Lovesick (5 page)

“Stamp 'em out without twisting,” he said, slicing into the dough and pulling back with the tin cutter in an almost mechanical action. “As close together as possible. Any dough that's left, then you can fit back together, roll again, and finish stamping.” He placed the cut pieces onto a greased sheet pan. “Put them close together in the pan so they rise up and not out,” he said. Then, brushing the tops with melted butter, he added, “Give 'em a kiss with the butter, cover them, and let them rise again. The butter will keep them soft and help them brown better. Use the big ring for cutting out biscuits for dinner or if you're going to serve them in gravy. The little one is good if you want to stuff them with something.”

“Like Katherine Fisher's ham.”

He just grunted. It pleased her to know that Katherine Fisher's comments had annoyed him.

While they waited for the biscuits to rise, she had Mona make coffee for them all. George, meanwhile, continued with the lesson, stressing to her how the oven had to be hot so the biscuits would cook quickly. When he pulled the biscuits from the oven, they looked perfect to her—a honeyed brown on top. But even that wasn't enough for George. He took one of the blistering biscuits from the pan and held it up so she could inspect the bottom as well. “Top is golden, the bottom is tan,” he said. “That's when you know it's done.” He then took a knife and sliced it open so the steam floated up into the room. He poured a drizzle of molasses over each half, then offered her and Mona the plate. “Unless you want me to run down to the store and see if they have one better than this for you,” he said with a slight nod to Mona. While she and Mona ate their biscuits in silence at the table, he stood at the counter, watching them, his own plate balanced in his left hand, using his right to hold the remainder of the biscuit to sop up any molasses that had dripped onto the plate. She could tell he wanted her reaction.

“Angel biscuits,” she said. “It's a good name for them.”

5

popovers with homemade preserves . . .

Butcher had been working at the Plantation House Hotel going on just a month. When he first sought employment, he was willing to take anything they had available—custodial, bellhop, it didn't matter. He had not asked the Director of the Residence for a reference and would probably not have gotten one either considering he quit without notice—just packed his bags during the night, served breakfast, and had lunch started when he told the director he was leaving.

“I made up the menu for the rest of the week. The boys should be able to follow it—nothing new on there. And William can take charge till you find someone better—he might even be the one to promote if he doesn't let them push him around.”

The director just sat behind his desk, silent, like he was waiting for Butcher to deliver the punch line to a joke. When none came, he said, “Well, this is a fine how-to-do. What is it, George? Has someone offered you a better position? I thought you might have a bit more loyalty in you than that.”

Butcher enjoyed how the boss always wanted to make it seem like you working for him was really him doing you a favor. “No, sir, it's just that it's time for me to be moving on.”

“You're not in trouble now, are you? I won't have the police showing up here looking for you?”

“No, sir. Just time to be going. Butcher handed him a slip. “I calculated my wages through yesterday.”

“And if I was to do an inventory.”

Butcher stiffened. “You would find everything there that is supposed to be there. I packed myself some sandwiches for the road, but that is no more than I would do for any man moving on. Go and check the pantry if you want.”

Butcher could see the director knew he wasn't going to take accusations of shortages or thievery, so he didn't push it, let the matter drop. But he still wasn't done. “I will have to pay you from petty cash, which means more paperwork for me,” he said. “You will have to sign a voucher—don't want you saying I didn't pay you.”

“I'll sign whatever you need,” said Butcher. “Write it out.”

As the director made out the form, Butcher noticed how his hands shook. “And don't imagine that you can parade back in here after a week or two of drinking and whoring wanting your job back.”

“Won't be coming back,” Butcher said. He clenched his fists tight to hold in his anger at the little squeak of a man. He didn't need trouble. Just wanted to disappear. He had already purchased his ticket on the afternoon's Southern Crescent, and when the director had handed over the cash, Butcher collected his belongings and walked to the station to wait for the train. He had thought the girl might come to wish him good-bye, but she didn't.

Though Butcher was reluctant to admit it, the fondness he had felt for her had begun to run to something deeper. He had little experience with women, had really only bedded Maude for a brief time when he was deployed. But he could feel the same tug of desire with the girl. Maude wasn't much like Mona, her features less delicate, coarser. But she was still just a girl when he had known her, an experienced whore at seventeen. Her age hadn't mattered to him then—little more than a boy himself after all. Still, whenever her image would creep from the recesses of his memory, he always remembered her as little more than a kid, her nightgown pulled down over her shoulder to reveal her small, firm breasts, her black hair falling in thick curls down her back. When she would crawl onto him in the bed or in a chair, she could drape herself over him so that she felt little more than a coverlet, and when he took her hand into his, her fingers barely reached beyond the flat surface of his palm. She told him her mother was Romanian, a gypsy, but he didn't know if this were the truth or a fiction she had fabricated for herself and her customers. He had chosen her from the group of women in the house—not because she was the prettiest, not because she was the youngest. It wasn't that he just wanted to fuck her, though fuck her he did. Those afternoons, nights, early mornings before dawn could travel back to him without warning over the years in the quiet of his room, the emptiness of his prison cell. When he would give himself over to the memory, feel his meat firm up in his hand, he would touch himself, remembering the softness of her skin like peach flesh, or the smell between her legs—sweet like melon. When he had known Maude, he imagined he had been her only lover, that though she still took the money each time he came, with him somehow it was more than that. He wanted to possess her, and wanted her to love him in that way as well. He was ripe for plucking.

There had been a period of time in Brest, after the war was officially over, that men remained in the town, waiting to be shipped home. Butcher and the other black servicemen were among the last to return home. Though he was still expected to show up to cook for his shifts, regulations relaxed, everyone seemed to breathe a bit easier, and the bosses turned a blind eye to many infractions that would have otherwise carried punishment. Perhaps it was the reward for having won. Or perhaps it was a small compensation for having survived. Butcher had not seen battle, but he had surely seen the war. They were all little more than frightened boys when they arrived in France, himself included. Every day was much like the one before—new arrivals waiting to be shipped out to the front lines. Wounded soldiers waiting to return home. All needed to eat. All came into the mess tents. The new arrivals were easy to spot in their clean uniforms, barely broken-in boots. Some blustered and postured bravely, assuming the stance of what they imagined a soldier should be. Some sat silently, writing letters home, trying to establish a link between where they were heading and what they had left behind. Those who were fortunate enough to come back to the port from the front in one piece did not posture, did not pose. They had learned that being a soldier meant only not getting your head blown off or being quick enough to grab your gas mask and praying it would work. Red Cross workers sat on the benches taking dictation from the ones who could not write, the ones who had been blinded or maimed. Others had to be fed because their hands shook too badly to hold the food. Yes, Butcher had seen the war.

But when the armistice was signed and Kaiser Wilhelm was nothing more than fodder for impressions by some of the rowdier boys, the mood in Brest changed. Men no longer polished rifles or fiddled with gear, instead choosing to sit in the sun for hours drinking wine brought in from the countryside. In the evenings, they visited cafés and bars and brothels. Many of the houses set up elaborate buffets, or what seemed elaborate to the men living on army rations. In the dining room of the house where Maude worked, they kept a table laid out for the men. A deep mahogany pedestal table sat in the center of the room. Some nights, Laurent the cook covered it with a worn linen tablecloth with blue striping so faded that it almost seemed to disappear. In the corner of the room, there was a hutch where the regulars could keep a bottle of cognac or absinthe. Laurent, or more typically Helaine, who actually owned the house, would mark the bottles and tuck them away for safekeeping. Bottles of beer and wine were always on hand, and Helaine made sure each man purchased something to drink either before going upstairs or when returning. She did not have to work hard—the servicemen were ready to drink before fucking, ready to eat and drink more afterward. Laid out on the table were platters of sliced ham and sausages; thick, crusty bread, and cheese—some so soft and ripe that they melted like candle wax, others so hard that they curled like wood shavings when you scraped the block with a knife. American dollars made purchasing supplies easy, and the cost of some bread and cheese was a pittance compared to what the men paid for the women.

Butcher was enthralled, captivated by the display. When Butcher had been coming to the house long enough to be considered a regular customer, or perhaps after Maude had let it be known that he was special to her, Laurent made a point to tell him what certain things were.

The pale, quivering white sausage was a boudin blanc—made with milk and cognac. The deep burgundy black was boudin noir—an infinitely more delicate version of the spicy blood sausage like he had eaten as a boy. Pâté could be made from almost anything—duck or chicken livers, pork or veal, seasoned with pepper and herbs, wrapped in a glistening skin of aspic. Butcher had never seen such things, had never imagined such things existed. But now that he knew, he could not learn enough. Laurent welcomed him as a pupil, and though the language was difficult, Laurent would show Butcher something, tell him the name and Butcher would write it down in his book, often accompanied by a rough sketch. Sometimes, after he had fucked Maude, Butcher would dress and climb back down the narrow staircase from the second floor and peek into the kitchen where Laurent would be making bread for the next morning. Sometimes she complained that he came for the cooking and not for her. Butcher tried to assure her it wasn't so. He wanted her. Desired her. Wanted to be with her. But he wanted the world of Laurent as well. He had begun to imagine a life like Laurent and Helaine's—so that Maude would not have to be a whore. Perhaps it would be an inn. Maybe a café. And he could cook for whomever would stop by for the night or for a meal.

It was easy for him to dream of those times in Brest as he sat in his uniform in the service area back of the kitchen at the Plantation House or wandered into the hotel kitchen. Though his title was Porter's Assistant, he served more as a jack-of-all-trades, helping the bellhops if they needed an extra hand with luggage. He would also run trays of food to guests from the kitchen or fetch a newspaper if requested. It was a perfect job for him. He could be everywhere, anywhere—unnoticed, unobtrusive as a chair in the lobby of the hotel. Most often, he worked the 4
PM
to midnight shift, but when one of the boys wanted a morning or night off, he was always happy to take a morning or night shift as well. In a small room next to the service elevator, they provided a cot and a chair, so he was free to relax unless the night porter needed him. Because of the hours, that wasn't often. Some of the boys said that when Colonel Claiborne's friends would take over the hotel, “Then they gonna run you all night long. And never tip. White cracker sons of bitches think they still own us.”

Butcher had learned a great deal about how the hotel operated from these men who waited around for orders. Butcher had learned chatter in these circumstances was always pretty much the same, whether you were in the army or sitting in the service hallway outside the kitchen of the Plantation House Hotel. Men liked to talk about women, liked to brag about sex, but they also liked to complain about their jobs. He also learned a great deal about Colonel Clayton Claiborne II, the hotel owner.

“Ain't no colored man ever gonna do anything in this hotel except tote and fetch,” said Matthew, a man only slightly older than Butcher, but who had worked at the hotel for well over a decade. When pressed why he stayed for so long, he told Butcher the same story he had heard so often—where else was he to go? What better was there out there? Here there was a paycheck, even if there was no opportunity.

“What about the kitchen?” Butcher asked. He had purposefully avoided asking for work in the kitchen, didn't want to draw attention to himself. “There's plenty of boys working in there. Maybe you could move up.”

“Line cook is about the top of the hill, and at least here I can sit a spell if I want. The rest is left to cutting and slicing and washing and peeling,” said Matthew. “I guess Colonel Claiborne figures the black will get cooked out of it before it gets served to a guest.” Matthew laughed, but when Butcher didn't respond, Matthew continued. “He's Klan through and through, brother. The joke is after his friends check out after one of their gatherings, they have to replace all the sheets in the hotel.”

“Go on, now. You know they don't meet here,” Butcher said.

“No, he's much too crafty for that,” said Matthew. “But everybody knows. He doesn't make any secret he hates us all. Wouldn't have any black man here in a position to give an order.”

Butcher knew it was true. Could see it in the faces of the maids or the bellhops and of the kitchen crew when he had to wait for a tray to be made to take to a guest. The cooks were all men, like men he had worked with in the army. Men who made food as if they worked on an assembly line stamping out a pattern with a die. The creativity all lay with the sole white man in the kitchen, Roland, the head cook in the hotel. A small, fiery-tempered man with remote ties to New Orleans, Roland claimed he had apprenticed at Antoine's, and prided himself on the menu. Though he cooked very little himself, he would inspect the plates as they came up to be loaded on a tray. If something didn't meet with his approval, it was discarded—often he would simply smash the plate into the wall.

“Goddammit. We ain't serving shit on a shingle here. Give me another one without the sauce running all over the goddamn plate. This ain't gravy, you black bastards. Don't slop it on like you were feeding a bunch of niggers. We got the top of the line of Atlanta society out front. Try to act with some sense and some idea of what it means to be civilized.”

And almost immediately, another plate, with sauce ladled on to his satisfaction, would appear. Butcher knew this man, or better this type of man, well: He was a low-rent white man with a small bit of skill and knew how to make that work for him. Butcher had met this type of man before—a sergeant, a conductor, a guard. Such a man also made sure he exercised a very firm hand over everyone around him to show he wasn't afraid to use whatever power had been awarded to him. Here in Atlanta, Butcher had seen men fired or humiliated for the smallest of errors. After all, as Matthew had said, to whom were these boys going to complain? If they didn't like being called shiftless, or lazy, or good-for-nothing, then “there's the door. Thank you very much.” And there would be a line of men ready to take their place, eager to get paid for the privilege of the insult.