Heather Gudenkauf - Little Mercies

With one last swipe, Jenny grabbed her father’s favorite t-shirt from the duffel and held it briefly to her nose, inhaling the familiar, slightly smoky scent that was her father. The t-shirt was washed and had been worn so many times that it was faded to a water-washed indigo-blue, and the motorcycle emblem on the back was cracked and peeling. Finding no more room in her backpack, Jenny tied the t-shirt around her narrow waist, wiggled into her backpack and, holding tightly to the envelope, made her way up the aisle toward the exit.

“Hey,” Dave called after her, “take care, niece!”

“You, too, Uncle Dave.” Jenny smiled in return. She felt slightly better knowing that she had Dave’s number in the cell phone, but knew she would never use it. On shaky legs, Jenny descended the bus. The air outside was warm and thick with moisture. Jenny squinted up into the sky where white horsetail clouds filtered the sun. Jenny tried to remember the real name of the clouds, cumulo or nimbus something or other. She couldn’t quite recall. But Jenny did remember how her teacher described the wispy clouds as resembling the tail of a horse. Jenny had visions of spectral-like white ponies galloping through the skies.

Jenny tried to push down the anger she felt toward her father for getting her into this mess—allowing her to be swept away all alone on a bus only to land in a strange town, hundreds of miles from anything that was familiar. But she couldn’t keep the hot tears from gathering in her eyes or keep the panic from nesting within her rib cage. She didn’t know what to do. Immediately get a ticket back to Benton? Call one of her father’s old friend-girls to come and get her? Connie came to mind again. She pictured her friendly face. Everything about Connie was big. Big hair, big smile, big chest, big heart. She was the only one Jenny could bear calling. Or maybe she should go to the nearest police station. Jenny knew she needed to make a plan. This was something her special education teacher, Ms. Lugar, always said. When in doubt, make a list, think it through and make a decision.

Jenny’s stomach rumbled loudly with hunger and she looked around in embarrassment to see if anyone had heard. She made her way around the side of the bus station, the weight of her backpack already causing her shoulders to ache and slump, a small question mark standing on the corner. She decided to start by getting a snack from the vending machine inside the bus station and finding a place to sit down and make her list. Then she saw the most welcoming of sights just across the busy intersection: a slowly rotating yellow-and-blue sign that spelled Happy Pancake Restaurant in large bulbous letters. Jenny scurried across the busy street, not waiting for the flashing green light that signaled that it was safe to cross, ignoring the blare of car horns and shouts of irritated motorists.

Yanking open the heavy glass doors, Jenny inhaled the sweet, buttery scent that greeted her. This was only the second Happy Pancake that Jenny had ever been to, but she was relieved to find that it was exactly the same as the restaurant she and her father had visited the night before in Benton. The same high ceilings, crisply painted white walls punctuated with large framed photos of stacks of steaming pancakes topped with pats of melting butter and dripping with amber maple syrup. Jenny’s stomach grumbled again and she placed a hand over her midsection as if to shush it.

She tentatively looked around for the Happy Pancake mascot named Stack who handed out crayons and children’s menus printed with tic-tac-toe grids and word searches and dot-to-dots. Jenny found Stack vaguely disturbing with his oversize pancake-shaped body and oversimplified features: wide staring eyes, a yellow mound of butter for a nose and an upturned strip of bacon for a mouth. Only the mascot’s legs and arms sticking out from the vast costume gave any indication that something human resided beneath. Apparently, Stack didn’t work the 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. shift at the Happy Pancake in Cedar City.

A weary waitress with a white ponytail and freckles dotting her nose approached, looking past Jenny’s shoulder toward the front entrance as if expecting an accompanying adult would step forward. She was wearing standard Happy Pancake fare, a navy-blue skirt and a blue-and-yellow-checked blouse and a matching scarf tied at a jaunty angle around her neck. Black, thick crepe-soled shoes completed the outfit.

“I’m meeting my big sister here,” Jenny lied effortlessly.

“Will it just be the two of you?” the waitress asked, leading Jenny to the table nearest to the door.

“Can we sit in the back there?” Jenny asked, turning slightly so that the waitress could see her backpack hanging from her shoulders. “Homework,” she said by way of explanation. If the waitress thought that it was odd that a young girl had homework in the middle of July, she gave no indication. Maybe they had year-round school in this town; maybe the waitress thought that Jenny was some kind of genius student who took college classes.

“Summer school, eh?” the waitress asked, her voice tinged with sympathy. “That’s no fun.”

“No,” Jenny rushed to explain. “Gifted and talented. I skipped third grade.”

“Good for you,” the waitress said as she led Jenny to a large booth in the rear of the restaurant. “No one can ever take your education away from you. What are you reading?”

Jenny blinked, drawing a blank. She wasn’t much of a reader, though she loved it when her teachers read out loud to her or when her father took the time to read her a book from the small stack of picture books that she brought home each week from the school library.

The waitress was looking at her with interest, waiting for her tell her the name of the genius-level book she was currently reading. Jenny’s mind worked furiously trying to recall a title of a book, but all she could think of was Little Turtle’s First Day of School and she could hardly say that. “The Bible,” Jenny finally blurted out. “I go to a very religious school. I’ve already read half of it.”

The waitress looked duly impressed as she set a large, glossy menu on the table. “I’ll be back with some water for you. Can I get you anything else to drink?”

Jenny wriggled out of her backpack, slid into the high-backed booth and set the pack next to her on the midnight-blue faux leather seat. The smell of coffee made her think of her father.

She had come to love waking up to the pungent smell of her father’s morning coffee. This meant that he was trying, that he was functioning well enough to get out of bed, to face the day, to go to work. The two of them would stand together at the kitchen counter, each sipping the black, caustic liquid. At first Jenny had winced, sticking out her tongue, rolling her eyes back in her head and making a gagging sound in response to the bitter taste, causing her father to laugh. Eventually she grew accustomed to the acrid sensation on her tongue, reveling in the bloom of warmth that flooded her mouth and coated her throat and to the zing of caffeine that nudged her into wakefulness. But most of all she loved the quiet moments with her father, both of them bleary-eyed, crunching on burnt toast and sipping their coffee from mismatched mugs.

“Coffee,” Jenny said with confidence. The waitress stood there for a moment, pen poised over her order pad while Jenny busied herself with scanning the menu, trying not to blush beneath the waitress’s puzzled gaze and realized her mistake. A waitress would easily remember a ten-year-old who ordered a cup of coffee and read the Bible for summer school. “It’s for my sister,” Jenny explained. “She’ll be here any minute. I’ll have milk.” The waitress raised an eyebrow at Jenny, her green eyes unwavering. “Please,” Jenny added contritely.