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Growing Tucker

Jarvis Coffin

    “I’m Chef,” Matthew said, extending his hand to the young man leaning against a stainless-steel prep table.
    The boy introduced himself as Tucker.
    “Have you worked in a kitchen before, Tucker?”
    Probably a stupid question. The boy looked twelve: a pimpled, soft white face with no trace of whisker, curly dark hair over his ears, and down his neck from under a light-blue bucket hat. He was wearing a Boston Celtics T-shirt, green and white basketball shorts, ankle-high sneakers. No socks. His hands were in the pockets of the shorts. Another one, Matthew thought, pushed out of the nest, and rolling to a stop at his kitchen door.
    Matthew started over. “Do you play basketball?” he asked.
    Tucker answered no to the first question about working in a kitchen. This was his first job. He was a sophomore in high school. He was fifteen. His mother would drive him to work and pick him up afterward.
    “Generally, we don’t get out of the kitchen until late, after ten. Is your mom going to be cool with that?”
    “She bartends. She can pick me up going home,” Tucker answered, adding, “I play a little basketball.”
    “I guess you’re a Celtic fan.”
    Tucker nodded.
    “Because you’re only fifteen, I’ll need your mom to sign something. Also, the superintendent of school’s office.”
    Tucker shrugged.
    Matthew walked him to the dish pit. Three large stainless-steel sinks connecting to two stainless counters in an L-shape, leading to a large stainless box, the dishwasher. The linoleum floor was slightly concave. Dirty water pooled where the surface had been eroded over time by the soles of so many basketball sneakers scuffing in the same place.
    “This will be your office,” Matthew’s said. “The servers come through that door and drop dishes here. You take them and rinse them here. Glasses go in these blue racks. Be careful slinging the racks because glasses—especially wine glasses—will break. Pots and pans come from the cooking line over there—where that scary-looking guy is working—and get dumped in this sink. When you get here after school, there will be a mountain of pots and pans.”
    Matthew pointed to a black bucket of green nylon pads, steel wool, a paint scraper, a bottle of Dove dish liquid, a can of Ajax, a forgotten bar mop rolled in a ball, hard as stone. “Cleaning stuff,” he explained, pausing to see if a spark of recognition appeared in Tucker’s eyes. “The steel wool helps on the bottom of the aluminum pans. Use the Ajax for that,” he said.
    Tucker turned his head and smiled.
    “Right?” Matthew asked.
    Tucker nodded.
    “Run the dishes through the machine by placing them in these racks. Like this. Then into the machine. Like this. Then pull down the doors. That starts the machine.
    “The cooks clean their stations, but you’ll be responsible for sweeping and mopping. You sweep and mop last. Here is the mop sink. Be careful because the right leg is not attached. The mop hangs over the sink. Like you see it. The mop bucket gets put back under the sink.
    “Over here is floor cleaner. Hose goes in the bucket. Turn this knob. Careful pushing the bucket around because it will tip over. You don’t want that. Have you ever used a mop? Back and forth, not side to side. Rinse it in the cleaner. Squeeze it in the wringer. Lift and empty the bucket into the sink at the end.
    “Some guys are in the habit of using just a couple of inches of water because it makes lifting and emptying easier,” Matthew says. “But it means they wash the floor with mud. Understand? They’re lazy. You need to be sure there is enough water and cleaner. Don’t be lazy, Tucker.
    “Are those your only shoes? They look expensive. They’ll get trashed.”
    “I’ll talk to my mom.”
    “Questions?”
    “How much do I get paid?”
    “Ten an hour.”
    Tucker’s face beamed from under his bucket hat, sensing the beat of his own wings outside the nest, which Matthew was used to seeing in all of them. Flying, of course, would be different.
    “It’s the easiest job you’ll ever have. It’s not rocket science, right? You just have to care. No one thinks doing dishes is important, but it is. Doing dishes is important. If you can do a good job doing dishes, you can succeed at anything. Anything. If you can’t—because, Tucker, really, it’s pretty straight-up easy—you’re gonna struggle at everything.”
    Tucker gave another shrug, which Matthew was always at a loss to interpret coming from any of them. Do we mean, yeah, so? Yeah, no? Yeah, maybe?
    “Are you good with that?” Matthew asked.
    “Yeah.”
~
    Inside, there were over thirty diners seated for dinner. The bar was full. Matthew’s partner, Ric, was helping the bartender keep up with orders by pouring wine and chatting up the guests sitting there swirling olives in their martinis, asking about the menu, and helping themselves to mixed nuts. The servers moved fluidly through the rooms, sweeping past each other with red cheeks, tight smiles, and nervous glances while a trio of musicians—a guitarist, bass player, and female vocalist—covered Fleetwood Mac tunes in the corner by the fireplace, which was filled with birch and maple logs burning brightly. Six inches of snow covered the ground outside. It was deep winter.
    Working solo in the kitchen, the line cook was juggling five pans, smoke coming from two of them, as she shook another, squeezing a lemon, pulling a plate from under the warming lights, pouring the bubbling ingredients from the sauté, and sprinkling parsley and finishing salt.
    “Order up!” she called, jumping to the smoking pans, running the sleeve of her chef coat across her forehead.
    Outside, treading carefully over snow and ice, Matthew had followed Tucker to the Chevy Blazer that Tucker had purchased for twelve hundred dollars when he turned nineteen. The blazer was two-toned: a tarnished blue on the bottom half, and flat black on top. The previous owner had rolled the car and replaced the roof before selling it. Since then, Tucker had purchased four new tires—two at a time, from different manufacturers—replaced the muffler, the starter, and front brakes. But on that first day of possession, the kitchen staff and the servers had assembled for a team photo, all of them leaning against the car, surrounding Tucker sitting in the driver’s seat, his arm resting in the open window, giving the thumbs-up—beaming—as proud as could be that he had accomplished the thing he most wanted after starting as a dishwasher four years before.
    Matthew had wedged into the passenger seat, clearing a spot for his right foot on the floor amid crumpled cigarette packs and Monster drink cans. The door was open behind him, and he had pivoted to face Tucker, who had both hands on the wheel, blood seeping through a bandage wrapped around his right hand. Rapidly, the steam from their warm breath fogged the windshield, erecting another wall, tightening the space. They were two miners in a cave illuminated by the dim overhead light. Tucker still wore an apron over his chef coat, which was stained from bleeding and the last two hours of pacing the line like a cat, splashing soup into bowls, slamming pots, tempting fire with the fat in his pans, leaning into each explosion as if hoping he might burst into flames. With his bandaged hand he reached and tried to wipe the glass in front of him.
    Looking back, Matthew says it was too much responsibility to put on the boy at the time. By then, Tucker had been at the restaurant for five years, but he was still only twenty, living upstairs from his mother, next door to his older brother, Casper, in a green, paint-chipped tenement. He had become the principal breadwinner in the family, helping fund groceries, car payments, rent, his mother’s Tennessee whiskey, and—unintentionally, because Casper would take the cash from Tucker’s wallet—his brother’s heroin habit. But he never missed a day of work. Never took a vacation—because what was that? Disney? A beach house? Not likely. Tucker worked, smoked cigarettes, played video games at night, and Matthew advanced him through different jobs in the kitchen, shaping, nurturing, rewarding—growing Tucker.
    Matthew made him sous-chef after the previous one fell in love and moved to Michigan. Tucker seemed fine in the role, and Matthew stoked his ambitions: “Tucker, you’re a good cook; in another few years, you could be in Boston or New York.”
    Then, fatefully, one day soon after the promotion Tucker texted, need to talk. His brother had overdosed. Heroin, fentanyl. The daily double. Tucker had found Casper, needle still in his arm, draped across the couch. Cold, gray-blue lips. Dead. On the telephone, he had been inconsolable.
    Five days later, he was back at work, but mid-afternoons he would leave to run “errands,” or be outside to smoke every other minute or be listening to music wearing earphones (not allowed). One evening after service, Matthew found him in the back hallway sitting on a milk crate, head in his hands.
    “Tuck, you okay?”
    Probably a stupid question.
    He was coming in late, leaving clean-up to everyone else, and then, this particular night, caught short on prep, he shredded the bottom of his palm while furiously running carrots over a mandolin.
    “Tuck, man, you need to slow down,” said Matthew, wrapping the gauze.
    “You know what, I can’t do this anymore!” Tucker responded and walked out. And Matthew went out after him.
    Tucker turned to Matthew in the car. “Get out.”
    “Let me help.”
    “I need to be home. I need to be with my mother.”
    “Okay. But don’t quit. Don’t walk. Don’t do it.”
    Tucker turned the key and revved the engine.
    “Tucker?”
    He shifted into reverse.
    “Tucker, please, don’t be one of those guys. Don’t bail. C’mon. A little respect for five years together.”
    The car lurched backward, propelling Matthew toward the dash. It turned, slid, and stopped suddenly so that the open passenger door recoiled, nearly slamming Matthew’s hand in the frame above him.
~
    Ric poured bourbon into a glass and carried it to the end of the bar where Matthew had arrived from outside, his kitchen hat removed, grayish hair matted against his head, his chef coat sleeves rolled to the elbows. He stretched out his arms, placing his hands flat on the mahogany surface, as Ric gently pushed the drink to him until it was under his nose.
    Matthew looked into the glass and slowly spun it around. He lifted it and inhaled, allowing the vapor to sting the back of his throat where the cold air had left it dry. He took a slug as a regular guest approached, an older woman, a rich older woman, as Matthew knew, with gray hair bundled tight behind her head, a tan cashmere shawl wrapped around her shoulders, bright red lipstick freshly applied in the Ladies Room after dinner.
    “It was good tonight, Matt, but, I have to say, it was a long wait. Honestly,” she said.
    The comment crumpled and collapsed against the image of Tucker’s blazer fishtailing out of the parking lot, the hiss of the tires hitting the sanded pavement and the anger of the accelerating engine racing away.
    Matthew lifted his head to look at Ric, while the woman stood nearby.
    “I gave my dishwashing speech to a new kid this morning. How many times do you suppose I’ve given that speech, Ric?”
    Ric glanced at the ceiling, running the numbers in his head. “I’d guess once a month for twelve years.”
    Matthew nodded slowly. He turned to the woman, wide eyed, red lipped, and fidgeting with the shoulder strap of her purse.
    “I’m not sure I can do it anymore.”

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