“Where is Joe-Bob?” asked the head chef.
“He quit,” said Jack. “Walked off the job. I tried to stop him.”
The head chef nodded thoughtfully. “Tried to stop him, eh? Well, young fella, I like the way you think. You have the right stuff – you’ll go far in this organisation.”
Jack did further trenchcoat wringings, but behind his back.
“I’m going to promote you,” said the head chef, “to head dryer-up.”
“Well,” said Jack, “thank you very much.”
“Not a bit of it,” said the head chef. “Loyalty is always rewarded. It’s the American Dream.”
By lunchtime Jack had gained the post of assistant to the head chef. He had risen rapidly through the ranks, from dishwasher to dryer-up to plate stacker to kitchen porter (general) to kitchen porter (specific) to head kitchen porter to rotisserie loader to supervising rotisserie loader to assistant to the head chef.
There had been some unpleasantness involved.
There had in fact been considerable unpleasantness involved and no small degree of violence, threats and menace. And a few knocks to himself. Jack sported a shiner in the right-eye department; the kitchen porter (general) was beginning a course of Dimac.
Jack’s role as assistant to the head chef gave him a degree of authority over the lower orders of kitchen staff. Who were now a group of boisterous Puerto Ricans whom Jack had seen dealing in certain restricted substances outside the kitchen in the alleyway and asked in with the promise of cash in hand and free chicken for lunch.
Jack stood next to the head chef, decapitating chickens.
The chickens, all plucked and pink and all but ready, barring the decerebration, came out of a little hatch in the wall, plopped onto a conveyor belt and were delivered at regulated intervals to the chopping table for head-removal and skewering for the rotisserie.
Jack put a certain vigour into his work.
“You go at those chickens as one possessed,” the head chef observed after lunch (of chicken).
“What do you do with all the heads?” Jack asked as he tossed yet another into a swelling bin.
“They go back to the chicken factory,” said the head chef. “They get ground up and fed to more chickens.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Jack, parting another head from its scrawny neck.
“It’s called recycling,” said the head chef. “It’s ecologically sound. I’d liken it to the nearest thing to perpetual motion that you can imagine.”
“Chickens fed on chicken heads,” said Jack, shaking his.
“Well, think about it,” said the head chef. “If you want a chicken to taste really chickeny, then the best thing to feed that chicken on would have to be another chicken. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?”
Jack looked up from his chopping and said, “I can’t argue with that.”
“Mind you,” said the head chef as he drizzled a little oil of chicken over a headless chicken and poked a rotisserie skewer up its backside, “chickens are a bit of a mystery to me.”
“Really?” Jack nodded and chopped.
“I don’t know where they all come from,” said the head chef.
“They come out of eggs,” said Jack. “Of this I am reasonably sure.”
“Do they?” said the head chef. “Of that I’m not too sure.”
“I think it’s an established fact,” said Jack.
“Oh really?” said the head chef. “Well, then you explain this to me. Every day, in Los Angeles alone, in the Golden Chicken Diners, we sell about ten thousand chickens.”
“Ten thousand?” said Jack.
“Easily,” said the head chef. “We’ll do five hundred here every day and there’s twenty Golden Chicken Diners in Los Angeles.”
Jack whistled.
“And well may you whistle,” said the head chef. “That’s ten thousand, but that’s only the tip of the chicken-berg. Every restaurant sells chicken, every supermarket sells chicken, every sandwich stall sells chicken, every hotel sells chicken. Do I need to continue?”
“Can you?” asked Jack.
“Very much so,” said the head chef. “It’s millions of chickens every day. And that’s only in Los Angeles. Not the rest of the USA. Not the rest of the whole wide world.”
“That must add up to an awful lot of chickens,” said Jack, shuddering at the thought.
“I think it’s beyond counting,” said the head chef. “I don’t think they have a name for such a number.”
“It’s possibly a google,” said Jack.
The head chef looked at Jack and coughed. “Possibly,” he said. “But where do they all come from?”
“Out of eggs,” said Jack. “That’s where.”
“But the eggs are for sale,” said the head chef. “We do eggs here. Again, at least five hundred a day. And that’s just here, there’s –”
“I see where you’re heading,” said Jack. “Googles of eggs everyday.”
“Exactly,” said the head chef.
“Well, the way I see it,” said Jack, “or at least what I’ve always been led to believe, is that fertilised eggs, that is those that come from a chicken that has been shagged by a cockerel, become chickens. Unfertilised eggs, which won’t hatch, are sold as eggs.”
“You are wise beyond your years,” said the head chef, “but it won’t work. The numbers don’t tie up. Unfertilised eggs, fine – battery chickens will turn those out every day for years. Until they’re too old to reproduce, then they get ground up and become chicken feed. But think about this – to produce the fertilised eggs you’d need an awful lot of randy roosters. Billions and googles of them, shagging away day and night, endlessly.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” said Jack.
“What, you’d like a job shagging chickens?”
“I would if I were a rooster. And it’s probably the only job they can get.”
“Well, it doesn’t pan out,” said the head chef. “I’ve never heard of any chicken stud farms where millions of roosters shag billions of chickens every day. There’s no such place.”
“There must be,” said Jack.
“Then tell me where.”
“I’m new to these parts.”
“Well, don’t they have chickens where you come from?”
Jack remembered certain anal-probings. “Well, they do …” he said.
“It doesn’t work,” said the head chef, oiling up another chicken and giving it a little flick with his fat forefinger. “Doesn’t work. There’s simply too many chickens being eaten every day. You’d need a stud farm the size of Kansas. It just doesn’t work.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I have to agree that you’ve given me food for thought.” And he laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” asked the head chef.
“Sorry,” said Jack. “So what is your theory? I suspect that you do have a theory.”
“Actually I do,” said the head chef, “but I’m not going to tell you because you wouldn’t believe it. You’d laugh.”
“You’d be surprised at what I believe,” said Jack. “And what I’ve seen. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” Which rang a bell somewhere.[27]
“Well, you wouldn’t believe this.”
“I’ll just bet you I would. Trust me, I’m an assistant chef.”
“Well, fair enough,” said the head chef. “After all, you are in the trade, and clearly destined for great things. But don’t pass on what I say to those Puerto Rican wetbacks – they’ll only go selling it to the Weekly World News.”
Jack raised his cleaver and prepared to bring it down.
“They are not of this world,” said the head chef.
Jack brought his cleaver down and only just missed taking his finger off.