The place had been there for ever as far as he knew. He'd seen the sign from the school bus when he was a kid, but he'd never really thought about it.
``Finish our sixty four ounce steak plus trimmings and get it free!'' the faded sign said.
Its true he was a logger. True he ate a lot. His wife packed six sandwiches, two apples and a couple of candy bars every day. That and two liters of Mountain Dew kept him going til dinner. Not that he was fat. He just burned a lot of calories.
When they went out to dinner he'd eat a one pound steak without a thought and have room for pie but it never occurred to him that he might take on the Big Steak House challenge until his wife brought it up.
``You could do it honey, I know,'' she said, ``I've seen you eat that much a thousand times.''
But the man had his doubts.
``How much time do they give you?'' he asked.
When they got to the Big Steak House first thing they did was put him up on a stage and shine a spot light on him. That took away his appetite for a start. There were a lot of salesman types and loud old couples watching him. The place had an old tobacco smoke and stale beer smell it had been collecting for fifty years. He didn't like the looks of the carpet either. A sort of beaten down deep shag of a brownish orange color. The spot light was making him sweat.
They brought the food all at once. Salad, baked potato, bread roll and a big water carafe. The steak lay huge and hissing on a giant oval platter. It looked like they might have pieced it together but so what.
He ate the salad first to get it out of the way and make a cushion for the meat to follow, and really the meat was good and he ate with plain enjoyment at first. True the people staring at him pissed him off but what the hell, he volunteered didn't he?
He was two thirds through the steak when his stomach began to hurt. He slowed down his eating, chewed long and hard and tried to fart the pressure out of his gut. A few belches helped too.
A little water to speed it through? It didn't help. He sat quiet for a moment, closing his eyes.
``You can't do that more than twenty seconds,'' the manager said.
``I need to use the rest room.''
The manager jerked his head at the sign, ``In one sitting,'' it said.
He picked up a fork and put in a mouthful.
``Don't forget the potato and the roll!'' the manager said. His fellow diners were laughing.
He undid his belt and unbuttoned his jeans which helped a bit.
With four ounces to go the pain was excruciating. If he could just pack it into his oesophagus he could maybe get to the rest room and barf it all up.
He jammed the last morsel in his cheek and forced it to the back of his throat. He felt like Paul Newman in some convict movie -
``SWALLOW SWALLOW!'' his fellow diners yelled, banging their forks on the table.
He did try to swallow, but instead the food packed above his stomach came shooting out of him accompanied by his own bright blood.
``Ruptured his stomach,'' the surgeon said, ``we saved most of it, but he'll always have problems if he eats more than a little food at a time.''
The man worked for a gyppo outfit. He had no health insurance. Neither did his wife. It would take years to pay his medical bills.
What really hurt was the bill from the Big Steak House, not just for the dinner but also for cleaning chewed up steak and blood from the deep shag carpet.