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fiction
Published in Gaia
table of contents
All You Can Eat
In the beginning you mistook the gunfire for thunder--it was distant and away and jumbled together like a low growl--but lately I'd been making out single high shots that exploded in the air and shook the trees.
"All you can eat!" Grandma was pulling on her white gloves. Andy and Lucille were heaped before the television. Jessica was still in the bathroom.
Grandma had seen an ad in the Tribune. "You see here? All you can eat for $5.95.
None of us wanted to go. We no longer cared to eat out, not even at the Happy Day Inn. I had wanted to barbecue some chicken wings down by the lake where the kids could throw a line into the water and Jessica and I could bask on a blanket and pretend that many good things still remained. But there was Grandma to consider. I felt my paunch, which was heavy and creeping over my belt, and I thought that I did not need all I could eat. None of us did. Jessica was packing it in around the hips, the kids were fat as butter, and Grandma should have been on salad. Even the dog walked with a curious over weight waddle.
When Jessica came out of the bathroom, Grandma helped her adjust the flower on her hat. Jessica had been dressing all morning, changing outfits and jewelry and combing her hair until at last she had aged herself ten years. It would have been different down by the lake. She would have worn something casual and loose and she would have left her hair alone and I might have, as the day wore on, put my arm around her.
Breathless, dedicated, Grandma picked lint from her daughter's shoulder. "I called for reservations," she announced.
The Happy Day Inn could serve thousands and thousands and never fill up. Their parking lot is a stadium, their dining room a barracks, their kitchen a factory. An entire town could dine in the Happy Day Inn without a reservation.
I went out on the porch and listened to the gunfire. It seemed strange that no one else spoke of it. The Jaspersons came down the walk in their Sunday outfits, waved unconcernedly, and drove away. Mrs. Jasperson wore a purple flower on her breast. Suddenly I was nervous, anxious to get the afternoon over. I started the car and sat there racing the motor, exactly like one of those impatient middle aged men I hate so much.
At last they came, Grandma walking slowly and carefully, helping herself on the porch railings, Jessica behind, looking like a stranger, and the kids. Andy had a book in his coat pocket and Lucille was carrying her transistor radio.
At that moment there was a terrifying explosion off to the south.
"Was that thunder?" Grandma asked.
"It sounded like fireworks,' Jessica said. "It's getting close to the Fourth of July."
"It's the Dago carnival," Andy said. "Why can't we go there instead?"
Everyone got into the car and Grandma said something about all you can eat. In the rear view a great pink flower, part of her Sunday hat, blocked my view. "Do you know how to get there?" Jessica asked, a certain tension in her voice. 'Of course," I said between my teeth, and that is the way it is between us at times.
Lucille turned on her radio.
The news was flipped away at once but not before I heard something--jumbled and indistinct--about the eleventh airborne and advancing forces and a statement the mayor would read later in the day. Then we had music, or what passes for it today, and I could not understand the words to the songs.
At every stoplight I turned and looked into the other cars. The women all wore flowers and their men had expensive ties knotted around their throats. They looked at me and I looked at them and we raced our engines, waiting for the green.
"It's a good thing I made reservations," Grandma said.
Outside the city we began to come upon the restaurants, in plastic, in glass, in imitation stone and redwood logs with fine cars parked around them. Oh, the restaurants! Char Broiled Steak. Country Style Eggs. Flaming Barbecue. All you can eat!
The sound of gunfire softened until I found myself concentrating on its memory. Outside of DesPlaines I made a wrong turn. "You should have gone left," Jessica said, and I said, "I'll go around the block." We went down a winding road with homes on one side and factories on the other and trees bending down over our heads. "The reservation is for three o'clock," Jessica said, and I took a side road where, as luck would have it, the blacktop soon turned into gravel and then dirt and finally came to a dead end before a huge fenced in factory with no one around it. Warning signs said DANGER! HIGH EXPLOSIVES! and a smokestack poured yellow smoke into the sky. In the back seat Lucille opened a Snickers candy bar. "Don't ruin your appetite," Grandma warned.
So we had to go back just as we had come, back to the gravel surface, back to the blacktop, back to the original road where I had made the wrong turn which now proved to be less than a half mile from the Happy Day Inn.
"They'll hold the reservation," I said.
Grandma opened her purse and studied her wristwatch. She had broken the band three years ago and never had it fixed. "There won't be anything left. It will be all picked over."
Briefly--we must have passed through a "dead zone"--Lucille's little radio grew silent and I could hear the guns again. They made a low rumble like a freight train passing far off at night.
Suddenly Grandma cried out, "There it is!" A handsome sign sparked at the side of the road. HAPPY DAY INN! A colored man in green overalls waved me into the parking lot with a rolled up newspaper. I turned into a wrong lane and he shouted, politely, but nevertheless he shouted, and the women began to scream and Andy, my son, my only son, called me a dumbbell, and Lucille kept her radio turned out loud.
I said a certain word.
"You can be polite for one afternoon," Jessica said.
"Down that way, sir," the colored attendant ordered, and I could see that he regarded me as a child. Very humbly, very obediently, I drove down a narrow lane, first leaving my family out by the doorway of the Happy Day Inn. It was a hellishly big parking lot and Grandma no longer had stamina for any kind of a walk. When I was parked and alone I am afraid I took a bottle out of my glove compartment and had a good snort.
On the way back I could hear the firing again. I asked another guy who was walking with me if he heard it. Heard what? he said.
"That gunfire," I said. "Take a deep breath and be quiet and you can hear it."
He was wearing a narrow brim hat and a purple blazer. He may have been fifty. "I don't hear anything," he said.
Jessica, Grandam, and the kids were already at their places when I sat down. A red haired waitress handed me a menu.
"Never mind the menu," Grandma said. "We'll take all we can eat."
And she laughed that high crackling laugh that I hate so much. I knew all the other diners must be watching, and to be sure, they were. I looked up and saw their eyes turn away. The clatter of silver started up again and filled the room.
"She is an old woman," Jessica whispered. I did not dispute that.
This immense room was jammed with people clashing their silverware against the china to the accompaniment of piped in music. There was a great table in the center of it and a line of men, women, and children steadily worked around and around it. We took our plates and joined them. "You can go back as often as you want," Grandma said. Andy complained that his plate was too small. "All you can eat," Grandma said. "All you can eat."
"Take this," she whispered, tugging at my elbow. "It has shrimp, get your money's worth." I was looking for something simple, something pure, a few slices of cheese, some ham and cottage cheese. "Don't take that stuff," Grandma ordered. "You can get it at home. She actually cracked Andy on the knuckles with a table spoon when he reached for a piece of sausage. Andy was right; the plates were too small. A sardine, a bit of macaroni salad, you had to sit down. "But that's only a sardine," Grandma cried. "You can have that at home!" Then she slopped something she claimed contained oysters over my salad and put a stuffed pepper on Jessica's plate.
Jessica and Grandma passed morsels back and forth, tasting. "Try it," Jessica insisted, pointing a spoon at my lips. "It's crabmeat." I felt as if thousands were watching. "Eat," Grandma commanded. "Eat. Get your money's worth."
I was full after the first plate but I went back to make it look good. Grandma was getting more and more excited--her dentures were clacking together and her breath was coming in hard little snorts. "Look! Fried chicken!" I took a thigh and a small sausage and some baked beans and then I saw a bit of smoked fish which looked good and while I was breaking off a piece I saw the cabbage salad right next to the deviled eggs. "That's it!" Grandma cried. "All you can eat!"
Throughout the great room people were rising, filling their plates, sitting and emptying them. All you can eat, all you can eat. I heard it from every side now. I began to eat a little faster.
Grandma was eating like a racehorse, shoveling food with both hands, chomping down on radishes, spitting out olive seeds, squirting tomatoes, dribbling mayonnaise. I looked at Jessica. She had a taste of everything on her platter, a colorful collage of calories. She was sampling, tasting, offering. She even offered a spoonful of jello to a bald headed man at the next table and I'll be darned if he didn't take it.
Lucille was still listening to her radio. Love, love, love, it sang while she filled her mouth with angel food cake. Andy was finishing his ninth piece of chicken, his round belly beginning to swell. "That's it!" Grandma cried. "All you can eat."
I sat quietly for a minute, listening for the sound of gunfire. All I could make out was the chomping of thousands of frantic jaws and the radio singing love, love, love. Then I went back to the big table.
This time I found the roast beef. Then I saw the cold cut platter and the stuffed celery and the greek olives and a frosted doughnut that looked good. "All you can eat," I cried to Grandma who was returning for another load. "All you can eat," I shouted to Jessica when I sat down. Then I noticed that she was crying.
"Here. Taste." I offered her a greek olive. Her eyes widened and the tears stopped. She offered me a taste of creamed asparagus. It was very good.
Lucille went back for more cake, and I picked up her transistor radio. Quickly flipping the dial, I found the news. Static, a few muffled words. Heavy casualties. Enemy claims. Fire warning. Citizen's alert. Then Lucille returned and the radio went back to Love, love, love.
Grandma was on her seventh dish. So was Andy. Jessica, having sampled everything, was talking to me, but her words were lost in a sea of belchings, slurpings, clatterings, sighs and dribbles. It was time to go to the bathroom.
"By the bar," Jessica said. She had checked the location when we came in. Jessica is good at things like that. I walked heavily and slowly through the dining room. On every side I could hear people saying, all you can eat. When I passed the big center table I picked up a chicken wing. I was still chewing on in when I walked into the bar.
A television set was operating on the wall. I recognized the newscaster and took a seat.
"What'll you have?" The bartender stood before me, hands on the counter. I hesitated. The television was saying something about limited evacuation.
The man next to me spoke. "Come on, Charlie. Get the game on." The news disappeared. A football game replaced it, both teams in brilliant color.
"Hey, what's this?" I said. "How can they have football in June?"
"Exhibition game. Going to be a good one." The man next to me turned his back and began talking to a woman with pure platinum hair.
I had my drink and went into the bathroom where two enormous mirrors on either side reflected my fat middle aged image back and forth, over and over again. I was infinite.
Someone had puked into the urinal. Despite the clean lilac scent of perfumed antiseptic, someone had puked. I went into one of the stalls and raised the plastic toilet seat. As I stood there pissing, I saw that someone who owned a red felt tip pen had written these words eye level on the wall. THE END OF LIFE IS A GOOD FUCK! Below, a dissenter had written, "I suck cocks. 253-2210." On the way back to our table, darned if I didn't pick up another piece of chicken.
"Wasn't that lovely?" Grandma said when the waitress brought our check. We had had all we could eat. We walked out of the dining room and another family took our place. Jessica showed me her purse. She had copped the entire bowl of breadsticks. Grandma brandished the doggy bag she had filled. It was dripping and full of dangerous looking chicken bones. "Take it home for our dog," she said. "Poor thing. He had to stay behind."
It was getting dark in the parking lot. I had not realized that it took so long to eat all you can eat. I walked alone to the car while the family waited by the entrance of the Happy Day Inn, dabbing at their lips with bits of Kleenix. Now, in the quiet country night, the sounds of the big guns were quite clear and sharp. I lit a cigarette and leaned against my car, listening.
That night I stood on my front porch. The glow of flames rose in the southwest. The sky seemed to tremble. Swinging down above me, I heard the whoosh of great jet airplanes. rhythmic and regular. They must have been landing at O'Hare. The firing was getting frantic. I saw the Jaspersons pull up and park beneath the streetlight. Mrs. Jasperson waved and they went into the house. Then everything was quite on our block except for a couple of cats screwing in the alley. I went inside. The kids were in bed. Jessica was watching TV. A late night movie about World War 2. "Well, how about it," I said. "Did you get enough to eat?"
Hours later, while we were sound asleep, the dog choked on one of Grandma's chicken bones and puked all over the rug.
the end
