Low and Slow

Low and Slow

Randy Cade

“Hey boy, don’t you know yer ass from Arbuckle’s coffee?” grunted Ralph Fortunado, owner of “The Pig Picker” Barbeque restaurant in Pecos Point West Texas as he sat in his office slamming the calculator trying to pay the bills.

Young Darryl Jane stood at the door to the office but didn’t answer. He rarely spoke.

“I swear if your daddy wasn’t a friend a’ mine I’d never a’ let a retard kid like you work in my restaurant. You ain’t nothin’ but a hup-jack kid, Now I tol’ you pick up the rest a’ that paper and Styrofoam trash from lunch fo’ the dinner rush starts. Ands’ much as I’m ‘fraid to let you do any damn thing that pertains ta’ cookin’, go outside put those racks a’ St. Louis on like I asked ya about 20 minutes ago, I’m busy here. Damn kid.”

Fifteen minutes later Ralph smelled charring meat and walked outside to find Darryl sitting down and leaning against a tree reading a comic book while his prime rack of St. Louis Ribs smoked up blacker than charcoal. Too mad to curse he strode over, grabbed young Darryl by his femininely longish hair and hauled him up to a standing position. He threw the comic book on the grill right before he pressed Darryl’s cheek directly on the hot grill and the smell changed. The boy screamed and when Ralph let him up a few seconds later there was some of his white skin stuck to the grill rapidly turning brown.

“Put some honey on it and get back to work. Damn kid.”

Daryl was in terrible pain and diminished beyond belief. But his father had done him worse.

Darryl Jane knew the familiar intoxicating smell of a barbeque cook-off; he’d been working them since the age of thirteen. Now a decade later a contender, he sauntered down the wide verdant grass aisle between the two rows of competitor’s booths breathing in the perfume of slow and carefully cooked and seasoned pork, beef and chicken. He was late. He and his assistant Marty were just loading in as nearly all of the other competitor’s booths already were up and running. But that’s was okay. Darryl was confident he would win this year’s Southeast BBQ Association’s annual Barbeque Waterloo; the ticket to notoriety for his ­­­­restaurant in Breakwater Texas near Carizzo Springs. He passed the booth for the Pig Picker and saw Ralph, older and more malevolent, bellowing orders and insults to his 7 assistants.

“Hey Ralph,” he said.

“Well, look who’s here? Daryl fucking Jane. How ya’ doin’ Lady Jane? Come here to lose to me again this year?”

“Always good ta’ see ya’ Ralph.” I had learned to shove my non productive anger into the background. Wait for my productive and vindictive side to come out. Although I didn’t know yet how far it would get. I approached him at his stand and stuck out my hand for him to shake.

He greeted me warmly as was his custom even though it’s a sure things he doesn’t like anyone even a little bit.

“You know I’m jus’ kiddin’ on ya, don’t ya boy? You ain’t still pissed about last year comin’ in second to me are ya? Hell, I know no boy like you with a girl’s last name gonna be able to come down serious on ol’ Ralph Fortunado.”

“I know I can’t hold a candle to your grillin’ expertise. Matter of fact I got a bottle a’ some new bourbon I just picked up my last trip to Kentucky. Thought you might like to come over to the tent for a snort after I get set up. Maybe you can give me some pointer on sauce.”

“Like I’m gonna help my competition! Damn kid. But I’ll take the snort. Later, I’m busy.” Fortunado went back to growling and belching at the help.

After sundown the activity on the competition grounds started to wane as the fires were started, the grills heating, some of the luscious meats hitting the fire or the racks in the smokers for the low and slow journey to barbeque perfection. I sent Marty out for supplies and then told his he could stay at his Mom’s; she lived in town and he was never much for sleeping in a tent at these events.

It was about seven when Ralph staggered into my tent. He already had a package on, probably been drinking the cheap festering supermarket whiskey he carried around with him. He belched and farted, unsteady on his feet.

“Ugh, ugh, ugh,” he grunted. “You said somethin’ ’bout some bourbon.” Ralph the magnificent fraud redneck peckerwood masquerading as a connoisseur and chef.

“Didn’t have a damn thing to eat today, real busy.”

I had figured that. I know how these setup days go. I told him

“I do believe I have something you will like.” I poured him a tumbler of ageless Kentucky bourbon which I’m sure wisped over his tongue as smooth and calm as a little creek wave. That was soon gone and I poured him another.

“Hey, wait a minute, I gotta take my insulin.” He pulled a little kit out of the fanny pack slung low over his protruding gut and fumbled and then hit himself up lightning fast with a quick shot in the side of the arm.

“You know Ralph, I was talkin’ to Jake Rusmiller today, ‘bout his sauce. He says the new trend which he’s been usin’ is to add a little cardamom and some secret ingredient. I happen to think that might be balsamic. . What do you think about that?”

“Rusmiller don’ know his as ass from…shit. That man knows less about makin’ a rub than I know about buildin’ a rocket ship to the moon. He don’ know cardamom from…from…”

“Arbuckle’s Coffee?”

“Tha’s right. Hey you got any more a’ that…”

“Sure Ralph, sure…” I poured him another generous taste of the Kentucky.

Now Darryl Jane; 23 year old Elvis sideburns, denim jacket, earring and tattoo wearing relative newcomer to the Barbeque Competition circuit knew Ralph Fortunado very well he had been gifted by his father to the man for indentured servitude in order to pay off a debt. But in doing so Daryl fell in love with the work. The feel, the smell, the hurry up and wait crafting a premium piece of meat into a series of perfectly cooked and presented morsels which would make the average person coo with delight. He’d eventually opened his own place, doing barbeque his own way, which some BBQ aficionados are occasionally fortunate enough to do. And he had been successful in that little town in Texas and was starting to be known around the BBQ circuit as a young man to be reckoned with. The next generation of Barbeque masters.

Knowing that Fortunado was half conscious at this point, he got up and rustled in the back of the tent, pulling up the lid on an old cask he had brought with them.

“What the hell’s that?” asked Fortunado.

“You’ll like this,” I told him bringing out the bourbon bottle that looked almost identical to the first except the number of years printed on the label was plus ten.

“Well I’ll be damned!” said Ralph when he got a good look. “That’s just about the best lookin’ bottle of bourbon whiskey I’ve seen in 20 years!”

“It’s my pleasure to share.” I told him.

Ralph ecstatically tippled one glass, then another. Then through a haze he made a comment.

“I do believe this older stuff is a little sweeter, don’t you?”

“I don’t notice it Ralph, but you are the one who knows taste. You are the expert. By God I know you could taste a fly got into the big 10 gallon pot a’ sauce.”

“Of course I could! But this does taste a bit sweet.

The conversation continued until it kissed 11pm. Fortunado gradually mutated from raw, abusive, tactless know-it-all to apologist for my hellish apprentice ship at the “Pig Picker” Pecos Point.

“You know I never meant to be that damn hard on ya’ son…It’s just that you was such a femmy little twat of a boy…didn’t know nothin’ couldn’t do nothin’ just floated...until I remember you started comin’ around and enjoyin’ the task. You finally fell in love with the…with the…”

“With the whole thing. With cooking, with barbeque, with owning and running a restaurant. Such as that place is. I wouldn’t call it fine dining.”

Ralph’s eyes started to light up, a window into his notorious hair- trigger temper.

“Why you little punk! You don’ call may place no names! I make the best barbeque in Texas, the best in the U.S.; I am the Michael…Michael…”

“Angelo”

“Of barbeque! I am the master! The pit master and don’ you…don’ you…”

Fortunado swayed and reeled, keepin his feet planted while his body rotated; attacked by vertigo I imagine. Then he plopped his fat ass back down in the lawn chair he had been sitting in, slumping back and gurgling.

“I’m dizzy as hell. Feel shitty.”

“Well Frank, can I get you something?”

“Maybe another shot of that…”

“Well sure, here ya go.”

I poured it and watched him drink and sink, soon he was staggering in and out of a twilight sleep, lucid at moments, nearly comatose at others. That is what I was looking for. Diabetic insulin shock.

I let him sink as I went to get the gear I had brought. Adding the sugar to the bourbon had worked incredibly well. It had taken him time notice it, but by that time he didn’t care. I took care to put the tiny needle in exactly the same spot I had seen him use for his insulin shot. Then I stared the nearly silent aquarium pump with the deposit tube in one of my steam pans.

He woke up about half way through saying “What the hell is this shit in my arm?”

“Oh don’ worry Ralph. I thought this might make you feel better. Hell, they used to do this to George Washington ’cept they used leeches.”

He looked for several seconds at the apparatus sticking out of his arm and I suppose was trying to process it.

“Just trust me Ralph.”

“Saying nothing, he drifted back into a calm twilight sleep, more at peace than I’d ever seen him.

The morning exploded in the camp where the Southeast BBQ Association’s annual Barbeque Waterloo was to take place in just a few hours. Smoke was rising, and all of a sudden, people were talking in loud voices, a siren split the peaceful Southern air, and Daryl could feel the human activity outside his tent. Marty walked in.

“Hey, did you hear?”

“I been asleep,” I told him.

“They done found ol’ Ralph Fortunado in his tent dead. Apparently he just cashed it in from diabetes last night. Said he got too much insulin or too much sugar or some damn thing.”

Old Ralph? What a shock! You know I used to work for him.”

“I know. It’s a bad deal. He was an asshole, but that’s still a bad deal. Right before the competition an all.

“Boy that’s a tough break. Hey we better get goin’. I guess they’re still gonna hold the competition?”

“I heard they are.”

When Daryl left the tent he saw the paramedics taking Ralph’s covered body out on a gurney. It had been much harder for Daryl to grapple that fat bastard’s body back over to his tent and lay him down on his cot, the help being down the road at a motel. No matter, he started listing the tasks so Marty could get started, the ribs they had to cook would go fast, no smoking, no tricks, just good quality grilled ribs with a great sauce and a secret ingredient.

The judges were effusive in their praise as they awarded Darryl Jane first prize at Barbeque Waterloo. He proudly accepted and made an eloquent stump speech for the crowd, eulogizing and lauding his onetime employer and mentor Ralph Fortunado from the “Pig Picker” restaurant in Pecos Point.