Orson Card - Feed The Baby Of Love

When Rainie Pinyon split this time she didn't go south, eventhough it was October and she didn't like the winter cold. Maybe shethought that this winter she didn't deserve to be warm, or maybe shewanted to find some unfamiliar territory -- whatever. She got on thebus in Bremerton and got off it again in Boise. She hitched to SaltLake City and took a bus to Omaha. She got herself a waitressing job,using the name Ida Johnson, as usual. She quit after a week, gotanother job in Kansas City, quit after three days, and so on and so onuntil she came to a tired-looking cafe in Harmony, Illinois, a small townup on the bluffs above the Mississippi. She liked Harmony right off,because it was pretty and sad -- half the storefronts brightly paintedand cheerful, the other half streaked and stained, the windows boardedup. The kind of town that would be perfectly willing to pick up andmove into a shopping mall only nobody wanted to build one here andso they'd just have to make do. The help wanted sign in the cafewindow was so old that several generations of spiders had lived anddied on webs between the sign and the glass.

"We're a five-calendar cafe," said the pinched-up overpainted oldlady at the cash register.

Rainie looked around and sure enough, there were five calendarson the walls.

"Not just because of that Blue Highways book, either, I'll haveyou know. We already had these calendars up before he wrote hisbook. He never stopped here but he could have."

"Aren't they a little out of date?" asked Rainie.

The old lady looked at her like she was crazy.

"If you already had the calendars up when he wrote the book, Imean."

"Well, not these calendars," said the old lady. "Here's the thing,darlin'. A lot of diners and what-not put up calendars after that BlueHighways book said that was how you could tell a good restaurant. But those were all fakes. They didn't understand. The calendars haveall got to be local calendars. You know, like the insurance guy givesyou a calendar and the car dealer and the real estate guy and thefuneral home. They give you one every year, and you put them all upbecause they're your friends and your customers and you hope they dogood business."

"You got a car dealer in Harmony?"

"Went out of business thirty years ago. Used to deal inStudebakers, but he hung on with Buicks until the big dealers up in thetri-cities underpriced him to death. No, I don't get his calendaranymore, but we got two funeral homes so maybe that makes up for it."

Rainie almost made a remark about this being the kind of townwhere nobody goes anywhere, they just stay home and die, but thenshe decided that maybe she liked this old lady and maybe she'd stayhere for a couple of days, so she held her tongue.

The old lady smiled a twisted old smile. "You didn't say it, but Iknow you thought it."

"What?" asked Rainie, feeling guilty.

"Some joke about how people don't need cars here, cause theyaren't going anywhere until they die."

"I want the job," said Rainie.

"I like your style," said the old lady. "I'm Minnie Wilcox, and Ican hardly believe that anybody in this day and age named their littlegirl Ida, but I had a good friend named Ida when I was a girl and Ihope you don't mind if I forget sometimes and call you Idie like Ialways did her."

"Don't mind a bit," said Rainie. "And nobody in this day and agedoes name their daughter Ida. I wasn't named in this day and age."

"Oh, right, you're probably just pushing forty and starting to feelold. Well, I hope I never hear a single word about it from you becauseI'm right on the seventy line, which to my mind is about the same asdriving on empty, the engine's still running but you know it'll sputtersoon so what the hell, let's get a few more miles on the old girl beforewe junk her. I need you on the morning shift, Idie, I hope that's all thesame with you."

"How early?"

"Six a.m. I'm sad to say, but before you whine about it in yourheart, you remember that I'm up baking biscuits at four-thirty. My Jackand I used to do that together. In fact he got his heart attack rollingout the dough, so if you ever come in early and see me spilling a fewtears into the powdermilk, I'm not having a bad day, I'm justremembering a good man, and that's my privilege. We got to open atsix on account of the hotel across the street. It's sort of the opposite ofa bed and breakfast. They only serve dinner, an all-you-can-eat family-style home-cooking restaurant that brings 'em in from fifty miles around. The hotel sends them over here for breakfast and on top of that we geta lot of folks in town, for breakfast and for lunch, too. We do goodbusiness. I'm not poor and I'm not rich. I'll pay you decent and you'llmake fair tips, for this part of the country. You still see the nickels bythe coffee cups, but you just give those old coots a wink and a smile,cause the younger boys make up for them and it's not like it costs thatmuch for a room around here. Meals free during your shift but notafter, I'm sorry to say."

"Fine with me," said Rainie.

"Don't go quittin' on me after a week, darlin'."

"Don't plan on it," said Rainie, and to her surprise it was true. Itmade her wonder -- was Harmony Illinois what she'd been looking forwhen she checked out in Bremerton? It wasn't what usually happened. Usually she was looking for the street -- the down-and-out half-hopeless life of people who lived in the shadow of the city. She'dfound the street once in New Orleans, and once in San Francisco, andanother time in Paris, and she found places where the street used tobe, like Beale Street in Memphis, and the Village in New York City, andVenice in L.A. But the street was such a fragile place, and it keptdisappearing on you even while you were living right in it.

But there was no way that Harmony Illinois was the street, sowhat in the world was she looking for if she had found it here?

Funeral homes, she thought. I'm looking for a place wherefuneral homes outnumber car dealerships, because my songs are deadand I need a decent place to bury them.

It wasn't bad working for Minnie Wilcox. She talked a lot butthere were plenty of town people who came by for coffee in themorning and a sandwich at lunch, so Rainie didn't have to payattention to most of the talking unless she wanted to. Minnie found outthat Rainie was a fair hand at making sandwiches, too, and she couldfry an egg, so the work load kind of evened out -- whichever of themwas getting behind, the other one helped. It was busy, but it wasdecent work -- nobody yelled at anybody else, and even when thepeople who came in were boring, which was always, they were stilldecent and even the one old man who leered at her kept his handsand his comments to himself. There were days when Rainie evenforgot to slip outside in back of the cafe and have a smoke in the wide-open gravel alleyway next to the dumpster.

"How'd you used to manage before I came along?" she askedearly on. "I mean, judging from that sign, you've been looking for helpfor a long time."

"Oh, I got by, Idie, darlin', I got by."

Pretty soon, though, Rainie picked up the truth from commentsthe customers made when they thought she was far enough away notto hear. Old people always thought that because they could barelyhear, everybody else was half-deaf, too. "Oh, she's a live one." "Knows how to work, this one does." "Not one of those young girlswho only care about one thing." "How long you think she'll last,Minnie?"

She lasted one week. She lasted two weeks. It was on intoNovember and getting cold, with all the leaves brown or fallen, and shewas still there. This wasn't like any of the other times she'd droppedout of sight, and it scared her a little, how easily she'd been caughthere. It made no sense at all. This town just wasn't Rainie Pinyon,and yet it must be, because here she was.