Cold Flat Junction

There are some words that can set up in me a kind of home-sickness for a thing other than home. The feeling is such a close kin to fear, it could convince you that fear is what it is. The Florida words seem to have done this and made me homesick for a place I’ve never been and probably never will be.

I am easily haunted. If any spirit wanted to, it could take me over without any trouble at all, slipping in through the invisible cracks in my skin. We all have cracks but don’t know it; we are all pretty windy.

Cold Flat Junction is like that. It has something to do with the silence and the distances. The distances are all around me—north south east west. Wherever I look is endless; nothing stops my looking. Something should; you’d expect something to stop it, a wall or a mountain, but Cold Flat Junction land just seems to go on forever. There are houses, of course, though even these are kind of spread out. There are a few businesses, like the Esso station and Rudy’s Bar and the Windy Run Diner. There are these, but it’s the stretches beyond these that I’m talking about. From the railroad station, I look across the tracks and the land beyond and those dark blue trees that are its horizon and this homesick feeling comes over me.

Cold Flat Junction seldom sees passengers either coming or going. The reason the train makes the stop at all is because of the old railroad station, which I think is called by some “an architectural gem.” I guess it is Victorian.

“The Junction,” as people who live around here sometimes refer to it, was originally expected to be a bustling, busy place, with the two roads intersecting there—a junction through which much traffic was expected to move, but none ever did. I had been here three times, twice aboard the train, once with Mr. Root and the Wood boys. The train compartment was pleasantly stuffy, with worn, burgundy-colored and once flowered horsehair seats. When the conductor came, I handed him the ticket that I’d bought last time. It had never been collected and I expected him to refuse it, but he didn’t.

I was the only person to step down to the Cold Flat Junction platform; I stood and looked at the imposing red brick station, which belonged in a much bigger, more interesting town. As always, it looked closed but wasn’t, although the blind was once again pulled down over the ticket window. I waited for the train to pull out, and when it had gone, I looked out again over that cropped, empty land on the other side that stretched away to that far-off line of dark woods. Then I set my feet in the direction of the diner, which stood across from the Esso station and which was the place I always stopped for information, and of course, food.

Its interior was by now familiar to me; I could see it perfectly in my thoughts when I was somewhere else. The counter, where I always sat, was a kind of half-horseshoe design with four seats going around the end curve. There were tables with chrome legs and different-colored Formica tops; a few booths were installed in the comer nearest the door. The booths were dark red Naugahyde, and one torn seat back was bandaged with silver duct tape. It all gave the impression of being furnished with leftovers, not enough of any one thing to fit the place out correctly. Skimpy flowered curtains too short to reach the sill hung at the small windows. I took my usual seat at the curved end of the counter and pulled out a menu. It was the same.

So were the customers. I recognized all of them, including the married couple in a booth. There was Billy, the one who looked like a truck driver but probably wasn’t, as he spent so much time in Cold Flat Junction, at least in the diner. Down the counter were the two whiskered men wearing the same blue caps that looked like those old railroad caps you see in pictures. One was named Don Joe; I think the other was named Evren. There was a heavy-set, chain-smoking woman in thick glasses who sat at the counter. And of course, the one waitress, “Louise Snell, Prop.” (This was on the badge she wore on her uniform.)

Now, here I came, blowing in like the dry wind that carries grit and sand across the railroad tracks, and no one seemed to think it peculiar that this was the fourth time I’d been here, unaccompanied, as usual, by any adult. The first time, Louise Snell had asked, in a friendly and not nosy way, where I was from, or what I was doing here in her Windy Run Diner. My reason had been that my dad’s car had broken down and it was being fixed over at the Esso place. The times I had come before today had been information-gathering events. Once for Toya Tidewater (who I never found) and again for Jude Stemple (who I did).

This question was not asked in a joking manner, but in a small-talk way. Would that car still be at the Esso station after nearly three weeks? But this didn’t faze them one bit. Nothing much did. Things just didn’t seem to change here, at least that’s my impression. It accounts, I guess, for the mysterious quality of Time, as if Time had been misplaced and we all had to get along as best we could without it. I remembered one of our hotel guests who explored a lot, talking about his travels in Tibet: the farther up he went into the mountains and the villages in them, the more time rolled back until he got to one so far up he felt completely outside of time.

Thinking of the ham pinwheels with cheese sauce my mother had left for our lunch, I had to check with my stomach to see how it felt about the hot roast beef sandwich. It told me the roast beef would be too much, and I had better just settle for pie and a Coke. The pies were displayed in a cupboard behind glass. The chocolate cream looked really good so I ordered that.

Instead of starting right off with asking Louise Landis’s whereabouts, I decided that mentioning Ben Queen would be the best route to take to her. After all, it’d been all over the papers that police were looking for him “to assist in their inquiries” into the shooting death of Fern. Since Ben Queen came from here, they’d regard the place itself as more or less famous and would be glad to talk about it. I smiled at everybody to get them feeling friendly toward me, but it was a wasted smile, as they were always glad to see a stranger here, even if the stranger was a kid.

I asked, “Doesn’t that man police are looking for live in Cold Flat Junction?” I mustered up my dumb look. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it really was dumb, for the question set off a spate of reactions that would go on and on until doomsday and would never get to Louise Landis.

Billy waved a dismissive hand at the two and turned back to the counter. Just as Louise Snell passed him with my pie, he said. “Don’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”

Ma’am? Me? Mervin sticking his nose in had kind of calmed things down, so I stirred them up. “Maybe he’s hiding out here somewhere—somewheres.” (I thought it would make them take to me more if I adopted a few little habits of speech.)

Up and down the counter they regarded one another as if this was crazy but interesting. “I just thought if he came—come—from here, well, it’d be where he’d want to hole up.”

Don Joe went on: “If I was Ben Queen, ’d’ve hotfooted it right to the border.” He slid one hand off another in imitation of the speed he’d fly off with.

“Twenty-one years,” I put in, thinking if I appeared knowledgeable, they’d be more inclined to pay attention. I didn’t know how long Alaska had been a state. I’m not even sure I knew it was. I knew there were two states added on to the forty-eight, but they could have been Nova Scotia and the Florida Keys for all I knew. For all any of us knew. They turned to me with something like respect. I looked around at their softly blinking eyes. What they reminded me of was the forest creatures’ eyes peeping into the dark where Snow White lay asleep. But I felt more like Cinderella than Snow White, for Cinderella had those evil stepsisters. It would take two to make up one Ree-Jane.

I told myself to stop thinking about fairy tales and get back to the real world and its problems. But then I wondered, looking into the sleepy-seeming ring of eyes: were the seven dwarfs any more of a fairy tale than what we’d got going here in Cold Flat Junction? I shook myself a little, for I felt spell-bound, or about to be.

They seemed to be waiting—Billy and Don Joe and the others—for further historical revelations. I remembered Hawaii. “Number fifty’s Hawaii. That’s been a state for, oh, ten or eleven years, at least.” We were way off the subject. I squinted my eyes up and said, “Now, what were we talking about? Oh, this Ben Queen. But if he’s from here, he must have ... kin (a good word) around here.”

“Of course he does, Evren,” said Billy. “Queens has lived here long as we have. That big house over on Dubois Road. Ben’s brother and sister-in-law, that Sheba, live there. Ben lived there with Rose and Fern when their house was gettin’ built.”

“Pretty girl from over Spirit Lake way. Yeah, ol’ Ben, he really give us a surprise there.” Billy was fingering a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket.

I was hoping someone would nose in with “What surprise?” but all they did was nod and murmer, so it was left to me. I imagine I knew as much as they did about Rose Devereau Queen.

They pursed their lips and looked thoughtful. For heaven’s sakes, why was it so hard to remember Louise Landis had been Ben’s steady girl before Rose?

Don Joe leaned so he could look past Billy and down the counter. “Why’s that? The Junction ain’t a bad place. I growed up right here all my life!” He slapped his small hand on the counter.

She turned to him. “I never said it wasn’t a nice place. But Louise Landis, shoot, she’s too smart and educated to spend her life here teaching in that little no-account school. She graduated college. Then she went to some big university and got herself a—whaddayacallit?—an Advanced Degree.”

Wow! I thought. What was Louise Landis doing in Cold Flat Junction? “Is Ben Queen? Educated, I mean?” I knew he wasn’t, but I wanted to hear more about the two of them.

Billy snorted. “Hell, no—’scuse my French—Ben, he couldn’t hardly sit still for stuff like that. He was one wild kid,” he added, obviously forgetting he’d laid into the man in the booth for saying just that.

I waited for more on Ben’s “wildness,” but Billy just clammed up, not giving thought to Ben Queen, but merely to the fact everyone here knew him. I drew little but air and ice through my straw and said, “I hate school.” They all smiled and nodded because that was what a kid should do. Hate school. But they didn’t say anything more about Louise Landis. “This Miss Landis, she must be a good teacher.”

“Absolutely,” said Louise Snell. “Of course she’s wasted here because she’s oversmart, even though she’s the principal. And the school only goes up to fifth grade. Then they have to go to Cloverly to the big school.”

“Real nice person,” said Billy. “Ev‘ry year she has a treat for them orphans that live up to that institution outside Cloverly, takes ’em out to lunch and stuff. Real nice woman.”

There was I guess you’d say a “respectful silence.” Then Don Joe asked Louise Snell, “Does Lou Landis still live over there in the Holler?”

I could have clapped. Here’s the information I wanted. At the same time, I felt just a trifle irritated because I myself hadn’t wormed it out of them.

Louise Snell nodded. “Surely does. Same house her folks lived in all along. They’re dead,” she said to me, as if it was information I might need. “It’s an awful big house just for one person.”

I stayed looking down the length of my straw and hoped it wouldn’t jog their memory that I’d been here not long ago asking about an Abel Stemple. But they didn’t remark on that.

“There’s some really big houses here,” I said. “I guess hers is one of them.” But it would be no problem at all to find out which it was, as all I’d have to do is ask Jude Stemple. We were by this time by way of being friends.

With a final clatter, I set down my Coke glass. “Well, it’s real nice talking to you. I guess I better be on my way.” I smiled brightly and slid from the stool, then looked up at the big clock, gasped, “Oh, I’m late,” and rushed to the cash register with my check before they could ask where I was off to.