Crackers

Olympia, 1989

Photo by Victor Freitas on Unsplash

My first real job was at a restaurant called Crackers, back in my hometown of Olympia. This late-night bistro was favored by wannabe sophisticates who thought eating fettuccine Alfredo while sipping white Zinfandel equalled culture.

To be fair, where I lived, it kind of did. Crackers was casual, but just classy enough to give people the illusion that they had temporarily escaped our mossy burg for slightly more glamorous destinations. The outdoor sign featured an image of Groucho Marx — all glasses, schnozz, moustache, and cigar — a nod to his famous film “Animal Crackers.”

This injected the place with a sense of zaniness — “Have fun” — it said with a pat on the back, while the Bill Evans/Billy Holiday jazz rotation conjured a very New York vibe that attemped to ape the such Broadway-adjancet spots like the legendary Sardis.

The gig was part-time (I was just finishing high school) but one that I enjoyed immensely. Of course, the actual labor was a grind (I was a lowly busboy) but restaurant work possesses an inherent thrill, and I loved being party to people partying — eating, drinking, and letting loose — at night, which is when I worked.

Our dish pit was populated by mohican-sporting, tattooed punk rockers who had hardcore blasting from the boombox at all times, and accepted each tub of dirty dishes with curled lips and growls. Theirs was an autonomous zone, but as long as you deposited the goods on the border, the dishes and cups were largely returned, steam blasted and chemically-scoured by the machine they all hatefully operated.

Crackers was one of those 80’s restaurants that had an open kitchen concept, which meant that the poor line cooks — dirtheads, bikers, and felons to a man — had to perform in front of a bar of patrons. Some of them embraced this by flipping and flaming dishes with great aplomb , while others glared and chafed under the eyes of the crowd.

These cats sported ratty pony tails, jailhouse tattoos, and the dead eyes of dudes who had done real time. Twice during my brief tenure at Crackers I witnessed cooks being dragged away from the line in cuffs for unspoken transgressions and the warrants that came with them.

A couple of weeks in we had a particularly busy night. It was early summer and there was a big musical going on at the local theater and everyone, it seemed, had come to Crackers before and after the show. It was never-ending frenzy of turnover, and — still new to the gig — I fell behind. By the time the last table had staggered out I had managed to clear every top, but it was an admittedly messy time.

When it came time to collect my 15% “tip out” from the waiter I was working under, Luke, my guy for the night, refused to give me a cent, despite the fact that he had to be marching with a good two hundred in cash, minimum. “Your performance was ‘feeble,'” he scoffed, before walking away with a bulging wallet.

I felt murder in my veins, because Luke sucked. He was four or five years my senior which put him in his mid-20’s. He was slim and handsome and sported a blondish Kenny G poodle perm which I guess was considered attractive at the time. I certainly didn’t rate his style as anything to envy. In fact, he was the smirking embodiment of all I despised about my town and the cheesedicks who called the shots at the time.

Thinking I may have had an ally in the owner, I approached Rob, a pockmarked, catastrophe of a cokehead who was always propped up against the bar with a cocktail clutched in his sausage fingers. Rob lived on a sailboat and wore nothing but shorts and baggy Hawaiian shirts to cover his rotting, bloated guts.

Imagine a late-stage Miami Vice extra washing up in a moldy, drizzle-soaked town in the Pacific Northwest and making a go of it in the tiny hospitality market. He had to be running from something or something back east or down south.

When I told him that, after this hyperhectic night, Luke had stiffed me, Rob took a drag from his Winston and a sip from his Jack Pepsi, before grunting: “Work harder next time. Or… deal with it yourself.”

Blood boiling, I made my way to my sister’s tiny apartment just a few blocks away, which she shared with her boyfriend, Dale. Like the cooks at Crackers, Dale was a rough customer — “the King of all Rednecks”, my friends and I joked — and his brother Shane was even harder. While both had spent plenty of time behind bars, Shane was a seasoned con with teardrop tattoos to let us all know just how many people had died on his watch (the answer was 3).

Both of these guys were wild and dangerous, from a notorious backwoods family famous for brawling, crashing cars, setting shit on fire, and always ending up afoul of the law.

“What’s up dude?” muttered the ginger-mulleted Dale, before rolling a joint the size of a bear’s dick. Still reeling, I vented the story, and as we all took pulls from the mega-spliff, I even included the name and description of the perp.

“Fuck that pussy,” hissed Shane.

He pulled down his muscle shirt, revealing a couple of lightning bolt “SS” tats splashed across his torso. “I’m Aryan Brotherhood, and you’re FAMILY. Dale and me are gonna fuck that faggot up.”

Dale nodded and grunted for good measure.

“Ah man,” I said, choking on a cloud of ganj while feeling ice shoot up and down my spine. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

I attempted to laugh and before catching Shane’s very serious, glacial eyes.

“Really,” I stammered. “I’ll take care of it. “

*

The week went on and I went on, drinking coffee, playing pinball, smoking more weed, listening to Guns and Roses, Metallica, and Jane’s Addiction, and mentally prepping for my upcoming year in Seattle, where I was enrolled on scholarship at a little frou-frou arts college.

The next Friday came around, and I returned to my weekend shift at the restaurant. All seemed normal, save the absence of a particular waiter.

“Where’s Luke?” I asked, refilling the ice basin.

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” said Linda, a plump, middle-aged waitress who had been there for years and always tipped me out well.

“He got jumped a few days ago. Someone beat the shit out of him. He’s in the hospital and out of commission for a while.”

I never saw Luke again, and while I didn’t mourn this, I also never took credit for what went down. I mean, I couldn’t. He was just that much of an egregious prick to where the line to beat his ass had to already reach around the block well before I even met him.

My sister’s thugs, while certainly loaded cannons, probably weren’t motivated or even bright enough to figure out who to take out and how do pull it off. The words they gave me over the blunt that night were just that: words.

Luke had surely pissed someone else off and suffered the consequences. After all, that kind of raw arrogance only goes unchecked for so long, especially in a smallish town in the Pacific Northwest.

At least in those days.

While I’m convinced the dogs who set upon him weren’t sicced by me, I still can’t help but wonder if Shane got a stick up his ass and struck Luke down out of some sense of tribal duty. Or maybe he just enjoyed beating the shit out of people, and I happened to give him an excuse to pursue his God-given passion and slam away.

I really doubt that’s how it played out, but water will always find the easiest way down the mountain, and when it washes away something you were already hoping would go, you just maybe, secretly, might want to take credit for it.

I mean, karma will always do its job, right? At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

A version of this was originally published at Rant Alley, 2021.