Goose in the Pond - Earlene Fowler [50]
“Honeybun, I need to talk to you. Please give your grandmother a call.” Monday—one P.M., the automated voice informed me.
“Benni, I need to talk to you right away.” Monday—1:37 P.M.
“Benni, call me NOW.” Monday—3:14 P.M.
“Young lady, if you don’t get on the phone right now and call me, you’ll be sorry.” Monday—3:51 P.M.
“You’ve had it.” Monday—4:28 P.M.
I glanced at my watch. It was seven o’clock. I knew that her first day with Aunt Garnet was always the hardest. Maybe things had settled down by now. Maybe they were getting along for a change.
Then again, maybe I’d better leave the house for a little while.
7
DOWNTOWN WAS MORE crowded than usual for a Monday night. I finally gave up trying to find street parking and settled for a space on the top of the new four-story municipal parking garage. The air was pungent with the smell of coffee and cinnamon and car exhaust. Gangs of students bunched in front of every open coffeehouse and cafe. School had only been in session for about a month, and everyone was still in an insouciant summer mood. The frantic days of finals and term papers were a distant, unreal worry.
In front of Blind Harry’s, San Celina’s most infamous homeless person, the Datebook Bum, sat on the curb next to his huge canvas bag of junk. His tangled gray head was bent over a maroon leather business diary as he furiously wrote mysterious messages to himself. He was a lovable if sometimes cranky man who, like many longtime homeless, appeared ageless. His dirt-encrusted face and clothing-layered body could be anywhere from thirty to seventy. He’d stubbornly refused any help—only staying in the local homeless shelter when the weather was particularly harsh. No one had ever found out his name or whether he had any family. About six months ago, in exasperation, Elvia, who sent food out to him a couple of times a week, asked him if there was anything she could do for him. He shyly pointed to Blind Harry’s window display showing the latest in business books and products and asked her in a gentle, cultured voice for the maroon leather business appointment book. With the compulsion humans have for naming things, we’d taken to calling him the Datebook Bum, and in his eyes Elvia was the queen of San Celina. I dropped a dollar bill and all my change into his red coffee can. He looked up briefly and nodded.
I contemplated going into Blind Harry’s and perusing the new-book section, but I had a stack of books at home I hadn’t even started yet, so I continued walking down the crowded street all the way to the neon-lighted Art Deco Fremont Theater, where they were doing a Gene Autry Monday-night film series. I studied the old cowboy-movie posters, concluding that a movie wasn’t what I was in the mood for either. I finally ended up down at a small coffeehouse off the main drag called Coffee To Go Go. They had an outside patio with plastic chairs and glass-topped tables nature had decorated with red-and-yellow leaves from the surrounding maple trees. There was a raised concrete platform in one corner for musicians to ply their trade when the mood struck them. Some wonderful impromptu concerts were held there, especially on summer nights when the moon and stars lit it bright as the Grand Ole Opry stage. I sat down in the almost empty patio and waited for my cafe mocha to cool. It was quiet enough for me to hear the silvery rushing of San Celina Creek, which flowed next to the patio right through the center of San Celina. Across the creek, the mission’s outside lights flickered on as dusk started to lengthen the shadows of the buildings and bring a cool heaviness to the air. The falling sun turned the church’s pale adobe walls to a soft amber. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes for what seemed just a second. When I opened them again, it was almost dark. Somewhere a guitar played a hauntingly familiar blues riff that seemed to coil sensuously through the myrtle and pine trees hanging over the creek.