The ChewChew Diner
It was a school holiday and Tara had to get out of the house. A gray cloud enveloped it even on the sunniest of days, even when her father was not there to terrorize them. So, she yelled over her shoulder that she was taking the spare car as the screen door slammed behind her, and she hit the highway with the radio blasting. She was singing at the top of her lungs as she came into town and took the short cut to the Dairy Queen.
Tree Ballard got his name from his height and long limbs, and as he aged, he began to resemble a Loblolly Pine bent by snow. He had rustled up enough change to buy a pint of Thunderbird wine and was crossing the road, headed for an abandoned flophouse, when Tara didn’t see him. She struck and shattered his long legs, throwing him headfirst into the windshield.
She sat still for a moment, numb, not sure what had happened. She looked down at her body and legs and saw she was unharmed, so she got out of the car and found Ballard sprawled on the asphalt. He was having a violent spasm, but he soon grew still, expelled a rasp, and died. Tara put her hands over her face and looked around for help, but she only saw decaying houses and unkempt yards, so, unaware of choosing at all, she chose flight.
She was doing seventy when she passed the turn for home. She met a cop going the other way and slowed down, wondering if it was illegal to drive with a busted windshield. She drove until she started sobbing and had to pull over, and just then a wave of nausea took her so fast she barely got the door open in time. Then she got out to look at the car, but she had a flashback when she saw the windshield and turned her back on it. She walked up the road with her thumb out, and by the time a deputy stopped to check the car, she was long gone.
Wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes, Tara caught a ride in no time, but the guy kept leering at her legs and asking personal questions. So, when he stopped for gas and cigarettes, she drove away in his midlife sports car. But he never got his gas, and the car sputtered to a stop a after a few miles.
She got luckier the second time, catching a ride with a young woman named Audrey on her way back to college in Chattanooga. Tara told her she was fleeing from an abusive home, and when Audrey asked how much money she had, she emptied her pockets and counted twelve dollars and seventy-six cents.
Audrey wanted to take her to a shelter or something, but Tara lied and said she was going to her sister in Kentucky and asked to be dropped off at the bus station. At the station Audrey gave her fifty dollars out of her expense allowance and drove away, and Tara was looking at a list of destinations when it suddenly struck her that she was hungry. But the bus station was noisy and smelly, so she wandered up the sidewalk for a block until she came to a half-full little eatery called The ChewChew Diner. She took an empty booth, ordered a hamburger, fries, and a Coke, and found the restroom, where she was shocked at her image in the mirror.
Her cried-out eyes were red and puffy, her hair was blown in every direction, and her once white tennis shoes were coated in red dust. There wasn’t much she could do for the hair, but she washed her face with cold water and got most of the dirt off her legs and shoes with paper towels. When she got back to the booth, her food was waiting, and when she finished it, she sat wondering what to do next.
How quickly things had changed. She had awakened that morning a normal, unhappy teenage girl just waiting for graduation. Now she was a fugitive a hundred miles from home with little money and no shelter. The waitress brought her a fresh Coke and she sat there until they pulled down the blinds and declared the place closed. She decided to go back to the bus station, buy a ticket to somewhere, and sleep on the way.
She couldn’t afford to leave a tip, but she was about to put some change on the table when a woman came up from behind her and said, “Put that away.” The woman plopped her short, stout self on the seat across from Tara and leaned in on flabby arms, her chubby face slick with sweat. She wore a white apron splattered with grease and smelled like a woman who had spent all day over a hot grill.
Tara said, “I was just going to leave a little tip, I can’t afford much.”
“You can’t afford any,” said the woman. “You’ve run off from home. You’ve been hitchhiking, coming in here with red dirt up to your knees and your hair all tangled by passing trucks. And you ain’t got nowhere to stay, and you’re thinking about that bus station. How am I doing so far?”
Tara nodded. “Just let me leave, I can pay you for the food. I can’t go back.”
The woman said, “Honey, I don’t care whether you go back or not, but unfortunately for me, I do care if you wind up on the streets or dead. Look, this joint is a block from the bus station. You’re not the first runaway kid that’s wandered in. Come with me.”
Tara followed her through the back to a flight of stairs leading to a one-bedroom flat. She unlocked the door and said, “I’m Willi.” They went in and she pointed at a sofa with a faded orange slipcover and said, “You can sleep here, wash up in the bathroom.” She crossed the room to a chifforobe and pulled out a patchwork blanket, a pillow, and a dress like the one the waitress had worn. “This one should fit you. Tomorrow, you wait tables for your room and board, and you keep the tips. Deal?”
Tara cried a little and thanked her. She cried more in the shower, but the hot water helped, and after standing in it a bit she washed herself, her clothes, and her shoes. She came out wrapped in a towel and said, “I washed my clothes.”
Willi pointed at a vintage clothes dryer, went to the bedroom to get her a giant T-shirt, and told her where to find a hairbrush and toothbrush. Tara scrubbed the used toothbrush with soap and hot water before grudgingly using it, and when she came out Willi was slumped on the sofa, legs splayed like a man, feet flat on the floor, drinking beer and watching the news. She said, “There’s beer in the fridge if you want, it’s that or tap water. Unless you want to make coffee.”
Tara didn’t much like beer, but she got one anyway and sat next to Willi on the sofa. The lawyer on television sought clients who wanted to gang up and sue a drug maker, then some politician came on and savaged his opponent, then Porsche wanted to sell them a new car. But after the commercial break, just about the time the alcohol was making a little warm spot in her belly, Tara’s picture came up on the screen. Chills ran through her as the newsman explained she was wanted in Georgia for Vehicular Homicide, Hit and Run, Reckless Driving, Failure to Yield to a Pedestrian, and Theft of a Motor Vehicle.
She turned to look at Willi and waited without expression. Never taking her eyes off the screen, Willi drained her beer, belched, and said, “Well, looks like you won’t be working tomorrow after all.”
“It was an accident,” said Tara. “He was crossing the road and I didn’t see him. I saw him die.” She paused to sob, blew her nose, looked back at Willi and said, “It scared me so bad I didn’t know what to do, and before I knew it, I took off. But I had nowhere to run to, nobody to help me. My dad would kill me just for wrecking the car, he’ll probably kill Mom for letting me take it.”
Willi said, “They’re charging you for stealing your parents’ car?”
“No, I hitched a ride with a man who gave me the creeps. When he went in a store, I took his car just to get away from him.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Ran out of gas, walked off and left it.”
“In Georgia?” asked Willi.
Tara nodded, still wiping her nose, and said, “Way back.”
Willi said, “Well, this changes things.”
“I know,” said Tara. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave. Can I wait until my clothes dry?”
“No, it only changes things for a day,” said Willi, appraising Tara’s face and hair in an odd way. “I need time to floozy you up.”
“Floozy me up?” said Tara.
“Yeah. I’ll have to go buy makeup and hair dye tomorrow, and you’ll pay for it one way or another.” She studied Tara's hair, reached out and took a strand of it between her fingers, and said, “We’ll cut it, dye it, and tease it.” She turned her attention to Tara’s face. “Rouge, eye color, mascara, false lashes, enough pancake to hide the wrinkles that aren’t there. You’re going to need a new name too, so think about that.”
Tara said, “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“You won’t, you’ll lie. Whatever kind of tart you wind up looking like after tomorrow is the only way I have ever seen you. Whatever name you take on is the only one I’ve ever known. Got it?”
“Sure,” said Tara.
Willi looked around. “Tell you what, you can clean this damn apartment tomorrow.” She got up, grabbed another beer, said goodnight, and closed the bedroom door behind her.
Willi was up and in the shower at four-thirty a.m. When she left the apartment, she told Tara to go back to sleep and eat anything she could find when she got up. Going back to sleep was not an option, and what she found when she got up was bulk sausage and white bread. By the time Willie brought her some lunch, she was using an ancient vacuum cleaner that did nothing but make noise.
She turned it off and said, “Do you have any new bags for this vacuum?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Willi said with little interest. “Look in my closet.”
Tara found an old pack of bags on the only shelf in the closet, under a bunch of stuff that appeared to be ready for the trash bin. Aside from the white skirts and tennis shoes she wore to work, Willie had one dress, a pair of flats that clashed with the dress, and a purse that clashed with both. Tara closed the closet door and looked around the room. The sagging double bed was flanked on one side with a table and lamp. The only other piece of furniture was a chest of drawers. None of it matched.
By the time Willi came back up after work, the place was about as clean as it was ever going to get. She brought with her a sack of cheap makeup and a big blond wig. “Good news,” she said, pulling out the wig. “No hair-dye. I got a deal on this thing.” She lopped off Tara’s hair, put the wig on her, nodded and said, “Good. Looks like Dolly Parton, before she got rich. Take it off now and let’s try the makeup.”
They went to the bathroom mirror and Willi coached her. When they were done and Tara thought she was about as trashy as she could be, Willi said, “You need bigger titties.” She went into her room, opened and closed drawers, and came out with an ancient bra she would never fit into again. “Here,” she said, “stuff it with toilet paper. Have you figured out your name?”
Putting the wig back on and admiring the full picture, Tara turned this way and that and said, “No. What’s a good name for a floozy?”
Willi said, “I don’t know, but what you need is a common name, like Betty.”
So, Tara became Betty. Her second week at the diner, Willi withheld only half her salary. With all the greasy food she could stand, she rarely left the place and eventually put away a few dollars. After a couple of months of that, Willi pulled off her apron one afternoon, looked at her and said, “Come on.”
She led Tara down the street a couple of blocks, never telling her where they were going, and entered an old apartment building with a shaky elevator. They rode to the top and went down the drab hallway, passing door after identical door until Willi stopped, knocked twice, and let herself in. A smiling, placid-looking woman looked up from her crocheting and greeted them gently. Willi said, “Betty, this is Mable. She has a room she wants to rent, and you can afford it. I’m kicking you out, so you’ll get your whole salary.” She looked at Mable and said, “I’ll show her the room.”
The view from the room’s one window was the tar roof of another old building, with all its steaming vents and ducts and machinery. Willi closed the door and said in a low voice, “Mable is like that all the time, you don’t have to wear your disguise. She doesn’t want to know anything about you, and you don’t want to tell her.”
It turned out Mable ran the cash register for a small meat and vegetables market and crocheted nonstop when she was home. She didn’t cook, but Tara had her own space in the fridge and began to eat healthier. The walk to and from work was good for her, too, and she began to feel brighter, lighter, and happier. But after a few months it was no longer so. The days were redundant and living with Mable was lonelier than solitude.
Life was hardly worth living this way. She didn’t see how prison could be much worse. So, she got a real haircut, bought a couple of outfits, and ventured out into the world with no further effort to disguise herself. At first, she just went out to eat, looking for cheap places that served anything not laden with grease, but in time that grew boring too. So, one Saturday night she threw caution to the wind and went dancing, and she lost herself in it. It was the closest thing to joy she had felt in a long, long time. She kept going back, the expense being of little concern because boys bought her food and drinks, and from time to time she let one of them pick her up. She wanted to ditch her floozy get-up altogether, but Willi wouldn’t let her work without it.
One morning after the breakfast crowd was gone, two police cars rushed up to the front of the diner with lights flashing, and four cops jumped out and hustled in. One took a position by the front door and one by the back, and two stepped quickly toward Tara with their hands on their pistols. She felt oddly relieved. It was all over, beyond her control, nothing she could do. Then they blew right by her on their way to the kitchen and arrested Willi. They marched her out in handcuffs, her eyes on the floor, and in the end, she pled guilty to bludgeoning her husband to death with an iron skillet twenty years earlier in Tupelo. The ChewChew Diner ceased to exist the moment she was escorted out.
The next day Tara sat looking out the window of a Greyhound bus as it growled and hissed its way through the slums and struggled up the ramp to the interstate. She thought about the peace she had felt the moment it was all over, and the flood of relief that had washed over her the moment it turned out to be Willi. It was confusing.
But she had never meant to stay in Chattanooga in the first place, so she was on the way to Baton Rouge. The main thing was to keep her options open until she made up her mind.
copyright Walker Bramblett 2022
Don’t miss my novella, MURDER ON HICKORY MOUNTAIN, on Amazon and other sites. Thank you for reading! - Walker Bramblett