Eight-year-old Millie leaps out of an old two-door at the curb. It’s a ‘61 Ford Falcon that once belonged to her grandfather. The day is so hot she can smell it, both acrid and sticky-sweet, of scorched asphalt and over-ripe peaches. Through the thin soles of her scrappy shoes, Millie feels the heat from the sidewalk in front of Gus’s World-Famous Burgers and Fries. Well after six o’clock in the evening, the whole day lingers in the air like a wilted canopy that’s been soaked in a summer’s worth of sizzle and steam.
Shutting the car door behind her and scuttling towards the counter, Millie glances back at the Ford, at her father inside, and waves over her shoulder. A week’s buildup of dust coats the hood of the Falcon while decades of rust skirt the bottom of its faded green fenders.
In her elfin hand Millie clutches a crisp twenty-dollar bill. Her dad watches from the car. On that newly cashed twenty, Joe can treat his young family of five to a Friday night extravaganza: bargain cheap, super tasty, junk.
Because it’s Friday night… because Joe wears a swarthy five-day-old growth of beard… because, like the Falcon, Joe is coated with a buildup of dust and grime that the lumber mill’s blowers failed to blast away at quitting time…
Because he’s refraining from guzzling but is nursing his first, icy, Friday night beer… because the beer can, cold and slick with condensation, is resting in the crease between the front seat and its backrest where Joe longs to pull it up for a serious chug… and because he understands that his independent third-grader, soon to be in fourth grade, is eager to impress her old dad…
Because Millie has memorized a family-size food order to recite on her own, Joe has promised to wait and watch from the Falcon until everything is ready for pickup.
Millie approaches the counter grasping that twenty, much as an organ grinder’s monkey would cling to a fake golden button stollen from an unsuspecting tourist’s coat.
The eight-year-old practices the order in her head: Two hot dogs (one for each of her baby brothers), two cheeseburgers loaded up with extra grilled onions (one for her dad and one for her mother), one hamburger, no pickles, no onions (for Millie), and two orders of French fries (one large bag of Gus’s world-famous double-fried French fries for her dad and mom to share, a second bag of fries for Millie, her little brothers, and the dog).
The counter is an inch or two higher than Millie’s chin, so she stands up as tall as she can.
She notices a schmear of mustard and chili dog sludge on the counter surface, an inch from her nose, and decides that she ought not to attempt to rest her chin there. Millie can smell the raw onions from the smear. With the counter probably obscuring her mouth, she wonders if the cheeseburger man will hear or understand her when she attempts to speak through it. She’s going to have to enunciate.
Last week she looked up the word when she came across it in one of her library books. She chose the novel from an abandoned reading list that she found on the big-kids’ side of the school yard on the first day of summer, after the eighth-graders dumped out their lockers and disappeared.
Millie realizes that she may have to shout her order. But she hates shouting. She cringes when people yell. Once, her dad’s uncle and aunt came down from San Francisco to take everyone to see the Roller Derby at the Olympic Auditorium, downtown. So much yelling, so many smells…. Millie waits to place the order.
To Rick, the cheeseburger man, it’s been extra slow for a Friday volcano-hot day. Now the evening is still molten lava. Of course, everyone seems to be getting off of work at the same time, and they’re all like starving sweaty criminals who’ve been bailed out of county jail. A long line is quickly forming at Gus’s, backing out to the street.
Rick glances down at the kid who’s standing in front of the counter. He wonders which of the adults is her parent. He starts to ask a lady who nudges in next to the little girl, placing a large order. “Is she yours?” he tries to break in.
But the lady is all wound up, not wanting to forget anything, rolling straight ahead with her order.
Then, the guy coming up behind her is an asshole who always tries to cheat, saying, “Hey, I gave you a twenty,” when Rick knows damned well it was a ten, and when the guy sure as hell knows. Rick plays out the ritual in his head, I’m absolutely positive you gave me a ten because I always put the customers’ money on the ledge above the open cash register drawer. Right here! Then I pull the change and count it out. Only after the deal is all done, only then do I ever put the customer’s money into the drawer. That’s how I was trained. And that’s how I do it. Every time.
But this guy is going to try again anyway, if not today, a month from today. Ass-HOLE!
Rick is ringing up the petty thief and scoping out the next customers in line. And have a look at these two… Dude is giving a monkey-bite to his girlfriend, while they’re standing in line.
How does a cringey guy like this get such a nice-looking woman? Rick is thinking about Meryl Streep and her devotion to the first love of her life, John Cazale. But that Johnny Cazale, he must have been very special, may he rest in peace. As for this dude here. I’ve got no respect for him–because, obviously, he’s got none for her.
Millie has lost track of how long she’s been standing at the counter, how long she’s been going over the food order in her head, wanting to remember everything–even if it is a little intimidating, standing here with all these adults, even if such a cacophony of so many cars and trucks is speeding by, even if there’s a cloud of stinging exhaust from the busses and the day, and even if the heat coming off of the pavement and the walls is still so incredibly hot and sticky…
Pausing on her list for a minute, Millie finally notices, she’s been standing here too long. She notices the humidity and heat steaming out from the burger joint’s windows, notices the workers, their hustling, sweating, and shouting inside, and Millie notices how much hotter it seems to be in there than the temperature out on the sidewalk, which may finally start to cool a bit, now that the day is nearing done. Noticing the sweet salty aromas of burgers, onions, and fries that are sizzling out onto the street, Millie inhales deeper than her throat and lungs, all the way down to her hungry belly.
Another minute goes by. She notices, somewhat retroactively, other customers who’ve been coming up beside her. It occurs to her that some customers seem to have placed their orders out of turn. Now, one of those customers, who definitely arrived after Millie, is leaving with bags full of pastramis, onion rings, and French fries.
Millie inhales deeply again, imbibing the wafting heady aromas straight from the passing bags. She takes a baby-step away from the counter and begins to turn her shoulders, then her neck and head to glance back at her dad, who, though he promised, must by now be getting impatient, waiting in the hot car. But before Millie turns halfway around, she’s surprised by Joe’s hands, by the soot and splinters of two giant Rock-‘em, Sock-‘em lumbermill worker’s fists, up on the counter at either side of her head.
The warmth of her father’s saw-dusty work shirt is rough against the back of Millie’s tender tank-topped shoulder. She catches the familiar fragrances of cedar dust and pine sap while looking up at Joe’s five-day-old growth of beard sticking out like pins from under the granite outcropping of his square jaw and chin.
“Can I help you,” the cheeseburger man asks Joe before looking out at him. Rick is un-wrinkling a fistful of one-dollar bills and fives, slotting them into his drawer.
Joe doesn’t answer. He stares down at Rick with what Millie can’t actually see, but soon deduces are her father’s dark evil eyes. “Snake eyes,” she mutters. Ba-BOOM!
“Can I help you?” Rick asks again, this time looking up at Joe, then down at Millie, who clearly belongs to him. Rick stares at the floor in front of his cash register. Shit.
“Didn’t you see her standing here all this time?” says Joe. Millie can tell by her father’s tone that this is a rhetorical question, and that it’s going to be followed by something unpleasant. She slides away from the counter, out from between Joe’s fists, looking up again, this time at her father’s forceful profile and at his blue-tinged gladiator beard.
Joe continues. “You took the orders of three people who came after her. How many were you going to take before you got around to her?”
“Well, I…I didn’t see her.” Rick avoids Joe’s evil eyes.
“You saw her. You reached over her to take their money. You figured she probably only wanted a little ice cream or a soda, and you were going to get the big orders first.” Joe catches himself and stops talking. One-Sentence-Joe rarely goes for more than one- or two-line retorts.
Friday night, make a lot of dough, rock and roll, Butthole! At home and at work, Joe likes to juxtapose silly phrases with cliches to make his kids or friends laugh. Come here, you filthy Mother-Smucker, let me introduce you to my big new Widow Maker. Then, sword-like, he pulls out from under the seat of his rusty old Falcon, a flawless, shiny, hardwood club that he made at the mill from a sixteen-inch long, 3” x 3” scrap of walnut.
Joe fashioned it during his lunch breaks, with four sharp corners and a rounded grip, adding several coats of impenetrable lacquer, So I can crack some Mother-Smucker’s head with it. The children all giggle and laugh when their dad says things like this. The boys repeat the funniest parts over and over in different cartoon voices. “Let me introdoosh you…Mother-Sssshmucker!”
Rick tries again, “I mean, I saw her, but then I didn’t. Look, I’m sorry. We were hustling up all these orders and”
Joe cuts him off, as if to say, No. YOU look. I’m hungry and I’m tired–I don’t have time for your excuses. But what he actually says is, “Go ahead, Millie. Tell him what you want.”
Now Millie is on the spot. She squares off with the counter, re-focusing on the list in her head, reciting it for the cheeseburger man, and especially for her dad.
Scribbling down the order, Rick’s writing hand is shaking the way Millie’s grandfather’s hand sometimes tremors, when he tries to eat a greasy drumstick from the Chicken Basket. Grampa is in his late eighties and has Parkinson’s disease.
Joe stays in place, both fists on the counter. He watches while Millie pays with what would be, if it were in her mother’s hand, a limp, wrinkled twenty-dollar bill. Gloria’s hands get clammy when Joe glares at her or at anyone else with his ominous evil eyes. “Joe, let it go,” she’ll say, if they’re at a Christmas party and the kids are sleeping on the bed with other kids, piled up on all the coats where Millie lies on her side, watching the dancing and flirting through two open doorways. “Let it go, Joe. We were only dancing. You said we could dance. He didn’t mean anything by it. Come on, it’s a Christmas party. Don’t fight, Joe.”
Rick works the cash register. He fumbles with Millie’s change, dropping some coins like cymbals on the counter before snagging them up and silencing the tympany. He manages to get them all into Millie’s lilliputian eight-year-old palm that barely reaches above the counter. Rick’s voice shakes mildly but discernibly while he counts out the change.
Millie imagines cartoon cranks and gears working in the cheeseburger man’s head. There are probably some distracting things spinning around up there that he’d like to tell Joe, but won’t. She wonders if her dad senses this too.
Millie observes her father. He’s all revved up, waiting, as if wanting the cheeseburger man to say something to him. Joe’s scowling brow, while he almost smiles, and piercing snake eyes are all but daring Rick to say it, the way he dares Millie’s mother when neither of them wants to shoot the first flaming arrow that torches a huge blowup at home, or at the start of a long road trip with the kids. And the way Gloria dares him back, even when her sweaty hands and blouse are drenched with fright, or fight, but not flight, drenched as a cloying handful of soggy dollar bills.
The cheeseburger man doesn’t say anything. He glances out to the curb where Joe’s old Ford Falcon is parked.
The peek is quick as a slash from a warehouse box-cutter. But it’s enough for Millie to intuit, when she observes her father, that now it’s Joe who is grinding away at the gears in his head.
Millie is fairly certain that her father is sure about this: the cheeseburger man saw or can smell how Joe was drinking a beer in the car. Go ahead, Joe might as well be shouting now, his chest puffs up like a cartoon cannon swelling, the giant barrel of it cocking back to Ba-BOOM! In fact, Joe is thinking Go ahead, Cheeseburger Man. Tell me how I shouldn’t complain if I want to sit and drink a beer in my car while my kid is out here trying to order all this crappy food…
Millie feels a little sorry for the cheeseburger man. Joe doesn’t have to say what Millie is pretty sure he’s thinking. He doesn’t back off from the window after Millie has successfully placed the order and paid, and not after the cheeseburger man has given her the ticket and her change. Joe stays planted.
She would like to tell her dad, Dude, relax, the way she tells their black German Shepherd when the hair rises on the back of its neck and shoulders because another dog is crossing the street, over half a block away.
Zorro was Millie’s first brother for a couple of years before the two baby boys came along, thirteen months apart. Joe found Zorro and named him before Millie was born, “So, technically,” she enjoys telling her cousins, with a small arm lopped heavily over the powerful animal’s thick neck, “this exceptional beast is my older brother.”
Zorro has sent several neighborhood strays away tripping over their own intestines to die at the bottom of the reservoir. Yet, he’s incredibly gentle with Millie and the boys. For all his territorial viciousness when it comes to encroachers, Zorro is useless as a watchdog. He adores people, all people, pushing the force of his weight against the chain-link fence, bowing it outward while he leans with affection, begging even strangers for a scratch or a pat.
One afternoon home alone with the kids, Joe watched T.V. in the living room while Gloria was out doing the grocery shopping. Through an open window, he heard the big Shepherd whimpering outside. When Joe looked out onto the porch, he saw that one of his baby boys, still in diapers, had crawled out there, and was teething on one of the exceptional beast’s raw-looking ears.
Millie goes to sit by another little girl and her mother at one of Gus’s picnic benches. The girl’s mom is on the chubby side, and is scrolling away at her old-people’s brag postings on Spacebook. The cellphone is half-hidden in her hands, as if she might be gawking at something provocative or violent that she doesn’t want her daughter to glimpse.
“Your dad looks really mad,” says the girl.
The golden hour before sunset is glaring in a bright halo about the girl’s head. At first, Millie doesn’t recognize her from school. Then her eyes adjust to the contrast and she does. It’s someone from fourth grade, a year ahead of Millie. Her name is Kati Sevilla. She’s pretty and can run faster than any of the boys.
The first time Millie saw her was at recess on Millie’s first day in third grade. Millie and her family had newly moved to town during the summer. Out on the school grounds that first day, Kati Sevilla ran several paces ahead of all the boys. Her dark hair was a silky brown mane shimmering with auburn highlights in the sun. Not one of the boys could catch her.
As the school year churned on, Millie discovered that Kati could make her athletic body do anything she wanted. Without a gymnastics coach or any lessons, she taught herself how to do laid-out summersaults, flying as if into the clouds from the highest monkey bar, landing gymnast-style, sticking her landings in the gravel, arms raised, not even a bobble, perfect 10’s every time.
“He’s all about the underdog,” says Millie.
“What?”
“The cheeseburger man skipped me. My dad boils-over when he notices someone is getting cheated or bullied. He has to intervene.”
“Inter-what?”
Millie shrugs her shoulders. “It’s what he says.” Millie lies, not wanting to be accused of showing off by a fourth-grader who’s going into fifth grade. A week ago, Millie looked up the word intervene after she saw it in one of her library books from the eighth-grade summer reading list. She could tell Kati Sevilla the definition of the word and use it again in a different sentence. But Millie doesn’t. She plays it cool.
Even so, it appears to Millie that she hasn’t fooled Kati. Because the soon-to-be fifth-grader looks her over in a way that Millie perceives is uncharitable.
“Well,” says Kati, “maybe he’s not boiling-over just because the cheeseburger guy messed up. Maybe it’s because you are your Daddy’s precious.”
“Nope.”
“Sure…” Kati almost sneers, Shhhhhhure.
“He intervenes for people we don’t even know.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, a kid at the Little Green Store who got skipped over when he was trying to buy a candy bar. Then there was an old man at Beaches Market, when a couple of punks took a grocery cart away from him that he’d been leaning against, like a walker, so he almost fell down. Once, there was a pregnant lady on the bus, before she got out at Nam’s Cantonese Cuisine on Valley Boulevard.”
“Yeah?” Kati’s eyes light up as if they’re reflecting Christmas tinsel. Her mom is pregnant, and Nam’s is where everyone in town, at one time and others, goes to celebrate special events, after graduations, for example, and first holy communions. Kati can almost taste the giant sweet and sour shrimps. She hopes her family gets to go there after the new baby is born and later baptized.
Millie continues, “My dad had words with the bus driver because he was speeding up then stomping the brakes, throwing people around when they got up for their stops. This pregnant lady was sitting beside me. My dad had given his seat to her earlier. ‘Look Man!’ he yelled at the driver over everyone’s heads, ‘this lady back here is pregnant, and she’s either going to be sick or hurt–or maybe have this baby in the middle of your bus if you don’t quit speeding up and slamming the brakes like that!’ My dad doesn’t like to talk to strangers, but he was really steamed. He intervened.”
“Is your dad a Christian?” asks Kati.
Millie pauses. What a fat question, similar to the juicy ones that Mrs. Hodge, her favorite teacher, always throws down at the end of pop-quizzes. It’s not mandatory to answer them, because last questions are less about memorized facts than about what students think and how they feel. As a result, Millie and most of her classmates work hard to impress Mrs. Hodge with care-full replies.
Suddenly, on a bench outside of Gus’s World-Famous Burgers and Fries, Millie realizes that she wants to impress Kati too. In fact, it’s donning on Millie that she feels glad, glad that she ran into Kati here at Gus’s, glad that Kati may be as interested as she is interesting–enough to ask about Millie’s dad.
Millie is hoping that Kati, the fastest kid in school, who can outrun all the guys, and whose long dark hair shimmers with sunlight when she races by, might become a friend, if not now, or even this summer, perhaps when their paths cross again at school in the Fall.
Millie considers her reply for a moment or two, and says, “Well, my dad doesn’t go to church with our mom and us. But he went with my grandma when he was a kid. He believes in Jesus and what he said about how we should treat everyone, especially the poor. And he tries to keep it fair, you know, speaking up for the underdog.” Millie can tell that Kati is listening by the way the girl sits still on the bench, leaning towards Millie when a noisy car with twin mufflers rumbles by.
Bolstered by Kati’s attention, Millie continues, “When he was around six or seven, he spoke in tongues at a huge prayer meeting in a giant tent at the edge of town. His mom and sisters are really religious, my dad calls them teetotalers, and they always wanted to speak in tongues. But they never could.”
Millie glances up to see that Kati’s pretty face is kind of screwed up. In fact, Kati is staring at Millie as if she and her father have just landed on the hot sidewalk in the middle of town at Gus’s World-Famous Burgers and Fries, in a space ship from Mars.
Though the evening is still warm, sweat grows prickly and cold, inching down Millie’s spine like creepy little cooties.
Kati keeps staring at her, not in an affirming way.
Millie can’t think of any vocabulary words that might distract from or salvage this situation. She wishes she could turn the clock back a few jots. But this isn’t The Twilight Zone and she can’t do that. She must somehow turn this around. Is your dad a Christian? What kind of a fat out-of-the-blue question was that?
Millie asks Kati, “Is your mom a Christian? Are you?”
Kati, the super-sport with astounding agility and speed, doesn’t pause or miss a tic. “No,” she says. “We’re Catholic,” putting a chunky period at the end of it.
What? puzzles Millie, who, as far as she knows, is both Catholic and Christian.
“Well, anyway,” says Kati, “your dad is old school. And he’s fierce.” She jumps up to play hopscotch on the sidewalk with a double-packet of ketchup.
“You got that right,” says Millie, relieved. Then she declares, “I bet you’re going to stomp that ketchup before you’re through.”
Kati shrugs and grins, “Hard to know…”
“Yeah?” Well, I know.
Kati is still grinning when she replies, “It will be a perfect 10.”
Millie hopes she gets to witness the big ketchup double-SPLAT when Kati sticks that landing.
Joe keeps his left fist on the counter. The right hand is at his hip now, elbow akimbo.
The cheeseburger man lilts sideways to take new orders around him. When ticket numbers are called, people who ordered out-of-turn, pushing around or over Millie, quietly maneuver with greater finesse around Joe’s elbow. They don’t touch him, taking their bags of food in guilty monk-like silence. Joe momentarily treats them to his evil eyes too. They won’t look at him. But from the way they avoid looking at him, Millie surmises they feel the snake eyes boring through.
At last, Millie’s burgers, hot dogs, and fries are being assembled. She can actually taste, in the tissues of her mouth, the hot, world-famous French fries while their aromas swirl around and through her nostrils, her clothes, and her hair.
“Hurry it up back there,” calls Rick to a sweat-soaked worker who stops to gulp a cold soda while finally bagging up the order. At last, the worker plunks two crisp white sacks onto a cart beside the cheeseburger man. Rick turns away from the window to make sure everything is in there. No mistakes. Then he passes the bags through, onto the counter, one sack for the double-order of French fries, a second one containing the burgers and dogs.
Millie gathers extra napkins, imitating her mom, who is always economizing, and extra mustard and relish for her brothers’ hot dogs. The boys will challenge one another to see who can eat up more of the spicey mustard on his hotdog. Although, neither of them can tolerate very much of it. Millie stops to put several small yellow chilies into a plastic container for her parents. She sees her dad from the condiments shelf. Joe is reaching for the bags. Millie hurries to his side.
“It was a mistake. I’m sorry,” Rick says, letting go of the bags.
Millie watches her dad. By now, Joe has observed what Millie noted earlier, has felt the hot air swelling out from the joint, has seen how steamy it is in there, and how the cheeseburger man, his helper, and the grill cooks are all sweating monsoonal moisture. Customers who missed all the slow-burn drama and tension are impatient or distracted as they come up to place their orders. Some have stood a long time in line. Yet, when they finally reach the window, they can’t decide what they want. Rick has to wait. People behind them in line are cranky and impatient. The cheeseburger man takes it all.
Joe has cooled down enough to see that Rick is an underdog too. Joe’s piercing evil eyes have softened to their usual hazel color now. To Millie, to most women and even some men, to Joe’s father, and one day to his sons, Millie’s dad has such beautiful eyes. When he showers and shaves, “He looks a lot like Elvis Presley,” practically everyone says. But Joe usually ignores them or corrects, “No. It’s Elvis who looks like me,” adding, “and that isn’t saying much for me. He was kind of goofy, except maybe during the black leather Comeback Concert.”
Millie, who appreciates classic cars and classic movies with her dad, thinks that this tired, Friday-Night Joe resembles a contemporary swarthy morph of Elvis and Robert Mitchum.
Now that the order is ready, Joe’s voice isn’t exactly cheery or sweet, but his dander is way down, not unlike Zorro’s after Millie tells the German Shepherd to relax. Joe no longer has the demeanor of a Rock-‘em Sock-‘em fighter, or a wild bull searching for something to stomp and gore. He says to Rick, “I don’t mean to preach, but we don’t want to skip over kids or elders, or anyone.”
Rick nods and sighs. He doesn’t appreciate being preached to, but he figures he owes it to Millie, if not to her dad. So, he takes this too.
Joe scrunches the tops of both food bags in one giant fist. He puts his other hand on the back of Millie’s shoulder, heading with her to the car.
Millie sighs, relieved, but not as relieved as the cheeseburger man.
Inside the Falcon, Millie opens and nudges the bag of fries toward Joe. She reaches around and into it, pulling out a long, double-fried French fry that’s so crisp on the outside, so soft on the inside when she bites into it, and so hot that it singes her fingers and tongue.
“How is it?” asks Joe.
“Tastes good,” Millie lisps through the near-blistering treat. Joe takes a few.
He signals with a soiled muscular arm, cutting out into the Friday night parade of Ford junkers and old Chevy trucks.
Not half a block later, “Hey, what’s this?” says Millie, reaching into the second bag.
Joe bristles, looking up into his rearview mirror. His teeth clench. “What did they do?” What the hell did they do to get back at me? Joe braces to make a sharp U-turn.
Millie pulls out three giant chocolate chip cookies in separate clear wrappers. “Thank you, Daddy!”
Joe’s jaw becomes slack. His pretty eyes open as wide as his child’s. Then he says, “Don’t thank me. You thank the cheeseburger man, next time you and your friends go to get a soda.”
“He gave them to us?”
“Yes.”
“For free?”
Joe grins, nodding. The stubbles of his dense Brutus chin stick out like a myriad of magnetized pins.
Millie can’t believe it, and she can’t wait to show her mother and brothers.
Joe gives his daughter a rough pat on her tiny forearm with his big callused palm. “Hey, how about a few more of those fries before we have to share them with your mom and the boys.”
Millie exclaims, “And Zorro!”
