Collusion: Part XXVI

Every single experience of our lives in a new layer of paint. Some clear like varnish. Some opaque. Some black. Some layers should be chipped off, and some of them should be painted over. All the same they are what makes us individuals. They are what give us color.

But you knew this already. We don't wander around stagnant... forced to stumble into what and who will be our next mistake.

The sun beat down relentless. Kids from the south develop a certain tolerance to heat. Not just heat like a sunny 78 with light breezes. Heat like a fever in the Sahara. South Carolina cares for no one. She believes firmly that it is her job to prepare all the baptists that live within her confines for the strong likelihood that they will at some point forget a prayer before bedtime and thus be sentenced to a little swim in the lake of fire. Oh yeah,  and the humidity cranks up the heat index so that being outside almost always feels like a sweat lodge.

I was one of those children who was almost always out in this heat, and as such was most nearly always sweating and playing happily. It was that part of the late spring just before the first days of true summer where all the wild vines that plundered their ways across ditches along the sides of the roads were gushing blackberries. Big fat, thumb sized remnants of their more gentrified bacchanal cousins, they gushed with a tangy syrupy sweetness. They tempted simple country children to cheat their sharp thorns and if they were so brave, to claim the high prize of their fruit.

My sister and I left the house yelling out to mom that we were going to pick berries and taking with us big squeaky Styrofoam cups from the pantry. We had made plans to pilfer and pluck only the best from this rush of berries and bring them back home... We had planned to make them into pies or tarts. Silly children we were then so easily amused.

The torrential heat and blinding sun were no match for out bright laughter and determined delusions of culinary mastery. We tripped and tumbled and frolicked down the side of the highway looking for the best vines with the biggest berries. Only the best would do for our tarts. Our big yellow dog, Minnie followed along behind us. She kept up well, never mind that she was nearly 12 years old. I think she felt like we were her responsibility and that there would be no berry picking without her.

ME: "Did you buy anything when you went shopping with Ashley the other day?"
BETH: "We got some pizza and road the carousel in the mall... it was really big! It was fun..."
ME: "and you didn't bring me back anything! haha. How dare you!?" I replied impishly...

My sister was eight and I twelve. She's one of the most beautiful people I know... and at that age had flawless sheets of shiny honey brown hair that ran down her back. Bangs that stuck to the sides of her forehead in the heat, and big doey brown eyes that were so brown that sometimes they looked black. We picked through the brambles in our ill fitting pre-adolescent clothing that had been handed down and handed down again. Happy as puppies.

We worked our way from thorn to thorn, and vine to vine. Following the line of ditches that lead from our house over to the church where dad was working.

BETH: "Stop eatin all of em! We're not gonna have enough!"
ME: "Oh whatever... there's plenty... look at all of them!
BETH: "I know but we aint gonna have enough if we keep eatin em all."
ME: "Ha ha.... stop bein a lil mama!"

We made it all the way over to the church and decided to go in and wash the berries and see what dad was up to. He was most days bunkered inside his office. Books spread all over the place and pages of scribble falling off the sides of the desk as he stacked things in piles that only made sense to him.

BETH: "Daddy! look at! Look at all the berries!"
DAD: "I see that. Were ya'll get those?"
BETH: "They're all along the sides of the road!"
DAD: "You're momma know ya'll walked down along the side of the road?"
ME: "I told her where we were going."

Dad got up from his desk and walked us down the long main hall of the church building. Back towards the kitchen. The lights were kept off in the hall during the day to save money... so it was all dim and gray. We walked slowly. I could tell dad was upset. But we were just having fun.

DAD: "I told yall about leavin the house and not tellin momma where you're goin. I don't want you kids gettin hit by a car. You ain't got enough brain between you to look up."
BETH: "We didn't stay by the road very long..." She started cryin a little. That made me angry. Me and my short fuse. Being twelve is sort of a curse.
ME: "It was my idea in the first place... "
DAD: "That's even worse... you should know better."
ME: "Know better than walking into traffic? Well... I do..."

That was just about enough snark from me apparently. Dad turn quick on his left heel as he was walking in front of us slapped me hard across the face. Thwap!
I wasn't quite expecting that... I was walking and trying to make sure not to spill the berries we were going to wash. Slapped or no, I fell down hard on the gray floor.... I tossed the berries and they scattered across the floor...

I didn't say anything. I just bobbled back up and started crying too. I hated when I let myself cry. But I wasn't expecting him to be that angry....

DAD: "Clean those up. I'm calling your mom to come get you."

Collusion: Part IV

Each next day was a mirror image of the last. The nice thing about monotony is that time seems to slip by more quickly. The ants were busy about their work. Everyone i met had plenty to say about where they were going... but nothing to say about who they were. Another aspect of society in the ancient puritan tribe i had supposed.
During the flurry of activities and people to meet my name was shuffled in a database. An archaic machine with punch cards was at work selecting what campus job i should have. With a chink, and a ding... a small card with my name and new station dropped onto a slate floor.

Josh Medlin

"Cook"

Dinning Common Staff

I had signed some paper somewhere... quill pen. red ink. According to the rules of my scholarship, i would have to work at least 10 hours a week at a campus job. Ten hours. Nothing to it. There was a work meeting and a power-point presentation about chemical safety. Cartoon characters with overly theatrical reactions to situations involving bleach and turpentine. In one of the booths that had been set up during my arrival, one of the smiling faces had asked me if i wanted to cook. Of course i wanted to cook! At the time when i was asked, the question conjured images of myself and seven or eight other smiling post adolescents in bright, clean, white aprons, icing cupcakes and making sculptures of swans out of chocolate. Out of thick glossy black chocolate. Jokes would be made... Someone would throw a handful of flour... and then we would all frolic about with as many cares as a daisy has. 

 Of course i wanted to cook! 

As usual, my imagination was my most well developed mental faculty. I had not yet seen the dinning common. Just like all the other buildings at school it was made of that same shade of yellow brick. That color like faded sunshine. A color that would take the place of a red curtain in this progressive academic theater. Order. Clarity. An un-assuming color. 

There was a work meeting that I attended in those first days. And after rising and dressing with care and a nod to AH, i walked the distance of four or so city blocks from my room to my new employ. 

The dinning common had at one time ages and ages ago been a grocery store... and the long long front face of the building was pock marked with a row of roughly fifteen double-doors. Identical to the ones everywhere else at school. Black metal. Plate glass and little black security panels to the right of each one. Green light, un-locked... Red light, locked. Through the one door that had a little green light. Those doors are heavy. A long, expansive lobby ran the length of the front of the building.... It would take you three minutes to walk from one end of the room to the other. Bent rectangles of light poured in through the fifteen metal doors and spilled all over the blue gray carpet. Opposite the wall of doors of the front wall, was another wall that ran the length of the room. This time there were 15 wooden double doors.... one of these was open. There were computer printed sings motioning me forward to the main event. 

I had never seen a larger room. Four stories or so to the ceiling i guessed.... It was like the Romans had bricked up a soccer field... and wallpapered it in the largest blue paisley print they could manufacture. Wrap-around windows in a recessed portion of the ceiling continued the idea of an 'inside-outside.'

This room was another machine. Massive common room for one of life's most basic needs. Food. Rows and rows and rows of tables and gray metal chairs covered in some blue rubber. You could seat eighty full sets of Brady Bunches... and all of Elizabeth Taylor's exes. 

In that momentous moment of being wowed by architecture.... it hit me. I would not be sculpting swans out of chocolate. I would not be chasing my friends around throwing flour on them. There would not be any cupcakes. Alac. A sous chef... I was not.

There was a flurry of staff meeting in the center of soccer-field-ish room. Tossing papers around...Writing students schedules around work. Helping them fill out their forms and papers. 

I walked up to one of ladies... and said.... "I think I'm a cook?" and "I don't know what these papers mean....", gesturing with a handful of papers that would become my schedule for the next three months....

She gave me one of those.... "oh, you poor little lamb...." looks. And with a grace and dexterity i had yet to observe amongst the other staff.... wrote my schedule and otherwise allayed my concerns about how i should set out my life for the next little bit. 

The kitchen i would discover was a fur piece more industrial than my imagination had lead me to believe. Cement floors. Rolling carts of staples.... Stainless steel everything. Glossy white paint everywhere... and the central feature was a row of fifteen 100 gallon stainless steel steam powered cooking pots that were all bolted to the floor. This would be what i did. 

I would make macaroni and cheese 100 gallons at a time. I would melt 65 pounds of cheddar that i had grated myself with a machine that would eat your hand off if you weren't careful.... 

I would shoulder 60 lb bags of rice... and the white apron from my imagination would be replaced a full uniform, apron included. all white. Even a pleated white hat. We can't have hair falling into macaroni. The cook staff that i worked with was quite a lot different from the american eagle models in my imagination. There were student workers.... who were mostly mute aside from their tasks at their stainless steel work areas... and then there were the the staff cooks.

Mr. Smith had worked in the kitchen for nearly 40 years. So i think that made him close to 70 something. He didn't know any of the student workers names. Those were the things that had changed the most here, and so were the last things on his list of important things to do. You could tell that he'd been taller at one time. Less bent. But the type of work to be done here was wearing. What was left of his hair was all white... he'd likely been in one of the wars. Korea maybe?

Mr. Rae. (We must always refer to them respectfully.) Mr. Rae was exactly like the kinda guy you would imagine owning a pizzeria in Naples. Prodigious man. Gargantuan. Italian. And jolly mostly. Given to moods. Because of his size, his joints were in bad shape. I swore i could feel the cement floor shudder a bit when he walked past. I liked working with him. This volatile colossal man with his black mustache and sing-song moods. He accomplished his tasks passionately.... and made conversation with the student workers.
There were rumors about him selling an heirloom pasta recipe that had been in his family since they left Naples.... but I don't think he ever will.

Mr. Balentine. Aggressively friendly. A short man with graying hair, large spectacles and a gray brown mustache. Quirky and bright... hard working. I worked with him mostly. He reminded me of a tinker. I had never met a tinker, but i had imagined that if i ever were to.... Mr B. would be one. He moved about in the bowels of the machine... stirring here with a 5 ft wooden spatula... skampering to one of the 60 ovens.... He liked to laugh.

It was grueling work. But it wasn't something that i minded. I made friends there. And the way that my life here had been divided into neat little rows and boxes.... work now. sleep now. read now. pray now.... it was therapeutic. It helped me balance anxiety and ambition. It focused my efforts into my studies.

During high-school i was a runner. I continued this tradition here. Back home i would run 4 or 5 miles along dirt roads.... through trails that four-wheelers had cut into the woods.... Here i ran around a track. Seven times around makes a mile.... and late at night there would be old people walking around the track; swinging their arms bent at the elbow and chatting with other old people.....
I ran around them.... I ran every day and i let the running drown me. The sweat and the repetition and the thud of my feet lulled my mind into a kind of rest. Each lap around the track pulled one of the tangles out of my head and assured me that i would make it here...
After running i slept soundly.