A Northern Light(61)
Fran and Weaver were peering out from behind the icebox. Bill was crouched under the sink. Two more waitresses and another busboy had hidden in the cellar way. I saw the door open a crack and their eyes blinking from the gloom. The kitchen was a complete disaster. The mess was breathtaking. The same sticky goo that was on my face was dripping from the ceiling. There was glass on every surface—on the plates, in the cutlery trays, on the serving platters, all over the floor. A cake batter, three pies, a bowl of biscuit dough, a pan of gelatin, a pot of soup, four trays of cookies, and a crab mousse were ruined.
I heard a moan coming from under the big plank worktable in front of the stove. It was Cook. She was lying facedown on the floor. Ada and I ran to help her up. She looked all around, shaking her head at the devastation.
"Where's Henry?" she gasped. "Where the devil is he?"
Henry came out from the pantry. He was ashen and trembling.
"You put those cans right on the stove, didn't you?" she yelled at him.
"You ... you try to kill me!" Henry shouted at her. "You tell me heat milk, then Blam! Blam! Blam!"
"In a pot, you jackass! In a pot! You can't heat cans; they explode. Don't you know that? What kind of godforsaken ass-backward caveman country do you come from?" she roared.
"You try to kill me," Henry insisted. Obstreperously.
"Not hard enough," Cook said. She picked up a carving knife. Henry bolted out through the screen door. She was right on his heels.
Half an hour later, she was back at her stove, wiping it clean, and Henry was nowhere to be seen. The rest of us were busy washing and mopping. I was at the sink, rinsing out my rag, convinced I'd come to work at a lunatic asylum. Only here, the lunatics were allowed to roam free, blowing things up or threatening to kill one another. I remembered what Pa had told me: He'd come after me, or get Royal to, if I wanted to go home. I remembered what he'd said about low-down jacks taking rooms in fancy hotels, too, and wished I could tell him what table six had done. Pa would settle that man's hash for him, but then I'd be on my way home whether I wanted to go or not, hearing "I told you so" the whole way. And then Weaver came up to me and pressed something crinkly into my hand. A whole dollar bill.
"What's this?" I asked him.
"Your tip. From table six."
I shook my head. "I don't want it," I said, trying to hand it back. "Not from him."
"Don't be stupid. It's the easiest money you'll make all summer. Hell, the old duffer can flash me for a dollar."
Fran appeared with a bucket of dirty water. "I'd give it another look for a quarter," she said, giggling.
Both Fran and Weaver jollied me until we were all three laughing, until I took the dollar and put it in my pocket along with the dimes and nickels I'd collected from my other tables, until Cook—seeing us idle—picked up her knife, pointed it at us, and said, "Stop loafing and start working before I tell Mr. Morrison to dig three more graves right next to the one he's digging for Henry."
So we did.
li ? mic ? o ? lous
Everyone in Big Moose and Eagle Bay and Inlet and the whole North Woods knew that it was bad luck to sharpen a tool after dusk. Everyone, it seemed, but Henry.
It was evening, about eight or so, and Cook had sent me down to the boathouse, where the guides were giving a fly-casting demonstration, with a tray of sugar cookies and a pitcher of lemonade. When I came back, there was Henry—sitting on the kitchen steps, sharpening a filleting knife. Cook had got it out of him that his so-called apprenticeship in the finest kitchens of Europe had consisted of mopping floors and emptying garbage pails. He was in disgrace and had to do all the menial jobs, like cleaning fish, and making stock from bones and peelings, and sharpening knives. She would have liked to send him packing, but she couldn't. The season was under way and help—good or bad—was hard to find.
"Henry, don't do that!" I scolded. "It's bad luck!"
I could do that now—scold Henry and tease Bill and joke with Charlie, the bartender, and the guides—for I'd been at the Glenmore a whole week and had received my first wages, and I belonged now, too. Just as much as they did.
"Vat luck? No luck but luck vat you make," Henry said stubbornly, keeping on with his task.
Well, he made some luck all right. Bad luck. And not for himself, either.
I thought of that knife, and of the sharpening stone, the second I saw Weaver's face. It was maybe half an hour later and Cook and I were hanging out dishrags on a line near the back steps when John Denio brought him to the kitchen door. We gasped at the sight of him, then hustled him inside as fast as we could, hoping the Morrisons and Mr. Sperry wouldn't find out. But they did.
"Weaver, why can't you ever stay out of trouble?" Mr. Sperry shouted, storming in from the dining room. "I send you to Big Moose Station on a simple errand—to help John pick up new arrivals—and look what happens. One of the guests said there was a fight. Were you in it?"
Weaver lifted his chin. "Yes, sir, I was."
"Damn it, Weaver, you know my policy on fighting..."
"It wasn't his fault, Mr. Sperry," I quickly said, dabbing witch hazel on the cut below Weaver's eye. "He didn't start it."