Just North of Nowhere Read Online Free PDF Page A

to build in Bluffton? Not much and that was a fact.
    Maybe that was it, maybe not. Ken wasn't sure. He'd spoken only that one time to Olaf Tim, ordering breakfast and asking for “a second mug of that soapy coffee, there.”
    After what was left of Olaf was in Lutheran ground up on Morning Bluff, Young Ken never missed breakfast at the White House. Even on the day he went blind. That was a few weeks later, a month, maybe, maybe a little more.
    Way that happened: One day Ken woke before sunup, leaped from bed in a sweat to be off to the Amish fields, jumped into his clothes, slicked back his hair with morning sweat and was halfway turned three times around when he realized, holy shit, he couldn't see himself in the mirror. Holy shit, he couldn't see anything! All morning, he kept trying to; tried over and over to pry his lids further open. Nothing. He washed his eyes with water, made them burn with soap, he swiped his lids raw with a clean kerchief and nearly popped the eyeballs, rubbing with his knuckles.
    Nothing.
    Daddy finally took him to see Doc. Doc looked and told him he was blind. Maybe his sight would come back, maybe not. Probably not.
    That was it. Why was he blind? Who knew? Maybe he'd been snake-bit and didn't know. Maybe he'd picked up something in the bushes, a tick, a scrape from something might have poisoned his blood. Something got infected he never noticed, maybe. Pastor Ingquist from up at the Lutheran said maybe all those years, him handling poisonous vipers and such other serpents as God had put there in Bluffton and in its hills around, had taken their toll, their terrible, inevitable toll. Maybe neither man nor boy should make his way in the world on killing. Might there be a touch of witchery in it?
    Who’d he pissed on lately, Daddy wanted to know? The Amish? One of them Aufderheidens up there? A Lurgos?
    Everyone had a thought. Everybody made their point.
    Point was, he was blind.
    That very day, he went to the White House for breakfast. He stumbled getting there, not sure yet where everything was in this dark. Daddy didn't help. “Best get used to it,” he said.
    He got there barking his shins, bumping his nose, turning his ankle, sinking in mudholes, tangling in vines, stepping in horseshit; he tripped up the steps to the porch, slammed himself with the wall, then the door, slipped on the threshold and fell into his usual booth—barking his shins—then he ate his damn breakfast. Mrs. Tim was that good a cook!
    Nearly a century later, the place was owned by a lady name of Esther, a State Civil Service lifer who’d taken early retirement in Philadelphia, PA. Esther and her husband had moved to Bluffton fifteen years before. She buried her husband a year after they arrived and when Egil Tim's granddaughter (the great-granddaughter of little Timothy Tim) decided it was time to thaw herself in Florida, Esther un-retired and bought the joint, lock, stock and two-barrel. She inherited Old Rattler Ken with the deed and Nora Tim’s secret recipes.
    The day Cristobel Chiaravino came to town, Old Ken had had complimentary egg and grits.
    When Cristobel walked into the American House—Eats that first morning she already felt for the old man. She’d seen him work his way up the street, taking a step, taking a minute, taking another step, taking another minute.
    When he walked in to the restaurant and almost sat on her lap, Cristobel took pity.
    Cristobel had made quite an impression on the breakfast crowd at the American House—Eats. First of all, she’d sat in Old Ken’s booth so everyone naturally wanted to see what that would lead to. Not much did. She swept herself out from under where he was going to sit as easy as a one of those ballet persons made a leap.
    After that, there was her to consider: she was a looker. Lean, muscled, tall, dark and foreign, Cristobel carried herself like something important.
    The Sons of Norway noticed. Her nose had a nice bump. Not a Norwegian bump, which tends to