Meal Ticket
by Patrick Schwarz

The big man pulled his balloon-sized suits out of the moth ridden closet and placed them into his maroon travel hanging bag.  It was Thursday and Lenny was glad to be leaving this burg.  He stared at the shabby hotel room shaking his head that closely resembled a Sharpei dog.  He was used to finer things.  Wormwood Hotel, he thought to himself, what an appropriate name for this shit house.  Lenny had to run the water in the shower for at least ten minutes for the rust to clear.  Not to mention the unidentifiable Texas-sized bugs that scurried for cover when he flicked on the light in the middle of the night.  No room service and the maid came only every other day!

Lenny was going to have to talk to his boss, Harry Snyder, about this territory.  Three lousy accounts.  That’s it for Carrion, Texas.  Three.  Lenny looked at the clock.  Noon.  Time enough to eat something at the airport, then board his commuter flight back to Colorado.  He had to go into the office tomorrow morning and meet with Snyder and one of the other big wigs at Hound Dog Brewery.  Hound Dog was a micro brewery that was emerging as a major player in the beer business and Lenny was on the way up.  Lenny even helped develop the catchy slogan: “If your beer ain’t barking, it ain’t a Hound Dog.”  

Lenny tied his tie as he stared into the slightly fogged mirror that one might buy at a garage sale and examined his face.  He could hear the phantom voices of kids as he walked up to the bus stop when he was twelve. 

“It’s Moby Dick without a dick...” Kids laughter stung like a swarm of July bees.

“Eat first, think later,” Lenny said his mantra, chasing off the old ghosts. 

To say Lenny Schwarzkopf was a big man was like saying World War Two was just a police action.  Lenny was four hundred and fifteen pounds of pure unadulterated fat.  Despite his weight, Lenny was one hell of a salesman.  Although his weight seemed to turn off the average person, Lenny had charm in spades.  His boyish face looked like a big wad of pizza dough with two bright blue marbles shoved into it.  He would simply flash his baby blues and his toothy grin, go into his act and hook people just like that.  His weight did bother him secretly.  He grew up with catcalls of the kids at the Little Shilo bus stop all his life. The calls would greet him as he trudged upwards through the fresh fallen snow. 

“Hey fat ass, did you eat your mom for breakfast?”

The skinny kids puffing on cigarettes with green book bags laying on the root infested embankment.  They look like miniature factories puffing out smoke into the cold January air.  Lenny walks towards them, looking into their mean pink faces wishing that the snow would fall a little harder to call school off.  Lenny would stand away from them, across the street.  It always started with Gallagher making their first snow ball.  Then a fury of others in a cannon like spray would follow.  Lenny would turn his back.  His old parka absorbing the blows.  It wasn't the snowballs that hurt, but the words.  But then, it got even worse when he came home at night to his father.

Lenny went back into the bathroom and grabbed his shaving kit and toothbrush.  He loaded up his carry-on bag and was ready to go.  He called down to the front desk for a porter.  It rang and rang.

“Lazy no-goods.  That’s the problem with companies, today.  No service.”  Lenny grabbed his bags and headed out the door.

Carrion airport was not a small airport nor was it a very large one.  It serviced several other neighboring counties surrounding Carrion.   A small but growing airline, Westward Air, had a hub at Carrion as well as in Boulder, Colorado.  Lenny had been flying Westward for about a year now and was treated with respect, not like those other airlines.  Lenny for years had to put up with the humiliation of buying two tickets because of his girth.  Rude stewardesses made snippy comments about his undulating rolls as he would pass by them in tight aisles.  Not Westward, they accommodated overweight people with special seating and wide aisles.

The flight attendants at Westward Air treated Lenny like he was a member of the Windsor family.  The airline went as far as finding out some of his favorite foods and stocked them on board.  Double cheese and pepperoni pizza.  Bangers and mash.  Porter House steaks.  Hoagies and cheese steaks, Philly style.  And of course, a poverty pack of Hound Dog beer to wash it all down.  Lenny had gained almost another hundred in the past year just from flying Westward. 

Gate thirteen was no different from any other gate in the airport.  It just happened to be Lenny’s gate today.  Lenny was breathing heavily from the long walk from the rental car drop off to the Westward Air gate.  His chest was heaving up and down.  His heart was pounding like a possessed jackhammer.  Sweat flowed like a raging stream from his forehead with his meaty hand acting as a dam.  Over the loud speaker, a haute female voice, blared.

“Delta Flight 461 to Cleveland, now boarding.” 

Lenny struggled to peer down at his watch with his five chins bunching up like a traffic jam on I-95.  They should have begun boarding five minutes ago.  What's taking them so long?  His stomach answered with a long growl.

“Eat first, think later.”

Lenny walked over to the large windows and put his catcher’s mitt hands against it.  Outside, the rain had started coming down in proverbial buckets.  The runways were completely water logged.  Small jets were experiencing problems stopping during landings.  Water shot out from the grooves of their tires giving them a rooster tail as the small bird bore down on the concrete.  Their blue and red lights reflected off of Lenny’s moon face as he stared down at his own plane, flight 107-A.  Men scrambled around the bird like tiny fledglings making last minute repairs.  Lenny began to sweat again.  His mind thought the worst.  The image of an engine ripping loose from its moorings burned into his brain.

“Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Smirnoff, your drunken pilot for this rainy evening.  I hate to inform you that an engine has just dropped off the plane and we’ll be crashing shortly.  I hope you have enjoyed flying Westward Air and have a pleasant crash.”  Lenny laughed uneasily to himself. Lenny’s stomach roared like some towering Cthulian creature rising up from some dark ocean trench to feed.  Lenny had to feed the beast.  

“Eat first, think later.”

Lenny waddled across to the bar as two beer-laden Southern gentlemen in Nascar jackets stared at him from the opposite side.  They were perched on bar stools like a couple of crows working over some road kill.  Lenny thought he recognized them from the movie “Deliverance,” especially the one in the overalls and missing teeth.  He sorta reminded Lenny of Ned Beatty’s boyfriend.  Just as Lenny ordered a Hound Dog Beer and some nachos to the bored looking barkeep, the haute voice that would have given a dead man an erection, crackled from the over-taxed loud speaker. 

“Thank you for your patience, we will now begin boarding Westward Air flight 107-A.  Thank you for choosing Westward Air, the official airlines for the Samhaign Nether World Amusement Park.”

“Cancel that order,”  Lenny yelled while running away from the bar.  The pock-marked bartender shook his head and turned to the movie redneck extras as Lenny lumbered back to his gate. 

“What a fat mother,” The bartender said with great disdain.

Lenny, toting his two carry-on pieces, headed towards the forming small line.  Lenny put his hand against his titanic chest as he passed by some kids wearing band uniforms.

“May I see your ticket, please?” the pretty blonde woman asked.  She smiled at Lenny, but he knew what was behind her fake Hollywood-like smile.  Evil thoughts and jokes that his dad, Chris Schwarzkopf, used to say to him.  Good ‘ol dad would make pig noises every night at dinnertime, bringing Lenny to tears as he struggled to eat. 

“Ya know what kinda animal this is Lenny?”

Lenny wouldn’t respond.  He would sit in humiliation and rage.  His dad would then slap him in the back of the head, driving his head down into the plate of food.  Some nights Lenny wouldn’t eat at all, but still continued to gain weight just looking at food.  His mom, Mary, would only laugh with her Vantage 100’s dangling from her nicotine-stained hands.  Laughing at Lenny as tears rolled down his.... 

“Mr. Schwarzkopf...Mr. Schwarzkopf...”

“Yes.”

“Right this way.  Judy take over for me.”

A beautiful brunette stepped in to check boarding passes. 

“I’m Monica, Mr. Schwarzkopf.  I’ll be your flight attendant in first class.”

Monica led the rotund beer salesman out a small door.  They walked together onto the tarmac only to be met with cold stinging rain.  Monica unfurled an umbrella, covering Lenny.  Two guys in yellow slickers pushed a set of rolling stairs up to the jet.  Lenny huffed and puffed his way up the thirteen steps to the plane.  At the top, the door opened revealing a smiling steward and pilot.

“Hello, Mr. Schwarzkopf.  Welcome to Westward Air.”

“Sorry about the delay, Mr. Schwarzkopf.”

Lenny stared at the friendly greeters, with confusion.

“Er, ah, thank you.  That’s quite all right.”

“Everything is bigger and better in first class,” Lenny thought to himself.  The delightful Monica seated him in his private La-Z-Boy chair.  No other airline had chairs like this in first class. Lenny sat down realizing this seat was more comfortable than his Dad’s leather chair at home.

“Who said that fat pig could sit in my chair.  Get out in the yard where the dirt is, pig,” his father would say with a painful smack of the newspaper to the back of Lenny’s head.

“Sir...Mr. Schwarzkopf...”

Lenny looked up to see Monica hovering over him with a pillow.

“Thanks,” Lenny murmured close to tears.  “I’ve never been treated like this before.”

“Our pleasure.  And thank you for choosing Westward.”

Monica, right then, flashed him a genuine smile.  Nothing hidden behind those teeth and gorgeous lips.  After thirty-four shitty years, Lenny finally felt at home.

The aircraft taxied up to the runway through the icy rain.  It briefly stopped at an intersection with what looked like a large traffic light, blinking away in the cold nebulous night.  The pilot then goosed it to make a hard right onto the runway.  The engines revved to a fever pitch.  Engine number two had sparks shooting out the sides as the plane went shuddering down the runway.  As it ran out of concrete, the plane nosed up into the dank night heading for Boulder.  Lenny never would make it. 

Monica handed Lenny an ice cold Hound Dog and a frosted glass with an accompanying plate of Buffalo wings.

“How did you know I wanted that?”

“Saw you over at the bar.”

“Man, you are sharp.”

The Barbie doll attendant winked at Lenny, then disappeared behind the curtain.  Lenny reverently lifted the cold glass to his parched quivering lips.  The cold beer splashed against his dry throat.   Lenny let out a pleasing moan. 

“This one is definitely barking.”

As Lenny made fast work of the wings and beer, Monica came by with some hot towels.

“You are too good to me.”

“I hope your hungry, this is only the first course.”

“I’d swear that you guys are trying fatting me up.”

Monica laughed and gave him the familiar Westward Air smile.

The sign for the seat belts went off.  Slowly people got up to use the bathroom.  Lenny started to maneuver into the aisle when he spotted an elderly couple moving fast toward him from coach.  Lenny flashed them one of his salesman smiles.

“After you guys.”

The old woman looked down at the special crimson seat Lenny was sitting in.

“No, I couldn’t dear, you go ahead.”

“Are you sure?”

The old man leaned forward and placed a hand on Lenny’s shoulder.

“Go ahead son, before we have an accident in the air.”

Inside the light flickered on as Lenny locked the door.  He sat down on the cold toilet as his rolls of flesh enveloped the sides of the commode.  A cold sucking air tugged at his genitals.  He giggled to himself like a school girl.  He rather liked that feeling.  Lenny sprayed the deodorizer that was on the sink.  It took several flushes to get rid of his evidence.  He stepped out of the bathroom and the old couple seemed to be doing the bathroom dance as they waited.  He thought to himself that he must have been in there for twenty minutes.  He skirted by them and the old lady winked at him.  Lenny wasn’t use to this level of niceness.

After a short while, the constant din of the engines soon worked its magic on Lenny.  He didn’t even bother to wake when Monica brought out the smoked sausage links.  Lenny snored like a slumbering giant.  The reclined seat he seemed to mold around his body or did his body mold around it. Lenny’s dreams were uneasy.  His father hovered over him with the brown leather belt as he pulled excitedly at Lenny’s jeans tearing a belt loop as he anxiously disrobed him.

“I just gonna beat the ever living fat off you boy...”

Suddenly Lenny was jarred awake.  He looked up to see the seat belt sign flashing angrily at him.  Behind him a younger couple began to whimper like beaten puppies.  Lenny thought they were first time flyers until the soda cart went whizzing by him in the aisle.  It smashed into the cabin wall.  Split Coke cans sent streamers of caramel-colored liquid into the air.  Something was definitely wrong. 

The plane was in a steep descent.  Lenny flipped up his window shade.  Outside, lightning animated the clouds with a violent burst of primal light.  Raging wind and rain lashed at the plane like a mad camel driver.  Smoke and flames poured out from engine number two.

Just then, the voice of a shaken pilot broke over the static-filled loud speaker.

“This is Captain...afraid we have lost engine number...going to try to make it to Boulder...the video screens, you will see how...Thank you for flying...” the garbled voice of the Captain cut out.

Lenny couldn’t believe it.  He was going to die.  He never thought he would buy it in a plane crash.  He always hoped it would be a nice heart attack over Veal Parmesan, not in a French De Sade Twenty-Five.

On the video screen, a mentally challenged flight attendant instructed passengers to put their heads between their legs for the crash position.  Lenny mussed to himself, “Probably to kiss their asses good-bye.”

  The jovial video image blared on.  After the plane came to a complete halt, the able bodied passengers were to open the emergency exits.  “What the stewardess meant by ‘able bodied’ are the passengers that don’t have their heads sheared off from the crash,” Lenny thought aloud.

No one on the plane paid any attention to the gleeful stewardess instructing them on safety.  Her last minute tips were like handing out sun block in Hiroshima and telling everyone that they may get a bad burn.  Some passengers were in the aisles trying to grab Monica, who was no longer smiling.  She knocked away their hands and made her way back to her seat and strapped herself in.  Other passengers of Westward Air were moaning and shouting the Lord’s name.  Numerous prayers were offered up to the air gods to spare their pitiful lives.  Some were using the barf bags.  The mushy, acid smelling contents were spilling over the sides.  They never make those bags big enough. 

Lenny tried to ignore the pandemonium.  He tucked his head in-between his tree trunk legs and tried not to think about the plane headed in a nose dive at the Colorado Rockies at three hundred plus miles an hour. 

“Serves ya right for being fat.  God punishes all the lard asses. It’s one of the fucking commandments,” Dad’s voice taunted him.  Lenny brought his beefy hands to his ears and screamed, “Eat first, think later!”

Just then as Lenny retreated to the dark corners of his mind, the plane dipped out of the low lying clouds toward the jagged mountain range dead ahead.  Wind lashed out at the French toy plane that dared to fly its skies and pitched it like a cork amidst a tempest sea.  The plane barely made it over the first peak.

Lenny heard the sounds of steel fingernails being dragged across a blackboard.  Then Scottish wailing banshees boarded the plane and began to shriek in everyone's ears.  He quickly spun his Jabba the Hut head around to be greeted by stinging winds.  Some kids from a high school marching band were seated back there and the knuckled headed folks who were roaming about the aisles did a quick rendition of the “Flying Nun”.  The seats, drink carts and a male flight attendant were also sucked out the back and into the black void.  The insane voice of Lenny’s Dad came to him.

“Cry baby.  Just like you Lenny. Big fucking baby.  Can’t even take it like a man.”  His dad whispered into his head.

“Shut up Dad, shut up.” Lenny cried out midst the screaming wind. 

Outside the plane the band members, their seats and instruments are pounded, bashed, and skidded across the cold rocks.  Their bodies exploded like rotted fruit as they came in contact with the wind swept plateau.  Searchers would later find pieces barely big enough to put in a sandwich bag.

Inside the plane, passengers screams and the howling wind ripping through the tattered tail section competed with one another.  One man in tattered jeans and a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt was hanging on the very edge of the tail section.  His long jet black hair whipped about in the air like a den of electrified snakes.  He leaned forward with all his might in a vain attempt to keep himself from joining the roamers and band members in the roaring black void.  Suddenly, the bolts holding his chair to the floor wrenched away.  The Hard Rock guy gave a horrendous scream that made one think of a scalded cat that seemed to penetrate all fifteen fillings and four root canals with crowns in Lenny’s head.  He grabbed the serrated metal edges of the hole.  Trying for dear life to hang on as the metal bit into his flesh.

The Hark Rock guy with the electrified snakes for hair was then promptly sucked out into the swirling void as the serrated sides of the hole cut off his fingers.  He met his fate among the cold rocks along with the pulverized passengers and the panicked aisle roamers.

“Eat first, think later.”

The plane barely cleared another peaked as it nosed dived down its slope.  It hit the snow bank hard.  Snow exploded up into the air.  Large boulders on both sides of the plane sheared off the wings converting the French plane into million dollar toboggan.   The nose of the plane jumped into the air as if it were trying to take off again. 

The plane then came to a halt as it jammed itself in-between two formidable boulders just shy of mountain’s edge.  Another ten feet and the rest of the passengers would have been dead, one with plastic and metal.  Forever welded together in this frozen wasteland.

None of the passengers moved at first.  Most laid still in their seats wallowing in their own waste products.  Fronts of their shirts covered in stomach acid and the mystery meat that was served an hour ago.  Passengers mumbled and chanted to whatever gods that happened to be listening at the time.  Their eyelids hammered shut in fear of witnessing their own tragic demise.  Lenny opened his eyes.  He slowly looked out the window to see that they weren’t moving.  He checked his fingers and counted.  He still had all ten.  He looked down at his feet.  His shoes were still on.  He presumed he had all ten there.  So far so good.  He gazed over at his neighbor across the aisle.  Her feet were missing.  Rocks had ripped up the flooring and the sharp aluminum had sheered off her feet.   She lay slumped over in the seat.  Her breathing was ragged.  Her stumps were bloody with protruding jagged bone. 

“At least she’ll still play the piano.  The keys any how,” Lenny’s dad dead panned in his head.  

Others in coach stirred in their seats undoing their buckles and climbing out of their seats.  They were checking each other for injuries.  Monica was getting medical supplies along with the other steward and the pilot.  Lenny undid his restraining belt and grabbed a blanket laying on the floor to wrap the woman’s bleeding stumps.  Monica gently grabbed his arm.

“I have it.  Just sit back and relax.”

She gave Lenny a Westward smile.  But it didn’t look that genuine anymore.

Dawn broke over the horizon.  It’s brilliant rays highlighted the wreckage sight with glorious yellow and orange colors.  A few scattered cotton balls in the sky stained by the morning sun was all that was left from last nights storm.  The plane or fuselage I should say looked like some forgetful kid’s toy left on a snowy hill.  A fire was built out of destroyed seats and other items rendered useless from the crash.  The fire gave off a sickly black smoke that drifted high into the morning sky.  The remaining passengers gathered around it for warmth.

“We should consolidate all are supplies,” The pilot said as he gathered his crew.  “Monica, Derrick, see to the wounded.  If you can’t find a first aid kit...improvise.  Somebody needs to keep an eye on that fire at all times...”

Wind came down off a peak, caused eddies of swirling snow to move passed the surviving members of the crash.  The tail section laid on the rocky slope with a wagon train logo and the words “Donner Corporation” on it.  The passengers and crew all huddled around a burning seat.  Oily smoke rose up into the black velvet sky.  The bleeding had stopped for most of the passengers who were covered with makeshift bandages.  Lenny stood close to the fire trying to keep warm.  The old lady and man were staring at Lenny from across the burning seat.  The old lady wasn’t friendly anymore. 

“When are we going to eat?” She complains to Monica.  More passengers echo those sentiments.  Everyone was cold, tired, and especially hungry.

“Soon.” Monica turned to the pilot as he trudged through the snow to the fuselage.

The pilot routed around like some dog searching for a long lost bone.  Muttering curses as he threw stuff out from the plane into the snow.  He finally emerged from the plane carrying something effulgent in his hands.  He approached Lenny with a Barker-like smile that kept growing on his face.  Lenny stared long and hard at the metal bar with a hammer on the end of it that the pilot was carrying.  The passengers gathered around him like the kids at the bus stop use to do.

“What?  What’s going on?” Lenny inquired with lamb-like eyes.

Monica giggled.

“Come on Lenny, you can’t be that stupid.  Nobody gets a free lunch.”

“Lard ass, you’re our meal ticket...” The pilot exclaimed with mad glee as he brought the hammer over his head.

Lenny thought the pilot’s face looked just like his dad.  The moonlight shimmered off the metal surface.  The light played across Lenny’s pizza dough face.

“Eat first, think later.”