Lone Women: A Novel by Victor LaValle

Author:Victor LaValle [LaValle, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

34

The Grill Cafe’s owner, George Shibata, arrived in California and followed work east, mostly toiling on the railroads but quickly figuring out how deadly the labor could be. He hit Havre, Butte, trying his hand at cooking instead, and ended up in Big Sandy, a town dominated by a single restaurant, the Bear Paw Cafe. Their food often went undercooked; their coffee always tasted burnt; the plates regularly showed faint traces of the last meals served on them. George Shibata decided he could do better—or, at least, as badly—and thus the Grill Cafe came to be. And he’d been correct. He did outshine his competition. Barely. Nearly everyone in town—except maybe the couple who owned the Bear Paw Cafe—agreed Shibata’s Grill Cafe served marginally better food. But the plates and glasses were cleaner. To be fair, the man had been trained as an engineer, not a chef. Shibata just couldn’t find such work in America. Or, such work wasn’t allowed for someone like him.

And yet the Grill Cafe and the Bear Paw Cafe had operated at a standstill. Neither decisively won over the customers in town. If one of them had been able to serve higher-quality cooking, that might’ve done it, but there’s no sense in demanding something that will never come. So imagine Mr. Shibata’s surprise when his business soared simply because he’d saved those two boys. People came in to pepper him with questions, congratulate him on the good deed, and they stayed to eat their meals.

That’s why, after the show at the opera house, the Grill Cafe filled up. Room for twenty diners, nearly every table taken. Adelaide and Sam were lucky they’d left early, or else they might have had to join the line of people along the wall eating from their plates while standing up. Adelaide and Sam each carried a copy of the Bear Paw Mountaineer, given away free—this time—but they went unread because Sam asked a question first.

“Do you think that lady was right?”

“At the opera house?” she asked. “Mrs. Reed? What part?”

“That we’re the wheat, not the chaff.”

Adelaide smiled as she squinted at the menu board. Was she going to need glasses?

“Maybe she meant it, maybe she was just trying to flatter—”

But she stopped talking when she looked at Sam, whose head was down and whose fingers were laced on the tabletop.

“Why do you ask, Sam?”

Still looking down at his hands, Sam said, “Do you think of yourself as the wheat?”

You had to go up to the counter to make your order, and the line there continued to grow as more people left the opera house. Adelaide did feel hungry and had decided she also wanted a beer. But when a child is thinking seriously, you do well to honor their questions.

“No,” Adelaide said. “Most of the time I do not think of myself that way.”

“Why is that, Mrs. Henry?”

And she did not think about where it had gone.

And she did not think about what it might be doing.

And she did not think about—

“I keep secrets,” Adelaide said softly, sitting back in her chair.

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