Home to Harlem · Second Part · Chapter 12 (1/2)

XII

The Treeing of the Chef

Perhaps the chef of Jake’s dining-car was the most hated chef in the service. He was repulsive in every aspect From the elevated bulk of his gross person to the matted burrs of his head and the fat cigar, the constant companion of his sloppy mouth, that he chewed and smoked at the same time. The chef deliberately increased his repulsiveness of form by the meannesses of his spirit.

“I know Ise a mean black nigger,” he often said, “and I’ll let you all know it on this heah white man’s car, too.”

The chef was a great black bundle of consciously suppressed desires. That was doubtless why he was so ornery. He was one of the model chefs of the service. His kitchen was well-ordered. The checking up of his provisions always showed a praiseworthy balance. He always had his food ready on time, feeding the heaviest rush of customers as rapidly as the lightest. He fed the steward excellently. He fed the crew well. In a word, he did his duty as only a martinet can.

A chef who is “right-there” at every call is the first asset of importance on an à la carte restaurant-car. The chef lived rigidly up to that fact and above it. He was also painfully honest. He had a mulatto wife and a brown boy-child in New York and he never slipped away any of the company’s goods to them. Other dining-car men had devised a system of getting by the company’s detectives with choice brands of the company’s foodstuffs. The chef kept away from that. It was long since the yard detectives had stopped searching any parcel that he carried off with him.

“I don’t want none o’ the white-boss stuff foh mine,” he declared. “Ise making enough o’ mah own to suppoht mah wife and kid.”

And more, the chef had a violent distaste for all the stock things that “coons” are supposed to like to the point of stealing them. He would not eat watermelon, because white people called it “the niggers’ ice-cream.” Pork chops he fancied not. Nor corn pone. And the idea of eating chicken gave him a spasm. Of the odds and ends of chicken gizzard, feet, head, rump, heart, wing points, and liver⁠—the chef would make the most delicious stew for the crew, which he never touched himself. The Irish steward never missed his share of it. But for his meal the chef would grill a steak or mutton chop or fry a fish. Oh, chef was big and haughty about not being “no regular darky”! And although he came from the Alabama country, he pretended not to know a coon tail from a rabbit foot.

“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 Goddamn 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 bushwhackers 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 Dostoevsky’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 icepick 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. “Youal’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 homemade 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.”