Leaving the Comfort Cafe

By

Dawn DeAnna Wilson

Copyright © 2007 by Dawn DeAnna Wilson

www.dawndeannawilson.com

These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

First print edition by The Wild Rose Press, Adams Basin, New York

Second electronic edition by Carraway Bay Press, North Carolina

While every effort has been made to create an error-free reading experience, despite our best efforts, formatting issues or typos may occasionally occur. To report any of these issues, please contact the author at [email protected].

Dedication:

For Debbie, Alyssa and Fredia.

With special thanks to the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, NC.

In 65 AD, he was a Norse god…

It was an intimate part of Austin’s fantasy. He pictured himself as one of the superheroes who inked the well-worn pages of the comic books he collected as a kid. Thor. Superman. Spider Man. But he always came back to Thor. The Norse thunder god. The name itself carried power. He sometimes whispered it when no one was listening and heard how the vowel landed short and heavy on his lips. Austin imagined that statues honoring his heroic deeds were carved out of the finest marble, his rippled biceps flowing into strong hands. Instead of his thinning, mousy brown hair, his statue would have long curls brushing his shoulders in the way Samson’s must have before Delilah took the scissors to it. Women would gaze into his ivory face and ample groin with swooning stares…and finally, he would be mistaken for someone important.

Reality, as always, was an entirely different matter. It came crashing down around in heavy bursts of ash and smoke, like a psychological Pompeii, freezing him in time and space. He was a grown man remembering super-hero fantasies. Pathetic.

In reality, he crouched on his hands and knees; his forehead was not of the finest marble, but a sweaty disarray of thinning hair—with an occasional stray strand flopping in defeat to rest just above his right eyebrow. His chin was not delicately sculpted like a noble Norse god of mythical proportions, but a bit too short, displaying the newly carved nick he gave himself shaving that morning. His hands may have been strong at one point, but now as the nimble but weary victims of the early stages of carpel tunnel syndrome, they gingerly shuffled through the overgrown grass and weeds, rustling through an entangled backyard, hoping to scare anything that might consider slithering into his path. Occasionally the overgrown grass responded to his shuffling with a surprisingly resistant spring, slapping back into his face and sticking his nostrils with a sickly sweet smell. It was a scent that grass and hay only seemed to produce when the humidity of eastern North Carolina summers reached legendary proportions. Occasionally a mosquito laughed in his ear. Occasionally a mosquito barked in his ear. Occasionally a mosquito bit his ear. Austin wondered if the Centers for Disease Control had any reports of West Nile Virus in North Carolina. He made a mental note to check the CDC website as soon as he returned to the office.

“Didyaseeit?!” The command snapped sharp, clear from behind him.

“What?”

“Did…ya…see…it?” The old woman stood at the corner of her yard, arms folded in front of her chest in disgust, her apron displaying the chocolate remains of a freshly baked batch of cookies that she certainly would not offer Austin.

When the town manager spoke of the “snake lady” who lived at the corner of First and James streets, Austin couldn’t believe that any sweet, genteel, Southern matriarch could strike such frustration in the hearts of those who served the town. “Just go and check it out,” the town manager had told him. “Just rustle around in the grass until she’s satisfied there’s no giant anaconda lying in wait to eat her or her grandkids.”

It sounded simple enough for his first day on the job—maybe even a nice diversion. It would save him from having a directorial debut of pushing papers, perusing spreadsheets, and enduring awkward small talk when Robert introduced him to the Conyers’ aldermen as the new town manager. At least this way, Austin could enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. It would give him a chance to practice the public relations skills he bragged about in his job interview.

But after one humid, hay-fever drenched hour of creeping through the weeds on his hands and knees, Austin would have given anything to push papers and peruse spreadsheets.

“Ma’am, I don’t see anything.” He was surprised to find himself panting. He told himself it was because of the heat and not because he needed to spend more time at the gym.

“Do you even know what a snake’s nest looks like? Do they even have snakes wherever it was you came from up North?”

“Excuse me?” Austin asked in his best lived-down-here-ten-years-and-I-hope-you-can’t-tell-I-was-born-up-North accent. He had given up trying to develop a realistic Southern drawl years ago. Living in Raleigh had taken most of the gnarl out of his voice, but his nervous tenor always indicated he was not a native.

“Snakes. Up North. You don’t have any snake’s nests up there?”

“No. We don’t.” A lie, sure. But it effectively ended the conversation.

“Well, I saw it the other day. Where there’s one snake, there’s two. That property belongs to the town, and if the town can’t keep it trimmed back, then I want to be sure there aren’t any snake nests lurking out there. My grandkids are comin’ up this weekend. Can’t have them get bitten. Lord, ya mean you don’t see anything?”

Austin’s throat gulped for air, but his lungs were greeted by searing steam—the heat blowing in his face. Sweat pooled on the corner of his eyebrow and eased down into the corner of his eye. When he stood up, his back creaked, admonishing him for thinking that he was suited for anything other than sitting behind a desk. He trudged toward the edge of the field, cooled only by the icy stare of the elderly “snake lady” who was now wringing her hands in apprehension.

“Ma’am, I did not see any snakes in that field, nor did I see a snake’s nest, borrow, den, hutch, hole, cave, dam or whatever else snakes make in which to hide.” Austin removed a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his forehead. During his excursion in the field he had only run across a field mouse, various varieties of bugs, and enough mosquitoes to create their own National Geographic television special. No snakes.

“Are you saying I didn’t see a snake?”

“No ma’am. I’m just saying I didn’t find any snakes.”

“Or eggs?”

“Pardon?”

“Eggs? Oh hell’s bells, boy, you do know that snakes lay eggs, don’t ya? Or do they not have snake eggs up North?”

Again with up North. “No, no ma’am, no snakes in Pennsylvania.”

“Well, were you looking for snake eggs?” she persisted. Her cloudy gray eyes made Austin think she may not have been able to see a snake if it slithered on her front porch and knocked on her door. “If you weren’t looking for them, you might have seen them and not realized what you saw. You better check again.”

“Ma’am…” Austin bit the inside of his cheek as he carefully chose his conversation. “Let me check back with the town. I’m sure they have a snake eradication plan in place or a snake egg detector or something that could help us both get down to the bottom of this.” Dear God, I have to get out of here, he thought, and imagined the cold marble of his superhero statue, as if by imagining, the icy stone could reach out of his mind and cool his body.

“Well,” she snorted and rolled her tongue around in her mouth as if she was enjoying a pinch of tobacco. “I’m sick of waiting for that sorry leader you got to do anything about it.”

Austin turned to leave.

“You just wait,” she called behind him. “They got a new town manager coming this week. He’s going to get these snakes taken care of. He’s going to get this place into shape and we’re not going to have any of these snake eggs hatching where innocent little children can get bit—the curse of Eden, snakes are, the curse of Eden. You just go on back, and you tell that new town manager, that new boy, that we’ve got a serious snake situation in this town. You be sure to tell that to the new town manager.”

“I don’t have to tell him,” Austin muttered under his breath as he got back in his truck. “You already did.”

Austin wished he could retreat back to the pages of colorful comic panels and serial cliffhangers that made him eagerly check the mail for the next edition of Captain America, GI Joe—but especially Thor because Thor was a Norse god. He controlled thunder. He controlled things. He didn’t have some fancy device or fast car or mutant alien muck or a business card that read “town manager” to make him who he was. He had control. He saved the damsel in distress. Dashed evildoers to their doom with campy catchphrases like “Kerpow!” and “Zowie!”

But practical parents constantly reminded him that career options for superheroes were extremely limited.

When he first applied for the job in Conyers, he thought the town was located in Georgia—the same place that was home to a sighting of the Virgin Mary several years back. The town clerk, Queen, quickly informed him that no such miracles occurred in the North Carolina Conyers namesake, but that still didn’t prevent confused visitors from wandering into Town Hall and asking where they could catch a glimpse of the Blessed Virgin.