by RB Banfield
“Do I know you?” she asked, trying to keep her voice mature. Then she noticed in the dull light from the street that a child of about six years was standing between them, looking at them like they did not belong there. He glared at them and stabbed at his lips with his fingers.
“My name’s Craigfield,” the man said, his low voice barely audible to her. “I’m staying at your Grandmother’s place. Pleased to finally meet you. I’ve heard much about you.”
“Sorry about that. My grandmother can go on. I hope she didn’t embarrass you.”
“Not at all. It’s nice to make new friends.”
The six-year-old then told them to hush with an angry and blunt bark. They did so, both trying not to laugh at how seriously the child was reacting. Then Sophie realised that Taylor was not exactly rushing to get to the door and all their haste was needless.
“What brings you to Gendry?” she asked him, risking the wrath of the child.
“That’s a little personal,” he replied, his voice suddenly devoid of any charm.
“Oh, no mind,” she said, offended that he gave her that kind of reply when she was only trying to make conversation.
The door opened and it was Taylor, with his parents purposely lingering back. The braces-girl flipped on the lights and everyone cheered. Taylor raised his arms and started jumping around the room, as everyone sang for him. Sophie made sure she made her way to the other side of the room from Craigfield, regretting that the conversation turned cold and she lacked any confidence to try restarting it. She tried to talk to the other adults there, all four of them, but she always felt herself glancing around the room for him, not willing to accept that he had already left.
Max turned off the television and threw the remote in its general direction, not really trying to hit it since it was only two years old and he didn’t want to go out to buy a new one. If he could change the quality of programming by hitting it then he would have thrown it earlier and more often. The remote glanced off a glass coffee table, covered in heavy scratches, and rattled against the wall. Its two batteries flew out and one bounced under a bookcase. Jill rushed into the room from the kitchen, worried that the crash was something serious. She had been trying to rescue what was the result of a recipe that she found in a woman’s magazine that must have contained a misprint. It was not a tablespoon of salt, but a teaspoon. A tablespoon of salt made it very, very nasty. She thought that washing the meat under a cold tap might help. It didn’t.
“It’s not working,” he said without looking at her. “I admit it. It’s just not there. Perhaps it never was.”
“The television?”
“My novel.”
“Your book? Why, what’s wrong with it?”
“Ever since you told Paul and Sarah, it hasn’t felt right. I mean, I liked the first chapter, when she arrived at Gendry. Now she’s met this new character, it doesn’t work anymore. Boy meets girl, it’s just so obvious. First she likes him, then she doesn’t, then she does again, then she finds there’s something wrong with him. I can’t see where it’s going other than the obvious, and I don’t want to do the obvious. I want my book to be unusual, standing out from all the others. Something to take notice.”
Jill sat on the edge of the couch and wiped her hands on her apron, thinking how trivial that sounded compared to what she was doing to the night’s food. “You don’t think the problem might be your style, not the story? You never use a lot of description, you know. The reader likes to know all the gritty details. I know you don’t like doing research, but for something like this, when you’re dealing with a real town, you need to know details about the place.”
“I know a lot about Gendry,” he said as he got up to retrieve the remote. “More than most people, really.”
“For instance,” she continued, not really listening to him, “don’t say it was a tractor. Say it was a D-80 Norganwood, or something like that. The readers like precise specificity.”
“Precise ...?” Max gave up trying to repeat it.
“You can’t insult them with blandness. Not when they can look Gendry up on the internet. You can’t have more about Gendry on some tourist website than what’s in your book.”
Kneeling, he found the battery under the bookcase, blew off the dust, and then put his hands on his hips as he looked at her. “You just made that name up. You don’t know anything about tractors. What was it you said, a Norganwood? Is that even a real make? Is that even a real name? You just made that up, didn’t you?”
“You said you don’t like the new character? Just get rid of him, or her. If they’re not working, replace them with someone else. Can you do that or is it too late? Will it mess with your story?”
“Yes, it’s a guy. All this build-up to meeting him and you want me to get rid of him?”
“What character are we talking about?”
“Craigfield.” Then he looked at her.
She was momentarily stunned and tried to hide it. “Kind of a strange name to choose, isn’t it? Not something you hear every day, I mean.”
“Why, have you not heard of that name before?”
Jill gave him an icy stare. “You know I have. And what you think you’re doing, I don’t like it.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked innocently.
“I think you know.” She went back to the kitchen with a look on her face that told him she would not be talking to him for a while. She scooped together what she had been cooking and threw it into the garbage.
Max snapped the batteries back into remote and turned the television back on. He increased the volume of some random soap opera he had never seen before and pretended to be interested in it. Then his thoughts went to his own TV show. Back when he was a successful newspaper man he had a great idea for a new show for kids. A cute animated show set in the jungle, where animals drawn in the Disney style would sing “jungle jingles” together. He wanted one of the characters, perhaps a panda bear, to look like Elvis, and he would add an “Uh-huh” into every song. At the end of each show one of the weaker ones would be hunted, killed and gorged by the carnivorous ones. It would be great suspense, Max told everyone, for the kiddies to find out if one of their favourites were eaten that week. It would give them, he said, an education not only into the reality of jungle life, but also real life. He still, to this day, did not know why the show was rejected.
With the car lights illuminating the baffling mound on the side of the road, the driver made his way to it. He stopped every few steps to take search for another taste of his whiskey. These were no longer sips for fun. Now he was trying to calm himself. The mound was a body, a man, not young but also not one of the town’s elderly population. For some reason it would have saddened the driver more to know that he hit one of the elderly folk. Face down, the driver could not see exactly who it was, but by the way he was lying and not making any movement or sound, he knew that he must be dead.
Sudden panic gave him energy to look around, up and down the street for other cars, and to the nearby houses, for any signs that he had been seen. He knew that just standing there was the worst thing he could do. Either he called for help and then hid behind his drinking problem to help him avoid jail time, or he did nothing and escape unseen and hope to never be caught. Then he realised that if he was going to truly get away with this crime he either had to leave town or quickly hide the body. The thought of someone seeing him trying to run away appalled him, so he was left with no other alternative.
The lifeless body made the most grotesque sound as it was dragged by the feet away from the road and into the fringes of a nearby forest. The effort made him feel dizzy and ill, and he almost threw up. In the move he had set his bottle on the ground, and now he forgot exactly where it was. After searching around in the dark, that didn’t accomplish anything other than make him feel more dizzy, he staggered back to his car and slowly drove to the spot from where the body had been dragged. Then he saw his bottle, glowing under the headlights. As he look
ed at it from behind the wheel he felt so overwhelmed by sadness that he started to sob. It took him at least ten minutes to go and retrieve the bottle. He held it up and waved it high, in the direction of the body, as he offered a toast, saying how sorry he was to whoever it was. The next sip was the best of his life.
Sally Wunder had owned the only restaurant in town for fourteen years and over that time the food had remained exactly the same. While there was a good variety of dishes, nothing had ever been added or removed. Now and then someone might try to suggest a new cake or main, and maybe one might have a spin to an old favourite, but never would it stay for an entire week. Sal was similar to Gendry; anything new had to be just another version of what they already had or it was not accepted. It was not that people had a suspicion or fear of anything new, they just didn’t see it as better than what was already there.
One old date fruitcake, however, remained untouched. Originally it was a gift from a rival eatery, that had since gone out of business, given to honour the passing of Sal’s father. Although it was never intended to be an insult, Sal took it as one. It was well known throughout town that their cakes were their worst product, and Sal almost threw it back at them. Such displays of violence were not her style, and she acted like she would be happy to add it to her menu. The cake sat in the same position with no one daring to order a slice. To everyone’s amazement, for all those years, it never seemed to change in colour or shape, and more than a few people wondered if it would outlive Sal herself.
Sophie was delighted to find that her favourite desert, a chocolate mousse so strong that it was almost black, was still on the menu. It wasn’t that she feared it might have vanished, it was just that she missed eating it, and the sight of it on the menu was enough to bring back fond memories. Even the thought of it reminded her of her childhood. To actually be served a bowlful would bring tears to her eyes. She had searched through all of the eateries in the city that she could find, sampling so many chocolate desserts, and it was a wonder she was not three times her size. Nothing had come close to Sal’s. The worst one was the one she tried to make herself, after getting Susan to do her best to guess Sal’s recipe. Sophie did not want to admit it, but Sal’s mousse may have been her real reason for wanting to spend her holiday in Gendry.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon, with a hot sun shining in a cloudless sky, when she pushed through those old wooden swing-doors, into her favourite place in town. When she was a girl those doors seemed daunting to get through, but now they opened with a slight push. The darkness of the room caused her to not be able to see the people sitting at the bar when she first entered. They saw her without any problem and it made them forget their present conversations. All of them were pleased to see her.
Sammy Hendersen was known as Two-Tooth and he still fancied himself a ladies-man. He sported a thin moustache that he liked to think made him look suave but since it was grey no one could see it. The name was given to him way back when he still had any teeth left at all. Never once in his life did he ever have a full mouth of teeth, and for about ten years of his life he only had two. That was thirty years ago. He called out Sophie’s name and raised his arm to give a small wave.
Next to him, Mortie George, or ‘Elbow’, grinned and nodded his approval. He was somehow related to Susan but no one had gone to the trouble of figuring out exactly how. Details were never really important in Gendry. No one even knew for certain why he was called Elbow, including Elbow himself. Speculation agreed that when Mortie was a boy he would like get to the front of a crowd by elbowing his way through, and since he was a skinny lad he had very sharp elbows. Elbow himself laughed off that theory, since he claimed to be raised to be too polite to ever do such a thing. That only reinforced the opinion, since he was well known to be a little pushy when he needed to be, and probably did not realise that he was.
Eatery owner Sal gave Sophie the best greeting of all by placing a plate with a bowl of mousse, without any invitation to do so. The added bonus was that it was on the house. As Sophie dug in, Sal proceeded to ask her as many questions as she could think, about what had happened in town since her last visit. Sophie knew it was a small price.
“Oh, hi, Sophie.”
Sophie turned to see who was talking. His voice sounded familiar but she had no idea who it was. She assumed that it was an old friend, so she smiled before she looked. When she saw it was Craigfield her first thought was on making sure there was no mousse on her face.
“How rude of me,” he continued. “Didn’t see you were eating. I didn’t recognise you at first.”
“I look different than I did last night. And it’s bright and sunny today. And I have my hair up.”
“Yes, but I would have walked right past you. That’s me, I guess. Day-dreaming again. So few people here and I miss one.”
“Are you having lunch?”
“Yeah, I just finished. Nice little place, this.”
“Everyone loves Sal’s.”
“Is Sal a real guy? I haven’t seen him in here.”
“That’s Sal over there,” Sophie pointed to the woman now engaged in conversation with Two-Tooth and Elbow. “She owns the place. Try the mousse.”
Another cake caught Craigfield’s eye, sitting by itself under a glass lid behind the counter. He waved for Sal’s attention and while she saw him she didn’t stop her conversation.
“You’re pointing at the date fruitcake?” Sophie asked him, not believing what she was seeing. She was about to tell him to choose something else but she was cut off by his enthusiasm for it.
“Is it a fresh one?” he asked as he caught Sal’s eye again. “I can’t see any slices missing. Must have just been baked, right? Still warm? I love cakes with an afterglow.”
“No, it’s old and cold,” Sophie said. “Very old. You don’t want that.”
“How old is very old?”
“What are you after, son?” Sal asked as she slowly made her way down.
“A date fruitcake, I believe it is,” he said to her with a smile that was not returned. “How long have you had it?”
“That little wonder’s been here as long as I have. Good preservatives in it, by the looks of it. Got it from Peterson’s store. They closed down years back; don’t remember how many, and have no reason to care.”
“I remember the Peterson’s when I was a girl,” said Sophie.
“If no one wants the cake then why keep it there?” asked Craigfield.
“Never got around to lifting it,” said Sal, amongst an almost horrified silence. “Since it kind of matches the walls, don’t see why it should go. Didn’t do anybody any wrong, so it wasn’t its fault nobody liked it. Have some apple crumble slice. I believe that’s a tad fresher. Wednesday, I think.”
“That’s a classic,” said Sophie.
Sal was going to give him the slice whether he wanted it or not. What made it famous was that the crumble was what it would do when it hit the serving plate, when it would fall away into a flat mess. Tasty, but flat.
“That’s a slice?” asked Craigfield.
“It’s trying to be, if you’ll let it,” Sal said with a tone that told the others she didn’t like him. “Be kind, now. Remember, it’s not for looking, but for eating.”
Sophie encouraged him that it would be the best crumbling thing he would eat. Still unconvinced, he took it back to his table and she joined him with a coffee. As he discovered that their description was true they both relaxed and chatted about the food. Sophie was amazed to hear that his opinion of the crumble, although good, was not as enthusiastic as she expected. He claimed he knew a place in the city that sold a better one. She wrote down the name and told him she would check it out, and maybe burn the place down on behalf of Sal.
Then they started talking about the people in the town, and Sophie told him about Elbow and Two-Tooth. There was also the old ex-mayor Gene Best who had been trying to get re-elected for the past twenty years and still remained hopeful of his chances, even thoug
h his doctor thought he should have died at least ten years back. The doctor told him his heart was weak, but everybody who ever knew him swore that the doctor was wrong because he was all heart.
Craigfield smiled at what she said but didn’t offer any comments of his own. He then wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up to leave.
“You’re going?” Sophie asked, a bit startled at his abruptness.
“I feel the need for a walk,” he said absently. Then he realised he was being rude and he changed his tone. “Haven’t stretched my legs for a few days. That’s the main reason I’m here in town, to get away from the city and take in all the nature you have up here. Time for a walk.”
“If you want, I can walk with you?” she suggested, wondering if it was a good idea or not. She had not planned on befriending someone who wasn’t even from the town, but from the same city she lived in. Then there was the problem that she needed to spend more time locked in her room facing that typewriter. It was very difficult to write with it when she was nowhere near it.
“What about your lunch?” he asked.
“I’m all finished. And if I stay here too long I’ll only eat more.”
It was a nice day for a stroll and they went at a slow pace, befitting the fact that there was no traffic. The only people to be seen were off in the distance, and they were too far away to think about on such a nice day. Down the road there was a large open area were various plans for development had come and gone over the years, and it now merely served as a nice place for a lone flagpole. If someone ever brought a flag, the picture would be complete. They came to a burnt-out building, all boarded up, and the blackened roof was only half intact.
“What did that place use to be?” he asked.
“From memory, it was the liquor store. If I remember rightly, Old Man Thrower leaned against that wall over there, most days. Either leaning there or sleeping there. He must have been very sad to see the store burn down. I think he died not long after. Rumour was, his wife burnt it, since she claimed he was more in love with the store than her. And he let everyone know he agreed with her.”