“All this heah talk about chicken-loving niggers,” he growled chuckingly to the second cook. “The way them white passengers clean up on mah fried chicken I wouldn’t trust one o’ them anywheres near mah hen-coop.”
Broiling tender corn-fed chicken without biting a leg. Thus, grimly, the chef existed. Humored and tolerated by the steward and hated by the waiters and undercooks. Jake found himself on the side of the waiters. He did not hate the chef (Jake could not hate anybody). But he could not be obscenely sycophantic to him as the second cook, who was just waiting for the chance to get the chef’s job. Jake stood his corner in the coffin, doing his bit in diplomatic silence. Let the chef bawl the waiters out. He would not, like the second cook, join him in that game.
Ray, perhaps, was the chief cause of Jake’s silent indignation. Jake had said to him: “I don’t know how all you fellows can stand that theah God-damn black bull. I feels like falling down mahself.” But Ray had begged Jake to stay on, telling him that he was the only decent man in the kitchen. Jake stayed because he liked Ray. A big friendship had sprung up between them and Jake hated to hear the chef abusing his friend along with the other waiters. The other cooks and waiters called Ray “Professor.” Jake had never called him that. Nor did he call him “buddy,” as he did Zeddy and his longshoremen friends. He called him “chappie” in a genial, semi-paternal way.
Jake’s life had never before touched any of the educated of the ten dark millions. He had, however, a vague idea of who they were. He knew that the “big niggers” that were gossiped about in the saloons and the types he had met at Madame Adelina Suarez’s were not the educated ones. The educated “dick-tees,” in Jake’s circles were often subjects for raw and funny sallies. He had once heard Miss Curdy putting them in their place while Susy’s star eyes gleamed warm approval.
“Honey, I lived in Washington and I knowed inside and naked out the stuck-up bush-whackers of the race. They all talks and act as if loving was a sin, but I tell you straight, I wouldn’t trust any of them after dark with a preacher. . . . Don’t ask me, honey. I seen and I knows them all.”
“I guess you does, sistah,” Susy had agreed. “Nobody kaint hand me no fairy tales about niggers. Wese all much of a muchness when you git down to the real stuff.”
Difficulties on the dining-car were worsened by a feud between the pantry and the kitchen. The first waiter, who was pantryman by regulation, had a grievance against the chef and was just waiting to “get” him. But, the chef being such a paragon, the “getting” was not easy.
Nothing can be worse on a dining-car than trouble between the pantry and the kitchen, for one is as necessary to the other as oil is to salad. But the war was covertly on and the chef was prepared to throw his whole rhinoceros weight against the pantry. The first waiter had to fight cautiously. He was quite aware that a first-class chef was of greater value than a first-class pantryman.
The trouble had begun through the “mule.” The fourth man—a coffee-skinned Georgia village boy, timid like a country girl just come to town—hated the nickname, but the chef would call him nothing else.
“Call him ‘Rhinoceros’ when he calls you ‘Mule,’ ” Ray told the fourth waiter, but he was too timid to do it. . . .
The dining-car was resting on the tracks in the Altoona yards, waiting for a Western train. The first, third, and fifth waiters were playing poker. Ray was reading Dostoievski’s Crime and Punishment. The fourth waiter was working in the pantry. Suddenly the restaurant-car was shocked by a terrible roar.
“Gwan I say! Take that theah ice and beat it, you black sissy.” . . .
“This ice ain’t good for the pantry. You ought to gimme the cleaner one,” the timid fourth man stood his ground.
The cigar of the chef stood up like a tusk. Fury was dancing in his enraged face and he would have stamped the guts out of the poor, timid boy if he was not restrained by the fear of losing his job. For on the dining-car, he who strikes the first blow catches the punishment.
“Quit jawing with me, nigger waiter, or I’ll jab this heah ice-pick in you’ mouf.”
“Come and do it,” the fourth waiter said, quietly.
“God dam’ you’ soul!” the chef bellowed. “Ef you don’t quit chewing the rag—ef you git fresh with me, I’ll throw you off this bloody car. S’elp mah Gawd, I will. You disnificant down-home mule.”
The fourth waiter glanced behind him down the corridor and saw Ray, book in hand, and the other waiters, who had left their cards to see the cause of the tumult. Ray winked at the fourth waiter. He screwed up his courage and said to the chef: “I ain’t no mule, and youse a dirty rhinoceros.”
The chef seemed paralyzed with surprise. “Wha’s that name you done call me? Wha’s rhinasras?”
All the waiters laughed. The chef looked ridiculous and Ray said: “Why, chef, don’t you know? That’s the ugliest animal in all Africa.”
The chef looked apoplectic. . . . “I don’t care a dime foh all you nigger waiters and I ain’t joking wif any of you. Cause you manicuring you’ finger nails and rubbing up you’ stinking black hide against white folks in that theah diner, you all think youse something. But lemme tell you straight, you ain’t nothing atall.”
“But, chef,” cried the pantryman, “why don’t you stop riding the fourth man? Youse always riding him.”
“Riding who? I nevah rode a man in all mah life. I jest tell that black skunk what to do and him stahts jawing with me. I don’t care about any of you niggers, nohow.”
“Wese all tiahd of you cussin’ and bawking,” said the pantryman. “Why didn’t you give the boy a clean piece of ice and finish? You know we need it for the water.”
“Yaller nigger, you’d better gwan away from here.”
“Don’t call me no yaller nigger, you black and ugly cotton-field coon.”
“Who dat? You bastard-begotten dime-snatcher, you’d better gwan back to you’ dining-room or I’ll throw this heah garbage in you’ crap-yaller face. . . . I’d better git long far away from you all ’foh I lose mah haid.” The chef bounced into the kitchen and slammed the door.
That “bastard-begotten dime-snatcher” grew a cancer in the heart of the pantryman. It rooted deep because he was an “illegitimate” and he bitterly hated the whites he served (“crackers,” he called them all) and the tips he picked up. He knew that his father was some red-necked white man who had despised his mother’s race and had done nothing for him.
The sight of the chef grew more and more unbearable each day to the pantryman. He thought of knifing or plugging him with a gun some night. He had nursed his resentment to the point of madness and was capable of any act. But getting the chef in the dark would not have been revenge enough. The pantryman wanted the paragon to live, so that he might invent a way of bringing him down humiliatingly from his perch.
But the chef was hard to “get.” He had made and kept his place by being a perfect brutal machine, with that advantage that all mechanical creatures have over sensitive human beings. One day the pantryman thought he almost had his man. The chef had fed the steward, but kept the boys waiting for their luncheon. The waiters thought that he had one of his ornery spells on and was intentionally punishing them. They were all standing in the pantry, except Ray.
The fifth said to the first: “Ask him why he don’t put the grub in the hole, partner. I’m horse-ways hungry.”
“Ask him you’self. I ain’t got nothing to do with that black hog moh’n giving him what b’longs to him in this heah pantry.”
“Mah belly’s making a most beautiful commotion. Jest lak a bleating lamb,” drawled the third.
The fifth waiter pushed up the little glass door and stuck his head in the kitchen: “Chef, when are we gwine to go away from here?”
“Keep you’ shirt on, nigger,” flashed back from the kitchen. “Youall’ll soon be stuffing you’self full o’ the white man’s poke chops. Better than you evah smell in Harlem.”
“Wese werking foh’t same like you
is,” the fifth man retorted.
“I don’t eat no poke chops, nigger. I cooks the stuff, but I don’t eat it, nevah.”
“P’raps youse chewing a worser kind o’ meat.”
“Don’t gimme no back talk, nigger waiter. Looka heah ——”
The steward came into the pantry and said: “Chef, it’s time to feed the boys. They’re hungry. We had a hard day, today.”
The chef’s cigar drooped upon his slavering lip and almost fell. He turned to the steward with an injured air. “Ain’t I doing mah best? Ain’t I been working most hard mahself? I done get yourn lunch ready and am getting the crew’s own and fixing foh dinner at the same time. I ain’t tuk a mouful mahse’f ——”
The steward had turned his heels on the pantry. The chef was enraged that he had intervened on behalf of the waiters.
“Ef you dime-chasing niggers keep fooling with me on this car,” he said, “I’ll make you eat mah spittle. I done do it a’ready and I’ll do it again. I’ll spit in you’ eats ——”
“Wha’s that? The boss sure gwine to settle this.” The pantryman dashed out of the pantry and called the steward. . . . “Ain’t any of us waiters gwine to stay on heah Mis’r Farrel, with a chef like this.”
“What’s that, now?” The steward was in the pantry again. “What’s this fine story, chef?”
“Nothing at all, Sah Farrel. I done pull a good bull on them fellars, tha’s all. Cause theyse all trying to get mah goat. L’em quit fooling with the kitchen, Sah Farrel. I does mah wuk and I don’t want no fooling fwom them nigger waiters, nohow.”
“I guess you spit in it as you said, all right,” cried the pantryman. . . . “Yes, you! You’d wallow in a pigpen and eat the filth, youse so doggone low-down.”
“Now cut all o’ that out,” said the steward. “How could he do anything like that, when he eats the food, and I do meself?”
“In the hole!” shouted Jake.
The third and fifth waiters hurried into the pantry and brought out the waiters’ food. . . . First a great platter of fish and tomatoes, then pork chops and mashed potatoes, steaming Java and best Borden’s cream. The chef had made home-made bread baked in the form of little round caps. Nice and hot, they quickly melted the butter that the boys sandwiched between them. He was a splendid cook, an artist in creating palatable stuff. He came out of the kitchen himself, to eat in the dining-room and, diplomatically, he helped himself from the waiters’ platter of fish. . . . Delicious food. The waiters fell to it with keen relish. Obliterated from their memory the sewer-incident of the moment before. . . . Feeding, feeding, feeding.
But Ray remembered and visualized, and his stomach turned. He left the food and went outside, where he found Jake taking the air. He told Jake how he felt.
“Oh, the food is all right,” said Jake. “I watch him close anough in that there kitchen, and he knows I ain’t standing in with him in no low-down stuff.”
“But do you think he would ever do such a thing?” asked Ray.
Jake laughed. “What won’t a bad nigger do when he’s good and mean way down in his heart? I ain’t ’lowing mahself careless with none o’ that kind, chappie.”
Two Pullman porters came into the dining-car in the middle of the waiters’ meal.
“Here is the chambermaids,” grinned the second cook.
“H’m, but how you all loves to call people names, though,” commented the fourth waiter.
The waiters invited the porters to eat with them. The pantryman went to get them coffee and cream. The chef offered to scramble some eggs. He went back to the kitchen and, after a few minutes, the fourth cook brought out a platter of scrambled eggs for the two porters. The chef came rocking importantly behind the fourth cook. A clean white cap was poised on his head and fondly he chewed his cigar. A perfect menial of the great railroad company. He felt a wave of goodness sweeping over him, as if he had been patted on the head by the Angel Gabriel for his good works. He asked the porters if they had enough to eat and they thanked him and said they had more than enough and that the food was wonderful. The chef smiled broadly. He beamed upon steward, waiters, and porters, and his eyes said: See what a really fine fellow I am in spite of all the worries that go with the duties of a chef?
One day Ray saw the chef and the pantryman jesting while the pantryman was lighting his cigarette from the chef’s stump of cigar. When Ray found the pantryman alone, he laughingly asked him if he and the chef had smoked the tobacco of peace.
“Fat chance!” retorted the first waiter. “I gotta talk to him, for we get the stores together and check up together with the steward, and I gotta hand him the stuff tha’s coming to him outa the pantry, but I ain’t settle mah debt with him yet. I ain’t got no time for no nigger that done calls me ‘bastard-begotten’ and means it.”
“Oh, forget it!” said Ray. “Christ was one, too, and we all worship him.”
“Wha’ you mean?” the pantryman demanded.
“What I said,” Ray replied. . . .
“Oh! . . . Ain’t you got no religion in you none ’tall?”
“My parents were Catholic, but I ain’t nothing. God is white and has no more time for niggers than you’ve got for the chef.”
“Well, I’ll be browned but once!” cried the pantryman. “Is that theah what youse l’arning in them books? Don’t you believe in getting religion?”
Ray laughed.
“You kain laugh, all right, but watch you’ step Gawd don’t get you yet. Youse sure trifling.”
The coldness between the kitchen and the pantry continued, unpleasantly nasty, like the wearing of wet clothes, after the fall of a heavy shower, when the sun is shining again. The chef was uncomfortable. A waiter had never yet opposed open hostility to his personality like that. He was accustomed to the crew’s surrendering to his ways with even a little sycophancy. It was always his policy to be amicable with the pantryman, playing him against the other waiters, for it was very disagreeable to keep up a feud when the kitchen and the pantry had so many unavoidable close contacts.
So the chef made overtures to the pantryman with special toothsome tidbits, such as he always prepared for the only steward and himself. But the pantryman refused to have any specially-prepared-for-his-Irishness-the-Steward’s stuff that the other waiters could not share. Thereupon the chef gave up trying to placate him and started in hating back with profound African hate. African hate is deep down and hard to stir up, but there is no hate more realistic when it is stirred up.
One morning in Washington the iceman forgot to supply ice to the dining-car. One of the men had brought a little brass top on the diner and the waiters were excited over an easy new game called “put-and-take.” The pantryman forgot his business. The chef went to another dining-car and obtained ice for the kitchen. The pantryman did not remember anything about ice until the train was well on its way to New York. He remembered it because the ice-cream was turning soft. He put his head through the hole and asked Jake for a piece of ice. The chef said no, he had enough for the kitchen only.
With a terrible contented expression the chef looked with malicious hate into the pantryman’s yellow face. The pantryman glared back at the villainous black face and jerked his head in rage. The ice-cream turned softer. . . .
Luncheon was over, all the work was done, everything in order, and the entire crew was ready to go home when the train reached New York. The steward wanted to go directly home. But he had to wait and go over to the yards with the keys, so that the pantryman could ice up. And the pantryman was severely reprimanded for his laxity in Washington. . . .
The pantryman bided his time, waiting on the chef. He was cordial. He even laughed at the jokes the chef made at the other waiters’ expense. The chef swelled bigger in his hide, feeling that everything had bent to his will. The pantryman waited, ignoring little moments for the big moment. It came.
One morning both the second and the fourth cook “fell down on the job,” neither of them reporting for duty. The stewar
d placed an order with the commissary superintendent for two cooks. Jake stayed in the kitchen, working, while the chef and the pantryman went to the store for the stock. . . .
The chef and the pantryman returned together with the large baskets of provisions for the trip. The eggs were carried by the chef himself in a neat box. Remembering that he had forgotten coffee, he sent Jake back to the store for it. Then he began putting away the kitchen stuff. The pantryman was putting away the pantry stuff. . . .
A yellow girl passed by and waved a smile at the chef. He grinned, his teeth champing his cigar. The chef hated yellow men with “cracker” hatred, but he loved yellow women with “cracker” love. His other love was gin. But he never carried a liquor flask on the diner, because it was against regulations. And he never drank with any of the crew. He drank alone. And he did other things alone. In Philadelphia or Washington he never went to a buffet flat with any of the men.
The girls working in the yards were always flirting with him. He fascinated them, perhaps because he was so Congo mask-like in aspect and so duty-strict. They could often wheedle something nice out of other chefs, but nothing out of the chef. He would rather give them his money than a piece of the company’s raw meat. The chef was generous in his way; Richmond Pete, who owned the saloon near the yards in Queensborough, could attest to that. He had often gossiped about the chef. How he “blowed them gals that he had a crush on in the family room and danced an elephant jig while the gals were pulling his leg.”
The yellow girl that waved at the chef through the window was pretty. Her gesture transformed his face into a foolish broadsmiling thing. He stepped outside the kitchen for a moment to have a tickling word with her.
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