Benny's Diner

At half past five, Parson showed up again like magic.  Her hands closed and unclosed at her sides but she held her chin high.  Something in Tate cowered at Parson’s unspoken awkwardness--a person who had been offended and was now standing in the presence of the offender, hurt and angry but not speaking a word of her pain.  With strangers, Tate was not afraid of confrontation.  Realizing her best friend was wounded and angry with her was quite different.  Tate could not bring herself to mention her rude behavior toward Parson, nor could she see herself apologizing.  Not that she didn’t want to.  But apologizing for a comment she had said in jest was like running up and down in front of all the shops and houses of the prestigious on Main with no clothes on.  So she did what she knew best in such situations--she sidestepped.

“That dress looks very nice on you, Parson.”

“Thanks.”  Parson’s voice was low with muted hurt, a bit hesitant to show her usual joy around Tate.

Tate wanted to say that she didn’t think Parson would be coming to the diner tonight but that was getting too close to the situation Tate didn’t want to talk about, so she pretended as if nothing was strange about Parson slamming out of her house then showing up several hours later without a word.

“Are you ready to go?” Tate smiled brightly.

“Yes,” Parson nodded.

The two headed off down Berry Lane where Tate rented from Mr. Sanderson, on toward the middle of town to Benny’s Diner on Main.

Tate was not necessarily against socializing, although she had strange moments of fear right before stepping into a room full of people or onto the church grounds when a pig picking was in full swing during their yearly revival mini-series with guest preachers.  It was mainly Judd that she shied away from.  He had been so much fun in high school but as the years passed by, he became an old man to Tate.  He still had the same hairstyle from their senior year and didn’t care that he looked like a country bumpkin with his farmer’s tan.  Tate did not go tanning nor had she changed her hairstyle in seven years, but if someone had pointed this out to her she would have said they were missing her point.  Tate wanted more out of life, something bigger, something better.  Judd loved their small town.  It was no surprise to Tate.  He always had.  But as all the other classmates had married or moved away, Tate had found herself growing slowly angry at Judd.  Her anger grew with each year until she purposely avoided Benter Street so she wouldn’t have to pass by the mechanic shop where he worked and was partial owner with old Mr. Kinslow.  There were rumors Mr. Kinslow would give his 75% of the shop to Judd when he kicked the bucket.  Tate thought being a mechanic was a horrible waste of a lifetime.  Her avoidance of Judd’s workplace didn’t mean they never talked.  Judd saw her at church, around town when she was snooping out stories, and recently he had taken to stopping by her house in the evening to chat.  Usually he caught Parson with her there and he would talk to the two of them.  He had been friends with Parson in high school as well, but he never knocked on Parson’s door in the evenings to talk to her.

Tate didn’t know how to explain why her feelings had changed toward Judd.  She didn’t even know why they had changed.  She just knew that his recent begging of her to go out to dinner with him had grated on her nerves more than anything else he had ever done.  But she was in a spot.  It wasn’t like he was her boyfriend and she could dump him.  They were just friends.  One couldn’t dump friends.  She enjoyed talking to him now and then, but she wanted to talk to him when she chose to.  She asked herself why she did not just ask him to stop by less often.  But something told her he must not catch on that she was trying to avoid him.

She had turned him down three times last week to go to the diner for supper with him, saying she had an assignment to work on.  Then he had threatened to stop by every evening to ask her until she agreed.  Her tongue had jumped to question him why their occasional unplanned lunches and evening chats weren’t enough.  There was no law saying friends had to go out to dinner together.  But she was afraid to hear his answer so she had told him yes, even promised him, just to keep him from coming by every night.  But when the moment came to go, she found she couldn’t bear the thought of a legitimate dinner with Judd.  What would the townspeople start to say?  Everyone was at Benny’s Diner at night, especially the older men who had no shame about teasing the young folks about their private lives.  It was not like Tate had never been with Judd at Benny’s Diner in the evening.  In years past they had shared a table as friends.  But this was different.  If it hadn’t been for Parson, Tate would have found a way out of tonight, even if it would have made her a woman who couldn’t keep her word.

Benny’s Diner was lit from the inside by fluorescent lights.  The two large glass windows were bordered with a band of neon light and an open sign flashed on the door one letter at a time.  After all the letters had blinked their turn, the whole thing lit up along with a border of neon blue.  The summer sky was still bright but a different feeling had come over the town.  The feeling of evening.  Main street after business hours was a busy, laughing place, with most of the laughter coming from the restaurants and food shops.  The retail shops were closed already along with the craft and consignment shops.  A few places like the pharmacy and the barber shop were the only non-food businesses open after five.  Although, the pharmacy did have an ice cream parlor inside in its own separate room and the barber shop had a soda fountain where they sold 32 ounce-ers for fifty cents.

Tate and Parson crossed the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of Benny’s.  Tate could feel Parson’s mood lift with each step, but her own got lower and a hum of nervousness grew in her stomach.  She had her arm linked through Parson’s and she left it there so she could clasp her hands together.  She was afraid if she would reach out for the door her hands would shake.  She maneuvered her steps so that Parson was closer to the door and naturally reached out to open it.  As the two passed through the door frame, a renewed strength came over Tate.  Worse than this dinner with Judd was him finding out how badly she did not want to be there.  It was time to be an actress and put on a convincing performance that she was impartial to his company.

“Do you know why no one wants that old farmland?” Tate heard Bob Callbrook saying as she and Parson walked through the door.

“Bob, don’t go on one of your superstitions rants.  We’ve heard your speculation about Thurber farm already.  What we want to hear about is who this new schoolteacher is that the board has hired.  Word is she grew up here but none of us recognize her and she has no accent.  You’re on the board, Bob.  Who is she?”

Bob continued on his own subject as if no one had interrupted him.  “Because it’s cursed.”  His voice ended in a slight shriek.  “Old Adelaide Thurber fed her husband poisoned pinto beans that they grew from that very ground.  She hated him fierce but no one ever knew it until they found him dead in the field the next morning.  Old Adelaide pretended to have him buried in the churchyard, but she knew she couldn’t because she had killed him and his unsettled spirit would wake all the souls in those graves.  So that night she dug him up herself and buried him somewhere out in their bean fields.  Johnson Dickson tried planting corn there after he bought it from her later that year but nothing would grow.  Nothing…”  He stopped and looked around eerily, “...but pinto beans.”

“Oh hush with ya,” Deacon Hill said.  He had been the one talking about the new schoolteacher.  “The way you talk I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re the new writer for Big Anita’s gossip column.”

Everyone knew Sherry Speare had quit because she was having a baby, but there was thick talk that she had coerced her timid-mannered husband into procreation because she was tired of being hated by the town for writing the gossip column for Anita.

Tate swept past the men pretending she wasn’t as interested in what she heard as they might think were they to glance at her.  She had almost succeeded in passing their table when Bob looked up and saw her.  Besides being superstitious, Bob was also cruelly sarcastic and always knew what barb would shoot the most poison into a person’s most vulnerable wound.  His fanaticism with ghosts seemed to have gotten to him and turned him into a maniacal tease.

“So how’s that book coming along?” he asked with a small smile on his face, one side of his upper lip lifted making him look like a snarling dog.  Tate felt her stomach clench at his accusation and took secret delight in noting his two yellowed teeth showing from the opening in his lip.

“Perhaps he is publicly humiliating me by making fun of me, but I would never look myself in the mirror again if I had teeth like that,” she thought.

“Your landlord told me you were working on a doozy.  Gonne be done soon is it?”  Tate knew his question was not really a question.

Not feeling like taking his bait and being annoyed at meeting Judd and having a somewhat sullen Parson on her hands, she just gave a tight smile and passed on by.  She was sure he, Deacon or one of the other men in their little gossip club would have enough to say to her after they saw her sitting with Judd.  There was no need to double her punishment.

“Judd, hi.  Sorry we didn’t come right over.  Bob stopped us for a moment.”  Tate grew proper in speech when she was nervous.  The big smile on Judd’s face irritated her but she smiled calmly and took a seat.

“Tate, Parson.  Glad you made it past those hungry wolves.”  His smile didn’t leave his face as Tate settled opposite him.

Tate didn’t need a menu but she picked one up anyway and used it as a sort of shield between her and Judd.

“So, there’s a new teacher?” she said raising her eyebrows.  “Hopefully someone interesting.  The quality of society around here is sadly lacking.”  Tate thought she detected a hint of light go out of Judd’s eye at her remark, but when she glanced up again, he was smiling.

Judd ignored Tate’s questions and turned to Parson.  “Thanks for dragging Tate here.  I didn’t know it was so hard to get together with a friend.”

Parson’s brown eyes lit up at being directly addressed.  And as she and Judd made small talk, Tate pretended to read the menu as she righted her thoughts and emotions.  In spite of the whirlwind in her stomach, the smell of burgers and onions on the grill mixed with the scent of the eggplant parmesan from Benny’s warm kitchen, and Tate embraced the feeling of home and belonging she felt to her town, small and pathetic though it was in her own opinion.

A Social Life

Parson put a kettle of water on the back burner of Tate's tiny stove.  The two had walked back to Tate's place as casually as they could after finding the note Avery had left under the urn in the graveyard.  Their tongues itched to speculate on what the note meant.  "Tonight.  11:30.  You know where."  Where was "you know where"?  What was Avery, of all people, doing writing notes like that?  No one knew much about Avery, but he certainly didn't act like the kind of person who put secretive notes in graveyards.  He seemed shy and nervous around people, but definitely not vicious.  

As the water heated for coffee Tate looked at Parson.  "You know what gets me about this?"  

"What?"  

"That after all the rumors and fake mysteries we've come up with for the paper, we actually have a real one, and I don't know what to do with it.  I can't write about it for the paper.  What if he's actually doing something evil like dealing drugs or having a real affair?"  

"Well, it's not like you haven't written about affairs before," said Parson.  The kettle whistled and she pulled it off the stove.  She got the Folgers can from the top shelf and spooned in two large teaspoonfuls of coffee into the bottom of the French press.  

"But those were all fake affairs.  We just made hilarious speculations about the judge and Mrs. Ellison.  If I had thought they were actually sleeping together, I would never have started a rumor about it."  

Parson poured boiling water on top of the coffee grounds until they came churning to the top, turning the water a deep, melted chocolate color.  She put on the lid.  "Well, as a newspaper woman, I think it behooves you to write about something real for once."  

"A newspaper woman, Parson," Tate threw back her head and laughed from deep in her throat.  "The title is ‘newspaper reporter'.  Or better yet, journalist."  

"Whatever, Miss Know-it-all.  But I'm right."  

Tate looked at her but didn't say anything.  
Then there was a loud knock at the door.  They both jumped.  Tate stared at Parson a moment longer, telepathing that she was not keen on the idea of writing about the truth of what Avery Stoole was doing.  Then she walked to the door and opened it with a whoosh.  

"Judd!  What's the meaning the knocking the bejeebers out of the door?!"  Tate slapped Judd on the arm as he walked into her kitchen.  

"Hi, girls.  I was just stopping by, seeing what you two were up to tonight."  

"We're women," Parson said in the background.  

But Judd was looking at Tate.  "How about you let me take you to Benny's Diner tonight.  You said two months ago that you would let me take you out, but you never have."  

"Judd, I can't tonight," Tate whined.  "I just got a huuuuge assignment and I really don't have time to go out and hang around the diner tonight."  

"Tate, you have the same assignment every week--to write gossip--and I figure you can make up gossip even better when you're down at the diner watching everyone while you eat."  

"But, Judd, it doesn't work that way."  

"Tate, you promised!"  Judd's eyes were hard and he was reaching the first stages of being pissed off.  

Parson jumped down from the counter where she had been sitting and spoke up, "Tate will go with you if I can come too."  

"What?"  Judd's eyes got big.  

"We'll meet you there at six then.  Right Tate?"  Parson poked her with her elbow.  

Tate turned and glared at Parson but said, "Right."  

After Judd agreed and they shooed him out the door, Parson poured the coffee and the two sat at the table.  

"Why the heck did you tell him I'd go?  I didn't want to go, with or without you.  I have too much to do.  I am a professional writer.  And professional writers spend their evenings turning down dinner invitations and writing instead."  

"But what are you going to write?  You have an entire week to get next week's assignment done and I happen to know it takes you less than a day to do it.  A writer also needs a social life."  

"You call going out with Judd a social life?"  Tate rolled her eyes.  

"Maybe you shouldn't be so mean to him?  I think he likes you.  And in a town this small, you can't afford to be mean to the only good-looking guy your age."  

"You think Judd is good-looking?"  Tate asked, now scribbling some notes on her yellow legal pad.  

"Yes."  Tate didn't see the slight blush that passed over Parson's cheeks.    

"Well if that's your idea of good-looking, I'd hate to see what you think ugly is."  

Tate heard the kitchen door slam before she realized perhaps she had gone a little too far.

What Is He Doing in the Graveyard?

Tate scrambled to get the article done in time.  Parson had stopped by just in time to let her know that she had seen the judge leave Mrs. Ellison's house at four thirty, the exact time when he should have been in his chambers readying for his next court case at five.  Tate typed in the last word with a flourish and popped off the article to her editor, Anita Bilgeworth.

"That was close," panted Parson.  "We almost didn't make it that time."  

"You got here just in time.  I sent the article at exactly 12:00 noon.  Anita would have had my head.  So what do you think Judge Eller was doing there?"  Tate sat back in her office chair and tapped her lips with a yellow #2 pencil.  

"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure he's not cheating on his wife, that's for sure.  Not the way he looks compared with Mrs. Ellison.  He's such a dud when it comes to good looks.  I would think that if she were going to cheat on her Clark Gable husband, she'd at least find someone as good looking as him.  Plus, they still walk around like newly weds even though it's been…like, 43 years.  And," Parson raised her finger in significance, "she's the women's Sunday school teacher.  I think it very unlikely.  That was a brilliant idea for the paper though."  Parson sank onto the two-drawer file cabinet near Tate's desk and grinned.  

"Yes, I must say my writer's brain never leaves me disappointed," Tate grinned back.  "Not that being a Sunday school teacher means she would never do something as horrendous as the rumor I just wrote."  

Working at Gas ‘N Go since she had graduated from high school had left Tate hungering for more of the world.  Her "writer's brain" constantly called for more excitement in her life.  She had wanted to pursue a degree in writing but then her father's business had gone bust during her senior year.  Of course there was no money for college so Tate moved out, to lighten expenses on her parents, gotten a fulltime job, a used car her high school boy bestie Judd had lowered to $300 out of pity, and began shouldering all her own expenses while her parents recovered from bankruptcy.  At first times had been too hard to focus on much else besides finances and learning to survive in the real world.  This wasn't high school anymore.  But now Tate was 25 and seven years of Gas ‘N Go was enough boredom to satisfy her for a lifetime and two more.  Desperate to pursue her writing dream somehow, anyhow, Tate jumped at the opportunity when Anita Bilgeworth ran into her at the Grocery Store and More.  Tate had just bent over to look more closely at some yellow summer squash, trying to decide if she wanted one for $.33 or two for $.50 when a large rump bumped into hers causing her knock against the squash display and send all the little yellow squashes bumping to the floor.  

"So sorry, Tate, I didn't see you there," Anita said.  

Tate saw the ten-pound bag of potatoes Anita had been trying to lift into her grocery cart and gave a cool nod to show she accepted her apology.  She wondered why the woman needed ten pounds of potatoes when she lived alone, but to each her own.  

Anita saw Tate eyeing the potatoes and explained, "My turn to host Sunday dinner."  

"Ah," said Tate and turned to pick up the runaway squashes, considering the conversation to be over.  

But Anita continued.  Tate never knew why Anita had kept talking that day but in looking back, she considered it to be her lucky day that Anita had been chatty.  

"So you work at the gas station on Charleston?"  Anita dropped the bag of potatoes into her cart, making it bounce.  

"Yes, I do," Tate said, still chasing yellow squash.  

"I think I've seen you there every week for…the past six years?"  Anita glanced at Tate over her shoulder as she lifted a second ten-pound bag of potatoes into her cart.  Tate just stared.  "Big family," Anita laughed, "Ah-ah-hahahahaaaa."  

Tate wasn't sure if she meant there were many people in her family that met for the Sunday meal or if all of them were at large and rotund as Anita.  

"Yes, um, seven years actually," said Tate, getting back to Anita's earlier question.  

Tate never really remembered how the subject changed to writing, but suddenly there it was.  Anita Bilgeworth was notorious for her "gossipaper".  It could barely be called news.  Well, she did print news, perhaps to cover up the true purpose of her paper, to spread gossip.  But the gossip column was the reason everyone read the paper.  Everyone knew she printed everything from scandals to rumors and was quite merciless in detail, except for people's actual names.  This was her one protection.  Most of the town hated her, but because they could never prove she was talking about them, the gossip column went on.  After a while, people grew ironically addicted to it, reading it with their morning coffee so they had a right of passage to complain and be grumpy.  "Well, let's see what the old witch said about me today," they might say.  And then if nothing was printed that could possibly be alluding to them, they complained that they were not popular to make it into the paper.  And now that she had the town folk hooked, Anita became more and more bold, going so far as to make up rumors, especially about people she disliked.  

Maybe it was Anita's uncharacteristically charming way of conversing that day in the Grocery Store and More, or maybe it was the aching in her gut that sparked tears in her eyes when Tate thought of returning to the gas station the next morning that drove her to actually see Anita's offer in a good light.  

"Come write for me at The Tattler.  My writer that was doing the gossip column is having her first baby and she's going to devote all her time to motherhood now.  Ah-hahahaaaa."  Anita laughed like she had no idea why anyone would want to devote their time to motherhood.  "You seem like you're quick on your feet.  I will edit your articles before they go to print so you don't have to worry about your lack of formal training."  Anita's voice sounded as round as she was.  

"Oh I'm a good writer," Tate butted in.  She just wasn't sure she would be comfortable writing scandal.  She was generally liked by the town and didn't want to make anyone despise her.  

Anita saw her hesitation and patted her arm.  "Well, darling, I'll let you go now.  Listen to me badgering you into something you don't want to do.  Ah-ha-hahaaa.  I'm sure you need to get home so you can get ready for an early morning at the gas station."  

Tate watched Anita turn to go and suddenly saw her only opportunity to get into the writing world in seven years walking away from her.  

"Anita!" she yelled.  

* * *    

"You're probably the best she's ever had," Parson was saying.  

"I know," Tate sang, smiling, and swirled around in her chair.  "I can't believe I get paid to write!"  

"Yeah, you must have been desperate to quit your job at the gas station for only $50 a week here with rent to pay and all."  

"Stop worrying me, Parson," Tate swatted at her friend with an old edition of the paper.  "I'm fine.  I worked things out with my landlord when I first took the job."  

"Yeah by lying to him."  

"I didn't lie to him," Tate wrinkled her eyebrows.  "Psh."  

"You told him you were writing a book?  And when it was done you would probably get a $10,000 advance as soon as the publisher accepted it?  Which would pretty much be as soon as the book was done?"  

"Parson, quit making your voice squeak at the end of each sentence.  You sound ridiculous," Tate frowned, looking away.  

"AND you don't even HAVE a book!"    

Parson's last squeak hit a nerve.  

"I do too!  I have a file with the name of the book on it and I have some notes written down."  

"On a 3x5 card--ONE 3x5 card," Parson choked on her last screech.  

"Parson, calm down.  Have some water.  You're more worried about my life than I am.  Now, let's go.  It's never too early to start on next week's gossip column."  Tate grabbed her leather messenger bag and a fresh legal pad and left the office like a high wind, letting the door bang against the wall when she opened it.  

The girls stepped outside and almost bumped into Avery Stoole.  

"Excuse me.  I'm sorry."  He said his words so fast it was like dominoes falling against each other and making that clattering sound as they all topple over.  His head was bent and his hat hid most of his face except for a glimpse of one worried blue eye before he shuffled along, his hands clasped together in front of him up against his chest.  Before the girls could even say anything, he was already past the neighbor's house and heading toward that patch of woods that stood between this part of the neighborhood and the church graveyard.  

Tate and Parson looked at each other.  

"What was that all about?" said Parson.  

"I don't know," Tate raised her eyebrows, "but it smells like next week's story to me.  Come on, let's follow him."  She grabbed Parson's arm and hunched down to sneak alongside the picket fences lining the front yards of the houses leading up to the woods.  

The girls had to pick up their pace.  Avery had already disappeared somewhere in the woods.  If he was up to some funny business in there, they would never find him unless they hurried a little faster.  

Tate and Parson followed the road through the woods and came upon the graveyard just as Avery was kneeling by a headstone.  The graveyard covered most of the front side of a hill that swept up toward town with the woods on its left and a tree line surrounding it, kind of like a natural forty-foot high fence.  The girls crouched in the brush near the edge of the woods.  Tate scratched the back of her neck to get rid of the goose bumps that were forming.  She looked up toward the church like she expected God to be watching her from its steeple.  Just then a shadow moved away from the window in the side room where the preacher's office was.  But they knew the preacher was having his lunch at the Happy Belly Diner on Main.   That's what he did every weekday between twelve and twelve thirty-three.  Tate knew Parson had seen the shadow too when she heard a sharp breath and felt her arm being squeezed until the skin was pinched.  

Avery's back was to them.  He seemed to be reaching inside his coat.  He turned slightly as he reached down to slip something white underneath the heavy flower urn sitting in front of the tombstone.  Then he got up, looked around quickly and scuttled away the same way he had passed the girls, head down, hands clasped in front of him.  He hurried through the rest of the graveyard, angling up toward the church and disappearing through the tree line as if he were going to circle around the long way back to town so no one would know he had come from the church.  

When the coast was clear, Tate and Parson crept toward the tombstone where Avery had been kneeling.  

"Parson, keep an eye out," Tate hissed.  

Tate knelt in the grass, grunting as she shifted the urn just enough to grab underneath it.  She pulled out a piece of white paper.  In the middle of it was scribbled, "Tonight.  11:30.  You know where."