The Usual

The boy walked into Rosy’s Mainstreet Restaurant, the screen door frame tinkling the bell. The proprietress sat at the far right end of the counter next to the pass-through. She took a languid drag off her unfiltered Camel and blew the smoke up toward the door to the kitchen where Curly, her bald husband and short-order cook, rattled about as if cleaning up after a breakfast rush that hadn’t happened. Rosy sipped her black coffee, then swiveled her stool to see who’d come in.

 Unused to coming into the Mainstreet without an older sibling, the shy 10-year-old stood inside as if unsure why he’d come.

“What’ll ya have, Fritz?” asked Rosy, trying to lighten her gravelly voice.

"I’d like a green river, please,” the boy answered.

“Well, sit on a stool over by the fountain and I’ll fix ya right up,” Rosy said.

Rosy lifted the pass-through and walked behind the counter while Fritz took his seat. He swiveled the stool twenty degrees left and right while gripping the counter edge. Rosy dispensed lemon-lime syrup over crushed ice in a glass and then topped it up from the soda water spigot. She dropped in a fresh paper straw and set the drink in front of the boy.

“Whatcha celebratin’,” she asked. The boy placed a nickel on the counter—caddying earnings—slid it towards Rosy and took a sip of his drink.

“We’re leavin’ on vacation Saturday,” he answered, “so I won’t get one of these for three weeks.”

“Don’t have a soda fountain in that little town up North?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. But anyway, I’ll be swimmin’ and fishin’ out at the lake every day, not goin’ to town.”

Rosy smiled without baring her stained teeth—it was the longest string of words she’d ever heard come out of the boy’s mouth. “Well then, let’s hope ya have good fishin’, she said.

Rosy lifted the pass-through and returned to her stool. She sipped her coffee, grimaced slightly, got up again, and went back behind the counter to re-fill her cup before settling again on her stool. By that time her cigarette, which she’d left in the holder of a thick glass ashtray, had exhausted itself. She butted it, then jogged another one out of the pack, tapped its end on the counter twice, and placed it between her weary lips. She lit the cigarette with a wooden match from a box on the counter next to her Camels and, once again, exhaled up toward the kitchen door. Curly peered out through the haze to see who’d come in. He noticed the boy, then he looked side to side for other customers who, of course, were not there. He retreated to his pots, pans, and sputtering griddle.

             

Fritz continued sipping his green river through the paper straw, now a little soggy in his mouth. He couldn’t decide which he liked better: the sweet, fizzy green river, or the fact that he was drinking it through a straw which they never did at home. He sipped slowly, savoring it. At the other end of the counter, Rosy sipped her coffee. Curly rattled utensils in the kitchen. The boy felt he could stay there all day, dreaming about how he’d spend his caddying money. A model airplane would only cost a couple dollars but there were so many WW II fighters and ‘50s jets hanging like a mobile from the overhead light in his bedroom that he couldn’t imagine how he’d tie another one on. Maybe a model car would be better? He could customize it instead of just building it stock. Or maybe he’d just keep the money for vacation and buy a souvenir. These ideas swirling in his mind, Fritz absentmindedly slurped watery green river from the bottom of the glass. Satisfied none of the drink had been wasted, Fritz let the straw slip from his mouth into the glass and pushed it toward the back of the counter. He swiveled his stool to the right and slipped off, his feet landing on the black and white tile floor, and headed for the door.

“Bye Rosy,” he said, and then called into the kitchen, “Bye Curly.” Rosy turned and nodded through her smoke. Unintelligible mutterings came out the kitchen door which Fritz correctly took for Curly’s good-bye.

Fritz tinkled the bell again as he walked out into the humid August morning. He squinted into the sun; heat waves rose from the sidewalk. There was a distant thrum of cicadas to the west where old oaks and maples lined Joliet Street. But Fritz headed east toward home, crossed the Pennsy tracks and Kennedy Avenue, passed Miller’s store, and stopped at the low stone wall before the feed store. He sat atop the wall, a good vantage point to watch trains and traffic, and scanned up and down Joliet for other kids. The wall was the informal meeting place for local kids in summer. In the morning they’d gather, a ragtag group of boys and girls, and decide whether to go to the park to play baseball; or to walk the tracks out to Manley’s woods and gig frogs in the creek; or to go bullhead fishing at Smokey’s pond; or, on a hot humid day in August, to explore the long culvert carrying the ditch under downtown.

No other kids were heading for the stone wall where Fritz sat. Maybe it was just too hot to play outside. Fritz waited, staring down at a concrete manhole cover in the sidewalk. The cover was large and as thick as the walk. On one edge an arc of rebar in the concrete formed a handle the town maintenance crew used to lift the lid with a chain on their tractor’s bucket. Below the handle there was a notch in the concrete where chain could be passed through and hooked. Kids routinely tried lifting with the handle but the cover never budged. From experience Fritz knew that the manhole allowed access to the culvert under town and to the water the culvert channeled from the south end ditch to the north end swamp. It was a rite of passage for town kids to navigate the culvert, a slog of about four blocks under downtown. Any girl or boy afraid to take the dare was relentlessly ridiculed. Fritz had gone through his first time at eight years old, and had guided many kids through during the last few summers. He knew exactly where the manhole was situated in the passage because the notch in the cover leaked light into a vertical service shaft down to the culvert. It was the only place in the passage where you could stand up straight without getting moss and slime in your hair and face. It was mid-way through.

A shimmering blue-black wasp crawled up through the notch into the sunlight. It flicked its wings a few times, crawled around aimlessly on the concrete walk, then disappeared down through the notch.

Fritz visualized the cylindrical shaft under the cover with its low light from the notch. The walls were covered in mud nesting tubes built by the wasps to house their colony. The wasps were generally calm when you passed beneath their “cliff dwellings” but if you zigzagged your flashlight beam up the shaft they became agitated in the strobe effect. During a passage through the culvert the shaft was a brief break for an aching back but also home to the forbidding wasps tending their mud shafts. On seeing the wasps some initiates would bolt back to the south entrance (a failed passage) while others fled to the unknown north exit (success).

A few kids started gathering at the stone wall. There were Charlie and Mike, both culvert veterans. There were Danny and Benny, the Ford brothers, who instigated most dares. There were two girls, Patty Casper and a companion Fritz didn’t know. The new girl had long dark hair and dark eyes She was prettier than most girls in town (in Fritz’s opinion), and she was just about Fritz’s height. She wore a white blouse and navy blue shorts and had white anklets in her navy blue sandals. She didn’t seem shy, looking each boy in the eye as Patty introduced them. She held Fritz’s eyes the longest when Patty introduced him last. Her name was Sharon but she went by Shari. She had just moved to town from Illinois and would be going to school with this bunch in September.

A discussion about what they were going to do that morning began. Each kid lobbied for his favorite activity. The wasp briefly came up through the notch again, flicked its wings twice, and retreated. Fritz was the only one who noticed it.

“How ‘bout I guide Shari through the passage?” Fritz offered.

There were about equal numbers of yeas and nays. On the yes side kids wanted to know what Shari was made of. On the no side, kids didn’t want Fritz monopolizing the new kid while they hung around twiddling their thumbs.

Fritz argued that it wouldn’t take long for the passage and they could go to the park afterwards. Eventually, they agreed: initiation first; ballgame in the park following. The gang dispersed to their homes to gather up mitts, bats and baseballs. Fritz also picked up a big flash light. In a half hour they met at the agreed spot where the ditch emerged from a large culvert under the Pennsy tracks and headed north. A three-acre garden formed the east bank of the ditch—Grandma Shafer’s land tended by her grown-up sons. Further east across Austin Avenue was the park. On the west the ditch bank was steeper, with low hills covered by native grasses. The kids walked north along the garden side less than a block to the entrance of the long culvert.

Since it was late summer, the ditch-water, which arose in a spring-fed pond on Smokey’s farm south of town, was low. About six inches of water and silt covered the bottom curve of the culvert, just enough mud to harbor a few of the crayfish that lived in the ditch. The culvert walls were mostly bare but a lengthwise seam at the top seeped enough groundwater to support a mat of mosses and slimy tendrils overheard through the length of the culvert.

Patty and the Ford brothers volunteered to head north through town to the culvert exit at the swamp, a wetland that had never been drained for farming like the rest of the area. Eventually, the swamp water organized into several other ditches that continued the drainage all the way to the Little Calumet River on its flow east to join the Deep River and finally dump into Lake Michigan east of Gary.

Charlie and Mike hung around the culvert entrance hassling crayfish. They’d wait there to start the ridicule if Shari chickened out and turned back. Fritz would lead Shari through the passage with his light.

“You’re gonna get wet,” Fritz told Shari, “So you better take off your socks. But wear your sandals ‘cause the bottom’s mucky.”

“How ‘bout if I just straddle the water with my feet on the sides?” Shari asked.

“That can work. Some do it that way,” Fritz answered, “but they always get tired and end up in the muck anyway.”  

Shari nodded understanding. Then she bent down, unbuckled her sandals one after the other, and removed her socks. She stuffed the socks into her pocket, then said, “I’m ready.”

Fritz turned on his light, ducked his head, and waded into the culvert. Shari followed. They made slow progress shuffling forward, the mud sucking at their shoes. Fritz pointed the light side to side and overhead to show Shari the gunk up there. They didn’t talk. The only sounds were their sloshing and sucking sounds if they tried lifting their heels. Finally, Fritz could see the filtered light coming down from the shaft ahead. He told Shari they’d rest bit at the shaft where they could stand up straight and stretch.

As they neared the light Fritz squeezed to one side and told Shari to go ahead of him to stretch her back in the shaft. She did as he said. When she was fully upright Fritz flashed his light up the shaft erratically.

“Look up!” he said.

Shari looked. The mud nests encircled her head and shoulders, meandering down the shaft like dreadlocks. Blue-black wasps emerged from each mud tube, flicking their wings excitedly, alternately pulsing their abdomens, touching their stingers against the mud as if testing it. Shari ducked and whirled toward Fritz, her eyes wide, her mouth agape in a scream she had stifled. Then she squinted and set her jaw. She stepped back setting her right foot against the opposite wall and threw a straight punch burying her fist into Fritz’s solar plexus. Fritz hit his side wall then lurched forward, crumpling over the punch. The light dropped from his hand into the water. Shari lunged down for the light grazing the left side of her head against Fritz’s. The light was still on as she shook off the water and muck.

“Which way?” she demanded.

Fritz wheezed, now on his knees in the muck.

“Which WAY?” Shari yelled, glowering at him. Gasping, the boy could only point feebly toward the north. Shari aimed the light that way and began sloshing toward the exit--fast. Fritz, fearful of waiting in the dark near the angry wasps, still gasping for breath, struggled after her.

Minutes later, at the north culvert exit, Shari emerged victorious and grinning. Patty and the Ford brothers whooped and clapped.

“Where’s Fritz?” called Benny just as Fritz appeared near the mouth of the culvert, sodden from the waist down, still gulping deeply for air.

“I’m here,” he coughed out, a sheepish grin on his face.

“What happened in there?” Patty asked.

Shari smiled. “Let’s just say Fritz had a tougher time in there than me,” she said.

The five kids scrambled to higher ground and headed back toward town. They picked up the other boys and the equipment, then crossed into the park to choose teams (a girl on each side) for a baseball game. Because they were short-handed, the ballgame wasn’t much fun so they all agreed to cut it short. Without a lot of discussion, they picked up their stuff and started heading home for lunch.

Fritz caught up with Shari. “Do you wanna go to the Mainstreet for a coke?” he asked her. Shari nodded OK. So they walked side by side back to Joliet Street, then west past the feed store, the stone wall, Miller’s General Store, they crossed the Pennsy tracks and arrived at Rosy’s Mainstreet Restaurant. Fritz opened the door for Shari, jingling the bell. The pair angled toward the left and took stools near the fountain. Rosy sat on her usual stool, smoking, drinking stale coffee. Curly peeked from the kitchen door. Rosy butted her cigarette, lifted the pass-through, and went behind the counter. Her tired eyes brightened.

“And who’s this?” Rosy asked, and Fritz introduced Shari. “What’ll ya have, Shari?” asked the proprietress.

“Cherry coke, please,” the girl answered.

“What about you?” Rosy directed at Fritz.

“The usual, please,” he said while digging coins out of his damp jeans.

Copyright 2017