TOMBSTONES by J.D. Allen
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Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
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Chapter seven, Timothy Compton, tall blonde, blue eyed and youthfully handsome with a snowy yet muscular build, ate his lunch, a bologna sandwich and a shrimp cup of noodles at one of the big three round tables that dominated the employees break room at the Buco Bakery plant playfully arguing with Joe Ellis over who was going to win the big game on Sunday. The Mariners or the Oakland A's maybe back in the days of Reggie and Catfish, but now they haven't got a chance. Joe Alice opined and since he didn't know who Reggie and Catfish were, Timothy couldn't argue with that. So he just shrugged, said can't argue with that and finished his last bite of the sandwich. The lunch room was buzzing with Buco employees coming and going, taking breaks from their work task, eating their lunches or just stopping by to grab a cup of coffee. Some were just looking for an excuse to step away from their workstations. When someone rose from one of the chairs surrounding the three round tables, it didn't take long for their vacated seat to become occupied with someone who was just starting their break as other employee breaks came to an end, but I've got five bucks that says you're wrong. Timothy Wager as he rose from his chair and tossed his trash into one of the garbage receptacles near the door. Mary bars from accounting sat down in the chair he had just vacated and she began to eat a salad, washing it down with a diet coke. You're on Joe Ellis called out his reply as Timothy walked out of the employee break room and into the adjoining hallway with a wave of his hand. See you, Timothy looked at his watch discovered that he still had 22 minutes left on his lunch hour just enough time to take a few hits on the pipe before he had to report back to work and finish the second half of his shift. He picked up his pace walking down the hallway toward the exit door that led to the employees parking lot thinking about the two mixing tanks that he still needed to clean out the marshmallow one wouldn't be bad, but cleaning out a tank of molasses was always tough before his workday ended when Judy Linwood passed him in the hall on the way to the break room for her lunch. Oh, sure. Run out. Now, you never want to have lunch with me. She teased as she walked past him. You know, I'm yours. Any meal any time he joked in return. But if the truth were told he would love to spend that kind of time with her. Every guy in the plant would love to share a meal or more with her. Judy Linwood was a total babe, I wish. But you just tease. She sighed in reply and entered the break room when he stepped out into the employee parking lot, Timothy Compton winced in the glare of the sun. When he started his shift that morning, the light of dawn had yet to break the darkness of night and this was his first and only exposure to sunlight that day. He spotted his car, a sporty red Mazda parked on the far side of the lot away from the windows of the Buco front office, far away from any of the other cars parked in the lot and he jogged over to it at a casual pace, settling into the driver's seat. Timothy cracked the window down a bit and he extracted a small metal pipe and big lighter from the glove compartment, keeping an eye out for his coworkers or anyone else for that matter. He lit the pipe and took a hit off the bud of Blue Dream marijuana crammed within the bowl. He held the hit in his lungs for as long as he could. And then a stream of Cobalt Blue smoke billowed from out of his mouth and nostrils in a burst of hacking coughs. He had barely expelled the full breath of his exhale before he was bringing the flame of the lighter to the bowl and drawing another head of the pot into his lungs. He continued the cycle for several more hits, filling his lungs and filling the sporty red monster with a cloud of hazy smoke. Timothy turned on the dashboard radio and blue Oyster cult advised those listening not to fear the Reaper. And he drew a final hit of marijuana from the pipe when he was sure the bud of pot was extinguished. He returned the pipe and the lighter to the glove compartment and he closed his eyes and stretched back into the driver's seat as the effects of the blue dream took a hold of his mind. His thoughts drifted to future plans both imminent and long term. This weekend, he was taking his girl the beautiful Sarah Mac on the drive out to Portland for a day of sightseeing, which was to accumulate in his marriage proposal to her at their favorite restaurant. He and Sarah had been dating for 3.5 years and she and her friends had sent the subtle at times, not so subtle message that it was time to **** or get off the pot when it came to getting engaged. Of course, they had a much more eloquent way of putting it, but essentially the message was the same and he received that message loud and clear. The time had come to pop the question he loves Sarah. ****. He even got a tattoo with her name on it for crying out loud and he was happy to make her his wife. But there would be drawbacks to settling down and starting a family. And he wondered if he was up for the challenge at the age of 23 years, plus a few months, he wondered if he was mature enough for the responsibility of marriage. Worst of all, Sarah expected him to literally get off the pot when they started having kids. Something she wanted to do right off the bat as soon as they got married. And he suppose that knowing he was going to have to give it up pretty soon was probably the reason he had been smoking so much of it lately, almost constantly pot mellowed him out, helped him get along with just about everybody with maybe the possible exception of that weird witchy woman who said she cursed him when he had that bad encounter with her at the public library a few weeks back. But maybe Sarah was right, Pott also made him clumsy and forgetful. He looked at his watch, his lunch break ended nearly two minutes ago. He dashed from the car and jogged across the parking lot at a hurried pace. He entered the building through the same door which he had exited a few minutes earlier and he raced up the hall to the employee time clock. He punched his time card to indicate the end of his lunch hour and he slowed his pace. As he worked his way onto the factory floor, the ever present taste and smell of sugar permeated the air thick enough to choke most people yet went unnoticed by the Buco employees on the job. Past their first week conveyor belt systems rolled and large machinery whirled all around him as he made his way across the large bakery facility through the cacophonous sounds of clanging metal working echoes within the cavernous industrial kitchen. He had a nice buzz in his head and a slight smile on his lips when he arrived at the row of six industrial mixing tanks, four of which were being manned by their crews while the other two awaited cleaning. And he went about the task of putting on his paper, a vac suit to protect his street clothes. Timothy decided he would clean out the tank coated in marshmallow fluff first as the molasses tank would consume most of the rest of his shift and he wanted to get the easier of the task finished and out of the way as quickly as possible. The 7000 gallon stainless steel Titan M X D mixing tank stood well over 16 ft tall with an opening diameter of nearly 7.5 ft wide. The dual axle flow turbines suspended above the large vats raised and lowered a set of two hydrofoil impellers each weighing over £65 and both equipped with three ultra sheer rotating dispersion blades. He placed a ladder against the side of the marshmallow taken as it was difficult to climb in and out of the large vat. He gathered up everything he would need all of his supplies before proceeding. He tossed into the tank towels and squeegees, scrapers and sponges, buckets and brushes. He placed the business end of a water hose over the rim and turned on the faucet creating pressure behind the handled nozzle. He rolled a large trash bin up next to the tank and set the brakes on the dumpsters wheels, Timothy Compton checked the safety lock on the control panel and placed a do not operate cleaning in process sign over the knobs and switches before climbing the ladder and swinging his leg over the side of the rim of the tank before dropping down inside the tank. As he straddled the rim, he lifted the ladder and placed it on the inside of the tank and then he climbed down into the sticky white interior. He wasted no time using a Squeegee. He began to scrape down the sides of the tanks concave interior walls and large peels of fluffy white marshmallow gunk fell away to pile and pool on the bottom of the stainless steel tank. When he was up to his knees in the sticky white confection, he used the buckets which he carried one by one up the ladder to dump out the excess candy into the large trash bin. He sat just outside the tank. He was making his fourth trip up the ladder when he thought he heard someone calling out his name. When he picked his head up and over the rim of the tank, he looked around to see if anyone was calling out to him, but he saw no one looking in his direction. So he dumped the bucket and climbed back down the ladder into the vat. He was looking up at the double set of impellers pointing down at him from the large turbines suspended above the opening of the tank tripping out. Thanks to the Blue dream on how big they were when he heard the voice again. Hey, Tam, you in there. It was Kevin Berry, a coworker who worked over in the chocolate department. Timothy recognized his southern accent. Boss is looking for you. Timothy tossed the Squeegee into the bucket and cast them both aside. He climbed the ladder and stuck his head up over the top of the rim. What's up? Yes, boss came by looking for you. Kevin Barry explained the old man had a sheriff with him. The law wants to talk to you. Get yourself into trouble. Tim, not me. Not, never. Timothy said with a smile. I'll be right out. He swung one leg over the rim end straddling the edge of the tank. He lifted the ladder out of the vat O. Look here they come again. Kevin Barry said and pointed toward the far side of the cavernous facility Timothy looked up just as his elderly boss, Vince in came into view, walking along next to a uniformed police officer. And as he set the ladder back down onto the factory floor, it slipped from his grip and it fell against the control panel. The ladder hit the safety lock button and it disengaged, the ladder bounced and landed against the power on button. Timothy was knocked back into the tank as the turbines began to descend. Kevin Perry scrambled to reach the control panel, slipped on a puddle of sugary marshmallow fluff and landed hard faced down on the concrete floor with a thud, just a few feet from the tank giving him an instant nosebleed inside the vat. Timothy landed on his back on the bottom of the tank in a pool of marshmallow goop and he grunted in pain as he struggled to stand, the dispersion blades whirled to life as they continue to lower further into the tank reaching 300 R P MS at a fraction of a second. Kevin Barry found his footing stood and slipped again. Timothy Compton found his footing stood and was instantly decapitated. I'll say the tank, someone screamed. It was Judy Lynwood who had just returned to her workstation from her lunch break just moments prior to Timothy Compton's fatal accident as an assembly line supervisor, Judy's perch in the scaffolding up in the rafters afforded her a direct view looking down into the tank and she was therefore the only person to actually see what happened to her doomed coworker as it was actually happening to him. Subsequently, her steaming vomit rained down in chunks from the catwalk on which she was positioned. Judy Linwood would never forget what she saw that day as the rotating blades continue to lower Timothy's body was torn apart, arms and legs rendered into pieces. His torso shredded into chunks. His small intestine caught him one of the turbines rotating blades and it was pulled from his dissected body like a bloody ribbon to wrap around the stem of the spinning impeller. A blood red spray of mascara and stark white marshmallow goop showered up over the rim of the vat in candy cane colors that splashed the floor all around the tank dripping from the sides of the vat like sticky sickening syrup. Kevin Barry managed to crawl to the control panel and he hit the emergency stop button with his fist before collapsing in tears, shaking in shock and holding himself in the fetal position on the cement floor as the turbines began to slow their span. Timothy's upper right arm attached to a piece of shredded shoulder flew up out of the tank and landed next to Jenny Lang was working a batch of honey two tanks over from the vat containing her doomed coworker. Jenny saw a heart tattoo with the name Sarah on the mangled bicep and she shuddered and fainted giving herself a bloody forehead and a serious concussion on the cement floor. Someone screamed the turbines dismantling Timothy Compton slowed to a stop all sound and motion ceased. Even time seemed to stop. Caught the events in a, just as the old man fainted, someone else screamed and more and more buco employees gathered to find out what all the commotion was about. Hysteria. Caught them like an infection and a wave of shock rippled among them. There was another scream and then another, in fact, the screaming went on for quite some time.