Unorthodox Angles/Andrew Gramling
Tales Across Time: Eric the Red and the Pokinator: Part 2
Being unfamiliar with the layout of Lakeland after only living there for a couple months put me at a huge disadvantage when it came to finding anything in the city. I honestly didn’t even know why I thought I could find Pokie’s car, but I went out in search of it anyway. Perhaps not knowing the city well left me more open to whatever was going on in the moment.
Unsure about what I was doing, I decided to drive down Florida Avenue, which was a street running north-south where people would try to flex with their cars late at night. It was the cruising strip of Lakeland. It was doubtful that someone who just stole someone’s car would be driving in such a conspicuous location, but I didn’t know where else to go. After driving down Florida Avenue for a little while, I turned around and headed back the other way. Suddenly, I started seeing a bunch of Mustangs coming from the opposite direction. Pokie’s car was a green Mustang convertible. There were a couple of convertibles and even a green Mustang that I passed, but none of them were Pokie’s car. I took this as a sign I was heading in the right direction.
I had been out between a half-hour and 45 minutes so far. Following this direction while continuing to see Mustangs eventually took me to Wabash Avenue, where I was getting close to the edge of the city. I turned left onto one of the last streets and entered a residential neighborhood to keep from leaving the city. How could I even be sure that the car thief wasn’t from another city? I decided this car search was foolish. How was I ever going to find Pokie’s car?
As I gave up and was preparing to turn back onto Wabash and head home, suddenly, a green Mustang convertible turned onto the street I was on from Wabash and passed me slowly. I stopped at the stop sign ahead of me and observed the car in my rear-view mirror. The driver was driving the speed limit and very carefully putting on the turn signal as well as coming to a full stop at the stop sign. This was all very suspicious to me, so I turned around and followed the car. By the time I caught up to the car, it was pulling into a driveway where there was a young woman on a cellphone who opened up a gate for the driver and closed it behind them. I drove past them and then headed back home. I figured I’d tell Pokie about this next time I worked with him.
The next Monday, Pokie was working in the kitchen.
“Hey, did you find your car yet?” I asked.
“Yeah, the police found it,” Pokie said.
“Was it on Strain Boulevard?”
“I think so. It was somewhere offa Wabash.”
“I think I found it. I followed a green Mustang convertible and there was a girl at the house waiting for the guy,”
“Yeah, there was a girl involved,” Pokie said.
Strange. It took me less than an hour to find a stolen car in a city I didn’t know very well. I just followed the signs and went with my instincts and ended up exactly where I needed to be to find the stolen car. I’m not sure exactly what this was, but it made me feel like I wasn’t alone and almost like something out there was working with me.
Ryan’s was still high-tension and competitive. It was like all the cooks wanted to prove they were the best.
“Can’t nobody do it like me,” Eric would sometimes say.
Pokie thought he was number one too.
“In the middle of a rush, I’ll have order tickets running all across the board. Y’all will be sweating but I’ll be laughin’,” he said.
One day he and Eric were getting into it about who was the best.
“I AM the ****! Y’all just smell like it!” Pokie said to Eric.
Eric was standing there with his arms folded, trying not to be bothered.
“I…AM…the ****! Y’all just smell like it!” Pokie repeated himself.
“**** you,” Eric said as he couldn’t take the humiliation anymore.
Eric himself was a pretty big trash-talker. One day when it was Eric, Greg, and I in the kitchen, Eric was talking about what would happen if we were in a fight.
“It’d be like a Mortal Kombat fatality,” Eric said.
“The only thing Mortal Kombat about you is your looks,” I said.
All this talk Eric was doing got me on defensive mode. I postured up and was ready just in case Eric wanted to do anything besides talk.
“Look. He’s already in a fighting stance,” Greg said about me.
“Well he in the wrong one,” Eric said.
“Where I come from, people don’t be talking like that,” I said.
“Where I come from, people talk like that, but then they actually DO it!” Greg said.
I didn’t know if Greg was trying to incite aggressive action from Eric or if he was trying to make Eric look like a say everything, do nothing, but Eric wasn’t doing anything else. It was like this just about every day. Someone was always trying to mess with me.
On another day, I was working in the kitchen and Eric was in the back preparing the dough for the rolls. There was a long and thin hallway on the side of the kitchen that went all the way back to the area where the dough was prepared. The kitchen window was large enough that it not only was accessible from the kitchen but also from the side hallway. I was talking to someone on the other side of the kitchen window at the end of the hallway, and without even looking, I sensed that Eric was way behind me at the other end of the hallway ready to cause some trouble. I sidestepped quickly back fully into the kitchen just in time to see a piece of dough go flying out the kitchen window where I was just standing.
“Why did you move?! You supposed to stand there and take that!” Eric said like I was the one who did something wrong.
I went into the buffet area and saw the piece of dough sitting there on the ground. Sue, the general manager, was right there. I thought she was going to be mad, but she just laughed. Sue didn’t take anyone’s mess but she was somehow kind at the same time. Eric claimed to be her “golden child” but he was probably the only one seeing it that way.
On another evening in the kitchen, Pokie was talking about arm wrestling. Manager Steve was looking in the kitchen window and listening to what was going on. I told Pokie I would arm wrestle him. We both opposed each other across the metal table in the center of the kitchen and Scott was next to us watching. Steve told me to put my free hand on the table but I kept it behind my back. When it was time to go, I went my hardest. Pokie’s arms were about twice the size of mine, but he was grunting and struggling. Maybe he was pretending just to get my hopes up. After a short while, Pokie regained his composure and brought my arm down onto the table.
“I told you to put your hand on the table,” Steve said.
He, as well as others, was entertained by what the kitchen workers had going on. There was drama all over the restaurant: between the servers, between the servers and cooks, between the cooks and managers, etc., but it was the kitchen where things usually got the most heated, logically.
After that, Scott wanted to arm wrestle me. For some reason, he always saw me as his rival. When it was go time, Scott and I were stuck in a stalemate. No one seemed to have the upper-hand. Suddenly, something in Scott’s elbow made a loud pop. I looked at him quickly.
“You alright?” I asked.
He looked at me for a split-second, then went back to concentrating on the match without saying anything. I guess he was using all his might. Eventually, Scott’s arm went down, and he wasn’t happy.
“How did you beat me???” You’re like this big!” he said as he made a small measurement with his index finger and thumb.
Pokie started getting cocky.
“Y’all wanna team up?” he asked as he put his arm back on the table.
“That’s it! I’m taking you by myself!” I said.
This time I used two hands. There are advantages and disadvantages to using two hands. I felt like I had less leverage, but I had more raw strength. We were going back and forth. It was like we were arm wrestling for our lives. Nobody was going to be the clear winner. We were just going to be stuck like this, but something deep from within me awakened. Suddenly I almost involuntarily let out a roar, and something else took over me.
“ARRRGGGHHH!!!”
Pokie’s hand went down instantly after that. What was that burst of strength and where did it come from?
“That boy usin’ the Force. ‘Return of Andrew,’” Pokie said.
As funny as it was that he said that, I could only speculate why. I guess they thought someone as small as me shouldn’t be that strong, and there was something else behind it besides physical strength
“We’ll meet again,” Pokie said as he pointed at me.
It doesn’t take long for rumors to fly in Ryan’s. Before the day even ended, two people came up to me saying that both Scott and Pokie said I didn’t beat them. It’s true I didn’t beat Pokie with a single hand, but I definitely beat him double handed.
Ryan’s wasn’t just a workplace. It was like a proving ground handpicked for me to make my life Hell. What was I becoming? What would be the end result of all this? How much of this could I take? All of those questions would eventually be answered.