Pancakes with Maple Syrup wds 2,653
On a sunny morning in June a man and woman age thirty-five to forty, walked into, for the first time, the John Henry Pancake house in Cornell, Wisconsin. They smiled, hungry, and were promptly seated. They asked for coffee.
“I love places like this,” the woman said, “so reliable, you always know you’ll get real basic food.”
The man, still smiling, nodded; he had heard her say this before and he replied, “Rural is reliable,” as she expected. It was the mantra of this, their first summer long camping trip through the Midwest.
This couple enjoyed the adventure of new places and people. Competent travelers, both were orderly in personal habits, organized in what they carried and efficient in research and planning. Judging alone by their plain, durable clothing a casual observer might assume they were neighbors when in fact their home was very distant. Thus far they had travelled together to every continent but one. They had no children.
As the young server poured coffee they asked her which house specialties were the best.
“Well, pancakes are all good,” she said. “It’s what goes in ‘em and on ‘em that people get to pick.”
The server had a small brass ringlet in her left nostril.
“Mangoes, do you have mango cakes?” the woman asked.
“Mangos? No, we don’t have those, we got pineapple, we got blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, stuff that grows around here.”
“Blueberries for me,” the man said, “and maple syrup, if you have it.”
“Oh we got that.”
“Cranberries for me too,” the woman said. “I like ‘em tart.”
Holding the coffee pot in one hand, the server picked up the menus, said “okeedoke” and walked away.
“yep, real country stuff,” the man said.
“Except for mangos. They don’t grow in the middle of Wisconsin.”
“Or pineapple. One never knows, do one?” This was a phrase, like many others, often spoken by the man.
They sipped their coffee and looked around the John Henry Pancake house, a large room well lit from many south facing windows, with a seating capacity of thirty to fifty at twelve tables. The man thought about seating capacity, the woman pondered the other customers, a dozen or more, all older, dressed in working or “home clothes” as she called them. In the past she had said, “Good enough for home is good enough for anywhere.”
“Good campsite we had,” the man said, “a wide variety of trees, i hope we can get back sometime.”
The woman opened her mouth to agree and said nothing; her lips remained open, soundless. The man looked at her, then followed her eyes toward the door where an old couple entered. She slowly put down her coffee cup, said, “Yeah, hope so,” and looked away from the old couple and smiled.
“What just happened?” the man said. He looked at her and the people walking in. “What’s up?”
She shook her head, leaned in toward him and said, “Those folks, that guy . . .” and broke off, “later,” as the woman who had served them conducted the newcomers to an adjacent table. The old guy made no sign of recognizing the young woman as he sat two feet away, his back to her. His companion sat with him and said, “Two coffees.”
The young woman put her hand on her companion’s arm, said, “Hold on, wait a minute.”
They sat silent. The old couple looked at menus.
“I’d like to get one of those newspapers,” the young woman said at last. The man said nothing as she stood up and walked to a newspaper rack beside the door and picked up a copy. As she approached the rack she glanced back, caught her man’s eye and tilted her head, a signal for him to join her. After a long pause he arrived by her side and whispered, “What’s this about?”
“The man at the table beside us,” she said out of the side of her mouth, low, looking out the window. “They were in the campground.”
Her companion picked up a newspaper without looking at it and glanced around at them, an ordinary looking white haired couple about seventy. As he was himself rapidly balding into middle age, the full thickness of both heads of their hair suggested good health. He turned to his spouse and nodded, “Okay,” and waited.
“He ~ they ~ were camping near us, did you see them?” she said.
“Not particularly, but yes, i saw them, what about them?”
“They were in that cute camper with the roof that goes up and the beds fold out?”
“Well, actually they pull out, the beds, but yeah. So?” He looked out the window.
“The guy, when i was walking in the woods, coming back from the privy and,” she glanced back at the old couple, “That guy was pissing there by their camp.” She giggled.
“Okay. He peed.”
“I had to step back or he would have seen me, but he was pissing and brushing his teeth at the same time!” She suppressed a chuckle.
“At the same time?” They chuckled looking out the window.
“Yeah, old guys have to pee a lot,” the man said, “Just a sip of coffee and whammo, so he was brushing his teeth and it hit and he had to run for the trees. I get it. You’re lucky he didn’t see you, or did he?”
“Maybe. I don’t think so, old people don’t see well, i’m not going to ask. Kinda handsome for his age.”
“That’s rich,” the man said. “What amuses you.” He shook his head.
“Hey there come the cakes, let’s not let it hold up our breakfast.”
“Oh no. It’s just funny, it won’t trim my appetite.”
They returned to the table with newspapers briefly nodding to the old couple who returned hard eyed smiles.
The paper they had fetched up was a free tabloid funded by advertising with local notices and stories. In their travels they often read such publications for amusing local content. They folded open the tabloids and read as they began to eat, careful not to look at the table beside them. They could not avoid hearing parts of the old couple’s conversation.
“Irma, please, you know what . . .”
“I heard him, i know. I’m wearing the pad, leave it alone,” the old woman said.
“I just don’t understand,” the old man said.
“Understand what? That i like to have a cup of coffee in the morning?”
“Irma, you’re not much thinking ahead.”
“Maybe i don’t give a shit much about ahead no more.”
Upon hearing this, the young couple tensed, glanced at each other. Their eating slowed, they sipped their coffee in silence, eating, waiting. They didn’t think about their pancakes or what they appeared to read.
The old man said, “If all you want to do is get worse. . .”
“Goddamit, will you drop it? If all i got left is a goddam cup of coffee that’s what i got so leave it alone.”
The young couple looked at nothing, said nothing. They were briefly distracted by the woman who served them arriving with pancakes for the old couple who, when asked, requested nothing in addition to the pancakes. The server left and a moment later returned to the young couple’s table with a pot of coffee. Without asking if they wanted more coffee she topped off their cups.
“Can i get you anything else?” she then said to them.
They looked at her, silent, and shook their heads in the negative.
The server said, “This here, your maple syrup,” she turned the bottle on the table toward them, “there won’t be an extra charge because it’s batched up right here in Cornell, outside Cornell.”
“Sounds good,” the young man said.
“And we sell it up at the counter, all local except the bottles i guess that they ship in. You can’t get a better price or better syrup.”
“I believe it, it is good, i’ll check it out,” the man said.
“Thanks.”
Slowly, they continued eating and, involuntarily, to listen.
“I got a say in this too, Irma.”
“Yeah, i know. I clean the goddam camper.”
“That’s not good language.”
“And soon you’ll have to do it all by yourself and you’ll be glad to,” the old woman said.
“I’m finished, no more talk. I’ll drop it.”
No one at either table spoke. The server returned with coffee, showed the old couple the pot at which they softly said no and she went away.
At last the young man said, “Pretty good, and really good maple syrup.”
His companion said nothing. He felt her emotions rising; she was getting ‘keyed up.’ It rarely happened but when it did the outcome was unpredictable. He was thinking of how soon they could get back on the road where the scenery passing and camp planning would distract them. He was about to suggest they go now, the situation was merely uncomfortable, not critical.
Wadding up his paper napkin, he set it in on his plate, took one last drink of coffee and was ready to say, “Shall we go?” when the old woman coughed, then coughed louder, shaking the air. They didn’t turn until the clatter of a dropped water glass made them look; the old woman had dropped the glass and water ran off the edge of the table. The old man stood up, bumping the back of the young woman’s chair, and set the glass upright. The old woman struggled to stand up, made gagging sounds, her face darkening. The growing darkness of her complexion contrasted with her white hair. The old man offered her his glass of water. “Drink, here, clear yer throat.”
The woman shook her head, coughed and spit up a sliver of pancake. The man held the water glass in one hand and wiped her lips with his napkin. The woman struggled to stand. The old man took her arm above the elbow to help her rise.
At the table beside them the young woman stood up and turned toward them.
“Can i help?” she said.
The old man ignored her, still trying to help the old woman rise. She coughed, said, “Let me go.”
The old woman sat.
“Can i help?”
The old man turned, shouted, “Get the hell away from me. Mind your own goddam business.”
The young woman felt droplets touch her face, he had bits of pancake on his lips. She stood back, upset her chair, her companion pulled her back.
“It’s okay, it‘s okay,” the young man said, “Let the old guy handle it.”
The old woman slumped in her chair, gasping. Slowly her breathing returned to normal as they watched her. The server had come into the room and now said, “Do you need a doctor?”
“No, no need,” the old man said. The woman had ceased panting. “She got something stuck,” he said. “Her medication comes on her sudden sometimes, no doctor.”
The old woman was now breathing normally, not moving, looking into the distance.
The server said to her, “You want me to take that away? I can get you another stack.”
Without looking up the old woman nodded, yes. The old man picked up the plate of half eaten pancakes, including the lump she had spit up and handed it to her. “Give us a few minutes to settle down. “
The young couple remained standing, looking at their neighbors. They appeared to wake. The young man laid his hand on hi s companions arm and said, “Let’s go.” They quickly left the table, leaving the two newspapers. In passing the young man put a bill beside his plate. They walked to the counter by the door to pay.
As the young couple left the John Henry pancake house the woman looked back. The old man looked directly at her as if he knew her, was angry at her or was he? He must be angry at her; she was free of illness, of any of the fractures and disorders of his life, she thought. She had no way of knowing, true or false. He could have been merely sad.
Turning away quickly, she bumped into her companion.
“Okay, slow down,” he said, “We’re all right, we’ll get there.”
Outside in the sunshine he said, “You can tell me about it, now or later, what’re you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I tried to help.”
“You did, but it just didn’t work out.”
“They looked so sweet.”
“Sugar coated you mean? Not so sweet inside.”
“You had the same thought.”
“I did,” he said.
“I guess we just can’t let it bother us.”
“Of course it does, but you can’t blame people for their infirmaties and miseries. People are like that, you have to go the other way, swerve around.”
They said no more as they drove away and for many miles said nothing. In silence the man’s mind wandered and a statement by his favorite president came to him, a phrase unrequested from memory; “Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.” He was about to turn to his companion and repeat this bit of wisdom when another thought intruded.
“Oh Christ, damn it all!” he said.
“What happened?”
“Damn it all, i forgot to buy a jug of that maple syrup.”
They both shook their heads quietly.
“Well, they’ll have it in tine the next town,” she said.
“Or we could go back; it’s only ten-twelve miles.”
They were silent a long moment. One of them thought while the other said, “Maybe not.”
Two days later in their campsite in the Upper Peninsula, as they sipped a favorite evening potion, cocoa and sweet rum, a concoction discovered on an otherwise unremarkable Caribbean cruise, she said, “I wonder if we travel because we are afraid of growing old. If we stop we grow old.” When her companion said nothing she said, “I just want to put that out there.”
“Black care,” he said and didn’t need to say more; she knew the line.
“Is our pace fast enough? What do we do when it isn’t?”
“Ah, the question,” he said. “Your fine intuitive, emotional thinking mind has turned its beam on us.”
“Fine, it’s on us, now what about the question, why do we go anywhere?”
“I think we travel because we have interests and we have money.”
“Is it all that simple?”
“Give me some time. I need some time to answer that one. But i suspect this could be a question that simply doesn’t have an answer.”
“They seemed like such a nice old couple.”
“Maybe old people are not what they’re cranked up to be,” he said.
“It just makes me wonder about what’s going to happen.”
“To us? I know that one; what will happen will happen.”
“To us. And everybody.”
“The same thing.”
“That’s so easy to say.”
“What else is there to say?”
“I just feel at times like we’re drifting,” she said.
After a few minutes looking into the fire he said, “Everybody drifts, drifting is our natural state. We ponder what we’re waiting for and we know what it is and we don’t know what it will be like. That’s it; we know what it is but not what it’s like.”
“But we do know.”
“In a way, we know everything. The old philosopher said, ‘We reach for the unattainable as we flee the unavoidable.’”
“That’s a nice, balanced sentiment,” she said.
“Yeah, well, it works for me. It’s enough for me.”
“It’s not enough for me.”
He said nothing.
“Was i wrong by asking to help?”
He replied, “I don’t know, it’s a mystery. You’ll never know, it’s a mystery for Christ sake there is no answer!”
Sitting on the other side of the fire, she looked at him and thought, ‘He’s never said that before.’
Edn of “Pancakes with Maple Syrup”
The cemetaries are full of people the world couldn't live without. Red Skelton