Continued from Part Five.

The wing shack, B. Merrel’s, was run by this guy named Marv, a short, jacked older white guy with a crazy jagged scar across his forehead and a lazy eye. Maybe the two were related, maybe not. After the interview we shook hands and he took me through the kitchen to meet the other cooks. Not the same types I was accustomed to back home. First off, everyone in the kitchen was black. Not a huge deal but noticeable and very different after living in the whitest state for my entire life. They were all careers cooks as well. Older dudes. No college kids doing this for extra beer money or twenty year olds on their way somewhere else.

I started as a fry cook, naturally, as I had some experience. So far, at the age of 21 I had already worked in six restaurants. Subway, as a “sandwich artist,” Howard Johnson’s as a line cook, Sweet Tomatoes as a dishwasher and cook, The Windjammer as a dishwasher, Red Lobster as a fry cook, and a strange but wonderful place called The Bourbon Street Grill as a dishwasher. Suffice to say, I was able to slide right in and do the job without much training.

This place had timers on the fryers. A new facet that made the job easier. A menu typical of restaurants of this sort from that era. They had sixty plus beers on tap and about ninety percent of the food items went into the deep fat fryers. Even some salads had spring rolls or crispy sticks or had the add on option to include a few fried chicken fingers. The vats of oil were enormous. Behind me, a stainless steel freezer with multiple heavy lockers, so huge it looked exactly like the ones they put dead bodies in at the morgue. Stacked full of bagged wings and fries, and a thousand other fryable items like jalapeño poppers, fish steaks, cheese sticks, popcorn shrimp, steak fries, waffle fries, and potato skins. To the side, a breading station. Flour, buttermilk, and stirred egg batter for chicken parmesan and fresh onion rings.

Marv was very strict about his standards. He paced back and forth during service like a caged lion in a starched white shirt and tie, the scar on his forehead bright red with the force of his high blood pressure. Sleeves rolled up to expose his bulging forearms. The veins in his neck like hoses as he commanded us to work harder. Heart pumping, the eye, the damned lazy eye always seeming to latch on me from any angle. The lunchtime services were insane. Waves of tickets pouring in from the printers, demanding wings with all types of sauces: butter, hot, spicy, honey mustard, teriyaki, dry spiced. It went on and on. People would ask for half this and half that, a little spicy, super spicy, volcano spicy. Teriyaki butter, honey mustard spicy. Endless combinations.

I had different steel bowls for each type of wing flavor. I would heft the sizzling chicken carcasses out of the fryer in the double sized baskets and shake the contents out onto these raised cardboard containers that were meant to absorb the excess oil, which of course, would splash onto my arms. Then into the bowls for a big toss and lathering of respective flavor.

I would drop wings into the awaiting fat by the twelve dozen, set the timer, then go about with the other items which took less time to cook, many of which had to be finished in the salamander. Nachos, potato skins…

The life of a fry cook is about oil. It’s in your hair, your skin, your lungs. Even after a shower, it’s with you. The smell of it at the end of the shift when you’re changing the oil out or filtering it. The feel of your fingertips which lose all feeling from touching hot platters and plating without tongs when you’re in the shit. Pure danger. The occasional cheese stick that slides out at the wrong angle and bounces off your arm. A 375 degree torpedo that melts flesh upon contact. It’s a testament to both the fragility and durability of the human body and spirit.

I worked alongside a massive, lumpy dude named Henry. To this day the largest hands I’ve ever seen on a man. Jovial and dorky. A crazy afro he had to keep contained within a hairnet. The salad guy, Dom, was silent but sarcastic and measured when he actually spoke, also a giant, he looked like he may have played football. Shaved head, thick neck. The dishwasher, Allen, was a tall, skinny, ripped kid with light skin and the deepest voice I’ve ever heard. A lady’s man with a thick gold chain around his neck and the nicest car out of all of us, a Honda Prelude with excessive rims.

Marv shouted at us as he paced and cracked the whip. He went in and out of the kitchen from the dining room so much it seemed like there were two of him. I could tell Dom hated his guts and wanted to strangle him.

“Let’s go Dom! Pick up the pace!” Marv would say coming into the kitchen with a tray of glasses. Dom would physically tighten up, like being jolted with electricity. Henry would smile and whisper to me, “Here comes the warden.”

Henry’s job was to prepare all the other dishes that came with items from the monstrous steam table. All the southern ingredients that sat and gave off waves of heat as we toiled. The mashed potatoes, grits, collard greens, rice with peas, You could get a half rotisserie chicken with all the delicious sides. I once helped Henry plate and forgot to put down the proper garnish, Marv was there instantly before the dish went out, shouting “Hey!”, the lazy eye right there, the scar florid. I placed a leaf of kale underneath steaming hot potatoes and then he looked directly at me and said: “Y’all eat kale up north, don’t ya boy?”

Henry and I established a fast rapport. We were both nerds. During the down times we spoke of Star Wars and Marvel Comics. The others didn’t seem to like him much. They were into sports, other things. He dressed in shabby clothing spotted with grease. He was also happy all the time. Always flashing his smile, the crazy, unkempt hair different every time I looked at it. We told each other jokes. We were basically the same two people, one white, one black, one giant, one small, one old, one young. He lived in a place called Frenchtown, the poor, black section of Tallahassee tucked away from the University and all the college kids.

“Ever notice something about Tallahassee?” Henry said one day. “There’s so many cops everywhere.”

“I did notice that.”

“You got the regular cops, then the sheriffs, then the staties, then you got the FSU po-po and the TCC cops, then there’s all the rent-a-cops everywhere. Oh shit, then you got the county guys, and the undercovers.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of cops here. Way more than where I’m from.”

I had noticed this detail upon arriving in Florida. You could throw a rock and hit a cop. I had already experienced the full wrath of one of them one night at a bar. My friends and I were walking out and I had fit the description of someone they were looking for. No velvet gloves were used. They got out of the car, came toward me, and when I protested and asked what was going on, they cuffed me and slammed me down face first. One took my wallet out of my pocket and rifled through it, leaving the contents out on the hood, while the other called in my information. When they found out I wasn’t the guy, they let me go, while I stood there with my friends, dazed. My two buddies shook their heads but were accustomed to seeing this sort of thing.

“Despite all this,” Henry said. “Dudes are still out there committing crimes. You’d think it would deter them, but no. Just the other day two brothas robbed a Miami Subs then ran across the street and robbed a Taco Bell. It’s crazy. No matter how many cops there are, people still gonna commit crime.”

We spoke a lot about the terms “Police State” and “Zero Tolerance.” So new to me being from a place with more lax laws. I told Henry about Vermont and how at that time getting caught with a small amount of weed just meant you’d get a fine or sometimes confiscation and nothing else.

“Crazy,” he said. “You get jail time for that here, well, unless you rich.”

“Yeah. We have a nickname for this place: Talla-Harass-Me.”