chefs 3 indoctrination

Headlights swoop through the Monona Terrace Parking Ramp. Alison pulls into a parking spot that overlooks Lake Monona and exhales heavily. Moonlight streaks across the surface of the lake. First day. Foot traffic scuffs across the concrete. Seth curls his thumb inside the shoulder strap of his backpack and finds an empty seat. Fifty people soon congregate in an auditorium marked Madison Culinary Institute Registration. It’s 3:25AM.

Clive Beckett leans back against a stage at the front of the auditorium. Stacks of books line the edge of the stage. Each stack of books has a form of protective headwear placed on top. One stack has a Green Bay Packer helmet. Another has a Vietnam-era Army helmet. Another has a construction hat with goggles strapped over the front. Yet another stack of books is crowned by a knight’s helmet.

His arms are crossed, and his eyes scan the faces, postures, and expressions of each person who enters the room. He bounces his back almost imperceptibly off the stage repeatedly, like a metronome. Hushed chit chat fills the auditorium, mostly speculating the reason for the array of helmets. The students glance at him, unable to hide their intimidation. This is the legendary chef and founder of the school. Clive’s assistant Mary Andrews checks the identification of each person who enters and makes check marks on her records.

The clock snaps to 3:30AM.

“Welcome to the Madison Culinary Institute. You have passed your first required responsibility which happens to be showing up. I can assure you that this will be the easiest task you will be expected to accomplish if you are to possess a certificate of graduations from my school. This is also the first and last time that you will hear me say: If you’re on time you are late. If you’re early you’re on time.”

He uncrosses his arms and begins to prowl the aisles. He moves with purpose, smooth. Lean, there is not an apparent ounce of fat on his body. His eyes move through and over his students.

“I personally reviewed seven thousand eight hundred and twenty four applications that were submitted to my school. I selected you fifty.” He licks the inside of his teeth. “Welcome to the jungle.”

An uncomfortable low laughter peppers the seated students.

“I selected you based on what you included in your application packet. I thought you fifty might have ‘it.’ But on paper is one thing. Living breathing humans are entirely another. We shall see.”

Clive turns around and heads back toward the stage.

“My name is Clive Beckett. I own and operate this school. I have since its genesis seventeen years ago. The only things you need to know about me are that I value discipline, hard work, precision, creativity, and really good food. I also enjoy urban exploration and occasionally get arrested for being on the exterior of very large buildings or the interior of unique pieces of architecture. I promise you though, that I will not allow any self-inflicted legal trouble to interfere with my responsibilities as the craftsman of your culinary development.”

“You are paying for your education and just as the paying customer requires my best effort as a chef, you require my best efforts as a mentor at this school. My goal is to invest in you everything that I have discovered, enjoyed, and learned. When you get as old as I am, you realize that you can’t take certain things with you. I have had a measure of success in this world from my own hard work. My expectation is that you will develop your own arena of greatness, and then pass it along to the next generation, as my grandmother did to me in the brilliant light of her kitchen. If you are here to massacre others on the way to greatness, then you know nothing about what greatness is.”

“This is the first day of your training.” Clive points at the stacks of books that line the stage edge. Each stack is marked with a name tag. “Gather your materials before you leave. The valedictorian of the last class has a few words for you before you are dismissed. Aden, they’re all yours.”

Aden Ramirez stands and faces the crowd. “My name is Aden Ramirez. I have been given the honor of informing you that your attendance is required at Mill Orchards by 5:30AM. When I release you, you are to find your stack of books placed on the stage. There is a map that will help you find Mill Orchards if you do not know where it is. You have also been assigned headgear. You will need to have this headgear with you when you arrive at the orchard, and you may want to change into clothes you don't mind ruining. Does anyone have any questions?”

“What’s the headgear for?” someone asks.

“You will find out at 5:30!” Aden says. “That’s all I have for you.”

chefs 2 seth's letter

The sweat pours from Staff Sergeant Seth Olson. It drizzles down his grizzled jaw like floodwaters eroding all beds. His eyes dart the terrain of the Iraqi village under the brow line of his Kevlar helmet. Hands. Scan hands. Haji hands kill. Where’s cover? Where am I going when the shots ring out. What's the best flanking route if we take fire from those huts? Where's the best place for a medevac if needed? He adjusts the tactical eyewear with his non-trigger hand and wipes at the salty sweat that stings his eyes.

He barks at his soldiers to keep their interval, don’t bunch up. Their boots shuffle through the sand, shoulders aching under their gear. His knees have begun to ache on their convoys and crunch when out for runs. “The weight of the body armor is fucking up everyone’s knees,” the medic says.

That fucking lazy shitbag is going to get someone killed, he thinks as he notices the rust in the muzzle of one of his gunners. All talk. The perfect new nickname for a worthless fatbody soldier who thinks it’s all a video game.

They’re at the trucks. They fan out providing security until the gunners are in position and set. Haji is good and bored today. Let’s keep it that way. Hateful looks don’t kill. Sergeant Erickson walks up. “Gunners are set, Sarnt.”

“Mount up,” Olson says.

The security element heaves open the doors of the up-armored humvees and take their places inside. Olson scans the line and when it appears everyone is in, he ducks inside his own truck. He adjusts his headset and gets a go from all the team leaders. “Let’s roll.”

“Rooftop fifty meters one o’clock,” Specialist Adams, a disciplined, reliable soldier calls out from the lead truck. “He’s got a camera.”

Video footage means someone is trying to get paid for killing Americans. The videotape is the evidence required by terrorists who offer bounties on verified American dead. “Scan your sectors, let’s move.”

The trucks heave forward in the Iraqi desert sun. Olson’s driver, Specialist Monterey, says over the headset, “We’ll be on a bird outta here in 6 days, Big Sarge! You’ll be back in your kitchen in no time, searing scallops and all that other gourmet shit you cook.”

“Number one: When has the Army ever kept a timeline, especially to let us leave Iraq? Number two: A lot can happen in 6 days. And number three: If you can get us back on BIAP without getting us blowed up, then I will cook you a fucking feast the day we hit the States.”

“Sorry, Sarnt, but the day we get back to the States my calendar is gonna be all booked up. A feast sounds nice, but I’m more concerned with making up a year of missed sack-time with my old lady,” Monterey grins.

“Good enough, Monterey. When you get time then—“

Suddenly the humvee is filled with sand. Staff Sergeant Olson can’t seem to breathe. He feels like he’s been hit by a linebacker on the goal line. He didn’t hear the IED go off underneath the driver side of the vehicle. All he can see is a bloody hand on top of the SINCGARS radio. A wave of pain heaves through his body. Nausea grips his stomach and fights with the pain for supremacy. All weapons have vanished. All is pain. The burning of his lungs fighting to breathe. The sharp, burning in his left upper leg. The splitting headache. All that is left now is the will to fight. The will to survive.

Seth heaves upward in bed. He’s drenched in sweat. He yanks the sheet away from his chest and neck as if it were trying to strangle him. He feels for the window behind him and shoves it open, begging air. Cool night breeze pours in. September tore down the wall of oppressive humidity and heat and replaced it with the glory of cool autumn.

He lunges out of bed, pulls on a t-shirt and shorts, slips on a pair of running shoes, and snatches his keys off the counter. He locks the door behind him, pushes through the entranceway of his apartment building and takes off at a sprint through the night.

The air is crisp. No one is out. Breath steams from his throat. Stars encrust the night sky. His muscles burn as he reaches the edge of the lake. He slows to a walk, his hands behind his head, elbows jutting out in an attempt to fill his lungs with air. He looks over the lake that sloshes against the concrete edge of the elevated sidewalk. He spits into the black water that laps and sucks at the concrete shoreline. It looms beneath him, a black, shifting surface. He hacks the mucous from his raw throat and spits again at the opal invitation.

He walks home slowly. He finds a couple dollars in his shorts pocket and buys a sports drink at a 24 hour convenience store. “Out for a run, sir? At 3AM?” the Pakistani man says from behind the counter. “You must work nights.”

“It’s a nice night for a run,” Seth mutters. He wants to get out of the blazing, moth attacked light of the convenience store parking lot and into the less intense, less intrusive street light. The breeze wades through the crisp leaves and pours over him, sweat drenched.

Tired enough, Seth re-enters his apartment building. His mail canister appears stuffed, and there is a post-it note stuck to it with a scribbled request from the post office for him to empty it. He has to yank it open and tears away the tops of some of the envelopes in the process. He mashes the stack against his chest and then drops it on his kitchen counter, locking the door behind him. An impressive gallery of knives and cookware litter the counter.

Seth pulls a garbage can up next to a stool, sits down, and begins leafing through the mail on the counter. Half of the envelopes are torn in to shreds and dropped in the garbage. He stops when he comes to an envelope from The Madison Culinary Institute.

Meditatively, he draws a rocker knife from the block and slides it over the edge of the envelope. His fingers grip the severed envelope. A slight squeeze opens its mouth. As delicately and silently as an explosive ordnance technician, he unfolds the letter that informs him that he has been accepted to their culinary arts program. Without moving the rest of his body, he turns his head toward the apartment window that overlooks the city. The brilliant, serene city lights blur as his eyes moisten.

Time to create breakfast.

Endlessly Into the Valley

When the shoulders rolled forward in the seething cold of night, a spine spat its spikes into place like switchblades. It was the glint of the moonlight across the blades as they swam the earth. A reptile of unknown origin. A reptilian escalation of the reality they chose. They were a people making decisions...completely unaware of the severity of the consequences.

They never saw it coming. They smelled the cigarettes and beer of a thousand prior evenings and nestled into the filth of their rotting, laughing carpets. They invited a death they did not understand. They sought a glory that did not exist. Once they learned exactly what they were thinking, they were on the other side of the wall. Nowhere to climb. Nowhere to retreat. Nowhere.

Theirs was merely spasm.

Theirs were merely swollen joints.

Tear the hair from the flesh. Shaking head. It still does not breed an infinite spirit.

The blood pools and dries and flecks and blows away in the hot wind of the desert. There is no sign of you.

And then there was the whisper--

I am not afraid of you with all of your locust. Your are a foreign, untouchable language.

I am not inside your cold, dead hands that spasm when the sun pours a warmth upon you. There is the righteous laughter when all of you make your decrees. Your prophecy is a petroleum iceland...churning, restless agonies.

And in one turn we are emitted into the endless awe of dawn, the brilliant warm dawn.

There is nothing in your ocean that can smother our breath because our bodies are beyond the molecule. We are the curious, head-canted. You chose this agony. You removed the leash. Now you are torn, limb from limb. Do you dare to ask us why?

Let the dawn come. Let the brilliant dawn of God pour through the walls of these corridors until the walls slide away. We are the wheat. You are the tares. While you gut yourself we are resting in brilliant afternoon beds where curtains tickle our foreheads with breezes fragranced by flower. We will feast again. It is our birthright. You will be constantly searching for the enemy that lingers in the voice you obey. This is the voice that sends you endlessly into the valley.

chefs 1 alison's letter

Two waiters stand in a recessed hallway that provides them a three prong view of a restaurant called The Mess. Adam stares through the seating area and the front window at the world going about its business on a chilly Friday night at nine p.m. His chin is propped on his fist which is propped on a stainless steel shelf. He occasionally glances to his left without moving his head for a view of the bar where two young women are sipping martinis. Their slender, tan bodies are draped in cocktail dresses that defy the brisk autumn air outside. It’s as if they hold the last remnant of summer between their elegant fingers as they sip their drinks.

Adam is having a difficult time hiding his boredom with the new waiter who wants everyone to call him Stingray although his real name is Les. Yes, Les is in a band. The band is not very good, but it’s enough to convince Les that he is awesome enough to need to be called Stingray. Les is facing the opposite direction, focused on Alison the sous chef.

“Oh my god she is so hot. I am going to do sick, twisted, despicable things to her when I get her in the sack,” Les says.

“So what’s the deal with the whole Stingray thing? You have some kind of thing for Steve Irwin or something?” Adam says.

“No, man, you wouldn’t understand. You don’t have to understand though, that’s all right. Just call me Stingray, and I won’t beat you within an inch of your life,” Les says.

“Okay, Stingray,” Adam says, shedding boredom for a nanosecond by pronouncing Stingray in a tone that insinuates a David Hasselhoff level of coolness.

“How long do you think it’ll take me to get her naked? Two nights? A week? There’s no way she’ll last a week,” Les rattles.

“Have you met Alison there, Stingray? She doesn’t strike me as being a stupid person. I’m pretty sure you’ll never get her in the sack. I’m pretty sure you’ll never get within six feet of her.”

“Watch me,” Les says and kicks open the swinging doors to the kitchen.

The kitchen stops cold as everyone looks at the new waiter who dared to enter the back of the house for what appears to be no worthwhile reason. Eyes batter his spiked hair, ink, MTV attitude, and the jaw line which looks like it’s never been punched contrary to what the mouth directly above it will tell you.

“You lose something, man?” Manuel asks him, smashing a lettuce head on the counter, driving the core loose. He tosses the core in the garbage and rolls the head down the counter toward Alison.

Manuel got out of prison six days ago. If Les had any true sense, he would know that three years worth of repressed rage was napping under that 90% personable salutation. Les couldn’t smell the 10% of the salutation that gets unleashed when the 90% personable part gets you within striking distance.

“No,” Les says. “I’m here to talk to her.”

Les nods at Alison who is dragging a blade down a slab of beef. She straightens and says, “I don’t know of any good reason why you would need to talk to me.”

“The reason is that you are the sexiest female I have seen possibly in my entire life, and I want to buy you a drink,” Les says.

Manuel grins and shakes his head.

“That funny to you, Manuel?”

Manuel nods, a 1000 yard stare settling in, produced by a 1000 traumas. He starts to get that familiar feeling.

“Unass my AO. Get back to the front of the house,” Alison says, continuing to carve the slab of beef.

“It’s Stingray,” Les says, looking from Manuel to Alison.

Les begins to walk toward her. She doesn’t pay any attention to him until he gets within her reach at which point she raises her right hand and drives her two longest fingers into his windpipe. Les doubles over coughing.

“What the hell was that?” he chokes out.

“My answer to your request to buy me a drink. You want to try again? Go ahead test my knife skills. Pretty boy, I will give you scars in places you don’t want ‘em—“

“Oh, c’mon, baby. You ain’t never had nothing like this,” Les says, beginning to recover.

“You’re right. I’ve never had anything like you because I can’t stand cokehead slimeballs who are so enamored with themselves that they have become senseless human beings consisting of stacked, rotten meat tagged with trendy ridiculous nicknames who have never suffered an afternoon of their overstimulated lives. If you even conceived for an instant that you would make me another notch in your belt on the way to your herpe-gonna-syphillis-infected grave, then you are deluded.”

Alison’s arms were folded at this point, the glint of the blade partially concealed behind her forearm, partially visible. “Go find Nancy, Sid. You’re fired.”

“I’m fired? For what?” Les is red faced and confused. Current events were forcing him to believe that he was nowhere near as cool as he thought. “Just because I asked to buy you a drink?”

“I don’t allow trash in my kitchen.”

Les glances at Manuel whose grin tempts him to react. Les spins toward the swinging doors and storms out of the kitchen.

“Leaving Stingray?” Adam says.

“Eat a dick,” Les says, bolting through the seating area and out the front door of the restaurant. The bells jingle on the door as it thunder-claps shut.

“Adam!” Alison shouts from the kitchen.

“Yes, ma’am?” he says leaning into the swinging doors.

“You’re flying solo tonight. Ol’ Stingray there couldn’t swim with the sharks. You cool with that?” Alison says.

“No sweat. Just means more tips for me. The place is dead anyway,” Adam says.

“Good deal.”

Manuel steps away from the line, sips a bottled water, and scans the wall. “You’re a bad ass, you know that Alison?”

“Si, verdad,” she says, grinning.

“You see you got some mail here? Hey this is from that culinary school you were talking about,” Manuel says.

“Yeah, I saw that. I’m gonna open it sometime.”

“Oh, c’mon, don’t be nervous, peel that shit open! You know you got in.”

“No, Manuel. You know how many people apply there every year? Thousands.”

“You know them busters don’t have the resume or the skills you got. Open this.”

Manuel hands her the envelope.

She drops it on the counter. Her eyes pool around it. She pokes at it with her knife. “If I was accepted it would be thicker.”

“Open it.”

Alison drags the blade across the short side of the envelope, sighs, sets the knife down, and pulls out the letter. Her eyes sear the page.

Incredulous, she says, “Someone must’ve screwed up. I’m in. They accepted me.”

Manuel nods. “I told you, didn’t I? Just remember me when you’re famous.”