Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  He couldn't cry, of course. Hell? What was there to cry over? Besides. The town was still there, out in the dark. Even after nearly a hundred years it was there.

  A boy, Ken crossed the town in a few pumps of his legs; a couple of heartbeats and it was gone.

  Took an hour, now, for the Old Rattler to totter from his flop on Slaughterhouse down to Commonwealth. The right turn took a couple, three minutes, then fifteen-twenty for the fifty-two uphill steps to the Restrant, another ten up the steps and to the door, two or three to the booth, the same where Old Ken sat at about the same time for the past how many years? By God, since the day Olaf Tim opened the place!

  Now, that was a story. Olaf Tim had called the joint The White House Restrant, Great American Pies Our Specialty!

  Ken called it the White House, since, or just “the Restrant,” like Olaf had before he lost his brains. Ken knew the place when four fluted columns supported the porch roof. The columns went in the little fire of ’45 and the name had stopped being the White House Restrant before that, ever since the Tim family, Republicans all, put some distance put between their business and THAT man in Washington.

  Through his tenth summer, Young Ken had watched the little bandy-rooster Swede, Olaf Tim, build his Restrant. Now and then, Tim got a town layabout to hold one end of something, while he nailed the other end in place, but, pretty much, he did the whole thing himself.

  Ken had watched the scrawny Scandahoovian crawl all-fours over the building, fitting, cutting, rabbeting, trimming, joining, putting board skin over the skeleton he'd framed out, battening the wide boards, then laying soft layer upon soft layer of wet white paint on dry white paint, taking every crack and seam out of the grainy wood with thick thick white.

  When Olaf took delivery of a fancy sign reading “White House Dinner, Great American Pies Our Specialty!” the Swede stood in the street and stared at the building, then at the sign, then at the building. Back and forth, for ten minutes. A GOOD ten minutes.

  Ken watched.

  The ten minutes up, Olaf got to work. In a couple days there were four fluted columns in place of the plain pillars that had held up the porch roof.

  Olaf covered the columns with more layers of white paint—changed his sign from “Dinner” to “Restrant”—did it himself, thus the personalized spelling—then nailed the white and gold thing to the porch roof and that was that. He was done.

  Through that short summer, Mrs. Tim had sat in a rocking chair by a tree in the street. She attended her knitting, watched her husband labor, and got fatter day by day. She nodded to Ken every morning as he passed on his way to snake the bluffs, but never said anything.

  Ken passed, nights, on his way home, a string of rattlers clacking down his back, and there'd be Olaf Tim, still working. Mrs. Tim, fatter, would nod to Ken as he passed.

  The day the White House opened its door, Ken was there, ready for breakfast.

  After a summer of wondering, breakfast was less than might be expected. The eggs were slippery, hard and shiny, the bacon, limp and chewy. The spuds were just north of raw. All the grub smelled like wood shavings and turpentine and the coffee, soapy and hot, tasted like what paint might. He figured things would improve when the place was broke in a little.

  Disappointed or not, Ken paid with a hard bounty dollar. He took his change and left a nickel; said he'd probably be back. Mrs. Tim was nowhere he could see. Her chair was gone from the street.

  Later that morning, while Ken was in the woods that verged on the Amishman Amos Dreibelbies's place up on the west bluff, two things—among many—happened in town: Mrs. Tim gave birth to the boy that had been making her fatter and fatter. She had screamed through a night-long delivery over at Doc's parlor. Once the boy came out, she told Doc that if the young one lived, he ought be called Timothy.

  “Timothy Tim?” Doc said. By then she was asleep.

  The other thing that happened was Olaf Tim blew his head off. After serving that first meal, Olaf dragged his wife's rocker into the new kitchen, took off both boots, sat them by the stove, stuck his double-barrel into his beard and pulled both triggers with his two big toes. Took doing, but folks were like that then: determined.

  Mrs. Tim was fine. She got one of the layabouts to clean up, repaint the kitchen and fix the mess on the ceiling. She hired a fat girl to take the money and tend baby Timothy Tim while she cooked. The Restrant reopened the day after the funeral. That day she started rising at 2:30 in the A.M. to make the great American pies promised on the sign her husband had ordered from Mankato.

  “A man promises, py Gott someone’s got to keep it,” she told Young Ken her first day on the job. She shoved a slice of apple in front of him and waited.

  Ken agreed: Nora Tim made pretty good pie.

  “But it’s great?” she asked.

  Not wanting her to go barefoot to Olaf’s two-barrel and leave little Timothy a whole orphan, Ken took another bite, considered, then nodded. “Ya. Great,” he said.

  Since Bluffton was in America, that covered that: at least one great American pie!

  Pretty soon, the scent of baking smothered the whole river bend end of town from the dark of morning until Nora was damn-well done. In a week, pie smell had rolled the stink of fresh paint all the way to the bank of the Rolling River. Like it did most things, the river flushed the smell out of town.

  Least, that was how Ken pictured it.

  Mrs. Tim and the fat girl made pretty good breakfast, too. Ken reckoned it an improvement over the one Mr. Tim had made, his last thing on earth. Maybe that was why he shot his brains: sudden knowledge that the light of his talent lay in building a thing, not in making it work! And what else was there left to build in Bluffton? Not much and that was a fact.

  Maybe that was it, maybe not. Ken wasn't sure. He'd spoken only that one time to Olaf Tim, ordering breakfast and asking for “a second mug of that soapy coffee, there.”

  After what was left of Olaf was in Lutheran ground up on Morning Bluff, Young Ken never missed breakfast at the White House. Even on the day he went blind. That was a few weeks later, a month, maybe, maybe a little more.

  Way that happened: One day Ken woke before sunup, leaped from bed in a sweat to be off to the Amish fields, jumped into his clothes, slicked back his hair with morning sweat and was halfway turned three times around when he realized, holy shit, he couldn't see himself in the mirror. Holy shit, he couldn't see anything! All morning, he kept trying to; tried over and over to pry his lids further open. Nothing. He washed his eyes with water, made them burn with soap, he swiped his lids raw with a clean kerchief and nearly popped the eyeballs, rubbing with his knuckles.

  Nothing.

  Daddy finally took him to see Doc. Doc looked and told him he was blind. Maybe his sight would come back, maybe not. Probably not.

  That was it. Why was he blind? Who knew? Maybe he'd been snake-bit and didn't know. Maybe he'd picked up something in the bushes, a tick, a scrape from something might have poisoned his blood. Something got infected he never noticed, maybe. Pastor Ingquist from up at the Lutheran said maybe all those years, him handling poisonous vipers and such other serpents as God had put there in Bluffton and in its hills around, had taken their toll, their terrible, inevitable toll. Maybe neither man nor boy should make his way in the world on killing. Might there be a touch of witchery in it?

  Who’d he pissed on lately, Daddy wanted to know? The Amish? One of them Aufderheidens up there? A Lurgos?

  Everyone had a thought. Everybody made their point.

  Point was, he was blind.

  That very day, he went to the White House for breakfast. He stumbled getting there, not sure yet where everything was in this dark. Daddy didn't help. “Best get used to it,” he said.

  He got there barking his shins, bumping his nose, turning his ankle, sinking in mudholes, tangling in vines, stepping in horseshit; he tripped up the steps to the porch, slammed himself with the wall, then the door, slipped on the threshold and fell into his usual b
ooth—barking his shins—then he ate his damn breakfast. Mrs. Tim was that good a cook!

  Nearly a century later, the place was owned by a lady name of Esther, a State Civil Service lifer who’d taken early retirement in Philadelphia, PA. Esther and her husband had moved to Bluffton fifteen years before. She buried her husband a year after they arrived and when Egil Tim's granddaughter (the great-granddaughter of little Timothy Tim) decided it was time to thaw herself in Florida, Esther un-retired and bought the joint, lock, stock and two-barrel. She inherited Old Rattler Ken with the deed and Nora Tim’s secret recipes.

  The day Cristobel Chiaravino came to town, Old Ken had had complimentary egg and grits.

  When Cristobel walked into the American House—Eats that first morning she already felt for the old man. She’d seen him work his way up the street, taking a step, taking a minute, taking another step, taking another minute.

  When he walked in to the restaurant and almost sat on her lap, Cristobel took pity.

  Cristobel had made quite an impression on the breakfast crowd at the American House—Eats. First of all, she’d sat in Old Ken’s booth so everyone naturally wanted to see what that would lead to. Not much did. She swept herself out from under where he was going to sit as easy as a one of those ballet persons made a leap.

  After that, there was her to consider: she was a looker. Lean, muscled, tall, dark and foreign, Cristobel carried herself like something important.

  The Sons of Norway noticed. Her nose had a nice bump. Not a Norwegian bump, which tends to the bulbous and which usually is at the nose’s end. Her bump came from some other place and was in the middle. Some men loose their souls to such a nose. And those nostrils! Well, for the Sons of Norway, that nose of hers gave gravity to every move of her head. They were drawn to it. Others too.

  And she didn't wear make-up! Women don't wear makeup? Well, some people think they're mad at something and the breakfast crowd was wondering what.

  The cop at the counter noticed. He didn’t blink but his attention followed her.

  Cristobel noticed the quiet when she entered. She didn't think too much about it. Strange face, small place, she figured. Besides, her head was occupied in disappointment, anger, pity, magic. A lot of stuff.

  The disappointment was about the bum carburetor, just to get that straight.

  Up at the (Formerly Amoco) Einar had walked a tight circle around the Volvo. His jaw worked like a rat having a quick chew before being chased. A couple minutes of staring, poking, stalking and grumbling and he threw up his hands. “Piece of foreign crap! Fifteen years and falling apart already,” Einar said. “Ain’t been cared of, you know! And who is it done this!?” he pulled back pointing.

  Cristobel looked at the greasy spot Einar’s black finger quivered over. “No idea,” she said. Then, “Oh,” she said, “some person on the road got it started. Last night. A man in the rain by the bridge. He’s the one said I should see you. Is that what he did.”

  “Bunch!” Einar yelled. “Now what’m I supposed to do? I make right Bunch’s mess?”

  Cristobel’s eyes went wide, then they narrowed. “Fix it,” she said. “Make it work and I'll sell it.” Cristobel said. This Einar! He’d made her angry.

  Then she’d almost been sat upon at the café and now she hunched over the steaming essence of tea bag at a table. She looked head-on at the old blind man seated in the booth she had dodged out of. He chewed quietly, listened politely to nothing. He spoke once or twice to no one. Then he got up, shuffled to the door. Left. Did not pay.

  The woman who ran the place, warmed Cristobel's tea pot. “Guess you're wondering. Town pretty much takes care of the old guy,” she said. “Food, room, beer, all that. Don't you want to know why?” Cristobel raised an eyebrow. “Used to kill snakes. All the snakes around here about a hundred years ago.” She smiled. “You wondered that, huh?”

  “Mm.” Cristobel said.

  “That's the story, anyway. I wouldn't know. I was just a kid, then, myself!”

  Cristobel nodded. “I see,” she said.

  The woman laughed.

  Everybody watched as Cristobel paid and left.

  “Hope I'm not looking quite that old!” Esther said to the other diners.

  But they were mostly still looking at Cristobel, still on the porch!

  Einar fixed the Saab, grousing all the way. Cristobel paid him then did what she said she would: sold the old car; sold it to Einar, gave him a good deal.

  Einar squinted sidewise and kept his mouth shut. He'd put one over.

  The Saab never ran again.

  Other things happened: In less than a week, Cristobel bought a two story wood frame house on Slaughterhouse Way at tax auction and moved in. A whim, like selling the car. She paid next to nothing for the house, but nobody bid against her.

  Her little house was down the way from the stock pens, and a half-block above Commonwealth. The river was across the street and down in the trees. And the place was a nice place. Every morning Cristobel sat on her stoop, sipped her tea – real tea – and watched old Ken inch past, heading to his booth at the Eats.

  Cristobel took.

  She got boxes by mail and freight, things came delivered by trucks from the east, west, from all over the damn place.

  Her short hair grew longer. It came in dark and wiggly, full of body; it spread down her neck and over her shoulders, spread like a thick soft cape, the Lightning Kiss stark against it. People looked, then looked twice. Something about the Italian Lady, made them a little nervous about a third look. That was rude, anyway, and too much like staring.

  She wore thin cotton dresses in pleasant and surprising colors and sensible black high-top sneaks: Old Mother Hubbard gone city chic.

  She had a scent, too. When she stood at the vegetable bins at the Wurst Haus Market or other places, she filled the place with a whiff of burning plant and dried herb. Add a zest of sweat, lemon rind and something else, maybe, and that was Cristobel. Cristobel Chiaravino. Always had to take two, three running starts at that name. Bluffton mouths had a time getting around that Italian stuff on the first go.

  She scared lots of people. Hell, she'd been in Bluffton a day, a night and another day and was a property owner – wham! – like that! “Not some rich person from a city, but one that comes in some foreign piece of busted crap car, gets it fixed, sells it, buys a house and what the hell?”

  “And that damn automobile never worked again!” everyone said.

  She knew people talked.

  “A woman looks like that, like she does,” one Son of Norway said to another at the Wagon Wheel Tap, “might find it useful wearing a little face stuff, maybe cut their hair up pretty. . .”

  “. . .take a bath now and again. . .” someone down the way added.

  “Oh, ya! She does all that and there she’ll go! Off being a weather girl up in the Cities.”

  That thought had aired at the Wagon Wheel during the 10 o'clock news out of the Twin Cities. Everyone paused a moment, looked up and agreed, yep, the Italian lady was as much a looker as “that skinny German up there.”

  “I seen Rock and Roll stars look like her,” Karl from the Wurst Haus said. He was rich. He probably had. By then Karl had finished his coffee and got the hell back to where he belonged: working, 10 P.M. or not! Was all he had to say on that anyway!

  So, over morning tea on her stoop, Cristobel watched Old Ken, shuffle down the hill. She said good morning.

  The Old Rattler said nothing. He didn't stop for much.

  She saw him everywhere. He sat, sometimes speaking to the empty side of his bench at Elysium Field. He sipped free beer at the Wheel, slurped free eggs or sucked grits every morning at the American House surrounded by others with companions, colleagues, chums.

  When she saw the old guy pinned by traffic in the middle of the intersection, Slaughterhouse and Commonwealth, she said, “I will fix that!” She said it aloud. “Good exercise,” she added to the thought she’d left in the air.

&nbs
p; That was the pity. After pity came magic.

  Memories of Creature came to her. Fixing death was a Thing, a Thing, perhaps, too large; too large, perhaps for anyone. Opening eyes was a lesser thing. Light wanted an eye to work. All she had do was encourage the flow, clear light’s path to the heart and soul.

  She walked, considering. Walking, she shook her head. No, no! Not something to enter lightly. Her hair whipped her face, side to side. On the street she very nearly growled her frustration at fully peopled sidewalks. A re-espousal of the Craft! What to do, Nonna? Weighing the matter, Cristobel walked one end of town to the other, walked morning to night, day by day.

  She saw Bunch in her walks; walking, she saw him everywhere.

  “You still here?” he called one morning from the roof of the Lutheran church on Morning Bluff.

  “Mm,” she said and walked on among dissolving soapstone monuments and goldenrod-lined, tea-smelling paths.

  “You ain’t gone?” he yelled to her across the street as she moved through a spray of mist picked up from the spill water at the dam.

  She may have heard. She never said back.

  “Ain’t you leaving tomorrow?” he yelled up under her skirt as she crossed the expanded metal roadway of Bunch’s bridge at Engine Warm, heading. . . Well, heading nowhere in particular.

  “I am not,” she said.

  She topped the rise on Morning Bluff one dawn and there was Bunch, heading townward, barefoot, his toolbag sagged like sin across his shoulders.

  “So this is it, huh?” he said.

  She may not have heard because she drifted by without comment. When the sun caught her face, though, she turned back. “What?”

  “Where you end up,” he said, “here’s where you are, huh?”

  “Hm.” She said. She looked at the town, below, still in the shadow of night. “Well, huh.” Bunch was already half-way to the first bend in the road. “You!” she called, “You’re coming home from work, first of the morning?”

  He didn’t turn; raised his hand and kept going.