Sam
The cook at Henry's lunch-room in 'The Killers', tied up in his own kitchen and wanting no part of what follows.
To be left out of it. Untied, he says he does not want any more of that; when Nick Adams decides to go and warn the man, he tells him mixing up in it will not get him anywhere.
The book
At a glance
- The cook at Henry's lunch-room in Summit
- Sam, when George calls him through the hatch; a racial slur most other times
- Tied to Nick Adams on the kitchen floor
- Stay way out of it
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeSam is the cook at Henry's lunch-room in 'The Killers', one of the fourteen stories in Men Without Women, the 1927 collection by the American writer Ernest Hemingway. He works out of sight behind a serving hatch, and he is called out into the room at gunpoint when the two men who have come to kill a boxer decide to account for everyone in the building.
He is Black, and both the gunmen and the counterman refer to him with a racial slur. It is the term the story uses for him, in dialogue and in narration alike, and it is used more often than his name.
He is marched back into the kitchen, tied to Nick Adams and left with a towel in his mouth for two hours. Afterwards he is the only person in the story who says clearly that he wants nothing further to do with any of it, and he says it in one form or another five times in three pages.
How the book draws them
- Called out at gunpointGeorge opens the slit into the kitchen and calls him in for a minute. He comes through the door in his apron and asks what it was, looks at the two men sitting at the counter, is told to stand right there, and answers, “Yes, sir,” before he is sent back through it.
- The language used about himAl gives him his orders using a racial slur, and when George asks what they intend to do to him, answers with a question implying that nothing done to a Black man would matter. George uses the same word about him when the gunmen ask who is in the kitchen. The story reports all of it without remark, and nobody in the room objects.
- Two hours on the floorHe and Nick Adams are tied back to back with a towel in each of their mouths, in the corner of the kitchen, while a man sits by the hatch with a shotgun. When they are untied he feels the corners of his mouth with his thumbs.
- What he says when it is over“I don't want any more of that,” he says, and says it again in the same breath. A minute later: “I don't like it. I don't like any of it at all.”
- The advice he gives Nick AdamsHe tells Nick he had better not have anything to do with it at all, and to stay way out of it. When Nick asks George for the address anyway, the cook says that mixing up in this is not going to get him anywhere. Then he turns away and says, “Little boys always know what they want to do,”
- He will not hear it discussedWhen Nick comes back from the rooming-house, the cook opens the kitchen door at the sound of his voice, says he does not even listen to it, and shuts the door again. That is his last appearance in the story.