Missy
Jack Linton

 

     John Pedigred sat at the old slat pine front counter next to the cash register and quietly drank his coffee. The smell of homemade buttermilk biscuits filled the room. Miss Mary stood behind the counter smiling at him through thick bifocals. She was undoubtedly the roundest and happiest little woman he had ever known in his life. Ever since he was a kid running barefoot through the front door with a nickel found on the street to buy a Coke, she had always been smiling.
     Little had changed in Mary's Cafe in the past twenty-five or so years. Mary still worked the front counter and did all the cooking, but she no longer waited the tables. She had hired a very thin nineteen-year-old girl to do that for her. The hiring had been a business move on her part to help attract teenage business.
     The passing years had not changed the feel or the look of the place at all. Covered with framed and unframed photographs of family and long forgotten country music stars along with hundreds of yellowing newspaper clippings about the town and its people, the walls stood sentinels to the history of the town. Most people born in Luxley Crossing Mississippi grew up coming to Mary’s Café for after school colas and burgers and for Sunday after church fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Most young people left as soon as they were old enough to leave for college or to make their way to the oil rigs in the gulf, but sooner or later, most of them returned looking for simpler times and a slower paced life. Almost without exception, the first place they visited when they returned was Mary’s Café. The café was a constant in everyone’s life; if home was what you were searching for, Mary’s Café was the place to be, and today John Pedigred needed the solace of home.
     John looked at the yellowed clippings. He could remember when Mary had pinned many of them to the wall. His favorite was a high school picture of him cut from the Jackson Clarion Ledger. The picture showed him leaping through the air to catch the winning touchdown in the conference championship game against cross county rival Presterville High School. Staring at the picture, he wished he could return to those less troubled times.
     The only other customers in the cafe were a couple of teenage kids sharing a cola in a corner booth and a broad faced man by the name of Eugene Cur eating a chili burger and fries at a table near the front door. The kids were obviously skipping school, and John couldn’t help but smile into his cup. He didn’t blame them; they were just a couple of kids enjoying life. He looked at the boy and thought how wonderful it would be to trade places with him -- to slip back twenty years to a time of innocence. To experience the freedom of once again sitting in a booth with his eyes glued to those of a cow-eyed farm girl would be the ultimate heaven. He sipped his coffee slowly, and watched over the top of his cup as the girl kicked off her shoes and ran her bare toes teasingly up the boy's trouser leg. He remembered how he and his wife use to sit in the same booth as teenagers and do the same things these kids were now doing.
     "You sure you’re doing the right thing?" Mary asked.
     "Huh?" John started, his fixation on the girl in the booth suddenly broken.
     "The right thing," Mary repeated. "Are you sure you’re doing the right thing about Missy?"
     "Guess so, I don’t know anything else to do but go after her," John said quickly, staring -- embarrassed -- into his empty cup. He hoped he hadn't been staring at the girl too long, and if he had, he hoped Mary hadn't noticed.
     Mary smiled slyly and poured a refill. "You don’t sound so sure to me," she said sweetly and turned toward the kitchen.
     "Mary," John said, taking another drink of her always overly strong coffee, "why did this happen to me and Bo?"
     Mary set the coffee pot on the stainless steel warmer and turned. "I don’t know," she said. “Why does anything like this ever happen?”
     "Well it’s not fair,” John said angrily. “I always thought we were happy."
     "Honey, you probably were, but things change," Mary said soothingly.
     John’s brow wrinkled and his eyebrows pulled slightly together. She sounded almost too patronizing for his liking. "How can things change that much and so quickly?" he asked.
     Mary picked up a cloth and turned back to the coffee warmer and began wiping at coffee stains on the counter. “Restlessness. The age old drive to see what’s over the next hill,” she said over her shoulder. “Sometimes the urge to ramble is just too strong."
     "I lost my Belle the same way," a deep voice said.
     John and Mary jumped simultaneously. Looking to his right and behind him, John saw Eugene Cur holding the hand written bill the young waitress had given him.
     “Sorry,” Eugene said, laying three dollars on the counter. “I didn’t mean to frighten either of you, but I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation while waiting to pay my bill, and it reminded me so of my own heartbreak, I couldn’t resist putting in my two-bits.”
     Mary nodded, "I think we’ve all experienced such a loss at some point in our lives. I know I grieved for days after my Bobby was run over out on Millstone Road. I guess the hardest part was knowing he lay on the side of the road for so long before someone had the decency to notify me."
     “At least you know,” Eugene said, tears swelling in his eyes. “Belle left me three years ago, and to this day I don’t know if she’s dead or alive.”
     John studied Cur carefully. In his opinion, he seemed to be a bit intrusive. It was obvious he had known great pain, but did that give him the right to tread on someone else’s misery. “Well, I’m sure Missy is alive and well,” John said flatly. “Although for the life of me, I can’t understand why she’d leave like she did.”
     “Exactly my point,” Eugene said. “You strike me as a fine devoted man, so why would your Missy still be missing unless she’s . . . .”
     “Don’t say it,” John warned. “Besides if she were, Bo would know.”
     “How would he know?” Eugene asked, a puzzled look dropping across his face.
     “He’s Missy’s brother, and there’s always been kind of a psychic bonding between them. If she were in danger, he’d know.”
     “Maybe so,” Eugene said doubtfully. “I tried that psychic stuff myself when my Belle disappeared. I called that “psychic of the stars network” you’re always hearing about on late night TV, and before I could even introduce myself proper, this psychic lady says she sees riches surrounding my karma. That was the only thing she was right about. Thirty minutes later when I finally got off the phone, she and that celebrity spokesperson were $88.50 richer, and I didn’t know any more about my Belle than before I called.”
     “I can’t believe anyone would actually be foolish enough to call one of those psychic hot lines,” Mary chuckled.
     “Well, maybe,” Eugene said sarcastically, glaring at Mary, “if you had, your Bobby wouldn’t have been left on the side of the road for a week to be repeatedly run over by eighteen-wheelers until he was as flat as a pancake.”
     “You . . . you,” Mary stammered, “you nasty . . . vile . . . man!” Her whole body trembled with rage. She stood facing Cur, her breathing growing shallow and more pronounced with each breath. Finally, she turned and stormed into the kitchen.
     “Eugene,” John sighed, “that was uncalled for.”
     “I’m sorry,” Eugene mumbled, hanging his head, “but I don’t like someone laughing at me.”
     “Yeah, I don’t much care for that either, but don’t you think you were a little rough?”
     Eugene nodded in agreement and ran his fingers through the bristles of his crew-cut. “You’re right. I’ll go apologize, but before I do, may I ask you one question?”
     “Why not,” John shrugged.
     “Well,” Eugene drawled, “like I said before, you’re a decent enough man, so what made your Missy leave.”
     John took a deep breath and leaned back against the counter. “I really can’t say. The day she left I’d made a special trip to Wal-mart for her birthday. You know I ain’t the shopping kind, but I really put some thought into her present. I betcha I was in that store a good thirty minutes or so before I finally made up my mind.”
     “Oooo-eee,” Eugene said, shaking his head from side to side. “You were in a serious way!”
     “Ain’t been more serious in my life,” John said. “That’s why I was so surprised with her reaction.”
     “Well,” Eugene asked, “what happened?”
     John took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “I couldn’t wait to get home and give her my present. I just knew she’d love it, but when I tried to fasten it around her neck, she went absolutely crazy. She tucked her tail and ran. I chased her as far as Leroy Nobles’ chicken houses, but then she cut behind his number two shed, and I ain’t seen her since. Wilber Grantham over in the Willow Creek community says he thinks he saw her chasing a rabbit along Millstone Road, and Billy Ray Madden told me just this past Sunday he’d heard she’d been chasing Marshall Stewart’s cows down on the south end of the county. But no one is for certain. It’s like she just dropped off the face of the earth.”
     “You poor wretched man,” Eugene said, laying an understanding hand on John’s arm. “The heartache . . . the heartache you must be going through. Well, if I hear anything, I’ll be sure to let you know. Hang in there.” He stood and shuffled off to the kitchen to apologize to Miss Mary.

END

      
      
      
      

 

 

Copyright © 2007 Jack Linton
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"