by James Jones
“Some guys like pots and pans,” Prew said hopefully. “Some guys claim you get done quicker and get a longer morning break, on pots and pans.”
“Thats fine,” Pfc Bloom said. “Reedy should be very happy. Just between you and me,” Pfc Bloom said confidentially, “I dint want to work with him anyway. He’s too slow. You and me now, we can get this stuff done up fast and have time for a good break in the morning and afternoon both.”
“We having spuds for dinner,” Prew told him.
“Oh, God,” said Pfc Bloom.
“You dont want the pots and pans then?”
“Hell no,” Pfc Bloom said. “You think I’m crazy?”
“Then I guess I’ll take them. You and Reedy can have the dishes.”
“You mean you want them?”
“Sure,” Prew said. “I like them.”
“You do? Then whynt you take them in the first place? without asking me what I want?”
“Well,” Prew said. “I thought maybe you might like them too. I dint want to cut you out.”
“Yeah?” asked Pfc Bloom suspiciously. “Well its okay by me. I wouldnt want to take them from you. I’ll take the rinsing sink. Reedy can have the washing sink, since he’s last man.”
So saying, he charged into the KP room, bull-like, not giving the other a chance to change his mind, and hung his fatigue hat on the faucets of this prize that was a windfall. He was very happy to have outwitted Prewitt.
Prew was already washing egg pans at the big double sink in the kitchen when Readall Treadwell finally appeared, having been routed out with the rest of the Company by the CQ at First Call. He saw Reedy peek at him, quite surprised, then amble happily into the KP room, so happily that he almost bumped into Dining Room Orderly Maggio who was coming through.
“Comin through!” screamed Maggio, shoving the two empty platters he had in his hands in front of him. “Stand aside! Hot stuff! Comin through! Me and my table waiters,” he bawled commandingly, in the protective tone of an officer who looks out for his men, “we workin our ass off. They runnin us to death. Hot Stuff! Comin through hot stuff one side!” He pushed through to the kitchen to refill the platters, joyfully cracking the new whip of his authority that nobody paid any attention to, least of all his eight table waiters.
“Howm I doin?” he asked Prew under his breath. “Man, I’m rough. Puttin in for corporal tomorra.”
Prew stopped long enough to grin at him ruefully, before he went back to work, scraping, washing, and rinsing the food-encrusted cooking pans and the mucky mixing basins that were suddenly beginning to pile up on him now, that he had never seen so many of at one time before, and that, work as he would, he could not get caught up with. And he worked fast, listening to Readall Treadwell in the KP room across the entryway asking Bloom what had happened as he hung the soap bucket on his hot faucet and turned it on full force.
“I dont know,” future Corporal Bloom said disapprovingly. “Prewitt had first choice and he choosed them. It doesnt matter now, what matters is you’re late, Treadwell. You make it hard on everybody when you’re late. Your sink’s half full of plates already.”
“You think I’m late?” future and forever Private Readall Treadwell said. “You just dont know. Usually I don’ git here till the sink’s plumb full. You jist happen to be lucky.”
“Personally,” future Corporal Bloom said, availing himself of the FMs’ morale psychology, “I’d rather work with you than Prewitt, anyway. You and me can really slick them up, Treadwell. But you got to get on the ball, Treadwell. You got to hustle up and show some pride.”
“I’m happy,” forever Private Treadwell grunted. “You’re unhappy. But I’m happy.”
The pots and pans kept piling up on Prewitt puzzlingly. Never in his life had he seen a crew of cooks use so many pots and pans so quickly and so often. It took him quite a while to catch on to what Willard was pulling on him. It was so outlandish that for a while he thought it was his imagination, inflamed and offended by the rotten muckiness that covered every pore of him, that it was exaggerating in a wild effort to help him keep his pride. But it was obvious, as the stacks kept getting higher, that no cook ever used that many pans, even for an officers’ banquet at the Club, ladies invited.
It was not until the middle of the morning, however—when Maggio had lovingly sent his table waiters off to drill and got his tables all scrubbed, when Bloom and Treadwell had finished up their dishes, the three of them settling down disgustedly with no morning break to peel the spuds for dinner (but working, Prew noticed enviously from his steaming greasy sinks, with the raw spuds crisp and solid in the hands in cool clear water that did not film the arms with grease)—it was not till then that Stark noticed anything was wrong. Willard being far too shrewd to ever complain that Prew was slow.
“Kind of slow with the pots and pans today, aint you, Prewitt?” Stark said, stopping by the sink and looking at the crotch-high stacks of pans stacked all around him. “You should be done by now.”
“I guess I’m just slow,” Prew said.
“The cook’ll need them pans to cook in pretty soon.”
“They probly need them now, since I already washed some of them three times already.”
“Cooks got to have pans to cook in.”
“They dont need them to spit in though, do they? They always taught me a good cook never used more pans than he had to, that a good cook tried to save his KPs work.”
“Thats what they supposed to do,” Stark said, getting out his sack of Golden Grain and making one, keeping his eyes on it with that self-effacing, almost shamed look good cops and noncoms always have when they have to use their rank.
“Then I guess you better put me on report then. I cant do them any faster than I am.”
“I never like to put a man on extra duty less I have to,” Stark said noncommittally, with a reluctant but real understanding that made Prew so warm inside he forgot that it was Stark who told him Willard would not bother him.
“You want to hear my side?”
“Sure,” Stark said. “I awys want to hear both sides. Whats your side?” he said, looking up, eyes withdrawn into authority but very clearly discerning.
“My side is Willard’s using all the pans he can, deliberately, so as to foul me up, because I didnt suck his ass this morning. Thats my side.”
“That sort of leaves you suckin hind tit,” Stark said, “dont it?”
“It sure as hell does,” Prew said. “If you dont believe me, look at him there. Just look at him,” he said, “the fat two-faced mother fucker.” Willard was watching them from the other end of the kitchen, leaning forward slyly while he pretended to work, his head on one side, listening hard.
“Willard,” Stark said. “Come heah! Now! This man’s hot as a forty-five shootin downhill,” he said when Willard came up. “Claims you deliberately usin pans to make more work and get him in bad. What about it?”
“If I’m goin to cook right I got to use pans.”
“Dont stall me, Fatstuff,” Stark said.
“Hell,” Willard said. “Do I got to count how many pans I use? So a goldbricking KP who’s afraid to work?”
“What do you want me to do?” Prew said violently. “Grow couple more arms?”
“All I ask,” said Willard dignifiedly, turning on him, “is that you keep the pans washed up, so they’re there, clean, when I need them. In order that I am allowed to cook the kind of food I ought to cook, the kind of food required for men who work hard all day and who need good nourishing food to get their nourishment.”
“Piss on that noise,” Stark said.
“All right,” Willard said, “okay. You asked me. Any time, just any old time, you want my job why . . ?” he left it up in the air.
“Watch out, Fatstuff,” Stark said. “I might take you up on it.”
“All right,” Willard said. “If you think I’m a rat . . ?”
“I think you’re a fat cook,” Stark said, “who cant cook. Because he’
s too busy makin sure the KPs respect his rank. What I want you to do is get your ass back there and cook, and quit using so goddam many pans, because I’ll be watching you.”
“All right,” Willard said. “If thats the way you feel about it.” He left them, disdainfully and with great dignity.
“Thats how I feel,” Stark said after him. “He wont bother you no more,” he said to Prew, “or if he does you come tell me about it. But that wont help you get these ones thats already dirty done,” he said, looking at the stacks of pans. “Come on. I’ll help you do them up. I’ll wash and you rinse and wipe.”
He flipped the cigaret end into Prew’s garbage pail and grabbed the spatula and began to scrape one of the worst ones with the deftness and economy of a great kitchen stylist, that Prew could only watch admiringly, feeling warmer inside now than he had felt for a long time.
“This’ll kill Willard,” Stark grinned lopsidedly, “the Mess Sergeant helpin a KP do pots and pans. Back home, when we use to divide our kitchen work up into White and Colored work; pots and pans was Colored work.”
“There wasnt any niggers in my home town,” Prew said, having to work very hard to keep up with Stark the stylist, but feeling very wonderful and friendly and very high, knowing that all the cooks and even the KPs were secretively watching this because Stark sometimes helped the KPs peel the spuds but pots and pans was something else again. “They dint allow them in the town,” he explained, remembering suddenly, for the first time in years, almost angrily, now, fifteen years after, the sign some drunken miners had painted in glaring red and hung up at the station when a nigger stopped to change trains, the sign that then, as a boy, he had only looked at and not minded: “DONT LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN HARLAN, NIGGER!”
“Well,” Stark said, “I can see that, in a town where theres never been any. Its hard to tell a good one from a bad one unless the family lived in the town a while. And all of them wanderin nigras are bad ones, or else they’d of found themself a white man who treated them right and settled down. In my town they’d been there for generations and we knew them.”
“No,” Prew said. “You dont see what I mean. Once in Richmond, Indiana, on the bum, me and another guy had stole some vegetables and a hunk of meat for a stew. We taken it down to this jungle outside town and there was a bunch already there, one of them a nigger. This guy was going to take it away from us because we were kids and when I wouldnt just give it to him, pulled a knife on me.”
“The nigra?” Stark said. “I’d killed the son of a bitch.”
“No,” Prew said. “Not him. A white guy. The nigger was the one that stopped him. I had got behind a tree and kept circling away from him, still holding on to the food, but I was just a punk kid and he would of caught me if this big buck nigger hadnt stepped out and tripped him up. He got up ragin mad and went for the nigger with the knife, but the nigger blocked it with his arm, just as cool as hell, and hit him with his right hand. Cut his forearm pretty bad, but he took that knife away from the guy and proceeded to beat the piss out of him, literally beat it out of him. Now, he was no bad nigger.”
“No,” Stark said. “He was a good nigra.”
“Sure he was. Out of that whole bunch of guys he was the only one who lifted his finger to keep me from gettin knifed. The rest of them just stood and watched.”
“Ordinarily,” Stark said, handing him another pan, “I dont hold with a nigra raisin his hand to a white man. I dont like to see that. But, in this case, of course, he was right.”
“I hope to Christ he was right! That was me that guy was chasin. I loved that big black nigger. When we cooked our stew we invited him help us eat it.”
“Did he wait till he was ask?”
“Sure,” Prew said. “He was a gentleman. More gentleman than the rest of those bastards by a long shot. And by god, they didnt any of the rest of them try cut in on our stew either, dont you believe it. They were all scared of him.”
“I’m not scared of any nigra that ever lived,” Stark said. “Good or bad. But he was a good nigra. But most of them you see on the bum are bad ones, mean ones. This one just happened to be a good one.”
“You dont see what I mean,” Prew explained. “I think most any nigger on the bum is no badder than any white man on the bum. Or for that matter, off the bum.”
“No, I see what you mean,” Stark said. “But you dont know them like I do. Most nigras on the bum are runnin away from havin killed some white man or raped some white woman. Though I’ve met some good ones, too, a lot of them, on the bum. Its just like with town nigras, some are good nigras and some are bad nigras, ony most of the good ones stay home and most of the bad ones end up on the bum. They have to or they’d get lynched. You dont think I’d take anything off any nigra in my home town that I’ve known all my life, do you?”
“Well I see what you mean,” Prew said. “I wouldnt take anything off a bad nigger, but I wouldnt take anything off a bad white man either.”
“Well with white men its a little different. Theres usually some legitimate reason for them bein bad, if you look into it. But a bad nigra is just borned bad, and the ony way to cure him is to teach him a lesson, thats all. Kill or cure. We had one in our town, just plain pisspoor, mean and shiftless. They finally run him off. Ruther, he took off, to keep from gettin taught his lesson. See what I mean? No guts at all, just bad. He was a young buck and his folks died off in the flu epidemic and he just plain run out. Went on the bum, instead of finding him a good hotassed wench and settlin down, like he should of.”
“Thats the same reason I went on the bum,” Prew told him. “Except it wasnt flu killed mine. It was the goddam mines.”
“Yeah?” Stark said, handing him the last of the pans that they had got through fast, so incredibly fast Prew could not believe that they were done, was almost reluctant they were done, in the warmth of grateful friendliness he felt for the other. “Reason I went on the bum,” Stark grinned, “was they was too many mouths to feed at home.
“Well,” he said, “that does her.”
He straightened his long-bent back and pulled the plug and hung it by the chain on the faucet, looking with his fine natural style like what would have made an example picture for a Good Cook’s Handbook, if there had been such a thing.
“When you get these sinks cleaned up go on out and help them to finish peeling the spuds. Willard tries anything else, you let me know.”
“I will,” Prew said, trying to put in his voice what he could not say without killing, “I sure as hell will.”
And thinking happily that sometime, when there was less work and they had leisure, he must explain more fully to his friend Stark what he had meant to say about niggers because he had not quite got it across to him yet apparently, he washed down the sinks and went outside on the entryway porch to where Maggio, Bloom, and Readall Treadwell were still peeling at the two big No. 18 kettles of spuds, heartily disgusted because they had got no break this morning.
In the afternoon they got a break, a good long one of almost two hours, feeling after the din and frantic work of dinner like rich men with a pocketful of coupons. There were baked beans and franks tonight for supper, not canned franks this time and not even canned baked beans either, and there was no extracurricular KP labor to be done and it was the greatest luxury to them to contemplate almost two hours doing nothing, playing cards, and loafing.
“I’m going up,” Dining Room Orderly Maggio, who was done first, called in to him. “When you get through come up and we play some two-hand casino.”
“For how much?” Prew said.
“Well,” Maggio hedged. “How much you want to play for?”
“I’m broke.”
“You are? Then I guess we play for nothin. I’m broke too. Well, what do you know,” he said. “Both broke. I thought I could maybe make you for a couple bucks.”
“We could play for jawbone,” Prew grinned.
“I cant. I owe my payday out already. Unless you want to make it pay
day after next?”
“Okay.”
“I guess I better not,” Maggio reflected. “I owe part of that one too. All I want is when that loudmouth Bloom comes up to be doin something. I listened to him tell how he is the middleweight champ next year enough for one day. I be upstairs.”
“Okay,” Prew said. Willard had not bothered him any more and he finished up the pots and pans from dinner even before Bloom and Readall Treadwell got their dishes done. He wanted to talk to his friend Stark again, not about Negroes, not about anything specially, but just to talk, friendlily, about nothing, with another, who was a soldier, of his own category. But Stark was working so he went on upstairs and had a shower, exulting as the steamy scalding water beat the sickening grease off him, and put on a fresh suit of suntans, just to loaf around in and be clean in, until time to report back.
Angelo was stretched out on his bunk in suntans himself, his hair still damp and looking very clean and obviously enjoying it, reading a well rolled, long discarded comic book.
“I get my cards,” he said and handed Prew the book. “Man, I feel good. I been readin Tom Mix and the Ralston Straight Shooters. Pow! Pow!” he said, jabbing a forefinger and cocked thumb at the jockstraps and special duty men scattered around on their bunks. “Straight Shooters always win and a nuther thousand yowling redskins bit the dust.”
“The Mystery of the Haunted Ranchhouse, starring Tom Mix,” Prew read. “This aint the Ralston Straight Shooters. The Ralston Straight Shooters is an ad.”
“So whats the difference? I use to be a Junior G Man onct. Its the same difference. Me and J Edgar was like that. Them drawings really look like old Tom, dont they?”
“I wonder what happened to him? You never see him any more.”
“His horse died,” Maggio said, “and he had to retire.”
“Tony,” Readall Treadwell said, coming in from the latrine, a towel wrapped around his big, fat, but heavily muscled under the fat, belly with its navel like a dimple and the hair on it thick enough to comb. “His name was Tony.”
“Remember Buck Jones’s horse Silver?” Prew said. “There was a real horse.”
