Someday . . . !

By Robert Balcomb ©2005

Joe was kind of a simple guy, having an average education, up through high school. Well, almost. He had dropped out of school during tenth grade, not being able to cope with all the trouble with the other students.

An only child, he had lost both parents in an accident, and was shuffled from one overburdened relative to another until he entered high school. At the age of sixteen he was on his own. During those “shuffle” years he learned how to fend for himself from the treatment by various recalcitrant relatives and bullies who saw him as someone to shove around. One decisive day Joe learned that he was tougher than everyone thought, starting when some of the worst of the town bullies cornered him in a garage and began to really work him over. Up to that point he had just taken the torment and let them have their fun until they tired of it and left him sobbing in a corner. But this time it happened: all the loss of family, all the shuffling back and forth among mean and unfriendly relatives, all the teasing and bullying by city kids—he did the unexpected. He brought his rage clear up from the floor and caught the biggest kid full in the nose, smashing it. The others, seeing their leader bloody with pain and shock, and seeing Joe facing them with “OK-punks-which-one-wants-it-next!” on his face, turned and ran. Joe grabbed the shocked and bleeding bully and kicked him out of the garage, kicked him down the driveway, and kicked him out into the street, where all the other kids saw their supposed hero holding his battered face in his hands and screaming in agony, “I’ll get you! Someday I’ll get you!”

From then on, they all left him alone, especially since the family of the boy with the broken nose had to move to another state because Father had been transferred, but the gang thought it was because the boy was afraid of Joe enough for them to run away.

So Joe was safely a tenth grader. However now because of his newly found strength and nerve, he put up too much of a front. Juniors and especially seniors lord it over freshmen to sometimes a very high degree, although most kids weather it out figuring that they will soon be in the higher seat and will have their own freshmen to push around. But Joe fought back too hard, causing everyone to resent his hostility and avoid him, and he decided finally to leave school and hitch-hike to a larger city, where he could become anonymous in the multitudes, where he could stay in the shadows and evade the authorities. In time he gained a simple job washing dishes and sweeping floors in an up-scale restaurant, but that didn’t ask questions as long as he did his work and they could avoid legalities such as perks and paperwork. The owner, Mr. Peccaloni, grew to like Joe enough to give him more and more responsibilities.

Inevitably Joe met a co-worker waitress named Jenny. In time they found an itinerant minister who married them for beer money, and the newlyweds moved into her single-room-bath-down-the-hall. Jenny didn’t question his past, she just loved him. Together they made enough to live on at least sparingly, and through the months enough cooks and chefs taught Joe so well that he could hold his own in a kitchen. At age nineteen he became salad and dessert chef and at twenty-one became head chef, making Jenny head of the serving staff. They were then able to afford a three-room apartment with its own bathroom.

Through the years, food editors of newspapers and gourmet magazines began asking questions about that young genius with the golden spoon. Who was he? Where did he come from? What famous cooking school did he attend? Also, Mr. Peccaloni realized that he would eventually have to set Joe up with the requisite retirement and medical programs, but since he knew that Joe had no high school diploma and especially no Social Security, that it was actually illegal for Joe to be there at all, in order for him to stay out of trouble himself he somehow manipulated his books to hide Joe from the accountants. He paid him well enough to get by without any legal perks, allowing that Jenny was well paid and had her own perks, so things went well. All was right with the world.

A man named Martin Grossman, self-made over many trampled bodies, had himself been cheated out of a partnership in a company he had started a few years ago and never got over it—Vengeance was his middle name. He began to gobble up companies that had started out in a garage and through the years had typically grown beyond themselves to the point where they were in financial trouble. He would reorganize and streamline them, sometimes combine them into one company, strip them down to a skeleton crew and sell them at an obscenely inflated price. Such concerns are looked down on in the business world, but ala Cash McCall make millions regardless.

Shortly after Joe had gained the badge of Master Chef, Mr. Peccaloni suddenly died and the restaurant was taken over by this very same Martin Grossman. One day Grossman was dining at Joe’s restaurant and was so pleased with the meal that he asked to see the chef. He looked at Joe for a moment and growled through his cigar, “Ain’t I seen you somewheres before? Never forget a face.” Joe said, “I don’t think so.” “Well, guess you’re right,” said Grossman and went on to congratulate him for a meal “Fit for a King!”

Martin Grossman returned to his office, thinking, thinking. . . .

Joe finished the day’s business at the restaurant and went home. Slowly that night a vision began to form in his mind. “Wait a minute. I think I remember something. Wasn’t he the one. . . ?

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