Tales From The Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

  “They came back. My men came back last night for the first time in weeks. I had been having all these horrible dreams about Arthur. At least I think it was Arthur. In my dreams, I was a young girl and Arthur would come crawling into my bedroom late at night trying to get into my bed. And I would scream. Then I would wake up. I’m going to ask my little men tonight what it all means.” Claire was having a double muffin. She was very happy to be in touch with the cosmos once more. Local doings were of no concern.

  Cynthia waltzed from table to table, pouring coffee for all of the news reporters who were buying breakfast. She had seldom been happier. “Just imagine. Daddy and Chip are in business together. That explains why they have been meeting so often and talking. Chip is already almost like family.”

  “Someone took my new police light,” Officer Campbell was in an uproar. “I placed it inside the car, so I could use it if I needed to pull over any of these out-of-towners for speeding. This town is busier than during Loon Fest. Bound to be some speeders. But some prankster took my light away. When I find out who took it then there’s going to be hell to pay. I’m the law in this town, and no big city newsman can get one over on me.”

  Amanda Manny pranced into the cafe bedecked with clothes and make up, all perfectly geared for a television camera. “Has anyone seen my partner Henry Van Elkind?” she announced in a regal tone loud enough for all in the restaurant to hear. “I need to show him my latest plans for the interiors of American Seasons. Oh, are you with NBC? How nice to meet you. You’re interested in talking to me? Really? How delightful!”

  Danny was bewildered by the hubbub in the establishment. Only the presence of Josh at the counter kept him calm. He confided to me, “Dad got really upset when he heard the news last night. He’s afraid that this development will destroy what’s special about this area.”

  “You knew this was coming didn’t you?” Thelma had been depressed ever since we had spied Gilbert and the other woman in Timberton. She was dreading the arrival of Sunday when Gilbert would once more appear for their weekly rendezvous. “Wally, you knew it was coming and you helped it along. Is this what you came back for? Do you want Manhattan rebuilt in your own back yard?”

  Mr. Packer held his coffee cup close to his nose. He allowed the steam to rise up to his nostrils before each sip. His beard seemly recently trimmed, and I thought he had taken a bath. I had never seen him look so presentable. He moved around the restaurant, pausing at tables, never saying a word, just letting the reactions of everyone float up like the steam of his coffee.

  “I’m the mayor. I should have been told . . .”

  “I wonder if I could rescind the sale to try to get more money . . .”

  “If you turn your camera on, I’ll tell you about the little men who visit this town . . .”

  “Everything will turn out okay now . . .”

  “That van just did an illegal U-turn in the square. I gotta go . . .”

  “Hank is my dearest friend. I met him when we redecorated his camp . . .”

  “Dad says the woods should be sacred . . . “

  “What did you get out of all this . . .”

  The cash register never stopped ringing. The coffee never stopped flowing. The voices and opinions swirled about me.

  The door from the street flung open. Pastor Paul Mall stood there with his arms outstretched. He was an imposing figure, dressed all in black, his close-cropped silver hair brushed to perfect attention. All of the reporters stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped drinking. He had the attention of them all.

  “This town is filled with sin. You need to know about . . .”

  Mr. Packer calmly strolled over to the pastor, gently pushed him out the door and closed it. “Sometimes you have to step in and put a stop to things,” he said to no one and to everyone. “I think that time is now.”

  And he was out the door.

  chapter NINETEEN

  When I stepped out of the kitchen door into the back yard, I was quickly surrounded by little clouds of midges, newly hatched in the remaining puddles of spring. I looked around my garden and soaked in the temperatures high in the ’60s. I didn’t care what Thelma said. My plot was ready for seeds.

  I liked to imagine my future flowerbeds that would let me decorate my cafe each evening with homegrown flowers. All winter, I pored over the seed catalogues, trying to guess whether dahlias would be better than gladioli, concerned that zinnias might have too strong a smell, and wondering if bachelor buttons were too frail for a vase. In the end, throwing caution to the winds, I bought everything I fancied.

  Behind me Thelma walked into the kitchen, her arms laden with branches covered with delicate white buds. “The pussy willows are in bloom again,” she said.

  I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” she wanted to know. I shrugged, unable to explain. She grabbed a mason jar from the shelf, filled it with water and arranged the branches. “I hope you’re not still thinking about getting into that dirt. You’re like a little boy with a sandbox. Don’t complain to me when you end up losing everything in a freeze.”

  “I called my mother last night,” I replied, “she didn’t think it was too early to get started.”

  “What does your mother know? She moved to Arizona. I bet it don’t even freeze there. Say, did you hear about Reverend Willy?” she asked.

  I hadn’t heard, and no matter what it was, I didn’t care to hear. But Thelma had to tell me about how Pastor Mall had heard about Willy’s nighttime film showings and was convinced the poor man was breaking some law or another. There had been talk of him sometimes watching the movies naked. The pastor had even called in the county prosecutor.

  “All that Pastor Paul Mall’s doing,” groused Thelma. “He just can’t let sleeping dog lies. Why, I bet Willy’s one of the best people in his church, and he does their janitoring for free. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  I tried to imagine the potential investigation. A handful of cars purring in the field outside Willy’s house, their lights turned off, their wheels gently coasting them forward; their motors extinguished–and on the exterior of the tiny house, the flickering lights of a Charlie Chaplin or a Clara Bow. Then out of nowhere, like a posse in the dark, the gravel is spit into the trees as the heavy police cruisers crash over the bumps of the lake road, their blazing headlights streaking across the nights, sirens echoing in the black woods.

  Cynthia flounced in with exuberance. She was carrying a tray filled to capacity with dirty dishes. “Wally, you should get back in the restaurant. I had to help Danny with the bussing, ’cause he can’t keep up.”

  “Wally’s moping about his garden,” Thelma said in a dismissive way. In the dining room, Bromley, Claire and Mr. Packer were at their usual spots. By now, Bromley and Claire’s morning breakfast rituals had spilled over into lunch and afternoon coffee. It seemed as though they never left. Mr. Packer came and went on his own schedule. They too were talking about Revered Willy and his supposed crimes of exposing Thread’s youth to the flickers.

  Claire was worried. “But what if they put him in jail. I’d feel terrible.”

  “They should institutionalize you,” muttered Bromley.

  “Don’t you talk that way to me,” snapped Claire. “I know who crawled into my room, and it wasn’t Arthur. So don’t you talk that way to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re gabbing about,” Bromley grabbed the last of his strudel and strode out the door.

  “Touchy, isn’t he?” I said.

  “I don’t know why,” Claire replied, “He’s been that way ever since my men stopped coming, you know, after Arthur’s dog visited Cynthia. Something’s on his mind. I don’t know what. I never seen him this way before, not in fifty years. But he shouldn’t be so touchy no more because my little men are back.”

  Outside, Officer Campbell and Henry Van Elkind were shouting at one another. Dressed in a double-breasted, vested suit, Van Elkind appeared decked out to brief his board of directors. But his ha
ir was falling out of place on a windless morning. Officer Campbell was in his usual disarray, with his leather jacket unzipped and his hat with its plush earflaps at an odd angle. Van Elkind kept trying to walk into the restaurant, while Officer Campbell tugged at his opponent’s arm trying to pull him back. Finally, in an act of disgust, Van Elkind flung Campbell’s grasping arm to the side and stomped into the cafe.

  “Fucking little piss ant,” snarled Van Elkind. “Get me some coffee.” Despite his recent triumphs, our Chicago financier had grown increasingly surly. At first, he gamboled delightfully in the initial shower of glowing reviews; now, he had to face rising opposition to American Seasons. It was as though a thousand noxious weeds had only been waiting for a sprinkling of publicity to sprout into opposition. New groups blossomed daily. There were the environmental concerns. There was the anti-gambling contingent. There were those who were against anything Native Americans wanted to do. Then there were those entrenched interests who opposed anything counter to their personal vision of the best interests of a reservation they had never visited. The anti-development crowd quaked about the need for new highways. The taxpayers union hoisted the threat of new taxes to pay for infrastructure. The lumbering interests and paper mills fretted about their source of cheap pulp. The mining lobbyists had a sudden thunderbolt that there was still ore to mine in the area despite decades of geologists’ reports to the contrary. Everyone across the state and the region found reasons to claim interest in the project.

  For every life-or-death concern, as each seemed to be, someone was on hand to deliver its truths for the television cameras. The old hotel on the square had overflowed its sullen rooms with crowds of do-gooders. Even the Timberton hoteliers were basking in the financial radiation emitting from the much-publicized and controversial American Seasons.

  Through it all, Henry Van Elkind was the man on the spot.

  “Don’t you go running away from me, Mr. Van Elkind,” Officer Campbell stormed into the restaurant.

  “Do your job. Find Mother Regina.” Hank shouted back.

  “And I told you I need the state police. I got no resources to conduct a kidnapping investigation by myself. Your mother could have been taken across the state border to the U.P. That makes it a national matter for the FBI.” Officer Campbell was quaking ever so slightly, but he stood his ground. Two days ago, Bromley had authorized him to deputize two men to help control the jamming traffic of television trucks. His new authority seemed to have given him added backbone.

  “And I told you. Keep them the fuck out of it!”

  Bromley waddled over. “Boys, boys,” he intoned, “there’s no need to argue. Not in front of a restaurant full of people. Come into the back room with me and we’ll work this out. I’m the mayor here. I can help.” Bromley’s face glowed like a highwayman discovering an unexpected opportunity to fleece an innocent traveler. The two fighters sullenly agreed to Bromley’s suggestion. I followed all three into my back room.

  Here we were in the room where I first learned of American Seasons. Of course, Van Elkind had romanced most of the needed players before my first meeting them at that dinner. Now the whole world knew of the pregnant possibilities. Nearly a year ago, flush with the thousand-dollar payment made by Van Elkind for the dinner, I had felt unique and had overlooked any apprehensions. Now as I looked at the livid Van Elkind, I wondered what havoc we had let loose.

  Bromley leaned against a shelf laden with boxes of canned goods ordered by Thelma. “Hank, do you think it’s wise to yell in a crowded restaurant about matters you want private?” he lectured. “You know I can keep a secret, because I’ve known about your park for quite some time. And did I ever hint at it? Not once. Now did I? So just tell me what’s got you so riled up here? And I’ll help. I run this god darn town, after all.”

  “Regina’s been kidnapped.”

  “But she’s dead,” I blurted out.

  “Precisely,” Van Elkind replied.

  Bromley leaned back even more, and tapped his chin slowly with an air of perspicacity. “I see,” he intoned. Officer Campbell shifted uneasily from foot to foot. His usual flush was creeping up his neck, spreading into the lobes of his ears. His hat, now in his hands, was being twisted like a spent dishrag.

  Van Elkind was incensed. “You do not see, you old man. You don’t know what the hell I am talking about, any more than you knew one god damn thing about my resort. Don’t posture with me. I have more important things on my mind. Like getting Regina’s body returned. I can’t let the press find out.”

  “Unlike Bromley,” I said, casting the mayor a look of apology even as I began, “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Your mother-in-law was scheduled to be buried today. People don’t kidnap a dead person. What would they do? Threaten to kill her?”

  “No, but they’re threatening to throw her body off the highway 2 overpass onto highway 17,” Van Elkind said as he slumped into a chair. The fight had suddenly gone out of him.

  Casting a human corpse into that particular intersection would be a bit messy I had to admit. Highway 2 connected Bangor, Maine with Seattle, Washington and was the only moderately busy highway in all of Northern Wisconsin. Its intersection with 17 just north of Timberton’s downtown actually sported a highway cloverleaf. A dead grandmother thrown in front of a Mack truck wouldn’t make for a pretty picture, but even I could see how it would make for a great news story.

  “Rita and I went to the funeral home this morning, after we decided to have Regina buried instead of cremated. We were going to airship her body back to Chicago and have her be buried next to Casimir. We walked into the funeral home to give Mother Regina our final goodbye, and then have the funeral home handle the air freight and the internment in Chicago. There was going to be no reason for us to be involved further.

  “So we walk into the viewing room, and the casket is empty. Fucking empty. ‘What have you done with my mother?’ screamed Rita. Agnelli was frantic. The stupid jerk hadn’t been in the room until he walked in with us. He fucking didn’t know someone had broken in and stolen my mother-in-law.

  “All that’s left in the casket is a poorly-typed ransom note. The scum demand half a million dollars or they’ll drop Regina off the highway 2 overpass. They threatened that if we bring in the state police or the FBI, they would alert the press. They’re clever enough to know I can’t have this kind of publicity and make American Seasons seem like some fucking joke. I’m sure one of these fucked-up demonstrators is behind it. They’ll do anything to stop me.

  “Rita says ‘Don’t pay.’ If they keep the body, what’s the difference? Regina is already fucking dead. But imagine the headline: Amusement Park Tycoon Tells Crooks: Keep Grandma’s Body. It would destroy me.”

  I gave Van Elkind the truth. “You have to call the police. They’ll know what to do. They’re not going to tell the press.”

  Van Elkind nodded glumly in agreement. Officer Campbell finally stood still. Bromley beamed brightly as though he had negotiated the solution.

  “I told Daddy last night. I told him everything,” Cynthia said. She had come into the cafe, following her last class at school, radiating a curious aura of joy and dismay. My only customer was Danny’s father, Toivo. He had starting coming in for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie after finishing his shift. I suspected that after he drank the last drop from his cup, he went to the cemetery to spend an hour with his memories of Lempi.

  “Told him what?” Ever since the showdown at the Sapphire Run over the spawning muskie, Red Trueheart had become an unpredictable, even irrational, man. He and Barbara had been in for dinner a couple of times. Each instance, he was glum and unresponsive to anyone’s attempts to start a conversation. Even when Bromley tried to insinuate himself into Red’s notice, Red couldn’t find the energy to snap at the old man.

  With the announcement of American Seasons, Red’s spirits should have lifted like a joyous hosanna. The connivery of two generations of Truehearts was about to pay
off and transform rugged second-growth scrub woods into a playland for the nation. Much of this “Las Vegas of the North” would be built on land controlled by Red. Vast riches surely awaited him. Yet as the only kid in the schoolyard who owned a ball, he didn’t seem to want to play.

  Cynthia reported that Red hadn’t gone fishing since the fishing season opened. He was usually the first to be in the trout streams, walking the riverbanks in his waders, casting his hand-tied flies. After the spring thaw hit Big Sapphire Lake, Red always kept a fishing boat tied to the dock in the front of his house. It might be just a little wooden model, with a tiny Evinrude motor under ten horsepower, something totally different than the monster speedboat he zipped about in when he was trying to show off, but he called this little boat, True Heart, and Red always seemed the calmest and most relaxed when he pulled up to his dock in True Heart, his basket full of freshly caught fish, the sun setting in the west, and his sunburnt nose gleaming brightly.

  But something about that spring evening spent in the tense light of the torches had unnerved him. Whether it was the raw violence that hung over the water current, or whether it was the promise of a protecting earth that coursed through the stream, who could say. Cynthia didn’t know. I didn’t know. And it was clear that Red didn’t know.

  Red didn’t like revelations, and I feared that Cynthia’s bubbling good news had been about her feelings for Chip. To anyone else in town, this would have been no news. But as with so many of us on so many topics, the only people in Thread from whom a secret could be kept were precisely the very people closest and dearest to those individuals who hid the truth.

  “You didn’t tell him about Chip, did you?” I asked tentatively.

  “Of course, I did,” Cynthia exclaimed. “What else could I be talking about?”

  “And he gave you his congratulations, I bet ya,” said Toivo. For the first time in the months that he had been having coffee in my cafe, Danny’s father entered voluntarily into a conversation.