Z. Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

“Naw,” a girl answered in her stead. “She’d beat ’em up like Joe Louis.”

She got off right before Stutz’s. None of the televisions were on window display. Without the televisions, the windows were dustier than she’d remembered. It seemed as though someone had stolen them all, but there was no broken glass. She cleared the film of dust off the window and peered in. In the rear of the dark store, televisions sat mutely on the floor like obedient children. Someone was moving around inside. The figure took a large box down from the counter and set it on the floor. He remained hunched over it for a long time, heaving, as if to gather strength for the next one. When the figure finally stood, she saw that it was old man Stutz himself.

She tapped on the window, saw him frown, then, recognizing her, smile with all his wrinkles. He invited her in with a grand sweep of his arm, like a baseball player winding up to pitch. “Come in, come in,” he said, though the glass was so thick she could only see him mouthing the words. She threw her hands up. “How? The door is locked?” He frowned. Then, understanding, unlocked the door.

“Mr. Stutz.” She started to take off her coat, out of habit, but the store was so cold she kept it on. “How are you?”

He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, folded it in fourths, then eighths, then put it in his pocket. He rubbed his huge eyelids. “Oh, not so good, Dorrie. Moving out. Almost two weeks now, you haven’t heard?”

She tried to remember the last time she’d seen him. Perhaps a month ago. “No. I guess I haven’t been by in a while.”

“This is the problem. You see it? This is the very problem. People come by. They watch. Laugh at Lucy. Ha ha ha, look at Lucy, love Lucy.” He made a crazy face, though whether it was supposed to be Lucy or Ricky, Doris could not tell. Then Stutz’s face went from crazy to somber. “The people, they love Lucy, they go home. No one buys. No sales, no money. No money, no Stutz.” He threw up his hands like a magician making himself disappear. “No Stutz,” he said again. He ambled over to the nearest chair, brought out a second one for Doris. She sat, watching him settle into his. He coughed for a long time, then brought out his handkerchief and pressed it against his lips. “And other things,” he said, “but I don’t want to offend.”

Her skin prickled. “What other things?”

“The neighborhood.”

“They’re good people.”

“Yes,” Stutz said sadly, his eyes wise and sclerotic, “Good people.” He swept his hand toward the barren store window. “This neighborhood. Good people, yes, but what’s-their-name, right here on Fourth Street. Chickens in the yard. Scratch, scratch scratch. Cock-adoodledoo. Lithuania in America. And those boys, playing baseball in the middle of the street. Do cars want to stop and buy from Stutz if they will get a crack on their windshield? I don’t think so.” Stutz shook his head in a slow, ancient way. “Good people. Yes. But.”

It was true. Sister Forrester still kept chickens in her yard, and her brothers’ friend Juny Monroe got every boy a mile around to play stickball in the street. The games lasted for hours. She could understand how, surrounded by televisions all day, one would be able to see that the rest of the world was different from Fourth Street, prettier, more certain, full of laughter and dresses and men who wore hats not only when they went to church but when they went to work in offices and banks too.

Old Stutz seemed to see something in Doris’s eye and said, “Aha! But as they say, there is a silver lining. A smart girl you are, Dorrie. You go learn, come back, make better. You see. I planned it all out for you. Just do.”

“It’s not that easy.”

He waved his hand. “Easy? Easy? I come from Lithuania. I leave my wife and my Lazybones son behind. I work. I send money. They come. Now my wife watches television and points. She wants a fur. Okey, dokey. I say, ’I go to the wood and catch you a fur.’ She says, No no no no, and slams all the doors.”

She wanted to say, But you’re white . She wanted to say, In another generation, your Lazybones son will change his name from “Stutz” to “Stuart” or “Star” and the rest of America will have forgotten where you came from . But she couldn’t say it. He coughed and this time unfolded the handkerchief and spat into it, so instead she said, “And I suppose you had to walk to school, twenty miles, uphill, in the snow.”

His face brightened, surprised. “Aha! I see you are familiar with Lithuania!”

SHE WALKED from Stutz’s and up along Fourth Street. When she got to Claremont, the street where she lived, she kept going, past Walnut and Chestnut and all the other streets named after trees. She hit the little business district, which was still lit for New Year’s, the big incandescent bulbs on wires like buds growing from vines, entwining the trees and lighting the shop façades. When she walked farther, she felt, for the first time, some purpose other than solitude motivating her. She rushed, and did not know why, until she found it. Clovee’s Five and Dime. As soon as she saw it, she knew what she was doing.

It was warm inside, and she made her way to the soda fountain, even warmer from the grill’s heat. A white man stood at the ice cream machine and whirred a shake. Two white men sat at the counter and talked in low, serious tones, occasionally sucking up clots of shake through a straw.

There was one waitress, hip propped against the side of the counter, wiping the countertop with a rag that had seen cleaner days. Without looking up she said, “Sorry. We don’t serve colored people.”

“Good,” Doris said. “I don’t eat them.” She remembered Helen telling her that this was the line someone had used during a sit-in, and Doris was glad to have a chance to use it.

The waitress frowned, confused, but when she finally got it, she laughed. “Seriously, though,” the waitress said, turning solemn, “I can’t serve you.”

The two men talking looked over at her and shook their heads. They began talking again, occasionally looking over at Doris to see if she’d left.

“What if I stay?”

The waitress looked to the man making the shake, eyes pleading for help. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t make the rules and I feel sorry for you, but I don’t make ’em.”

The man walked over with a shake and gave it to the waitress, who bent the straw toward herself and began to drink it. “Look,” the man said to Doris, “I wouldn’t sit here. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.”

She sat. Shaking, she brought out her World History book. She’d made a book cover for it with a paper bag, and she was glad she’d done it because she was sweating so much it would have slipped from her hands otherwise. She set it on the counter, opened it, as if she did this every day at this very shop, and tried to read about the Hapsburgs, but couldn’t.

It occurred to her that other students who did sit-ins were all smarter than she; they’d banded together, and had surely told others of their whereabouts, whereas she had foolishly come to Clovee’s all by herself. She stared at her book and didn’t dare look up, but from the corner of her eye she noticed when the two white men who’d been talking got up and left.

The man at the ice cream machine made himself some coffee and beckoned the waitress to him. When he whispered something to her, she swatted him with the rag, laughing.

Once Doris felt the numbness settle in her, she felt she could do it. She tried at the Hapsburgs again.

The waitress said, “Student? High school?”

“Yes, ma’am. Central.”