CHAPTER 7

 © 2010 GREG DUNAJ 

7.

        The car had pulled off the road and came to a halt in a gravel-lined parking lot. Carlo was still in the backseat. Harry’s face appeared over the front seat, broad and beaming.  

        "Hey buddy, it's breakfast time," he said in a voice much too loud for Carlo's present state of thought. 

        "Okay," said Carlo as he weakly pulled himself upright from his cramped position. "Where are we?" 

        "The Hell I know, but I couldn't pass up a sign for biscuits and gravy." 

        "Of course, how could you," said Carlo. 

        They got out of the car. There was a semi parked in the back of the worn looking building. The place was called the Mountaineer Diner and Gift Shop. The sign for biscuits and gravy was written on a white card and hung in the window. The word gravy was spelled G-R-A-V-E-Y.

        "Killer food, I bet," said Carlo gesturing with his cigarette.

        They pondered the statue that stood near the road. It was of a bearded man wearing tattered clothes and patched hat holding a rifle over his shoulder.

The statue was an advertisement for the diner, but the colors of the fiberglass statue were faded. Someone had unloaded a shotgun into the face. The nose was missing and there was a hole where the right ear should have sat.

        "Hillbilly," said Harry after a moment.

        "Mountaineer," said Carlo with an incredulous grimace. They walked inside.

         A very large woman wearing a pink v-neck sweater that revealed a deeply creased cleavage, and wearing a flimsy pink scarf tied around her neck, yelled a hearty hello at them when they entered. Sitting behind the cash register, she waved a meaty arm at the half-empty eatery, telling them to sit anywhere they'd like, that Francine will be with them soon. Retrieving a pencil from her beehive hairdo, she attacked an itch somewhere between her shoulder blades.

        The gift shop was a glass counter at the cash register. Aside from gums and candies there were a couple of knick-knacks: water filled glass balls with the Mountaineer guy (nose attached still) amid swirling Styrofoam snow; wooden moving novelties that depicted a man and women in compromising positions; tri-colored crocheted doilies; lapel pins of the American and Confederate flag crossed, and toy-sized plastic out-houses, complete with a urinating boy inside, that served as banks. 

        "Maybe get a souvenir here for Kris," quipped Carlo as they passed the display on their way to the men's room.

        They sat at a table in the corner, with a good view of both the road and the grill. There were three calendars hanging on the wall to one side of the cash register. One advertised the Mountaineer Diner, and had a close-up picture of the namesake statue outside. The nose was gone in the photograph too. A second calendar came from Agway and the third was graced by September's Miss 4H posing with her prized Rhode Island Red. 

        Francine was a withered old woman wearing an orange uniform. The skin on her arms hung in folds. She had an orange ribbon either tied or stuck onto her hair sprayed bun. She brandished a coffee pot. 

        "Coffee," she said as she righted their mugs and began to pour without waiting for a response. She was simply describing the black liquid that sloshed into the mugs to waylay their fear. Fetching some creamers from a pocket of her uniform, she piled them on the table. "I'll give you some time," she said and she turned to leave. Harry stopped her.

        "I know what I want."

        "Aw right."

        She stood there half-turned away from Harry and still holding the coffee pot.

        "Well, biscuits and gravy, of course. I saw the sign."

        "Gets them in every time," said Francine without enthusiasm.

        "Then I'll have one egg, no, two eggs over easy, no fried, you know what, scrambled. Then, sausage...Do you have links or patties?"

        "Links and patties."

        "Links then, no, make it patties."

        "Hot or sweet?"

        "Hot."

        "Then it's links."

        "No patties?"

        "Patties don't come hot, only sweet. So it's links."

        "Links then, I guess...and orange juice."

        "Pulp?"

        "Is that fresh squeezed, or is it concentrate? I think, I think I'll have the pulp."

        Francine put the coffee pot on the table; it was getting too heavy for her to hold. She sighed deeply before she continued.

        "Potatoes?"

        "Home fries?"

        "No potatoes.

        "Potatoes, and an order of rye toast....no, an English muffin....no, a bran muffin....no, no, make it the rye toast. You have the rye with those little seeds in them....what are they called?"

        "No rye, white."

        "Caraway seeds?"

        "Yes, caraway seeds in your rye?"

        "No rye. White."

        "Oh? No rye? Whole wheat?"

        "No, white."

        "White... with some jelly on the side."

        There was a long pause where no one spoke.

        "That it?" said Francine.

        "That's white toast, right?"

        "Ye-ah."

        There was another long pause.

        "Well," said Francine tentatively.

        "Yeah, yeah, that'll be it."

        "Gonna eat?" said Francine gruffly to Carlo who was sitting there patiently smoking a cigarette. "I hope you know what you want."

        "His crumbs would be enough for me," he said, flashing his big smile.

        The stone-faced Francine finally turned and fully looked at the men.

She put the coffee pot down and leveled her eyes first at Carlo and then Harry.

Her eyes loomed large and ominous through her thick glasses. After staring at

Harry for several seconds she turned back to Carlo.

        "What are you gonna want?" A flash of anger danced in her voice. 

        "Well Ma'am, would you be so kind as to bring me some country ham and

red-eye gravy, fried apples, couple of fried eggs, some breakfast grits..."

        "Hey, yeah, grits. I want some of them too."

        Both Francine and Carlo gave Harry a look.

        "And, could you find it in your heart to bring me some freezer biscuits?"

        Francine's grimace softened. 

        "We call them Angel biscuits around here, darling."

        "Angel biscuits then," said Carlo smiling. "And, some fresh-squeezed orange juice, please."

        As Francine walked away Harry looked between the two, a terse look on his face.

        "Darling?"

        "What?"

        "Darling! I thought she was going to kill me...but she calls you 'darling'!"

        "Jealous, huh?"

        "Well...you handled that well."

        "What did I do? I just ordered breakfast."

        "But you knew what to order. What the hell did you order? You didn't get biscuits and gravy...you get ANGEL biscuits."

        "Yeah, I took a chance calling them freezer biscuits. There are different names for them."

        "What are they, and what's red-eye gravy?"

        "They're just biscuits, really. They're usually made beforehand and kept in the refrigerator before they're baked. And, red-eye gravy is what goes on country ham around here."

        "Red-eye gravy. It sounds like a late-night thing."

        "Well, the story behind it has to do with a drunken chef thinking the ham bone was an eye."

        "Again, you amaze me with stories from the road. I guess you've traveled through here."

        "I don't know exactly where we are, but it's Appalachia or the Up Country somewhere."

        "Up country?"

        "Hills as opposed to low country, near the coast. Just after high school I hitched a ride with a semi going to New Orleans. The guy had me all over the south and I ate in some weird places and had some meals I'd never find back in Jersey, like fried squirrel and something somebody called souse. It was head cheese or something like that."

        "What's head cheese? Wait, maybe I don't want to know."

        "You don't want to know."

        "And squirrel?"

        "Wasn't that bad. Tender, in a gravy, it was good. You'd probably like it."

        "Did you get to keep the tail?"

        "No, nope, I had to give it back."

        They sat there awhile in silence. Outside, clouds billowed over the tree covered mountains. A light rain began to fall. A semi pulled out of the parking lot of the diner and made its way along the slick road.

        "You know I envy you and your travels."

        "Well," said Carlo, he shrugged his shoulders.

        "I mean, New Orleans and Paris. Where haven't you been?"

        "Lot's of places."

        "C'mon."

        "Really."

        "Really?"

        "Of course. Lot's of places."

        "Well, hell. You've still seen a lot more places than I'll ever see, even if you haven't seen everything."

        "I guess."

        "Now, I'll never have the chance."

        "Yes, you will." Carlo put a hand to his brow and closed his eyes. He held his other hand out before him. "I see a trip to Florida in your future."

        Harry rubbed his face and looked out the window.

        "You're wearing mutant mouse ears..."

        "I mean with the house and now the baby and..."

        "You're out now aren't you?"

        "But it's not the same. We're going to get back in a few days, and then it's back to work. It's hard to have everything planned out. I don't have as much freedom since Amanda was born and Chris' father got me a job at his place. I got a house and a mortgage and a baby and a wife. I don't have a life anymore. Not like you. You're the one with the life."

        Carlo was staring out the window, blowing smoke against the window pane and watching it billow into a churning cloud. He closed his eyes and slowly breathed deeply.

        "You're right Harry. I've got the life of a king. I go where I want, sleep where I can. "

        "That's right. You don't have to work. How's that money holding out from that insurance settlement?"

        "I'm vanilla," said Carlo, waving a hand at his friend and turning back to the window pane. The rain was now coming down heavily.

        "That's something that happened to your aunt."

        "Yeah, I guess. It was bad for her...good for me."

        "Yeah. You're set for life."

        Carlo shrugged his shoulders. “Money wise, I guess.”

         They listened to a thunderclap and for a few moments watched the teeming rain.

        "It's coming down hard!" said Harry. "Good thing we stopped when we did. I'd hate to be driving in this."

        "Probably drive off a cliff."

        "Wouldn't see something until we hit it."

          Carlo nodded his head at the window. He spoke without turning his head towards Harry.

        "When's the last time you called Kris?"

        "Last night."

        "Everything okay?"

        "Yeah."

        "You should call her today. Let her know how we're doing."

        "Yeah, let her know we're caught in a monsoon. Wow, look at that! We're going the rest of the way by boat. I'll call her after we eat. You know, I don't even know where we are. I couldn't begin to guess."

         Carlo turned to look at Harry.

         “Wait a minute, you were driving. Don't you know?"

       "I was just following the road. Tennessee I guess. I was supposed to go along 81 or 40 straight through the state, right?"

        "I don't remember. Sounds right."

        "We're in trouble now."

        "What? What're you talking about?"

        "You're the man with all the answers. Got every fact in order. As long as I've known you, you've never left anything to chance."

        "Come on. How am I supposed to know where we've ended up? I was sleeping, or trying to. I'm tired. It's tough to sleep in the back seat of a car. I've been on the road for a long time. I haven't stopped since I left Paris. Got off the plane and went straight to your place."

        "Well, when we get to Dallas, we'll get a room in some motel. We'll stretch out a bit before the show. Get in a shower too."

        Carlo didn't really answer Harry. He just looked down the length of his cigarette and emitted some smoke from the corner of his mouth. The sky crackled with lightning.

        "How long you figure we have to drive? I mean I'd hate to miss Dedalus.

You don't think he'll be sold out do you?"

        "No, I don't think he'll be sold out. Now, if we're in Tennessee like you say, it'll depend on where in Tennessee we are. It's a long state. I mean are we near Nashville, or Memphis? There's nearly a day of driving difference right there."

        "I think we passed through Nashville. I'm not sure. We passed some city in the middle of the night. You were snoring away in the back, so I didn't want to wake you. I probably would have nodded off too, but my cigar kept me awake."

        "That wouldn't surprise me."

        "Really, it works for me. Whenever I have to go for a long ride, I'll fire up a cigar, and I'll stay awake."

        "How are you able to hold your breath for so long?"

        Harry laughed. "No, it gives me something to do."

        "Isn't driving enough?"

        "But you get on those dark roads and it gets monotonous. With a cigar it gives my hand something to do."

        Carlo stared blankly at Harry.

        "I have to worry about keeping the thing lit and ashes."

        "When do you pay attention to the road?"

        "The road takes care of itself."

        "It does?"

        "Yeah."

        "You...do...drive?"

        "Yeah. I just entertain myself like this. It's better than blasting the radio, or talking to myself, or singing to myself. Well, okay, maybe I'll sing a little to myself...quietly."

        "But, how does the road take care of itself?"

        "Well. I just drive along. I don't tell the road which way to turn."

        "That would be a pretty tough argument to win."

        "Yeah, right. "

        "When do you know...How do you know you're going in the right direction?"

        It was Harry's turn to stare blankly at Carlo.

        "If you come to a fork in the road, how do you know which one to take?"

        "Which fork?"

        "No, which way in the fork, left or right?"

        "Well, I'm usually driving in an area I know. I don't think I really have to think about which fork or which way in the fork to take. You know, I don't come across any forks in the road when I drive around going on errands or running into the city for work. There are turns of course. I know when to make a left or a right, or even when to go straight. And, I know that red means stop and green means go, and yellow means go faster."

        "Okay, okay." 

        Carlo laughed. Their food came. The diminutive Francine trundled up to their table, both arms laden with plates. She placed them all down on the table. There was a separate plate for the toast, the eggs, the ham steak, the fried apples and the biscuits and gravy. Carlo's ham steak filled the plate, a large pink eyeball with its circular bone for a pupil staring back at him.

        "Yikes, there's a lot of food."

        "I accept the challenge," said Harry.

        As the two of them tore into their food, Francine returned with her coffee pot and their orange juice. 

        "This is great," mumbled Harry. He smiled at Francine, a bit of gravy clinging to his left cheek. One of her eyes twitched, but there was no other reaction. She turned to leave. Carlo called her back. She stood at their table and looked over their heads and out the window. The sky was broken up in dark and white swatches and the trees were bending in a strong wind.

        "Hope y'all don't have to drive much in this."

        "That's what we wanted to ask you Francine," said Carlo as he watched

Harry snatch a piece of his ham steak, "how much further west is Memphis?"

        "Well Darling, y'all gotta go, y'all gotta go, I don't know....Say Desdemona how do you get to Memphis from here?"

        Desdemona was on the phone. She waved at Francine annoyingly and turned her hulking body away from them. 

        "I don't know," Francine said, flatly.

        "I guess we didn't get as far as we thought. I'm a little worried about this."

        "You don't know where we are, do you? You were driving."

        "I told you it gets monotonous driving at night."

        "Do you even know what state where in?"

        "Tennessee...I guess."

        "Where in Tennessee are we?"

        Francine did not answer them; she was preoccupied with looking out the window. The sky had turned very dark. She put her coffee pot down on the table.

        "I'd never seen weather like this," she said. "Say, Desdemona, you ever see weather like..."

        But again Desdemona angrily flicked her hand over her head at Francine to silence her. Another waitress lumbered over to their table to look out the window. Wide-hipped and slope-shouldered, the woman wore a white waitress' dress that was stained and splattered with countless meals. Reaching past Carlo, she flicked a cigarette ash into his ashtray. She stood there a moment, holding one elbow in her hand. She sucked on her cigarette, scratched her arm and then lumbered off again without a word.

        "Uh, excuse me, Francine," said Carlo, giving the other waitress a wary look. "Where are we in Tennessee?"

        "Huh. Oh, you're not in Tennessee, darling.

        "I better go out to the car and get the map," said Harry.

        "You're not going out in that? Wait till it blows over."

        "You boys are in Quebec."

        "Shit! We're in Canada?"

        Francine started laughing.

        "Eh, you want some lemon donuts, eh and a Molson?"

        Harry and Carlo looked at her with wide eyes and furrowed brows.

        "We get that all the time around here. Y'all in North Carolina.

Tennessee is way off through the Pisagh forest. They call the river near here the French Broad River, so somebody..."   

        "You better get the map Harry." 

        Harry got up and trotted for the door.

        "...figured Quebec is a fine name for a town. I don't really think one way or another about it, but it kind of gives the area some class, don't you think. Like it's European or something. So you two are headed off to Memphis?"

        "Er, no, we're actually trying to get to Texas."

        "I once went to Texas, had some family down in Galveston. They got wiped out one year, because of a hurricane. They claim they got good barbecue down there, but it's not like here. We got good barbecue, too bad you're not here for dinner, or even lunch. What they got down there is excellent crawdads. Excellent. I know this place serves them with black beans, saffron rice. That is if they're still down there, with the hurricane and all. Y'all want to bet we got us a hurricane going now..."

        Carlo was not listening to Francine. He was watching Harry fling stuff out over his shoulder. He watched Harry drop his backpack on the wet ground. He watched napkins and paper coffee cups and cigar wrappers fly off in the stiff wind that had kicked up. He watched a newspaper escape the sedan and get snagged in a puddle. Only one corner tittered in the wind. Sand or grit began to ping against the glass of the diner. Trees were bending in the fierce wind and leaves swirled around and around the parking lot. A limb of one tree broke off and landed a couple of feet away from Harry.

        A crack of lightning streaked the sky. Desdemona slammed the phone down and said a tornado just cut through town. The cook, a tall man with a red kerchief tied around his neck, ran out from behind the stove to peer out the window. 

        "What's he doing out there?" said the cook, pointing at Harry.

        "He's looking for a map Gus," said Francine. "Wants to know where he is."

        "We won't be able to find him ifin' he gets blowed away," said a patron who had wheeled around on his stool at the counter to watch the show.

        "How far are we from town?"

        "Five minutes down the road."

        "Which way was the tornado headed," someone asked Desdemona.

        "Don't know," she said, pulling herself out of her chair at the cash register to ogle Harry as he floundered in the stiff wind. "The phone line went dead."

        The sky turned greenish-yellow as they watched Harry finally retrieve an atlas from under one of the seats of the car. He pulled his head out of the car and the atlas was immediately whisked from his hands. 

        Carlo ran to the door and yelled at Harry to come back into the diner.

A newspaper flew up and was caught on the gun barrel of the Mountaineer statue. Harry ran back towards the diner, protecting his head from wind-born particles of pebbles and other debris.

        "Everyone in the basement," cried Gus, grabbing a transistor radio.

He motioned the 10 people in the place towards a door in the hallway that also led to the bathroom. A horrific, roaring noise seemed to surround the diner and the building itself creaked and moaned. Locking the front door and the cash register, Desdemona was the last through the basement door.

        Sitting in the cramped basement amongst sacks of potatoes and cans of vegetables, the group listened to the wind howl and the building groan above them. 

        "Sounds like a train," said a short, round man who patted his belly and rubbed his close-cropped hair nervously. No one answered him. The chef turned on the radio, but there was nothing but static. A bared light bulb, swinging on the end of a wire from the basement ceiling, flickered. Glass broke upstairs.

        "Dang," said the chef. He pulled off his hat and rubbed his brow with it.

        Incredibly the noise of the wind got louder. 

        "You all right? What was it like out there?"

        "It felt like my skin was crawling," said Harry, first to Carlo, then to the rest of the gathered faithful. They stared back at him wide-eyed, the light bulb casting odd shadows on their faces as it swung side-to-side.

         Francine got up and grabbed the bulb. "I can't stand that damned thing moving like that. I get a headache."

        What sounded like pots and pans began to clamor about above their head and there was a loud crack.

        "Shit," said the chef this time. He stamped his foot on the ground. "Gonna lose everything."

        No one thought to disagree with him.

        "I thought she said we were in the mountains, a forest," said Harry.

        "Whattabout it," said Carlo flinching at another crash above them.

        "I mean a tornado, in the mountains? Don't they have to be in Kansas?"

        "We've been having strange weather around here," said a woman wearing a flannel shirt and a kerchief that did little to hide curlers. She absently tugged at one of the kerchief's corners. "Coulda swore it was snowing yesterday morning."

        "In August?" Harry whispered to Carlo.

        "The other day I had frogs crawling on my back porch, hundreds of 'em," said a jowly-cheeked man with a hooked nose.

        "That's not weird weather Bill," said Gus.

        "It was weird enough," said Bill, motioning with his head so his cheeks flounced. "Never saw that happen before."

        "That happened last year when the river flooded. The frogs took your porch to be a lilly pad."

        "It might not be a tornado, per se," said one man as he tugged at his baseball cap. "It could quite possibly be a microburst of extreme wind shear."

        "It don't matter what the hell they call it," said Gus. He was up and pacing, hunched over in the low cellar, as they listened to the clamor above them, "'cause it's making a mess out of my life right now."

        With every thud and crash Gus wrung his little chef's hat tighter.

        "Did you leave open a window," asked the man with the baseball cap.

        "I don't have any more windows from the sounds of it."

        "Yeah, you shouldn't have closed all the windows," said Desdemona.

"It's supposed to alleviate the vacuum caused by the low pressure of a tornado." 

        Exasperated, Gus gave Desdemona a dirty look.

        "Since when did you become such an expert? Since when did you all become experts on this god-damned thing."

        The other waitress grunted loudly.

        "Sorry Emily."

        "That kind of talk is what brings trouble like this down on your head," she said, gesturing with her cigarette. "Serves you right, Gus Pollard."

        Gus squeezed his hat tighter and grimaced. 

        "You shouldn't be smoking down here in this enclosed area Emily. Other people got to breathe."

        Francine turned to Carlo; she was sitting next to him. "She's one to talk," she whispered. "Got three kids from three different men."

        "Weather channel," said Desdemona.

        "What? What about the weather channel?"

        "No Discovery," said the man with the baseball cap. "And I think it wasn't so much about vacuum, but to keep things from blowing in."

        "You sure about that," asked Desdemona. "I coulda swore they talked about tornados during one of those 'tornado watches' or warnings..."

        "Desdemona you shouldn't swear."

        "Oh shut up Emily, and put out that god damned cigarette."

        "No, I am sure of it....Next week they're gonna talk about twonammies."

        "Huh?"

        "Twonammies. They're violent, destructive."

        "What're ya talkin' about, dueling babysitters?"

        "Tidal waves," whispered Harry to Carlo. "Tsunami, I saw the same program."

        "Tidal waves," said the man in the baseball cap. 

        "Oh," said Desdemona. "Tidal waves? Next week?"

        "That is if the cable ain't out," said the fat man still rubbing his head.

        "Or that the frogs don't carry off my television set," laughed Bill.

        "You said the phone lines went down?"

        "Yeah," said Desdemona as she fingered a key chain. "I was talking to my honey when the storm came through. Oh, I hope he's okay. I bet HE had enough sense to leave open a window."

        Gus stopped his pacing and stared at Desdemona in the dim light of the basement of the Mountaineer Diner.

        "Why do you always needle me? Why do you always poke fun at me?"

        "'Cause you're an easy target."

        "You gotta stop sometime Desdemona. Just 'cause you're my little sister don't give you the right. Besides I wouldn't talk about easy targets."

        Bill began to laugh.

        "Shut up Bill, or I'll start charging you for those fourth, fifth and sixth cups of coffee."

        "Where did you fellers say you were headed? Galveston?" Francine asked.

        "Dallas," said Harry.

        "You picked an odd way to go then."

        Emily trundled over and hovered near the three.

        "Evidently we took a wrong turn last night," said Carlo with a glance past Francine at Harry.

        "You keep on the road you're on and you're into South Carolina. Hard to get to Dallas heading south into South Carolina. You have to head west don't you think?"

        "I believe thought was never an option," said Carlo with a wide grin.

        "This is great," said Harry in disgust. "Just great."

        "But why were you asking about Memphis?"

         "'Cause I'm gonna have to live there after my wife throws me out of the house."

         "Kris isn't going to throw you out."

         "Family troubles?" Emily asked, with a wry smile on her lips and an empathic arching of her eyebrows.

         Harry, Carlo and Francine looked over their shoulders at Emily.

         "No sense gathering dirt about them. They're just passing through. No good gossip here...unless... you want to talk about me and my darling here."

         Francine hooked an arm into Carlo's and gave him a wide, iridescent grin. Her gums were as orange as her uniform. Carlo looked back up at Emily and wriggled his eyebrows at her. Emily stared blankly at the pair for a long while, her face now drained. She said nothing. Taking a long drag at her cigarette, she blew the smoke at them before trundling off to a dark corner of the darkened basement. Carlo looked back at Francine and gave her a sheepish grin.

         "My," said Francine, looking into Carlo's face. "Give me back five years, and I would never let go of this arm."

         She hugged his arm for emphasis.

         "I'm deeply honored Ma'am, but I'm already spoken for," smiled Carlo.

         Harry rolled his eyes at Carlo over Francine's shoulder.

         "I knew it! A good looking guy like you can't be allowed to run around. Got an anchor someplace, huh? You know what they say sailor, 'Any port in a storm'."

         "Francine! WHAT are you talking about over there," yelled Desdemona. "You falling in love again?"

         "Ye-AH," smiled Francine. "Let this old buzzard have a thrill, huh."

         "Hey," said Gus, stopped near the steps, an ear cocked toward the door, "sounds like its over."

         He took a few steps up.

         "Careful now," said Desdemona.

         Gus waved his hat at them and disappeared into the shadows. Everyone stopped to listen. Bill got up to get a better look. All was quiet. There was no sound of a storm. They could hear Gus at the door, jiggling the doorknob.

         "I bet there's a lot of damage up there," said Bill to the crowd, his cheeks flouncing with each word.

         "Shit! God-damn it!"

         "Told you," said Bill.

         "What's the matter Gus," cried Desdemona, a hand to her mouth. "The place gone? Everything gone?"

         "The damned door's locked! You locked the door when you came down."

         "We're locked down here!?" cried the woman with the flannel shirt and curlers. "We're trapped."

         "No we're not," said Desdemona, a wide, goofy, grin on her face. "I've got the keys, see," she said as she whirled them around a finger.

         Gus started banging the door.

         "Gus! I got the keys," said Desdemona. She stood and shuffled her great expanse over to the steps.

         Gus threw his chef's hat at her from the top of the steps. It hit her in the chest.

         "There's no lock on this side," he screamed.

         "Oh shit," said Desdemona.

         Gus ran downstairs and glared at his sister. His eyes were wide and menacing, but after a moment he started darting about the basement.

         "What're looking for," said Bill, "can I help?"

         "I dunno, maybe an ax or something to open the door."

         "What are you so worried about buddy," said Carlo. Harry had his arms covering his head.

         "Oh, nothing," said Harry to the floor. "Nothing at all."

         "Ye-ah," said Francine, patting Harry on the back. "Pretty soon they'll figure out a way to get the door open and you can be off again driving to wherever it was you think you're driving to."

         "That's just great," grumbled Harry, mumbling.

         "What he say?"

         "He said he was hungry," said Carlo, translating.

         "I'm not hungry!" Harry snapped.

         "He's hungry. Didn't get to finish his breakfast," said Carlo with a hand to his mouth.

         "Shut up! Willya just shut up for once. I'm stuck in the middle of bum fuck in a cellar, without a clue where or why I am here."

         "At least the electricity ain't out," smiled Francine.

         Harry lifted his head and gave Francine the widest grin he could muster.

         "Much obliged Ma'am," he said in a super syrupy voice. "I would not have noticed." He then cursed under his breath and buried his head in his arms again.

         "I think you're right," said Francine to Carlo. "Low blood sugar. He needs something to eat."

         In the meantime, Gus had picked up an industrial sized can of baked beans and was using it to pound the door in an attempt to open it. Bill came up the steps with his own can and the two whacked at the door repeatedly. At one point Bill slipped and slid down the stairs on his butt. The woman with the curlers began to sob and Desdemona encircled her with her meaty arms.

         "There, there, it'll be all right. Don't you worry," she repeated over and over, patting the woman on the back.

         Emily walked over to the bottom of the steps and watched Bill and Gus wail at the door with their cans of beans while quietly smoking her cigarette. With one hand she held an elbow, but there was no sign of emotion on her face.

         "Help'll come, right? Somebody is gonna come, right," said the short fat man, still rubbing his head. He stood up and paced the floor, periodically jerking his head to look up at Gus and Bill struggle with their task. An endless stream of low grunts and curses cascaded down from the two men and their cans of beans.

         "I hope so," said the man with the baseball cap, calmly. "Fast response by emergency personnel will reduce trauma and prevent death."

         "You watch a lot of Discovery?" Carlo nodded at the man.

         "I try. Who needs formal education with television?"

         "Wait! Wait! I hear somebody," said Gus, an ear to the door. "Shhh! Quiet everybody."

         "Quiet!" Bill yelled, he took a step down and waved a hand at the gathered. Francine got to her feet and walked over to the stairs.         

         "Didn't hear no sirens," said Francine, her eyes owlish behind their lens. "You sure it's help?"

         "Course it's help," said Gus. "It's gotta be help. “

         “It could be robbers!” she said.

         Gus grimaced at her. “No,” he said incredulously and went back up the stairs and held an ear to the door.

         "There's someone inside,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I can hear them walking."

         Nearly everyone locked in the basement stared up at the darkened ceiling in silence as they listened to someone walking slowly through the diner, crunching glass underfoot and kicking pots and pans out of the way. They could hear the footsteps circle the front area near the door and walk behind the counter. Emily was the only one of the captured clan that seemed disinterested. She stood in a far corner with her cigarette. As she smoked she examined the nails of her smoking hand and picked at its cuticles.

          Mindful of Francine's observation about the source of the footsteps all were afraid to cry out for help. All sorts of theories coursed through the little group as they listened to the ominous footsteps above them. An emergency crew come to rescue them was not an option.

         "It's one of them rapists," whimpered the woman in curlers.

         "Don't worry," said Desdemona. "I won't let him take you."

         She enveloped the trembling woman in her meaty appendages.

         "I bet it's a looter," said the man with the baseball cap. "Bet he don't know we're here. He opens the door and we whack him with a can of beans!"

         "I say it's the meter man, come to read the meter," offered Carlo to several sets of blank, staring faces. Only Emily snickered in the background.

       They heard footsteps walk into the kitchen and back out again. Slowly, deliberately, the footfalls came towards their tomb. Gus and Bill retreated down the stairs, their wide eyes never looking away from the locked door to freedom. The whimpering of the woman grew louder, and Desdemona begged her quietly to silence herself and caressed the petite woman’s shoulders. Francine hugged Carlo’s arm tightly, her orange gums glowing in the half light of the basement.    The footsteps approached the door and stopped. For a long time there was no sound, save for the low, low whimpering of the woman. Desdemona cradled the woman in her arms and smothered her against her mammoth breasts in an attempt to silence her. Everyone in the basement had wide, frightened eyes, except for Emily, who was smoking her cigarette in a far, darkened corner. She was still picking at her cuticles, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the basement.

       The door knob jiggled and a collective gasp escaped the gathered group in the basement. The woman in curlers buried her head deeper into Desdemona's bosom. Gus brandished the dented can of beans like a weapon. The door knob was jiggled again and the door was tugged a bit. Francine buried her head in Carlo’s chest and took this opportunity to squeeze his buttocks.

          "Em-i-ly,"

         The sing-song voice on the other side of the door was playful.

         "Why are you hiding on me?"

       "Huh," said nearly everyone in the basement. They turned to Emily in her corner. Without looking up from her cigarette she wagged her head in disgust and spit out some tobacco.

       "I know you're down there Em-i-ly, I can smell your cigarette."

       Emily took a drag and spewed smoke in the direction of the door, her face screwed up in a grimace.

       "I know you're waiting for me down there...open the door so we can play 'read the meter!'"

       "I told you," whispered Francine to Carlo. She elbowed him in the ribs.

       "Wait a minute, I called it," whispered Carlo. The two giggled and smiled.

       "Everyone else is gone; I know you had to wait for me, Em-i-ly."

       Gus turned to her.

       "Is this what you do when I ask you to close up?  'Read the meter?'"

       Gus slapped his thighs with both hands. Emily's mouth churned as if to say something, but nothing came out. She moved quickly to the steps.

       "Em-i-ly! I want you so bad, I'm ready..."

       "Will you shut the FUCK up!" said Emily, to a low chorus of snickers and arched eyebrows throughout the group. Even the sobbing woman stopped her crying and looked up, puzzled and amused at the situation.

       "Oh. Sorry baby. Open the door."

       "It's locked you dumb shit."

       "You shouldn't swear like that Em-i-ly," snickered Gus.

       She flashed him the middle finger and turned back to the door.

       "It's locked and there's no way to unlock it on this side."

       "Desdemona," rasped Francine, "who is that up there? How'd this one get past us? I don't recognize the voice."

       Desdemona considered the source with a wagging of her head, a rolling of her eyes and with her lips drawn back in a silly grin.

       "I don't know, but I can't wait to see who it is. Hey Emily, take the keys and slip them under the door."

       "Baby, are you alright? Are you scared? Are you hurt? How did you get locked down there? You want me to get an axe? You want me to call the fire department? Does Gus know about this?"

       "Will you just SHUT UP! Can't you see a tornado whipped through here?"

       Emily walked over to Desdemona, past the snickering group, to retrieve the keys.

       "Sorry baby. So, that's why you're stuck down there? You said there was a tornado?"

       "That's real good," said Gus, giving the 'okay' sign to Emily as she walked up the stairs with the keys.

         He was a big man with a full beard, wearing overalls. She walked out into the bright daylight now streaming through the windows of the diner squinting and covering her eyes and he embraced her with large arms that swallowed her and hid her from view.

         "You're late you dumb shit," she said from deep within his embrace.

         He was shocked to see first Gus, then Bill and then Francine, who walked right up to the man to look him up and down with her owlish gaze, emerge from the darkened staircase. He had obviously thought Emily was in the basement alone.

         "Er," he began to say, but Emily quieted him with a kick to his shins and took him by the hand into the dining area.

         Gus pushed by them to examine the wreckage. Bill came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. Gus started laughing; the damage was not that bad.  Francine elbowed past the two men and stood arms akimbo and surveyed the damage.

         "You got some kinda luck Mister," she said.

         There was one large window broken and the floors were covered with leaves and garbage hauled in by the storm, but aside from a number of pots and broken dishes and glasses on the floor there seemingly was nothing else damaged.

         "I expected the place to be leveled. It's a good thing that window got busted, or Emily’s ‘meter man’ would not have been able to get in," said Gus.

         The man with the baseball cap said, "It most probably wasn't a tornado....or that it had just missed hitting the diner directly."

         Desdemona dragged the woman in curlers out of the basement. The woman started breathing heavily and began to cry again. Desdemona patted the woman on the back and half dragged her over to where Emily sat with her boyfriend.

         "Who are you?"

         "Thomas Peters, Ma'am, outta Ashville. My Daddy runs an antique shop there. Come through about a week ago on a run down to Athens to pick up some estate throwaways and, well, I stopped by here to eat, and well, I met Emily."

         "She meets a lot that way," said Francine, a hand covering her mouth, to Harry who was finally emerging from the basement. Harry just rolled his eyes and shook his head and shuffled past her.

       Carlo walked up to Thomas Peters and shook his hand.

       "Thanks for coming," he said, before following after Harry.

       "You didn't know it was tornado out here? Now, Missy," said Desdemona to the curlers woman still draped in her arms, and still whimpering, "you're gonna have to pull yourself together. The danger's over. Thomas Peters here from Asheville says so, say's it wasn't nothing. Hell, he must've drove through it all to get here. It must've not been that bad."

       "It looked mighty bad to me Ma'am," he said, scratching his beard. "I mean it was raining and the wind was blowing and trees were bending, but I didn't see no Dorothy funnel thing."

       "Huh," said Desdemona.

       "You know, like the Wizard of Oz."

         "You must've been afraid?"

         "Well, you know Ma'am, life is like a tornado watch...you can hunker down in the basement or you can get on the roof and enjoy the show."

         Desdemona looked at the man for a long time in silence. She was trying to figure out what he was talking about. He offered no other clue, save for his wide, bearded face stretched out in a broad smile.           

       Gus ran into the kitchen to survey the damage.

       "Though there may be no apparent structural damage," said the ever-vigilant man with the baseball cap, "there's always the chance of a gas leak."

       "Nonsense," shouted Gus over his shoulder as he began to squirrel around the kitchen, picking up pots and placing them on the counter. "I don't smell anything and the electricity is still working. Let's face it, I got lucky."

       "Maybe we should evacuate the diner, just to be sure," said Bill. "This guy's been right all along. We should wait outside until the fire department comes by and checks out everything."

       "Hell," said Gus, "my hair'll grow back before those clowns make it all the way out here. They got more troubles if whatever this thing was hit the town proper, like Desdemona said."

       "That's right," said Desdemona from her sagging perch next to Mr. Peters. "Bobby Ray said the tornado was hitting right when I was talking to him. I hope he's alright. Is the phone still out?"

       Emily got up, and after lighting another cigarette, walked over to the cash register where the phone was located. Gus was still clamoring around in the back and Francine slowly walked through the diner with her arms akimbo, shaking her head slowly in disbelief and sniffing the air for gas leaks. Thomas and Desdemona sat off to the side and watched a number of patrons who had been stuck in the basement walk outside to see if there was anything left of their cars.

       "Nope, phone's not working," said Emily. She put the phone down and still smoking her cigarette, followed after Gus into the kitchen.

       Thomas Peters’ dove tailed truck was unscathed and it was sitting near the entrance of the diner. Painted on the door was: "Peters’ Collectables, Ashville, North Carolina.

         A tree had been uprooted by the storm and it was now leaning like a troubled drunkard against one car. One limb had fallen onto the hood of Carlo's rental and that had nicked the paint a bit. The windows were plastered with dirt and leaves, but there was no other noticeable damage. A pick up truck was not as lucky. The windshield was cracked straight across. Carlo and Harry could not tell if the windshield was cracked because of the storm. They did not see any debris or other evidence that something was flung into the glass by the strong winds. Missy, the woman in curlers and still whimpering quietly, ran out the diner clutching at her open flannel shirt. She ran by Carlo and Harry and hopped into the pick-up. Either she did not notice or chose to ignore the cracked glass, but she started up the truck and drove off, skidding in the wet leaves.  

         It was the namesake Mountaineer statue that seemingly fared the worst. After removing the limb from their car Carlo and Harry walked over the statue that was now cracked to the pedestal, with a tree limb shoved into the hole in the face. Bits of the fiberglass statue lay strewn around on the ground.

       "Mountaineer," said Carlo after a moment.    

       "Garbage," sneered Harry. He turned toward the car. "Come on! Let's get out of here," he said gruffly.

       "Wait, we can't just leave these people. They may need help," said Carlo at the driver's side window.

       Harry gave him a dirty look.

       "Let's go. That curler woman took off. Why do we have to hang around? Oh, I know, the lovely, vivacious Francine," said Harry, shaking his hands in the air.

       Carlo laughed.

       "Please. It's just that...well, Thursday night we had to wait for Clarabella...I mean..."

       "Well, I made a mistake...Let's go!"

       Carlo looked long at his friend. Harry didn't return the stare.

       "Let's go, come on...We got miles to go."

       "Do you know which way to go? Hell. You were the one who got us lost in the first place? We don't even have the atlas."

       "I don't care, let's get moving."

       "You must be tired. You drove all night."

       "Get in the fucking car!"

       He was screaming.

       "Okay," said Carlo, flatly. He slowly walked around the car, opened the door and got in. Harry put the car in gear and sped off before Carlo had a chance to shut the door. 

       "You are being childish, you know," said Carlo after a few seconds of hanging onto the strap as Harry careened past debris knocked onto the road by the storm. Harry did not answer him. Behind them came a 'foom' and then an explosion.

       "What the hell was that?" Carlo wheeled around to look at a fireball billowing above the trees in the distance.

       "Smoking cigarettes is no good for you. I'm surprised you don't know that," said Harry.