Winter Loon(84)

“Any time! And, hey, if you go to the Cozy Cup you might want to ask if Aveline is working. Her last name’s Blue. Maybe she knows that couple you was looking for.”

I stopped with one foot out the door. “What was that?”

“Aveline Blue. She’s a waitress. At the Cozy Cup.”



ACCORDING TO THE ARTICLE FRAMED by the cash register, the town was founded by a Jesuit named Father Burden. He raised chickens and doves behind his bark slab cabin and tended his flock, human and avian. Someone suggested that adding the word “Falls” would make Burden sound more appealing to settlers. So, being an honest man, Father Burden climbed up into the canyon, found a creek and named it Burden Creek, then christened the little spot where a pile of rocks dropped the creek down about seven feet or so Burden Falls. I liked the name. It seemed like a place a person could finally be at peace.

I passed the sepia-toned pictures of Father Burden, then took a seat at a booth in the back where no one could get past me. The waitress came over. She was low to the ground with bottle-black hair piled high on her head. She seemed too old for the tangerine-colored lipstick that snaked off in tiny tributaries around her mouth. She did not seem like my father’s type. Her name tag, in the shape of a turkey, told me her name was not Aveline.

“What can I do you for?” she asked, pressing the coffeepot toward me.

I turned my cup over. “Burger, I guess. Fries.”

The dining room was small, maybe a dozen or more tables, most occupied with men tanned to leather from working outdoors, plaid shirts rolled up to the elbows, cowboy hats—some set on the table, some not—old tattoos bled to death under curling arm hair. There was a frazzled woman about my mother’s age in the booth opposite mine, cutting a whole sandwich into three for her kids to share. Her kids were young and fretful, a buzz-cut boy and two girls who might have been twins spun from a tornado. The mother slapped at their grabbing hands and pointed a warning finger at their jabbering mouths. That would have been my mom with kids who talked back, kids who acted up, instead of me, who never did fuss much.

I considered every waitress on the floor and behind the counter, looking for an angelic face and what Topeka had described as a giant ass. She wasn’t there. My waitress waddled over, a burger piled on the plate in her hand. I heard a voice call from near the cash register, though I couldn’t see the person. “Thanks again, hon! See you in the morning!”

“Happy to help!” the waitress called back, waving her free hand as she set the plate down in front of me. The bell on the door rang as it opened and closed. Out the window I saw a flip of blond hair in the light and a backside that was not at all small.

“Sorry about that. Switching shifts. Anything else I can get you?”

A car pulled out of the parking lot. The taillights disappeared down the street.



THE NEXT MORNING, I SAT at the Cozy Cup’s bustling counter. The crowd was mostly men, mostly friendly. There was no sign of my father. Aveline, though, she was easy to spot. When I was in fifth grade, there was a kid in my class called Roper Powell. Roper said his dad had stacks of girlie magazines under his bed and that any kid could look at them for a quarter. Roper was scrawny and he’d sell the peep show by drawing these women with swoops of his hands and arms, great curving tops, teeny-tiny waists, blossoming bottoms. He was drawing Aveline. Even her hair was curvy. Even her voice. I kept my head down when I ordered, watching her in glances. I ate my omelet slowly, drank cup after cup of coffee to stay. The counter waitress called me “love” and “hun,” and I tried to keep from drawing attention to myself, especially when Aveline came behind the counter for a coffeepot or to put an order in. I listened for clues. I listened for my father’s name. She did hesitate once when I spoke, turned like she’d heard a familiar voice. The coffeepot was in her hand.

“You want a top off?” she asked. Her head was cocked slightly, so her ponytail rested on her shoulder.

“No, no. I’m done. Thanks. No.” I fumbled my words, grabbed the bill, practically fell off the spinning stool trying to get to the cash register and out of the café. I was afraid her eyes were on me, so I didn’t look back.

I drove around Burden Falls, looking at the faces of the men walking down the street. When I figured the lunch rush would be over and the early shift ending, I went back to the café. From my surveillance spot in the parking lot, I watched Aveline come out in her pale pink uniform, a down coat over it. She got into a little brown car and drove off. I tailed her down Main Street and turned behind her on Maple, where a pharmacy stood on one corner and a bank on the other.

The house on the corner was simple enough, small and white with a low fence around the yard. She pulled into the driveway and stayed in the car. I stopped a ways back and watched. Had my father cut the grass at this house? Was the last layer of paint one that he had put on? If the tomato box next to me did not connect to the house in front of me, what then?

The front door opened and a hunched woman stepped out onto the porch. She wore a blue checkered blouse tucked into pants pulled up high around her waist. Her glasses were thick and her hair was thin and gray. Aveline got out of the car, made her way to the woman quickly, taking her arm, stroking it. She glanced my way and I tried to make myself small like a detective on a stakeout. She held me in her sights for a second more, then turned her attention back to the woman, who she guided into the house. Seconds later, though, she was outside again, coming toward the car.