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.”
