Relative Peace

When I found out what happened to Gene, I was flipping the ribs in the barbecue pit my father welded for the restaurant, the heavy iron lid propped open with a crowbar, the heat rising steadily over the meat, so hot the air rippled in front of my eyes like a flag. The mesquite underneath the crusted grate splintered into red and orange before shrinking into white ash. It was five in the morning, and I'd been at work for nearly two hours, cutting and cooking the ribs and beef and pork, mixing coleslaw, molding hamburger patties. Most days during the week, I come in at five. But Saturdays get busy because the restaurant is located in the mall. On these mornings I have to get a head start on the extra supply of barbecue for the day. Besides, I like the early morning silence. Saev, the Vietnamese man who prepares the batter and seasons the steaks and patties for me, doesn't usually arrive until eight, so I work several hours alone. I love the solitude, love the ritual of preparation before the cooks and waitresses arrive, before the hectic and sometimes maddening frenzy of the day: the lunch and dinner runs, the last-minute catering trips, the small kitchen tragedies, and my own temper.

I like this time to focus. In my life before this one, I rarely felt a moment's peace. What I came to love, what I always really loved, was the simple rhythms of work. For the past eight years, ever since the fire, I'd been a new person: new marriage, a new start with this restaurant. I felt I'd been delivered, somehow, into a new life, and that life demanded the silence and peace of these mornings.

It'd been raining all through the night, a late autumn storm. Hail thumped against the roof. Wind whimpered down the vent chutes. Flipping the last side of ribs, I heard the back door open. I turned my head from the oven and rubbed with my sleeve the heat tears. I was surprised to see Cheryl, my wife, and Rich, my youngest brother, standing in the doorway, drenched. Cheryl wore her yellow slicker, her hood off. Water ran down her coat in thin rivulets. Rich wore a light blue coat with our Steak 'n' Taters logo on the side, dark in patches because of the rain. His normally bushy hair clung to his head in dripping ringlets.

I was surprised to see Cheryl here—she hates getting up in the dark and had never been to the restaurant this early in the morning—but it was more of a shock to see Rich standing beside her. Rich had worked for me the last four and a half years as my floor manager and had quit only a month ago. It'd been coming for a while. But the final argument flared over something inane. I came in one afternoon to find him mixing a large tub of potato salad for a catering job. He'd poured in twice the amount of mustard and paprika, and the blob of potatoes was obviously ruined, a sickly yellow-red paste.

It seems stupid now, but a ruined tub of potato salad is like flushing money down the toilet. The argument led to shouting, chest pokes. He swung for my head and missed. I shoved him against the serving line, clutched his throat until the veins in his forehead pulsed, and then he kneed me in the groin, and I fell to the tile. He slung a huge metal meat pan that shattered a tray of tea glasses and tumbled across the serving line. And then he was gone, the door slamming behind him.

I hadn't seen or heard from him since. Despite the nastiness of our fight, I wasn't upset about him being here now. When I hired Rich, he'd just gotten out of prison after serving seven months of an eighteen-month term for assault and kidnapping, which was worse than it sounds. He and his wife, Babs, had separated. Still somewhat delusional...