Carly Anne and the Crabby Pig

Carly Anne never liked the weekends. If she could, she’d work eleven to six, seven days a week at Crabby Pig Deck and Grill in the shade of the Ferris Wheel at Daytona Beach Pier.

Paul Irving Gill (who goes by Pig for short) wouldn’t have it. Said she could only work 40 hours a week. Plain and simple. Something about some stupid laws or something. She couldn’t figure ’cause she told him she would do it for free.

“Free? Ain’t nobody do nothing for free,” Pig snapped.

God bless him, I guess ’cause he did insist I work on Sunday in the name of Our Lord and all. She still wanted Saturday, she told him.

Sunday she goes to Daytona Beach Drive in Church in the morning and then gets to work at noon. The whole day accounted for. How she liked it — busy. No time to mull around or figure nothing out. No time to think. Amen, and thank you, Jesus.

“Please, Saturday, too?” she begged.

“You’re silly, Carly Anne, Jesus love you, and you love Jesus. You know how Reverend Farthington like you singing up front in the choir in your colorful Sunday dress and perty voice. You sing on Sunday, after church; families follow you here.”

“Please, Pig, I need to work Saturdays.”

“You got Sundays. Saturday, the only time Dolly Lil has her mama to watch those three noisy kids of hers.”

Carly ended up with the worst days off for a single middle-aged woman like her — Friday and Saturday, a triple-decker of not-knowing-what-to-do-with-herself boredom. Like she was sent to the back of the 3rd classroom and told to sit on her hands and not peep a word while all the others gotta play and sing with the tambourines and rhythm bells.

Life ain’t fair.

She didn’t mind eating alone, watching TV alone, sleeping alone, being alone. She enjoyed the freedom of doing things herself without consulting some man first if it was okay, like her coworker Peggy Lou who had to have her husband, Bennie’s approval for every damn thing she did.

“Can I stop by Ashley Lane Boutique before coming Home?”

"Is it okay, if I get my nails done this weekend?

No Siree! She ain’t asking nobody nothing no how. Not no more.

She’s an Independent woman with a capital ‘I’m nobody’s dependent, and I don’t need your sh*t to boot. Why any modern-day female would live like that, she just couldn’t figure. Were these women brain dead at birth goin’ along with every damn thing their man tell them?

Make breakfast, go to work, come home, make dinner, clean it up, do the laundry, tidy up, pleasure him, go to sleep. Wake up and do the damn thing over and over again. All for what? A dinner? Maybe a movie and a dinner out at Olive Garden? Olive Garden ain’t even real Italian! Don’t know what they servin’ there.

Carly Anne been there done that.

Three years of cooking, cleaning, pleasing “let me get you this, “let me get you that,” “let me roll over like some dumb obedient labrador retriever while you shout out commands and do nothing.”

Woof.

Sure, she would have stayed with Bobby Baker, her high school not so sweet of heart. Like divorce was outta the question. She made her bed and was gonna lay in it “till death do us part and all.”

She didn’t enjoy it, though. Maybe a little bit… not much… His corny smile… maybe…

Well… honestly… She didn’t think anybody really paid attention to the Big Blue Recycle Trash Trucks, other than trying to get past them when they was hogging up the road on Saturday. They, like everything else, just become part of the ordinary goings on around North Beach.

Well.. that is until the steel robotic giant growled down the street, reaching out its steel mechanical arms and latching onto Bobby and his blue bin of discarded newspapers and takeaway containers.

Wrong place. Wrong time.

Before the operator knew it, Bobby was in its grip and lifted up into the air, swinging into the rear of the truck where, for a few brief moments, his screams blended into the pneumatic hiss of the hydraulics.

Old Lady Abigail saw the whole thing from her wheelchair positioned at the living room window where she sat on neighborhood watch most mornings. Nothing could get past her. Nothing.

Saw the whole thing, she said, from the moment he was lifted in the air to the time the compactor growled to life and compressed and chewed up the refuse, squishing it to a fraction of its original volume.

The man-eating arm then lowered the blue plastic bin to the ground with a soft thud — devoid of Bobby and its contents.

So, Old Lady Abigail told the uniformed officers, who swiftly arrived 15 minutes after it happened.

Carly Anne noticed all the commotion outside and had no idea what had happened. She listened with a mix of shock and horror as the unfortunate carnival of onlookers and neighbors gathered around to be part of the tragedy firsthand.

Carly was enjoying a peaceful morning cutting out grocery coupons from the Daytona Beach News and didn’t even know Bobby was missing until she heard the screeching sirens stopping at her doorstep. Her Saturday boredom had suddenly transformed into a surreal nightmare. She couldn’t believe it. Her mind raced with thoughts of her husband of fifteen long years, now reduced to a pile of crushed waste.

Just like that. Here, one moment, then gone. As boring and oppressive her life with Bobby was, his death was anything but. Like, who gets chewed up by a trash can in this day and age?

No, she never thought about getting married again after that. Didn’t need nobody.

But Saturdays… Saturdays was real hard… real hard. She’d rather be working than thinking about things that’s for sure.

Ain’t no AI write this.

(Originally published on Medium.)