“You know that smell never failed to lure out Toivo. Minutes after Ma would take the first doughnut out of that cast iron pot of hot fat and roll it in granulated sugar, Toivo would be at the screen door, looking in. You could see all over his face that he wanted to be invited in. And he would eat those doughnuts with such pleasure. It made you happy just watching him.
“That’s how he was when he met Lempi. Lempi told me once her name meant “love” in Finnish. And did that man ever love her. Sometimes, I wondered if he even noticed that he had a son, he was so wrapped up in Lempi. He took it real hard when she committed suicide. Never understood why she did that. But if he don’t look out, he’s gonna lose that son too.”
“Do you remember how Lempi used to dance in the St. Urho’s Day festival up in Timberton? She was quite a beauty. Like a princess in a fairy tale,” said Claire. She stood up and waddled to the window. “I don’t like the looks of that wind. It’s going to get hot, real hot today.”
“After Lempi died, Toivo was beside himself. He couldn’t stand to live in the same house anymore. Sent Danny off to work at a resort last summer. Had to sell the place and move into a little house in town. Dragged Danny with him, and from what I hear Danny always loved that farm. But now the two of them are stuck in that little house. Toivo still works in the woods on the lumber crews. It’s only when he’s working that he seems normal, from what I hear.
“But not for long, because when the day is done, he goes to her gravestone every day to bring her flowers. Sometimes you see him there in the cemetery for hours, talking to her I guess, not letting go, sitting beneath those trees he loves. A strange Finn. Ain’t sensible or right for the boy.”
“I guess that’s why Danny looks so sad,” I said. “Must be tough living a life like that, always around a man tied to his past, not letting go.”
“No, that’s not why he’s sad,” said Thelma. She bustled back into the kitchen.
I was fed up. “Thelma and Cynthia,” I called out, “look out after the place. I’m going for a walk.” Who needed all the mysteries people were trying to send my way?
Stepping out of my cafe gave me a strange sense of freedom. I had only been in Thread since February, but already I was beginning to be snared in a sticky web. But the question was: who were the spiders and who were the flies in these gossamer threads?
I turned right as I stepped out of the Loon Town Cafe and headed east on the Square. Across the street was the park in the center of town, its grass badly in need of its weekly mowing. The summer had been a wet one, and the grass always seemed too long. Since school was out, they had hired the town’s latest school bus driver to do the mowing but he didn’t seem too interested in the task. It was harder than driving the school bus, and there weren’t any little kids to boss around.
Next to the Loon Town Cafe was the Little Papoose—the one-stop shopping spot for everything no sensible person needed. Did anyone need an anatomically correct ashtray that said “A Butt for Your Butts?” Or a T-shirt that said “Not the end of the universe but you can see it from here.” Or a precious heirloom plate with a man rushing to the wooden outhouse carefully handpainted on it. These were the treasures of the Little Papoose, which took American Express, Visa, Mastercharge, but no wampum please. At least that is what the little sign said next to the cash register. I had heard a delegation of the Lattigo had demanded that Myra Collucci, the Little Papoose manager, both remove that sign and change the name of the store. They called it degrading. She called it good business and ignored their complaints.
Next I came to Sven’s Barber Shop. No Sven had been the barber at Sven’s for sixty years. The original Sven had been a crackerjack lumberjack in the days when they went after the hardwoods. That was back in the Twenties, but then he had made one mistake. A huge maple came crashing down and pinned his legs, breaking both of them. He walked with a distinctive limp ever after and took to barbering, even though he only knew one way of cutting your hair.
The current barber is named Harry and he pretty much only knows one way to cut hair too—and that’s badly. People who can afford the time head up to Timberton. But Bromley, Red and many others in Thread give Harry their business anyway.
Bromley was sitting in the barber’s chair as I strolled by and he gave me a wave. “What’s new with the world?” he shouted out. Harry didn’t wave or say anything. He hadn’t stepped into my cafe yet either. Claire had told me confidentially that until I went to Harry for my haircuts, I wouldn’t get the time of day from him. The town had to stick together.
Two giggling teenagers rushed out of Lil’s Fashions. I couldn’t hear what they were whispering to each other, but having looked at Lil’s store windows more than once, I guessed that these big city teenagers were amused by the backwardness of small towns. Of course, most women in Thread responded with equal astonishment to Lil’s merchandise. In reality, most of Lil’s customers were matronly summer women who were carried away by nostalgia or summer giddiness. They bought clothes that they would never wear again once they returned to the big city. Yet they made grand entrances into my cafe night after night wearing the most bizarre outfits. It gave the Loon Town Cafe its own peculiar and eclectic look. I was tempted at times to snap group photos of everyone dining, and then travel to Chicago’s North Shore, grab passersby at random and asked them to identify which of the diners were from Chicago and which were locals. I would guarantee you that most of the tourists would be dismayed by the results of that poll.
I turned the corner onto East Street, the former power strip of Thread. The theater, the railroad station, and the bank were all lined up in a row on East Street. Now it was the targeted redevelopment zone—should any redevelopment appear on the horizon.
The Thread Theater had stood empty since 1972. It sputtered into its last showing not long after the last train of the Great Lakes Rail Road had made its farewell run. The Great Lakes train schedule stood curling near the old ticket window of the depot. The only sign of life on the entire East Street this morning was in The Old Candy Shoppe that occupied a small storefront carved out of one corner of the theater’s street frontage. The balancing corner was the catalog storefront for Sears, but the owner had posted a sign that he had to run an errand and wouldn’t be opening until noon.
After the depot were the solid pillars of the Great Northern State Bank, chartered in 1890. The bank was the only substantial building in town, clad in marble and three stories high. It had been built when optimism for the town had run high, and speculators from the East had surveyors mapping out whole cities at any potential railroad stop. There had been no end foreseen to the lumbering, and the cut over land would surely support great farms. Rumors of enormous mineral wealth further captured the heady imagination of many a distant investor.
Great towns need great banks, and so the Great Northern was chartered and built. The third floor had long since stood empty. The second floor was home to the few professionals who could pull a living out of Thread: a lawyer, an accountant or two, an insurance agent, a dentist. The bank itself was only open in the morning, run as a branch office of the Timberton bank. But they kept the marble floors nicely polished.
To the right of the bank was a small gravel path that crossed over the abandoned railroad track and led two blocks to Big Sapphire Lake. I headed to Homestead Park on the Big Sapphire. As I approached the lake, I could see a familiar tall figure sitting on a park bench. Waving to the man with the long beard, I yelled out, “Mr. Packer.”
“Wally, is business so slow that you can depart to perambulate on the beach?”
“I need fresh air now and then,” I said.
“Yes, I understand. Just thinking myself that I should have stayed in town for another cup of your fine coffee. Need something dark and rich. But there’s something so pleasant about a warm summer day, children playing in the water. Serenity. All’s right with the world. Why don’t you and I recline here for a moment and regard the children.”
I sat next to Mr.
Packer and gazed out at the small beach. There were maybe a dozen children in the water. They acted as though they all knew each other and were about the same age, maybe nine or ten.
“Where’s the lifeguard?” I asked.
“No lifeguard at this beach,” Mr. Packer replied. “At least not on weekdays. The town can’t afford it. They have one at the beach at Little Sapphire Lake since that’s where most of the tourists go. Easier to find a parking spot over here though. This park is more for Thread. All those children down below reside in Thread. I know who they are. I know their parents.”
“Do you know everyone in town?” I asked.
“Most likely do,” Mr. Packer replied.
“What can you tell me about the Reverend Willy?”
Mr. Packer looked up, slightly startled and slightly concerned. Just then a scream came from one of the small girls. All of the children came rushing out of the lake, water spraying everywhere as they churned through the water in a slow-motion run.
“I felt him!” shouted one of the girls.
One of the boys chimed in, “I could see the shadow. He was there. He was huge.”
Mr. Packer and I walked over. “What happened?” I asked.
“There’s a giant muskie in the lake,” shouted one of the girls. “And every day when we go swimming, he comes swimming in close by, like he wants to play with us.”
“Or eat us,” said the first girl.
“Muskies don’t eat people,” said the skeptical boy.
“Muskies don’t grow seven or eight feet long either,” said another.
“Let’s go back in. Maybe we can catch it.”
The horde of children rushed back into the lake, water splashing everywhere.
“A giant muskie? Really?” I asked Mr. Packer.
Mr. Packer was quite amused. “We should call the Milwaukee and Chicago papers. Imagine the headlines. Giant muskie in Big Sapphire Lake. We’ll get more fisherman in one week than have descended on Thread in the past fifty years. They’ll all be trying to catch the big one. Bromley will be on the phone in a minute if he hears of this.”
“But what if there really is a giant fish in these waters? Would you want to see it caught?”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Mr. Packer. “Let’s just head back to your fine cafe and have some coffee. We can talk to Claire about her aliens. I’d rather see one of them caught and put on display.”
As always, Mr. Packer was the voice of reason. I had a cafe. I had a staff. I had customers. And the town already had Claire and her imagined aliens. Who needed giant muskies or any new stories?
chapter four
My work family had grown. Thelma in the kitchen managed to make my crazy menu ideas actually work. Cynthia charmed the diners out front to forgive the often slow service. Danny pitched in where needed. Gerta worked a few shifts to give Thelma time off. I was host and bartender, and having a blast forgetting Manhattan.
But I was worried about the dinner party I had committed to cater for Henry. I needed to have someone come with me to make it work. “Danny, ready to help out at the van Elkind event?” I asked.
Danny, his hands in the soapy water of the kitchen sink, gave a startled, frightened look. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked, not really seeking an answer. Danny was my enigma. He was never late to work, always dressed just right, and did every task both correctly and completely. He was courteous and polite with the diners. Yet asking him to do anything new was like slapping him in the face with the impossible. I was delighted that Cynthia had convinced me to hire Danny, but he could be tortuous. I wanted to help him be happy, but who knew how.
“Danny, do it,” begged Cynthia. “The Van Elkinds are fascinating. I just wish I could go along.”
“Cynthia,” I broke in, “why don’t you? You were invited with your parents. Henry specifically mentioned that Kip was hoping to see you there.”
“Kip is too weird,” Cynthia shuddered. “Even if I was invited, I need to be here on Saturday night.”
“But I would have given you the night off,” I persisted. Thelma and Cynthia had talked me into keeping the lights on for the night, with Gerta on as temporary help.
“But Claire would have been so disappointed. She depends on me for her fish fry on Saturday. You know how she has to have the fish placed on her plate just so, with the tartar sauce in a certain spot and the lemon wedge on the left edge. Otherwise she won’t eat it.”
“It’s Wally’s own problem,“ Thelma broke in as she stood by the stove. “You could have told Claire the very first time she asked for a fish fry that they were only available on Fridays. Now every Saturday she comes in and orders her perch. Then there’s at least one other customer who wants the same thing, and you won’t let us give it to them. Either you have a fish fry or you don’t.”
“I shouldn’t have one at all,” I said. “This isn’t a tavern. There’s no reason to have a Friday night fish fry, except this damn town has its traditions. God, this cafe wasn’t even open for years. Where did everyone get their fish fries then?” I knew the answer. They got their fish fries wherever they wanted, since there wasn’t a place within five counties that didn’t offer a Friday night fish fry. Even the fancy Penokee House up in Timberton offered one, complete with a hefty price.
Danny retreated during this hullabaloo back to washing his pots. He was always so intense and careful, never a spot on his pots and pans that wasn’t properly scoured and rinsed. Glasses, plates, cups, flatware were correctly placed in the dishwasher, no unpleasant banging from carelessly stacked dishes. Yet when you looked at Danny there always seemed something a bit forgotten, a lock of hair out of place, a collar turned up—nothing to complain about, actually sometimes attractive, but definitely not planned, just overlooked.
“Danny, don’t you want see the Van Elkind place,” Cynthia pursued her sales job for me. Cynthia was Danny’s protector, helping him cope. He never seemed to notice how beautifully perky she could be. “There’s a lot of cool houses over there. They say Dillinger once stayed at one.”
“Did every crime lord from the Thirties come to this town?” I asked in mock disbelief. Somehow, though, I liked the idea of Henry dwelling in a crime hangout.
“Not all of them,” Cynthia replied in total seriousness, “but Dillinger did. Grandpa John told me about the time he was here.”
“Didn’t your Grandpa cause a couple of those hooligans to get shot? That’s what I recall,” Thelma said.
“That’s not the way it happened at all. Grandpa John has never done anything to hurt anyone.” At that, Danny and Thelma simultaneously rolled their eyes.
“He didn’t do anything wrong. He was just making money,” said Cynthia. Her large brown eyes seemed ready to rain with tears. “Anyway, I probably have it wrong. Dillinger hung out in a different place.”
A glorious afternoon in July. Thelma and I were headed to Timberton for van Elkind dinner party supplies. Making good time on a back road that Thelma chose, we were enjoying open touring in her 1965 cherry-red Mustang convertible.
“Ain’t it grand?” she said, “Riding under blue skies. And just smell that air. It’s summer at its best.”
I inhaled deeply, as much to pull in fresh oxygen to calm me down from the speed of Thelma’s driving as it was to quench the desire for clean country air. Then it hit me.
“Stop the car!” I demanded.
A wine-like aroma hung in the air, as though we had stomped through a field of overripe fruit. “Wild raspberries,” I said. “I’m swimming in the smell of black raspberries.”
“Big deal,” Thelma said, but she pulled to a stop.
I bounded out of the car to walk the ditch, smelling out the berries. Tall orange Indian bushes and a low spread of white Queen Anne’s lace blanketed the shallow trough. “There,” I said, pointing about one hundred feet behind the car. “See those brambles. I know you got some empty pails in your trunk. Let’s go berry picking. It’ll be
raspberry cobbler for dessert tonight.”
“Wally, I’m happy to pick some berries. Just recall you still have a lug of ripe peaches back to the cafe. Remember your plans for peach pies a la mode with that crazy maple syrup ice cream you’ve been fooling with.”
“We’ll offer both,” I said.
“You expecting some land rush in business that I ain’t heard about? You know, Wally, running a restaurant requires some common sense planning. Peach pies and raspberry cobblers won’t hold up after the first day. And you know as well as I do that homemade ice cream is only good the day it’s churned. Once you put it in the freezer, it just never feels right again. You might as well dish up the store-bought stuff.”
“I know all that,” I countered.
“And I know you know all that,” laughed Thelma in return, “but I also know what my eyes tell me. Every night you’re throwing away perfectly good food because you won’t serve anything that ain’t fresh, and you can’t keep from overcooking like a darn fool.”
“People want fresh ingredients. That’s what keep’s them coming back.”
“It ain’t enough for them to like your cooking. You gotta make some money. Wally, I like this job. God knows why, but I’m getting kinda fond of you and Cynthia and Danny. Even Claire and Bromley coming in every day are starting to be fun. Hank, not so much, but I’d hate to see it all go down the drain. I know you know this, but if you don’t make good money during the summer, you’re going die during the winter. There just ain’t enough snowmobilers and skiers to keep this town from skidding through the winter.”
“So you want me to leave these berries here to rot?”
“Wally, God surely has other plans for these berries if we don’t pick them up. But you like picking them, so I’m not saying we won’t pick some. I’m just saying, we got peach pie for dessert tonight. Put the berries in the cooler for another day. Use them for dessert at Hank’s big dinner party out to their lodge. Use God’s plenty to make a little more profit. He won’t mind.” Thelma started walking briskly down the road, two white plastic gallon ice cream buckets in her hands, each bumping against her fleshy thighs.
Tales From The Loon Town Cafe Page 7
