Jane Two (23 page)

Now, The Piccadilly Cafeteria was a bit of a maze to navigate, and probably a firetrap, too, by today's standards. The front door just brought you into a breezeway, which was like a little glass box of about fifteen feet wide and about eight feet deep that ended with two doors to the cafeteria. So, when you entered, there was a door to your left that took you into the cafeteria, and a handleless door to the right that was an “exit only” by the cashier. Well, this man had run from the cashier with a fistful of money all the way around to the door by the entrance that was handleless on the inside, and only opened inward. He was frantically banging on the door, as if it would open if he just ran at it harder.

“Open the goddamn door, nigga-bitch,” the man screamed at Miss Shelby, who was black.

“Git yerself another macaroni, boy, I'll be right back,” growled my Grandaddy long and low. Never taking his eyes off the thief, my Grandaddy walked calmly to the correct exit, slowly folding the napkin that had been in his lap, and handed it to Miss Shelby. “Miss Shelby, don't you listen that now. He a thief. And you's a lady. Hear?” She smiled gratefully at Grandaddy and let him take the keychain that was clipped to the belt on her pantsuit.

The man immediately saw my Grandaddy exiting into the breezeway and started sprinting around to the only exit that allowed freedom. The man came busting into the breezeway just as my Grandaddy pulled the key out from the dead bolt that locked the final door to the parking lot. I made my way to the entrance, where the thief initially tried to exit, and watched as my Grandaddy sat Clint Eastwood the fuck down, the way he dealt with this man. Now Grandaddy was in his fifties at the time, and this man was fit, and in his early twenties, and had just screamed at Miss Shelby to “Unlock these fuckin' doors NOW, nigger!”

“I'm the nigger y'gon' talk to right now, boy,” said Grandaddy as he clipped the keys to his own belt. “Now y'gon' go back inside, and apologize to that beautiful woman in there, that's Miss Shelby. Then pick all the money you dropped while you was runnin' the Piccadilly, hand it nicely back to Miss Shelby, and then we gon' talk about how you can pay fer yer meal.” I had my face smashed against the glass watching as Miss Tillman, one of the servers, tried to pull me back to the safety of the kitchen, but I would not budge. The man took a moment to think about it. I knew that he was about to do the right thing…just as he did the wrong thing. He leapt at my Grandaddy, and was met by a huge left hand that latched on to the front of his collar and held him at a safe arm's-length. The man tried in vain to release the hand as we both heard, “Well, what're you gonna do, son?” The man then seemed to relax for a brief moment, sizing up his options. He stared into my Grandaddy's eyes, and then exploded, throwing wild punches that were just out of reach. Grandaddy balled up his empty hand, held it by his right ear, and yanked the man's face toward him by his collar as he threw that giant right fist. They met in the middle with a violent crack. My Grandaddy repeated this three more times. Blood flung onto the window right above my face as he dragged him by his collar to the corner of the breezeway right in front of me and dropped him with all his stolen money in a heap.

Grandaddy turned and walked back into the cafeteria. I was back at our table before he was, and Miss Shelby and Miss Tillman were in a panic next to me. He sat down, asked Miss Shelby for his napkin back, and told her, “Tell that boy when he wakes up to come get the keys from me and he can go.” He palmed his big glass of ice water over the rim and turned it upside down over my empty bowl of macaroni and cheese. After all the water drained out, he dumped the ice into his napkin, twisted the edges, and wrapped his knuckles saying, “Your Mamau sees the swellin' otherwise,” and threw a spoon into his pinto beans. My last cube of green Jell-O swiveled as my Grandaddy finished his beans, and I watched Miss Shelby and Miss Tillman talking to that man through the glass. He finally stood up and entered through the door he initially tried to beat down, and walked up to our table. My Grandaddy unclipped Miss Shelby's keys from his belt, held them up without looking at the man and said, “The gold key in the middle open the front door. You can put that money back in the register and let yourself out, or you can sit here and talk to me.” I jumped in my chair as the man grabbed the keys in a whiff and bolted to the front. He fumbled with the keys until he found the one that finally unlocked the door while sporadically looking back to make sure that my Grandaddy wasn't coming after him. He then ran out into the parking lot.

My Grandaddy just looked over his shoulder and said, “That just really hurts my feelin's. Boy's garbage. Garbage's what's wrong with the world.”

“Charlie!” Miss Shelby yelled. “He's coming back in.”

We both looked up to the front door and sure enough, the man was back in the breezeway looking right at us with two fists full of dollar bills. My Grandaddy pulled out his huge index finger and threw it looping over his head indicating for the man to come over to our table, and went right in for another spoon of beans. Miss Shelby beat the man to the table and offered to take me away, when my Grandaddy said, “Not necessary, boy's gonna stay, he needs to hear this. Boudin for my great-granbabbies.” She just looked at him kind of shocked and slinked away. The man arrived coated in defeat and blood and opened his mouth to speak when he was met with, “Have a seat, son.” The man slowly took a seat, and my Grandaddy removed his soaked napkin from his knuckles and handed it to the man and said, “Go on, clean yerself up.” The man began wiping off his face with wells of tears in his eyes as Grandaddy asked, “You steal 'cause you ain't have money to eat, or you steal 'cause you's an ass?”

“Bit of both I s'pect. I'm sorry, sir. Woman in the lot says you's the law,” the man said. I had just seen this man violently throw himself into a glass door to try to escape The Piccadilly with a handful of stolen money, curse out and attack my Grandaddy, but I truly felt horrible for him. He hurt. He hurt badly.

“I can fix the job, but you gotta promise me you gonna fix the ass,” said Grandaddy. “You gonna clean up here at The Piccadilly, then you gonna clean up next door at the Piggly Wiggly till they tell ya you done every day for a month, then you'll be clean. I'll have Miss Shelby give ya' three hot meals a day here and I'll tell 'em to keep you least for the thirty days, but if you really wanna rid youself of the ass, then you make them wanna keep you.”

“How do I do that, sir, when I just tried to steal off 'em?” he said.

“Miss Shelby!” Grandaddy called out, “Bring us a pen and paper placemat, will ya?”

Miss Shelby rushed back to the table as if summoned by royalty, laid a placemat and pen on the table, then drifted back to the front door as a patrol officer finally showed up. I saw the uniformed officer walk briskly in through the front doors with his hand on his holstered weapon, then he called for my Grandaddy.

“Fine, Macky, no need, go back ta business,” my Grandaddy responded without even looking up. “Now, what's your name son?”

“Lenny Frank, sir,” said the man.

“You write, son?”

“Yessir, a bit,” he responded.

“Write this down. It's three things you gotta do every day. My own daddy gave me these. Three easy shit little things and I promise you they's gonna wanna keep you here at The Piccadilly Cafeteria. You ready?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lenny, as he picked up the pen with his hands shaking like he was freezing to death.

“Number one, you gon' show up early.” My Grandaddy took another scoop of beans as he waited for Lenny's pen to catch up. “Number two, stay late…and number three, volunteer for the hard shit. You do them three, and you already ahead of the whole field. You do those three every single day for that month, and they gon' ask you ta stay and they even gone pay you. Now, you wanna know how to stop cleanin' and move up in this company? One simple rule: For every dollar Mr. Jarman pay you here at his Piccadilly, you give him two dollar of value. You understand me? I come back here next month and you don't work here for pay and I'll know you's lazy garbage. You lazy garbage, boy?” asked my Grandaddy.

“No, sir, I'm not,” answered Lenny.

“After I come back in three months, you still cleanin' and not moved up, I know you just lied to me…You a liar, boy?” he asked the man whose hand still shook like it was diseased.

“I'm not, sir,” responded Lenny.

“Three simple things to tell a boss you'll do, and you get any job in the world…and one extra if'n you wanna be a boss,” said Grandaddy leaning in toward Lenny, whose face was now down practically touching the placemat ready to write. “Shake my hand and get yourself home, you gonna be here shit early, son.” The man's hand came up in front of my Grandaddy. “Ain't no shake you don't look a man the eye, son. You look him in the eye and you give him the truth're you don't shake at all. You give me the truth, boy?” my Grandaddy asked him. Lenny's head slowly came up from pretending to write on the placemat. Two full eyes of tears and he offered my Grandaddy his hand. My Grandaddy scribbled on the blank placemat, stood up, shook his hand, and said, “Now get outta here, lemme finish my beans with my boy…you tell your momma you had good talk with Charlie and that shit gon' change…but leave out the shit, you don't curse your momma, hear me?”

“Sir,” he said, and the man held his gaze for a moment and slowly walked for the door.

“You get your second macaroni, son?” my Grandaddy asked me.

“No, sir, I forgot,” I said.

“Finish that green plastic sugar cube'n we'll have Miss Shelby get you one ta go. Double macaroni don't come around enough.” My Grandaddy turned and gazed out the window as Lenny walked across the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. “And don't you tell your Mamau what we done today.”

“No, sir, I won't,” I promised.

Lenny was working at The Piccadilly Cafeteria every single time I ate there until it got bought out by the ice cream chain. I wish I could control my emotions when it's time to not have any compassion, like my Grandaddy did. He was cold and calculated, and he still had access to his logic and reasoning. But instead, my fists had a sort of physical Tourette's when my emotions got the best of me. To this day, I don't think I've ever struck someone in hostility without a tear in my eye. Where my Grandaddy was the definition of cool in those moments, I just turned into a vicious infant. In this way, I thought my Grandaddy's rattlesnake analogy was a bit flawed, that the cool had somehow skipped my generation. Emotionally, my dad and my Grandaddy were both very different than me, or so I thought.

I know how lucky I am to have had strong men in my life like my dad and my Grandaddy. But I was far too emotional to be strong like my father, and cried too often to be as tough as my Grandaddy. They did have a bit of rattlesnake, I thought, and I always wanted a little bit for myself. I had never seen either of them cry the way that I so often couldn't help myself. But, there is always a moment in a child's life when he realizes that his father is as big as life itself, but not actually larger. We're all the size of life, and maybe my dad was just a more pronounced version. He didn't take up any more space than I did, but he did it in a much more profound way.

My dad shrank to a mortal size and I saw my lineage accurately defined the night we returned home from seeing snow for the very first time. It was soon after Lilyth's return from being “away” and after she cut my tassels, ending our truce, and right after the trip that was intended to be a family reunion for Mom, Dad, Lilyth, and me. No mention was made of Lilyth's baby Charlotte or the nuns. The endless drive back from the wonder of snow in Taos, New Mexico, put us in late to find my buddy Kim from next door slumped over my handprints in the cement step, crying. Kim had been feeding Steve McQueen for us and letting him out to do his business, and didn't know what was wrong with him all of a sudden. My dog's stomach looked like it had been inflated with a bicycle pump. Wheezing, Steve McQueen waddled stoically into the kitchen and his knees just kind of buckled at my feet. I knew something was really wrong. No Grunt came as I did not even try to stop the tears that showed up, seeing the look of apology in my dog's eyes, like he was ashamed that he hadn't run to the door and jumped on me like always. My legs buckled, too, and we met on the floor.

My dad immediately slung Steve McQueen in his arms, told the girls to stay by the phone, and told me to get in the back of the car and hold Steve steady and calm so he could race us to the vet. My mom kept saying, “It'll be fine,” and patting Steve's head,
nice dog
, every time Steve released a brittle whine. She closed the door with tears in her eyes, her palm remained pressed flat on the glass until the car pulled away from her. As my dad and I drove, my dad kept assuring me we'd be at the vet soon, his voice steady as usual. My best friend never took his eyes off me as my dad drove and told me to be strong for Steve McQueen.

“We'll get him the help he needs, son. But you hold him tight, boy, and let him know that we're right here and ain't going nowhere.”

I wanted my dad's strength. I wanted my dad's control. My dad spoke to me the whole way to the vet's office, just like we were at the dinner table discussing dodging open field tackles. Steve McQueen had spent every single moment of his life with either me or my dad. I wanted my dog to know I was there for him just like I knew my dad was there for me. I wanted to be strong for Steve, but I was completely overwhelmed by the possibility of losing my best friend in the world. And that level of grief punctured my chest like a pointed helmet charging at me for an open field tackle. Where was my rattlesnake when I needed it? I needed to be cool for Steve, like my dad was. In his moment of pain, Steve did not need to worry about me, and see my chest heaving so severely that I could hardly get an “okay” out at each of my dad's instructions. I was truly a child, but my dad was a man.