“The best in Oak Ridge? That’s easy.”
Ninety minutes later, I parked my truck in the lot beside Wildcat Stadium, the high school football field in Oak Ridge, and one of the city’s earliest landmarks. Although the original high school had long since been demolished—replaced by a sprawling, modern complex two miles away, right across the Turnpike from Isabella’s library—the stadium had never been replaced. Tucked into a natural hollow in the side of Black Oak Ridge, the stadium—home to quite a few championship football teams over the years—felt like small-town Americana. From where I parked, I could see the stadium, Chapel on the Hill, and the Alexander Inn. Clustered so close together, they seemed an architectural trinity of sorts, embodying human play, spiritual sanctuary, a scientific crossroads. Such a small town; such a big legacy.
Crossing Broadway, the two-block street that separated the football field from Jackson Square, I strolled beneath a sidewalk awning and stepped into the finest restaurant in Oak Ridge, and one of the finest in East Tennessee: Big Ed’s Pizza.
Big Ed’s was the creation of Ed Neusel, and the nickname was actually an understatement. Big Ed was a mountain of a man, as anyone who’d seen him perched on the bar stool at the back of the pizzeria could attest. Big Ed had long since gone to that great pizza kitchen in the sky, but his legacy and his likeness lived on. The restaurant’s glass front window featured a larger-than-life caricature of Big Ed’s face. T-shirts featuring the same likeness—and the quote I MAKE MY OWN DOUGH—were considered must-have souvenirs by tourists savvy enough to appreciate Oak Ridge’s contributions to history and cuisine.
The kitchen was open, and ran most of the length of the deep, narrow restaurant. Behind the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area, eight or ten high school kids—all wearing Big Ed’s T-shirts—hustled beneath fluorescent lights, twirling disks of dough, dealing out toppings, shuttling pies in and out of a wallful of ovens. During his lifetime, Ed Neusel had always been quick to give a kid a job, and I was pleased to see that his policy, like his pizza, had survived his passing.
The dining area was dark as a cave—black ceiling, dark hardwood floor, dingy walls, dim lights. That was probably for the best. I felt my foot slip slightly, on grease or tomato sauce or a mix of the two, until its skid was halted by a sticky patch of drying beer or soda. There was probably a health inspector’s rating posted on a wall somewhere in here, but I didn’t want to see it.
I scanned the dim interior for Isabella. I didn’t see her. For that matter, although the place was full, I didn’t see much of anybody—not well enough to discern identifying facial features, at least. The place could have been packed with Anthropology Department faculty and graduate students, and I wouldn’t have been able to recognize any of them.
At my back, I felt a blast of cold air as the door to the street opened. “Hi.” I heard her voice at my elbow again. She had a way of sneaking up on me that I was starting to like. “We had an after-hours staff meeting that ran long. Somebody’s been cutting the racy paintings out of the art books, and we’re trying to figure out how to catch them.”
“Art thieves in the Oak Ridge library,” I said. “Who’d’ve guessed? Is nothing sacred anymore?”
“Maybe theft; maybe censorship,” she said. “Hard to tell. Either way, it’s bad for the books. Shall we sit?” She nodded at a booth tucked into a narrow alcove just inside the door, and we slid onto facing benches. Some of the fluorescent light from the kitchen spilled into the booth—not so good for the appetite, but better for watching as she talked. She handed me a menu—a simple card listing sizes and toppings, the paper translucent with grease. “What do you like?”
“Just about everything except olives,” I said. “Pepperoni, sausage, ham—any of those. What about you?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” she said. “How about we order two? One for you, one for me?”
One of the high schoolers, a lanky redhead sporting torn jeans and red Converse high-tops with his T-shirt, came to take our order. Isabella pointed him to me, so I ordered a Coke and a small Hawaiian pizza, with ham and pineapple and onion. She made a face, then ordered a beer and a veggie special for herself. The kid jotted it down and turned to go, then turned back. “The veggie—also small?”
“Actually, no,” she said. “Make mine a large.”
I laughed. “Aren’t you a dainty thing?”
“Hey, you’re buying. And I want leftovers.”
I called our server back a second time and changed my order to large as well.
“So,” I said to her, “you got something for me that’s worth a large veggie special and a beer?”