And Chap. 15 is wrapped up. I will be back in a day or two with a “pre Xmas update” on what to expect next.
+ + +
By the time he was old enough to disregard any fantastical warnings, he’d lost all interest in the murky creek. Thinking of it just now, however, the faint scars left from his plunge through the brush came to brief but vivid life. Absently scratching a forearm, Will turned at the end of city owned “Muni”. His disappointment increased as he approached it. The “Muni” was backed up to the river, and the angled parking spaces in front of the building were full. So was the street, on both sides, extending a block in either direction, bumper to bumper. On the sidewalk near the front door stood a knot of half a dozen or so people, holding drinks and smoking. The parking lot at the other side of the bar was roped off with triangular plastic flags of red, white and blue. It was packed with people. Pillars of smoke rose from grills and there was a band blaring country music. The smell in the air was as good as the music was bad, and it added another knot to his empty stomach. But he wasn’t willing to dive into that mess and more than he was the noxious Wahpekute. Fuck… At the next corner, he turned left, back toward the center of town.
Will was at the stop sign by the bank, about to turn back onto Main when he noticed something that had escaped him on his first pass through town. The diner was open. He couldn’t tell if it was occupied, but the front door was propped wide open. He decided there was no choice between sweltering in his lovely kitchen with a grilled cheese and his mother’s journals and the possibility of a decent meal. He threw the truck into reverse, got lucky and found an open space in the bank’s parking lot.
The diner was indeed open, and Will found himself to be the only customer. Wendy was seated at the end of the counter, smoking a cigarette. She didn’t put it out when he walked in, and didn’t even make an attempt to hide it. She looked at him, exhaled a cloud, and said, “Great.”
“And a Happy Fourth to you as well,” Will answered. He took a seat a few places away from her, toward the middle. A safe distance, he figured, as her mood didn’t come off as welcoming. He pulled menu from the back of a condiment rack and she continued to smoke.
Without looking up from the menu, Will asked. “Still serving breakfast?”
Her sigh sounded more like a gasp and Will was pretty sure it propelled a lungful of smoke. He heard her stabbing at the ashtray and kept his eyes down.
“Breakfast served from open ‘til close,” he heard. “Three-hundred-sixty-four days a year, Christmas excepted. It’s on the front of that thing, if you’re of a notion to look for yourself.”
In spite of himself, Will did indeed flip the menu shut for a glance at the front of it. Sure enough: “Open 364 Days A Year! Christmas Excepted! Breakfast Available Open ‘Til Close!”
“You’re having breakfast, then?”
Will tucked the menu back in the rack without further examination. “I suppose.”
“The usual?”
Will took the chance of turning the waitress’s simmer to a boil and said, “Yes ma’am, I’d eat it three hundred sixty-four times a year, the exception being Christmas.” He risked a glance in her direction.
She didn’t even bother to glare at him. Instead she said, “Why’d you bother looking at a menu, then?” She didn’t write it down, just shouted his order to the back, then followed her words and disappeared into the kitchen.
Whatever guilt Will may have felt for adding inconvenience to Wendy’s bad holiday was offset by the growling in his gut. Any concern at all for the quality of her Independence Day was dampened by his musings over the river. His mother’s words had been a fresh and clear in his head as if she’d been riding in the truck right next to him. He’d yet to find anything in her journals that offered any hint of her illness, and her writings were now taking place around the time she was in high school. Will had done enough research in to believe something should have appeared by then, either in her head or in her actions. Nothing bizarre or outrageous, but at least a foreshadowing. Hormonal changes should have triggered something, but Will hadn’t read anything in that department other than complaints of tender breasts, cramps and an occasional complaint of “overflow.” There were no other red flags, no hint of early attempts at self-medication, no confessions of surging libido, no ramblings of grandiosity or religious fixation. She’d scribbled nothing of beer bashes or spiked punch bowls or backseat groping. At fifteen, she confessed to hating to church and going so far as to write “…confirmation is sooooooo boring and stupid.”
Other than funerals, Will had never spent a minute of his life in church, and his grandfather’s had been the first. “I didn’t go through childbirth just to bring another brainwashed Papist into this sorry world.” His grandparents had attempted to take him once, but his mother caught them going out the door. “If you drag my kid in front of a priest, you’re going to come home to a smoking basement.” She had screeched if from her bedroom window as they were going out to the car.
Will was perhaps three years old. It was one of his earliest, clearest memories, but by no means his first. He’d witnessed several confrontations and rages between his mother and grandmother by then. Included in that was his distress at seeing his grandmother in tears. To see his mother crying was something he’d accepted as a regular, normal occurance. Nan, on the other hand, seemed impervious to weeping. He was too young, however, to comprehend anything other than his mother’s objection, and hadn’t the capacity to interpret his grandparent’s wordless concession. It was years before he was able to piece together the cause of his grandmother’s meek surrender to his mother’s threat. They had been sneaking him out to be baptized.
“Like running water over your head is supposed to save you from Hell,” she told him when, years later, he brought the occasion up. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Billie, you’ve been in Hell since the day you were born.”
He wasn’t about to offer an argument to that.
Will’s father was a professed atheist.
On that thought, his afternoon breakfast was slid in front of him. Wendy placed it without a comment, then took her seat at the counter where she’d been smoking before Will entered. She sat in silence. After a few bites, enough to quell the demands of his belly, he said without looking up from his plate. “Feel free to smoke. It won’t bother me.”
“Can’t smoke with a customer present.”
Will made a show of looking about the empty diner, then said, “Think of me as an intruder. I can guarantee I won’t make a complaint.”
“I won’t want one for another half hour,” she answered. “If you perform your usual routine, you’ll be out of here by then.”
“I have a routine?”
“You’re out of here no more than twenty minutes after your plate lands in front of you.”
“Well, I guess today would be a bad time to change my ‘routine,’ then, wouldn’t it.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. I’m stuck here until four anyhow.”
Will worked through a few more bites. He wasn’t sure he liked having ‘a routine.’ “The front of the menu notwithstanding,” he said, “why are you open on the fourth of July?”
“I don’t decide when we’re open or not,” she answered. “It was busy during breakfast, like it always is. Haven’t seen anyone since noon, though… not until you showed up.”
“My apologies,” Will offered.
“No reason to. If you’re hungry, you’re hungry.” She rose from the end stool, went behind the counter and produced a rag. She started wiping the counter down, though it was obvious it didn’t need it. “I can’t complain. It’s one of the only days I make time-and-a-half.”
Will was ready to finish the rest of his meal in silence, when she added, “Then I have to work at the Muni at nine. If I’m acting ornery, that’s probably the reason.”
“No time-and-a-half?”
“I wish. When I get there, the only people around will be the drunks leftover from the patio shindig. They’ll either be too broke or too drunk to order anything and just hanging around until they think they’re fit to drive home. If they’re not too broke and don’t want to leave, they’ll be too drunk to serve and be assholes about it. By the time those people have cleared out, everybody who went to Maastricht for the fireworks will come pouring in, bound and determined to get into the same shape as the folks I’d just gotten rid of. It’s usually a rotten night all around.”
“Sorry I’ll miss it.” Will went to work on finishing his late breakfast before his twenty minutes were up.
Wendy refilled his coffee cup and asked, “Are you going to the fireworks?”
Will nodded his thanks for the refill with a mouthful of hashbrowns, swallowed and said, “Nope. I got my fill of Maastricht before I came here.”
“Why were you in Maastricht?”
“Townball tournament.”
“Oh, yeah…” she tossed the rag back under the counter. “I’d forgotten about that. My ‘ex’ used to play in that when Venlo had a team.” She reached into her apron, fished out a cigarette, sat back down at the end of the counter and lit it. “That can’t be over with already. It usually drags on until the fireworks start.”
Will couldn’t help but glance at the clock. He wasn’t sure of when he’d first walked in, but it hadn’t felt like a full twenty minutes. “I sat through half a game and realized I didn’t like baseball,” he said. He wasn’t about to bring the Sheriff into this conversation.
Wendy screwed up her face for a minute, then said. “The only reason you’ve ever said you went into the Muni was to watch baseball.”
Will shrugged. “Alright. I realized I didn’t like Maastricht.”
“Better than Venlo.”
“Matter of opinion.”
Looking directly at Will, she took a few drags from her cigarette, then said. “So, why don’t you come to the Muni at about ten o’clock? You can help me clear out the daytime losers and keep me company until the after-fireworks losers show up.”
Will wasn’t sure how to take that offer. He waited a minute, trying to appear as if what remained on his plate took priority. It gave him enough time to conjure a response. “I suppose I have a ‘routine’ there, as well?”
She paused for a drag on her cigarette, stubbed it out and said. “A beer, nursed for about an hour, a glass of water—sometimes you nurse that too, another beer, another hour, and a beeline for the door.”
Will pushed his empty plate away. “Gotta keep it below the legal limit.”
Wendy gave a chuckle that didn’t come across as very genuine. “That’d be a first around here.”
Will drained his coffee cup, put a twenty on the counter. “Keep the change,” he said. “And try and have a happy Fourth. Hope your night is as uneventful as your day.”
“Not likely,” she said.
As he headed for the door he heard, “It’s a roll through town and three miles in a direction hardly anybody drives,” she called. “Not much risk involved.”
Will paused before stepping out to the sidewalk. “Sure, but a risk nonetheless. See ya next time.”
Walking away he heard. “Getting a little buzzed up won’t do you any harm. It might even make people believe you’re less of an oddball.”