Tales From The Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

  “Well, that’s a god darn fiberglass fish. Ain’t no more real than our wooden Claire de Loon out on 17. I’m talking about a real fish. A monstrous mystery fish that no one can capture on film. Imagine that!”

  “All right, if you don’t want him dead,” Claire went on, “I could have my men capture him and put him in a giant baggy and set it down in the town square.”

  Bromley Bastique gave a major sigh that only the girth of his body would permit. “You do that, Claire, and I’ll have to have Officer Campbell here post guard all night long so no little hooligans come out and punch a hole in that baggy to let the water out and kill our prize.”

  “Good idea,” agreed Claire, “except for one thing.” She hesitated and gave the officer a quick glance. “I don’t know if Officer Campbell is the best man for the job.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the officer huffed. “I’m a damn good officer.” He puffed up his chest and took a stance designed mostly to impress Thelma.

  A storm was brewing inside to match the external thunder and lighting that was now accompanied by a major rainfall. Huge drops of rain slammed against the plate glass windows. I thought of the little garden I had planted in back in hopes of growing some fresh greens for the cafe’s salads. With this rain, it would be washed out. Completely.

  “You know, I think a twister could be coming,” said Officer Campbell in a bid to change the subject. “Maybe I should get out in my patrol car and make the rounds in case something bad does happen.”

  “You stay here,” Bromley commanded. “I’m the town chairman,” he said with a sneer as he looked pointedly at Mr. Packer, “and I think we should pursue this idea of promoting our giant fish.”

  Frozen Bear seemed amused by us all and broke in. “You people are crazy. There’s no giant muskie in any of these lakes. Why don’t you tell this girl the stories she wants to hear?” Cynthia looked at him with thanks. That annoyed me. “In fact, I’d like to hear about these Oxfords myself. Did you know them?”

  Mr. Packer gave him an appraising look. “I’ve known a lot of people in my years.”

  The door opened. Wrapped up in our conversation, we hadn’t noticed that someone had been struggling with the door against the strong winds. But with the door suddenly open, the full force of the storm was obvious and a spray of rain flew in.

  “Close the door,” I yelled. It was Kip van Elkind, with his stringy hair and a cigarette dangling from his lips. Was last night’s party all going to show up here?

  “Got any raspberries, man?” and he laughed. He was in worn and dirty jeans, frayed at the knees and on the seat, all of it held together by a safety pin at the crotch. His stained t-shirt was overlayed by a heavy flannel shirt. Every bit of it was wet, and it stank. The room was quiet. Cynthia turned to go back to the kitchen.

  “I’ll get you some more coffee, Mr. Packer,” she said.

  “What about my coffee and roll?” reminded Frozen Bear. Cynthia awarded him a smile.

  “Cindy baby, bring me a cup too,” Kip said. He got no smile, and she was through the kitchen door.

  “Cute ass, don’t you think?”

  Officer Campbell stood up and strutted over to the table where Kip had taken a seat. “You’re not in Chicago now, young man. You need to treat people better in Thread. Keep that kind of language you’ve been using out of public. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand. You keep a real tight lid on this town. I guess that’s why the Reverend Willy attracts such a congregation.”

  The cop seemed torn as to what he was going to say. He started to speak, then closed his mouth, started again, stuttered to a stop. Then as he looked at Bromley instead of Kip, he said, “First of all the man’s no preacher, and second of all, he ain’t hurting nobody in town. So we just leave him alone. He ain’t hurting nobody, so I don’t want you go bothering him either. Understand?”

  “Sure man. I’ll leave him alone. But maybe then you better go check out another a problem. I hear some guy’s trying to raise the dead out at the old cemetery. He’s there every day casting a spell. I hear people been seeing a ghost at sundown. Check that out, sheriff.”

  In the kitchen, a huge clatter arose as though the entire table of pans had tipped over. Danny came out, his face glowering, his eyes focused right onto Kip. But he didn’t say anything. He only turned to me and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Laughing, Kip walked to the door, without waiting for any coffee, “See you later, assholes.” Then he turned abound to look at Chip Frozen Bear, “And you. Stay away from my dad.” He paused. “You should all stay away from my dad.”

  Promontory Park spread before me like a sun-faded, shaggy green carpet brushing against the cool blue marble of Big Sapphire Lake. The sun, lowering behind the treetops, encouraged shadows to encroach onto the lake. I lay back against the tinder dry August grass and stared up into the blue bowl of a sky. Except for the darting sparrows, the sky was as clear as any time during the summer.

  It was a commanding view of Thread and the lakes that surrounded it. There was a hint of fall in the foliage, a bit of summer’s past in the sound of the sparrows. The lake, still crowded with fisherman cramped in their wooden boats, was placid. The fishermen sat quietly on their seats, protected by bright orange lifejackets half strangling them in the heat, their poles held semi-erect over the water, motionless. Then a bobber dipped into an expanding ring of ripples, and the pole was jerked back. The reel began to be turned and another fish broke through the water in an arcing struggle.

  A water-skier went shimmying over the water, her wake rolling several fisherman. They seemed not to notice. The roar of the skier’s powerboat was muffled by distance. High overhead, in the heat of the late afternoon, a golden-tailed hawk rode the air currents, circling the lake. It waited for that fish that would be thrown back as too small.

  A slight sound to my right from the thick ferns beneath the old maples. Out stepped a fawn, nearly a deer this late in the summer. Did it see me, lying on my old flannel blanket frayed at its edges? Did it know that a half drunk bottle of gewürztraminer sat inside my cooler? It eyed me curiously, and then bent its head to pluck at the tender shoots of grass that grew in the shade of the glade’s edge.

  Summer’s end. I was avoiding the reality of the Loon Town Cafe. Business had not been good. The summer folk were snobbier than I expected; the Thread residents thriftier than I remembered; and the expenses out of control. Who would have guessed that good fresh ingredients would be more costly here than in New York City? Maybe a Chip Frozen Bear. But not me.

  Townspeople were already claiming the good times were over for the year. The tourist rush had come and gone. All that was left was a slow dance toward Labor Day. Oh, to be sure, there would be that quick tarantella of fall colors when hordes descended in late September and early October to gape at the colored leaves. But a night out at the Loon Town Cafe was unlikely to be entered on their dance cards.

  And after the last leaves dropped, it would be yet another month until the hunters arrived in November: first the bow hunters stalking the deer; then the bear hunters; and finally the fainter of heart who drove into town with guns for the full deer season. All any of them would want at the Loon Town Cafe was beer, and lots of it.

  The fawn moved closer into my thoughts. Little deer, run now before they arrive. No one cares how darling you look or how clever you are. They won’t care that your white spots still show like mirages beneath a winter coat. If they think they can convince a game warden that you’re a buck, they’ll shoot you dead in your tracks. You’ll be another venison burger.

  It was a rotten day and I had to face it. My life was now tied to the give and take of the summer visitors. Soon most of the resorts would close, pull their floating docks up onto the shore and await another season. The windows of the log cabins would be boarded up, the power and water turned off, the lawns raked for one last time until next May. What of the people who worked at these resorts, who mowed the lawns, cleaned th
e cabins, served as guides? They would have to scrape by until spring. Just like me.

  Where could any of us go? There was no industry. The forest had been depleted decades ago. All that was left was some scrub lumber that headed to down-and-out paper mills. Sure, there were iron and copper mines in the upper peninsula of Michigan but the drive was far too long for any but the most desperate. Some said the local window and woodworking factory was about to expand, focusing on energy-saving, custom-built, triple-paned windows. A few weeks back, a fancy New York advertising agency team had been in the cafe after talking to the plant owner about a national campaign. Metropolitan Home. House and Garden. All of that. I didn’t have much hope that Thread windows would become the next architectural fad.

  Was my life like this town? Depleted and meaningless? Why had I run from Manhattan, unwilling to deal with the emotional aftermath of that mugging? What had I expected to find in Thread? Something to give meaning to a life that had so far meant so little?

  Lately I obsessed over watching Danny and Cynthia as they worked in the restaurant. Soon they would cut back on their hours when they entered senior year at Thread High. It would be fine with me. Except for weekends and evenings, Thelma and I, with the occasional shift from Gerta, would be able to handle the cafe by ourselves. But I liked the kids’ company each day.

  A large orange and black butterfly flitted overhead in a curious path toward a patch of milkpod plants. Was it true that Monarch butterflies migrated to Mexico? How did they have the energy? Who knew they lived so long to take a journey like that?

  “What ponderings give you such a serious look, young Pearson?” The young deer fled back into the woods, and beside me were tattered shoes of Mr. Packer. “It is a beautiful day, isn’t it? But why retreat to this lovely hillside? Searching for your giant muskie?”

  I shook my head. “But it would have been a wonderful gimmick for the town to sponsor a giant fish festival. I don’t know why Cynthia couldn’t talk her father into it.”

  “Who needs big fish?” Mr. Packer had plopped down beside me, his long legs projecting in a gangly way down the hillside. “It’s better this way. More peaceful. We only have those people who really want to be here, who enjoy the town for what it is, not for what it might be, or for what it isn’t. They enjoy it for its true essence. A quiet place filled with decent people surrounded by God’s beauty.” We sat quietly for several minutes.

  Mr. Packer leaned over, patted my leg, then used my shoulder as a fulcrum to get back up. He was heavier than I thought. “Do you think that young Cynthia would pour me a cup of good coffee if I were to head down to your cafe right now?”

  “I’m sure she would,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you join me in a walk back for a cup of your brewed elixir?”

  “Okay,” I replied taking one last look at the blue water. I looked again. What was that shadow beside the fourteen-foot Chris Craft? How had it disappeared so quickly? I looked up at the sky to see if a quickly moving cloud had played a trick shadow on the lake. But the sky was clear. I looked back at the lake. There was a giant dark spot a hundred feet aft the boat. “Mr. Packer,” I said pointing to the shadowy fish lurking beneath the water’s surface.

  Mr. Packer kept his eyes on his feet as he walked slowly down the incline toward Hazel Street. “Don’t look for things you’d need not find,” he said. “Come on, let’s get into town while the coffee’s still fresh.”

  .

  CHAPTER SIX

  Manhattan and its memories were behind me. The promise of a new life in Thread was well underway. Each day I was growing into some new person, even as my wallet slimmed down. It was as though my finances had become a crazy reverse mirror to the garden in back of my kitchen.

  By late August, crops in Thread were at their fullest. In the marshlands deep within the woods, one could still find late-blooming blueberries. Apples reddened, hanging heavy from the branches, inviting the picker to take one home. In the gardens stroked by nightly lake fog, the tomato bushes laid low to the ground, seldom properly staked, but always overflowing with thin-skinned and fragrant tomatoes. When sliced, they perfumed the air with their sweet acidity. Zucchini and cucumber vines sprawled across mounded earth, long green vegetables growing with no end in sight, finally becoming too large for good eating and left to yellow on the vine. The patches of sweet corn grown tall boasted hair on each cob that grew darker by the day. Potato plants, once bright green with tiny white blossoms, began to retreat, slowly dying back, shriveling up, while beneath the soil each potato grows large.

  Thread gardens held a cornucopia of plenty beneath their surfaces. As word spread through town that I bought fresh ingredients, backyard gardeners began to stop by, trying to sell the best of their lot. Those who sought to unload their shriveled cast offs soon learned that I held no interest in anything but the finest. I vowed to have my life and my restaurant involve only the finest.

  So as my bank account shriveled, I felt an enlargement of spirit I had never achieved in Manhattan. It was as though I had planted a seed of myself, and every aspect of my personality burst with flavor around me. I liked to think I could be as wise and thoughtful as Mr. Packer, as quirky as Claire, as down-home sensible as Thelma, as eternally optimistic as Cynthia, as fulfilled and grounded as I had always wanted to be.

  But then there was Danny. Surely there was something I could tell Danny that would lift his perpetual cloud and let him too be a reflection of what I wanted, and not what I feared.

  Kip lounged against the dark stone column at the Great Northern State Bank. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. The kid was moored to the spot with no sign of his father or that lifeboat of a car that Henry Van Elkind drove. The grass in the square separating the bank from my cafe was dry and yellow, a few unmowed weeds gone to seed. A flick of Kip’s cigarette into that mess and it would go up in flames.

  The kid just glared in the direction of the cafe’s plate glass window. At least it seemed a glare to me, but perhaps it was really a misguided longing stare or leer. Ever since the raspberries desserts were flung across the camp kitchen’s floor, I sought to avoid the younger Van Elkind. Luckily, he seldom joined his father for Henry’s frequent lunches. Yet, he inhabited the square much of every day, doing nothing but watching. His lounging around the square seemed to match Cynthia’s work schedule.

  Today I stood outside my cafe and watched him watch me. It was an afternoon lull and I had put Danny and Cynthia to work washing the windows. I stood guard, like my old friend Patrice in Brooklyn who always kept a lookout posted as we painted over neighborhood graffiti, as though a lookout could be a magic talisman against evil.

  Cynthia was on a stepladder, reaching high to get the top of windows above those arched letters spelling out “Loon Town Cafe.” Danny was beside her, bucket at his feet, drying rags at hand.

  Mr. Packer ambled over. During the course of the day he seemed to visit every establishment in town. Somehow, growing up, I had never realized that he was the one person in town who truly knew everything that went on. He paused at my side, watching me watch Kip watch us. He said nothing.

  Behind us, Cynthia was her talkative self, unaware of any lurking danger. “This will be the best school year yet. I have it all planned out. All the courses I’m going to take. What I’m going to wear the first day. Even where we’ll take the senior class trip.”

  Mr. Packer always found Cynthia’s planning for the world amusing. “Don’t you think, young lady, that the other students in your class might have a thought or two about where to travel?”

  “They always listen to me,” she replied nonchalantly, then turned her attention back to Danny. And she was off, informing Danny of every course choice and every reason for every choice. Not that there were many choices. The school was small. The faculty even smaller. The only language choice was French, and if Cynthia didn’t want to take that that, her one elective would have to have been either home ec or shop.

  “So here’s my plan. Fi
rst hour I’m going to take trigonometry with Mr. Hackens. He’s such a strange one, the way his hair is always sticking on end, but I think he’s kind of cute. And I think it would be fun to take trig, and it might help when I go to college, although I’m not really interested in math at all. Still it seems the right thing to do. Then the second period, I thought about taking French. I suppose it’s kind of silly starting French in my senior year since it really won’t do me much good for getting out of a foreign language in college, but you know it’s the first year they’ve ever managed to hire a foreign language teacher, so it would be kind of rude not to enroll. Besides, Daddy said we might go to Paris next summer if everything works out all right with his business deals. He wants to talk to some French people about something or another, so it could come in handy.

  “And then third period has to be gym. Do you think Miss Cupid is, well, you know, that way?”

  Danny threw his sponge into the bucket. “Cynthia, I don’t really want to know every course you’re planning to take this year, and what you think of the teachers. Who cares? It’s not like we have any choice.”

  “I could take shop. Build a bookcase. I could do that.” Cynthia flounced her hair and came down the stepladder. Then she pulled out the sponge from the bucket, wrung it dry, and stepped back up the ladder. “And what would be wrong with that? I bet I could build a wonderful bookcase. In fact, I bet I could build anything better in shop than you could bake in home ec.”

  I jumped into the conversation so that the windows would get washed before being shattered. “Cynthia, don’t forget. Danny’s learning to cook here. Remember how he helped Thelma bake those tollhouse cookies yesterday.”

  “Anyone can make cookies.” She restarted washing the windows. I watched her scrub with incredible energy. All summer long she had mooned over the boy.

  “I haven’t tasted yours yet,” I joked.