JOHNNY
Alfred Hayes
J OHNNY SLEPT WITH THE GERMAN BAKER
and the ex-army officer who
was the pantryman. The baker played the accordion in the evening.
He played East Side West Side, and Sweet Rosie O'Grady and Du, du
leigst mir im Herzen. The ex-army officer who was the pantryman lay
on his back in the cot and smoked a cigarette. He blew rings up at the
flaps of the tent very carefully. First he would blow a ring of smoke,
watch it curl upward until it dissolved, and then he would blow another
ring of smoke carefully. He did this for hours because he could not
understand the Polish and German the baker or Johnny or the chef spoke.
Johnny, the ole! Polack who was the dishwasher, sat on the edge of
the bed and cut the hard burning callous on the bottom of his foot with
a razor blade. As he cut the flesh he screwed up his eyes in anticipation
of the pain. The brown leathery skin of his face cracked into countless
lines and under his long drooping moustache he sucked in his dry thin
lips.
On the corner of the bed sat the little bowlegged chef, Mike. Every
night after work Mike came down to the tent to smoke a cigarette and
drink a couple of bottles of beer before he went to sleep. He had to
drink a great deal in order to sleep because he lived in the M ain House
where the guests danced at night. In spite of the fact that he was very
tired he had to drink four of five bottles to fall asleep because the music
and the pounding feet shook the whole house.
Also, he was very lonely and he missed the big Polish girl named
Greta who came to see him every Thursday night when he was in the city.
Johnny grunted cutting the hard lump of flesh on the bottom of his
foot. The shoes he wore were cracked and broken and standing in water
all day in the room where he washed the dishes only made his foot worse.
He had a dirty bandage wrapped around his thumb which he had cut on
a piece of broken glass in the stone washtub. He kept telling the Miss,Js
that she should get a new washtub, that he could not work in a stone
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