Whatever Happened to Kitchens?

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO KITCHENS?


by Albert Huffstickler

"I haven't seen any of those people In years. Everybody I know has drifted away."
--Old Plantation Restaurant habitue.

"So be their place of one estate
With ashes echoes and old wars,
Or ever we be of the night
Or we be lost among the stars."
--Calverlys, by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Places people come to in the evening after work
to eat and drink coffee, then wander back later
with the dark coming in and the loneliness on them.
Day in and day out, that little core of regulars
meeting in clusters, each cluster aware of the others,
nodding to each other. And the waitress of many years
knowing just what to bring when someone sits down.
Weary with the day, they come, ready to mingle hopes and needs,
voices tinged with boredom, a furtiveness about them,
the furtiveness of one who has no place else to go.

"What ever happened to Kitchens?"

They find their places and they stay, year after year,
a new face appearing from time to time, an old one vanishing,
the loss absorbed slowly after endless discussion of
the manner of his going, his new estate;
the light in the room a quality of their lives, a condition
more familiar than the rooms to which they return
to fall exhausted across the rumpled bed and sleep
till morning draws a damp and cheerless hand across the drugged face.

"What ever happened to Kitchens? Where did he go?"

The one who left unannounced, the one who broke all the rules
and vanished without a word--
the brawler, the bruiser, the banger against lives,
who fought and cursed and spoke his mind and embarassed them
to a man,
who was ugly and graceless and knew all their flaws
and flung them in their faces and laughed at them
and was dragged out more than once drunk,
cursing the world and the cops and all of them individually
and returned unrepentant to their subdued midst
to continue as though he'd never left, haranguing, mocking them--
And then vanished one night with a wave and a curse to return no more,
black jacket flapping, bald head shining, beak-like nose
plowing through the darkness like a ship at sea, big Harley roaring.
"So long, Motherfuckers!"

The shadows of the room converge, the talk goes on.
The shadows listen and do not comment. The waitress
moves from table to table, filling salts and peppers, wiping
catsup lids.
Voices sound from the parking lot, shrill and despairing.
Lights flash against the window then vanish to the engine’s roar.
They huddle closer in the close, still room.
The night grows. They are dreams without a dreamer.

"What ever happened to Kitchens?"

They slouch in their places, humble before his absence.
"He shouldn't have gone away like that. He should have said something!"
Lonely and dissatisfied, they talk desultorily, watching the clock.

"Somebody oughta call the shop and ask."
"Maybe he's there and don't want to be bothered."
"Maybe he's--" the word never comes out.
They crouch over their coffee cups; the shadows draw closer.
His absence as bulky and menacing as his presence--but less acceptable.
The waitress refills their cups automatically, her boredom a texture
of the space
like the shadows in the corner and the night that swirls in
with each opening of the door.
"Hell, he could write! He could send us a postcard here. They'd get
it to us!"
They sit on, later than usual. The talk turns to other things but no
one is fooled;
they're waiting.
They think of seasons past: Kitchens stomping in in the cold,
jacket zipped tight, gauntlet gloves encasing his forearms,
cursing the cold in his high, venomous voice;
or shirtsleeved and sweaty summers, bald head glistening, cursing the heat.
Now nothing.
The silence descends like a shroud. They smoke and wait,
gathering their courage, not meeting each other’s eyes.
Finally, one stands, glancing furtively at the door.
"You leaving?"
He almost sits down again, then straightens, nods.
"Yeh, I gotta get an early start in the morning."
Another shifts uncomfortably, settles back, then rises slowly.
"Me too," he mumbles.
One by one, the others rise, stand hesitating,
then slowly, one by one, move down the aisle and out the door
to stand there in the night.
"I guess he's gone," one says.
"Yeh, he's gone."
"Gone without a word."
One by one, they move off down the street, heads bent,
a dread on them--of the night, of the silence,
of the musky rooms with their rumpled beds and the darkness.
One stops and stares upward, mouth agape.
"What happened to him?"
A car screams around the corner, then vanishes in a spray of light.
He stands a moment longer, then trudges on,
homeward beneath the clear, unanswering stars.


October 14, 1982
Posted over on Four-Sep