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" In the beginning, Sanford Carter was ashamed of becoming an Army cook. This was not from snobbery, at least not from snobbery of the most direct sort. During the two and a half years Carter had been in the Army he had come to hate cooks more and more. They existed for him as a symbol of all that was corrupt, overbearing, stupid, and privileged in Army life. The image which came to mind was a fat cook with an enormous sandwich in one hand, and a bottle of beer in the other, sweat pouring down a porcine face, foot on a flour barrel, shouting at the K.P.&amp;#039;s, &amp;quot;Hurry up, you men, I ain&amp;#039;t got all day.&amp;quot; More than once in those two and a half years, driven to exasperation, Carter had been on the verge of throwing his food into a cook&amp;#039;s face as he passed on the serving line. His anger often derived from nothing: the set of a pair of far lips, the casual heavy thump of the serving spoon into his plate, or the resentful conviction that the cook was not serving him enough. Since life in the Army was in most aspects a marriage, this rage over apparently harmless details was not a sign of unbalance. Every soldier found some particular habit of the Army spouse impossible to support. Yet Sanford Carter became a cook and, to elaborate the irony, did better as a cook than he had done as anything else. In a few months he rose from a Private to a first cook with the rank of Sergeant, Technician. After the fact, it was easy to understand. He had suffered through all his Army career from an excess of eagerness. He had cared too much, he had wanted to do well, and so he had often been tense at moments when he would better have been relaxed. He was very young, twenty-one, had lived the comparatively gentle life of a middle-class boy, and needed some success in the Army to prove to himself that he was not completely worthless. In succession, he had failed as a surveyor in Field Artillery, a clerk in an Infantry headquarters, a telephone wireman, and finally a rifleman. When the war ended, and his regiment went to Japan, Carter was still a rifleman; he had been a rifleman for eight months. What was more to the point, he had been in the platoon as long as any of its members; the skilled hard-bitten nucleus of veterans who had run his squad had gone home one by one, and it seemed to him that through seniority he was entitled to at least a corporal&amp;#039;s rating. Through seniority he was so entitled, but on no other ground. Whenever responsibility had been handed to him, he had discharged it miserably, tensely, over conscientiously. He had always asked too many questions, he had worried the task too severely, he had conveyed his nervousness to the men he was supposed to lead. Since he was also sensitive enough and proud enough never to curry favor with the noncoms in the platoons, he was in no position to sit in on their occasional discussions about who was to succeed them. In a vacuum of ignorance, he had allowed himself to dream that he would be given a squad to lead, and his hurt was sharp when the squad was given to a replacement who had joined the platoon months after him. The war was over, Carter had a bride in the States (he had lived with her for only two months), he was lonely, he was obsessed with going home. As one week dragged into the next, and the regiment, the company, and his own platoon continued the same sort of training which they had been doing ever since he had entered the Army, he thought he would snap. There were months to wait until he would be discharged and meanwhile it was intolerable to him to be taught for the fifth time the nomenclature of the machine gun, to stand a retreat parade three evenings a week. He wanted some niche where he could lick his wounds, some Army job with so many hours of work and so many hours of complete freedom, where he could be alone by himself. He hated the Army, the huge Army which had proved to him that he was good at no work, and incapable of succeeding at anything. He wrote long, aching letters to his wife, he talked less and less to the men around him and he was close to violent attacks of anger during the most casual phases of training -- during close-order drill or cleaning his rifle for inspection. He knew that if he did not find his niche it was possible that he would crack. So he took an opening in the kitchen. It promised him nothing except a day of work, and a day of leisure which would be completely at his disposal. He found that he liked it. He was given at first the job of baking the bread for the company, and every other night he worked till early in the morning, kneading and shaping his fifty-pound mix of dough. At two or three he would be done, and for his work there would be the tangible reward of fifty loaves of bread, all fresh from the oven, all clean and smelling of fertile accomplished creativity. He had the rare and therefore intensely satisfying emotion of seeing at the end of an Army chore the product of his labor.  A month after he became a cook the regiment was disbanded, and those men who did not have enough points to go home were sent to other outfits. Carter ended at an ordnance company in another Japanese city. He had by now given up all thought of getting a noncom&amp;#039;s rating before he was discharged, and was merely content to work each alternate day. He took his work for granted and so he succeeded at it. He had begun as a baker in the new company kitchen; before long he was the first cook. It all happened quickly. One cook went home on points, another caught a skin disease, a third was transferred from the kitchen after contracting a venereal infection. On the shift which Carter worked there were left only himself and a man who was illiterate. Carter was put nominally in charge, and was soon actively in charge. He looked up each menu in an Army recipe book, collected the items, combined them in the order indicated, and after the proper time had elapsed, took them from the stove. His product tasted neither better nor worse than the product of all other Army cooks. But the mess sergeant was impressed. Carter had filled a gap. The next time ratings were given out Carter jumped at a bound from Private to Sergeant T/4. On the surface he was happy; beneath the surface he was overjoyed. It took him several weeks to realize how grateful and delighted he felt. The promotion coincided with his assignment to a detachment working in a small seaport up the coast. Carter arrived there to discover that he was in charge of cooking for thirty men, and would act as mess sergeant. There was another cook, and there were four permanent Japanese K.P.&amp;#039;s, all of them good workers. He still cooked every other day, but there was always time between meals to take a break of at least an hour and often two; he shared a room with the other cook and lived in comparative privacy for the first time in several years; the seaport was beautiful; there was only one officer, and he left the men alone; supplies were plentiful due to a clerical error which assigned rations for forty men rather than thirty; and in general everything was fine. The niche had become a sinecure.  This was the happiest period of Carter&amp;#039;s life in the Army. He came to like his Japanese K.P.&amp;#039;s. He studied their language, he visited their homes, he gave them gifts of food from time to time. They worshiped him because he was kind to them and generous, because he never shouted, because his good humor bubbled over into games, and made the work of the kitchen seem pleasant. All the while he grew in confidence. He was not a big man, but his body filled out from the heavy work; he was likely to sing a great deal, he cracked jokes with the men on the chow line. The kitchen became his property, it became his domain, and since it was a warm room, filled with sunlight, he came to take pleasure in the very sight of it. Before long his good humor expanded into a series of efforts to improve the food. He began to take little pains and make little extra efforts which would have been impossible if he had been obliged to cook for more than thirty men. In the morning he would serve the men fresh eggs scrambled or fried to their desire in fresh butter. Instead of cooking sixty eggs in one large pot he cooked two eggs at a time in a frying pan, turning them to the taste of each soldier. He baked like a housewife satisfying her young husband; at lunch and dinner there was pie or cake, and often both. He went to great lengths. He taught the K.P.&amp;#039;s how to make the toast come out right. He traded excess food for spices in Japanese stores. He rubbed paprika and garlic on the chickens. He even made pastries to cover such staples as corn beef hash and meat and vegetable stew. It all seemed to be wasted. In the beginning the men might have noticed these improvements, but after a period they took them for granted. It did not matter how he worked to satisfy them; they trudged through the chow line with their heads down, nodding coolly at him, and they ate without comment. He would hang around the tables after the meal, noticing how much they consumed, and what they discarded; he would wait for compliments, but the soldiers seemed indifferent. They seemed to eat without tasting the food. In their faces he saw mirrored the distaste with which he had once stared at cooks. The honeymoon was ended. The pleasure he took in the kitchen and himself curdled. He became aware again of his painful desire to please people, to discharge responsibility, to be a man. When he had been a child, tears had come into his eyes at a cross word, and he had lived in an atmosphere where his smallest accomplishment was warmly praised. He was the sort of young man, he often thought bitterly, who was accustomed to the attention and the protection of women. He would have thrown away all he possessed -- the love of his wife, the love of his mother, the benefits of his education, the assured financial security of entering his father&amp;#039;s business -- if he had been able just once to dig a ditch as well as the most ignorant farmer. Instead, he was back in the painful unprotected days of his first entrance into the Army. Once again the most casual actions became the most painful, the events which were most to he taken for granted grew into the most significant, and the feeding of the men at each meal turned progressively more unbearable. So Sanford Carter came full circle. If he had once hated the cooks, he now hated the troops. At mealtimes his face soured into the belligerent scowl with which he had once believed cooks to be born. And to himself he muttered the age-old laments of the housewife: how little they appreciated what he did. Finally there was an explosion. He was approached one day by Corporal Taylor, and he had come to hate Taylor, because Taylor was the natural leader of the detachment and kept the other men endlessly amused with his jokes. Taylor had the ability to present himself as inefficient, shiftless, and incapable, in such a manner as to convey that really the opposite was true. He had the lightest touch, he had the greatest facility, he could charm a geisha in two minutes and obtain anything he wanted from a supply sergeant in five. Carter envied him, envied his grace, his charmed indifference; then grew to hate him. Taylor teased Carter about the cooking, and he had the knack of knowing where to put the knife. &amp;quot;Hey, Carter,&amp;quot; he would shout across the mess hall while breakfast was being served, &amp;quot;you turned my eggs twice, and I asked for them raw.&amp;quot; The men would shout with laughter. Somehow Taylor had succeeded in conveying all of the situation, or so it seemed to Carter, insinuating everything, how Carter worked and how it meant nothing, how Carter labored to gain their affection and earned their contempt. Carter would scowl, Carter would answer in a rough voice, &amp;quot;Next time I&amp;#039;ll crack them over your head.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You crack &amp;#039;em, I&amp;#039;ll eat &amp;#039;em,&amp;quot; Taylor would pipe back, &amp;quot;but just don&amp;#039;t put your fingers in &amp;#039;em.&amp;quot; And there would be another laugh. He hated the sight of Taylor. It was Taylor who came to him to get the salad oil. About twenty of the soldiers were going to have a fish fry at the geisha house; they had bought the fish at the local marker, but they could not buy oil, so Taylor was sent as the deputy to Carter. He was charming to Carter, he complimented him on the meal, he clapped him on the back, he dissolved Carter to warmth, to private delight in the attention, and the thought that he had misjudged Taylor. Then Taylor asked for the oil. Carter was sick with anger. Twenty men out of the thirty in the detachment were going on the fish fry. It meant only that Carter was considered one of the ten undesirables. It was something he had known, but the proof of knowledge is always more painful than the acquisition of it. If he had been alone his eyes would have clouded. And he was outraged at Taylor&amp;#039;s deception. He could imagine Taylor saying ten minutes later, &amp;quot;You should have seen the grease job I gave to Carter. I&amp;#039;m dumb, but man, he&amp;#039;s dumber.&amp;quot; Carter was close enough to giving him the oil. He had a sense of what it would mean to refuse Taylor, he was on the very edge of mild acquiescence. But he also had a sense of how he would despise himself afterward. &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; he said abruptly, his teeth gritted, &amp;quot;you can&amp;#039;t have it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What do you mean we can&amp;#039;t have it?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I won&amp;#039;t give it to you.&amp;quot; Carter could almost feel the rage which Taylor generated at being refused. &amp;quot;You won&amp;#039;t give away a lousy five gallons of oil to a bunch of G.I.&amp;#039;s having a party?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sick and tired,&amp;quot; Carter began. &amp;quot;So am I.&amp;quot; Taylor walked away. Carter knew he would pay for it. He left the K.P.&amp;#039;s and went to change his sweat-soaked work shirt, and as he passed the large dormitory in which most of the detachment slept he could hear Taylor&amp;#039;s high-pitched voice. Carter did not bother to take off his shirt. He returned instead to the kitchen, and listened to the sound of men going back and forth through the hall and of a man shouting with rage. That was Hobbs, a Southerner, a big man with a big bellowing voice. There was a formal knock on the kitchen door. Taylor came in. His face was pale and his eyes showed a cold satisfaction. &amp;quot;Carter,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;the men want to see you in the big room.&amp;quot; Carter heard his voice answer huskily. &amp;quot;If they want to see me, they can come into the kitchen.&amp;quot; He knew he would conduct himself with more courage in his own kitchen than anywhere else. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll be here for a while.&amp;quot; Taylor closed the door, and Carter picked up a writing board to which was clamped the menu for the following day. Then he made a pretense of examining the food supplies in the pantry closet. It was his habit to check the stocks before deciding what to serve the next day, but on this night his eyes ranged thoughtlessly over the canned goods. In a corner were seven five-gallon tins of salad oil, easily enough cooking oil to last a month. Carter came out of the pantry and shut the door behind him. He kept his head down and pretended to be writing the menu when the soldiers came in. Somehow there were even more of them than he had expected. Out of the twenty men who were going to the party, all but two or three had crowded through the door. Carter took his time, looked up slowly. &amp;quot;You men want to see me?&amp;quot; he asked flatly. They were angry. For the first time in his life he faced the hostile expressions of many men. It was the most painful and anxious moment he had ever known. &amp;quot;Taylor says you won&amp;#039;t give us the oil,&amp;quot; someone burst out. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s right, I won&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; said Carter. He tapped his pencil against the scratchboard, tapping it slowly and, he hoped, with an appearance of calm. &amp;quot;What a stink deal,&amp;quot; said Porfirio, a little Cuban whom Carter had always considered his friend. Hobbs, the big Southerner, stared down at Carter. &amp;quot;Would you mind telling the men why you&amp;#039;ve decided not to give us the oil?&amp;quot; he asked quietly. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Cause I&amp;#039;m blowed if I&amp;#039;m going to cater to you men. I&amp;#039;ve catered enough,&amp;quot; Carter said. His voice was close to cracking with the outrage he had suppressed for so long, and he knew that if he continued he might cry. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the acting mess sergeant,&amp;quot; he said as coldly as he could, &amp;quot;and I decide what goes out of this kitchen.&amp;quot; He stared at each one in turn, trying to stare them down, feeling mired in the rut of his own failure. They would never have dared this approach to another mess sergeant. &amp;quot;What crud,&amp;quot; someone muttered. &amp;quot;You won&amp;#039;t give a lousy five-gallon can of oil for a G.I. party,&amp;quot; Hobbs said more loudly. &amp;quot;I won&amp;#039;t. That&amp;#039;s definite. You men can get out of here.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Why, you lousy little snot,&amp;quot; Hobbs burst out, &amp;quot;how many five-gallon cans of oil have you sold on the black market?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never sold any.&amp;quot; Carter might have been slapped with the flat of a sword. He told himself bitterly, numbly, that this was the reward he received for being perhaps the single honest cook in the whole United States Army. And he even had time to wonder at the obscure prejudice which had kept him from selling food for his own profit. &amp;quot;Man, I&amp;#039;ve seen you take it out, Hobbs exclaimed. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve seen you take it I to the market.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I took food to trade for spices,&amp;quot; Carter said hotly. There was an ugly snicker from the men. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t mind if a cook sells,&amp;quot; Hobbs said. &amp;quot;Every man has his own deal in this Army. But a cook ought to give a little food to a G.I. if he wants it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Tell him,&amp;quot; someone said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s bull,&amp;quot; Taylor screeched. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve seen Carter take butter, eggs, every damn thing to the market.&amp;quot; Their faces were red, they circled him. &amp;quot;I never sold a thing,&amp;quot; Carter said doggedly. &amp;quot;And I&amp;#039;m telling you,&amp;quot; Hobbs said, &amp;quot;that you&amp;#039;re a two-bit crook. You been raiding that kitchen, and that&amp;#039;s why you don&amp;#039;t give to us now.&amp;quot; Carter knew there was only one way he could possibly answer if he hoped to live among these men again. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s a goddamn lie,&amp;quot; Carter said to Hobbs. He laid down the scratchboard, he flipped his pencil slowly and deliberately to one corner of the room, and with his heart aching he lunged toward Hobbs. He had no hope of beating him. He merely intended to fight until he was pounded unconscious, advancing the pain and bruises he would collect as collateral for his self-respect. To his indescribable relief Porfirio darted between them, held them apart with the pleased ferocity of a small man breaking up a fight. &amp;quot;Now, stop this! Now, stop this!&amp;quot; he cried out. Carter allowed himself to be pushed back, and he knew that he had gained a point. He even glimpsed a solution with some honor. He shrugged violently to free himself from Porfirio. He was in a rage, and yet it was a rage he could have ended at any instant. &amp;quot;All right, you men,&amp;quot; he swore, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll give you the oil, but now that we&amp;#039;re at it, I&amp;#039;m going to tell you a thing or two.&amp;quot; His face red, his body perspiring, he was in the pantry and out again with a five-gallon tin. &amp;quot;Here,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;you better have a good fish fry, &amp;#039;cause it&amp;#039;s the last good meal you&amp;#039;re going to have for quite a while. I&amp;#039;m sick of trying to please you. You think I have to work\u2014&amp;quot; he was about to say, my fingers to the bone\u2014&amp;quot;well, I don&amp;#039;t. From now on, you&amp;#039;ll see what chow in the Army is supposed to be like.&amp;quot; He was almost hysterical. &amp;quot;Take that oil. Have your fish fry.&amp;quot; The fact that they wanted to cook for themselves was the greatest insult of all. &amp;quot;Tomorrow I&amp;#039;ll give you real Army cooking.&amp;quot; His voice was so intense that they backed away from him. &amp;quot;Get out of this kitchen,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;None of you has any business here.&amp;quot; They filed out quietly, and they looked a little sheepish. Carter felt weary, he felt ashamed of himself, he knew he had not meant what he said. But half an hour later, when he left the kitchen and passed the large dormitory, he heard shouts of raucous laughter, and he heard his name mentioned and then more laughter. He slept badly that night, he was awake at four, he was in the kitchen by five, and stood there white-faced and nervous, waiting for the K.P.&amp;#039;s to arrive. Breakfast that morning landed on the men like a lead bomb. Carter rummaged in the back of the pantry and found a tin of dehydrated eggs covered with dust, memento of a time when fresh eggs were never on the ration list. The K.P.&amp;#039;s looked at him in amazement as he stirred the lumpy powder into a pan of water. While it was still half-dissolved he put it on the fire. While it was still wet, he took it off. The coffee was cold, the toast was burned, the oatmeal stuck to the pot. The men dipped forks into their food, took cautious sips of their coffee, and spoke in whispers. Sullenness drifted like vapors through the kitchen. At noontime Carter opened cans of meat and vegetable stew. He dumped them into a pan and heated them slightly. He served the stew with burned string beans and dehydrated potatoes which tasted like straw. For dessert the men had a single lukewarm canned peach and cold coffee. So the meals continued. For three days Carter cooked slop, and suffered even more than the men. When mealtime came he left the chow line to the K.P.&amp;#039;s and sat in his room, perspiring with shame, determined not to yield and sick with the determination. Carter won. On the fourth day a delegation of men came to see him. They told him that indeed they had appreciated his cooking in the past, they told him that they were sorry they had hurt his feelings, they listened to his remonstrances, they listened to his grievances, and with delight Carter forgave them. That night, for supper, the detachment celebrated. There was roast chicken with stuffing, lemon meringue pie and chocolate cake. The coffee burned their lips. More than half the men made it a point to compliment Carter on the meal. In the weeks which followed the compliments diminished, but they never stopped completely. Carter became ashamed at last. He realized the men were trying to humor him, and he wished to tell them it was no longer necessary. Harmony settled over the kitchen. Carter even became friends with Hobbs, the big Southerner. Hobbs approached him one day, and in the manner of a farmer talked obliquely for an hour. He spoke about his father, he spoke about his girlfriends, he alluded indirectly to the night they had almost fought, and finally with the courtesy of a Southerner he said to Carter, &amp;quot;You know, I&amp;#039;m sorry about shooting off my mouth. You were right to want to fight me, and if you&amp;#039;re still mad I&amp;#039;ll fight you to give you satisfaction, although I just as soon would not.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, I don&amp;#039;t want to fight with you now,&amp;quot; Carter said warmly. They smiled at each other. They were friends. Carter knew he had gained Hobbs&amp;#039;s respect. Hobbs respected him because he had been willing to fight. That made sense to a man like Hobbs. Carter liked him so much at this moment that he wished the friendship to be more intimate. &amp;quot;You know,&amp;quot; he said to Hobbs, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s a funny thing. You know I really never did sell anything on the black market. Not that I&amp;#039;m proud of it, but I just didn&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; Hobbs frowned. He seemed to be saying that Carter did not have to lie. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t hold it against a man,&amp;quot; Hobbs said, &amp;quot;if he makes a little money in something that&amp;#039;s his own proper work. Hell, I sell gas from the motor pool. It&amp;#039;s just I also give gas if one of the G.I.&amp;#039;s wants to take the jeep out for a joy ride, kind of.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, but I never did sell anything.&amp;quot; Carter had to explain. &amp;quot;If I ever had sold on the black market, I would have given the salad oil without question.&amp;quot; Hobbs frowned again, and Carter realized he still did not believe him. Carter did not want to lose the friendship which was forming. He thought he could save it only by some further admission. &amp;quot;You know,&amp;quot; he said again, &amp;quot;remember when Porfirio broke up our fight? I was awful glad when I didn&amp;#039;t have to fight you.&amp;quot; Carter laughed, expecting Hobbs to laugh with him, but a shadow passed across Hobbs&amp;#039;s face. &amp;quot;Funny way of putting it,&amp;quot; Hobbs said. He was always friendly thereafter, but Carter knew that Hobbs would never consider him a friend. Carter thought about it often, and began to wonder about the things which made him different. He was no longer so worried about becoming a man; he felt that to an extent he had become one. But in his heart he wondered if he would ever learn the language of men. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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