During my twenties, with an advanced degree but no real skills, I worked as a dishwasher. Standing at the sinks, I breathed in foul, steamy air, bad for the lungs, a future killer. We used harsh chemicals to clean the floors. More death coming. My clothes stank at the end of the shift and my face was burned from hissing grease.
One establishment, a fancy French restaurant, was noteworthy for its hustle and bustle, the kitchen a harried mix of uniformed waitstaff urging speedier meal production, prep-line assistants chopping urgently, chefs in tall white hats cursing as flames rose from the pans.
Along with dishwashing, I also had the task of picking up dead mice from the cooler. I wrapped the little corpses in tissue and deposited them in a trash can in the alley. I felt sad for the mice, for their stiff little bodies designated for an ignoble burial. I did enjoy stepping out of the hot kitchen and breathing the cool night air of New Mexico, if only for a moment. But one night, in the thick of the weekend rush, returning from another alley burial, I called out to the kitchen at large, to the harried waitstaff, the frantic prep line, the chefs battling grease blazes, “Why am I the one who has to pick up the dead mice?”
Everyone stopped still, looked at me as if I were a prophet come in from the desert. The gears of a great machine suddenly stopped. The chefs held their pans motionless in space. A waiter’s hand froze, an order form held between thumb and index finger. There hung in the air a vast possibility, a remaking of the rightful roles. We might have a deep discussion. What was the proper hierarchy, the just division of labor? Must it always be this way? Was the system fair, just? Really, weren’t we all just tools of the system? I asked once more, “Why me?”
The head chef, a tall, thin man from Belgium, solved our dilemma. “Because you’re the dishwasher,” he said. He turned back to the stove. The hiss of grease and the cursing resumed. The waiters delivered the order forms, and the steamy sink beckoned to me like a witch’s cauldron. The gears of the great machine, greater than me, greater than all of us, lurched back into motion.
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Robert Garner McBrearty has published five books of fiction, most recently When I Can’t Sleep, a collection of flash fiction (Matter Press). His stories have appeared widely including in the Pushcart Prize, The Missouri Review, Laurel Review, MoonPark Review, Fractured Lit, North American Review, and New England Review. His new collection of short stories is forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press.