Tales From The Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

  “Flora was in the chorus that day, a bar maiden in the beer hall scene. At least that was the first scene where he noticed her large brown eyes that drank him in. The rest might only be a costume, but those eyes! He couldn’t be sure that she would live up to those eyes, but he wanted to know. He desperately needed to know. So quite unlike him, he lingered after the curtain fell. He slowly walked up the short aisle to the rear of the top tier of the balcony; then he came down the narrow steps to the first landing, and then even more slowly down the grand steps that led to the entry foyer. The opera hall was pushed back from the street to allow stores along the main street. Perhaps you’ve been there. They show movies now.” Thelma nodded her head in agreement. “So you know there is a long hall, with an arched fresco ceiling that leads to the street. He looked down that long corridor, seeing the hot sunlight at its end, and he just couldn’t will himself to take the first step back to the humdrum day. All he could think of were those eyes. He had to meet the woman behind those eyes.

  “But he had never been so daring, to simply linger at a backstage door and introduce himself to a perfect stranger. Such things were not done in the old country. And to Luigi, the ways of the old country were religion. He longed to return home. But first he would have to make his fortune, and he would have to meet a beautiful woman that would make his old mother forgive him for the pain he had caused her, that he had left home as a child to make his way, and that he had never written to his mother in the twelve years he had been gone.

  “But that dream was elusive. Luigi scrimped for years. He worked many hard hours. All that he had was a small bag of gold twenty-dollar pieces that he kept carefully hidden in his small house on the outskirts of Timberton. He thought of that little house, with its carefully whitewashed walls, its well-kept gardens brimming that August with tomatoes and basil, but all he saw were the scuffed chairs, the patched clothes, the little bag with a few gold coins. What was he waiting around for? Any woman would want more than him. Disheartened, he began to walk the long hall.

  “‘Are you waiting for someone?’ he heard. He turned. It was her. At least it was the eyes that he knew and loved from the performance. Large, brown, beautiful eyes. She wasn’t blonde and she didn’t have braids as she stood beneath the chandelier of the Opera House foyer. Short auburn hair cut in a pageboy, looking very sophisticated. Her dress barely covered her knees. A flapper, he thought, his mother would never approve. But then he noticed that the binding she wore wasn’t quite tight enough to hide a voluptuous bosom. He was smitten.”

  Officer Campbell looked over at me and rolled his eyes in disbelief. “I’ve arrested people for smaller bunko than this,” he whispered. I motioned him to be quiet.

  Gilbert continued. “Luigi knew at that very moment that the great dream of America might still come true for him, but first he had to take the risk. He had to be willing to overcome his cautious self, to do something more than he had ever done before. He had to tell a woman what he really thought. ‘I was waiting for you. I love you,’ he said.

  “It was a simpler time. To be back then once more would be divine. She didn’t slap him for being forward. She didn’t worry that she would be raped. She blushed at the ardor of this northwoods lumberjack. Small beads of dew appeared on her forehead and she fumbled toward her tiny purse to find a handkerchief.

  “But before she could find it, Luigi whipped a huge starched white blanket of a kerchief from his side pocket and presented it with a flourish. As he did so, a pocket watch fell out of that same pocket and fell to the ground, having no fob chain to hold it in place.

  “Flora quickly bent and picked it up. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, “ I hope it’s not broken. I would feel so dreadful.’ Then she looked at it more closely. ‘What a beautiful watch,’ she said. And indeed it was. You can see for yourself. It was this very same watch you all just admired.”

  Campbell rolled his eyes once more, “I don’t think so.”

  Thelma shot the officer a withering look. “Wait right here,” she said, “let me get some coffee and sticky buns and we can have a good three o’clock coffee while you finish.”

  So we all sat around the table, drinking coffee, as Gilbert continued his tale.

  “Love at first sight is a rare thing. Few of us are willing to believe in it today. But it can happen. It happened that day. Anyone who saw Flora and Luigi together would have known that it was true love. So there was no surprise when Flora did not return to the traveling troupe to continue singing Romberg. Instead she took a small room at the old Comstock Hotel that once stood across the street from the Penokee House. Flora could never have afforded the grandeur of the Penokee House, plus both Luigi and she found it more comforting to meet in the small front parlor of the Comstock in the room lined with faded dusty rose wallpaper, with its old horsehair sofas and drooping ferns on tall stands.

  “Luigi wanted to do everything right, which is why they didn’t marry at once. He insisted that they have a courtship, and so they did. Each night he came to the Comstock after he finished in the lumber mill, usually bearing some small gifts, a fresh flower, a sweet dessert, a new magazine. Soon she began to drop her flapper ways, and seemed more and more the simple country girl that he wanted.

  “At the same time, he grew more adventuresome. One day early in September, he borrowed a Model T from a co-worker and they drove all the way to Thread, rented a canoe and rowed out to a hidden beach. They say she even convinced him to drop all his clothes on the beach, and together the two swam for hours in the all-together.

  “When they came back on to the shore, their pale skin sunburned from the out-of-the-ordinary exposure to the sun, Luigi suddenly became quite agitated. He rummaged frantically through his piled-up clothes. ‘What is it?’ Flora cried out. He didn’t answer. He just continued to search. Flora ran up from the beach, her breasts bouncing in the sunlight. ‘Tell me what the problem is. What is wrong?’ he still didn’t answer.

  “Luigi got down on his hands and knees and began running his hands through the tall grass, back and forth, crisscrossing the meadow. Suddenly, he fell back against the grass, his legs splayed out against the green, his arm spiking into the sky, with a glint of gold from within the clenched fist. ‘My watch,’ he said, ‘I though I had lost the watch.’

  “Flora began to pummel him. ‘Why did you scare me so?’ she demanded, ‘I thought it was something important. You frightened me half to death.’ Gradually, her punches became softer, more playful, and he began to punch back like a cat batting at ball of thread. Before you know it, they were rolling across that meadow, burning their private skin to a nasty red.

  “It was that day that they knew they truly were in love, and that meeting in the parlor of the Comstock must come to an end. It was time to get married. As they made the long drive back to Timberton, and it was a long drive in those days since the roads were not nearly so good, Flora asked Luigi why the watch was so important. And he told her the story. It had been a gift from his dear mother the day before he left southern Italy. It had been the last gift that he had ever received from his mother. She had made great sacrifices to save enough money to buy the watch. He had always felt guilty that after receiving such a magnificent birthday gift, he was still able to leave his home, without telling his mother, to make his way to America and to what he hoped would be a great fortune. The watch was his only tie back to his past, the only link to his dream that stayed with him as he lay sick to his stomach in the steerage of the slow ship from Naples to New York, his passion as he worked twelve-hour days throughout the harsh Wisconsin winters, the hope that he would meet a woman who would make him happy and create a life of prosperity. Once that happened, then he would be able to return to southern Italy, to tell his mother once more that he loved her, to seek her forgiveness and to tell his dear mother how much the watch had meant to him through all the years in America.

  “Flora was touched, as who could not be? ‘We will go back one day,’ she said. ‘We can go back any day
you want because as far as I can see, you are the wealthiest man there is. Why? Because you are filled with love and happiness.’

  “Luigi shook his head slowly in disagreement. ‘I am not even worthy of letting you into my life. We should not get married, but I can not live without you.’ He was silent for the rest of the drive to his little home. When he pulled the Model T into the rutted driveway of his little whitewashed cottage, a golden collie came running from behind the outhouse, barking joyously. The dog was named Spot, a name Luigi had chosen because it seemed so American. Before there was Flora, Spot was the only thing that Luigi had truly loved in America. Another animal might have been jealous when a new love had appeared. But not Spot. He adored his master, and therefore he adored everything important to his master. Another woman might have wanted her husband-to-be to give away a dog that had played such an important part of his life. But not Flora. Each, in fact, adored the other. And Luigi adored them both.

  “But that night, the wagging tail of Spot and the beautiful eyes of Flora were not enough to pull Luigi from his melancholy. The near loss of his watch made him realize how very little he had in material things. The more he reflected on it, the uneasier he became. It was wrong to marry Flora unless he had more to offer. Unless he were to make a fortune soon, he would never be able to afford to return to the old country and see his mother one last time.

  “He paced the small front parlor, while Flora sat in his one good chair, with Spot at her feet. She petted the dog, which acted concerned over Luigi’s behavior. Finally, Luigi went into his bedroom and after much noise and banging about, he came back into the parlor carrying a velvet bag. ‘Count them,’ he demanded.

  “’Count what?’ she asked.

  “’My gold coins,’ he replied. And so she did. It wasn’t a large bag. It didn’t take long. She did it as slowly as she could. She wanted the count to last longer than it did. But there were only twenty-seven gold twenty-dollar coins in the purse. Five hundred and forty dollars. It was more money than Flora had ever seen. In fact, she thought it a small fortune. She knew that many of the men in the woods only made a dollar or two a day. Yet she sensed that no matter what she would say to Luigi, he would contradict her. She could see in his face that he considered the small count a mark of failure.

  ‘How many?’ he whispered.

  “’Twenty-seven,’ she said in a low voice, unwilling to look into his face, knowing that she should, but yet unable to raise her eyes that fraction of an inch.

  “’It’s not enough,’ he said. ‘I have to find a way to make more. I did not come to America to be poor.’

  “Flora stared at the small pile of gold coins, the value of it gradually cascading into her mind, and she begin to think of the many despicable characters she had encountered in the rough and tumble lumbering and mining town. ‘You should put this in a bank,’ she said. ‘Does anyone know you have so much money in the house? It’s not safe.’

  “’It’s safe,’ he replied. ‘There’s not enough worth stealing.’ Flora remained still. The joy of the afternoon on the shore was quickly receding into a tiny wave, dying out into the tiniest of ripples. They both sat quietly in the room for many minutes, Flora sitting on the good chair, Luigi sitting cross-legged on the braided rag rug atop the golden soft pine floor. Finally, slowly, he began to pick up each gold eagle, looking at it carefully as he dropped it back into his bag. When finally all twenty-seven were once more in the bag, he stood up and went into the bedroom. He didn’t close the door. Flora could see him pry up one of the loose floorboards and put the bag below it. He came back into the room. ‘It’s time you went back to the Comstock, and I need to return the car.’ The evening ended.

  “It was only a week later, after they had announced in the Timberton Mining News classifieds the joy of their engagement, that Luigi came running to Flora filled with excitement. He had finally come into a secret opportunity that would make all his dreams come true. He had met someone at one of the small bars that lined Silver Street who could make him rich, a person with knowledge of a mine lined with copper ore, a vein so rich in copper that its wealth would make everyone who came into contact with it a millionaire. All this newfound friend needed was some money to help him buy the mineral rights to the land and set up the initial cut. If Luigi could provide him with that seed money, then the two of them could become partners. They would roll in the cash that would follow.

  “Flora was not a foolish woman. She had worked a few cons in her own tumultuous lifetime. She recognized this tale for what it was—a fantasy for rubes, intended to unknot their purse strings and send the coins tumbling in the direction of the weaver of the tale. She tried to warn Luigi that the deal could not possibly be true, and that the person would only take his money and never be seen again. But Luigi insisted the man was to be believed.

  “They argued late into the night. Spot crept out of the small cottage and hunkered down against the tilled garden dirt of Luigi’s prized tomatoes. He whined ever so low. But the cabin was far from any neighbor, and the only people who could hear Spot’s anguish were Luigi and Flora, each of who was determined to change the mind of the other. Neither had time to worry over a dog.

  “Finally, Flora gave up on Luigi in dismay. But before she left, she exacted one promise from her fiancé. ‘Vow to me on your mother’s heart,’ she said, ‘that you will not spend any of your money with this man whom you only met today until we talk again.’

  “Luigi took out his mother’s watch, this beautiful gold pocket watch that I have with me now, and he set it into the palm of his hand. He was so nervous that his heartbeat was almost as loud as the ticking of the watch. He believed that on one hand he had waiting for him the beautiful woman he had vowed to meet and love forever. On the other hand, he finally had the opportunity to rise above the poverty that had been with him all of his life. But the two were in conflict. He wanted both. But it appeared he couldn’t have one without losing the other.

  He held the watch in his unsteady hand, looking straight into the beautiful eyes of the woman he loved so much. ‘This watch is like my mother,” he said, ‘it will never leave my heart. And on this watch, I vow to you tonight that I will obey your wishes. I will not give any of my money to this man before we talk again tomorrow.’

  “Flora left, feeling comforted that he had made this promise. She knew Luigi to be a strong Catholic and a man of his word. But late in the night—in fact, it was already near morning and the sun was only an hour from rising—she awoke in a panic of anxiety and thought about the vow Luigi had made. He said he would not give the money, but he had never thought of the transaction as giving the money away. He was investing it, loaning it. Would he still loan that horrible grifter the money he had? And if he did, would he think somehow in his Catholic heart that he had not given it away? Would he still feel secure that he could go to confession on Saturday night, and have no sin to confess? Would he feel he had not in any way compromised his mother? Flora fretted and could not go back to sleep. Soon, roosters, kept by those families who raised a few chickens for eggs, were beginning to crow, welcoming the sun rising in the east. The morning light flooded through the lace curtains of her little room in the Comstock. The faded wallpaper seemed to glow in the early morning rays, and Flora began to fret that she was thinking unfairly of Luigi. He loved her. He would never lie to her, never mislead her. He meant what he had said. There was still time during this coming evening to convince him to avoid the grifter.

  “She spent the day with a calm heart, looking forward to the evening, preparing her arguments to convince Luigi to do the sensible thing. More than that, she began to see that it was essential for her to make him realize that he was already prosperous in all ways that counted. He had a small home, a woman who loved him, a nest egg for emergencies. He had so much more than most men.

  “She took the street car to the last stop, and then walked down the dry country road that led to his small cottage. It was a beautiful early autumn evening. The r
oadside ditch was lined with tall purple thistle and goldenrod. Butterflies were flitting to and fro. Evening birds were beginning their night songs.

  “She arrived at his cottage. There was something wrong. Spot did not run out to meet her. Luigi was nowhere to be seen. She walked through his small house. He was not there. There was no note on the kitchen table. She went out to his garden, certain that Luigi would be weeding or picking fresh tomatoes from his low-lying vines. He was not there. Spot was.

  “Spot was hunkering down over an area of the worked garden dirt, his body low to the ground. The dog kept crying, moaning. She tried to pull him away, but Spot refused to move; he just kept whimpering. She sat down beside the collie, wondering what was wrong. They waited for Luigi to return.

  “Luigi did not return.

  “He did not return that evening. He did not return the next day. He did not return in a week. He did not return in two weeks.

  “During all of that time, Spot never left the garden. He stayed low to the ground, sometimes pawing it, as though seeking Luigi through the dirt. Flora would bring the dog water and food. Sometimes, he would pay attention to her offerings. More often than not, he would only keep his head to the ground. Some evenings, Flora would sit in the garden with Spot and weed between the rows, stake up the tomatoes and pick the ripening corn. She would bring it back with her to the Comstock and let her tears of fear fall over the bounty.

  “After that first evening when Luigi had not returned, she became convinced that something horrible had happened to the man she loved. When he had not returned the second day, she became certain it had something to do with the grifter who had wanted Luigi to partner on the secret mine. She wished so desperately that she had pressed Luigi for more details of what the man looked like or where he had lived. Had he taken the gold and then killed Luigi, she wondered?