Tales From The Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

  “Don’t you think several thousand cars, and thirty thousand hot dogs and hamburgers grilled in fast food shops will make the air smell just like downtown Chicago?” I questioned.

  “No, this country is too big for that. This air is fucking bigger than that.”

  Van Elkind was deluded. A project as big as American Seasons would require widening Highway 17 to four lanes. A new route would surely bypass the center of the town. The town square would become even more forlorn as thousands of travelers sped along the bypass to spend their vacation dollars at Van Elkind’s fantasy with its special ‘air.’ And how long would that last, as they built a new airport to handle the jumbo jets that could never land safely at the current airport in Timberton? Maybe they’d even restart the old train service from Milwaukee and Chicago. Whatever they did, I had trouble imagining the air big and clean.

  Stephen returned carrying a set of Wedgwood cups and saucers, a silver antique coffee tureen and a Lalique glass platter filled with fresh fruit, marmalade, jam and croissants. I took a croissant, still hot, and definitely not Sara Lee. The jam was imported and French and tasted of wild strawberries. Stephen retreated into the house as quietly as he came. As he exited he cast a backward look, giving me a supportive smile. Maybe Regina wasn’t my only ally in the house.

  “American Seasons will transform this place in the best of ways. We lured away a couple of the top designers from Walt Disney Imagineering. Brought along some fucking big ideas. Everything is coming together as four lands, four seasons, just like in those preliminary plans. Each with that special theme and touch. And it won’t matter if it rains or snows, because each land will be under a dome. Get it. It will always be all four seasons at American Seasons. Big idea, huh?” I nodded. I was still trying to imagine how he thought the air would stay so big.

  “Every season will have its own hotel and casino built right into the land. Once we get the suckers there, they can’t leave.

  “First there will be Spring. We’re giving it a New Orleans, French quarter look. This one will have the Hotel St. Printemps. Chicory coffee, beignets, king’s cake in which everyone gets a baby, jazz and all that stuff. Get the picture? A little wrought iron on the front, a little desolate, like those cemeteries above ground in New Orleans. The big attraction will be a great aquarium, and shows to go with it. There will be a Mardi Gras parade every day. We will plant everything with hothouse daffodils and tulips. Or something with the same look. It’ll always look like spring. What do you think?”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “Wait until you hear about Summer. This is going to be more of a family retreat, a return to the end-of-the-century elegance, sort of like the Grand Hotel at Mackinac Island. We will call it the Grand Island Resort. There will be roses everywhere, fake if need be. And there’ll be the convention center and the big shopping street. Some great rides too. We got this idea for a whitewater rafting ride, but built into a giant flight simulator. The movie is all around you, some water splashing up at the right time, but you never move. It’ll be big. And we can run it during the winter. We will also have a beach and some water rides under a protective dome. So people can go to the beach even when it snows. Got the idea from some parks in Japan.”

  “Big touch,” I murmured.

  “I bet you’re thinking ‘Where can we go from there?’ But this whole concept is really big. Fall is even better than Summer and Spring, because we’re going to mix in the county fair and the Halloween horror house. We have this dude ranch kind of hotel called The Barn at Cornucopia Farm. The whole hotel shaped like a giant barn, and the silos house the special suites for big spenders. We’ll have a State Fair Midway year round.”

  “What about a ride?” I asked. “You got to have a ride.”

  “We do—a boat trip through a simulated forest with all of these animated animals. But here’s the truly big idea. I don’t know how yet, but somehow we’re going let riders in the boat hunt some of them and rack up big scores.” I rolled my eyes. Van Elkind didn’t see that big gesture.

  “That leaves Winter. People can stay at the Hibernia Lodge, sort of a ski lodge, and there will be a giant rollercoaster themed as a bobsled run, and there’ll be ice-skating in the lobby of the hotel. The decor will be evergreens and poinsettias, always Christmas. Red and green. Every celebration, every land, every day of the year.”

  “What more could one want,” I said tiredly.

  “Casinos. Don’t forget them. That’s why we got to have the Lattigo. That is the tricky part in site placement, to let the casinos be on Lattigo land while we control the rest of the park. But I’m confident we can do it. Keep the best for us.”

  Van Elkind reached for another croissant. The sunlight reflected off the heavy diamond in his wedding ring. His hands were soft and well manicured, with the slightest tufts of hair on each knuckle. The gold on the wedding band almost matched the color of light as he sat in the autumn morning glow of the terrace. He spread a thick wedge of soft butter across the croissant, and reached for the French marmalade. Glints of sugared orange rind mixed with butter. “Have more,” he said. “It’s here for the taking.”

  How would I ever get back to town, I fretted. Wrapped in the comfort of his vacation camp, Van Elkind had lost all urgency in finding his errant son.

  “Perhaps we should look for Kip,” I ventured.

  He waved me to be quiet. “I have to tell you the best thing about this deal for American Seasons. These shitty locals aren’t going to get a damn thing. Oxford’s got it all figured out. Perfect scam to get the land cheap. But we need your help.”

  “How’s that?” I asked. Van Elkind in his big business mode was proving quite tedious.

  “Oxford’s great grandfather owned most of this land back at the turn of the century. Go back and review all of the land titles, and it’s all about one man: Oxford. Cheated it out of both the Indians and the railroads according to family gossip. Now, he was a businessman. Even when he sold the land, he retained full mineral rights. Anything beneath this ground still belongs to the Oxford family, even in this camp they used to own. At the time they thought there would be iron and copper here, but none of those veins went much further south than Timberton. Miles from here. But here’s the beauty. After all these years, the mineral rights still belong to the Oxford family trust.”

  “So?” I didn’t see the point. “The mineral rights won’t help you get the land to build on. And if there’s no iron or copper below us, then the mineral rights mean little to Jonathan Oxford.” Nothing would give me more pleasure than to know that such rights were worthless to fat Jonathan Oxford. After our unpleasant meeting in the back room of my cafe earlier in the summer, I had seen him twice during his summer weekends at the Van Elkind camp. Both times he came into the cafe for morning coffee with Red Trueheart.

  One time, the two sat morosely over their coffee, engaged in desultory to and fro that passed for conversation. Having had more than one experience in attempting to negotiate with Red, I suspected he was simply aping the personality of his counterpart in an attempt to have Oxford lower his natural defenses, thus opening him up for a quick feint from Red.

  Oxford appeared however to have sparred with the best of them. He simply spooned another bit of sugar into his coffee cup, then stirred it, without speaking to Red, without even looking at him. Outside, it was raining. Oxford sipped more of his coffee, and then removed a silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket. He flipped open the case, and removed a cigarette, without offering one to Red. He returned the case to his jacket, without saying a word. He lit the cigarette, inhaled and then let loose a small cloud of smoke in a direction that could evoke no offense to anyone.

  Red yanked his wallet from his hip pocket, and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and casually tossed it to the table, while jamming the wallet back into his rear pocket. He said nothing to Oxford. He said nothing to me, but simply walked out into the rain, without an umbrella, without a hat. Oxford continued to smoke, the ciga
rette decorously clutched between his fat fingers.

  “Sans une parole,” murmured Mr. Packer that day.

  “What did you say?” I asked him.

  He waved me off. “I was just reminded of an old French poem,” he replied, “and of a woman I once knew in Paris.”

  Van Elkind broke through my reverie. “Yeah, the mineral rights are worthless in and of themselves, but they can serve other goals. That’s the fucking genius of Jonathan Oxford. He’s sending up his mineral company scouts to do full testing throughout the area for the possibility of open pit copper mining.”

  “But you said there wasn’t any copper.”

  “There isn’t”

  “Then I don’t get it,” I responded.

  “If there were copper, and I am not saying that there is, but if there were, then it would belong to Jonathan. And if the copper were his, he could do whatever he needed to get at it. The mineral rights allow it.”

  “And what do you mean by do anything he needed to?” I asked not really wanting to know.

  “Dig a pit, a really big, ugly pit,” Hank smiled, “Of course, eventually, he would have to restore the land to its original state. But that could take decades, leaving the land scarred and open. You know. No trees. No lakes. No wildlife. Just a mine. Not quite the vacation investment, is it?” He grinned.

  I got the picture. “So what did you do? Line up dummy companies to buy this land once the word of the mining gets out.” Van Elkind was reminding me too much of some of the people my friend Patrice once knew on New York’s upper east side.

  “Well, the land would be worthless, if the mines were to be dug.”

  “But they won’t be dug,” I said.

  “But they could be,” he countered. He slapped his knee in glee. “With the land Red already controls and tribal lands of the Lattigo reservation, we can amass the property we need for a fraction of what it’s really worth, even before the casinos.”

  “And what about the people you cheat.”

  “Who’s cheating them? No one putting a gun to their head and forcing them to sell. It’s a free world. Anyone who cared could take the time to find the land surveys dating back over a century and know there’s no iron or copper here.”

  “But they won’t look,” I pushed back.

  “So who’s at fault?” Van Elkind sat back and took another bite of his butter and marmalade-laden croissant. The flaky golden crust crumbled in his bite and tiny crumbs fell to the ground. A tiny sparrow swooped in to eat the falling nuggets.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Stephen had a remarkable ability to move quietly across the stone. I looked up at this butler, or whatever he was—tall and in his mid-thirties, looking far more fit than his employer. How could he stand working for Henry? Stephen noticed my glance and looked at me as though to ask a similar question? “Mrs. Rabinowicz would like to see you. She has awakened from a short nap in quite some terror.”

  “One of her fucking old-world dreams,” Van Elkind muttered. He pushed himself up from the chair, stopped to pick up the last croissant and stuffed it into his mouth. He waved at me to follow him. I looked at Stephen as though to say, what can I do but follow. The butler’s eyes gave no free pass.

  Van Elkind walked up the broad oaken staircase as reluctantly as one would scale the tall ceremonial steps of a Mayan temple to have one’s heart pulled at the altar from a still quivering body. “What’s the old witch dreamed up this time?”

  The grandeur of the second story of the old camp building was far more engaging to me. The lower rooms had the scale of great ceremonial and public spaces. Upstairs, the hallways and the bedrooms were more discreet, although still grand. The interior walls were thick, hand-plastered walls with carefully crafted moldings. Heavy carved doors with well-varnished woodwork opened into a succession of rooms.

  “Seven bedrooms, eight baths, and a study up here,” Van Elkind said, as he noticed my sightseeing gaze. “The third floor’s for servants. But only Stephen is there anymore. Keep telling him he should hire a live-in maid. Might have a little fun then, but I’m not sure he is into female fun.” We stopped in front of the last door in the hallway. “Get ready for a different kind of fun,” he warned.

  He opened the bedroom door, “Mother Regina, have you had another bad dream?”

  Regina sat at the foot of an old-fashioned brass twin bed. A huge stack of thick feather pillows hid the headboard. All of it sat in the middle of large oval rag rug that was precisely in the middle of the room. The positioning seemed odd, and then I realized that by sitting in the bed, one was perfectly positioned to gaze out the small casement windows onto a well-framed view of the lake and forest beyond. The entire house might have been constructed around this small entrancing view.

  Regina noticed my gaze, “It’s my peace and pleasure, young man.”

  She turned back to Van Elkind. “Yes, I had another vision. I could see Kip in great pain, alone, surrounded by flames. He reaches out to me for help, and I try to hold on to him. But I can’t, and then I fall and keep falling. I wake before I crash, but my last thought is of Kip. I’m his grandmother. I must help.”

  She seemed tiny as she sat in her anxiety, sinking into the soft mattress, with the fluffy down comforters wrapped around her weight. She looked up at both of us, her face double-crossed with lines of worry.

  “It’s just a dream,” Van Elkind began.

  She cut him off. “Don’t tell me that. The week before Casimir died, I woke up in the middle of the night with such a feeling of dread weighing me down that I thought I would never be able to sit up. But I did and I saw this large box falling through the sky. I woke up Casimir and made him hold me until I fell asleep. I was so scared, even though I didn’t know what it meant. The next week when the officer showed up at my door and told me that an American Airlines flight has crashed trying to leave O’Hare, then I knew what the dream had meant. But it was too late. God had given me a sign to take better care of my Casimir. But I was foolish and thought only of myself, seeking Casimir to hold me when I should have been holding him back, refusing to let him travel during the holiday seasons. And then he was gone forever, too late. It’s always too late.

  “But not this time. I have had this dream three times. Kip needs our help.”

  A discreet knock at the door from Stephen. “The police just called, ma’am,”

  Regina broken into an unearthly cry. I thought of the loons that morning. Van Elkind just stood there, astounded by her wails. I rushed to the bedside and held onto her, much as Casimir must have done that week before he had crashed to the earth. Stephen joined me at her side, “Please Mrs. Rabinowicz, please, listen. Kip is fine. He is not hurt. They called to ask Mr. Van Elkind to bring the boy home. There’s nothing to cry about.”

  We both cradled the terrified woman. She had seemed strong and large the first time I met her, but I realized she was really quite frail.

  An impatient cough. “I hate to interrupt this love fest,” Van Elkind said, and I felt Stephen straighten in anger, “but if I need to go bail out the kid again, I want to get started. What did the police say?”

  Stephen resumed his professional stance. “The call was from Officer Campbell He found Kip sleeping off an enjoyable evening near Sapphire Falls.”

  “Yeah, I bet that’s just how he phrased it.”

  “To be specific, he said Kip was drunk as a skunk. But he did request that you arrive as soon as possible to take him home. He appears to washed up on the banks of the falls without any of his clothes.”

  “I guess your dreams were wrong again, old woman,” Van Elkind snapped. “You might as well come with me Wally, so I can drop you off in town after I get the kid in tow. Stephen, get some clothes for Kip.”

  “They’re already on the hallway table,” Stephen replied. “A pair of jeans and a shirt, as well as a robe, should it prove difficult to dress him more fully in his current state.”

  “Thank you for your ever complete thoughtfulness,” Van Elkind said d
ryly. He turned and walked down the hall toward the stairs, the front door and his BMW. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled a bit sheepishly at Stephen and Mrs. Rabinowicz as I followed my ride.

  As the BMW sped through the stately avenue of maples, Van Elkind’s mood seemed to brighten. “I won’t have to put up with any of this once we get American Seasons underway.”

  I broke in, “Speaking of American Seasons, not that I wasn’t honored to be asked . . .”

  “We need your p.r. sense and local touch,” Van Elkind broke in.

  “Be that as it may,” I said, “the truth is that I’m a bit uncomfortable with the whole scheme. I’m afraid you will ruin this area and everything that’s great about it. And if I were your communications person, I would certainly counsel you to start planning things differently.”

  “What do you mean? Give me an example.”

  Why did I start this conversation? It was just this kind of talk that led up Kip’s staying in town. “First of all, stop sounding like a god damn Wall Street robber baron. Don’t talk about what’s in it for you. Instead, focus on how you’re bringing jobs to the northwoods, describe the steps you’ll be taking to save the environment, be excited about redeveloping the Lattigo and bringing new opportunities to America’s most oppressed minority. God, I don’t know. There’s a million ways you could position this so it would sound good. But cheating old retirees out of their hunting camps with rumors about fake mining actions is definitely not the way to do it.”

  Van Elkind was so excited he could hardly keep his hands on the steering wheel. “You’re right. You are absolutely right. We got to look at the big picture. I love your idea. We will save the land from being raped by evil mining companies and we’ll build an ecologically friendly resort that will restore this depressed economy. It has everything for everyone.”

  “Wait a minute, that’s not what I said at all,” I protested.

  “Yes, it is,” Van Elkind countered. He turned into the Sapphire Falls parking lot. The lone Thread police car was there, still minus its top light. Officer Campbell hearing the rumble of the BMW’s tires as they spun over the loose gravel of the lot walked up from the banks of the short stretch of river that ran from the lake to the falls.