(6)
— Originally published in the Antietam Review (Spring, 1999)
Continued from page (5)
The revulsion on Carver’s face gave Kerney a stab of pleasure in the pit
of his stomach.
At morning chow the next day, Griffin was missing.
“Shit,” Diver said as Kerney sat down. “The grease trap? Gawd.”
“Carver just picked a name out of the hat, and Griff lost.”
“Grease trap in the kitchen?” Kerney asked between bites of scrambled
egg. “Knew there was one, but I never seen it.”
“You ain’t lived.” Riley hooted. He folded his hands on top of his head.
“Shittiest place in the detachment area, shittier than the shit house. Zip
kitchen boy didn’t show up, and it’s gotta be cleaned, so somebody had to
do it. Griff sure has rotten luck.”
Pleasure flickered in Kerney’s bowels. Luck, my ass. Carver works fast.
“Never seen it, either,” Diver said.
“Under the floor,” Riley said. “Have to take up the tiles to see it. Just a
big square tank maybe four foot by two foot. Maybe three or four feet
deep. All the grease and crap flows down there through the pipes from the
grills. Gets all full of sludge and stuff.”
Kerney stopped listening. He gave himself over to the picture in his head.
He saw Griffin groveling and sweating, up to his crotch in grease, filthy,
humiliated, degraded. Kerney smiled.
At mid-morning Kerney returned to the mess hall, as if stopping by to get
some coffee. He avoided looking at the back of the kitchen until he had
greeted the mess sergeant and filled his cup. Then he allowed his eyes to
settle on Griffin standing in the grease trap.
Griffin, shirtless, was shoveling out the bottom of the trap with a flat
spade. Three garbage cans on a dolly beside the trap were nearly full of
gray, rancid slop. He mopped his face with a filthy rag from his back pocket,
folded his hands over the spade’s handle, and rested his forehead on his
knuckles.
Kerney ambled toward the back of the kitchen. He stopped at the edge of
the trap. He could hear Griffin breathing. Blotches of sludge and thick sweat
dripped from Griffin’s forehead. Grease clung to the hair on his chest and
under his armpits. The fair hair on his head had turned coarse and shiny with
sludge. At the smell of him, Kerney’s stomach bucked.
TOM'S TALES