A big old-fashioned sign shaped like a fifties atomic triangle announced your arrival to the center of town. The big red letters, missing the final S but everybody knew what you meant, the place was an institution. Simmy’s burgers and fries, home of the big burger, had been in business since just after the Second World War. The mess of a cheeseburger with a bun as big as a baby’s head came (for the past sixty years) in a paper checkered basket. Simmy’s was a place that did not change. Going there was an event.
When Henry’s father was young if he ate at Simmy’s he ordered his food from a sliding door in the back of the restaurant. There was no colored entrance or sign that marked a separate space, but the blacks in town knew they would not be welcome at the front door. To this day some blacks preferred the pickup window to going in the restaurant. Others loved the idea that the times had changed enough, the wounds healed enough that they could walk proudly through the front door on their own terms. But not Henry’s father. Once the place was integrated he still wouldn’t go in. It was Henry’s Uncle Buddy’s favorite place. He would bring in king burgers or barbecue for them in bags so damp and heavy, he’d had to keep his meaty hand underneath the bag to keep the sloppy food from falling out the bottom. Uncle Buddy would cut a burger in half for Henry and his brother Sean, and though they protested about who got the larger piece, neither of them ever finished their share.
The town was bisected by a main street and divided into four sections. All four corners had changed only slightly in Henry’s lifetime. A KFC had replaced a family restaurant on one corner and a McDonald’s opened in the early eighties. Back then his family swung their boats of cars into the parking lot running out their little bit of gas as they waited for a parking space. Gone were his elementary school teachers’ names, the address of his grandmother’s house, his first day of school, when he was told his mother almost lost her job at the cafeteria because she sat in their station wagon in the school’s parking lot until noon. All of that gone, but the Big Mac jingle he learned from the commercial abideth.
Henry turned right on Main Street away from the center of town. He’d wanted fish but he found himself behind Simmy’s in the back parking lot. A few years before, a woman had gotten killed by her boyfriend in a struggle for the night’s receipts. He took the money she was supposed to deposit and paid his light bill, his water bill, put gas in his car. What a relief he must have felt to have those bills paid, no more creditors on his back, free for one quick minute. Dear God why are we such fools?
Since then none of the employees was allowed to go out alone, even to take out the garbage, even to smoke. But the years had softened them all, dulled them to the unpredictable possibilities of mean in the world. Instead of worry, if they thought about it at all, they reasoned that there was little harm in ten short minutes in the evening air.
Henry turned off the ignition. As usual, the car was a mess. He flipped the visor in front of him as dust floated into the air and he reached to pick up the solitary dime in among the litter of napkins and dried clay on the soiled carpets. He used to care about a car and was at the Crossroads Carwash and Laundry every Sunday morning, coaxing crinkled dollars into the change machine. There were times he even got there before the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were replacing or adding to the Watchtowers on the tables, a blur in long skirts and sensible shoes. He meant to take one of the magazines, but he was afraid of what they would mean to him. That he was a man so easily bought by images of wholesome children and the promise of good love in paradise. In those days he kept a bucket in his trunk with Turtle Wax, chamois, and dishwashing liquid (preferably lemon fresh Joy, nothing made better lather than that), a stiff bristle brush for scrubbing the tires. The cars he owned were never special, but the sparkle of his, all his, even on the roof where nobody would look, gave him a satisfaction that to the untrained eye looked like happiness.
In the visor in a stretchy band was the cracked plastic window of a yellowed bill. He had forgotten the light bill again. Ava would scream when she saw it, or worse, cry, like some real tragedy had struck. People get folded up in the creases of their lives.
Carrie was thick through the middle, her face rounded out, but she was a beautiful girl. The pouch below her belly button, the apron some women get who’ve had babies, was never concealed by the long shirts she wore. Nobody cared about her flabby belly. Carrie opened the passenger door and leaned in to Henry as he kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’m glad to see you, baby,” he said. He held her shoulders afraid of the long blondish brown strands of her hair that might find their way to his clothes. Ava had pulled a strand of it from him one day, pinched it between her fingers, and dropped it in the trash. She’d said nothing, but Henry knew her well enough to know she had stored the information for later.
“What are you doing here? Jerri told me she saw your car or I’d have missed you.” Carrie slipped the apron over her head and positioned herself in the passenger seat to face Henry.
Carrie and Henry had met in high school, though Carrie didn’t know him then. She knew few of the black people at the school and was friends with none of them. A lot had happened to the world in twenty years. Back then no black kids dated white kids, not in public. Nobody Henry or Carrie knew was interested in making that public stand. What would be the point? And at that age there had to be a point. The mission of high school was to come from money and have great hair, but blend in and be invisible and envied by everyone.
“I can’t stay. I just got off from work.”
“Look at you? You’ve got sawdust in your hair.” Carrie brushed Henry’s hair with her hand. Henry stopped her and rested his face in her palm. “Baby are you okay?”
“I’m fine, just listening to the radio.”
“You depressed?”
“No I don’t get depressed. Just bored.” Henry took Carrie’s hand and placed it on her lap. “Don’t make everything so serious.”
Carrie searched Henry’s face for deceit. Not that she needed proof, he was obviously sad. “I miss you, Henry. We don’t get to see you anymore. When are you coming to the house? Zeke asks about you all the time.”
“I don’t know.” Henry rubbed the back of his head. “Maybe Thursday. Are you working? I’ll be off. I’ll bring him something.” Henry wished he could be more like Zeke with no need to name and define his life, no time for a one-eyed squint at the world trying to really see it. He just took things as they came. Five-year-olds have it made. “Ava’s going to be with Sylvia. I’ll know more tomorrow.”
“Are you coming in?”
“I’ll just do the drive-through.”
“Come on in a few minutes. If you sit in my station we can talk as long as we want to.”
Henry was shaking his head no.
“She’s not going to notice you gone for a few minutes,” Carrie snapped.