Tales From The Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

  “Tell me everything you heard.” Bromley was like a little boy who woke up early on Christmas morning and couldn’t get out of his crib by himself. He just knew there was going to be a fantastic present at the very bottom toe of his stocking.

  “He was describing this raccoon that got into the house his sister and he have and how it knocked over the Christmas tree. The way he told the story, it was so funny. I really like him.”

  “Not that stuff,” Bromley broke in. “Who cares about him? What were they really talking about? What business things? Your father needs to know what goes on in this town.”

  “Would you say that Chip Frozen Bear is a really handsome man?” Josh asked Cynthia. “Tall, dark and handsome. Everything you’d want.”

  “Yes,” Cynthia responded with enthusiasm.

  “Forget about all that junk.” Bromley was frantic. “What were they talking about?”

  “Just a bunch of words,” Cynthia said. “I don’t know what any of it meant. Something about a leveraged takeover. And pension funds.”

  “But did Chip ask you out?” Josh wanted to know.

  “No, why would he do that?” Cynthia seemed shocked. “He’s much older than me. Why would he want to date me?”

  “So you wouldn’t mind if I tried to snag him.”

  Now Cynthia was truly shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure he likes girls. He’s just too handsome to want guys.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Josh said in mock indignation.

  “That’s not what I meant at all,” Cynthia was looking over at the table intently. She looked Frozen Bear up and down. “Maybe I should go check if they need something else. Make sure they have enough water.”

  “Wait a minute,” hissed Bromley. But Cynthia was already walking over to the table. Bromley turned to the rest of us. “They are up to something. But what? There’s something I don’t like about what’s happening.”

  “All you don’t like is that you don’t know what’s going on,” Mr. Packer said calmly. Bromley looked at him quietly and didn’t respond.

  The front door tinkled. “Things are looking up,” said Josh. Danny walked into the cafe and he was carrying a wriggling blur of silver black fur.

  “I wanted to show you my new puppy,” Danny said. “It’s a baby Norwegian elkhound. I got it for Dad. Sort of an early Christmas present. I thought it would help take his mind off Mom.” He stumbled to an end, embarrassed by his own statements.

  “What a cute puppy!” Cynthia said. “Where did you get it?”

  “You better take good care of that dog,” Claire began. “You don’t want him running off come spring. I’ve been hearing packs of wild dogs at night, barking as they run through the streets. There’s something about the sounds of a wild pack, especially come spring, that seems to take over the mind of a housedog. They just got to get out there and run. Once they do, you can never get them back. They’re lost to the wild.”

  “It won’t happen with my dog,” Danny nuzzled the dog. He lifted up his head and the dog yelped as though it wanted more attention.

  “What is that?” asked Wheeler from the corner table. “Is there a dog in here? I‘m quite allergic.”

  Cynthia was alarmed. “It’s just a little puppy.”

  “Puppies, dogs, they are not allowed in restaurants. Get rid of that dog this instant.” By now he was standing and turning red. Frozen Bear also stood.

  “No need to get upset. We can go somewhere else to finish our discussion,” and he threw a twenty to the table and hustled Wheeler out the door. As he was leaving, Chip turned and whispered to Cynthia, “Don’t worry about this. See you tomorrow.”

  Danny looked humiliated and the dog was whimpering in his arms. All of the shouting had scared the small thing. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No big deal,” I responded. “But maybe you better take it home.”

  Mr. Packer looked at me as he began to speak. “Lovely puppy. Let’s hope he doesn’t run with the wild dogs. To race with the big dogs can be very alluring, but when you do it, you end up leaving everything behind. Beware the big dogs, Wally.”

  He looked at me. I looked at him. I didn’t think he was talking about Danny’s new dog.

  The American Seasons dinner was nearly over when Van Elkind handed over a small envelope. “Oh, that reminds me, Henry, we have a small gift for you.”

  “Open it,” commanded Haligent.

  I tore open the gilt envelope. Inside was a certificate for ten thousand shares of American Seasons, Incorporated.

  “It’s not worth much now,” observed Van Elkind with a flush to his face. “But in a year or two, it could be worth a million . . . or more. We didn’t want you to think we were taking advantage of you in any way. We want you to have a stake in our success.”

  They were all watching me. Outside, I heard the cries of another dog pack racing wild through the woods, followed by the sheer stillness of a winter night. Then a loud resounding boom echoed in the silence as the ice in the lake shifted and cracked. A shimmer of crackling light from the still-roaring fire in the adjacent living room bounced off the crystal goblets. No one said anything. Haligent was waiting. Amanda was bored. Chip Frozen Bear’s eyes were the ones to avoid.

  “Thank you,” I said. I looked down at the congealed juices of the squab, and I wanted to escape with the dogs, to be anywhere but here.

  chapter fourteen

  Winter dragged on, only slowly inching toward spring. Each succeeding day the sun appeared in the eastern sky a few moments earlier. Each evening it set in the western sky just a bit a later. To many in town the blue shadows stretching across the white snow still seemed too long at noon and too short at dusk.

  An occasional Volvo, Saab or BMW, topped with racks of skis, would find its way to the town square and park. Vacationers would tumble out and head into my cafe. For a few hours, the cafe would be filled with skiers on their way to the timid peaks of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Tired from their long drive from the big cities hours away, they stopped to rejuvenate themselves. Business was best when they were young couples, flush with money, out to prove they could still have a good time before they were laden with the responsibilities of children, mortgages and planning ahead. They would order appetizers, entrees and desserts. A bottle of wine was never out of the question, and they were always generous tippers. After a full evening of dining and drinking, they would slip and slide as they tried to walk carefully over icy sidewalks to their frosty cars, still facing an hour or more of driving before reaching their resorts. The snowflakes would be flurrying about them, each unique crystal dancing about in the falling light of the street lamps. Sometimes the flakes would so blanket the sky that you couldn’t see across the square to find the hardware store. On such nights, only the neon sign of the Northern Nights bar across the square would be a beckoning light. Such couples would often stroll to a halt in the empty square, with their car, transformed into a snowbank, parked just feet away. Caught in the shower of snow, they would turn to each other, say a few words. The wispy steaming clouds of their breath would float out into the icy night. And then they would move in for a long kiss.

  Cynthia lived for these moments. She would linger in the dining room, slowly picking up the dessert plates, her eyes captivated by the scene outside. When finally the young couple would drive away, she would sigh, then turn to one of us and sigh once more. Danny would look back at her with the wariness of a kitten you were trying to coax into a bath.

  Short days flowed into long nights. The packed snow grew thicker and thicker beneath the always freshly falling snow. Except on the square, the town’s sidewalks, when still shoveled, were treacherous paths of built-up ice and compacted snow. The banks of plowed snow along the roadsides grew ever higher. Little kids walked along the ridges like mountaineers.

  For the past week, the daytime highs never broke zero. At night the temperatures dipped below minus thirty. Frozen water pipes had burst in some of the best-insulated homes. My apartment
above the cafe, with its drafty windows and minimal weatherproofing, was a whistling icebox. Each morning I eagerly descended into the warmth of the restaurant. Thelma usually arrived an hour before I did to open up the restaurant and make the day’s breads and cakes. By the time I got to the kitchen, clean-shaven and hair still wet from the shower, the place would be toasty warm and the hot caramel smell of freshly baked sticky buns floated in the air. In those moments, I had no thoughts of what I had left behind in Manhattan or what lay ahead with American Seasons.

  “I just can’t decide what to do about this land,” mused Josh Gunderson. The restaurant was ready to close. No romantic couples had shown up this evening to kiss in the ever so lightly falling snow. “Thanks to my folks’ life insurance, I have more money than I need. Even my father never dreamed his swampland and cranberry-growing fantasy would ever be worth anything. Now here’s someone offering me a lot of money for some stagnant water. And I can’t decide what to do about it.”

  “Take the money and run,” Danny suggested. He was seated at the counter filling up salt and pepper shakers. Lately, Josh had taken to staying past closing and talking as we closed up.

  “I would,” replied Josh, “except I’m convinced someone is up to no good. I can feel that somehow, someone, somewhere is cheating me. Laugh if you want but I have a sense about when I’m getting the shaft. Believe me, there’s been times in Hollywood when people tried to sell me a load of goods. They didn’t succeed. At least not more than once. No little hick town’s going to win where L.A. lost.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Josh glanced at me with an air of dismissal. “It’s true my mother could foresee the future, extrasensory perception, and they say it’s hereditary. Once when grandma was sick, my mother woke up in the middle of the night, knowing something terrible had happened to my grandma. She had to call right then, and you know what? She was right. Grandpa had died, in the middle of the night, quiet and calm in his sleep. Until the phone rang and grandpa didn’t pick it up like he usually did, Grandma didn’t even know. But my mother knew.

  “The day mom and dad died, I woke up in the early morning with a terrible headache. I knew, so I don’t know why Mom didn’t get a warning. Does carbon monoxide interfere with ESP?’

  “Maybe,” Danny said, in a way meant to stop another conversation he found uncomfortable.

  The lights of the restaurant were dimmed, the evening linens removed from the table and the chairs upended on the wooden tabletops. I was putting away the last of the liquor bottles. The neon sign spelling out Loon Town Cafe still cast its pink glow onto the snow accumulating on the sidewalk. On the square, a few late-starting drinkers headed into a bar. Amanda Manny teetered on the icy steps of the Northern Nights Tavern, her stiletto heels finding no traction. I held my breath, anticipating a fall.

  “What were you boys jabbering about, and now you’re all so silent.” Buxom Thelma stood in the kitchen door. “You know there’s still pots and pans to scour. And why are you here every night, Josh? I thought you worked at the tavern now.”

  “I switched to days,” he replied. “I like my nights off.”

  “Then maybe you should run off and enjoy your nights. These boys have got work to do. The grease won’t disappear by itself.” Increasingly Thelma had assumed bossing privileges over me and those around me.

  “I could help,” Josh said eagerly.

  Thelma was already into the kitchen. “The more the merrier. The sooner this is all done, the sooner we can all go home.”

  Like a little train, the three of us followed her lead. Danny went first, the coal car carrying the final tray of dirty dishes to feed the sink. Josh was eagerly pulled along, like a car full of jolly vacationers who had no worries. I brought up the rear, a baggage car that picked up a nearly full bottle of Heitz Cellars Martha’s Vineyard cabernet.

  “We might as well enjoy the close of our evening,” I said, holding aloft the bottle. “I can’t believe that couple from Minneapolis would order a great red like this, and barely drink any of it. Let’s say we finish it off.”

  “Danny’s a minor. You could lose your license,” Thelma said.

  “Who would tell? Would you Josh? Would you Danny? You know, Thelma, when I went to high school here, kids got drunk every weekend evening. I’m sure Danny’s tasted wine before.”

  Danny looked worried. “I better not. I don’t want to get you guys in trouble.” He looked wistfully at the bottle and at the glass of wine already held by Josh. Instead, he picked up a scrub brush and attacked the sink full of greasy pans.

  “Hold on, boy,” Thelma laughed. “You don’t need to set any speed records. Dirty dishes let you take as much time as you want.”

  Through the glass of the back door’s window, I could see the snow-bedecked features of Toivo, who had just tentatively knocked. Big bushy eyebrows and a full head of hair embellished with accumulated snowflakes.

  “Open the door,” I told Thelma, “it’s Danny’s father.”

  Toivo Lahti walked into the warm glow of the kitchen, and he shook like an old dog that just pulled itself out of the lake, with light flakes of snow flying around the room.

  “Dad, be careful,” moaned Danny.

  “It’s a cold night out, son. Didn’t want you walking home, so I thought I’d stop by and drive you. The door was locked in front, so I figured I should head around back and make sure I hadn’t missed you. I guess I didn’t.”

  “How come you’re covered with snow, Dad?”

  “Couldn’t help but stop by your ma, and tell her how you’re doing. I don’t get to do it as much as I’d like now that it’s winter. It’s like when she was alive you know, and we never got to walk as much as we wanted. After all these years, I still wish I could bring her back, you know.” Toivo bit at his lower lip. Danny kept scrubbing furiously at the pans.

  “Son, slow down a bit.”

  “I already told him that, Toivo,” Thelma said. “Won’t do no good. Your son is a stubborn one. When he gets an idea in his head, he won’t let go. Like someone else in the family I know. Wally probably wouldn’t think to tell you, but we’re all real happy with the way Danny works here. You raised a good kid.” Danny’s shoulders seemed to sink lower.

  “Yeah, he’s a really good guy, Mr. Lahti,” Josh was eager to be part of the conversation. “He’s a great waiter, a great busboy, and as you can see a great scullery maid.”

  Toivo looked at Josh with suspicion, but back at his son with love. Even when his wife was alive, he wasn’t one to socialize. He never went to a tavern, seldom kibitzed with Red when he shopped for groceries, and had no time to contemplate politics with Bromley Bastique. He was always quiet, smiling faintly if he thought the story was meant to be funny, but always with a look to his eyes as though seeking the nearest escape path into the woods. Only in the forest was he at home and fully at peace. Before he cut any tree or even climbed one to trim it, he would put his hand against the bark and hold it there for a full minute. If you were to ask him about it, he would look away shyly, or redden and say that he was just taking a rest. But his wife Lempi once told her neighbors what he was really doing. He was comforting the soul of the tree by slowly letting his energy move into the life force of the tree, so that he could feel its life and its will to live, and that it in turn could feel his. He was seeking forgiveness and understanding for what he was about to do. Did the tree feel less pain? Did the forest grow back more rapidly? Or did Toivo merely sleep better? Perhaps Lempi could have told us. She was the only person Toivo had ever touched in the same way that he touched his trees, but his touch hadn’t been enough to keep her happy and alive.

  “The snows seem heavy this year,” Toivo said. “Might get three hundred inches before the year is out. Like back in ’79. A hard winter for the deer and the animals.”

  “You shouldn’t be lumbering when the snow gets so deep in the woods. It’s dangerous. That’s what my husband used to say,” said Thelma.

  “But you can’t stop. Y
ou gotta live,” Toivo responded. “We can cut them down and then pull them logs out come spring. For us, it’s not so bad. For the deer, though, it’s a harder thing. They can’t find nothing to eat, unless it’s the twigs of the branches they can reach from the ground, or the bark. They’ll be a lot of weak deer come spring. Some say they saw a wolf up to Timberton last week. You know the wolves; they run across the lake from Isle Royale in winters like this. Seeking out weak deer in the woods.”

  Danny was rinsing off his last pot. “Dad, I’m done. Let’s go.”

  “I should say something to the Gunderson boy,” Toivo muttered. “I was real sorry to hear about your pa and ma. It don’t seem fair, no way you think about it, what happened to them. But you got to go on.”

  “And I am,” said Josh amusedly, in the tone he offered back whenever townspeople tried to give him their sympathy. “I will go on.”

  “Ready to go, Dad?”

  “Danny, maybe your father would like some wine before he goes,” Josh was already handing the man a glass of the Heitz cabernet. Toivo held the glass uncomfortably in his hand, peering at the deep red liquid inside, watching its firm legs hold to the curvature of the bowl.

  “I’m not really a drinker,” he said. “Maybe a beer and a brandy chaser at home.”

  “Try it. Prepare for the winter ahead,” Josh persuaded.

  Toivo stopped the swirling of his glass and ventured a small sip of the cabernet. He made an unpleasant face. “Think I’ll stick to my brandy.”

  Thelma broke in, “Wait a minute, Toivo, we got a full bar here. Let me get you a Leinie’s and a shot of Christian Brothers. No sense your sitting here without something to drink while the rest of us finish off this bottle of wine. Do you want something, Danny?”

  “No,” he replied quickly. “Dad, we should be getting home.”

  “Oh, Danny, let your father enjoy his drink,” Thelma responded. She was beginning to glow. “I never get a chance to talk to your father. I’d like to get to know him better.”