The American Café

by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

  “That was exciting,” offered Lance in a sarcastic tone.

  The sheriff emerged from the house pushing a blond-haired woman wearing shorts and a tank top toward his vehicle.

  Lance and Charlie moved in closer to lend a hand. “Is the house clear?” asked Charlie.

  The sheriff shook his head. “No.”

  “Find what you were looking for, Sheriff?” asked Lance.

  “Meth,” he said. “This place is a mess.”

  “Whoa.” Lance froze. “Have they been cooking meth in here? Because if they have, I'm not going to go in and breathe that crap without some kind of protective gear.”

  “No, these are just users, all small potatoes,” assured the sheriff. “But don't worry, we'll get their source, too.”

  Lance pulled his weapon and followed Charlie through the front door. He hated what he felt. The stench of methamphetamine chemicals hung in the air. Knowing the sheriff was wrong, he pulled out his handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose. Meth had taken such a toll on the small communities of northeast Oklahoma, he longed for the days when he and Charlie had made similar raids near Sycamore Springs and found only marijuana.

  As he stepped over a pile of filthy clothes, he noticed a child's sippy cup and a stuffed toy peeking out from under the edge of the couch. Those were the real victims, he thought, the children who would end up ingesting drugs through the ignorance of their drug-addicted parents.

  Charlie quickly headed toward the hallway and Lance took the kitchen. Lance observed encrusted dishes piled in the sink, trash on the counter and on a small table, but he found no one hiding. He checked a small pantry and broom closet. They too were full of junk but no suspects. He opened the back door to allow fresh air to enter and discovered the bench where they had been cooking meth. “Damn it,” he said and closed the door. Through the window, he could see the bobbing of a flashlight beam in the trees a few hundred yards away. He assumed the two deputies, who had given chase to the runner, had been unsuccessful in their pursuit.

  He met Charlie in the hallway, coming out of a bedroom. “Kitchen's clear,” said Lance.

  Charlie nodded. “Yeah, this bedroom is too. But look at this.” He held up a fishing lure. “This is my lure. I know it is.”

  “I doubt you're the only fisherman in Delaware County who ever owned a lure like that, Charlie, but get the damned thing and let's get out of here. Did you check this other bedroom?”

  “Headed there right now.”

  Lance flipped the light switch on and the two men entered the empty room. Charlie quickly checked under the bed and shook his head. Suddenly, the closet door burst open and a young black-haired child ran screaming toward the men, attaching himself to Lance's leg like a mad dog. In a split second, Lance saw an Indian girl with a familiar face emerge through the hanging clothes. It was Gertie, the young girl who had hit him in the head with a rock near the field of marijuana a few weeks ago. She had a shotgun.

  “I won't let you take my baby deer!” she screamed. “You can't have her! She's mine!”

  “Drop it!” commanded Charlie.

  “Stop!” yelled Lance. He could see Charlie's .357 aimed directly at Gertie, his own gun down as he tried to push the child out of danger. The blast of two guns firing simultaneously rendering Lance deaf, but he could feel the stinging in his shoulder as he tried desperately to protect the child by shielding him with his own body.

  The room began to swirl in slow motion around Lance's head. The child shrieked, the shotgun hit the floor, and the girl fell backward into the closet with a bullet wound in her chest. The last thing Lance saw before he lost consciousness was blood everywhere and a shiny, squiggly lure vibrating on the floor beside him.

  25

  It was Saturday morning and, knowing the café was in good hands, Sadie had allowed herself the unusual luxury of sleeping late. It was already past 8:00 a.m. when she walked off the back porch and sat down on the bottom step to have a heart-to-heart conversation with Sonny before she drove toward Liberty. She positioned her injured leg on a nearby rock, allowing Sonny to sit next to her other foot while she scratched his head. The longer she scratched, the closer he inched, leaning hard against her good leg.

  She dug in her purse and pulled out her new cell phone. She turned it on and watched as the reception indicator tried to climb, then fell again. The woman at the booth inside the Wal-Mart store had promised her the reception in northeast Oklahoma had improved so much that she would refund Sadie's money if she wasn't satisfied within the first thirty days. She was beginning to think a refund would be in order, but she would wait for now. She wanted to appease her Aunt Mary, who thought she needed one for safety's sake after the episode in the vault. It seemed more reasonable than her uncle's suggestion, which was to start carrying a handgun. She flipped the top down on the phone and dropped it into her purse.

  The last few days had been unseasonably cool, void of the usual triple-digit temperatures and stifling humidity. Several yellow leaves, caught in a brief gust of air, drifted from a nearby walnut tree and came to rest near the porch. With only four days left in August, the sight of those falling leaves gave Sadie a peculiar feeling, as if something wasn't right.

  She began to think about the Cherokee National Holiday scheduled for the upcoming Labor Day weekend. There would be thousands of tourists descending on Tahlequah for the festivities and powwow. Sadie liked to watch the parade, hear the chief deliver his “State of the Nation” address, then drive out to the Heritage Center and cruise the arts and crafts tents. Maybe Rosalee would like to go with her this year. Emma had a bad habit of making derogatory comments about Indians in general, so asking her was out of the question. Better yet, maybe Lance would be going.

  She nudged the huge wolf-dog. “That's my toe you're sitting on,” she said and then laughed when he leaned his head back on top of her knee and looked at her with his pitiful icy-blue eyes. “What's the matter, Sonny? Haven't been getting enough attention lately, have you?” As if he could understand her sympathetic confession, he thumped his tail against the porch and leaned a little harder. Right on cue, Joe whinnied.

  “That's it,” she said as she stood. “If you guys are going to gang up on me, I'm out of here.”

  Sonny jumped up and barked.

  “Sorry, boy. You have to stay here.” He sat back down when he heard the word “stay.” She threw him a kiss over her shoulder as she got into the car. “I promise to make it up to you.”

  As she drove toward Liberty, she thought about how glad she was to be going to the café instead of the bank. Emma told her the night before that everything had gone without a hitch for the two days she had filled in for Tom Duncan. Rosalee had done a good job, Emma reluctantly conceded, and Red agreed when Emma suggested Sadie stay off her injured knee for a few days. Sadie argued, then promised to call the doctor's office and stop by on her way into town to make sure it wasn't anything serious.

  Doc Brown's office, located two blocks west of the café, was the only choice for medical care on Saturday morning unless she wanted to drive to Tahlequah and spend the rest of the day sitting in the waiting room at Hastings Indian Hospital. The other option, which she seriously considered, was simply to prop her foot in the air, grab the television remote, and lean back on a couple of feather pillows and chill out. But that thought was short-lived; her personal commitment to her new calling as an entrepreneur won out.

  The young girl who had answered the doctor's phone when Sadie called the day before had told her they had a nine o'clock cancellation. Sadie quickly grabbed the time slot.

  Sadie pulled into the last empty parking space in front of Doc Brown's office, a two-story white house set back from the street with a manicured lawn and a hedge of mature azaleas. The only thing that designated the house as a doctor's office was a small hand-painted sign hanging on the wall next to the front door. Sadie got out of the car, climbed the steps, and limped through the front door with five minutes to spare.

 
; She signed in at the desk in the corner and sat on a worn couch in what she envisioned must have been a living room or parlor in ages past. A few minutes later, Doc Brown emerged from another room, ran his finger down the list of names, then turned and noticed Sadie. “Come on back, Sadie. We're almost full-up this morning, but you can take my office at the end of the hall. I'll be there in just a moment, and we'll check out that knee of yours.”

  Sadie let herself into a small room that looked like it doubled as an examining room and office, with a small desk in one corner and a row of metal filing cabinets against one wall. She scooted onto the end of the examining table and waited.

  A few moments later the doctor stuck his head in the door. “I'm sorry, Sadie, my nurse is not here today and I've got to do everything. I'll be here just as soon as I stitch up a cut on Willard Fox's hand. It will only take a minute.”

  “No problem,” she offered. The doctor had already closed the door and disappeared before she finished her words.

  She slid off the table and began to read a certificate that hung in the middle of the wall. It declared the doctor's graduation from the University of Oklahoma Medical School in 1966. That made him old enough to be her father, she thought. Two photographs flanked the certificate, one of an old barn and the other of a green-headed mallard swimming in the middle of a farm pond. The signature “Brown” in the bottom right-hand corner of each identified the doctor as a skilled amateur photographer.

  She searched for a magazine or something to occupy her mind while she waited for the doctor to return. She spotted a newspaper on top of one of the filing cabinets and decided to see if it was current enough to warrant her interest. It was only one section of an Oklahoma City paper, and a week old. Someone had circled an article about a soldier killed in Cambodia more than thirty years before. Plans were underway to return his remains to Oklahoma. She quickly glanced at the rest of the page, decided it was old news, and put it back.

  Her knee hurt and she leaned against the wall for a moment. The filing cabinet to her left bore a worn label that read: “Medical Records 1966–1967.” She couldn't believe her luck, or even that medical files that old would still be intact and in public view. Was it possible that Rosalee's 1967 birth records could be right here beside her?

  She argued with herself. She was new in Liberty. If she got caught illegally rummaging through medical records, it would ruin her reputation. She looked over her shoulder and strained to hear activity in the hallway. Silence.

  I'll be quick. No one will ever know.

  She stole a quick peek. Only a few files remained in the old cabinet, but the name “Pearl Mobley” jumped out at her. She looked around again to make sure no one was watching and pulled the folder open. She found several six-by-eight typed cards inside. She read quickly, scanning the old records. “Twins?” she gasped.

  When she heard the doctor's voice in the hallway, she quickly replaced the folder, closed the file cabinet, and hobbled back to the examination table. Just as she did, Doc Brown burst through the door.

  “Okay, young lady, let's take a look at that leg of yours.” He sat on a short stool, rolled over to Sadie and took her knee in his hands. Gently pressing his fingers around her kneecap, he then worked his way up and down her leg. “Where does it hurt?” He held her thigh with one hand and carefully tried to bend her knee with the other.

  “Everywhere.”

  “Any sharp pains?”

  “Everywhere,” she repeated.

  He opened a nearby drawer and retrieved a stretchy bandage. “I can send you to Tahlequah to get an X-ray, but my guess is that it's just badly bruised. Best thing you can do is stay off of it for a few days.” He began to wrap her knee.

  “Say, Doc, did you know Pearl Mobley for very long?”

  “Pearl? Why, I guess everybody around here knew Pearl.” He continued to work on Sadie's knee. “As a matter of fact, Pearl was one of my first patients when I came here right out of medical school.”

  “Really?” Sadie tried to sound surprised.

  “Yes, her folks brought her in because she was sick. It turned out to be morning sickness.”

  “Pregnant with John, I guess.”

  “Yes.”

  Sadie remembered the article she had found at the Tahlequah library about Pearl being raped. “Was she married?”

  The doctor gave Sadie a curious glance as he finished tying her bandage. “Why are you so interested in Pearl?”

  “Just curious.”

  The doctor opened a nearby cabinet and produced several prescription sample packets. “This will help with the pain and swelling. You can take two a day.”

  Sadie nodded. “Someone said they thought Pearl had twins,” she lied.

  “I know Pearl's dead, but I still have to respect her privacy.”

  Sadie nodded again. “Thanks, Doc. I think I'll take your advice and go put this foot up.” She slid off her perch and turned around, but the doctor had already disappeared through the door. She grabbed her purse, limped down the hall, and checked out with the girl at the front desk.

  After leaving the doctor's office, she got back into her car and drove down the street in front of the café. Before turning into the alley behind the café she slowed to admire the freshly painted windows. The name change was now official. “The American Café,” she whispered. The words brought a smile to her face. As she parked, she thought about her great-aunt and how hard it must have been to run a café back in the forties. She hoped she could be as strong and successful.

  When Sadie walked through the back door and into the kitchen of the restaurant, she could hear the clatter of dishes and the soft mumble of customers. “Doesn't the front window look great,” beamed Sadie.

  Emma pulled two loaf pans out of the oven and the aroma of freshly baked bread filled the air. “I guess so. I don't know what was wrong with the Liberty Diner. But I guess with Goldie gone, it doesn't matter.”

  Rosalee carried a platter of dirty dishes into the kitchen and dumped them in a rubber dishpan. She noticed Sadie and smiled. “Hi, Sadie. You're supposed to call some guy named Charlie.” Then she disappeared through the swinging doors back into the café.

  “What did the doctor say, honey?” asked Emma.

  “The same thing you did,” reported Sadie, “to stay off of it and take a couple of aspirin.”

  “Well, you ought to mind him. The morning rush is over and we're going to offer beans and cornbread and chicken-salad sandwiches for lunch. I've got apple and peach pie, too. It'll be easy to clean up and we'll be out of here by three. You go get some rest.”

  “Sounds tempting,” said Sadie. “How about a sample?”

  Emma sliced a loaf of bread that had been cooling on a wire rack, piled it high with chicken salad, then topped it with a tomato slice, a lettuce leaf, and another piece of bread. Sadie filled a small cup with brown beans, spooned in a dab of sugar, and headed for her favorite table in the back of the café near the kitchen door.

  Emma followed, filled a tall glass with sweet tea, and sat down across from Sadie. The café had emptied and the two women were alone at the table.

  Sadie took a bite and raved. “Mmmm. That's good chicken salad, Emma. Never had anything quite like it. What'd you put in it?”

  “It's just boiled chicken, except that I only use the white meat. Then, let's see, there's celery, grapes, almonds, some Miracle Whip, and a little salt and pepper.”

  Sadie abruptly changed the subject. “You know, Emma, I think Pearl Mobley may have had twins when John was born.”

  “Oh, good grief,” remarked Emma. “Not you too.”

  Sadie wrinkled her forehead and stirred her beans. “What do you mean, me too?”

  “Rosalee said she read an old newspaper article about Pearl being raped behind this café. She's got it stuck in her head that Pearl was her mother.”

  “Oh, really?” Sadie frowned, wondering about Rosalee's source of information. “It could be a possibility, though. Did Goldie ever
talk about finding Pearl that night?”

  “No, and besides that she probably wasn't even raped. In the sixties, everybody was having free sex, married or not.”

  Sadie held her sandwich, poised to take another bite. “Do you remember the incident?”

  “Not really. I had my hands full with the kids. I don't really remember much about it.”

  “I thought you said Rosalee's mother was Indian.”

  “She was. Like I said, I saw her myself.” Emma took a gulp of tea. “And I've explained all that to Rosalee. Why, Pearl was as white as a spoonful of Crisco. Anyone can tell by looking at Rosalee the poor thing has got some Indian blood in her. She hides it fairly well with bleaching her hair, though. Don't you think?”

  Sadie finished off her sandwich and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin as Rosalee approached their table.

  “How are you feeling, Sadie?”

  “Not bad, now that I've got a full stomach. How about you?”

  “Okay, I guess. Don't forget to call that Charlie guy. He sounded kind of upset.”

  “Charlie McCord?” Sadie had never known the man to get riled about anything, but she couldn't think of another Charlie that would be calling her.

  “I heard you two talking about Pearl,” said Rosalee. “I'm going to prove Pearl was my mother.”

  “How in the world do you think you're going to do that?” asked Emma, visibly shaken. “I don't know why you want to insist that Pearl Mobley was your mother. Besides, if that article really is about Pearl and she was raped, then John is probably the result.”

  “I heard Sadie say she thought Pearl had twins,” said Rosalee, and turned toward Sadie. “Why do you think that?”

  Sadie looked away. “I'd rather not say.”

  “Well, it would all make sense,” continued Rosalee. “Didn't you say back when you were talking to Pearl she said she had a little girl and Aunt Goldie took her?”

  “Something like that,” answered Sadie. “But you have to remember, Rosalee, Pearl was saying a lot of crazy things back then.”