The Quaker Café (5 page)

The morning crowd had begun to form; the talk on everyone’s lips was of the Judge. At a corner table Timmy Bates sat with a grocery sack of roasted peanuts that he methodically shelled and sorted into a row of miniature bags
. He sold each bag for fifty cents. Liz stopped by his table, picked up one of the five bags, and dropped two quarters. Timmy gave her a snaggletooth grin.

Timmy’s older brother, Marshall, who’d owned the Bates Peanut Processing Plant
on the edge of town, had taken care of his brother all his life. Timmy slept in a small apartment attached to the plant. When he left the stove in the efficiency kitchen on overnight one time, Marshall took out all the appliances and made arrangements with Miss Ellie for Timmy to get his meals at The Quaker Café.

Timmy helped out with odd jobs from time to time; sweeping the town sidewalks, washing store fronts. When business was slow, Marshall gave him a big grocery bag full of roasted peanuts
to sell. When Marshall died without warning from a heart attack, his wife sold the business and moved Timmy into a trailer they still owned on a small piece of land. She reached an agreement with the new plant owner that Timmy could continue to get a large sack of roasted peanuts every weekday. Timmy used the money he made from shelling the peanuts to pay Miss Ellie for his meals, although Marshall’s wife still sent Ellie a check monthly. Sometimes Miss Ellie took Timmy’s money, more often she didn’t. Just as often someone else at the café would pick up Timmy’s tab.

“How’s Maggie?
” Miss Ellie asked as soon as Liz approached the register.

“She’s doing okay
. I don’t think any of us slept much last night.”

“I didn’t, either,” Miss Ellie nodded.

“You should have closed the café for the day,” Liz said.

“And do what?  Sit at home and cry?  This is the very day I need to be open, so people can gather together to grieve and reminisce.”

“Has Grandpa Hoole been in already?” Liz asked.

“He has
. Chase was here to meet him.”

“Good,” Liz said
. “I’m going to run across the street. Would you fix me an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee to go and I’ll pick them up in a few minutes.”

“Sure honey, they’ll be ready.”

*****

Liz walked across the street to the pharmacy that had lured her husband
back to Cedar Branch twenty-five years ago. Ceiling to floor windows stretched across the front with a raised shelf on the inside large enough for placard billboards propped up in one side and two patio chairs and a circular patio table decorated with a red checked table cloth in the other. Billie had helped touch up the display with gala accessories implying that ice cream floats and a juke box awaited you once you entered. Nothing was further from the truth, though years ago such a scene had indeed existed.

An elegant black and white checkered marble floor stretched the breadth of the
room with the pharmacy in the back. At one time a soda fountain had provided coffee, sodas and ice cream at a long counter near the front entrance. When Chase was a teenager the pharmacy was the meeting place after school, and he spent happy days as the soda jerk behind the counter. Liz and Chase had kept the old juke box and toyed with the idea of cranking it up, but in the late 60s they were eager to get their business started without any wrinkles.

Frank had closed down the soda fountain in the midst of the civil rights demonstrations and unplugged the juke box
. The possibility of black and white teenagers socializing together seemed to unhinge many in the community. It occurred to Liz that whites in the South worried too much about who might sit next to them, and as a result denied themselves more than they gained in return.
What a waste
. But that was the Yankee in her talking.

While Chase filled a prescripti
on for a customer in the back, Grandpa Hoole sat at one of the six circular tables that remained after a half century. Liz slipped into the chair across from him. She looked into the eyes of the man her husband would become twenty-five years down the road. He was almost completely bald and the bit of hair around the ears was gray. Heavier than Chase, he carried the extra weight well.

“Grandpa, I’m so sorry.” Liz pulled out the chair across from him.

As Grandpa looked up at her, his thin lips curved down. The two furrows that ran from each side of the bridge of his nose etched prominently up the middle of his forehead. “It’s a loss,” he said, “a loss to the whole town.”

“The two of you made quite a team,” Liz said. She knew how hard it must be to watch the people you’d grown up with your entire life die one by one
. Grandpa and the Judge had similar hopes for the community. They’d worked on many of the same committees over the years despite the difference in their personal lives.

“A team?”
Grandpa looked bewildered. “He understood the politics. He was good.”

“And you are the most patient and persistent man I know,” Liz added
. “It was a great combination.”

“Well, it worked on a few things,” he said.

“Cedar Branch is a better community because of both of you.” Liz wanted Grandpa to accept that he was as responsible for the positive changes as the Judge. They had served together on numerous boards, including education and health, but the accomplishment they could both be the proudest of was the zoning and funding resources for numerous low income housing projects that eliminated the majority of the shacks that littered the county less than two decades ago. Ninety-six percent of the population in the county now had indoor plumbing and electricity.

  
Speak truth to power.
If ever there was a Quaker phrase that exemplified Grandpa, this was the one that fit him best, Liz thought.

Grandpa didn’t respond
. He shook his head just short of disagreeing. Liz wondered why Grandpa was so reluctant to accept a compliment. She was convinced he was the finest man in town, just short of Chase. Even Euphrasia would admonish him at times to step forward and receive the recognition he deserved, but he refused.

Grandpa braced his arms on the table to stand up
. “I need to get back to the house and tell Euphrasia.”

“You want me to go with you?” Liz asked.

“No, no, she’ll be fine but she’ll want to do something for Maggie. Anything she needs?” 

              “She seems to be focused on arrangements for the funeral.” Liz said. “She’ll be okay.”

“She’s a strong woman.”

Liz accompanied her father-in-law to his car. He walked slower, bent lower and hesitated longer than usual at the curb. It bothered her to think of his getting old.

Once Grandpa was gone, Liz ducked back into the pharmacy, behind the counter in back of Chase and slipped her arms around him with a hug
.

Liz had met Chase at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where Chase received a full scholarship
. At that time, a 6’3” basketball guard was considered tall. Chase Hoole loved the game and gave it everything he had.

They were in a chemistry class together
. Chase wanted to be a pharmacist and Liz wanted to be a nurse, someplace where flowers bloomed in March. She remembered vividly her first spring in Chapel Hill when she walked across the campus and was spellbound by the beauty of the azaleas, dogwood, and camellias.
Good Lord
, she thought.
Where have I been all my life?
Then she remembered:
St. Paul
.

For the entire first semester Chase sat in the back of the classroom, unnoticed, as she fluttered up front asking the professor one question after another
. One day she ended up at the tutorial center, and as part of his work-study scholarship Chase Hoole stepped forward to help her. No one was more surprised than she.

The real stunner came in January when basketball season heated up
. As Liz followed the team, she realized for the first time that Chase excelled, not only in chemistry, but also as a star player for the Tar Heels. Liz was in love, and to her delight he appeared to be equally infatuated. After a whirlwind courtship, they married at her hometown Presbyterian Church in St. Paul and moved back to Chapel Hill. Chase worked to complete his Doctor of Pharmacy degree and she took a job as a nurse, but soon found herself pregnant. Fifteen months later, back in Cedar Grove living with his parents, she was pregnant again.
No one ever told her you could get pregnant if you were nursing,
she confessed.

Gone were the days when Chase’s basketball cronies used to call him
Icabod. A nice cushion of flesh softened his middle. She barely came up to his shoulder, making them the butt of multiple Mutt and Jeff jokes. She slipped her arms around his waist.

“Watch that, little lady,” he said in his best John Wayne accent
. “If my wife catches you here again, there will be hell to pay.”

“I need a hug,” she said.

He turned and wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.

“Just want to feel alive, that’s all
. Let’s do something crazy,” she said as she felt the comfort of his embrace.

“Well, we’ve got about thirty seconds
. Here comes your favorite customer.”

“Maybe later,” Liz said as he let her go
.

When the bell dinged on the front door, Liz could see Helen Truitt enter in the mirror from the back counter. Even before
eight Helen was in a suit with stockings and low pumps. When her husband had died, out of respect for his thirty years as a county commissioner, the board had appointed her to serve out the remainder of his term. She had assumed his responsibilities with a zeal that far exceeded his, and then she filed to run in the next election.

She would be a time-consuming customer, Liz knew, and she didn’t want to get trapped into a conversation about the Judge
. More importantly, however, Liz had filed to run against Helen in November for the position of county commissioner. Twenty years had elapsed since she had first dipped her toes into the political arena; Maggie had convinced her that the timing was right for a Democrat. Maggie’s backing would be crucial. The local elections wouldn’t heat up until September or October, but Liz already knew that Helen was miffed.

Liz and Chase joked about the convenient layout of the mirrors around the walls of the store
. While they were originally installed to discourage shoplifters, Liz found them more helpful to avoid certain people.

“I’m slipping out the backdoor,” she whispered.

“Go on,” he said and kissed her curls again. “By the way, the boys want to spend the night with the Browns tonight and watch the Carolina game there. I told them they could.”

Chapter Five

When Liz returned to Cottonwoods later that day
LuAnne was arranging a platter of sandwich meats on the kitchen counter. Liz frequently imagined that she could easily age like LuAnne and become rounder above and below the waist.

“Are you okay,
LuAnne?” Liz asked.

LuAnne took a tissue and wiped her nose. “Yes ma’am, I’ll make it.”   LuAnne was twenty years older than Liz, but always called her “ma’am” despite Liz’s constant objections. It was part of Cedar Branch for a black maid to speak this way in a white home; but on Liz’s part, it was also Quaker tradition never to use any prefixes to a name that would imply that one person deserved more respect than any other.

This had been an adjustment even for Liz
. Several years passed before she got used to her children addressing the elders in their meeting by first names. To have a black person, particularly an older black person, always address her as ma’am continued to make her uncomfortable.

“You’ve been a
saint,” Liz ran her hand across LuAnne’s shoulder. “Maggie’s going to need you now more than ever.”

“Miss Maggie will always be my little girl.”

Billie came half way down the stairs leading to the formal living room and called to Liz. “Reverend Morgan should be here in a few minutes. Maggie wants to meet upstairs. Bring him on up, will you?”

Liz picked up a piece of roast beef and put it on a roll
. She looked at LuAnne. “Why is she meeting upstairs?  That’s a long climb for the Reverend.”

“I’m not sure,”
LuAnne said. “Maggie’s been in her office all morning. Dozens of calls, but Billie’s been taking them.”

Liz walked to the door as a car pulled into the drive
. Reverend Morgan heaved himself out of his ‘88 Buick Le Sabre looking like a man who had already put in a full day’s work in one of the nearby fields. To the contrary, he was nursing his flock, many of them elderly widows who tempted him with generous offering of pastries and pies. A sinner of gastric proportions, he found temptation too great. His waistline and arteries proved that this bake-off competition was a deadly business.  

Liz welcomed him and directed him to the stairs
. “Maggie’s waiting for us in the living room,” she said.

Reverend
Morgan sighed, paused momentarily and then began the climb. He was breathing heavily when he reached the top step and stopped to catch his breath. Maggie appeared from her office and walked over to greet him.