CHAPTER FIVE   THE SNACK BAR

Nutrition classes were suspended for the duration of the emergency.

“You’ll learn more through actual experience now,” Miss Pearson told them, “than I could teach you in many lessons.”

Kitty spent as much time as possible during the next three days helping to feed the homeless cannery workers and their families. Tuesday evening she was much too weary to go to the regular USO party, and so she had no opportunity to see Brad till the following Saturday.

By that time her excitement over the fire had cooled, and she was afraid he would think her silly to accuse the strange sailor of having anything to do with it. A score of times she had heard her father say, “When in doubt say nothing.” So she wisely followed his advice.

There was so much work to be done in the closing days of the nutrition class that she had no time to think of anything else. The course had opened up to her a whole new world of practical interest.

“I can’t believe we’ve learned so much in two weeks,” she said to Lana and Vera.

“I’m surely glad Miss Pearson taught us every day, instead of once a week as they do in some places,” said Vera.

“I’ll say,” agreed Lana. “It’s much better to do it in two weeks instead of ten.”

“And it’s been so much fun, too,” said Kitty. “Only think of the places we’ve visited—packing plants, canneries, bakeries, restaurant kitchens. It’s so interesting to learn about all the food industries around this part of the country.”

“I’ve got a whole notebook full of recipes, and ideas about food I can put to good use when my Jim comes back from Italy,” said Vera.

“Huh,” laughed Kitty, “I don’t have to wait for anybody to come back.”

Lana laughed too. “That’s right. You have a dad and little brother to experiment on right now.”

On the last evening, as they were going over to class, Kitty said to her two pals, “Strange, but I don’t feel a bit nervous over the exam.”

“It’s been so practical and interesting there’s no sense in anyone being nervous,” Vera agreed.

“I wish I felt as certain as you two,” said Lana, who was still poring over her tables of vitamins and caloric values.

At this final meeting all except three members of the class signed up to go on with the Canteen work, though Kitty and her two friends were the only ones from Palmetto Island. Kitty felt a real glow of pride when she received her certificate at the conclusion of the course. Each member of the class was also given a recipe book to help with her own home menus.

The Canteen course that followed immediately under Mrs. Evans gave quite a different kind of instruction. The brief experience they had already had in emergency feeding made them keenly appreciative of all the phases of the Canteen instruction. Step by step they discussed all the angles of the work; planning menus for large scale feeding, food preparation, and here the course they had just taken was of invaluable aid. They also discussed methods of food service and how to keep a Canteen orderly and spotless. Kitty was one of the group who received some practical experience in serving food at the blood donation center twice a week.

Two days before this course ended there was a railroad wreck twenty-five miles from town. Kitty went with the mobile canteen to supply food for the rescue crew who were working to clear the wounded from the wreck. It happened to be Hazel Dawson’s day off, and she, too, went in the Red Cross station wagon, and worked like a trooper, giving first aid to the wounded.

“Tired?” asked Hazel gently as they were riding home in the Red Cross car at ten o’clock that night.

“I didn’t know I was tired till I sat down,” Kitty admitted. “But Hazel, isn’t it wonderful to be able to help people at a time like this?”

“There’s nothing in life quite so wonderful. You have the spirit of a real Canteen worker, Kitty. It’s a privilege to feed men’s bodies when they’re hungry, but it’s still more wonderful to give comfort to their souls and anxious minds as I saw you doing several times today.”

Kitty had had no greater sense of pride when she donned her cap and gown at graduation than she felt the day she was entitled to wear her Canteen uniform the first time. She was going over to Bayport to meet a troop train with several of the workers.

The Belgian blue poplin dress made her bright eyes seem all the bluer. Her heart was beating proudly when she arranged her cap behind the auburn hair rolled softly into a pompadour. She had a feeling of real pride in those red crosses on her pocket and the white band of her cap. Some day she meant to earn service bars, too. Mrs. Evans wore a chevron and three bars, representing seven years of service.

Although the girls did not wear their uniforms at the Snack Bar, Kitty donned the official apron she was allowed to wear there on the first evening after finishing her course. Though she had done much volunteer work at the bar she felt somewhat elated tonight over being a full-fledged Canteen worker.

She was in an expansive mood and said as she and Judy were slicing bread for sandwiches, “Let’s make ’em extra large, with plenty of stuffing just to celebrate our graduation.”

“You might make that special dressing you were telling me about,” Judy suggested.

“May I, Mrs. Evans?” Kitty asked.

“Of course. The boys always enjoy something different.”

Kitty had learned to make a tart creole sauce for sandwich filling from their cook in New Orleans, so she prepared a bowlful. By the time the boys began to drift into the hall the air was fragrant with coffee and chocolate, and trays of sandwiches were ready.

Brad, knowing it was Kitty’s initiation night, was one of the first bluejackets to plant his elbows on the counter and demand a sandwich.

“And a cupa cawfee, too, wench, and be snappy about it!” he said with mock gruffness.

She made a face at him as she turned to get the coffee.

After one bite of the sandwich Brad’s eyes bulged. “Oh boy! This tastes like something from Toni’s swanky joint in New Orleans.”

Kitty laughed in delight. “Our old cook used to work at Toni’s. She gave me lots of his secrets.”

Jimmy Barnes sat beside Brad taking huge bites of a sandwich. He enthusiastically added his praise to Brad’s. “Boy, but this is really seasoned up like home cooking.”

“About the best seasoning they give us up at the hospital is the shrimp creole.”

“And they only have that about twice a month,” added Jimmy in disgust.

Kitty’s curiosity stirred. Maybe this was her chance to learn something about the staff in the galley.

“Do you know the cooks very well?” she asked.

“Only a passing acquaintance,” said Brad. “Our Chief Commissary Steward is named Krome—an old timer at the job.”

“I saw a thin, dark-looking chap on the bus the other night with a crescent on his arm. Do you happen to know him?”

“Quite a number down there,” said Jimmy dubiously. “Only one I’ve talked to very often is a fair young chap, named Ned Miller.”

“There’s one named Punaro fits your description,” Brad told Kitty. “He empties wastebaskets on our floor.”

“Right young—about eighteen or nineteen?” Kitty persisted.

“About that. Only been in a few months. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I just happened to see him the other day on the bus.”

A few minutes later Brad and Jimmy went off to play a game of pingpong with some of the girls and for the next hour Kitty was very busy at the bar. Later during a lull in their business she glanced down the hall and noticed that Lieutenant Cary was playing chess with someone in the south corner of the room. They were about the only two who had not patronized the Snack Bar during the evening.

“What’s so interesting over there?” Brad’s teasing tone jolted Kitty out of her curious speculation.

“Who’s that playing chess with Lieutenant Cary?” she asked in a low tone.

Brad glanced to the south corner of the room and replied, “Krome.”

“You mean the head cook up at the hospital?”

“What’s so surprising about that?”

“Somehow I thought Lieutenant Cary would be too snippity to play chess with the cook.”

“Why Krome’s Chief Commissary Steward. Lieutenant Cary has no reason to be high-hat to him. He was in the service long before Cary ever thought of such a thing.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure.”

“But Dr. Cary is a lieutenant.”

“Just the same he’s only been in the service a few months. He’s one of the physicians recently recruited.”

“Oh, I see,” murmured Kitty in a significant tone. Then she asked, “Do you know anything about the cook?”

“What’s So Interesting There?” Brad Asked

Brad laughed. “I know he can dish up some mighty good chow on occasion.”

“He looks as though he didn’t object to good eating himself. He must weigh two hundred and twenty-five at least.” Kitty tried to make her tone seem trivial in case anyone else had overheard their conversation.

“I’ll be trotting along,” Brad said. “I promised to make a fourth for bridge over yonder.”

Kitty held his eyes a moment and lowered her voice to say, “There’s something I want to talk to you about when I have a chance.”

“I’ll see you home if you can get through before eleven. We can talk on the way up.”

“Fine,” she agreed.

Brad had scarcely taken his seat with the other players when Lieutenant Cary and Chief Krome came toward the bar.

Excitedly Kitty whispered to Judy, “Let me wait on them if they come here.”

Judy sent her a surprised look. “You’re welcome to them. I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Neither am I, in the way you think,” retorted Kitty with a laugh.

She thought what an odd pair they made as they came toward the Snack Bar. Lieutenant Cary was as lean and alert as a bloodhound, while the square-rigged Krome was almost a head shorter. Kitty would have felt curious about any man who was friendly with Lieutenant Cary, even if her curiosity had not already been stirred by one of Krome’s assistants, so that the association brought the Chief Steward under suspicion also.

Vera came out of the kitchen just as the two men straddled the stools at the counter and she took Lieutenant Cary’s order. Kitty’s hand was a little unsteady as she poured Krome’s cup of coffee.

“We have some special sandwiches tonight,” Judy explained to the two customers, “made by our new Canteen worker, Miss Kitty Carter.”

“I’ll take two,” Krome spoke up promptly.

When Kitty faced the head cook squarely he seemed such a hearty, good-natured sort her suspicions evaporated like the steam above his coffee cup.

“So you’re now a full-fledged Canteen worker.” Though Lieutenant Cary’s smile and words were friendly enough his tone held a slight cynicism.

“I wasn’t a bit prouder when I donned my cap and gown at graduation from college, than when I put on my uniform the first time,” she said frankly.

“They got something when they got you, young lady,” spoke up Krome warmly. “These sandwiches ain’t to be sneezed at.”

“Why, I’m thrilled that you think so! They tell me you can serve some very good things over at the hospital, and I can vouch for it myself the few times I’ve eaten there.”

“So you’re Chief Carter’s daughter?”

“And proud I am to have the honor.”

Krome finished the last crumb of his sandwich, and said, “How about giving me the recipe for that sandwich filling?”

Kitty looked disconcerted. “If you feed the boys on it at the hospital they may not want our sandwiches down here.”

“I’ll promise not to do that.”

Kitty laughed. “Oh, really, I wouldn’t be that selfish. You’re welcome to the recipe. And maybe you’d do me a favor in return.”

Krome looked surprised. “Me do you a favor?” he asked, indicating himself, then Kitty with his fat hand. Then he laughed as if it were a great joke.

“I heard the boys talking about your grand shrimp creole—and that they don’t get it often enough. How about giving me that recipe?”

“Oh, that? Sure. We’ll swap recipes then. I’ll bring it next time I come.”

When the men had gone Judy said with a sniff, “If you ever get a recipe out of him you’ll do better than Mrs. Evans has. He’s promised her several and never brought them.”

“Maybe he’ll pay more attention to my request if he wants a recipe from me.”

At ten-thirty when Kitty put on her light wrap to go home she was really tired. But how glowingly happy she felt at the realization that her job had been well done! Brad was waiting for her.

Though it was only March there was more than a hint of spring in the balmy night air, and the stars seemed close and warm in a sky like deep purple porcelain. Neither of them spoke while they walked the first block.

Then Brad said, “You wanted to ask me about something?”

“Yes, I did. But somehow it seems absurd to be suspicious of anyone on a night like this.”

“Well, forget it.” After an interval he asked, “Think you’re going to enjoy the Canteen work?”

“I’m crazy about it. But really it seems so little to do when there’s so much to be done.”

“It’s all the little bits put together that’s going to help us win this war.”

“And prepare us to live in a more wonderful peace afterward. It’s learning to work together that’s so important.”

“One person pulling in the wrong direction can upset the whole works.”

Kitty made no reply, but she thought he must know what was on her mind even before he added, “I figure you’ve been wondering why Krome and Cary seem so intimate.”

“You hit the nail on the head!”

“We’ve both put a big question mark behind Cary, and when we see Krome buddying with him he gets a question mark, too.”

“Not only Krome.”

“That chap, Punaro, you were asking about?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s he done?”

“I’ve hesitated a long time about mentioning it. It may seem I’m straining at a gnat.”

“Let’s have it,” he urged.

“You do hate to suspect people of being spies and saboteurs, especially when they’re right in the hospital with your own father.”

“All the more reason you shouldn’t take any chances.”

Quickly Kitty gave Brad an account of the little incident on the bus three weeks earlier. “It seems sort of absurd now that I’m talking about it for the first time to think the boy might have had anything to do with the fire at the oyster cannery, but that’s exactly what I have been thinking.”

“I don’t think your suspicions are unfounded.”

“If he used gasoline or kerosene to start that fire it was still fresh enough to flame up from those cigar ashes. And he certainly did get on the bus right at the cannery station.”

“If that fire was the work of saboteurs the objective was no doubt the shipyards, not the cannery.”

They walked on to Kitty’s door in silence. Then Brad said, “I sure wish you’d told me about this when it happened.”

“Why? I can’t see that we can do anything.”

“Maybe I could have managed to get a squint at Punaro’s shoes.”

“Punaro’s shoes? But the gasoline, or whatever it was, had already burned off.”

“But shell dust would still have been on the soles next morning.”

“Say—that’s so! I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You know all that land around the cannery has been built up of oyster shells,” explained Brad. “It was once only a marshy bog they tell me. If Punaro set that fire he’d be obliged to get shell dust on his shoes.”

“The only paved sidewalk runs along the street where the bus stopped,” explained Kitty. “I noticed that the day we went over to open the Canteen.”

“There’s a possibility I might still find out something.”

“How?”

“He probably stopped wearing those shoes with the burned stain. If he discarded them right away they’d probably still bear the evidence of shell dust.”

“And even if you found out he’d really been there, Brad, where would it take us?”

“I don’t know, but you can just be sure, Kit, I’m not going to let a thing like this slide by.”