by Ann Pancake
It was at that moment the Czar caught a movement in one of the ground-level basement windows. “CAL-vin BERG-doll, CZAR of Olde BERK-ER. CAL-vin BERG-doll, CZAR—” The motion again. The Czar closed his mouth. He laid down his bread.
For just an instant, the movement constellated into what the Czar could not deny was a face. Just a flash, and no beard, no hair at all in fact, but the Czar knew immediately Whose face it was. What he couldn’t tell, after the eyes moved, was whether The face had blinked or winked.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, the Czar of Olde Berker and Blackie glided to a stop under the locust trees outside Theodore Munney’s trailer. The Czar did not honk. He drew himself tall in his seat and beamed at the grizzled pit bull who approached from the house across the road, sniffed Blackie’s tires, and peed. “You just help yourself,” the Czar permitted through the window.
The Czar had awakened in fine fritter, full of oil and vinegar, right as ravioli, even the faux Christmas icicles dangling from Theodore Munney’s trailer eaves dazzled on this day. Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Olde Berker. And the least of these. His mouth watering a little, he smoothed his hands over the mostly clean yard-sale corduroy pants he’d donned for the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. Theodore Munney would not be taken to the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast; five-dollar all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts were reserved for more loyal subjects, but once Calvin got Theodore Munney circling on the Cub Cadet, Cal would pick up a sausage biscuit for him—or could the Czar pocket a pancake and patty at the all-you-can-eat?
Then Theodore Munney was on the porch, his tensed arms radiating an impression of flapping even though they did not move. His legs rushed him to the passenger window, his eyes panicked. “Gottagivemetimetobrushmyteeth.”
“Surely!” granted the Czar. “You just take your time. Take your time, my sage serf.” Patience came easily to gentility. That’s why their blood ran blue instead of red. The plastic watch taped to Blackie’s dash indicated that the doors to the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast would not open for another thirty minutes. Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Olde Berker. The saliva welled up again in the Czar’s mouth.
Theodore Munney was clambering into Blackie’s passenger seat. The Czar noticed that for the third day, he had not shaved, whiskers sprouting in irregular scraps across his face, Theodore Munney’s odor one degree richer than it had been yesterday. Signs of spring. A washing machine agitator plugged with wet grass swirled up into Cal’s brain, but the Czar extinguished the image with a rap of his scepter.
“Shshshshshotoffthecannonatthegradeschoolthismorning,” said Theodore Munney.
“Now, Theodore.” The Czar adopted a tone both authoritative and benign, gentle and firm. “Today I expect you to finish what you’ve started. You’re more than halfway through.” Not exactly true, but positive, positive. “I’m going to get you started, and I’ll bring you back some breakfast. And that four dollars an hour will give you a little spending money for the rest of Bygone Days.”
“Shshshshshotoffacannonatthegradeschool.”
Early this morning, at exactly the moment the Czar had been scattering cat food in the possum pan, several pickups wearing rail adapters on their axles had passed the house. Reenactors on their way up the railroad tracks towards the defunct cornfield where they’d fake-kill each other for the pleasure of the tourist train. That this occurred before Theodore Munney had witnessed it from his orbit on the lawnmower was yet another blessing endowed upon the Czar, and the Czar had every reason to believe more were forthcoming.
Soon the Czar of Olde Berker was striding across the gravel lot to the Fire Hall, having left Theodore Munney contentedly circling on the Cub Cadet. The Czar tripped on the step up to the door but caught himself with regal aplomb. Still nimble. He took his place behind a family of five waiting to pay their pancake fee. Beyond them, the high-ceilinged fire hall thrummed with conversations around long tables covered with white paper, and eaters already padded back and forth for seconds, maybe thirds, while the fire trucks, consigned to the darkened half of the building, looked on through headlights and gape-mouthed grills. Calvin felt a twinge of panic that the cakes might all be gone before he had seconds himself, and how’d they all get in here so fast? The doors had opened just twenty minutes ago; there must have been a line outside before then; note for next year. And now the Czar was at the money-taking table, and the folded tent of cardboard in front of the cash box read $5.50.
The Fire Department had raised the price.
“I see the Fire Department has raised the price,” the Czar remarked primly, pretending not to recognize the lady collecting the cash although she was a friend of his youngest sister’s whom he’d known since grade school. The Czar took two deep breaths, repressing a sugar rise with a quiet grit of his molars.
The money lady smiled. “Yes, well, this is the first increase since Bygone Days began in 1982. They just have—”
“Should get extra for that,” Calvin snapped unmajestically, his mind whipping out in several directions to identify what extra a person might get from an all-you-can-eat.
He received his first round in silence at the serving window, but the aroma of fried pork restored his luster as he carried his tray to the end of a table near the fire engines where no one else yet sat. The Czar did not want to be eaten with or talked at, he wanted to treasure his all-you-can-eat pancakes in peace, he hitched down his cap bill and retreated behind his glasses, fading into the gray specter featured on his school board campaign poster. He looked around for a bottle of syrup. All the condiments huddled in a small thicket several yards away in the inconvenient middle of the table. The Czar exhaled loudly. He levered himself off his bench and shuffled towards them.
The Czar plucked up each and strained at its label through his darkened bifocals. His stomach fluttered. He ran through the thicket again. Spinning around, he called to the nearest bunch of happy all-you-can-eaters clustered around syrup bottles at the next row of tables, “You all got any sugar-free over there?”
Cousins Tick and Carroll Might, eager to help, twirled each syrup in their hands. “Sorry, Mr. Bergdoll! It’s all regular.” Their buddy Bradley went so far as to research a third condiment station at a table behind him.
“None here either!”
Calvin crept back to his seat. Upon his nearly bald cakes melted margarine already coagulated. He shot the sugar-full Aunt Jemima a look that should have pierced a leak. This moment he’d been anticipating for weeks, there was nothing else for him to eat at Bygone Days, I’ve paid my $5.50 and that includes a right to sugar-free syrup. The effects of regular syrup were such that not even the Czar would risk them, especially after the brown-sugar daydream yesterday, those were the types of experiences Calvin could very well do without. If he’d brought Theodore Munney with him, he could have dispatched him to the kitchen to ask the cooks bite off your nose to spite Cal punted that one away, and he was just about to struggle to his feet and make the kitchen journey himself, leaving his plate undefended to who knew what, a loose dog, a slick-fingered child, marauding fire engine grills, when—
“Hello, Cal!” The volume and pitch stung through Calvin’s tinnitus like a copperhead. A voice cheerful, boisterous, and hypercountrified. A campaign voice. A hand clapped Cal’s shoulder. The Czar winced to his toes. It was George Callahan, a young local attorney, the one without the implant, a rampant Republican running for county commission. “How are your cakes?” Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Olde Berker. George swung a leg over the bench and slopped his heaping plate next to Cal’s.
“Not so good.” The Czar glowered and Calvin cringed at this undignified mewl, but it had been as unstoppable as a hiccup.
George speared half a sausage into his mouth and while swallowing boomed, “And why is that?”
“There isn’t any sugar-free syrup.” The whine again, as if the Czar were possessed.
George licked the back of his fork. “Why don’t you try the gravy?”
I don’t want gravy on my panca
kes. I want syrup. I want sugar-free Aunt Jemima’s syrup. Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Olde Berker, wants Aunt Jemima’s Sugar-Free Syrup. His Majesty, Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Olde Berker, has waited all year, there is nothing else to eat—
“Oh, she was just thrilled. Just thrilled to death.”
A pair of gray-curly-haired women were settling in across from each other a few feet up the table.
“Yes, were you close enough to the stage to see? She was just a-crying!”
“And I can’t think of a soul in Berker County who deserves Knight more!” bellowed George. “Miz Helen Smithster!”
Calvin Bergdoll’s mouth went numb.
“George, I certainly agree with you. I’da thought it might of been Lloyd Hines, old as he is, but Helen, by golly, all the things she’s done for this—”
The Knight? The Knight? The Least of These! The Least of These! The Czar, the Sugar-Free, Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Olde Berker, Ole Cal Czar of Ole Berker, Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Olde West Virginia, His Honorable Majesty and Lord Calvin Bergdoll, Czar of Almost Heaven and North America, Venerated Emperor of the Symphonies of Vienna and Prague—
An elbow whacked Calvin’s bicep. “You should give it a try, Cal! It’s some mighty good gravy!”
The Czar snatched a bottle of regular syrup the women had fetched and drowned his pancakes and then his sausage. He plunged the entire top pancake into his mouth, and once he got it chewed compact enough, forced a second one behind it.
Abruptly, Calvin was staring into the forsythia bush at the side of his own house, his sight scoured to ultraclarity. The tang of fresh urine steamed in his honed nostrils, and then he saw he was hovering right behind Theodore Munney’s left shoulder while Theodore finished up with his zipper. When Theodore stepped back, Calvin stepped with him. Theodore turned in the direction of the waiting mower in the backyard, then stopped. He cocked his head, nearly imperceptibly, but Cal’s vision detected it, and Calvin strained, but caught nothing but inner-ear bedlam.
After several seconds, Theodore jerked to the corner of the house, Calvin yanked along behind. There Floodie sat in the driveway catching her breath. Along the path to the back door hustled the son who used to have a few problems, his head swiveling, his eyes a-dart, but the watchfulness was all hollow habit, the son so preoccupied that he did not notice Theodore Munney at the corner of the house although Theodore didn’t hide.
The back door slammed. Theodore and Cal slipped to its window. Now past the creases that made long X’s on Theodore’s sunburned neck, Calvin was studying the son’s back, him in the same sag-seated Levi’s as yesterday and in a white hooded sweatshirt that had been washed, at least twice, with something bright red. The son, in turn, studied the glass door of Calvin’s gun cabinet.
The son snugged his cap tighter on his head. Scratching his ribs under his sweatshirt, he sidled towards Biggest Rack.
Calvin Bergdoll’s skin went cold. It was the key. The one Calvin’d made sure Theodore Munney had never seen the hiding place of, not even during those times he and Theodore Munney had taken out a rifle or a shotgun and cleaned it or even enjoyed a little target practice. Scooting aside Biggest Rack’s mount, the son plucked the key from the tack behind it.
Theodore Munney emitted a chokey “oh oh.” He pitched backwards a step. The son lifted out one of the four remaining guns, Cal’s favorite, a .30-30 his departed father had left him. The son held it lengthwise across his palms, examined it, returned it to the case, and reached for another. Twice the son glanced over his shoulder, and twice he did not discern Theodore Munney, who, after the key revelation, had skittered to a more discreet peeping angle, his back heaving with rapid breath, his mouth ajar. After the son had made his choice, relocked the cabinet and rehid the key, Theodore Munney scrambled back around the corner of the house and squatted in the side yard, Calvin still appended helplessly to his shoulder. From his hyperlucid proximity, Calvin could detect a quiver in Theodore Munney’s ears, until, Cal had to surmise, Theodore Munney heard Floodie’s engine flare full-bore upon hitting the smooth asphalt of Route 50.
At which moment Theodore surged back to the door, Calvin in tandem. Theodore rushed across the floor, his head in anticipatory full-blown chicken bob, Theodore Munney almost knocking Biggest Rack off the wall in key-fumbling enthusiasm, and Theodore Munney unlocked the gun cabinet.
Theodore Munney hesitated. Calvin could feel Theodore’s body heat rise. Then Theodore Munney was reaching for the very rifle the son had decided against stealing, Cal’s favorite deer rifle, the one Theodore Munney and Calvin had handled most often, the one Theodore Munney had most often watched Cal clean and had on occasion seen Cal load. Theodore dropped to his knees on the floor and, after some trial, some error, broke open the barrel. He pulled out the ammunition drawer in the cabinet’s bottom. He sampled three boxes before he found cartridges that fit.
Boosting the rifle to his shoulder, Theodore rose, then pivoted so smartly Calvin nearly lost his hat in the spiral. Theodore Munney marched three steps towards the back door. He halted. He dropped his chin and mused upon his vegetation-hued clothes. Then, leaning the .30-30 gingerly against the wall, Theodore turned to the coat closet.
After a moment’s survey, he plunged in both hands. Garment after garment he shoved aside, passing over a blaze-orange vest, a gray overcoat, several flannels of plaid, the grubby old letter jacket from the time the son was just starting his problems. Until he arrived at Calvin’s bride’s navy blue windbreaker.
The jacket choice confirmed Calvin’s horrified suspicions. His invisible mouth reared open in inaudible yell. Into his blue uniform, Theodore Munney wiggled, the fabric straining a little across his shoulders, and with a deep breath, Theodore puffed his breast, brushed phantom epaulets, and reshouldered his gun. Then Theodore Munney and Calvin were slamming out the screen door.
The blue jacket rooster-stepped across the yard, Calvin towed behind like a hobo bundle. Past the possum pans, the Cub Cadet, past the dingy white blossom of the Arts Channel–snagging satellite dish. Theodore Munney scrambled up the railroad embankment, dropping the .30-30 diagonally across his hands the way the Seasoned Woodsman had instructed him to carry it when crossing fences. Through the roar in Calvin’s ears penetrated the report of an upriver cannon. The battle reenactment was well under way. Facing calamity, Calvin’s brain shimmered with an acuity it hadn’t had since 1979, but Theodore could not hear Calvin’s desperate shouts, could not see his flailing hands. Once they reached the railroad ties, they pivoted again, to face upriver. Another cannon boomed. And Theodore Munney, Calvin Bergdoll tethered to his collar, marched to the cornfield to defend the Union.
ROCKHOUNDS
JOS HAD FOUND it first. Went out early that morning to the flat place by the creek where she practiced and saw straightaway the orange dirt they’d laid over the hole ripped up and sprayed. Without getting close enough to tell if the little body was gone, she wheeled and ran to the house to fetch her uncle. If they had to break more bad news to her grandfather, they could break it slow. But she and Uncle Derek weren’t halfway back to the grave when they heard the door whine open behind them. Granddad had sniftered it without being told.
When they saw for sure the hole was empty, Uncle Derek shook his head. “Must have been coyotes.” He said it “kai oats,” which was how Granddad would say it, not how Uncle Derek, who had been to college, did. Joslin held her soccer ball between her elbow and ribs. She looked up at her grandfather, saw on his cheek the red webs brightening, and she pulled her head, just a little, back into her hood.
“Yep. Coyotes dug er up and drug er off.” And that was all Granddad said.
They’d buried the little dog just the afternoon before, her granddad praying over her for a long time when they did. They’d waited until Jos got home from school, but not because she’d asked them to. It wasn’t a funeralish day. Late bright October and the kind of blue like if you struck the sky with a pipe it would ring. “That curly dog,” her grandma cal
led Goldy; her grandma didn’t much care one way or another, but her granddad doted on her. “Cuddle Dog” was Granddad’s nickname, and Goldy was the only thing Joslin’d ever seen her grandfather hug. When she’d first come to stay with her grandparents five years ago while her mother got her life together, Goldy slept with Joslin every night until Granddad’s bedtime. Then Granddad would shuffle into Jos’s room, trying so hard to keep quiet he’d wake Jos with the effort. He’d pull Cuddle Dog by her armpits out from under Jos’s covers and stow her in his own bed, where she slept on a pillow beside his head. Grizzled gold against grizzled black.
A little over a week ago, Goldy had looked at her food and looked away. Grandma said leave her be, she’ll eat when she’s hungry, but Granddad slipped her Penrose sausages and tuna until Goldy cared not even for those. By the fourth day, there was talk of taking her to the vet, but as usual, the consensus was wait and see. Mentioning cost would have been like saying there was dirt in the yard. Her uncle, when things became clear, at least to him, took hold the bigger younger dog, a lab mix named Bunker, and chained him to a pin oak behind the house. “It was the creek water got Goldy,” Uncle Derek told Jos. “We don’t keep Bunker tied, we’ll lose him, too.”
Anytime a person stepped out of the house, Bunker bolted to his chain end and danced on hind legs, baffled, but optimistic and eager to forgive. He spent the rest of his time wrapping himself around the tree and knocking his water pan dry. Every time Derek drove away from the house, Granddad unclasped the chain. Every time her uncle got home and found Bunker loose, he’d catch him and tie him back up. Neither her granddad nor her uncle said a word to the other about it. Joslin tried to keep the water pan full.