Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Mama Tilderman said it once; she said it a thousand times: "If a recipe isn't passed on, it dies." Slammed her cleaver on the block. She pulled a drag on her cigarette. "Now wash your hands. This is a kitchen not a toilet."

Mama Tilderman wasn't Roach's Mama. That woman was kidnapped by UFOs when Roach was just a tyke. One moment, she was there. The next moment, there were lights, and she was gone. 

No, Mama Tilderman was the woman who got some money from the city to take in childrens like Roach. That woman could cook. There never was a time when there wasn't a pot boiling. There was the smell of peanuts baking in clean sand ready to make his heart glad. There was a mess of greens getting ready to party in Roach's mouth on the way to his belly.

That was where he got his love of cooking and his love of philosophizing. 

Kant, Rousseau, Hume, all the big ones—amateurs. They weren't nothing on Mama Tilderman. How she could go on about the brother to liberation locked up a prisoner in Plato's cave. She could.

When he was sixteen, Mama Tilderman was taken up to live with the angels. This was remarkably similar to when the UFOs took Roach's mama but with more singing. Her first cousin put Mama Tilderman's black iron pots and pans and wooden spoons out at a yard sale. So Roach bought them with the change in his pocket. 

Well, he would'a bought them with the change in his pocket if he'd had change. 

So he took them. 

It was a shadowy time in his life. 

Roach's cooking was for shit in those days. He didn't know how to proof bread. He barely understood how to use okra to thicken stews. Marinate roadkill so it tasted like something other than roadkill. He kept trying to pick wild vegetables using his copy of Stalking The Wild Asparagus but he never cooked the milkweed long enough and it came out bitter.

But he kept trying in the encampment. Cooking on that old gas drum.

It was the old, equally homeless, dude living behind the dumpster on Fifth and Ninth that put Roach on the idea. He said, "Boy, you are tender as hell. You'd better always stay on the move, or you will get pickled. Or the fairies will get you. One or the other."

Roach took this advice to heart, and after scrimping and saving, he bought a Roach coach from an impound sale with the money he earned cleaning dishes.

He would have bought it with the money from washing dishes if he'd gotten paid before the restaurant owner was arrested for dealing cocaine. 

But no one wanted the coach on account of the bullet holes and blood stains, so he got it for free so they could make room on the lot. 

Duct tape fixed the holes, and that was that. 

He was free to drive around and set up shop wherever he wanted to sell his meals. 

Problem was no one came to buy. A little here. A little there. Mostly, Roach was turning overripe veg into fitters. Cattail roots and frog leg stew. 

Getting run from one town to another. 

Health inspectors had it in for him. His coach was clean.

Mostly.

Mainly.

Primarily.

The iron pot held the souls of his ancestors—someone's ancestors. It had soul, but he couldn't make the pot sing the way Mama Tilderman could before the angels got her. He couldn't find a place where he could park and be left in peace. So he kept on moving on, always looking for a way to taste food, not just eat it.

At least the fairies didn't get him, so Roach counted that as a win. 

But the towns he went to grew smaller and meaner. Everybody had hardened arteries and hard hearts. Not a single adventurous eater, not a person wanted a bite of flavor. 

Finally, he came to a desolate stretch of road with a weathered Welcome to Bonnetville sign. The number of residents had been patched over and over until someone had just given up.

Over the years, he'd come to learn what that meant: a dying town, dying taste buds. But it was where the road went. 

Anyway, he did see one positive sign: the blooming supermarket of the swamps. Baby cattails were growing thick as thieves by the side of the road. Naturally, he pulled over to yank the babies out of the ground to peel them for stew. He even caught some frogs. 

While this was going on, he chanced to smell the most delightful scent. It was light and sweet. He followed that smell all the way into the town of Bonnetville. Where on the top of a row of boring-ass-looking shops was a garden. A man in a bright yellow silk suit was watering lavender bushes. He looked down at Roach's coach and at Roach and said, "Are you here about the private chef position? I'm looking for someone to prepare lunch and dinner for my staff."

"Yes, I am here for that," said Roach, who had no idea what the man was talking about. But Roach was private. He was a chef.

The man put down his watering can. "Haven't actually been all that many applicants, but I would like to taste what you have on offer. My name's Stede Bonnet by the way."

Roach braced himself and gave his name. "I'm Roach."

"Excellent. Excellent." Bonnet beamed. "Hard to kill. That must come in handy for you when the freedom of those who live the life of the road comes into conflict with the uptight law types."

As a result of that speech, Roach formed the opinion that Bonnet was Rousseau as fuck, and nothing much changed that opinion as he learned more about him. Particularly when Roach found out Bonnet abandoned his kids in the middle of the night.

But that was in the future. At that moment, Roach somewhat desperately looked at what he had on hand to cook, which were baby cattails and frogs. Still, the lavender had brought him there, so in lavender would he trust. Roach lightly fried some frog bits with the tender white heart of the cattails, mixing in a little lavender and rosemary from the roof. As he cooked, he prayed to Mama Tilderman and tapped the side of the iron pan for good measure.

He gave Bonnet a plate and waited. Bonnet frowned. "Huh, it tastes like hope." 

Roach cleared his throat.

Bonnet's frown turned upside down. "You've got the job."

With that, Roach was hired to cook for the staff of the Best Revenge soap shop. However, he declined to make breakfast because that led to brunch and the fires of hell itself.  

The soap smelled delicious but tasted terrible. 

Roach tried and tried to recreate the taste of hope, but the food just passed through the mouth into the belly without that hopeful taste.

But he kept trying.

Chapter Text

Roach learned very quickly that the previous generations of the Bonnet family had dumped, as the store manager Buttons put it, "A fuckton of shite in the lake. So you must never gather foods from the lake or the river, not that much of anything grows."

"Nothing but death," agreed Wee John, who built things for Bonnet.

The webmaster Frenchie turned the whole thing into a song. He had a real flair for musicality. Roach learned very quickly that he should never attempt to beat him at Rochambeau. He always knew what Roach would pick.

Even though Bonnet gave Roach a budget for buying supplies, it was far more fun to drive around the hills and forage.

The Swede warned Roach that certain of the woods were sacred to a goat god named Elroy Rich. But Elroy Rich liked rum, which could be purchased in small bottles at the gas station. This left Roach free to pocket the rest of the money. 

On the day of Bonnet's big grand opening for his soap shop, Roach was foraging acorns from the oak trees. Naturally, acorns made him think of wild pigs, but try as he might, he couldn't catch any. But Roach was able to grind the acorns up and boil them down into some very nice grits, which Roach hated to mix with lizard meat. He really did. 

It was with some surprise that he arrived to cook up lunch to find Buttons asking for his culinary opinion and presenting him with a half dozen dead police officers. 

He had to admit, "They won't fit in the oven, but we could dig a pit behind the house and do a pig roast." Roach was already thinking that he'd need to gather sweet rushes, some onions, and maybe more acorns.

"That could work," Wee John agreed. It's a good thing we've already been tearing up the asphalt for repairs."

"We are not turning them into a feast," snapped Bonnet, which Roach thought was unnecessarily harsh.

Roach tried to be helpful. "Meat is meat."

"Eat the rich," agreed Buttons.

"We have no idea where they've been," Bonnet frowned. We don't know what they've eaten, either." 

"Um, team," said Oluwande, who clearly had not been in this sort of situation before, "You do all get that this is bad."

Roach didn't see the problem. Sure, it was a lot of meat to come into all at once, but if they smoked it properly and then froze it, it shouldn't be too hard to preserve.

Instead, it was decided that the bodies would be packed into Roach's coach and brought to Bonnet's packaging factory, where they could be rendered into smaller parts.

Roach was a little insulted since he knew how to bone bodies very well, but he agreed to transport the corpses. Though he took a little belly fat since it certainly wouldn't be missed.

They arrived at the factory at closing time. A small crowd of prospective eaters gathered outside his coach, wanting a meal. Something prepared by Roach. They wanted a taste after a long weary day at the grind.

Roach made the rest of the crew leave with the bodies, and he set to cooking. 

He boiled the acorn grits with molasses, sugar, and beans, and a little belly fat. He felt as if the spirit of his ancestors were making his hands nimble, keeping his cigarette ash out of the food, and making time fly as food went into the mouths and bellies of the elderly factory workers. 

"It tastes like freedom," said one old man with tears in his milky old eyes.

"No. Summer days when I was a boy," said another, dashing at a tear from his cheek.

"Same thing," said a third as he shoveled another mouthful into his mouth.

As Roach watched, the men lost ten years. The gray in their hair turned dark, and the heavy lines on their faces smoothed. 

Roach tasted his own mash and felt not so much younger as full of the juice of life. He'd never cooked anything quite so good. He had to wonder if the bit of sheriff was the key. Or the acorns from trees blessed by a goat god. 

Too soon, the dinner rush ended, and Roach went to see how the rest of the crew was getting on. They were still feeding bodies into the most beautiful machine that Roach had ever seen. He no longer felt insulted that they hadn't trusted his knife skills but humbled to be in the presence of a creation of so many whirling, spinning, slashing, chopping, and carving blades. 

"I want to marry this machine." Roach looked up at the gleaming thing with all the fierce love of his heart.

"It's no legal," said Buttons. 

"The heart wants what the heart wants." Roach patted a shiny piece of metal and whispered, "I would if I could." 

Since the machine didn't also vow its undying love for him, he joined the rest of the team in looking at the now-packaged pieces of police. 

There was a bit of a tussle over who got to dispose of the bits. Buttons took the majority, while Roach got enough to fit in his freezer.

Try as he might, he was unable to recapture the flavor of the freedom meal. Finally, he had to admit that it must have been the acorns, because it hadn't been the sheriff. 

But he kept trying to recapture the food feeling all the same.

Chapter Text

"Liars," Roach told the wild mustard greens growing on the banks of the Bonnet River. A small gray bird landed on a swaying stalk of bright yellow. "Ever since I got here, everyone has said nothing grows on the banks of this river because it's poisoned."

The little bird trilled back at Roach. He wasn't Buttons, so he didn't speak a word of bird, but Roach knew agreement when he heard it. 

He contemplated the wild tumble of greenery and tossed the remains of his roach into the river as an offering to the spirit of the water. Then he flicked open a large garbage bag and started gathering. Mustard greens boiled down to nothing, but they were tasty. He didn't completely clear what was there. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any mustard greens the next year. But when he had two garbage bags stowed in the coach, he went to see if there was anything else they said wasn't there.

Mostly dead trees, which he recognized as the trees that Bonnet paid the team to plant. But there was a date palm that was heavy with juicy fruit. "Liars," he told the tree. Patted the spot where someone had carved that JJ+OB inside a heart on the trunk. When he'd gotten the groove of the moment, he picked what was there and went back to the coach.

When he arrived at his spot out front of the Best Revenge, he saw a horrible sight. The worst kind. A taco truck had moved into the neighborhood down by the bus stop. 

He pointed with his boning knife at the taco truck and made a slicing gesture. He was too much of a professional to accidentally slit his own throat. He was feeling particularly Hobsian and would go Calvin on that taco truck's ass if it tried to move into his territory.

He couldn't see the chef in the other truck but assumed he got the message because the truck stayed where it was.

But they were like roaches. No sooner had the taco truck shown up, but a kebab truck drove up. Slowly grilled and marinated mystery meats on a spit. Roach longed for something as amazing as mystery meat on a spit. 

He did what he always did when he was depressed. He made a cake using some acorn flour and dates. He mixed his sorrow that with competition like that, he'd soon have to go. He baked his frowns, his sighs, and his sharp cuts. A few drops of blood went in, too.

He was putting the little cakes out to cool when he saw two strangers walk up to his coach. It was obvious who they were. He told the Tacos of Gold man, "What do you want?"

But it was the man from Anat's Joint who answered, "One of those cakes if they are ready." 

Roach did not have arsenic to sprinkle on the cakes, so he drizzled them with molasses. "Now they are ready." He took their money irritably and watched as they ate. Tears welled in the Anat's Joint man's eyes while the Taco of Gold man openly cried. "This is what it feels like to cook from the heart."

"This is what it feels like to leave your home because of troubles," said the Anat's Joint man more quietly.

"Yeah." Roach went to the tin where he had a rolled joint and lit up. He offered it to them. They each took a puff in turn, and so they each became the best of friends. Ruis and Anat were good additions to the street. "Basic Kant shit," Roach told Ruis when particularly high-flown.

The street became much more lively soon after. 

Every Friday, some locals would bring out instruments and play long into the night. Even with the fog rolling in off the sea, that didn't matter. Folks rolled out half barrels and burned broken bits of pallets. Ate and danced to keep warm.

As to the soup from the mustard greens, it tasted like surprise. Every batch. With just a touch of, "Fuck you liars, there is something here." 

"That's a bit long for a soup name," said Old Man Flores, who lived by the train tracks. 

Roach shrugged. The soup chose its own name. Old Man Flores danced with his sister-in-law Maria while Roach drummed on the side of his now empty pot. Frenchie played some melody that slapped and jangled, and Wee John sang a tune.

It was the sort of soup to get folks dancing. Even Bonnet, who showed the neighborhood kids how to do some dance called a pavane.

Roach reflected to Anat that he might not just be trying, but really getting somewhere with his food.

"We are where we should be," said Ruis, and there wasn't nothing in that philosophy that Roach wanted to argue with a bit.

Chapter Text

Bonnet arranged for the entire team to go on a trip to a far away land.

"It's an investment conference," insisted Frenchie wearily.

"A vacation," repeated Roach, who had heard of such things but had never done one, given that his house was his place of business and both were on wheels, and faraway lands where sort of just how he wandered.

"A working trip," grumbled Black Pete. He thunked another box into the Swede's van. "It'll take us days. It's thousands of miles away."

"Maybe not," said the Swede, the sort of mysterious smile that made Roach think of honey  butter. The kind that held a surprise. "My van is very fast." 

"Not supersonic," muttered Black Pete, as he shoved in another box.

"A vacation." Roach had it all mapped out in his head. In the same city, there were a couple of philosophically interesting events going on: Divine Drag and Torturefest. 

Also, the convention center was only a few blocks from a cranberry bog. Roach's curl pattern was all messed up by the salt air. His skin permanently sunburned from foraging. Even his toenails were poking through his shoes. It was time for something he'd heard Bonnet refer to as self-care.

Plus, there would be an opportunity to watch over the death trap that Bonnet was putting on in the convention center. If any guests died, he wanted to be on hand to quickly dress and package the bits for later. He still wasn't certain if that wasn't what had sent him on his current soulful food journey, and science required experiments.

Sadly, they got to the convention, and no one died. 

The first day, no one could even figure out how to get into the death trap, but Roach lived in hope. On the second day, people did get in, but still, no one died. 

Roach continued to live in hope of a death. A life. An idea for a meal worth tasting. 

He was thinking about that when Wee John asked, "Roach, want to come with me to the Jolly Cock. I'm downing a few drinks with the local teamsters." While Roach had planned to go to a more philosophical event, he was happy enough to head out for some drinks. Especially to a bar named the Jolly Cock.

Unfortunately, it was just a bar with darts. The curry wasn't even that good. Once they got there, Wee John seemed almost a different person. Taller, wider, and all around bigger, but somehow hollow. Like all the space required to be that large came from inside. Roach had scooped out enough things to know what that was like. 

All the men's talk -- and it was men but somehow not a gay bar -- was about everyone being too sensitive these days. How what was needed was a revolution and to pull out the guillotine. It was very internet-revolutionary, except for Wee John. The more he talked, the more Roach got a Robespierre vibe. 

Roach finally asked, "What are you doing?"

Wee John looked away. Got up and just walked out the door. 

Roach followed him out. Contemplated the parking lot and the teenagers doing tricks on skateboards in front of the 7-11 across the street. "That was depressing." Roach pulled a couple of fliers out of his pocket. He waved not depressing at Wee John. "De-vine Drag or Torturefest. Or both; they're only a few blocks apart. In case Wee John was wondering, Roach added, "Torture is very relaxing."

Wee John said, "I'm thinking the drag show." He followed that up by pulling in a breath as if for a big admission, but all he said was, "I did bring shoes. Just in case."

Roach shrugged. He could skip Torturefest for now. 

Wee John was amazing with a sewing machine, but then Roach knew that. Within an hour, he had a couple of outfits whipped together for them. Roach loved, loved, loved his ballerina cocktail dress, while Wee John was gorgeous as the goddess Calypso.

Some idiot tried to make something of two gorgeous creatures such as themselves as they left the hotel. 

Roach pulled a cleaver that he'd had hidden in his chiffon. "I'm Roach, and this is Calypso, a great goddess of sea and tide. While you are piss and wind!" Roach really hoped the idiot would continue to make something of it, but he backed down. 

Maybe it wasn't as relaxing as torture, but it was nice. Everyone danced and strutted, and by the end of the evening, Roach knew what feeling he wanted to cook next.

Chapter Text

Despite how late Roach had been up, he got up early and headed out to the cranberry bog just like he'd planned. 

While he was walking, Bonnet ran by him wearing his jogging gear. Roach studied the pained bounce to his gait. "Nice, " he told the empty street. "The boss got boned last night. Good for him." He kept going until he reached the bog and climbed down to sit on a muddy bank. 

The sun rose, and the morning mist peeled back. A pleasant-looking older gentleman with a leather headband looked over the railing. "What are you doing?"

"I'm practicing self-care. Look." Roach reached into the bog and pulled up some mud, which he wiped over his face. "See."

"Ah, that sounds nice," said the man. He hugged a collapsible fishing pole in a current state of erection.

Roach waved to indicate the free space next to him. Soon, the man, Fang, who also went by Kevin, which was very Dualist of him, was sitting next to Roach and chatting about his time working at Blorbo Media. "It really felt like we were doing something important—building products that took into account the needs of folks like us."

"Bog dwellers?" asked Roach, who really had settled into the bog life.

"No, I mean," Kevin pointed to himself and Roach, "Folks of color."

"Oh, so most of the world." Roach idly watched as a wolf spider lurked under the water until a water skater came too close and became dinner. He wondered what water skaters tasted like to wolf spiders. 

"What was that?" Kevin around in rapid alarm at the ripples in the water. 

"Wolf Spider. The bog is full of them." Roach grinned happily. He bet water skaters tasted excellent.

Kevin looked like he was about to pull up his legs.

So Roach reassured him. "Relax. They aren't poisonous to humans." He considered that. "Mostly. Just don't annoy them. They work hard. Like fairies, only nicer." A penny-sized spider climbed delicately onto a float of leaves. Roach saw how Kevin looked at the spider and decided to push the conversation along. "So, was what you were doing before you became a bog dweller fun?"

Kevin's phone buzzed from his vest pocket. "No. Now all we do is destroy. I'm well paid, but you know how it is." He slumped into the supportive bog grass. 

Roach was currently the most well-paid he'd ever been for doing the thing he loved. "You've got to take care of yourself, man," Roach told Kevin. 

They sat and contemplated the bog while mud dried.

But the sun was rising, and it was time for bog life to end. After they washed off, they walked companionably back to the convention center. "Where do you work?" Kevin asked.

That was easy. "Roach's coach." Roach went on to describe his coach and how it had a roach riding a unicorn while smoking a joint painted on it. 

"Ah, that sounds nice," Kevin really meant it. Roach could tell. 

"It is," agreed Roach, who was more than a bit pleased to see a stand of Burdock growing in a weedy clump in an old wood chip pile. It was at the perfect stage to harvest. He'd have needed a shovel if the soil hadn't already been so loose. As it was, he yanked them out of the ground easily and put them in his tote. 

"Are you actually going to eat that?" Roach didn't mind Kevin's horrified tone of voice. He'd heard it before.  

Since he was in an explaining mood, Roach said, "The Japanese grow a version of this called Gobo, but it's the same stuff."

"Oh, Gobo." Kevin looked more interested. "That's an aphrodisiac. You give it to newlyweds."  

Kevin got it, so Roach grinned and invited Kevin to come to the booth for lunch.

But when Kevin arrived at the booth later, he was more than a bit subdued. Even he steps on the stairs were subdued, which was fine. They were rickety as Roach's coach. Kevin said, "I thought you worked for yourself. Roach's Coach."

"I do," Roach put some stir-fried shredded gobo on Kevin's plate with carrots, soy sauce, and a few fricasseed salamanders. Just the thing to give everyone the energy to get through another day. Everyone perked up as they ate. 

Though he was also working on a recipe to get across the rainbow spaghetti later.

But Kevin wasn't touching his gobo. Kevin looked around the breakroom they'd built on top of the booth. "But this is The Best Revenge's Booth!" 

"That's right," agreed Frenchie. He had a cold cloth over his eyes. He and Olu had gotten up to some shenanigans the night before and had been slow all day, which was unfortunate because they'd had a lot of visitors to the booth. Also, Frenchie's Existential Despair was a little off without Wee John's The Black Cat of Your Inevitable Death to play off of. Roach handed Frenchie a glass of the soda he'd made from the burdock roots to get him going. Frenchie lifted the cloth. "Is there something we should know?"

"No, nothing," said Kevin quietly. 

Too quietly.

Very ominous.

Whatever. There was always something.

Roach shrugged. It was like wolf spiders. He just couldn't worry too much about being bitten by them. Not when he had meals to plan.

Chapter Text

A few days after they got back from the conference, the wolf spider of everything dropped. 

Kevin showed up following Blackbeard—the corporate pirate who was targeting the Best Revenge for some reason. Frenchie was saying they'd all be fired. Buttons was giving Izzy the one eyed glare and muttering.

Roach decided to listen to Mama Tillderman's advice. She'd often said, "Ya, gotta be Stoical Roach. Cause the whole damned future is just cups of uncertain. You spend all your spoons on worrying about it, then you can't eat today." 

Good advice right up until the angels got her.

On that philosophical plan, he offered Blackbeard's right-hand man, Izzy Hands, a fresh birch sugar cookie because no one could resist a sugar cookie. They weren't quite as sweet as maple, but the weather was better when birch sugar sap ran.  

No one could resist except Izzy Hands. He shouted, "Who paid for this? Where's the accounting? Where are your receipts for what you buy? Where are your records for time spent?"

Roach had no idea what Izzy was talking about and decided to be a question based person about it. "What?"

"Your books, you idiot. This is no way to run a business." A little vein was pulsing next to Izzy's eye that didn't look good. "Fang, you go through the accounting for what we're spending on food for freeloaders."

Kevin came over in response. Roach tried to parse that. "I thought your name was Kevin. Is it Kevin or Fang?" 

Kevin shrugged awkwardly. "I go by both. You can call me Fang. Everyone does." 

Pete loudly whispered to Frenchie, "Does Blackbeard own Best Revenge now?" 

"We are so fired. Been through this so many times." Frenchie shook his head like the existentially philosophical fellow that he was.

Bonnet came back from his house where he'd gone with Blackbeard. They both had that "just had sex" gate. "Good for you," Roach told them. 

Frenchie wanted to know if they were all fired. 

Turned out Blackbeard was now Bonnet's partner, so the money to keep paying Roach would keep flowing, which was good. The Roach coach needed a lot of gas. He invited Kevin out to the coach to have a look.

"You forage everything?" asked Kevin, looking around the coach as if a book of receipts would magically appear, which Roach hoped it would not because that would mean he had an infestation of fairies. 

"Not everything." Roach shook his head at the very idea. "Salt is a bitch to make, and things like oil, vinegar. Butter. Spices." He shrugged. "I get the things that are easy at the store. I don't have receipts." He frowned at the very idea of holding on to something as unimportant as a receipt.

"But," Kevin frowned, "where does the money Bonnet gives you go?"

Roach held his arms out to point out the shiny magnet rack holding all his knives and the rice cooker puffing away on wild rice. 

Kevin wanted to know what that cost, but Roach interrupted him with what he thought was a better question. "Wouldn't you rather stalk wild asparagus?"

Kevin blinked. "Do they take much stalking?"

"Some." Roach put some pots back in their cabinet. "You have to find last year's old ones to find the good ones for this year." 

They spent a pleasant afternoon stalking. They got a good crop.

With that in the bag, Roach showed Kevin how to prepare his asparagus. Nothing complicated, but treating wild asparagus well was important.

That night, the asparagus tasted tender as hell. It was full of longing for rest and as much peace as a cranberry bog with a touch of wolf spider bite—the sort of thing to have folks floating in memory.

Roach happily tapped the side of his iron pot with his wooden spoon but decided maybe to keep the floating to a minimum next time.

Chapter Text

Roach wasn't entirely clear why they were going to put on a bad musical, but he was going to cater the food. It had something to do with what Frenchie and Oluwande had gotten up to at the convention. Some sort of scam on rich people. 

Roach asked what he felt was the most important question. "Will we be able to eat the rich?" Though he was beginning to think maybe his food hadn't improved because of the dead cop bits, but because he'd finally found his groove. Something worth thinking about.

"How many times have I told you," Bonnet rubbed his eyes, "You can't eat the rich. You don't know what they've eaten." 

"There will probably be neo-nazis and white supremacists who come to see the play," offered Frenchie.

"That could work," agreed Roach. He still hadn't completely given up on the idea of turning horrible people into good food. It was part of a whole philosophy he planned on naming Tildermanmamaism. 

He had been going to focus on berry picking for the play, but an old friend of Blackbeard's showed up. Cali Jack was a true scholar of objectivism, a real Randian. It was hard to want to go berry picking when there were whippies and wheelies in the parking lot to do. Cali Jack had them all jumping off the roof garden into the inflatable pool because it was fun. There was also day drinking—a lot of it. 

That was good because Roach missed when he jumped and landed on the dirt. "I'm fine!" he shouted while lying in the dirt. I'm definitely fine." However, this was an occasion when he decided to take aspirin rather than go with willow bark tea. Also, there was more drinking.

There was less food preparation, so Roach was glad Anat's Joint and Tacos del Oro were around to help out. 

Until Spanish Jackie chased everyone off to the railroad tracks to dangle off bridges while the train rumbled overhead or something. Mainly, she didn't want them doing stunts in the parking lot. 

Roach didn't really remember when Cali Jack murdered Button's seagull friend except in flashes. Not cool, but very Randian. Individualists always killed the seagull. Always. 

So, head aching and moving slowly, Roach went to gather berries to use for the cake at the wake. 

"Karl would have loved this cake," mumbled Buttons around a mouthful.

"Yeah," agreed Roach wearily. Still feeling in his back where he'd bounced off the planter's box in the community garden. But then again, he'd made the cake of missing a lost friend, of coming together to heal from pain, not the cake of feeling no pain.

Probably just as well. They might all have become individualists, but then where would the world be? Up burning shit creek, as Mama Tilderman had used to say.

Chapter Text

In the end, Roach settled on little finger food for the play. Not actual fingers, but food for fingers. He was particularly pleased with the pickled Jerusalem Artichokes. He offered one to a man with a hammer of Thor necklace and a swastika tattoo on his neck. Roach wasn't going to call him Nietzschean because, to Roach's mind, everyone got Nietzche wrong and missed the point of God being dead was appealing to transcendent sources as moral authority and instead acted like assholes. 

Roach gave him the thumbs up, when the man swore and him and hoped they'd been killing him later.

But things just went downhill.

One of the people serving his candied nuts spilled nuts all over the floor. Olu got a text that Jim wasn't going to make it to serve drinks at the play.

"But Jim's is our best at killing people," Buttons looked at the neo-nazis in the crowd. "And these men need killing if we're to add meat pies to our revenue stream."

"I can do it." Roach adjusted his apron. "Meat is meat." 

"Less murder plotting, more playacting, " said Frenchie, who went on their little cobbled-together stage just before Blackbeard, who was now no-beard because he'd shaved his beard to play the role of the soon-to-be murdered by a rabbit Fuhrer. Really, Roach was very unclear on the plot. The whole thing was very existentialist. 

Roach spotted several attendees, who looked ready to fly apart at the sight of a Jewish Maori playing that particular role. He asked Buttons to put them on the to-be-murdered list.

Unfortunately, their racism turned out to be because they were cops who arrested Bonnet, broke up the play, and generally ruined the evening. They didn't arrest him though, so that was a plus. Instead he was left to mill about and go upstairs to watch them arrest his boss.

After they drove away, "But what about my artichoke dip?" Roach asked the night sky, all forlorn. He'd pickled, pureed, and fried artichokes in what he liked to call an artichoke three-way. 

"Fuck your Jerusalem dip," said the neo-Nazi from earlier, lurching out of the shadows.

"Are the police gone?" asked Roach. He looked around the parking lot and didn't see any cars left.

"Yeah, they are? No one to save you" said the soon-to-be mystery meat. Roach hits him with the hammer he'd picked up at the bar. Mystery became meat in a really transformative way. The new was always created from the old. "That's actual Nietzscheanism," Roach told the corpse.

"Huh," said Wee John, skidding over with a sock full of rocks. "Respect. Roach, you're better at that than I expected."

"I'm good at my craft," agreed Roach. He almost wished this was a good excuse to visit that beautiful machine in the factory, but really, there was nothing here that his blades couldn't handle. 

There was even time to do things up proper after Wee John's errand to blow up city hall and the jail turned out to be not necessary. 

Leaving Roach time to really focus on the craft of cooking.

Roach found the taste of hate was more than countered with some artichoke hearts and baked dandelion roots. Something he'd have to experiment with if he had the chance.

Chapter Text

Roach had the chance to experiment—plenty of it. Once the finances were all worked out, it was decided that they'd keep up the honeypot speakeasy for an occasional stream of mystery meat that wasn't road kill. 

That said, not everything could be made with forage.

For Bonnet and Blackbeard's wedding, Roach went to the big fancy store in Sweetwater. He wandered its aisles, which were filled with one hundred types of pasta, including pasta in all the colors of the rainbow. He looked at the artful displays of clams in the cooler, the array of creams and sugars, and the gleaming racks of spices. The angels sang, and he heard Mama Tilderman say to him, "You done good, Roach. You done real good." 

For the cake, he purchased white flour, cream, and sugar. Hen's eggs. Butter. Baking powder. Things it was easier just to buy. However, he got the oranges he needed from Jim's nana's food pantry. So that was practically foraging. 

For the dinner, he got that rainbow pasta and jars of spices from around the world. But the tomatoes came from the planter where he'd almost broken his back during his objectivist phase.

The cake took several hours to make. 

The sponge was as airy as a light heart that had found its home.

The orange glaze was as sweet as finding food to taste and not just eating to survive. The orange buttercream was as rich as an abundant home full of friends. 

The meal was perfect overall. Everyone grooved to the rainbow pasta feeling. As the cake melted into their mouths, they danced on air. 

As he fed a selection to the grand slicing machine at the factory, he heard it hum with life and knew that this was the life he was meant to live.