by Beth Vrabel
Gretel reached toward Kerica, putting her wrinkled hand over Kerica’s smooth one. Kerica kept sketching with her right hand. “I’m sorry about that, kiddo. I really am.”
Tooter whimpered and licked at their joined hands.
“Williams Diner didn’t make African Americans sit somewhere else, did they?” I asked.
“No,” Gretel shook her head. “Daddy never would’ve done that. But the thing is, even though we didn’t have a law about it, or one of those awful ‘Whites Only’ signs in the front window, there were so many unwritten laws. Customs that people followed even if they weren’t enforced.”
“Like black people only shopping on Saturdays,” Kerica said. “Grandma still only shops on Saturdays.”
Gretel nodded. “And that if a white person owned a diner, black people would go to a different one. So even though Dad would’ve whipped up a milkshake for anyone who came in our doors, no one of color would. Until Harold changed things.”
Gretel took another drink of her milkshake. “See that man over there?” Even though I couldn’t make out Mayor Hank from where I sat, with my eyes closed I could paint a picture of him. I saw his belly pushing at the buttons of his striped shirt. His hands full of flyers for the Sinkville Success Stories contest. His cheeks red and eyes scanning. “Now take away fifty years and just as many pounds. Maybe a few more.”
Suddenly I saw a young man, shirt sleeves pulled up to show muscled arms. I saw eyes bright and chin set. “He was handsome,” I murmured.
“That he was,” Gretel said. I peeked and saw that her eyes were closed, too.
In a soft voice, she continued: “In nineteen sixty-four, the Civil Rights Act passed. Harold there was a teenage busboy working for my dad. For months he had been talking about the movement, about department stores closing rather than serving black men and women at the lunch counter. He wanted to join the sit-ins and protests, but his mama wouldn’t let him. Said he was too young. But Harold supported the movement in ways that didn’t put him in danger. Even took on the role as manager, setting up meetings in safe places.”
“A lot of people got hurt during that time,” Kerica piped in. “That’s why my grandma’s still scared. People were beat by police officers, had rocks thrown at them. Some were arrested for no reason.”
“In other parts of the South, it was even worse,” Gretel said. “Some people died. But Harold had to do something. That’s just the way he is. When he sees a way to make our town better, he has to do it. But I thought for sure he’d give my dad a heart attack with what he did!”
“What did he do?” Kerica and I asked together.
Gretel grinned. “He went to that big window at the front of the store.” Gretel thumbed behind her. The window was huge, covering most of one wall of the restaurant. “He painted on it the most enormous set of hands you’ve ever seen. One white hand, one black hand, shaking. Under it, he wrote in huge letters, EVERYONE WELCOME AT WILLIAMS.”
I felt my forehead wrinkle. “Why would your dad be mad about that? Didn’t he support the movement?”
Gretel laughed, her cheeks turning rosy. “He was in favor of equal rights, for sure. But he also was in favor of someone having a smidge of artistic talent before painting his storefront windows!”
Her laughter wheezed between her words. “You should’ve seen those sad-looking claws Harold painted. Picture this: his first try looked more like baby paws clutching at each other. Then he reworked it, painting right over the first attempt. This time, it looked more like we were welcoming visiting aliens. The fingers alone where three times the size of the arms! He tried again—and soon the entire window was covered with a pair of gigantic, and I mean gigantic, drippy monster claws grasping at each other.” Both Kerica and I joined in Gretel’s hiccuping laughs. “That man, I’ve seen him convince a toddler to eat a plate of brussels sprouts. But he can’t paint a smiley face—let alone a handshake—worth a darn!”
Gretel wiped tears off her cheeks with a napkin. “Dad was a good man. He poured his life into this diner, making sure it supported Mama and me. But he was a slow man. Took him months to ponder menu changes.” Slowly, Gretel shifted her head to look over at Mayor Hank. She tilted her head to where he sat. “Harold, he’s always been a bolt of lightning. Can you imagine how Dad felt when he saw the entire front of his store painted like that?”
“Did your dad fire him?” Kerica asked, concern in her voice.
Gretel smiled. “Like I said, most times Dad was slow to move. But even he couldn’t resist Harold. The world was a’changin’, and Harold was one of its champions.”
Gretel told us that by the end of that day, the three of them had managed to scrub the window clean. Then Gretel and her dad painted the window themselves, with Harold handling the sales inside. “Once the window was painted, Dad, Harold, and me, we just stood back and admired it. Dad went inside and grabbed his camera.” She flipped the menu over to the timeline again.
I got out my magnifier from my pocket and looked at the black and white picture. Sure enough, it showed a beautiful painting of two hands shaking, welcoming everyone to the diner. A pretty girl held a paintbrush in front of it, a small smile on her face. Next to her, a handsome boy stood grinning at the girl. “Is that you and Mayor Hank?”
Gretel nodded. Without really meaning to, I leaned into her until our sides were touching. It’s how I used to sit with Grandma. Gretel didn’t seem to mind. She kept talking.
“Dad was so happy with the painting, he told Harold he only wished Sinkville drew in more customers to see it. ‘Something like that needs to be seen, doesn’t it?’ Dad had said. Harold offered to call up his friends.” She laughed again. “Dad didn’t realize Harold meant the young people planning sit-ins, protests, and demonstrations! Our little diner soon became a hotspot for promoting the movement, with meetings held right here.”
“Wow,” Kerica whispered.
“These kids, they weren’t used to being invited to a public place for meetings. Especially a restaurant in a mostly white town like Sinkville. They came in primed for a fight, so used to being turned away, threatened with arrest, or generally mistreated wherever they went. But Dad just shook each person’s hand and told them the day’s specials. Harold even mentioned to Dad that one of the young men needed work.” Gretel tilted her head toward the kitchen. I heard whistling and saw a blur of movement. “Chef Johnny’s been with us ever since.”
“Why isn’t the painting in the window still there?” Kerica asked.
“A couple years ago, we had a bad storm. Used to be a tree growing in the parking lot. A branch went right through the window. By then, everyone knew all were welcomed here, so the painting wasn’t necessary.” Gretel paused, looking straight at Kerica. “But maybe we could use the reminder, even now. What are your painting skills like, Kerica? I can see you’re an artist from your sketches there.”
Kerica’s cheeks flushed. “I’m okay, I guess.”
I grabbed the placemat and held it closer to see what Kerica had been doodling. It was a drawing of me and Gretel, both of us midlaugh.
“I didn’t know you could draw like this!” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you like art?”
Kerica shrugged. “It didn’t come up.”
“Well,” Gretel said. “How about putting it to the test. Why don’t you try re-creating the painting on paper for me? Then we can talk about commissioning you to re-create it on the window. I sort of miss it.”
“Really?” Kerica asked. “I’d love that!”
Gretel patted Kerica’s hand again, then gathered our menus in one arm. But she paused before getting up. She drummed her fingernails against the Formica top and sort of nodded to herself, like she was having a conversation in her head before speaking aloud. “Sinkville, it’s not much of a town. It’s got its problems just as sure as the Mill stinks. But it’s a good town. One that’ll break down barriers when it can. One that will focus on the sweet instead of the sour.
“And Harold?�
� She again turned and looked at the mayor. Sometimes you just know things. In that moment, I just knew that when she looked at Mayor Hank, she still saw the handsome, passionate boy he once was. “He’s the one to credit for most of that.”
Kerica must’ve seen it, too. “How long have you and Mayor Hank been girlfriend and boyfriend?”
Gretel brought the menus to her chest like a shield. She shook her head so hard her dangly earrings whipped her cheeks. “Ah, no. It’s not like that. We’re just friends. I haven’t even had a boyfriend since I took over this place after Dad passed. And that was forty years ago!”
“Maybe it could be like that,” I suggested. “Is there a Missus Mayor?”
Gretel laughed. “Nah, Harold’s as married to this town as I am to this diner.” She sighed and glanced toward the counter where Mayor Hank still sat. “I thought maybe, once . . . but, no. That passion of his is for our town. Not for me.”
Kerica cocked an eyebrow at her. “You should ask him out.”
Gretel giggled like she was our age. “I’m pushing seventy, sweet cheeks. Those days are gone.”
“What days are gone?” Suddenly the man himself, Mayor Hank, stood behind Gretel.
Gretel’s face flushed and her mouth popped open. Kerica to the rescue. “We were just talking about what life was like when you guys were kids,” she said. “Life back in the sixties.”
Mayor Hank rolled back on his heels as a smile stretched across his face. “Those were the days, weren’t they, Gretel?”
“So what did you do then?” I asked. “Like for dates and stuff.”
Mayor Hank’s face flushed, too. “I didn’t go on many dates.”
“Too busy saving the town, even then,” Gretel murmured as she strode back to the kitchen with our menus. Mayor Hank turned to watch her leave, and again I had a flash of knowledge. He loved her. And she loved him back.
“You had to have had at least one date,” Kerica pushed.
Mayor Hank studied his shoes for a second. “I do remember a picnic by the Sycamore.”
“What sycamore?” I asked.
Kerica sat with her arms folded and her eyes wide. She shook her head. To the mayor, she said, “Excuse my best friend. She doesn’t get out much.”
I crossed my arms and wiggled my eyebrows at her. “Blind and new, remember?”
Kerica nodded. “Forgot about the blind thing for a sec, sorry.” She shifted in her seat, giving Tooter the leeway to put his paws on the table and lick the grease from the hamburger plate. Mayor Hank’s eyes widened at the sight of a dog in the diner but he didn’t say anything.
“What sycamore?” I asked louder. This whole everyone-knows-but-you-so-I’m-going-to-stretch-out-telling-you-as-long-as-possible thing was getting old.
“We’ve got to introduce this girl to the Sinkville Sycamore, Kerica,” said Mayor Hank, laying down a few bills to cover our milkshakes. “Time for a field trip.”
Chapter Nine
How had I not noticed the Sinkville Sycamore before? It was only a few blocks from the Williams Diner.
The Sycamore stretched so high that its top branches were blurs. Even Kerica said she had to squint to make out the delicate-looking bone-white tips of the branches. The trunk was mottled brown. An entire class of kindergarteners could stand, arms stretched out and fingertip to fingertip, and not enclose this tree.
Sinkville Sycamore stood sentinel in the center of a park, encircled by a ring of boulders. Barefoot children leaped from rock to rock, laughing and playing. Elderly men played chess at a bistro table. A woman held a crying baby to her chest on a bench nearby. The laughter, camaraderie, and life combined like a kaleidoscope as we approached the massive tree. But as we got closer, the noise muffled. I felt a silence unfold like new leaves.
The bark felt rough under my hands, but not like it’d splinter my fingers. More weathered, like skin about to peel after a sunburn. I could fit my hand in ridges of the tree. I had never climbed a tree before, but this one made me want to. Only there was no way I could jump to the closest branch, which stretched out like a tree of its own growing horizontally. It made a perfect bench, big enough for a picnic of twenty, before gently tilting toward the sun. At least thirty other limbs twisted and creaked above that bottom branch, each one looking wider than even my dad could encircle with his arms.
“How tall is it?” Kerica asked.
“Oh, I’d say a hundred feet at least,” Mayor Hank answered. “And at least two centuries old.”
We stared silently at the tree for a few more minutes. I pulled out my notebook and started to sketch the tree. My sketch didn’t come close to capturing it, but I tried.
I want to say that the tree was beautiful. But it wasn’t. It was hideous. Huge, massive, twisty, ugly. But somehow, that made it majestic. I thought about what it had blindly faced in two hundred years. Sure, it was rooted in the same spot, but how many storms had it weathered? How many times had lightning threatened one of its limbs? It had stayed still and stubborn through the rise of the town. It breathed in thousands of people’s air, exhaling oxygen. How many lovebirds carved their names in its bark? Kerica counted a dozen aged hearts; certainly there were more that she couldn’t see. How many fights had it heard? How many birds’ nests had it cradled? How many dirty toes and fingers had scrambled up its sides? Even though it always stayed still, the tree never stopped changing. Its bark broke away to reveal smoother, paler bark below as it grew.
“Can I borrow a piece of paper?” Kerica asked.
I smiled, knowing her sketch would be so much cooler than mine. “Here,” I said, and handed her my notebook and pencil. “No way I can draw this tree.”
“You sure?” Kerica asked.
I nodded, and she stepped backward from the tree, settling on a bench a few yards away; I guess so she could see it better. I tried to lock the image of the tree in my mind instead. I didn’t realize my eyes were closed until I felt Mayor Hank’s breath on my head. I opened my eyes and saw that he was waiting for some kind of response from me. About the tree. Maybe about Sinkville. Maybe about me.
But then again, I thought, maybe some people saw this and just thought, wow, what a big tree. I tried to swallow down all the huge thoughts that shadowed my mind while standing under the Sycamore. Then I looked more closely at Mayor Hank and realized I didn’t have to. He got it.
“It’s amazing,” I managed to mutter.
He smiled slowly, one of those smiles that you feel more than see.
Mayor Hank knelt in front of me, his hand buried in one of the tree’s ridges. “This tree, it’s been through so much. Right here in Sinkville. Who knows where these boulders came from, forming this perfect circle? A lot of folks say the first inhabitants here, the Native Americans, arranged them. This tree saw them leave. Then it stood here while the Civil War waged. Notices about runaway slaves used to be nailed to its trunk. The nails are still in the trunk. This tree was here through the Mill coming. It was here for every generation of Sinkville.”
I wished for my notebook back as I let the idea of the tree seeing everything that happened in Sinkville wash over me. Just like I had tried to lock the image of the tree in my mind, I tried to capture Mayor Hank’s words.
“Gretel, she loves this tree,” he said softly. “I was a busboy for her daddy in high school. You should’ve seen her then. Prom Queen, cheerleader, debate captain. The most beautiful girl you’d ever seen.”
“I can picture it,” I said behind closed eyelids.
“She used to come here every day after school. Just sit under these branches and think.” He shifted a little beside me, resting his head in one of the trunk’s ridges. “She was surrounded by people all the time, friends and hangers-on. I knew she came here to be by herself. But I used to come anyway. I’d sit on one side of the trunk, she on the other.”
“It’s so big! You probably didn’t even see each other.”
Mayor Hank nodded. “Yes, that’s how I justified it. But after a while, we’d
somehow end up on the same side. And then we’d be beside each other. We wouldn’t talk. Just sit beside each other.”
I thought about that, how Kerica and I could spend all day sitting next to each other in the hand chairs, just reading and not talking but still feeling like we were there together. “That sounds nice.”
But Mayor Hank shook his head, like he was scattering the memory. “It was nice. But it wasn’t enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“All my life, I’ve never had a problem telling folks what I think. But I could never work up the courage to tell Gretel that I was sweet on her. After about a month of us sitting side by side here, she said what she loved most about this tree was knowing that she wasn’t the only one who fell in love in its shade. If that wasn’t an invitation to speak up, I don’t know what was. But my stupid mind just shut down. Couldn’t speak.”
“Did you tell her the next day?”
“I was going to. I planned to ask her to prom. I packed a picnic—cheese sandwiches and juice. I was going to tell her I loved her.” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “But Gretel wasn’t sitting here.”
I scooted a little closer to the mayor, but stayed silent. I wanted him to know I was listening but I didn’t want him to be pushed out of his memory. “Then what happened?”
“I hardly think that’s appropriate to share.”
“She liked you, too. She told us you were handsome.” His eyebrows shot up. “And passionate,” I added.
Sure enough, he started talking again. “I found her at the diner, sharing a milkshake with the football star. I tried to tell her I liked her, but she said if I really cared, I wouldn’t have waited until someone else asked her out.”
Mayor Hank told me that after that, he did everything to impress her. “I even started a ‘Save the Sycamore’ campaign to turn this into a park, to make sure it never became fodder for the Mill or got torn down. Heck, I even became mayor to get her to notice me again. Sinkville’s youngest mayor, not even out of college when I ran.”
