“You too, Harry.”
“I’ll never forget that A-plus. I framed that, too. Got it right up beside my diploma.”
“Good for you.”
And it was. It was all good. His essay had been primitive art, but every bit as powerful and true as any painting by Grandma Moses. It was certainly better than the stuff I was currently reading. The spelling in the honors essays was mostly correct, and the diction was clear (although my cautious college-bound don’t-take-a-chancers had an irritating tendency to fall back on the passive voice), but the writing was pallid. Boring. My honors kids were juniors—Mac Steadman, the department head, awarded the seniors to himself—but they wrote like little old men and little old ladies, all pursey-mouthed and ooo, don’t slip on that icy patch, Mildred. In spite of his grammatical lapses and painstaking cursive, Harry Dunning had written like a hero. On one occasion, at least.
As I was musing on the difference between offensive and defensive writing, the intercom on the wall cleared its throat. “Is Mr. Epping in the west wing teachers’ room? You by any chance still there, Jake?”
I got up, thumbed the button, and said: “Still here, Gloria. For my sins. Can I help you?”
“You have a phone call. Guy named Al Templeton? I can transfer it, if you want. Or I can tell him you left for the day.”
Al Templeton, owner and operator of Al’s Diner, where all LHS faculty save for yours truly refused to go. Even my esteemed department head—who tried to talk like a Cambridge don and was approaching retirement age himself—had been known to refer to the specialty of the house as Al’s Famous Catburger instead of Al’s Famous Fatburger.
Well of course it’s not really cat, people would say, or probably not cat, but it can’t be beef, not at a dollar-nineteen.
“Jake? Did you fall asleep on me?”
“Nope, wide awake.” Also curious as to why Al would call me at school. Why he’d call me at all, for that matter. Ours had always been strictly a cook-and-client relationship. I appreciated his chow, and he appreciated my patronage. “Go on and put him through.”
“Why are you still here, anyway?”
“I’m flagellating myself.”
“Ooo!” Gloria said, and I could imagine her fluttering her long lashes. “I love it when you talk dirty. Hold on and wait for the ringy-dingy.”
She clicked off. The extension rang and I picked it up.
“Jake? You on there, buddy?”
At first I thought Gloria must have gotten the name wrong. That voice couldn’t belong to Al. Not even the world’s worst cold could have produced such a croak.
“Who is this?”
“Al Templeton, didn’t she tellya? Christ, that hold music really sucks. Whatever happened to Connie Francis?” He began to ratchet coughs loud enough to make me hold the phone away from my ear a little.
“You sound like you got the flu.”
He laughed. He also kept coughing. The combination was fairly gruesome. “I got something, all right.”
“It must have hit you fast.” I had been in just yesterday, to grab an early supper. A Fatburger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake. I believe it’s important for a guy living on his own to hit all the major food groups.
“You could say that. Or you could say it took awhile. Either one would be right.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I’d had a lot of conversations with Al in the six or seven years I’d been going to the diner, and he could be odd—insisted on referring to the New England Patriots as the Boston Patriots, for instance, and talked about Ted Williams as if he’d known him like a brudda—but I’d never had a conversation as weird as this.
“Jake, I need to see you. It’s important.”
“Can I ask—”
“I expect you to ask plenty, and I’ll answer, but not over the phone.”
I didn’t know how many answers he’d be able to give before his voice gave out, but I promised I’d come down in an hour or so.
“Thanks. Make it even sooner, if you can. Time is, as they say, of the essence.” And he hung up, just like that, without even a goodbye.
I worked my way through two more of the honors essays, and there were only four more in the stack, but it was no good. I’d lost my groove. So I swept the stack into my briefcase and left. It crossed my mind to go upstairs to the office and wish Gloria a good summer, but I didn’t bother. She’d be in all next week, closing the books on another school year, and I was going to come in on Monday and clean out the snack cupboard—that was a promise I’d made to myself. Otherwise the teachers who used the west wing teachers’ room during summer session would find it crawling with bugs.
If I’d known what the future held for me, I certainly would have gone up to see her. I might even have given her the kiss that had been flirting in the air between us for the last couple of months. But of course I didn’t know. Life turns on a dime.
3
Al’s Diner was housed in a silver trailer across the tracks from Main Street, in the shadow of the old Worumbo mill. Places like that can look tacky, but Al had disguised the concrete blocks upon which his establishment stood with pretty beds of flowers. There was even a neat square of lawn, which he barbered himself with an old push-type lawn mower. The lawn mower was as well tended as the flowers and the lawn; not a speck of rust on the whirring, brightly painted blades. It might have been purchased at the local Western Auto store the week before… if there had still been a Western Auto in The Falls, that was. There was once, but it fell victim to the big-box stores back around the turn of the century.
I went up the paved walk, up the steps, then paused, frowning. The sign reading WELCOME TO AL’S DINER, HOME OF THE FATBURGER! was gone. In its place was a square of cardboard reading CLOSED & WILL NOT REOPEN DUE TO ILLNESS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR BUSINESS OVER THE YEARS & GOD BLESS.
I had not yet entered the fog of unreality that would soon swallow me, but the first tendrils were seeping around me, and I felt them. It wasn’t a summer cold that had caused the hoarseness I’d heard in Al’s voice, nor the croaking cough. Not the flu, either. Judging by the sign, it was something more serious. But what kind of serious illness came on in a mere twenty-four hours? Less than that, really. It was two-thirty. I had left Al’s last night at five forty-five, and he’d been fine. Almost manic, in fact. I remembered asking him if he’d been drinking too much of his own coffee, and he said no, he was just thinking about taking a vacation. Do people who are getting sick—sick enough to close the businesses they’ve run single-handed for over twenty years—talk about taking vacations? Some, maybe, but probably not many.
The door opened while I was still reaching for the handle, and Al stood there looking at me, not smiling. I looked back, feeling that fog of unreality thicken around me. The day was warm but the fog was cold. At that point I still could have turned and walked out of it, back into the June sunshine, and part of me wanted to do that. Mostly, though, I was frozen by wonder and dismay. Also horror, I might as well admit it. Because serious illness does horrify us, doesn’t it, and Al was seriously ill. I could see that in a single glance. And mortally was probably more like it.
It wasn’t just that his normally ruddy cheeks had gone slack and sallow. It wasn’t the rheum that coated his blue eyes, which now looked washed-out and nearsightedly peering. It wasn’t even his hair, formerly almost all black, and now almost all white—after all, he might have been using one of those vanity products and decided on the spur of the moment to shampoo it out and go natural.