Drunk on the Job Read online

  For those in the room that have never had the pleasure to meet me before, let me take this quiet moment to introduce myself. My name is Daniel Terrence Drunk, Jr., and I live on Paradise Isle, a small island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. I’m Terrence to my mother and my friend Al’s wife, Evie, T or T-Bone to some of my friends back in the States, Danny to one woman in particular, whom you’ll meet eventually, and Drunk to almost everyone else.

  I’m a “gangly fellow,” as my mother would call me. At six-foot-four, I’m mostly legs and arms, and I’m top-heavy, with an oversized nose, a thick pile of dark Grecian hair—which I usually keep safely tucked under a black fedora, and a larger-than-life ego. I consider myself a good-looking fellow, hence the larger-than-life ego, but I’m quite aware that I’m not everyone’s brand of oatmeal and I’m fine with that, because if everyone liked me, I think I’d be doing something wrong at life. As it stood, I had a handful of close friends, Al Becker being one of the closest, I had a cushy job, and I lived on a fucking tropical island.

  I was currently winning at life.

  When the Royals game was over, Al hopped off his barstool and walked to the end of the bar while I attempted to suck down my strawberry margarita without incurring brain freeze.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I need to stop ordering these blended.”

  “You say that every time,” said Al as he hobbled back over to his stool with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand.

  “Every time I’m right. But I like ’em blended.”

  Once Al was properly situated, he unrolled the Paradise Isle newspaper. While I struggled to unthaw my brain, Al scanned the front page. Less than a second later, his breath caught in the back of his throat. “Well, I’ll be!”

  “You’ll be what? A monkey’s uncle? You know, I never understood that expression. What’s that really mean—a monkey’s uncle? Why couldn’t it be a horse’s ass or a bullfrog’s dick or something a little more catchy?”

  Al tipped the paper sideways to give me a look at the front page. “Well ain’t this a bullfrog’s dick,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  A quick glance made my eyes nearly burst out of my skull. There was a huge picture of me on the front page. “What the—”

  “You made the Sunday paper. You’re a celebrity, kid!”

  I plucked the paper out of Al’s hands and read the headline. Newest Islander Takes Down the PGC. “Holy shit.”

  “Can I get your autograph, Officer Drunk?” asked Al with a chuckle, sliding a pulpboard coaster across the polished wood bar top to me.

  “Ah, piss off.” I groaned as I scanned the article. Officer Drunk of the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department… “These fuckers. They just told the whole goddamned island I’m a police officer.”

  “Well, you are. Or at least you were,” said Al.

  “Were, Al, were. That’s the operative word.” I shook my head. I hated being called Officer Drunk.

  “You know, if I remember correctly, you said you wanted to be the island’s next eligible bachelor after Ziggy Thomas bit the tarmac. From your lips to God’s ears.”

  I slumped forward against the bar top. Al spoke the truth. For a moment, I’d liked the idea of women on the island throwing themselves at me. But that was before Frankie Cruz and I had had our moment. Ever since then, I’d been dying to take her up on the offer of bringing me back to her place. I’d tried making that happen a few times since everything had gone down, but lately, it seemed, Frankie had been a hard woman to get ahold of.

  “Yeah. I know, but maybe that was childish of me.”

  Al quirked a grin. “Ya think?”

  “Shut it.”

  He chuckled. “Ah well. What’s done is done. I can’t imagine this article will cause you any harm or anything.”

  “I don’t know. Frankie might not like it. I didn’t see her name in there. Chicks get freaked out about shit like that. She might be a little sore at me, like somehow I tried to take all the credit.”

  Al swatted the air with his gnarled eighty-seven-year-old hand. “Ah, give her some credit. Frankie’s smarter than that. She knows you didn’t write the article.”

  And then out of nowhere, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air, piercing my eardrums and quickening my pulse. “AHHHH!”

  My head turned just as it sounded again.

  “Ahhhhh!”

  And then someone else’s scream chimed in. “Get away from me!”

  Dropping the newspaper onto the bar, I lurched off my barstool and sprinted outside. I burst out the clubhouse doors and instantly froze, unable to believe what I saw.

  What the fuck?!

  When Al caught up to me, we glanced at each other.

  “Holy sweet potatoes,” he breathed.

  The concrete pad in front of the clubhouse was now swarming with chickens. Two hundred or more chickens had invaded the pool, swim-up bar, and miniature golf course. I stared blankly as I watched the wild band of rust-colored chickens chasing after the resort guests, wondering how in the hell this was even happening.

  “What the—?”

  “Ahhhhh!” went the scream again.

  I looked to my right to see a short elderly woman on the miniature golf course, shaking a putter at a particularly aggressive rooster who was asserting his dominance by flapping his wings at her.

  “You get away from me!” she yelled at it.

  I raced over in her direction and flapped my arms, hollering at the bird. “Shoo. Shoo! Get outta here!”

  The bird got spooked and ran, but I could hear screams and shouts from every different part of the area. Even though I had no idea how this was happening or why, as head of resort security, this was go time for me. I had to take control of the situation.

  “Okay, just stay calm, everyone,” I hollered, cupping my hands around my mouth. “My name is Danny Drunk. I’m the head of resort security here. I’m going to need everyone to clear the area for the time being. I’ll get these chickens rounded up and removed in a jiffy. So if I could have you all make your way up to the lobby or to your rooms, that would be great.” I waved my arms in a forward motion, indicating everyone should move towards the golf cart parking area.

  People around me groaned. I could tell they were pissed about having to load up all their stuff, but thankfully, I supposed, the resort had settled into what Artie referred to as a “slow patch.” As it was finally warmer in the States, business was down slightly, so our guest count was relatively low. The pool and beach area were far from full, but there were still guests that I needed to keep safe.

  “Golf cart attendants, please take full loads and return immediately until we’ve escorted all guests up to the resort.”

  As guests began evacuating the area, I rushed back over to the clubhouse to find Al standing on the staircase, his mouth gaping open. “Where in tarnation did all these chickens come from?”

  “I have no idea. But, Al, I need you to call Artie. Tell him to get down here right away. And then do me a favor and close up all the clubhouse doors so the chickens can’t find their way into the restaurant and bar.”

  Al nodded and turned around to head back up the stairs, pulling his phone from his back pocket. “I’m on it.”

  I hollered across the pool to Manny Velázquez, the stocky Puerto Rican swim-up bartender that I now considered a personal friend, “Hey, Manny! Gimme a hand?”

  “Sure thing, Drunk.”

  Manny and I spent the next ten minutes evacuating guests from the pool area. Every time we made a move, it seemed, we stepped on a chicken, making them squawk louder than a hormonal woman with a bone to pick. Every way we turned, there were more chickens. They just kept coming, like someone had turned on a chicken faucet and had forgotten to turn it off. I’d never seen anything like it.

  When all the guests were finally gone, I turned to Manny. “Where’d they all come from, Manny?”

  “I don’t know, man. They came from the beach, I guess. First there were just a few of them, and then they were coming a dozen at a time. I literally blinked and the next thing I knew the beach was swarming with them.”

  I scratched my head. It was possible I’d overslept on the day they’d taught chicken wrangling at the academy, but that didn’t change the fact that I had to figure something out fast. “Well, let’s see if we can’t get them to go back to wherever they came from.”

  Manny looked skeptical but shrugged. “We can try.”

  Together, we began by chasing the chickens off towards the ocean, hoping they’d just follow their original route and go home. Wherever home happened to be. Just as long as it wasn’t on our beach and pool area. But the chickens didn’t seem to like that idea. We’d herd them one direction and they’d skirt around us or between us and race right back in the direction we’d just chased them off from. It was ridiculous.

  By the time Artie got down to the pool area, Manny and I had done little in the way of chicken evacuation and instead had only managed to wear ourselves out by running around and flapping our arms up and down. For his part, Al was seated at a table on the clubhouse’s wraparound porch, getting a kick out of watching Manny and me look like a bunch of fucking idiots.

  “What the hell? Drunk!” hollered Artie from across the pool. “Where did all these chickens come from?”

  “Like I know, Artie? They just—showed up. But they won’t leave!” At my feet, a chicken pecked the top of my big toe. “Gah!” I screamed, nearly jumping out of my flip-flops. I shot out a leg, sending the thing skittering out of reach. “Get outta here, you feathery mother-clucker!”

  “Drunk!” Artie screamed.

  “What?!”

  “Quit playin’ around, for Pete’s sake!”

  My mouth gaped. Quit playing around?! “You think this is fun? Little clucker just yanked a toe hair.”

  “Come on. Get ’em rounded up and out of here. The guests up there are steaming mad.”

  “I’m trying to round them up, Artie. But there’s gotta be a couple hundred of them. What am I supposed to do with them?”

  “I don’t know. Get some of the maintenance vans over here and load them up.”

  Was he serious? Not a single one of the chickens could’ve passed a walk-and-turn sobriety test, let alone walk in the direction I wanted them to. Did he really think I’d be able to convince them to get in a fucking van?!

  “Hey, Drunk,” hollered Manny, walking through a flock of chickens to stand next to me. “You want me to call my cousin?”

  “Your cousin? Why would I want you to call your cousin?”

  “He’s an exterminator.”

  “Does he have any experience with chickens?”

  “I don’t think so, but maybe he could spray them with something.”

  I looked at Manny sideways. “Manny. Are you fucking insane? I don’t think we wanna do a mass murder here. We just wanna relocate the bastards.”

  “I guess we could call my other cousin,” he offered with a shrug.

  “What’s he do? Work for KFC?”

  “Nah, man. He works for animal control.”

  I stared at him blankly. “Yeah. How about we fucking do that instead.”

  Manny pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Yeah, okay. I’ll call him.”

  “Sweet. Thanks. Great idea.” I turned to walk away and then stopped short. “Well. The second idea was a great idea. The first idea was just fucking psychotic.”

  With the phone to his ear, he laughed. “Hey, man. All ideas can’t be winners.”

  3

  Three and a half hours later, Al and I sat in front of Artie’s desk. My shirt was drenched with sweat from all the running around down at the pool. I was exhausted, and my body was still working to come down off the adrenaline high.

  “Man, that was some shit,” I said, laughing after taking a swig from the bottle of Dr Pepper I’d grabbed on the way in to refuel. “Thank God for animal control.”

  “What are they going to do with all those chickens?” asked Al.

  “The animal control guy said there’s a chicken farm not too far away. He’s going to give them a call and see if somehow we wound up with their chickens by mistake,” said Artie.

  I shook my head as I screwed the lid back on my soda. “What I don’t understand is how the hell an entire flock of chickens escapes from a chicken farm and just happens to make their way onto our beach?”

  “Maybe they were scheduled for a trip to the butcher’s and they chickened out?” said Al with a shrug and a half-smile.

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh my God. There’s that German humor again.”

  “Well, you know, I wondered that same thing,” said Artie, wagging a finger. “So while you were getting them all rounded up, I drove down to the guard shack and spoke with Wilson. They didn’t just happen to make their way onto our beach. According to him, a delivery truck came through earlier with a poultry shipment. He assumed it was meant for the kitchen and let them through, but he had no idea they were live chickens.”

  Dumbfounded, my jaw dropped. “You’re joking?” I couldn’t believe that someone had actually dropped them off intentionally!

  Artie shook his head. “We’re not exactly sure what happened. Wilson didn’t get the name of the company the driver worked for, so we don’t know if the shipment was meant for the chicken farm down the road or if someone else got their wires crossed.” He threw his hands up. “We may never know exactly what happened.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said, with a bewildered smile. “You know, it’s gonna take us a week to get all the bird shit cleaned up down there. And of all weeks for this to happen, we’ve got Carnival happening this weekend.”

  “Yeah, I already call—” Before Artie could finish his sentence, the phone buzzed and a woman’s voice spilled out. “Mr. Balladares, Sylvester Smallwood is on line two for you.”

  Artie’s shoulders went slack and his whole demeanor visibly changed right in front of us. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “No, sir. He just asked to speak with you.”

  Artie sighed. “Alright. Thank you, Alicia.” The phone clicked and he glanced up at Al and me. “Ugh. I hate this guy.”

  “Yeah, we noticed. Who’s Sylvester Smallwood?”

  “He runs the Crystal Point Resort next door,” said Al.

  “You’ve heard me talk about him before. Everybody just calls him Sly.”

  My eyes widened. “Oh, Sly? Yeah. I’ve heard you mention him before. Sly’s last name is Smallwood? Well, ain’t that a kick in the nuts to be named Smallwood.” I laughed. “No wonder he just goes by Sly.”

  Artie sighed. “Yeah, well, he’s certainly got a chip on his shoulder to go with the unusual name. I actually went to high school with him. He’s a real jerk.”

  I stared incredulously. “You went to high school with the guy who owns the resort next door? How the hell did things shake out like that?”

  Al chuckled. “Artie opened his big mouth, that’s how it shook out.”

  Artie let out a heavy sigh. “It was at a class reunion about ten years ago. Sly was there and I happened to mention how great Paradise Isle was and how my dream was to buy a resort on the island one day.”

  “Sly beat Artie to it,” said Al knowingly.

  My mouth went slack. “You’re kidding? He stole your dream? Who does that?”

  Artie’s face flushed redder than usual. He pursed his lips. “Sly Smallwood. That’s who.” He looked down at his desk and shook his head sadly. “It was my own fault. Sly always was a bully in school, and I admit I wanted to impress him a little and prove that I’d actually done something with my life. I bragged a bit about my tales of travel and my Case IH dealership. And then I mentioned that when I retired, I’d love to buy a resort here and live out my days in paradise.” Artie shrugged. “How was I to know he’d buy a resort here before I did?”

  “So he was here first?”

  “Yup. He bought the Crystal Point literally that same year I mentioned it. Of course I had no idea until after I’d already bought the Seacoast Majestic. And then it was too late.” Frowning, Artie held a finger to his lips to shush me. “Now, I better take this and see what he wants. Just hang on a second, fellas.”

  I leaned back in my seat, stretching out my long legs while Artie put the call on speakerphone.

  “Sly, it’s Artie. You need something?”

  “Artie Fartie!” boomed the voice through the speaker. “What the hell took you so long? Have a heart attack on the way to the phone?”

  Artie’s eyes skipped up to glance at me uncomfortably. “Now’s not a very good time, Sly.”

  “From what I’ve heard it’s never a good time at the Seacoast Pathetic!” Sly chuckled through the speaker. “Seriously, though, I only called to offer my condolences. I heard you had a bit of a pest infestation problem today. Did you call the police? Is anyone suspecting fowl play?”

  Sucking in his breath, Artie stared wide-eyed at the phone. “This was you, Smallwood?”

  The question was met with only laughter on the other end of the line.

  Artie’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. “I should’ve known it was you, you sonuvabitch!”

  I sat up in my seat and turned an ear to the phone. Were these two implying that this wasn’t an accident after all?! This jerk was actually claiming responsibility for it? Who did shit like that?

  “You know, from what I’ve heard, it was a real eggs-citing day over on your side of the beach.” More evil chuckling.

  “I’m gonna get you for this, Smallwood!” shouted Artie.

  The blood in my veins began to simmer. Not only because he’d been responsible for the chickens, but because of how he was speaking to Artie!

  “Oh, Balladares, you know I didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers, but go ahead, do your worst. I promise you, revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  I wanted to lurch forward and share a few choice words with the asshat on the other end, but Artie, seeing the look on my face, shot me a warning look. When he held up a finger at me, I pressed my lips together, and instead of exploding, I seethed inside.

  Artie’s finger sliced the air determinedly as he barked into the phone. “I’ve had enough of your pranks, Smallwood. This is where it ends!”