“Where’s the menu? We had this yesterday.”
Will worked his mouth as if he were talking to her but no sound came out.
Miss Bertha tapped at her hearing aid and said, “What’s wrong? I can’t hear.”
Will kept working his mouth, saying something to Mill, who worked his mouth back. They carried on a silent conversation for a few seconds.
Now, I really think this routine amused Mrs. Fulbright no end, but she did nothing except cut up her toast.
“Serena!” cried Miss Bertha. “What’s wrong with this fool thing?”
Mrs. Fulbright just smiled and went for the pepper.
“Say that again!” she demanded of Will.
Will mouthed silent syllables.
Miss Bertha took the hearing aid out and shook it, even hit it several times on the edge of the table. “Damned contraption!”
Will smilingly took it from her, looked as if he were messing with it, then handed it back. She screwed it into her ear. Will spoke to her in his normal voice, “It’s okay now.” Mill echoed this sentiment.
Then we scattered.
36
Diner life
There are times I think all mysteries begin and end in Cold Flat Junction. Spirit Lake itself might seem the more mysterious, what with the Devereau house there and Mary-Evelyn drowning there, and Ulub’s story of the lights in the woods. Or White’s Bridge Road where the murder occcurred. Yes, you might think either of these places held the greater mystery.
But whenever I get off the train at Cold Flat Junction, and it pulls away, and I’m left looking across the tracks at that empty land that seems to go on forever, Cold Flat Junction seems to me the real mystery. My gaze is stopped only by that dark line of trees on the horizon, the only thing that keeps my eye from falling off the face of the earth. I don’t know what word to use to describe it—“unreal,” or “unearthly,” maybe—but that doesn’t say it, for if ever a place were “earthly,” it’s here. It’s raw land, forgotten land, land you wouldn’t give a second thought to, so why do I? Even the milky sky, colored the gray-tinged white of an opal, seems to suffer under a blight of indifference. So I sat on the platform bench and looked over there, and even grew weary with looking.
I sat there for some minutes, then walked the worn path from the station to the Windy Run Diner.
They were all there today, again, either sitting at the counter on the same stools, or in the same booth. I had the eerie impression of stopped time, the diner frozen in time and its customers turned to ice sculptures. The only person missing was the wife of the man who occupied the booth. He seemed pleased by her absence. I took my same stool at the counter, the end that butted against the wall.
Don Joe and Evren both nodded to me at the same time and the heavyset woman in dark glasses smiled at me and smoked her cigarette. They actually seemed glad to see me, but I didn’t put that down to my likeability. I just figured there was so little happening in Cold Flat Junction that any news was good news.
Louise Snell said, “Well, hello, darlin’, nice to see you again.”
It wasn’t really a question, but I said, “I’m on my vacation.” This was partly true, for I really was on vacation, except it wasn’t here; it was in Florida. But hadn’t I told them I was from La Porte? So why would I be vacationing around here unless I was insane?
Billy was the first to comment on this: “Vacation? Thought you said you was from La Porte.” He acted like he’d told a good joke, for he laughed and slapped Don Joe beside him.
“What happened is, our car broke down again over in Spirit Lake so we took it over to Slaw’s Garage. It’s been there now for nearly four days. We’ve been staying at the Hotel Paradise, which is really nice, so things could be worse.”
They were all listening intently, Louise Snell going so far as to get out her cigarettes and light one up as she leaned back against the cupboard that held shelves of pie wedges. (I was planning on having the banana cream.) Maybe I liked the Windy Run because I was paid such close attention to.
“And Mr. Slaw,” I went on, “employs a master mechanic, so I guess he’ll spot the problem.”
The heavyset woman in the dark glasses beside Billy said, “Better than Toots’s trying.” Everyone laughed.
Toots was the owner of the Cold Flat Junction filling station and garage where the car was supposed to have been fixed the first time I was in the Windy Run Diner. I was almost beginning to believe there was such a car, it having caused such trouble.
The woman said, “Well, Toots could sure use a mechanic like that, so maybe you could go by and drop off this mechanic’s phone number.” Everyone laughed.
Billy was irritated because someone else was leading things and asked, “If your folks is over in La Porte, what you doin’ here? Not that we ain’t glad to see you, now.”
“My ma wants me to look up an old friend of hers, name of Rebecca—?” I squinched my face as if trying to recall the last name, then pulled a scrap of paper from my pocket and pretended to read it. “Rebecca Calhoun, at least that’s what her name was when Ma went to school with her. She lives on”—I consulted the paper again—“Sweetmeadow Road.” I knew there was no such road. There was a Lonemeadow and a Sweet-something, but I could get them arguing over which road it was and where the Calhoun house was.
And of course they did; they fought over the right to set me straight. Billy, Don Joe, the lady in the dark glasses, and even Louise Snell said all at once: “Sweetmeadow?”
Billy took over. “Ain’t no such a road, little lady. Now, there’s Lonemeadow, and there’s Sweetwater, so your ma must of just mixed ’em up.”
“Oh,” I said, in my disappointed tone.
“Ab-so-tive-ly,” said Billy, as if I weren’t believing him.
Don Joe and Evren nodded in agreement.
Don Joe said, “This Rebecca person, she’d be living on one or the other?”
While they were all deep in this problem I requested of Louise Snell a piece of the banana cream pie.
“Sure, hon.” As she pulled a wedge from the shelf, she said to the diner at large, “Well, for the Lord’s sake, help her out, whoever knows where this Rebecca Calhoun lives.”
They all seemed to be putting on their thinking caps, consulting one another in whispers, when a voice said, “Red Coon Rock.” It was the small man in the booth. “That’s where.” He held his white coffee mug with his thumb on the rim. His other hand held a cigarette and he was flicking ash from it with his little finger.
Billy turned on his stool. “Now how’n H you know that, Mervin? There’s no Calhouns round here. Calhouns, they live over in the La Porte area. I never heard tell of one in Cold Flat.”
Mervin answered, “Her name ain’t Calhoun no more, that’s why. She was a Calhoun, only she married a Spiker, Bewley Spiker that was, only he’s dead now.”
That all of this useful information came from someone in a booth seemed to aggravate the counter-sitters.
Mervin went on: “Then Rebecca, she passed away, too.”
My heart sank. I couldn’t believe that my fresh lead had dead-ended.
“It’s only Imogene lives there now. That’s Rebecca’s sister.”
Sister! I was too excited by this news to stay quiet. “Which sister’s that, Mr. Mervin?” I had no idea what his last name was.
Their heads all swiveled to look at me. They were not used to me taking part in the discussion, even if I was the whole reason for it.
“Rebecca’s sister?” Mervin scraped the heel of his hand across his whiskers. I could hear the rasping noise even halfway across the room. “Well, I don’t rightly think she had more than one. This Imogene, she’d be younger than Rebecca by a good ten, fifteen years.”
Imogene must be the little sister Aurora mentioned, the one Rebecca took with her all the time when she had to work; she’d have been ten or eleven when she went to the Devereau house, almost the same age as Mary-Evelyn.
Louise Snell said, “But you w
as looking for Rebecca, right?”
I tried to look disappointed, and in a way I was, thinking of how Rebecca was waitress at the Hotel Paradise and ’d’ve really liked to hear her talk about it. “My ma will be disappointed as she was such a good friend.” I looked down at the plate my pie had rested on and mashed my fork against the crumbs. When had I eaten it? “But Imogene, maybe she’d be worth talking to, for she might remember my ma. Where does she live?”
“Red Coon Rock over past Flyback Holler,” Mervin said. “Where Jude Stemple lives.”
Don Joe said, “Why, you was asking about Jude, too. Did you find him?”
“I did, yes.”
“Huh,” said Don Joe. “ ’Fore that, it was somebody else.”
“The Tidewaters,” said Louise Snell.
“No, ma’am. I never did find the Tidewaters.”
“And there was somebody else you was lookin for—”
I broke in before he could remember about Louise Landis. “See, my ma’s very best friend, besides Rebecca, used to live in these parts.”
“She did? What’s her name?” asked Louise Snell.
It took me only a couple of seconds to say, “Henrietta Simple. Her maiden name, of course.” Where that name came from I have no idea. Names just pop into my mind. Maybe because I spend so much time making things up, my mind is really greased. Well, I could see them putting on their thinking caps all up and down the counter, for here was a name to contend with, one they could try to lay claim to.
Billy shook his head. “Ain’t no Simples in Cold Flat Junction. You ever hear of a Simple?” he asked the others.
And it was kind of like one of those relay races where you hand off a stick to a team member. Even Mervin got it before handing it back to me.
“I never said the Simples lived in Cold Flat Junction. I said Ma used to live in these parts.”
They had no choice but to accept there were Simples somewhere, or had been, that were outside their kin. They looked pretty defeated over this name they weren’t familiar with, so I thought I should do some explaining. A cool breeze blew through the diner’s louvered blinds, and I sat thinking for a moment.
“The Simples, you wouldn’t know of them because they lived and maybe still do on a farm. It’s really huge. They were what you’d call—or at least my ma says so—recluses. Hardly ever left the farm except for George—Henrietta’s father—and he’d go into town once a week for supplies. They allowed only a few people to come to their house who they had business dealings with. My ma for years went to the Simple farm for eggs. That’s how she got to be friends with Henrietta and how she found out her little brother—Miller was his name—was touched.”
Well, their eyes really opened at that, and a couple more cigarettes got lit. They had perked up a lot listening to the story of the Simples. For if they didn’t know the Simples, at least the Simples might be discredited and so not worth knowing.
“Touched how?” asked Evren, who sat beside Don Joe and never said much.
“Miller got kicked by a mule when he was hardly more than an infant and it did something to his brain.”
“Like what?” Evren asked, and I wondered if he could be touched himself and was eager to know someone else in that condition.
“Well, he could turn really bad—violent, you know—and attack a person. He did my moth—my ma one time. He just picked up a chair and went after her like a lion tamer. George saw and saved her. You can see how they’d be recluses. They couldn’t afford to have Miller in an institution, so they kept him, like I said, at home. But they had to be really careful about visitors.”
I saw all of this in my mind’s eye—Miller charging my mother, Henrietta yelling, George hurrying to the rescue. The farm came clearer and clearer, the vast acres, the chickens scratching in the dust, my mother getting a basket of eggs. I blinked and looked around and for a moment wondered where I was. It was like when I come out of the Orion, wondering what world I had entered. But in a flash the diner came back and I was on firm ground. Or at least as firm as ground could be in Cold Flat Junction.
“So, you see, Imogene Calhoun might know what happened to Henrietta Simple. You said she lives at Red Coon Rock? And that’s past Flyback Hollow?” I figured even if any of them ran into Imogene Calhoun and mentioned the story of the Simples, and Imogene said she’d never heard of such a family, it wouldn’t matter as the whole story was so complicated they’d think they remembered it wrong or Imogene was touched too.
“It ain’t far past, though,” put in Mervin. “Not more’n three, four blocks.”
Billy was mad at having his directions questioned. “For God’s sakes, Mervin, ain’t no blocks out there. You just have to measure off a length of road. I’d say a quarter mile if I’m any judge.”
I asked, and was sorry I did, “What’s her house look like?”
“White, with a big porch around it,” said Don Joe.
Billy sighed. “It ain’t white; it’s this beige color.”
“It’s blue,” said Mervin. “Spiker painted it this sky-blue.”
Mervin, I thought, could really talk when his wife wasn’t around. He must have lived for these occasions. “We all agreed it was the dumbest color to paint a house.”
Billy swiveled around on his stool. “That ain’t the Calhoun house, for the Lord’s sakes! That’s Wanda Leroy’s. And it ain’t anywhere near Red Coon Rock.”
The woman in the dark glasses shoved her mug toward Louise Snell and Louise went to get the coffee pot.
Don Joe said, “It’s olive green’s what it is, that sour-green color.” When Billy went to contradict him, Don Joe held his hand out. “I guess I oughta know, Billy, all the deliveries I made to that place.”
I wondered what he delivered, though I didn’t really want to know, for that would take Don Joe outside his diner life and onto that great flat uninhabited land across the railroad tracks. He could wander there forever. It was strange I should think this, when I was making it all up anyway. Or making up a lot out of whole cloth (as my mother said), spreading a little truth a long way.
“Hey, sugar.”
I felt Louise Snell’s hand on my arm and I shook myself.
“You all right? You had your eyes closed.”
“I was just wandering in my mind.”
Mervin was giving directions. “All you do’s go up past the schoolhouse and then left on Dubois and that there’ll take you past Flyback Holler and then it’s an easy scoot”—here he scraped one hand off the other to mean scooting—“to Red Coon Rock.”
I thanked them and took my check to the cash register by the door. The pimply-faced boy cashier who’d been there when I first came to the diner hadn’t been there the last several times. I wondered if he got fired. Louise Snell came to take my money and give me change.
“Hey, girl,” said Don Joe. “If you been in La Porte and Spirit Lake a while, maybe you heard some about Fern Queen getting herself shot. We don’t get the news here; all we get’s that Conservative every week.”
Evren gave a tittery little laugh that shook his narrow shoulders. “‘Don’t get the news here’; that’s funny, Don Joe. Nothin ever happens here. There ain’t no news.”
I wondered at this strange notion of Cold Flat Junction and just looked at Evren. Then I answered Don Joe. “Sheriff’s still looking; I guess they don’t make anything public until they’re pretty sure of what’s going on.”
“Well, if that DeGheyn fella’s still thinkin’ it’s Ben Queen, he’s not ever goin’ to get nowhere.”
I would have asked why he was so sure of this, but I knew it wouldn’t tell me more than I already knew.
Louise Snell wished me good luck.
Good luck. It was as if I was setting off on a trip that might be harder to make than Mervin allowed it was. This didn’t bother me one whit; I figured if I could get all the way to the Rony Plaza, I could surely find my way to Red Coon Rock.
As the diner’s screen door banged shut behind me and
I had to shade my eyes against the glare of the sun in that white sky without mercy, I wished I had a diner life to anchor me to something, a place like rock in a riverbed where water just flowed around you but never moved you, a place where they didn’t get the news.
37
Lemonade
By this time I was so familiar with Cold Flat Junction I was tempted to stop off and see people. Off Schoolhouse Road was the house where they kept hens and where Mrs. Davidow came to get eggs (a lot different from the Simples’s farm). I passed the Queen house on Dubois Road. I followed it to its end, to the whitewashed rock with “Flyback Hollow” written in large white letters. I would have liked to talk to Louise Landis again, but decided I had too much to do.
Past Flyback Hollow the road narrowed and what showed signs of having been a hard-surfaced road had pretty much gone back to its old rutted-earth self. A distance ahead, I made out a girl who appeared to be sitting at a table, which struck me as no-end peculiar; when I got closer I saw it was a lemonade stand. A sign taped to the rim of a card table said “Lemonade 10¢.” On this lonely road, business couldn’t be all that good.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.”
At first I thought she was the Pick Up sticks champion, as her wide-eyed and sorrowful look was like that girl’s. Maybe it was just the Cold Flat Junction look.
I had plenty of money, most of which I was going to pay whoever might be a source of information, and it looked like it would be Imogene Calhoun. That still left enough for a stop at the Windy Run Diner and for lemonade. “I’ll have two cups,” I said, taking twenty cents from my change purse. It wasn’t lemonade, either; it was Kool-Aid and I asked about this: why had she put lemonade on her sign?
“Because it’s a lemonade stand.” She crossed her arms over her chest and scratched her elbows, which I sometimes do myself, so I guess we had something in common, except she was more stubborn than I was. I drank my Kool-Aid, a yellow color but tasting nothing like lemons. It was warm, too, but I didn’t complain; I thought it kind of brave of her to set up here where she had so little chance of success. I pondered this. Or was it just dumb?
Cold Flat Junction Page 24