Tales From The Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

  “And this is good?” I asked skeptically.

  Claire was enthusiastic. “Oh it is. You pour some heavy cream over the top of it and it’s wonderful. Remember, Bromley, at the hotel, how you used to poke a little hole in the center of your pudding and would pour the cream as slowly as you could, and it would soak all the way through and come up from the bottom of the bowl, loosening the pudding and the whole thing would float like a big pink iceberg.”

  Despite the enthusiastic reminiscing, I watched Kip’s reactions. I liked to try new foods on the menu, but I didn’t want to fall into the same mistake I made last summer when I added to the menu quenelles of walleyed pike with kasha dumplings. I thought it sounded great. The few adventurous souls who ordered it never cleaned their plates. And because forming those stupid quenelles was a lot of hard work, Thelma never forgave me for that menu addition. Kip didn’t look like he would even consider trying a cranberry porridge for dessert.

  “Oh, Kip, lighten up,” said Josh. “You have a look on your face like we’re talking about poison. You’d love it if you tried it. Wally, add it to the menu just for Danny’s sake. It would make his father happy.” Danny cast a big smile in Josh’s direction.

  Kip was on another track. “I don’t care about any fucking food. Why am I still in this town? No one likes me. I might as well just die. Me and Grammy. We’re both just outcasts. Because no one wants us bothering them in their fucking fancy lives in Chicago.”

  What was this? “Your father sent you here because he cares about you and wants to keep you out of trouble. You’re here because he loves you.” I was pretty sure I didn’t believe anything so positive about Henry Van Elkind, but I wanted to get back to the food.

  “None of them fucking care about me. Barbara and Hank would just as soon I off’ed myself. It would be one less thing for them to fucking worry about.” Kip’s high had completely vanished, leaving a more morose Kip that was no more appealing than the belligerent one.

  Kip lived on an island of his own making. Some afternoons, the cafe would be filled with kids from the high school. Most came because in such a small school, there could only be a few cliques, with the basketball team and cheerleading squad being the most prestigious circle there was, and Cynthia was the queen of this group. She reigned alone. A couple of the boys on the team, Jack and Alex in particular, were definitely knights in waiting, but all bowed to Cynthia. I wasn’t sure whether it was due to her natural innocence or her father’s position.

  No clique was associated with Danny, although he seemed well enough liked. Kip was another story. He led his own small—very small—circle of admirers who saw in him the big city embodiment of bad. But these were mostly seventh and eighth graders who just liked being in company of a senior. In a larger school, they wouldn’t even have been in the same building as Kip. The couple of truly bad teenagers in town had quickly sized up Kip as an unpleasant pain in the ass; they avoided him as much as Cynthia did.

  If Kip had ever taken the time to find clean clothes or wash his face, you might have felt sorry for him. He had been banished by his parents from his natural kingdom. He had grown up getting whatever he wanted and now he was stuck in a rambling log cabin estate with a woman in her eighties and a condescending servant, dealing with a crush on a girl, who while she knew he existed, would just as soon he didn’t.

  “I bet you think I’m making it up,” Kip snarled.

  “Making what up?” I asked.

  “About trying to off myself. It was last summer on the beach at our camp. With one of Dad’s shotguns. I sat there, had a few beers, watched the sun set, and I aimed that gun right at me.”

  “But then you couldn’t do it, right?” Josh asked. “When the time came to pull the trigger you knew life was worth living.”

  “Fuck no, it wasn’t worth living. Not then. Not now. You better believe I pulled the trigger. I just missed.”

  “You missed! You point a gun at yourself and you miss!”

  “Hey, you fucking fruitcake. It ain’t so easy pointing a gun at yourself. Try it sometime.”

  “I’d rather not,” Josh said smartly.

  “I’d rather not,” Kip mouthed back in an exaggerated emotion. “I bet you don’t even believe me.”

  “We believe you,” I said.

  I’d believe anything the kid said. I regretted ever telling Van Elkind that I would keep any eye out for the well being of Kip. The kid was beyond well being. When I thought back on it, I regretted damn near everything I had ever said to Van Elkind. He got me involved with that big dinner at his place last summer and nearly stiffed me on the bill. He conned me into getting involved with this stupid American Seasons project. And he tried to make me buy into being the guardian of his schizoid kid. The next time I saw him I was going to let him know exactly what I thought of him.

  “I don’t believe him,” Josh said. “If someone wanted to shoot themselves, they’d shoot themselves. How would they miss? You put the gun in your mouth and you pull the trigger. Any moron can do that.”

  “I didn’t want a gun in my mouth,” Kip muttered.

  “So?” Josh replied, dragging out the word.

  Kip looked at him sullenly. “So,” he said, dragging out the word just as much, “I pointed the gun at my heart and I pulled the trigger and I missed. The bullet went through my shoulder. I didn’t know there would be such a kick.”

  “Uh, huh. Sounds tough. Danny, could I get some more cream?” Danny rushed to Josh’s side with a new pitcher.

  “You don’t fucking believe me. Well, let me show you.” Kip stood up, facing the plate glass window looking out onto the square. He began to unbutton his greasy plaid shirt, pulled the shirttails out from the pants and let the shirt fall off his shoulders. Underneath was a tattered, once white, thermal undershirt. He began to pull it up over his head, exposing a swastika tattoo right below his navel.

  “Wow, a strip show in Thread! I’m impressed.” Josh emitted a low whistle.

  “Josh,” I whispered, “leave him alone. He’s a fucked-up kid. I know he’s tried to kill himself at least once before. That time I helped his father carry him home.“

  By now, Kip had his undershirt completely off. To me, it looked as though he had carved a few more tattoos since the morning Van Elkind and I had found him naked by the lake. He had also put on some bulk. But he wasn’t interested in showing us either the tattoos or his muscles. “Look at that,” he said pointing to a purplish round scar, just below the shoulder, above his biceps. “That’s where the bullet went through.”

  “Looks like it healed nicely,” Josh said smartly.

  “You are one fucking asshole,” Kip grabbed his shirts and walked outside without saying another word. We all watched him stand in the snow of the square and the twenty-degree temperature putting his two shirts back on. Then he strode off in the direction of the Piggly Wiggly.

  “I hope he’s not looking for Cynthia,” I said.

  “Wally, I don’t know how you managed to grow up in this town and remain the way you are. Kip’s not your worry. Cynthia’s not your worry. This climate makes us all crazy. And this town is exactly why each of us is crazy. And no one is going to stop you from acting out your crazy destiny, whatever it might be. This is the most free place on earth.” Josh was not trying to be West Coast clever. Each word he uttered he believed.

  Bromley harrumphed. I had forgotten he was there. “You young people. I don’t know where you get these ridiculous ideas. This town is no crazier than any other. In fact, I take that back. This town is saner than any place I know. Nothing strange ever happens here. Never has and never will.”

  Josh started laughing, and it grew within him until he was rocking back and forth in his chair. “I could list strange things all day long. There’s nothing normal that ever happens here. It’s like God takes all the weirdos and rolls them down Highway 17 until the cart quits rolling, hits a bump and overturns to drop its load of wackos here. It doesn’t matter if you’re from a small town
or big town. If you hang around here too long, something strange will happen. And no one will ever figure out why.”

  “That’s ridiculous. There’s not a god darn mystery in this town that I don’t know the answer to.”

  “Okay, Mayor Bromley Bastique, you tell me why everyone is so interested in buying my parent’s swamp. And who’s really trying to buy it? A hunting club from Sheboygan? I don’t think so.”

  Bromley looked at Josh for a few minutes before answering carefully, “I just might know the answer to that question, but even if I did, I wouldn’t necessarily tell you.”

  “I see,” said Josh, “how many other solutions to mysteries do you keep locked up for you to know and the rest of the world to find out? Do you know why Kip is so unhappy? Do you know why my parents died in such a grotesque way? Do you know why I’m gay?”

  Bromley remained silent.

  “And how about real mysteries. Who actually runs this town? Is it Red Trueheart? Or is it Tesla Haligent? Isn’t he the person who actually owns the bank and the window plant and millions of dollars worth of other assets all around this state? And isn’t it true that Red and Haligent get what they want?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Bromley said quietly. He had been slowly retreating back to the counter and was maneuvering a return to his stool. Claire was fidgeting in her drawstring purse digging out some change to pay for her tea.

  Mr. Packer, who had been unusually quiet all morning, decided to speak up. “The boy does bring up mysteries, does he not? Mr. Haligent, so much a controlling factor in our lives, and yet he so seldom appears.

  “Ten years ago he used to be in town a lot. Yes, he had a cabin then on the Coeur de Lattigeaux; of course, he still does, so that’s not the reason why he came so often in those days. There were some who thought he came so frequently because of a woman. A young married lady, as I recall. Of course, Mr. Haligent would have been married then as well. But it was the aftermath of the Sixties. Free love was in vogue, and Haligent was a young millionaire.

  “Still the young woman thought Haligent would marry her. No one ever heard her say so, of course. Just one of those things that we all seemed to know. Her husband, though, was a bit of an obstacle. He was such a strong Catholic, and refused to believe in divorce. His name was Phil, wasn’t it?”

  Bromley and Claire were casting looks at Mr. Packer that were clearly commands to find a new subject. He didn’t seem to notice. Or, perhaps he didn’t care.

  “People weren’t quite sure if Phil knew what his wife was doing. He was the kind of man who might have pretended to have never known. As long as the words were never said, it would have been easy for him to deny his wife’s philandering.

  “Of course, we’ll never know what he did or didn’t know. No one asked him in time. And then it was too late.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Phil liked to hunt. He had outfitted a small but quite nice camper on the back of his pick-up. It had a little kitchen, a table that could be lowered into a bed, another bed built over the top of the truck cab. Even a little shower if you didn’t mind being cramped.

  “Phil has some forty acres of deer-hunting second growth woods about twenty miles north of here. He would drive the pickup onto his land, park it there and use it as his camp. That’s where they found him that hunting season in 1975. Tragic what they found.

  “He was burned to a crisp. Nothing left inside but a charred hand and foot, all locked inside the camper. The entire camper, kitchen, shower, bed, everything was melted inside. The heat of the fire had been intense. Some speculated that his Coleman lantern must have fallen over and started the inferno. Others called it spontaneous human combustion.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I uttered.

  Mr. Packer shrugged his shoulders. “Who can say what is odd? Life is filled with mysteries. Still I was always mystified by one fact. The camper was locked from the outside. Never could explain that to myself.”

  “It was an accident,” Bromley said. “Everyone agreed at the time that it was an accident.”

  Mr. Packer shook his head in agreement. “Still,” he said, “it was odd how it was locked from the outside. Difficult to imagine how Phil could have done that, or why he would have done it.

  “Phil’s wife of course was quite the grieving widow. We all expected her to pack up and move to Chicago or New York, or wherever it is that Haligent lives. She didn’t. It turns out he never invited her. Or so they say. Others say he only wanted to play with her as long as she wasn’t free. It added to his pleasure.”

  “Haligent is a very powerful man,” Bromley warned. “You should be careful the kind of stories you repeat. You could be sued for slander.”

  “And what would they do with an old man like me. I’m only telling stories. I’ve lived a long life. I’ve encountered many rich people and shared their lives. It seems fair that I should pass some of that knowledge along.”

  “So what happened to this woman?” I asked.

  “She moved away. Alone. Thread lost track of her. And now we must go on without her and just ponder our tale.” Mr. Packer took another sip of his coffee.

  “There nothing to ponder,” Josh said. “It was just an accident.”

  “If you say so, young man, after all, Phil was your uncle. Tragedy does flow in your family, I’m sorry to say,” Mr. Packer tipped his hat toward us all and left the cafe.

  Josh remained behind, silent and grim.

  chapter thirteen

  Winter was deep upon the town. Dogs howled in the woods, crows congregated in the Town Square and everyone talked of the tragedy of Tony Masters. What caused him to do such a horrible thing? He had been so normal at the Gunderson funeral a few weeks earlier. Many theories existed for his snapping. Bromley, Claire, Mr. Packer and Thelma clustered around young Josh Gunderson who claimed the full story direct from Mrs. Masters.

  “The snowplows went out early that morning,” Josh began, “and by ten, Highway 17 held only a thin, but packed, layer of snow. By eleven, the combination of light traffic and a bright December sun had melted even that. The black macadam glistened under a clear sky as the sun reach its noon peak. Black crows cawed and flew from bare tree branch to bare tree branch, looking for something to scavenge.” To me, Josh seemed overly dramatic, but he captured everyone’s attention. Cynthia walked out from the kitchen to listen.

  “In Timberton, a dozen Harleys revved up their motors in unison. Black leather jacketed lawyers from Milwaukee prepared for the next leg of their road run—an all-day cruise south on 17 heading home. This mad dash by motorcycle to Lake Superior and back home was an annual event. One day up, one day camping, one day back, at seventy miles an hour through bone-chilling weather. In the compartments of a few riders were brightly wrapped gifts, secret Christmas gifts picked up along the way to surprise those left at home.

  “This year was better than most because the snow came early and heavy this far north. The skies were clear. Bright sunlight played across the crystalline powder, putting everything into stark relief. At the riders’ overnight camp at the foot of the Couer de Lattigeaux River gorge, they did what they did each year: playing cards, drinking beer, ignoring the roar of nearby snowmobiles and exaggerating their legal triumphs. Their brightly colored arctic tents, their down-filled sleeping bags and the deep blue sky were the only disturbance in an otherwise leafless landscape of snow, black icy water and men in black leather on bikes.”

  I had dabbled in my own rituals at a different camp the night before. Heat billowed from the Van Elkind’s massive fireplace where gigantic natural boulders framed a fire big enough to roast a bear, should one have been foolish enough to wander into the camp. A twenty-foot noble fir stood near the stairs, the angel on top failing by several feet to touch the peaked ceiling of the living room. The tree’s irregularly spaced branches drooped with Czechoslovakian blown-glass ornaments. Hard-to-find bubbling electric candlelights marched in steady rows from branch to branch.

&nbs
p; Henry Van Elkind leaned back against the heavy upholstery of his Morris chair. His lightweight Merino woolen pants and his cashmere sweater were slight variations of the same deep tan. Only the kelly green of the dress shirt peeking from the V-neck cut of the sweater provided any color. He swirled the deep ruby cabernet in his heavy Waterford goblet. The shadows of the flames shimmered through the cut facets and reflected red across his sweater. “Merry Christmas,” Van Elkind said. “I am so glad you all could be here.”

  Coo. Coo.

  “What the hell is that?” scowled Red Trueheart. His dress-up for this special dinner invitation resulted in an overzealous knot of a green and red striped tie that appeared to strangle him.

  “They’re the four calling birds,” pouted Amanda Manny, pointing toward an ornate Victorian cage near the tree. She wore a long midnight-blue velvet dress, cut close to her bosom. A large piece of costume jewelry festooned her neck. Companion pieces dangled from her ears. Whenever I saw Amanda walk out of her decorator’s shop, always thought of Jack Mandy in his hospital bed. Rita Van Elkind was not in sight. “When Walter refused to cater this dinner tonight,” and a stabbing glance was thrown my way, “well,” she shrugged, “Hank said I could plan the dinner, and I thought since it was the fourth day after Christmas, that I would have a theme to the party. That’s why we have the four calling birds. And the soup tonight will be a consommé made from three French hens. And each of you will get squab for dinner. They’re like turtle doves, don’t you think?’

  Van Elkind smiled at her tenderly, “Of course, they are.”

  “Does that mean we’re having a partridge for dessert?” I asked.

  Amanda trilled a charmless laugh. “Don’t be silly. What kind of dessert is that? We’re having a pear tart. With a tiny chocolate partridge on top.”

  Chip Frozen Bear started laughing. Van Elkind glared at him. “I was just thinking,” Frozen Bear said, “how much nicer it would be if this meeting were tomorrow. Then we could be given five golden rings.”