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lettuce prey
I was still working in the restaurant then. I can remember the night that it happened, I was sitting in a bathroom stall, kind of reading the newspaper but paying more attention to the poem someone had written on the wall in permanent marker.
Reading the paper
Of course it's a haiku. They're written all over D'Starkville. On the backs of the seats in the city busses, under restaurant tables with white-out, and pretty much everywhere else you can think of. The D'Starkville Diatribe even ran a special on this vandal the other day, detailing police efforts to catch him. They had a pretty good psychological profile of the culprit, built from his handwriting, haiku subject matter, and the locations where he chose to leave his wisdom.
That night in the bathroom, it was the second time I ever killed someone. It was almost an accident, but I guess if anyone could be called 'responsible' for it, it would have to be me.
When I went back to the line to start making salads and baskets of chicken wings again, there was an order for a chicken Caesar salad waiting for me. I made it, and then fifteen other tickets came out in a row. There were brownie sundaes, and onion peels and all our other favorite fried foods, and I hurried to make them all.
I'm not sure why, but I was in a pretty foul mood that night, cursing all the customers. The waiters came to pick up all the other food, but the chicken Caesar salad just stayed right there under the heat lamp, getting staler and hotter.
I went back to the freezer to chill out a little. There were frozen steaks and big cardboard containers of ice cream and lots of other things in there, but what caught my attention was a big box of frozen fries that had been defiled by the so called 'mad marker'.
Sizz-ling and crack-ling
My reverie was only temporary, however, because one of the waiters came back to inform me we just got another fifteen-top. Christ, we were supposed to close the doors for the night in five more minutes. I went to see the crowd who was so intent on making sure I didn't get home 'til 1am. And it was the Apostolics. The Apostolics were this group of people who frequented the Apostolic Tabernacle Church of D'Starkville. There were six or seven kids about my age, and their families. It seemed like they came in every Sunday after they went to night services, waiting until the exact second I got all my pots and pans washed so I could skate right at closing time.
You can spot the teenage Apostolic girls because they all wear really tight turtleneck sweaters and ankle-length skirts at all times, regardless of the outside temperature. The males are a little trickier, but their cars are a dead giveaway. All Apostolics feel that part of being pious is looking stylish by driving the newest cars, having Rolexes, and tipping God far more generously than their poor waiter who on this occasion only got two dollars.
But we're not there yet. That one table made my ticket-spitter pop out ten or eleven orders. I hurried to be as clean and quick about getting the food out so I could manage to get out at a decent time, and I was pretty successful. I made all the food, waited for them to order dessert, and made that too. I even washed my hands and threw my apron in the duffel bag for dirty aprons. It was time to go. I spotted the lonely caesar salad, and scraped it into the trash without soiling my hands.
I turned to walk out when I heard the telltale beep of the last ticket. And it was a chicken Caesar salad. I sighed and grabbed a plate from the stack, preparing to make one last salad when I got an evil idea. I eyed the trashcan and decided to invoke a longer version of the five-second rule, stretching it a little to include things dropped deliberately into the trash.
When I finally walked out the front door, I saw the old man enjoying his salad. He was bald on top with a fringe of white hair and gold-rimmed glasses. None of Jesus' groupies paid attention to me as I strolled by. It would have been just another friendly and forgotten act of guerilla line-cooking for me, had I not noticed the headline in the newspaper the next day:
Local Priest Dead of Sudden Illness
And I recognized the picture next to the story that detailed his descent from perfect health on the prior day to his unexplained stomach and intestinal pains and subsequent heart failure. His death was blamed on complications stemming from a recent surgery, but I knew the truth. My salad killed him.
(c) 2003 J Baugher |
