the meat, cut in half and you're done. Put some chips and a pickle on the side and walk it over to the waitress station, along with the ticket."

"So, about your wife?"

Claude spun around to me and poked my chest with a finger. "What have you heard about my wife? She knows I killed the first one so she ain't cheatin', I can tell you that!"

I backed up a step. "No, I mean...uh, your first wife?"

"Her! Damn bitch! Where was I?"

"Telling me about making sandwiches?"

"No, 'bout my wife."

"You had walked in the house."

"Oh yeah. So I heard her givin' someone the ol' one-two and stormed into our bedroom. She was fuckin' the damn police officer down the street. He jumped off my wife like he seen a crime in action, reaching for his gun belt. I wunt goin' to let him get me so I reached into my bedside drawer and pulled out my Sat'day night special and took him down in two shots. The ol' lady was screamin' real good by then, crying 'What are you doin'! What are you doin'!' I looked at her and was actually goin' to apologize. Then she said, 'It ain't what it looks like.' The bitch actually said that. That was it! I pointed the gun at her and emptied it into her chest."

I was impressed. "Wow!"

"Yeah? Well, that was that, wunt it? I was fucked. I'd shot my wife and a police officer. So I sat down on the bed, put the gun next to my wife and called the police."

"No kidding?"

"Yeah, it was over and done with. I confessed to the whole thing but the lawyer they gave me wunt me to plead innocent on account of it bein' an 'act of passion.'"

"So what happened?"

"I got twenty since it weren't no premed act. They put it down just as the lawyer said, 'Act of Passion.' 'Cept it wunt my passion that caused the damn mess. It was hers."

"I see."

"Yeah, I'm a law-abidin' citizen. I still am. In prison, I did everythin' they tol' me to do and stayed away from the gangs that wunt to fight all the time. After ten years, the DA tol' me he'd let me go if I left Vermont and never came back. I saluted him and hitched a ride south until I got here and found myself a job. Been here five years now, got a wife and four kids and they treat me wit' the respect I deserve. We gotta 'nother order. What say you try this one and I'll watch you."

I made that sandwich the most perfect embodiment of Claude's instructions I could muster. He approved of my methods, unaware that I was as focused as a person could be who was standing next to the first murderer he'd worked with. I worked with Claude for a year and a half, while I attended college classes at a local extension of a nearby university (what we jokingly called a commuter college, but where I met other interesting characters I'll talk about sometime, including a woman I dated who lived behind the local dirt racetrack and took dating just as seriously as Claude took someone fucking his wife).

Do you follow the laws of your planet? After all, you can't beat gravity. But what about your civilization? Do you know the civil and criminal laws you do and don't obey? I bought an iPod nano a few years ago, the first generation version. Somehow, a class action lawsuit involving the shiny metal surface of the iPod and its tendency to show scratches has ensnared me on a list of potential recipients of free money in a class action settlement. Supposedly, all I have to do is fill out a claim form that arrived in my mailbox recently, return the form and receive up to $37.50. In Claude's case, who was the victim? Is it all right to fuck your neighbor's spouse and expect to live? Is it all right to kill your spouse for fucking your neighbor and expect to get by with it? Is it all right to buy an object with a mirrored surface and expect it to be scratch-resistant? Am I truly a victim if I bought a protective cover for my iPod because I anticipated the mirrored surface to be susceptible to scratches? Instead, is Apple a victim of a frivolous lawsuit? I'll keep the claim form and stick it in a drawer. As much as I like free money, I don't believe that I was victimized. I want to encourage innovation and artistic inventiveness, not subject commercial pieces of art and design to vampires sucking blood out of profitable businesses. I have friends who are lawyers but none of my lawyer friends are iPod or ambulance chasers that I know of. There's enough money to be made in pursuing breaches of contract that are clearly written down without making up unnecessary ones to pay for tennis lessons at the country club.