RSS 2.0 FeedFood, Beer, Ammo
“Tell me again why we’re starving to death on this road to oblivion.” She tossed her hair back and laughed, but it was an ironic laugh, as if to show that their self-imposed detour had nothing to do with her. Her disposition, however, was eroding like the road, which was working its fractures from the edges toward the center.
“Just for the hell of it. Back roads, funky small town, down-home-cooking lunch, a kick; that’s all. Small adventure. A three-portage getaway you could call it.” He was referring to the canoeing truth that it only took two portages to separate the real adventurers from the pretenders. Two years earlier, at his urging, they had made such a trip. She had risen to the occasion because she knew it was necessary. It wasn’t any longer. So she felt.
He said, “The town’s ahead; a few more miles if I remember the map. There’ll be someplace to eat there.”
“Whatever. But give me the bit about incompatibility again. It will help pass the time.” She pulled her hair back around to one side and held it there against her cheek. She liked the scent of the conditioner she had used this morning and breathed it in along with the warm, grassy air from the adjacent hay fields.
He cleared his throat and took one hand off the wheel, which he moved through the air, conducting his thoughts as he talked. “Well, it’s just for fun, you know. You see, here we are, cleaned and buffed after four days of resort living and well-wrapped in a confident young-professional identity.” He paused and looked over at the huge hay marshmallows dotting a field. “We’re excessively defined, you might say.” He expected her to laugh with him at themselves.
“You might say that. Most wouldn’t.”
“Well, that’s right. But, the truth is that we’re always enroute from one feeding ground to another. You know, to some milieu that gives us the same psychic nourishment. We go only to those places that certify we’re the chosen. That kind of thing.”
“That kind of thing seems a little fuzzy. You’re falling in love again with trivial ideas. You trot out phrases like ornaments and hang them here and there.” She smiled at her simile; she didn’t play this way so often. “You obviously just want attention.”
He laughed and continued speaking to the windshield. “That’s a pretty good spear. I’ll even admit you’re right; Mea culpa. But it’s obvious that once in awhile we should be somewhere that’s totally indifferent to us.”
“Uh huh. I thought we were just stopping for lunch.”
“Well, the big idea is not only lunch, you see. It’s to make new friends.”
“Oh, God …”
He laughed again, easily, and obviously at himself and waved his free hand at her. “This is not as silly as it sounds. I don’t mean it so literally. You see, what we do … well, we end up in the cafe right at lunchtime, if I’ve timed it right, and successfully encounter the locals. Through one device or another we engage them in common reflections on life itself. They and we gain nothing but mutual appreciation of being in the same boat, even if we don’t see the same horizon.”
“John,” she shifted in her seat to face him, “you sound like some verbally-intense grad student. You don’t have the freedom to fool around with ideas like these. We don’t. They’re joke ideas; they deliver no benefit. And, really, aren’t you just being condescending and pretentious?”
“Sure. We’ll have to transcend condescension and pretension. But there’s something to what I’m saying. It’s an interesting idea. I’ll admit it came from Anna at the office. She and her boyfriend do this kind of thing just to keep fresh, she says. We’re always free enough to explore some idea. We’re as free as we want to be; that’s Anna’s mantra.”
“Oh, groan. Who’s this Anna? I’ve never heard you mention her.”
“She’s the witty one; wears her hair long. She works mostly with Hal. She’s been an associate for a year now. Sharp, but I think a little too unconventional to last. You met her at the last office party; the one at Halleren’s.”
“No, I don’t know her. If she’s given you all this humanity on the same boat stuff, I have to wonder about your hiring.”
“Oh, I’ve just made everything sound a little flaky. Anna’s not. You’d like her as a matter of fact. She’s very aware of things, just like you.”
“If I’m so smart and aware, why am I having lunch in McKinney, population 1,009?” She pointed to a sign on the shoulder of the road. They crested a rise and saw commercial dilapidation running for two blocks on each side of the road. “I not sure I want to sit down in this rural slum for a meal. Really, let’s just head back to the city. Leave all the goofy ideas behind, too.”
“No. No. There’ll be some place that’s okay. I’ll admit it’s a little shabbier than I would have guessed.”
“You’re being kind. Your Anna’s off-the-wall idea has gotten us too far off the track. Let’s just go on.”
“We’ll see. I can’t believe there’s not a decent place to eat. Maybe we missed it.” They were at the end of town now and the road curved tightly to their right. As they went into the turn, a sign appeared just off the shoulder. It was bright yellow with strong black letters: FOOD, BEER, AMMO. Across the gravel parking lot was a sensible brick building with wide, white-framed windows. On one side fluorescent lights illuminated a wall of booths, freestanding tables and a long counter and stools. On the other side the window was full of corn stalks and two stuffed pheasants. You couldn’t see past this display.
“Terrific,” he said. “You have to admit this place looks okay.”
“Food, beer, ammo.” She made it sound like a grocery list. “The choices alone are worth a stop. But you know we don’t have to make any friends, really.”
“Let’s get something good to eat.”
“And drink and shoot,” she added.
Their entry escaped no one; even the cook peered out from the pass-through to the kitchen. What noise there was immediately ceased as they stood rooted a few steps inside the doorway, strange flora swaying slightly under the scrutiny of the natives.
The large woman behind the counter wiped her hands on her apron and spoke loudly. “Sit where you want.” John turned to acknowledge their perfunctory reception but she was heading to the kitchen to deliver a tray of dirty dishes.
Liz prodded John toward one of the booths but he took her arm and moved them to a table in the center of the room. As they took their chairs, he nodded to a senior couple awash in wrinkled gray sitting in the nearby booth. The couple used their license of age to baldly stare. When John glanced over again, they were involved with coffee, pie and whispers. However, above and behind the woman’s head was propped the face of a young girl – five- or six-years old, John guessed – who was standing upon the seat of the adjacent booth. She looked at John and Liz as if they were an extravagant dessert, out of reach high on a shelf.
“Take a look at our first new friend.”
Liz looked up from the menu defensively. “What are you talking about?”
“Girl peeking over the booth.” He indicated with a nod for Liz to turn her head. She hadn’t a chance to see her, however, before a throaty voice pulled the girl back down.
“Sit down there, Nadine, before I smack that butt of yours. I’ve told you about bothering people. Stay down and drink your chocolate milk.”
The woman giving the commands leaned out to look them over. She was forty and worn, in a tight shirt with waitress breasts distorting a faded, silk-screened picture of a panda. Her brown hair was pulled back tightly to the sides of her head. Her face was thin and sharp and angry, as if she spoke only in argument, complaint or confrontation. She was a bar woman. One who talked annoyingly to men for a long time about nothing at all and then went home with one or another. When she saw she had John’s notice, she jerked herself back into the booth.
She said, out of sight and apparently for his benefit, “You bother folks again, you won’t come in here no more. Hear?” She lit a cigarette in the silence that followed, and the smoke burst into a grey bloom over the booth.
“I’ll just have a cup of coffee,” Liz said.
“Nonsense. You’ll be starved before we get home. I’ll order one of their dinners for each of us. Just eat what you want. Let me see. Monday special. Meatloaf dinner; vegetables, potatoes. Terrific. I’ve always wanted to eat a down home cliché.”
“You are what you eat,” she said, and flashed him a superior smile but said nothing further. One side of their table filled with the apron of the heavy woman from behind the counter.
“What you folks going to have?” she asked.
“Two meat loaf dinners. I think I’ll have a beer with mine. What do you have?”
The waitress looked down at him and cocked her head slightly. “You can’t get a beer in here.” She waited expressionless, expecting him to continue with something equally stupid.
“Your sign says beer.”
“That’s off-sale. Buy it on the other side.” She nodded to the opening near the rear. “Off-sale only.”
“Sure. Of course. Just black coffee for each of us. Thanks.” He looked to the rear and saw a table of four men in dirty seed caps and flannel shirts laughing among themselves.
The waitress left and went to the kitchen pass-through. “Two specials,” she half-shouted.
She returned with two coffees and put them down without comment. He took a sip and asked, “How long to the city from here?”
“Couple of hours more or less, depending how you go.” She shrugged and returned behind the counter. The mother of the young girl slid out of her booth and walked to the restrooms in the rear. John watched as the four seed caps turned to follow her progress and then huddled closely to bob with their jokes.
“Here you are.” The plates were set down abruptly, seemingly dropped from an inch above the table. “I’ll be by with more coffee,” she said, already turning away.
“Are you really going to eat this?” Liz asked quietly, barely moving her lips. She looked down at her plate and nudged it with her thumb toward the center of the table.
He leaned forward. “Come on. Don’t go elitist on me. This is hearty fare. I haven’t had meat loaf in years. I’ll bet it’s great. Eat your vegetables.”
She offered a grimace and used her fork to pierce a couple of green beans.
He had a few bites, sampled the potatoes, murmured a ‘good’ to Liz and then had to turn, mouth full, to see who had tapped him on the shoulder.
“I can read,” the girl said, moving close, pressing against John’s shoulder. Liz looked across the table but gave her no recognition. John took a napkin to his mouth, set it down primly and said in stentorian judgment, “No you can’t. A girl as young as you could not read. It’s impossible.” He turned away.
She answered back with petulant authority, a bit theatrical but confidant. “I can so. I can read better than kids in school. Better than my brother. My last dad taught me.”
Liz looked away; John turned back and said, “I just can’t believe you could be that smart. Hardly anybody is that smart. Let me see …” John took the menu from the holder. “Can you read this?” He pointed to a line on the bottom: Coffee is not included with dinner orders. No substitutions.
The girl took the menu from his hand and held it close to her face. Her hair fell forward, and she held it back with one hand while she studied the line. She began without looking up, “Cof … fee is not … in … clud … included with di … din … ner, dinner or … ders, orders. No sub … sub … . I don’t know that word. It’s too long.”
He bent toward her, his head brushing against hers. He whispered, a secret truth. “No it’s not. It’s not too long at all. Long just means it’s a bunch of small pieces. Let’s do it one piece at a time. You’ve already said the first piece: sub.” He took the menu from her hand and used his little finger to point at the word. Say the first part again.”
“Sub.”
“Right. Now here’s the next part: `sti.’ It sounds like the first part of stick. Say that for me.”
“Stick.”
“Just the first sound, not the ‘ck’ sound.”
“Sti. Sub – sti.”
“Terrific. Here’s the next piece: ‘tu.’ Sounds just like the number. Say it for me.”
“Tu.”
“Of course.”
“Here’s the last piece: ‘tion.’ It doesn’t sound like it looks at all. It sounds like `shun.’ You know other words with that sound. Like motion or attention … “
“Abortion,” she said and bounced up on her toes.
He didn’t miss a beat. “Right. So say that sound for me.”
“Shun.”
“Absolutely. Let’s put all the pieces together.” He brought his finger to the beginning of the word.
“Sub … stick, no, sti… tu … tion.”
“Terrific. Say them together, fast.”
“Substi … tution. Substitution.”
“Substitution. Wow, are you good. Put an ‘s’ on the end.”
“Substitutions.” The girl held the menu to her chest full of glee. A hand reached over and roughly took it away.
“Nadine, why you bothering these folks? You get back to your booth, you hear?” The waitress pushed against her with her thigh. John placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“She hasn’t bothered us. She’s welcome to stay right here.” The girl pressed into him. He saw her mother walking rapidly to their table, her face one of harsh contrasts from her just-applied makeup. The waitress turned toward her as if John weren’t there.
“Marge. Nadine’s at it again. Get control of this girl.”
He looked up at the mother, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. He spoke to the air. “She was a pleasure, not a problem.” The mother paid no attention to his remark and came around to grab the girl by the arm. She whipped her with words.
“Damn it, Nadine. I’m going to burn that butt of yours. You get out to the car now. Get.” The girl bolted toward the door, rubbing her eyes.
“She was no bother,” John said again. The mother walked away without answering beyond a hissing sound.
Liz whispered with urgency, “John, let’s get out of here.” Not waiting for an answer, she continued, “I’ll use the restroom and meet you in the car.” She got up and the four seed caps bobbed as they looked her over. He sat there eating his meatloaf until she returned.
“Why are you sitting there? I’ll meet you in the car. I’d like to get going.”
“Okay, okay. I’m just going to the other side and look around. I’ll be out in a few minutes.” He handed her the keys. He didn’t look up.
“What are you talking about? Oh, never mind. Just don’t take long.”
He sat for another minute, a few more bites, a sip of water, a sip of coffee. Then he got up and met the waitress at the cash register.
“Your wife didn’t like the food.”
“No, it wasn’t that. Her stomach’s been a little upset is all. Is the other side open?”
“Sure. That’s eleven-eighty.” She stabbed his check onto a small metal spear.
He handed her a ten and a five and said, “That’s fine.” She said nothing. He left it at that and walked to the other side.
The room was large, dark and cluttered. Along the left wall were refrigerated cabinets full of beer, sodas, and milk. Twelve-packs of beer were also stacked on the floor. John walked over, took one from a waist-high column and carried it to the counter behind which was a wall of shotguns, rifles and camouflaged hunting bows.
The man behind the counter was coarsely fat, bald down to his ears and bearded. He was smoking a cigarette as he listened to another man leaning over the counter.
“She’s a goddamned bitch, is what she is.” The speaker was tall, wiry, leathery, two-day bearded and gravel-voiced. He tapped dirty fingers on the glass as he talked. “She had no call…”
John set his beer down on the counter, and both the men looked up. The fat man crushed his cigarette into a lump in the ashtray. He spoke to his companion first, breathing smoke into his face, “Well, you’re right. You’re right. All you gotta do is figure what to do about it.”
“Twelve-pack is all?” he asked, placing a hand on top of the carton.
“Yeah, that’ll do it. I was just going to look at your guns for a minute. Interesting. You’ve got an interesting selection.”
The man behind the counter tapped the beer carton with his fingers and looked John over. He fingered his beard. As if that were his signal to move, the other man came over to a few feet from John’s side.
“What are you shooting now?” the fat man asked. He squinted as he spoke, and the thick flesh above and below his eyes puffed up.
“Well, I don’t shoot anything. I don’t own a gun.”
“You don’t own a gun?”
“No. Never have.”
“You from the city then?”
“Right.”
“Hell, you need one more than we do.” He laughed and his companion’s face took on a smirk of agreement.
John shrugged. “Oh, it always sounds worse than it is. I wonder, if you don’t mind… could I take a look at that one.” He pointed to a rifle with an octagonal barrel, large telescopic sight, an oddly curved trigger guard and a complicated leather sling. “It looks really interesting.” The man watching at John’s side hissed a “shit” through his teeth. The fat man gave a reproving glance to his friend and then leaned forward like a bartender.
“Well, sure you can. That one’s got quite a story behind it. Odd as hell how you just picked it out, Lemme get it down for you.”
The observer on his left had now backed off a step and lit a cigarette. The fat man pulled the rifle down, slid a foam pad over on the counter and laid it carefully upon it. “This here is Lou’s gun, or was until I bought it from him. It’s a twenty-five ought six, single-shot, high-wall Browning with a six by twenty Leupold on it. That crazy bastard Lou could hit a gnat off a mosquito’s ass with that setup. You go ahead and get a feel for it.” He waved his hand over the rifle to suggest John pick it up.
He lifted the rifle to his shoulder, surprised by the weight. He closed his left eye and looked through the scope. He saw only black. Still holding the rifle to his shoulder, he said, “I can’t see anything through this.”
The wiry man laughed but kept his cigarette between his lips. He said, “Just move you head forward and back; the eye relief’s wrong for you. That’s all.”
John shifted his head backwards and suddenly the black circle filled with a blur of colors. “Everything’s blurry.”
“Hand it here for a minute,” the fat man directed. “Scope’s on twenty power is the problem.” He twisted a serrated ring near the rear objective. “Take a look now.”
John replaced the rifle at his shoulder and shifted his head back and forth. The black circle changed to a razor-sharp image of a mounted fish hanging on the wall. He tried to hold the cross hairs steady on the fish’s head, but couldn’t. “That’s six power now,” the fat man said.
“This is something to hold,” he allowed, still keeping it trained more or less on the fish. “It’s a heavy piece.” He removed it from his shoulder and cradled it in front of his chest. He put the rifle on the counter. “You said there was a story behind it.”
The fat man shrugged his shoulders for his companion’s benefit and began speaking in a lowered voice. “Well, you see, this Lou we’re talking of had the Ford dealership in town. Closed down now. Lou couldn’t make it because everybody around here was going into the city to buy Jap. That’s what he said. It was a bit true I suppose. But, he got himself worked up on it, and you could understand why, having to close down after being in town so many years. Anyway, when he finally closed up, well, he kind of snapped a little.” The man took some pleasure in the telling of this, and John pressed him with his enthusiasm.
“What happened? What did he do?”
Both of the men laughed again but just with each other.
“It was kind of nice, if you really get down to it,” the wiry man offered. “Not that crazy, really.”
The fat man wasn’t about to give up the story and left his friend’s point of view hanging there in the air. “Not sure when he started, but what Lou did was take this rifle of his with that fancy glass and made him a real nice blind on the hill just off the road as you head out of town.”
“Yep, that’s what he did for a fact,” the wiry man attested. “He ended up in line with the road, but he still had to work with that down angle, of course. No way you would spot him.”
“So then,” the fat man went on, “if a Jap car would come in or out of town when Lou was on his watch, he would take that piece with its twenty-power glass and, pow, shoot the goddamn mirror off one side or the other. Now those mirrors, well, they would just explode into nothing. One second they were there, the next second they weren’t.”
“Goddamn,” the wiry man inserted, “that was some fine, goddamned shooting. Those cars going forty-fifty as they were. He was shooting at near two and figuring that down angle. That was good work.”
“Yeah, it was,” the fat man agreed.
John was leaning against the counter now and in this natural pause, spoke without thinking. “Shooting the mirrors off. That’s something. I’m glad the guy isn’t around. I’ve got a Japanese car.”
Both men straightened, the fat man saying, “Do you now? Well, that’s interesting as all get out with you hearing this story. But, Lou’s still around. He’s around. Hell, we can just shout out the back door, and he’d come on over. Anyway, when we finally figured out what th’hell was happening, we just took care of things ourselves.”
“How did you know what was going on?”
“We figure he got three, four mirrors before he made a mistake. A good joke, a joke on himself, if you come down to it. Lou didn’t know his cars well enough. He potted a mirror but it was on some Kraut car, and it didn’t just blow to pieces like the rest. The guy pulls into the cafe all crazy, and I go and look, and sure enough there is a neat little hole in the mounting that’s left. Well, I thought on that and of course I figured it quick.
“Well, you’re not going to come down hard on a man over a bunch of cheap-shit Jap mirrors. So we just had a little talk with him about what we thought was going on. I told him I’d just buy that sharpshooter gun from him because I wasn’t going to able to sell him the ammo anymore. He took it fine. Knew we was right, of course.”
“That’s a fantastic story.” He was excited to take it along.
“I know,” the fat man said, moving away a few steps. “I know. Don’t usually tell that story. We’re always private about things like that. Just your interest and all that made it come out. Be best if you don’t think of it as something to tell around, like some kind of joke, you know.” He looked at him with hard judgment in his eyes. Their conversation had ended. He replaced the rifle in the display and walked to the end of the counter. The wiry man followed along on the other side. When John paid for the beer, the money was exchanged but not another word.
When he opened the driver’s door, Liz tossed her magazine on the floor and started right in with vicious, clipped words. “How could you let me sit out here for so long? I had two creeps in a pickup leering at me for the last five minutes. Why I am being punished for some loopy idea of that flake at your office?”
He had not expected the steam. “Liz, damn, I’m really sorry. I am. I was listening to this unbelievable story … about this guy who used to run the Ford dealership. I mean it’s fantastic. But, I’ll tell it to you as we go.
Liz propped her head against the window and closed her eyes. He drove ten over the limit and, because he just could not stop himself from doing so, watched the rise of the land behind them in his side view mirrors (“We could just call out back, and he’ll come on down.”) until the town was well past. He then related his story. Liz did not move her head until he had finished and some minutes of silence had passed. “Wasn’t that something?” he asked softly.
She didn’t turn to look at him. “It was crazy and nothing, John. It was as ugly as our waitress, as dumb as that meat loaf dinner and as screwed up as that mother and her daughter. You’re turning into some kind of weird voyeur.”
“Liz, I’m sorry all this got to you the wrong way. You’re more right than I am. I was following my own fancies.”
They drove on in silence. John grew comfortable with his aloneness. It was those sonofabitches in the pickup that had spooked her.
Neither saw it until it was upon them. A hen pheasant burst out of the roadside grass and slammed into the windshield, a feathered fist swung hard enough to shake the entire car. At the instant it hit, he pushed himself away from the steering wheel. This reaction caused his foot to press hard on the gas and the car shot forward with a jerk. The pheasant’s head lay flush against the glass, its strange, glassy eye looking in and blood dripping down on the glass out of its broken beak. He slowed. He would have to stop. Liz was screaming down at the floor and pounding her fists on the dash. Her screams turned into words.
“John, I hate you! I hate you! You’ve ruined everything. Everything. Get it off! Get it off!” She again pounded her fists against the dash. Tears tracked her cheeks.
He went halfway onto the shoulder. He threw his door open but before getting out couldn’t stop himself from answering the trauma within. “Shut up, Liz!” he shouted at the crouching, shaking figure. “Shut the fuck up! It’s just a goddamned bird! You cowardly twit!” He slammed the door behind him.
John grabbed the pheasant at the neck. It was still warm, and the feathers were slippery with blood. He pulled hard at the bird but it wouldn’t come free. His hand slipped up the neck, and he felt its blood run between his fingers. He didn’t let go. He used his other hand to grasp the bird’s tangled foot, wincing at the cold, lizard-like skin. The bird came free, and the wiper slapped back against the windshield. He held the bird by both feet, took it to the edge of the grass and threw it in a long and gentle arc, its broken wing fluttering awkwardly in the air. He watched it land noiselessly in the grass and disappear. He stuck two fingers into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief to wipe his hands. He gave them some spit and wiped them a second time. He went back to the car, rubbed the window and the wiper clean and rolled the handkerchief into a ball and threw it toward the grass. It unraveled in the air and floated down on the shoulder; he went and kicked at it. He left it there.
They drove the rest of way without speaking. In the course of the next few days they tried awkward, confuse-the-issue apologies, an expensive, ceremonial dinner and all the ersatz thoughtfulness that covers for lack of care. But nothing worked because neither could find the words to frame the problem. By the end of the week, John had made other living arrangements. He moved his things when Liz was at the club.
Whenever he happened to think of the ‘lunch’ trip, three images always came to mind: the little girl who could read pressing against his shoulder; the fat, bearded man leaning over his counter to tell his story; the broken-winged pheasant tumbling through the air into the grass. Each one of these story-pictures stayed with him far longer than his memory of her.