3529. SEDLAK

SEDLAK (1967)

(Restaurant Onion Batter)

I knew him as Sedge and so did the

rest. Long face of 10th Street, constable

of Dog Horace, roomer in Elvery's brownstone.

All of this very nice. Times for a job were few.

That old boat, back then, was still in the harbor,

perched at the pier near the end of Canal, or close;

slightly listing and ever leaking oil, it stayed in place.

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'High School of Maritime Arts' or some such

ridiculous nomenclature it wore. Perhaps in its

way it was meant to signify by symbol a larger and

much broader world (of which) Sedlak never knew.

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Nor I, for that matter. We somehow both thrived on the

incidental manner of all this meaning. We sometimes

had a breakfast together, there, in some leaky

stateroom of our own imagining  -  coffee in cups,

some stinking roll of a restaurant onion batter.

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Yes, well, that restaurant was quite nearby  -  a

truckman's dinner really, for coffee and slop, for

truckers and dockhands, haulers and stevedores,

vagrants and bums and hookers too. We'd gotten

to know them all, altogether in that steamy pall,

restaurant onion batter. We sometimes went there,

but found more fun on the listing boat, before and

after hours, when, by stealth, it was ours alone.