The Doughnut King

by Jessie Janowitz

  All the tables were pushed to the sides of the room, and the chairs were lined up in rows in the center. Nobody was sitting yet though. Almost everyone was standing at the counter either waiting for a pupusa or eating one. You could tell who was on line for seconds by their greasy smiles.

  “Right foot, yellow!” someone called out.

  I turned around, and there, in a corner by the door, was a Twister mat spread on the floor with Dr. C, Josh, and Cal, the kid who works at the Gas Mart, all tangled up across it. Josh’s arms and legs looked almost braided together, and his face was pressed to his knees.

  “Hands on the mat at all times!” Harley Turnby called. Harley was balanced on a folding chair—he was too wide for all of him to fit on it—a Twister spinner propped on one watermelon-shaped knee and a paper plate on the other. “You’re up, Dr. C.” Harley took an enormous bite of pupusa and flicked the spinner with his thumb. “Left foot, red!” he called, bits of pupusa raining down on the spinner.

  “Left foot, red. Left foot, red.” From a tabletop position, Dr. C straightened a leg and wove it between the arms of the kid from the Gas Mart. “Got it!” he said, touching the toe of a paint-splattered sock to the edge of a red circle.

  Cal turned his pimply face away from Dr. C’s bare, hairy thigh. “There should really be a rule about wearing pants for Twister.”

  “Sorry, squeezed in a run after my last patient.”

  “Man,” Calvin said, stretching out the a. “And you didn’t shower? Shouldn’t doctors be clean freaks?”

  “Actually, most people wash too much. See, bacteria—”

  “Would you please spin?” Josh begged. His legs were shaking.

  “Hold your horses!” Harley took another bite of pupusa, sucked his fingertips, and gave the arrow a flick.

  “I told him not to bring that thing,” someone said behind me. I’d have known who it was even if I hadn’t heard her rattling the Tic Tacs.

  I turned to find Winnie, head back, pouring Tic Tacs into her mouth.

  “What’s wrong with Twister?” I asked. “He thought it’d be fun.”

  “Fun.” Winnie rolled her eyes, then whipped her yellow-white braid over her shoulder and waved me in close like she had a secret to tell.

  Her breath was so cinnamon-y, my nose burned when I inhaled.

  “Wake up, Slick. Harley Turnby doesn’t care about people having fun. This is marketing, pure and simple. Some toy store in Albany was going out of business. He bought a carload full of Twisters for nothing. See?” She pointed to a stack of the games under Harley’s chair. “The man is selling, which brings me to my question for you: Why aren’t we? How come The Doughnut Stop’s not open? Look at all these people shoving their faces. Why aren’t they shoving them with doughnuts?”

  I should have seen this coming. “We sold out.”

  “So!” she spat.

  “So, we can’t sell doughnuts we don’t have, right?”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Slick. I meant, so what are we doing? We can’t grow the business if we keep selling out.”

  “I know. I know!”

  “Well, excuse me. If you know what the problem is, then fix it.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Oh, yeah, how?” Winnie saw right through me.

  “I’m thinking about it, okay?”

  “Well, think faster.”

  “Thanks. That’s helpful.”

  “Anytime,” she said and shook some more Tic Tacs into her mouth.

  A few minutes later, Jim climbed on a chair and yelled for everybody to sit.

  Eventually everyone did, but they were still chatting, and Jim’s “quiet downs” weren’t making any difference. Then Walter clanged two pans together, and the room went silent.

  “So when are we getting the rink?” someone called from the back of the room. People cheered. I turned around.

  Andy Hubbard, Josh, and the other Ice Kings lined the back wall and were giving each other high fives.

  This was not going to go well. Jim had better have a plan for a quick getaway.

  “We’ll get to the…surprise soon.” Jim pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and smoothed it on his chest. “But before we get to that, I just wanted to say, this is the first ever Petersville town meeting, as most of you know because, well, you’ve never been to one before, but I just thought I should say it because a first ever anything is a big deal, right?”

  “If he’s going to be making these meetings a regular thing, he should really consider public speaking classes,” Jeanine said.

  “Ice rink. Ice rink…” the Ice Kings began to chant.

  Jim tried to quiet them down but it was no use.

  Walter looked like he was about to bang the pans again when Jim climbed onto the counter and shouted, “The post office is closing!”

  That did it. The room went so quiet I could hear the whine of Mr. Skinner’s hearing aid all the way in the front row.

  “Weird,” Dad said. “That doesn’t sound at all like, ‘The town is disappearing.’”

  Chapter 6

  At first, I didn’t get it either. How big a deal could it be that the post office was closing? How often had I even been to a post office in my life?

  I had to be missing something. I knew that from the look on Jim’s face, the same weighted-down one he’d had that afternoon in our kitchen.

  “Big deal?” Harley Turnby called. “We can just go to Crellin.”

  “We want to know the surprise!” somebody shouted.

  A bunch of people “yeah-ed.”

  “We want the rink. We want the rink…” the Ice Kings sang.

  “Don’t you get it?” Jim shouted over them. He was shaking his head and tugging on his beard. This “annoyed” Jim was at least better than the “crushed” Jim from earlier. “You don’t get an ice rink! If you don’t get a post office, you’re not getting an ice rink!”

  The room went quiet.

  “So what do we get?” Cal said.

  “Nothing!” The parts of Jim’s face that hadn’t been taken over by beard were nearly purple.

  “And that’s the surprise?” Cal said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But that’s not a surprise.” Harley wagged a finger at Jim.

  “They’re right,” Jeanine said. “He never should have called it a surprise. That was a mistake.”

  “Jeannie, remember what we said about only saying the helpful things,” Mom said.

  “You want a surprise?” Jim yelled. “Ready? Here it is: Petersville is disappearing. Surprise! We’re going to be like the Roman Empire or Atlantis or Troy. Just like that. One day, Petersville won’t be here anymore. The place most of us have lived our whole lives and the place our parents lived their whole lives and their parents lived their whole lives. Not today or tomorrow, but I’m telling you, if we don’t do something fast, Petersville will disappear like the dinosaurs.” Then he threw his head back and cackled. His eyes were bulging and his beard was sticking out in all directions.

  “What’s wrong with Jim?” Jeanine asked.

  “He’s okay. Just a little…overwhelmed,” Mom said.

  “See? He should take a public speaking class.”

  “Jeanine,” Mom said through her teeth.

  “What? That’s helpful.”

  Up front, Walter had brought Jim a glass of water, and he was guzzling it down. When the cup was empty, he handed it back with a “thank you,” and exhaled like he was blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

  “You want to sit down, Jim?” Dr. C called.

  Jim shook his head. “Anybody want to guess how many people have moved to Petersville in the last five years? Come on. Give me a number.”

  Zoe shouted out, “Three million and four and three hundred and twenty.”


  “Eight,” Jim said. “The Levins, that’s five. And the Ramirezes, that’s three.”

  “So?” Cal shouted.

  “Yeah, is that really so bad?” Harley asked.

  “It is when you consider that sixty-four have moved away in the same period.”

  “Why?” Josh asked. “I mean, we can survive without a post office.”

  “How about a school? Can Petersville survive if Waydin closes? Schools that weren’t even as small as Waydin have closed all over upstate New York. Basically, what we’re hearing is that it doesn’t make sense for the State to pay to keep open a school for so few students.”

  I knew small classes were bad news for me, but I’d never thought they might be bad news for the whole town.

  “If Waydin closes, kids will have to travel a full hour to the school in Crellin, which will mean families moving away to be closer to the school. And if there are fewer people living here, what will happen to the businesses over time? To Turnby’s? To the Gas Mart? How will The Station House stay open if it doesn’t have local customers?”

  “But the restaurant is doing well, right, Mom? Really well, right?” Jeanine asked.

  “Shhh,” Mom whispered, without looking at her. “Let’s just listen.”

  “But, Mom?” Jeanine said.

  Dad put his arm around Jeanine. “Of course. It’s doing great.”

  “But if it weren’t, we’d get to move back to the city, right?” Jeanine asked.

  “But it is doing great,” Dad said.

  “But if it weren’t, we’d get to move back, right?”

  “But it is doing great,” Dad repeated.

  Jeanine may be the one with the genius IQ, but she still thinks we could move back to the city whenever my family wanted. I once had so many spelling mistakes on a history paper, the teacher asked my parents if English was my second language. I’m not the genius, but I know we moved to Petersville because my father lost his job. Nobody told me. I just knew. I never believed we moved here only because my parents wanted “something different,” no matter how many times they said it, just like I didn’t believe them then that The Station House was doing “great.”

  “This isn’t about the post office,” Jim said. “It’s about what the closing of the post office means about the future of Petersville.”

  Mr. Jennings, who owns a turkey farm a few miles from our house, stood up. “So what are we going to do?”

  “Exactly!” Jim snapped and pointed at Mr. Jennings. “What are we going to do?”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s what I said.” Mr. Jennings looked around the room to see if others were as confused as he was.

  “What. Are. We. Going. To. Do?” Jim was shouting now.

  “I think Jim’s having some kind of breakdown,” Jeanine said.

  “Are we going to lie down and let Petersville disappear?” Jim called like he was a cheerleader at a pep rally.

  The room was silent. Maybe pompoms would have helped.

  “No! Come on, folks; no, we’re not. Say it with me.”

  “No,” some of us said like we were in first-period health class: Do we have potato chips for breakfast? Uh, no?

  “Do we want to be like the dinosaurs?” Jim shouted.

  “Yes! The flying kind,” Zoe yelled.

  “No!” Jim yelled back. “We’re going to fight!”

  A second later, the song from that old boxing movie my Grandma Esme loves was pouring out of the speakers, and someone shadowboxed out of the stockroom in a ladies’ bathrobe and red boxing gloves. You couldn’t see his face behind the gloves, but whoever it was had very white, very skinny arms and legs.

  Jim took the boxer’s arm and threw it in the air like the guy was a prizefighter, only now we could see he wasn’t. He was Riley Carter, our dairy guy, though it did take me a second to recognize him without his Stinky Cheese Farm baseball cap.

  Jim pumped Riley’s fist in the air. “Petersville, we are going to fight, and we will survive! Want to know how?”

  People mumbled to each other.

  Jim dropped Riley’s arm. “I said, ‘Do you want to know how?’”

  Some peopled “yeah-ed.” Others “okay-ed.” Nobody really seemed all that interested, but I guess it was good enough because that’s when Jim said, “Okay, Riley, show ’em!”

  Riley threw off the robe and let it fall to the floor. Underneath, he wore shiny, white shorts and a white T-shirt that read in big black letters: PETERSVILLE, THE PLACE TO EAT.

  Jim reached behind his back, pulled a magazine from his jeans pocket, unrolled it, and held it up high. “This is how we’re going to survive.”

  “What is it?” Mr. Jennings said.

  “Our future.” Jim winked.

  “Uh, okay. But really?” Mr. Jennings said.

  “It’s Destination Eating’s Guide to the Best Small Towns in America,” Riley said.

  “Was this Stinky Cheese’s idea?” Harley asked.

  “You be quiet,” Jim said. “This was Riley’s idea, and it’s a darn good one. Petersville is going to become one of the best small towns in America.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Winnie said. “How?”

  Riley knocked his gloved hands together. “Food! Food is in! Like, in in. I’m talking big-time. And like, fresh stuff—everything homemade from real, whole ingredients, like my cheese and Mr. Jennings’s turkey, and what The Doughnut Stop and The Station House sell. Food is like, majorly big right now, and people will travel and spend all kinds of money for a super-special food experience.”

  “A food experience?” Renny said. “You mean eating. Eating is just eating.” This wasn’t surprising coming from a man who sells Hostess cupcakes that are older than I am.

  “Eating is just eating? Renny, man, that makes me sad.” Riley put a boxing glove over his heart. “I’m coming to the Gas Mart tomorrow with my Ooey Gooey Camembert. You experience that stinky perfection and then tell me that eating is just eating.”

  “Can someone tell me why this boy thinks stinky is something that you want from your food?” Renny asked.

  “Let me break it down,” Jim said. “People eat food. People want good food. We have good food. People come here to eat and buy food. We get money. Some people like it here so much, they move here. Petersville survives. The end.”

  Now I got it.

  Jim was going to bring people to town on the promise of doughnuts I didn’t have, the doughnuts I couldn’t make enough of, for the people who were coming now.

  Going back to “plain old Tris” was one thing. Becoming the kid who let Petersville go extinct was another. Our doughnut supply problem had just gone from serious to epic.

  Chapter 7

  Jim spent the rest of the meeting explaining his “Main Street Makeover” plan.

  Step one: give Main Street a facelift. We were all supposed to sign up at the library to help clean out, repair, and paint all the storefronts.

  Step two: open new stores. Jim was holding a contest for the best new shop ideas. The winners would get to rent the empty buildings for a dollar a month.

  The meeting ended when a fight broke out between two women who both wanted to start a quilting shop. At least a quilting store sold stuff people might actually buy. Mr. Jennings wanted to open a shop that would sell the old animal bones he’d collected on his property over the years, some of which he’d made into lamps.

  The second we got into the car, Jeanine started blabbing about how Jim’s plan was never going to work if we didn’t get the word out about Petersville. She thought the Destination Eating article on The Doughnut Stop would help, but it wouldn’t be enough. “We need something huge. Like, TV commercial huge.”

  “Commercials are really expensive,” Dad said.

  “I know. That’s why I said ‘like a TV commercial.’” Jeanine rolled her eyes.

 
; Zoe tugged on Jeanine’s sweatshirt. “When I’m old enough, I’m going on Can You Cut It?”

  Jeanine was suddenly bouncing up and down. “That’s it! It’s perfect!”

  “I know!” Zoe said, bouncing too.

  “Not you. Tris.”

  I laughed. “Forget it, Jeanine.”

  “See, he doesn’t even want to go,” Zoe said.

  “That show was like, made for you. How can you not even want to try?”

  “Because I have The Doughnut Stop.”

  That was true, but it wasn’t the only reason. It wasn’t why I didn’t even need to think about it. It wasn’t why I’d never thought about sending an audition tape to Can You Cut It? It wasn’t the cooking. It was all the other stuff, the competing with everyone watching. I’d competed before in basketball and soccer, but always on a team. This was all on your own. This was like having to do a math problem in your head in front of the whole class, only instead of a whole class, it would be the whole television-watching world.

  “Think about it,” Jeanine said. “You could talk all about The Doughnut Stop and Petersville. Like that kid, what was his name?”

  “Gus,” Zoe said.

  “Right, Gus. It would be so perfect.”

  “No. Way.”

  “Do you realize how selfish you’re being? You won’t even do this for the town?”

  “No.”

  Jeanine leaned forward into the front seat. “Do you hear this? Aren’t you going to do something?”

  “Like what?” Mom said.

  “Like make him send an audition tape to Can You Cut It?”

  Mom laughed. “We’re not going to force one of our children to audition for a televised cooking competition.”

  “Talk about bad parenting. I mean—”

  “Jeanine! Sa soo fee!” Dad barked.

  None of us speak French, but you can’t live with my father and not figure out that those words mean “cut it out.” Dad only French-es when he’s angry, so it’s not as if we need, or even want, an exact translation.

  Jeanine sat back and gave the back of Dad’s head a dirty look.

  That’s when I asked the question I’d been waiting to ask since Jim told us about the post office: “Mom, how come The Station House stopped serving lunch?”