Tales From The Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

  “She ransacked Luigi’s cottage looking for his sack of gold coins. She knocked at all of the floorboards until she found the one that was loose. When she pulled it up, the space below was empty, a few dusty webs and nothing more. But she refused to believe what the emptiness portended. So she yanked up every board, until all that remained were a few boards on which the furniture stood. There was nothing below any of the boards. The gold was gone. As gone as Luigi.

  “One evening Flora sat in the dying light looking out the windows of the little cottage, looking at where the garden cornstalks stood in the dim evening gloom. There was a portent of frost in the air. She could see the sorrowing body of Spot, who had not barked in joy in weeks, an animal which seldom left his grieving location for more than a few minutes during the day. Suddenly she knew where Luigi was. In that autumn instant, she knew what had happened.

  “But how was she to convince the sheriff that she was right? She was a showgirl and they paid no attention to her when she showed up with her fantastic tale of the missing Luigi. Luigi had become frightened of marriage and ran off was their surmise. But, no, she insisted, he was robbed and murdered. He was buried in his own garden. She insisted that was why Spot wouldn’t leave the garden. He knew his master was there, buried beneath the soil he had loved. The sheriff just laughed.

  “One day, Flora overheard a story of a pawn shop that had a beautiful watch with an inscription in Italian. Some stranger had pawned it about the time Luigi had disappeared. The people were joking, that it had been Luigi himself, gathering more money so he could run off and avoid marriage. She raced to the pawnshop to see for herself, but the shopkeeper said someone from out of town had bought the watch earlier in the week. Flora could take no more. She heard the other guests at the Comstock snicker when she walked in.

  “She knew what she had to do.

  “She was going to dig up the garden herself. She knew a murdered Luigi had to be buried there. Spot had told her by his loyal actions. She began digging. The driver of the streetcar could see her digging from the crest of the hill where the streetcar line ended. When he got back to Silver Street he told everyone what that crazy Flora was doing. But not everyone was amused. Many had wondered themselves if Luigi might not have met a foul end. There were the ones who had seen just how much the man loved Flora. They never quite believed that he could have run off without so much as a fare-thee-well.

  “So first one, then another, picked up their own shovel or pick, and caught the street car to the end of the line. They walked up that country lane and past the little cottage. None of them said a word to Flora. They just started digging. Spot began to howl in a mournful way, a way that sent shivers up the backs of all those who were digging. But the townspeople did not stop, not even when the sun went down, and the mosquitoes and chill of the night came out in force. The bites began to swell in their damp sweat and yet they kept digging. But as the full moon rose over the sight, it was clear that the entire garden had been dug and redug, and there was no body. There was no murdered Luigi. Yet Spot still sat and howled.

  “Flora fell to the ground and began crying. One by one, each who had come out to help her dig left to return on the same street car that had carried them out.

  “Flora never saw Luigi again. Never heard from him, never heard of him. The watch never appeared. The twenty-seven gold coins had vanished into another era. Spot never left the garden. He lived a full year, with Flora bringing him water and food daily. People said that you had never seen a more loyal and frightened animal. Then he died in the garden and Flora buried him in the very place he had guarded so loyally through four seasons. Flora, never married, eventually died too, never knowing why her happiness had disappeared that fall.”

  Gilbert sat silently for a moment, his tale finished. He took a last bite of his sticky bun and a sip of the now cold coffee. He looked over at Thelma, who looked back at him, her eyes brimming with tears. For once, she had nothing to say and no laughter to ignite the crowd.

  Campbell harrumphed. “You just made that whole story up, and you couldn’t even keep your lies straight. If no one ever heard of Luigi again, then how did you end up with that watch of his?”

  Gilbert smiled, “It’s like this, you see. Years ago I bought Luigi’s cottage. Of course, it was already many years after he was gone, but just before Flora died. I met her and she told me the tale during one long winter evening.”

  “But what about the watch,” Campbell persisted.

  “That came later when I lost my house to a land collapse. You know how they didn’t properly buttress some of the old mines, and how time and water has weakened them, until they sometimes collapse in on themselves. That happened to my land. Old Luigi’s place had been built on top of a mine everyone had forgotten. One of the first mines. What they say is that it never was much of a mine. But it collapsed some ten years back or so, and took my house with it. The collapse created quite a bowl, and at the bottom a little pond formed. They said it was water streaming out of the old flooded mine.

  “That water stayed there most of the summer. But by fall it had all dried up. And I went walking down along the bottom of that little pond now shrunken to a tiny puddle. It was right about where old Luigi would have had his garden. Lots of little things had rushed up with the water when it had flooded out after the collapse. Pieces of wood, old mining bolts and the like. And then I saw a flash of gold.

  “It was this watch. It had come up from the ground. Brought it to a jeweler to have it shined and oiled, and it’s been working ever since.”

  “But where did it come from?” Thelma asked.

  “The way I see it,” Gilbert said, “is that it came from Luigi. I think he got snookered into going into that old abandoned mine by the con man he had met, who probably robbed him of his gold coins and knocked him dead. Probably didn’t know that he had killed the man right below the very spot that Luigi gardened. But the dog Spot knew. He knew his master was dead below his feet, even though the body was a hundred feet down. Somehow the dog knew. And he never left his master’s side.

  “I only wish Flora had known that Luigi had never left her, that he had been there with her all those nights she sat in the garden.”

  Gilbert stood up. “I really must go. It’s been a pleasure, Thelma, I look forward to seeing you again.” Thelma smiled.

  I looked out as Gilbert walked out the cafe, across the square, got into his big shiny new car and drove off. “I wonder what the point of that story was,” I mused.

  “Don’t go looking for meanings,” Thelma snarled, “it just shows to go you. Nothing more.”

  chapter eight

  At the beginning of September, the days were already shortening with shadows grown long. Chip Frozen Bear invited me to his home and to attend the Lattigo PowWow. I didn’t really want to go because I was afraid he would try to talk about the Van Elkind business. Yet I was excited to see Chip in his native surroundings.

  Dusk was nestling in as I drove into Lattigo. The sickly pines in the marshlands beside the Lattigo trunk road cast spiky narrow silhouettes across the cracked blacktop. The first streetlight sputtered into fluorescence just as I passed the welcoming sign that read “Lattigo. Population: 626.” Ironic that Lattigo was a true village in the eyes of the government, warranting an official population count on its sign. Thread, larger and slightly more prosperous, had never managed such official status. Its state sign simply read: “Thread. Unincorporated.” When I left Thread for college over a decade earlier, Lattigo had also been in that same nether state, neither village nor city, merely a collection of houses. When had it changed?

  Chip had instructed me to drive through town and turn left at the fork just south of town. I was to pass the sign pointing to the site for the PowWow, and go to the next house. There I would meet his sister and the three of us would take the ten-minute walk through the woods to the dance site.

  The village of Lattigo was depressing and had little in the way of business: a small gen
eral store, a post office, a cafe, a souvenir shop or two. Not many tourists ventured down the twisty, bumpy road. All the commercial buildings were rundown with peeling paint and an air of unprofitability. Unlike every other Wisconsin village, not a bar was in sight.

  After passing through town, I kept my eye out for the fork in the road. I had been warned I might easily miss it. I saw the badly weathered signboard for the PowWow, half-hidden in blazing red sumac. Its letters were so nearly obliterated by time that a casual observer might think they had encountered an obscure message in baby talk: at go ow ow, instead of Lattigo PowWow.

  But Chip was playing games with me. He had neglected to mention the massive, brand new industrial complex, with a large backlit sign at its entrance that read Lattigo Electronics. What was this?

  I turned left at the not-at-all-hard-to-find fork and drove slowly by this unexpected plant with its three separate buildings. There was a two-story, contemporary office building covered in vertical red cedar siding, with four ground-to-roof columns of weathered fieldstone that bubbled up from the ground to anchor the roof. A lush lawn encircled this building, and behind it was a broad expanse of gravel intended for parking. Behind that were two pole-and-steel buildings, typical inexpensive construction designed for manufacturing processes. When had this been built?

  Suddenly I was at the driveway of the Frozen Bear property. A graceful curving gravel path led up a gentle hill to a sheltered two-story modern log cabin, in which every window cast a welcoming yellow glow into the growing twilight. A pair of Norwegian elkhounds came bounding to meet the car, their silvery black curved tails wagging furiously to and fro. I stepped from my car, just as Chip walked out of the house. He sensed my admiration.

  “Not what you would expect in Lattigo, is it?” he stated briskly, but without his usual sardonic air. “You know I stayed east for a few years before I came back home and I put my Columbia MBA to work on Wall Street. Did pretty well, but like you, I wanted to come home,” he smiled.

  “And the factory. Is that yours?” I asked.

  “Not quite a factory yet. And, as a member of the Lattigo, yes, it’s mine. Not personally. It’s a tribal investment, with some venture capital funding from people I know in New York, including Haligent who you met. It’s a disk duplicating and fulfillment center for software companies, mostly small ones, who want one place to handle the entire manufacturing, inventory and shipping process. With the contracts we have in place, we’ll hire about one hundred and ten people over the next few months. A small step to ending the unemployment on this reservation.”

  I was perplexed. “If you’re able to do this, why get involved with American Seasons? It’ll destroy this environment. Maybe your people can get rich, but are you creating the right kind of heritage for them?” I had been thinking a lot about Van Elkind and his scheme. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing to be involved with.

  “Perhaps you can help me keep that from happening,” he smiled enigmatically. “Come into the house and meet my sister. We need to leave right away, or you’ll miss the big opening dance.”

  The living room was spacious with an open-beamed ceiling. The furniture was low, plump and substantial. Large plate glass windows looked over a small stream near the base of the hill. “This is one of the few spots on the entire reservation that isn’t a marsh,” he said quietly.

  “So why did you come back?” a calm voice said from behind me. If Chip were a casting agent’s dream of a handsome Indian brave, then his sister was simply that same agent’s finest fantasy. Tall, slender, with clean lines. Dark long hair, dark eyes and controlled self-confidence.

  “I’m Jacqueline Grant,” she said, extending her hand. “You must be Walter Pearson, and I’m delighted that you could come.” I took her hand, but said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. “I really don’t understand why Chip wants you to see this PowWow. He hates them and finds them degrading. Or so Chip says. He believes we must be true to our heritage. That’s why he calls himself Frozen Bear, instead of Grant. Even though we have been Grants since the time of Ulysses S. Grant. My great-grandfather met President Grant in the 1870s and was so impressed by the man, he decided to call himself Grant. But Chip doesn’t prefer to honor that part of the heritage. I guess the ancestors involved aren’t ancient enough.”

  Chip looked indulgently at his sister. Clearly, they had had this conversation before. “Great Grandfather Grant sold out our tribe at the same time he sold out our name. He signed the final treaty that stuck us on this god-forsaken swamp.”

  “What other choice did he have? To leave us with nothing? It was a different world then. We weren’t even citizens. We didn’t have the right to vote. Northern Wisconsin was overrun with robber barons looking for new worlds to plunder. There were forests to cut. Mines to dig. Lakes to fish to exhaustion. What did a few hundred Native Americans mean to them? What did it mean in the Dakotas? Sure, our people took care of Custer. But then what? The Sioux are on lands no better than this. Worse in fact. They’re not called the Badlands for nothing. I say it’s time to look forward,” she sighed. “Let’s get to the dance, or Walter will have missed his reason for coming.”

  Chip turned to me, “If we were all like my sister Jacqueline, we would simply be frozen into inaction. She wants to be a Native American, and yet she does not. She hates what has been done to us, and yet she accepts it. She wants to reverse it all, and yet she acquiesces. I won’t do that. I know you wonder why I cooperate with Van Elkind and his modern-day robber barons. But I won’t let them rob us again. Unlike my great-grandfather, I know survival is not found in mimicking the oppressor. You must use their own ways to trap them.

  “Let’s go to the PowWow.” He closed the discussion and opened the door.

  “Wasn’t it awful?” Cynthia asked the following morning. “The last time I went to a PowWow, the music was dreadful, just a loud noisy steady beat. And the costumes were so sad. Not at all like our costume for Nanoonkoo.”

  “Did someone mention Nanoonkoo?” Claire piped in. She had shown up this morning with a tiny jar of wild strawberry jam. She claimed it had been left behind the previous evening by a new group of visitors. They were able, she claimed, to create any type of food in a special “transmogrifier.” I asked if I could order one of the thingamajigs for my restaurant. She cast a scornful look and demanded a new cup for her coffee claiming there was a lipstick stain on the one she had been given. The stain looked suspiciously close to her tone of lipstick.

  “Claire,” Cynthia began, trying again, “it’s not about Nanoonkoo. It’s about trying to do better. You know that all of us in Thread try very hard to do things the very best way we can. And it just doesn’t seem that way at all in Lattigo. Daddy won’t even let me go there.”

  “Didn’t you want to go with me when Frozen Bear asked,” I reminded her. She had been serving him dinner when he asked me, and she had done everything but insist that he invite her too. He did not take her hints.

  Cynthia blushed and walked toward the coffee and hot water stand. “Claire, do you want some more hot water for your tea?” she asked.

  Cynthia was right. There had been something unpleasant about the PowWow. I still didn’t understand why Frozen Bear invited me. In fact, I didn’t understand why he didn’t force an end to the tourist event.

  Although it had been the Saturday of a beautiful fall weekend, there were only a score or so of tourists in the audience, taking up less than a tenth of the open-air amphitheater. The wooden benches of the bowl had not been properly maintained since the building of the PowWow Bowl decades earlier. Many were either half-rotted or split. One quadrant of the theater seemed completely abandoned and roped off. Giant thistles thrust up between the bleacher rows.

  The row of theater lights dimmed, and then stuttered out. A single pinlight illuminated the very center of the stage. A block of dry ice was opened to the air and a few weak tendrils of carbon dioxide fog snaked across the bottom of the stage. A ponderous voice boomed from a scr
atchy p.a. system. “Before there was the United States, before there was Columbus or even Leif Erickson, there was” (momentous pause, crescendo of music) “the Lattigo and the PowWow. We invite you tonight to engage in the mysteries of the Indian PowWow.” It only got worse from there. The dancers were too few and unpracticed. The dances seemed choreographed out of a bad Hollywood B-movie. The tourists were visibly unimpressed.

  As Chip, Jacqueline, and I rose from our seats, we could see the Lattigo dancers streaming out from the small dressing room near the amphitheater. They seemed anxious to avoid Frozen Bear’s eye.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, “but it’s like religion. It serves a principle in continuing traditions and in setting a compass. But like religion it can become divisive and an excuse for not thinking. It cloaks many motives and can hide many truths. Why else does a town as small as Thread need so many churches? In the end tradition can snare us in a degrading trap, and the rope pulls tighter with every move. But why release the trap before you have a safe place to go to? And why release the trap if you can turn it on the trapper?

  “Are you a trap or a trapper, Wally? Don’t get too close to Van Elkind and his group. You could get hurt.” We had arrived back at the Frozen Bear home. He simply walked in without inviting me to follow or saying good night. Jacqueline looked at me before following her brother through the door.

  “He means what he says,” she said.

  “But I don’t understand what he’s saying,” I replied.

  “Does it matter? Just know that he means it.”

  I survived the PowWow, but I was still pondering Chip’s final words as I watched Cynthia bring Claire a fresh pot of hot water. Already there was lipstick on Claire’s new cup. And from this angle, I could see a sticker still left on her tiny jar of wild strawberry jam. It said “Knott’s.” An intergalactic brand, I guessed.

  Thelma came out of the kitchen with her hands covered in flour. “Has that Gilbert Ford fellow shown up yet,” she demanded. She was wearing blush, which didn’t seem appropriate to her.