Puzzling Ink

by Becky Clark

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said quietly. She tossed the capsule toward the back of her throat, then swallowed it down with a gulp of water. The pill she placed on her tongue, the acrid taste intense and bitter.

  “You guys going to the festival? It’s going to be a scorcher today.” Rico picked up his duty cap, organizing it over his tight curls, the bane of his existence. In middle school Quinn had to squelch rumors that he got regular perms at the beauty salon. It only took one whispered threat to expose perpetrator Molly Campbell’s secret shame, a padded bra. The rumors stopped immediately.

  They organized themselves to walk the few blocks to the festival while Georgeanne put the finishing touches on the boxes of bake sale items, which consisted of toothpick tent poles in each cupcake to support a canopy of protective plastic wrap.

  Every so often they passed a statue of a chestnut, even though Chestnut Station, Colorado—out on the plains—was named after a person from Merry Olde England and not the tree. In fact, there was not a chestnut tree to be found in Chestnut Station, but long ago, some artsy type began sculpting chestnuts, large and small, and planting them around town, often in the dead of night. One particularly productive summer saw more than thirty chestnut statues installed at intersections throughout town; quite remarkable, since there were only about twice that many streets. In the years since, many more had materialized depicting raw chestnuts, shelled chestnuts, chestnuts fuzzy from the tree, and, of course, roasting on an open fire. Made of wood, metal, clay. Large, medium, and small. Loud and proud, hidden and demure. Earth tones and neon. You name it, there was one like it somewhere in town.

  Quinn and Rico passed several of these chestnut statues decorated for Independence Day, one sporting a Lady Liberty crown, one with an American flag print bikini top tied around it at a jaunty angle, and Quinn’s favorite, one wearing sunglasses and a beer hat. She stopped to adjust the glasses.

  As they strolled through the residential area of Chestnut Station, they collected neighbors heading to Square Park. Georgeanne and Dan fell in step with friends and dropped behind Quinn and Rico. It wasn’t technically the festival parade, but it might as well have been. Problem was, with a town so small, there’s no one to watch the parade since practically everyone was in it.

  Quinn and Rico crossed Parliament Avenue into the park.

  “As a kid, it used to bug me so much that this was called Square Park,” Quinn said. “It’s not anywhere near square. In fact, if one of those enormous chestnuts was planted at the corner by the fountain, you’d have a fairly anatomical depiction of the side view of a brown bear.”

  “Not Kodiak or grizzly?”

  “Nope. Definitely brown. And if you turn the map forty-five degrees, it looks suspiciously like the Facebook logo.”

  “Why suspicious?” Rico asked.

  “Because what would Facebook gain by branding Chestnut Station? It’s like crop circles. Completely baffling.”

  “You know it’s actually called Town Square Park,” Rico said.

  “Well, I know that now.”

  “Hey, Quinn, hey, Rico. Like our booth?” The publisher/editor/typesetter/sometime reporter of the Chestnut Station Chronicle, Vera Greenberg, gave a Vanna White sweep of her arm.

  Rico wrinkled his nose. “Can’t say I’m wild about it. Think you missed your mark this year.”

  Vera rolled her eyes at Quinn. “When will I learn?”

  Quinn jabbed Rico in the ribs while pulling him away. “What is wrong with you?”

  “What? She asked!”

  Quinn sighed. “Rico, we talked about this. She wanted you to say something nice. Not truthful.”

  “Then she should’ve—”

  “Have you been practicing like I told you?”

  “I’m not going to practice fibbing, Quinn.”

  “There’s no hope for you. You need to learn how to fib. You can hurt people’s feelings that way. Like yesterday when you said I was too skinny.”

  “That hurt your feelings? But it’s true!”

  “Be that as it may. If you really felt it necessary to comment on my weight, why couldn’t you just have said, It seems like your jeans are fitting better?”

  “I don’t know.” And he didn’t.

  They found the Music Teachers Association booth and set down their boxes of cupcakes. Georgeanne and Dan followed soon after.

  Dan saw Abe the handyman two booths over. “You have everything under control, Georgie? I want to go talk to Abe.”

  “Off you go!” Georgeanne shooed him away. She motioned to Quinn and Rico to pick up the boxes while she fluffed and smoothed a musical motif tablecloth. Georgeanne began placing her cupcakes randomly on the table.

  As soon as Georgeanne turned away to chat with the orchestra director at the school, Quinn carefully chose a red frosted one, then a white, then a blue, repeating the pattern after offsetting the first cupcake in the row, creating a multicolored parallelogram centered on the table. The cupcakes marched like little soldiers along a line of the treble clef staff.

  Rico thought he’d figured out the pattern and tried to help. Quinn simply held out her hand until he returned the cupcake to it.

  “I guess I better get to the station,” he said.

  “Anything interesting going on at the police department these days?” Quinn asked. “Murder? Human trafficking? Secret drug cartel working out of Mrs. Olansky’s nail salon?”

  “Nope. Not even another bike theft. How ’bout you?”

  “Well, it’s a hotbed of infamy at the Chestnut Diner. Yesterday I told someone we had lemon pie, but we didn’t. Got me an old-fashioned tongue-lashing.”

  “Wow. Scary.”

  “Plus, there was a kerfuffle when Jake forgot to put a fresh pot of coffee on before the Retireds got there.”

  “You be careful over there,” Rico said with mock horror. “Keep your eye on those notorious Retireds.”

  Rico said his goodbyes. Quinn leaned her backside against the table and counted the men in her vicinity wearing socks with their sandals. When she ran out of those, she counted all the sun hats she saw, grouping them into large-brimmed, visor, and baseball cap categories. Then she saw one of those canvas Australian ones and had to start over.

  “Quinn? You in there?” Wilbur said in his gruff, gravelly voice.

  Herman and Wilbur, two of the Retireds she waited on regularly at the diner, stood in front of her.

  “Gathering wool, my granny used to say.” Wilbur’s voice was three notches too loud.

  Herman’s face was arranged in its normal quizzical manner. He was a true literalist, analyzing and parsing every word and deed so he always looked puzzled, no matter what was happening, for at least ten seconds longer than was reasonable.

  “When’s the diner opening today?” Wilbur asked.

  Quinn took in Wilbur’s socks-and-sandals combo. “After the parade.”

  Right on cue, the wobbly strains of the high school fight song wafted over the park.

  Wilbur handed Georgeanne a dollar and picked a cupcake with red frosting from the center of the display, making Quinn wince. As he passed her, he gave her a head-to-toe glance. “You should be the one eating this. You’re scrawnier that the puniest side of nothing…and then whittled to a point.”

  Herman stopped mid-stride and frowned, trying to unpack Wilbur’s folksy aphorism.

  “I’ll have you know,” she said, “that I maintain this exquisite figure by adhering to a strict diet comprised solely of the wistful dreams of orphans and the obnoxious words of old men. So thanks for feeding me.”

  Wilbur cackled and led a short-circuiting Herman away. Quinn did her best not to smile until they turned and walked away. The Retireds might be obnoxious old men, but they were her obnoxious old men.

  Everyone headed for the nearest street to watch the parade, led by the school band. The ol
der kids played brass and woodwinds, while the younger kids banged wildly on drums, tambourines, and triangles. Behind them came the animals from surrounding ranches: Shetland ponies, goats, and alpacas, followed by two enormous yoked oxen pulling the mayor and town council in a buckboard wagon.

  The pooper-scooper team—Duke McCaffrey from Public Works and the Grand Scooper who drew the lucky straw at the June town meeting—followed with shovels and a large plastic bin on wheels. Over the years, the Grand Scooper had turned into the most coveted position in the parade. Each year the honoree tried to outdo Grand Scoopers past. Last year, newly retired Silas Simmons, another of the Retireds, raised the bar exponentially by wearing his powder blue tuxedo, pink feather boa, and pointy magician’s hat. This year it was someone Quinn didn’t know. Whoever it was couldn’t hold a candle to Silas.

  Next came the town volunteers, practically the entire population of Chestnut Station. Scout leaders. Church organists and choir directors. The team who delivered meals to shut-ins and new parents, overwhelmed by the ordeal of feeding themselves. Larry the cabdriver, who never charged. Youth sport coaches. A small town like Chestnut Station couldn’t survive without neighbors helping neighbors.

  By the time the pooper-scooper team traveled three-quarters of the way around the quarter-mile route—south on Gordon’s Gin Flat, west on Buckingham Palace Way, north on House of Parliament Avenue—the marching band kids had time to get back to the school and hop on their bikes, decorated so heavily with red, white, and blue streamers, it was somewhat of a miracle their wheels could turn.

  In twelve minutes the whole thing was over and everyone was free to wander the fundraising booths and games of the festival.

  As soon as the cheering died down, Quinn said, “Mom, I’m going to head to work now.”

  Quinn waved at her dad and Abe as she passed them.

  The town of Chestnut Station was spread thick with creamy sunshine, fragments of music from the marching band settling over the festivalgoers while Quinn walked the few blocks to the diner. She had to detour around a couple of town dogs sprawled across sidewalks, including bloodhound Jethro, the unofficial mascot of the Chestnut Diner. He made it his job most mornings to trot through the diner when Jake unlocked the door, checking out all corners. For what, nobody knew, but when he finished, he’d always wait patiently for his paycheck, a strip of bacon. Then it was back to lolling on the sidewalk.

  After Quinn greeted Jethro, then wiped drool from her hand, a man wearing a knit cap and sunglasses turned abruptly and ran into her, knocking her off-balance.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. Quinn saw a large mole on his right cheek she had at first mistaken for a dimple. He pointed at the handwritten sign hanging on the door. “No website. These the real hours?”

  “As opposed to the fake hours?” When he didn’t laugh, she said, “Yep, seven to seven every day.”

  He pushed past her and hurried down the sidewalk. Probably already drunk on festival libations and trying to figure out how to use Jake’s restroom without buying anything, Quinn thought. Must not be from around here. All he had to do was ask.

  Chapter 2

  Quinn pulled open the door to the diner, jingling the chime. Coffee and French fry grease assaulted her nostrils, but just for a minute. She’d only worked for Jake a few weeks, but it was already a comforting odor she came to expect.

  She glanced around, surprised by how busy it was. She greeted the customers, promising to be right back with refills.

  Jake passed her carrying a coffeepot. His tight T-shirt stretched smoothly over his equally tight torso and biceps. This must be what they meant when they talked about guys keeping it tight. The coffeepot looked puny in his hand. “I’ve got it, Quinn.”

  “Morning, Jake. I didn’t think you’d be open yet.” Quinn felt like a slacker and picked up her pace. She also felt like a creeper, noticing her boss’s T-shirt like that. He had to be in his forties. And her boss. Not that she had anything against older men or bosses, but that felt like a Venn diagram without intersecting sets.

  “No worries. I got bored, so I unlocked the door.”

  Quinn crossed the dining room toward the hallway in back, where three time cards hung on the wall: hers, the weekend cook’s, and the weekend waitress’s. She pulled out the card with her name written at the top in Jake’s blocky hand. She glanced at the clock, wrote the time, then shoved the card back in her slot.

  As she did, Jake passed by on his way to the kitchen. “Remember to use the exact time when you clock in.”

  “I always do.”

  “Yesterday you clocked in at six-forty-five.”

  “Because that’s when I got here.”

  Jake shrugged, flashing his signature smile, all white teeth, reaching up to his eyes. “I guess I’m a little bit OCD too.”

  Quinn wasn’t thrilled that he knew about her obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was no different than telling her employer she was diabetic or had allergies. She wondered if he knew, or guessed, about the related depression she was fighting. Full disclosure from the get-go was best, she had decided, at least about the OCD, at least up to a point. Since she would be spending so much time here, if she got stuck in a loop again she wanted someone who understood what was happening.

  However, Jake should know what he was talking about. Quinn followed him into the kitchen, dropping the neck strap of a bib apron over her head.

  “If I got here at six-thirty-eight but clocked in at six-forty-five, would you feel compelled to go home and restart your day?” Quinn brought the apron ties around her waist and tied them in front.

  “No, of course not. I just want to pay everyone for the time they work, no more, no less, and when I see a time like that, I think it’s been rounded off and one of us is getting cheated. Money is one of the few things I feel very strongly about.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  “Can you leave your house if a picture frame is askew? Do you check to make sure the oven is off twenty-seven times before you can leave?” She looked around the kitchen. “If the power blips, will you convince yourself all the food has spoiled and you’ve poisoned your customers?”

  “Yep, nope, and maybe, now that you mention it.” Jake dumped some hash browns on the grill, where they sizzled pleasantly.

  “Then you’re not OCD and you shouldn’t say you are. People who have OCD aren’t just über-efficient neat freaks. Checking to see if your oven is off before you leave your house makes perfect sense. Straightening pictures on your wall when they get crooked makes perfect sense.” Quinn pinned her name tag to the front of her apron. “What doesn’t make sense, though, is when efficiency”—she used air quotes—“turns into an all-consuming obsession with order that makes you create some compulsion to check or clean or organize or wash your hands and you literally can’t think about anything else.”

  Jake flipped the hash browns, cracked four eggs, and poured two pancakes. “Is that what happened to you?”

  “Something like that.” He didn’t need the particulars.

  The diner doorbell chimed. Jake leaned to peer out the pass-through window. “It’s Chief Chestnut. Better get out there.”

  Ugh.

  When she reached the doorway of the kitchen, Jake said, “I didn’t mean anything by saying I’m OCD. Not trying to make light of your…condition. But I take your point. Persnickety is different from obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

  Quinn gave a crisp nod while a slight smile formed on her lips. Transforming the world, one person at a time. “It’s adorable you think you’re persnickety.” She glanced pointedly around the kitchen, raising her eyebrows at the dirty dishes piling up, the prep containers in various states of emptiness, the haphazard heaps of hand towels, cooking utensils, and order tickets stashed around.

  “It’s my own personal brand of persnickety. Persnickety lite. Persnick, I gu
ess I’ll call it.”

  Quinn grabbed the coffeepot and was still grinning until she saw Police Chief Myron Chestnut, descendant and namesake of the founder of their town, glad-handing and greeting all the customers in the diner with a bony handshake or clap on the back. His thin-lipped smile turned into a sneer when he saw her.

  Quinn knew that Chief Chestnut was the same age as her mother, because he and Georgeanne went to school together. But that’s where the similarities ended. He was bony where Georgeanne was soft, brittle where she was delicate, strident where she was compassionate. He was all angles and knobs, giving him a slightly sinister air. It didn’t help that he was also sharp-tongued, routinely strafing unwary bystanders like he was a Luftwaffe pilot over Britain.

  Quinn made the rounds of the tables to see if anyone needed a refill, all the while racking her brain once again to try to determine why Chief Chestnut hated her so much. He’d been this way since she was a kid, but he never seemed to show such disdain to any other kid. He probably thought she was the one who TP’d his yard that time a thousand years ago. All he had to do was ask Rico; he’d tell him it wasn’t her.

  Maybe it was her looks. He’d commented on them when she came back to town, making it a point to tell her she took after her dad, something no woman wanted to hear, no matter what her nose and ears looked like. Or maybe it was something entirely different. Whatever it was, even Rico didn’t know. She’d asked him every which way she could think of, but his answer remained the same.

  When Chief Chestnut got settled at his favorite table in the center of the diner, Quinn poured him a cup of coffee. She felt a little flush of pride when she saw the newspaper crossword puzzle sticking up out of his shirt pocket. He pulled it out and smoothed the wrinkles, then patted his other shirt pocket.

  “Need a pencil?” Quinn pulled the collection of writing utensils from her apron pocket, sorting through until she found a mechanical pencil.

  “I ain’t no sissy.” He plucked a pen from her hand with his bony fingers and clicked it at her.