by Jeff Vrolyks
Chapter Five
It was spring, and the first clear day of the week. The benign gray clouds of late was now a light blue firmament stretching from horizon to horizon. The morning air was biting cold and somehow heavy, as if it possessed an actual weight, and was imbued with the scent of bacon and sausage, a smell that would intensify as Timothy neared Millie’s Diner. It was Saturday, his favorite day of the week, and not because it was the first day of the weekend. It was his favorite because it was the only day of the week he saw the girl. On his list of things to be thankful for in life, topping it was the unnamed girl’s unwavering routine—at least as it was pertaining to her Saturday breakfast.
Timothy had gotten his driver’s license two weeks ago, on his sixteenth birthday, and it couldn’t have come soon enough. For the two weeks preceding his birthday he stood near the defunct phone-booth of a gas station adjacent to Millie’s and waited for the girl to pull up in the city bus and exit near the diner before he followed her in. Now he was afforded a whole new means of waiting for her, and that was in the comfort of his ’98 Camry, engine idling in the vast mostly-empty parking lot, heat blasting. Mornings sure were cold considering summer was only a calendar page away.
He had grown wiser over these five weeks. It was imperative that he be the customer immediately following the girl. Then he would stand a better chance at getting the booth nearest hers. The hostess tended to seat people in consecutive booths, so if there was an empty booth beside the girl’s destined seat, another customer might get it before Timothy. But that wouldn’t happen; not again.
His exhalations were frosty balloons as he made his way to the restaurant, grated the old door on its rusty hinges (it was part of the joint’s charm, if to nobody else but the proprietor) and entered just in time to see the girl taking her seat. His heart skipped a beat at his blessed fortune. She was facing the empty booth beside hers, the very booth that the hostess would undoubtedly seat him. And if she didn’t seat him there, perhaps he would take it upon himself to request a different booth and point in that direction. It would be his first time in such a fortuitous seating arrangement.
The hostess returned to her podium from having seated the girl, and was all smiles as she grabbed a single breakfast menu, said “Good morning, honey” so sincerely that Timothy had little doubt that it came from the heart. Sacramento wasn’t a small town by a long shot, but this was a small town diner, its patrons regulars and simple hard-working folk, salt of the earth people. A lot of the town’s farmers dined here, partly because its location was near the belt of farmland just outside city-limits, and partly because of the food and atmosphere, which for some speculative reason was agreeable to farmers. Timothy couldn’t dispute that agreeableness to farmers, being that he both worked on a farm and dined at Millie’s. The place had antiques mounted on the walls, such as an early nineteenth-century sled and a prehistoric set of wooden skis, cutesy doodads on shelves, framed covers of old Life magazines with people like Liz Taylor and J.F.K., a glass counter showcasing homemade pies, and a staff composed of kindly aging women.
Over the last couple weeks he had gotten on a first name basis with the hostess and couldn’t recall how that came to be. He called her Susan because her name-plate read as much, but how she got his name out of him he couldn’t begin to guess. But that was neither here or now; she was leading him to the table, his heartbeat increasing with each step taken closer to the girl. He could only see the back of her head, the lank walnut brown hair with a vibrant sheen, so dense and healthy. He yearned to touch it, to breathe its presumably fragrant scent. As he passed her table he took a deep breath through his nose, hoping to smell her shampooed hair but receiving only the pig-parts sizzling on the grill. He slid down the red vinyl bench-seat facing the girl, risked a quick glance at her. She noticed him! And smiled!
“How are you this fine morning, Timothy?” The hostess asked while scooting his silverware proper before him.
“Great, Susan.” He looked to the girl but she was poring over her menu.
“Apple juice?”
“Please.”
“Martha will be by shortly to take your order, dear.”
“Thank you. Actually, I’d like a cup of coffee instead, if you don’t mind, ma’am.”
She smiled at him. In it was her appreciation of his manners. A polite and respectful young man, she thought. She left.
The coffee came a moment later, dropped off by Martha, who was another sweet-looking elderly lady. It probably wasn’t a great choice of drink, being that he had already began a nervous layer of sweat before starting the coffee. The coffee would thicken that sweat from both temperature and caffeine. He wasn’t a huge fan of coffee but it was all right. It was a grown-up thing to drink, and he wanted the girl to see the adult Timothy, not the stuttering child who drank juice because coffee was icky.
Gosh the girl was beautiful. More than beautiful. Whatever the greatest of superlatives is, that’s what this girl was. If he was her, he’d never leave the mirror. He was looking through the window at his side, staring at her through his peripherals. Cars were coursing the road just forty feet beyond his window but he saw nothing but the girl. He did finally see something other than the girl (or someone, rather) just then. There was a guy striding across the parking lot toward Millie’s with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, smoking a cigarette. Timothy paid the guy no attention, pulled the tab off a half ‘n’ half creamer and dumped it in his coffee. Martha was at the girl’s table now and taking her order. She ordered a ham and cheese egg-white omelet and home-fries. Timothy committed the order to memory and decided he’d order the same thing next Saturday. The key was to order it before she did, and loud enough for her to overhear. Maybe it would be the ice-breaker that he so desperately needed, though it would have to come from her end. He had no designs of initiating a conversation with her. She was far too pretty and he was far too… well, bland, he guessed. And eternally shy. He’d order the ham and cheese egg-white omelet and her pretty blue eyes—now that he was close enough to her to get a better look, he saw an amber ring around the blue iris—how unique and strangely beautiful!—would jump to his and smile no less than they had just a minute ago, and maybe she’d say something like, “Aren’t they the best here? I get the same thing. How about that? I’m blank by the way. What’s your name?” How he wished he knew what the blank was. He had guessed at her name countless times. She looked like a Hannah, he thought. Maybe an Allie. She was definitely no Agnes, Sue, or Betsy.
The restaurant door grated open stridently—it wasn’t the first time Timothy wondered why they don’t put some oil on those hinges—and the man whom he recently spied through the windowpane dropped his cigarette and stomped it out, entered, dumped off his duffle bag under the bench seat utilized by customers waiting to be seated. He seemed to be in a hurry. As Susan approached him, he was approaching her, and not slowing down. He spoke to her in transit, gestured toward Timothy, and continued on. Susan nodded and left him to his will. Timothy swallowed dryly. Did the guy just point at him? He was taking long strides toward him, and that was just as unsettling, violating the lazy cozy atmosphere. Timothy nervously looked away from the guy and took a sip of his coffee, watching him through the corner of his eye.
The man stopped at the girl’s table. Timothy leered a little more directly, inquisitively. The stranger looked directly at him when he discerned being stared at. The guy was maybe eighteen and handsome looking. Jet black wavy hair, sharp facial features, pale blue eyes several shades lighter than the girl’s, the rugged good looks of a jock—a footballer, perhaps. The two locked eyes. He took two steps forward, now before Timothy’s table. The girl didn’t seem to notice any of this. She was spooning sugar into her coffee.
What happened next made Timothy so dizzy that he feared fainting. The guy slid onto the bench seat opposite him.
“Sorry to alarm you,” the guy said. “I don’t mean to be rude.” He then considered it, and said inwardly, “Of course it�
��s rude of me, I should have asked.”
“Hello,” Timothy said awkwardly. “H-have we m-met?” He knew they hadn’t.
The guy looked over his shoulder at the girl, then back to Timothy. “That’s exactly what I was wondering. You look naggingly familiar. I’m Edgar Verboom, but people call me Eddie. What’s yours?”
“I don’t b-believe we’ve met. I’m Timothy. Timothy Stoddard.”
Eddie stared silently and keenly at Timothy a moment before saying, “Do you mind the company? Can I stay?”
“Uh…” The guy was eclipsing the girl. It was shaping up to be a miserable Saturday morning after all. He didn’t have the nerve to say no to him, or to anyone for that matter. But especially this guy, for some reason, and it perplexed him why he was prepared to grant his request. The guy was teeming with confidence and wore it on his face. He looked like the type who might bully Timothy, make fun of his stutter; a stutter which wasn’t severe unless he was nervous or scared. “I… I guess.”
A realization occurred to Eddie. He slid to his right a little, his shoulder nearly touching the glass pane of the window. This returned sight of the girl to Timothy, who wasted no time absorbing her again, making up for lost seconds.
The corners of Eddie’s mouth upturned. “She’s pretty, huh?” he said softly enough that the girl probably didn’t hear. There was decades-old country music playing lightly through some hidden speakers, plates clanking, meat and hash-browns sizzling, denizens conversing: the sum of these noises was a respectable barrier between the low voice of Eddie’s accurate remark of the girl being pretty and the pretty girl herself.
Timothy shrugged.
Eddie’s grin became greater. “Don’t be shy about it. Anyone would think she’s pretty.” He looked over his shoulder at her again, longer this time.
“Don’t,” Timothy urged. Quietly this time: “Don’t stare at her.”
The girl looked up from her coffee, met eyes with Eddie, then Timothy, grinned measuredly and said good morning, if only with her eyes. Those blue eyes, Timothy thought, with their amber rings like a sun’s corona… how remarkably unique and mesmerizing.
Martha stopped by the table to get Eddie’s breakfast order. He waved her off with a no thanks.
“Is there a r-reason why you’re…?” Timothy said, careful not to sound impertinent.
“I saw you through the window and thought you looked like someone I knew. It was my mistake.”
“Do you go to Prescott Wills h-high school? Or d-did you?”
“I’m not from around here. I’m from Nebraska. Hitch-hiked out to California to try to find work. Sacramento was where a truck-driver who picked me up was heading, so I figured it was as good a place as any to look for work. I should have known you weren’t Eric; he’s from my old neighborhood. It’s just that you two look so damned alike.” He glanced over his shoulder at the girl again. Timothy’s stomach writhed each time he did this, and this time the girl didn’t let it go unchecked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but do you know me? I see you keep looking back.”
“I apologize,” Eddie said. He turned to better face her. “It’s just that you look familiar to me.”
Geez, Timothy thought. This guy was playing the you-look-familiar card to anyone with a set of ears to hear it. What was his angle here?
“But I’m probably mistaken,” Eddie said. “You look a lot like a girl I went to middle-school with: Mae was her name.”
Her eyes widened, brow raised. “Did you go to Piedmont Junior High?”
Her name is Mae? Timothy mused. It must be. How satisfying it was to finally know that. He said her name silently a few times, relishing the sound of it and attaching its pretty sound to her pretty face.
“No, I’m not from around here,” he replied. “Is your name Mae Cook?”
Her brow lowered. “No, different Mae.”
“I figured. Enjoy your breakfast, Mae.”
“You too.” She smiled at him, and unlike last time this one was sincere.
“I’m Edgar, by the way.” He reached out over the bench: she felt obliged to shake his hand, and did. “Edgar Verboom. People call me Eddie.”
“Nice to meet you, Eddie. You know my name, and you weren’t far off my surname. It’s not Cook but Clark.”
“Truth is,” he said, and turned his body toward her even more, “I don’t know a Mae Cook. It was just a lucky guess. Well,” he amended, “a half-lucky guess. Can’t win ‘em all, huh?”
He smiled at her. A charming smile with perfect white teeth; an easy smile to reciprocate, as genuine smiles typically are.
Timothy was beginning to resent this guy. This intruder was making all kinds of headway getting to know her, while he remained non-existent to Mae. At least he knew her name, he had that to thank Eddie for (and nothing else).
“If you were soliciting a psychic reading,” Mae said in good humor, “I’d probably hire you. That was a pretty good guess.”
“Would you believe me if I said I was psychic?”
She grinned sidelong and said, “How many fingers am I holding up?” She extended four fingers on her left hand under the table.
“I believe that would require a clairvoyant or telepath, not a psychic, but maybe I’m wrong. It’s all a bunch of hoodoo in my opinion, but I’m sport. Uh… I’d guess… four fingers?”
Her eyes widened a little. “How about now?”
“I don’t know, one? Your pinky?”
Her upturned lips slackened. “Oh my… are you really clairvoyant?”
“No,” Eddie said and chuckled. “The post of your table has a chrome base, acting as a mirror. I saw your fingers.”
“Oh,” she said, cheeks colored. “I didn’t see you glance down, though. You’re good.”
“Your eyes,” Eddie said meditatively, “they’re… unlike any eyes I’ve ever seen. Amber fringe around blue. Very pretty.”
Her color deepened. “Thanks. My dad had amber eyes; Mom’s were blue. Instead of getting one or the other, I got both.”
“How rude of me. Mae, this is my friend Timothy.”
Timothy and Mae met eyes, said hello in harmony. Now he had two things to thank Eddie for, and this one was no trifling favor: he was introduced to the love of his life.
“Do you live around here?” Eddie asked her.
“A few miles.”
“Oh? It’s awfully chilly out, and you don’t strike me as old enough to have a driver’s license. How are you getting home, walking?”
“Bus.”
“Gosh,” he said, assuming a bashful demeanor, which Timothy perceived to be all an act, “I hope I’m not intruding, but Timothy here drives.” How does he know that? Timothy wondered. “And I’m sure he wouldn’t mind giving you a ride home if you’d like.” He looked at Timothy for approval.
“Yeah, sure,” Timothy said eagerly. “If you w-want, that is. I just got my license two weeks ago, and l-look for any excuse to d-drive. Sorry.” His apology was for his stutter.
She smiled crookedly, bit down on her lip, stirred the spoon in her coffee. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine. It’s not a big—” Her cellphone rang in her purse. She apologized and tended the phone.
Eddie returned proper in his seat, put his elbows on the table and leaned forward a little. “Sorry, bud. I tried for you.”
Timothy smiled at him appreciatively. “Thanks, that was cool of you. I thought you were hitting on her at first. You did that for me?”
“Heck ya,” Eddie said, coming off as offended that his new friend may have thought otherwise. “You’re shy, aren’t you, buddy?”
Timothy nodded. He heard Mae talking quietly into her phone, plugging her other ear with a fingertip. “How’d you know I drive? Do I look old enough to drive to you? Most people think I look fourteen, not sixteen.”
“Lucky guess. I’m good at it. What do you drive?—let me guess… a Buick Century?”
Timothy humored and shook his head no, but admitted tha
t his grandparents drive a Buick. Eddie matched his humor.
Martha stopped by to top off the coffee and see if Timothy was ready to have her put that breakfast order in yet, which was his usual. He was, and encouraged Eddie to get something to eat with him. Eddie reluctantly declined the offer, said he needed to be frugal with his money until he found employment.
“Nonsense,” Timothy said. “It’s on me. Get something, I insist.” Timothy noticed he was no longer stuttering, which was a good thing. It meant he wasn’t nervous or fearful.
“Nah, I shouldn’t.”
“Martha, make it two short-stacks with home-fries. And coffee. You like coffee, Eddie?”
He nodded. “You’re very kind,” Eddie said. “I appreciate it more than you know. I’ll get you back someday, you have my word.”
“Think nothing of it.” He lowered his voice as to not be overheard by Mae, who was still talking on the phone. “You did me a favor inadvertently.”
“You know her name now, is that it?”
Timothy nodded with a bashful smile. A thought occurred to him, and the idea thrilled him. His stomach tingled. “So you’re looking for work, huh?”
“I am,” said Eddie with a sigh.” I don’t have any skills, but I’ll find something. Why, do you know someone looking to hire?”
“Would you believe that I do? My grandparents. A farm hand. It’s what I do. We used to have another guy, but he quit a couple months ago and we haven’t found a replacement yet.” Regretfully he added, “Probably because we can’t afford to pay anything higher than minimum wage. Times are kind of tough for my grandparents right now.”
“I’d work for half that if it included a place to shack up. Are there quarters on the farm for the help?”
“Yes, and there’s no rent on it. A kind of make-shift apartment in the loft of the barn. It’s where Jason used to live, the guy who recently quit. If you’d like I can introduce you to my grandparents and I’m sure they’d be jazzed to have you.” Jazzed… who the heck says jazzed? He was a total dork and Eddie was probably starting to piece that together.
“I look forward to it.”
The drive to the Stoddard farm was fifteen minutes southwest of Millie’s, out of the town proper and into a series of agricultural plots; strawberries, spinach, and when he turned south on Road 171 it became cows. A heavy stench of cow manure that Timothy was immune to, having smelled it his entire life. The Stoddard farm was on eight acres, consisted of a large single-story house with detached garage, built sometime before the second World War, a modest barn, a long narrow stable where they boarded horses for rents, which they had been doing since the 60’s. An equal portion of their income came from olives, which they began growing in the 70’s to supplement their revenue. They had four acres of olive trees on the farm. There was a sprawl of outbuildings, sheds and a henhouse. A wooden fence lined the perimeter of the ranch with the exception of the entrance which was a wrought iron gate that glided along a track when Timothy entered the password on the keypad.
“Just to let you know,” Timothy informed, “my grandma Phyllis is black. Phillip is white. So I hope you aren’t racist or anything. They aren’t my real grandparents. I was adopted. They treat me like a son, though, and I love them as if they were my flesh and blood. Grandpa has Alzheimer’s, though it’s in the early stage.”
“Do I come across as a racist?” Eddie said from the passenger seat.
“No, just saying. A lot of people aren’t fond of a white man and black woman married. I could tell you some stories that would break your heart. There are some mean people in the world.”
He rolled forward, the gate closed behind them. They idled up the driveway and pulled into an empty garage-stall.
“You’d think in this day and age people would be okay with it,” Eddie said. “Do they get threats? Do people call Phillip a nigger-lover or anything like that?”
“Yes, and worse. People in this neighborhood even. Some kid or kids spray painted some pretty horrible things on our stable about a year ago. God,” Timothy reflected painfully, “Grandma acted like it didn’t bother her, but I could see it in her eyes. She was hurt. And Grandpa, he was both hurt and angry.”
They got out of the car and ambled toward the house. Timothy pointed at the barn and said they’d check it out a little later.
“Can they do anything about it?” Eddie asked. “Get the cops involved?”
“No proof. I know damn well who did it, though. The night it happened, that day a kid named Reynold was riding his bike just outside our gate and flipped me off, asked when I was going to find me a nigger bitch to marry.” He shook his head at the thought.
“Are there others like Reynold around here? Is this a chronic problem here?”
“Most people are great about it. It’s a nice community over all, but there are a few troublemakers. But I guess the same could be said about any community. It’s not as bad as it was in the olden days. Grandma told me about some pretty bad stuff that happened. Like really bad stuff, when she was just a kid. Stuff that happened right here on this farm, long before my grandpa bought it. Back then it was called the Hunsacker farm.” Timothy saw that he was unraveling a yarn that would go on and on, get uglier and uglier. It wasn’t an appropriate conversation to have with Eddie just yet. “But there are a few troublemakers, yes. A kid named Max, he’s probably the worst. He kicked my ass once on my way to the bus stop, before I could drive. What hurt worse than the beating were the things he said as he was d-dishing it out. Asking me how n-nigger tit tasted and wondered if drinking it was why I’m a stuttering retard, and something about a sh-short bus.” He looked over at Eddie. “As you’ve heard, I stutter.”
Eddie stopped and looked sternly at his new friend. “Christ. That ain’t cool, man. If you get me this job, things will be different from now on, okay? Even if I don’t get the job. How would you like being on the right end of a fight with Reynold and Max?”
Timothy scoffed, leered at him as he took the two steps leading to the porch. “Yeah right. I’d never be able to kick their asses in a million years. I don’t know how to fight and I’m not very strong. And I’m a c-coward.”
“Strength has little to do with winning a fight. You’ll see, Timothy. I’m not saying we should go out on a mission to kick some asses, but from now on we’ll defend ourselves. All right?”
Timothy shrugged and opened the door.