China Man

Something just didn’t sit right. We had a mean chef. By the fourth day, I’d traveled all over the island. Every time I went somewhere new the natives offered me juice. I figured out that the island had a special juice. It had an orange tang, pineapple, mango and strawberry taste to it. The juice flowed smoothly and cured any thirst. I loved drinking that juice. I brought it to Kell’s attention that China man, our chef/door man/manager/head of security was now watering down our juice. They conserve on everything we figured. She laughed at my observations. If it wasn’t enough that we’d been bamboozled to stay in a shoddy room with vermin and mold, they didn’t even serve us the real food. On certain days they served powdered eggs. I had pet milk for my cereal. And there were always ants on our croissants. I don’t even want to know what that meat was.
We started watching China man closer. He was a fairly built man in about his late 50s. China man always walked around with a terrible hacking cough. He fussed at all three of the wait staff. He just kept a mean face everywhere he went. He was a real grouchy old man. Sometimes he would speak to us and hold a great conversation, asking us how we slept that night and what we planned to do for the day. Then other times he would wave us off as if to say don’t bother him today.
We’d walk up on him sometimes and catch him knocked out, cold sleeping with his feet up in a chair.
I started to beef with China man because he fussed about cooking for us one night. The thing was, Monday Kell and I asked him to cook. He cooked but we didn’t show up for dinner. He talked about us and said he wouldn’t cook anymore for us. We didn’t have a clue that he cooked exclusively for us. We thought other people were going to eat too. But, no, we had to make a special request. We reneged on our request. We apologized. He had been mad ever since.
From then, I didn’t want to mess with China man. He was a mean, grouchy old man.
I stopped holding conversations with him. I stopped eating his powdered eggs in the morning and switched to cereal. But Kell didn’t. She kept going to breakfast and smiling. As the days went on China man grew quieter. He just shooed the wait staff around a little more. But he leaned on tables a little more.
Until finally I asked Kell, why China man wasn’t his usual self. She told me that his kidneys were failing and he needed a transplant. We found him sleeping all the time because the dialysis made him tired. He was on the list for a kidney transplant. The treatments made him have short patience.
China man used to be a chef on a cruise line and in the military. He had seen many beautiful places by traveling all over the world. He’d met all kinds of different people. He was once a very well respected man.
But turns out, you never know what the other man’s dealing with. I knew he wanted to hold on to that last bit of respect. When I saw him leaning in the security booth,
I became a bit more understanding.