Sweet Caroline(3)

“Mercy Bea or the Café?”

Brushing biscuit crumbs from the corner of my lips, I laugh softly and head for the dining room. “You’re bad, Andy.”

A guttural um-um-um vibrates from the cook’s immense chest. “This money pit is putting food on my table, paying the bills. Gloria’s been out of work for over a month now on account of her back. I need this job. I’m believing God has a plan.”

The cook’s confidence makes me pause at the kitchen door. “If there is such a thing as an all-knowing, all-seeing All Mighty, He might have a plan for the Café. But Jones? I’m not so sure.”

Andy’s large shoulders roll as he laughs. “Guess you’re right about Jones. Yes sirree. But the wife and I are praying, Caroline.”

“You do that. I’ll wish upon a star.”





DAILY SPECIAL


Barbeque Chicken

Choice of Three Sides: Greens, Corn,

Fried Okra, Corn on the Cob, Fried Tomatoes,

green Beans, or mashed Potatoes

Bubba’s Buttery Biscuits

Pluff Mud Pie or Vanilla Layer Cake.

Tea, Soda, Coffee

$6.99


2

The Christmas bells dangling down the glass-front door ring out as three retired Marines—Dupree Cornwallis, Luke Gold, and Pastor Winnie Smith—file in wearing their Semper Fi caps over their graying, receding hairlines.

Always faithful.

“Morning, fellas,” I say, bringing around their orders. Five mornings a week, when the bells chime at eight-oh-two, Andy sets their food in the window.

“‘Sweet Car-o-line,’” Pastor Winnie sings, clapping his long-fingered, dark hands together as he slides into a booth along the front wall by the windows. “‘Good times never seemed so good.’”

Luke and Dupree supply the trailing bump, bump, bumps.

“You boys are feeling good this morning.”

“God done made a beautiful day.” Pastor Winnie always testifies.

“I was up all night, peeing.” Dupree grunts as he slides into his side of the booth. He starts every morning with a bathroom story.

“No coffee for you, then? Caffeine, makes you . . . you know . . . go.”

Luke chuckles. “She’s got your number, Dupe.”

“Worse than trekking to the head a hundred times in the night is facing the morning without coffee.” Dupree drops his cap, embroidered with the Third Marine Division emblem, on the far side of the table. “Make mine extra black.”

“Have it your way. Do you want to move to the booth by the restrooms?”

“Listen, Wet-Behind-the-Ears, I was drinking mud water in the Korean forest before you were a glint in your granddaddy’s eye. Caffeine don’t scare me.”

The breakfast-club boys are the silver lining in my Café career. If I’d turned Jones down, I would’ve never met Dupree, Luke, or Pastor Winnie.

“Ignore him, Caroline.” Mild-mannered and recently widowed Luke unrolls his silverware as I fill their coffee cups. “He’s complained about the mud water for fifty years.” He looks up at me. “Any news on the Café?”

Nope. I point to my forehead.

Luke wrinkles his.

I sigh. “No news.”

“Don’t know what I’d do without this Café.” Pastor Winnie says, mixing his eggs with his grits. “Jones was one of the first in town to defy the old Jim Crow laws. Let the black man and the white man eat together.”

Dupree nods. Luke um-hums . In that moment, their affection for the Café sweeps over me. When they lost Jones, they lost a friend. The Caféis all they have left of him—a symbol of their friendship and youth.

Along with hundreds of other combat veterans, their names are on the Vet Wall.

When Jones bought this place in ’57, it was a run-down 1850s home. In the process of fixing it up, he discovered two soldiers’ signatures under a tacky layer of ’30s wallpaper. So he created a memorial to the hundreds of veterans who have fought for our freedoms over the years. Since then, vets from World War I to the Iraqi conflict have signed the Wall. Their sacrifice is not forgotten.

Mercy Bea bumps up next to me with a pot of coffee. “Morning, boys.” She checks to see if their cups need refilling. Which they don’t. I’m on top of it here.

“Morning, Mercy Bea.”

“How’re you doing, Luke?”

He clears his throat, scratching his thumbnail across his brow. “Getting by. Never imagined I’d live life without Melba.”

“It’s hard on the man when the wife goes first.” Mercy Bea flicks her free hand with an air of authority. “See it all the time when I take a shift at the nursing home. Men need women. Can’t live without us.” She checks the coffee level at table 4. “Women, see, are really the stronger of the sexes. We live long and healthy lives after our men go on.”

“Ha!” Dupree slaps the table, calling after Mercy Bea. “A man can live long and fine without a woman. Especially a nagging one.”

“Dupe,” I say, “she’s not insulting men. Just making an observation.”

“Well, she best to hold on to some of her observations.” He raises his voice, turning his chin over his shoulder so she can hear him loud and clear. “She might be able to trick a smart man into taking her to dinner.”