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 steward 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 broad-smiling thing. He stepped outside the kitchen for a moment to have a tickling word with her.
In that moment the pantryman made a lightning-bolt move; and shut down the little glass door between the pantry and the kitchen. …
The train was speeding its way west. The first call for dinner had been made and the dining-room was already full. Over half a dozen calls for eggs of different kinds had been bawled out before the chef discovered that the basket of eggs was missing. The chef asked the pantryman to call the steward. The pantryman, curiously preoccupied, forgot Pandemonium was loose in the pantry and kitchen when the steward, radish-red, stuck his head in.
The chef’s lower lip had flopped low down, dripping, and the cigar had fallen somewhere. “Cut them aiggs off o’ the bill, Sah Farrel. O Lawd!” he moaned, “Ise sartain sure I brought them aiggs on the car mahself, and now I don’t know where they is.”
“What kind o’ blah is that?” cried the steward. “The eggs must be there in the kitchen. I saw them with the stock meself.”
“And I brought them here hugging them, Boss, ef I ain’t been made fool of by something.” The rhinoceros had changed into a meek black lamb. “O Lawd! and I ain’t been outa the kitchen sence. Ain’t no mortal hand could tuk them. Some evil hand. O Lawd!—”
“Hell!” The steward dashed out of the pantry to cut all the egg dishes off the bill. The passengers were getting clamorous. The waiters were asking those who had ordered eggs to change to something else. …
The steward suggested searching the pantry. The pantry was ransacked. “Them ain’t there, cep’n’ they had feets to walk. O Lawd of Heaben!” the chef groaned. “It’s something deep and evil, I knows, for I ain’t been outa this heah kitchen.” His little flirtation with the yellow girl was completely wiped off his memory.
Only Jake was keeping his head in the kitchen. He was acting second cook, for the steward had not succeeded in getting one. The fourth cook he had gotten was new to the service and he was standing, conspicuously long-headed, with gaping mouth.
“Why’n the debbil’s name don’t you do some’n, nigger?” bellowed the chef, frothy at the corners of his mouth.
“The chef is up a tree, all right,” said Ray to the pantryman.
“And he’ll break his black hide getting down,” the pantryman replied, bitterly.
“Chef!” The yellow pantryman’s face carried a royal African grin. “What’s the matter with you and them aiggs?”
“I done gived them to you mammy.”
“And fohget you wife, ole timer? Ef you ain’t a chicken-roost nigger, as you boast, you surely loves the nest.”
Gash! The chef, at last losing control of himself, shied a huge ham bone at the pantryman. The pantryman sprang back as the ham bone flew through the aperture and smashed
