The Red Hen Diner

By Darlene O'Dell

How I, Hannah Cassidy, at the age of 13, went in search of a million-dollar treasure with my new best friend and ace zinester Candice and realized it's true what they say: the life you save just might be your own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darlene O'Dell
• Release date: Jan 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301350773

Darlene O'Dell

Darlene ODell is a writer and teacher who lives in North Carolina. She is the author of The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven (Seabury Books, 2014), Sites of Southern Memory: The Autobiographies of Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Lillian Smith, and Pauli Murray (University of Virginia Press, 2001), and I Followed Close Behind Her (Spinsters Ink, 2003).She has been published in Cobblestone, Sugar Mule Literary Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, Patheos, Pearson’s Custom Guide to American Literature, Hashtag Queer, and The Journal of Southern History. She was the head writer for the National Park Service’s Jamestown Archeology: A Teacher’s Guide and has appeared on NPR’s Interfaith Voices and given talks or appeared on panels in Washington, D.C., Blacksburg (VA), in Charlotte, Asheville, Winston-Salem, and Brevard (NC), Clinton (SC), and Knoxville (TN).She taught at Clemson University and the College of William and Mary and, in 2014, founded Freewrite Fridays in Brevard, North Carolina. She has taught multiple writing workshops for both children and adults, is currently a writer for the Family Narrative Project, and has recently completed a memoir, Men of Respectability. See her Dr. Dar's Freewriting Prompts series on Amazon.Purchase her ebook, The Red Hen Diner (a mystery for 8-11 year olds) here on Smashwords and visit darleneodell.com for more on The Red Hen Diner.Selected reviews of The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven:The National Catholic Reporter called The Philadelphia Eleven “excellent storytelling” and a “narrative that draws deep meaning out of the movement.” Bernard Palmer of The Church Times in London wrote, “Her book makes for enthralling reading. . . . O’Dell certainly has the novelist’s gift of making her story come alive and in maintaining her readers’ interest, even though they already know how it will end.”Reviewer Mary E. Hunt, founder of Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual, called the book “a needed history and a brilliantly told tale.” And Dan Carter, author of Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, wrote, “With the gifts of a scholar and novelist, Darlene O’Dell has told the story of the Philadelphia Eleven. . . .”

Book preview

The Red Hen Diner

How I, Hannah Cassidy, at the age of 13, went in search of a million-dollar treasure with my new best friend and ace zinester Candice and realized it's true what they say: the life you save just might be your own.

by Darlene O'Dell

text and illustration copyright 2012 Darlene O'Dell

Published by Indigo Island Books at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

in fond memory of

Poppies Market and Cafe

where my dear and brave friend Bev

was the first to hear this story

Table of Contents

Map

Chapter 1 The Sign

Chapter 2 The Staff

Chapter 3 The Stamp

Chapter 4 The Letter

Chapter 5 The Map

Chapter 6 The Call

Chapter 7 The Cats

Chapter 8 The Willows

Chapter 9 The Shadow

Chapter 10 The School

Chapter 11 The Tombstone

Chapter 12 The Mansion

Chapter 13 The Stairs

Chapter 14 The Falls

Chapter 15 The Friend

Chapter 16 The Book

Chapter 17 The Box

Chapter 18 The Brothers

Chapter 19 The Break

Chapter 20 The Assistant

Chapter 21 The Glasses

Chapter 22 The Visitors

Chapter 23 The Confession

Chapter 24 The Stranger

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Coming in 2013 from This Author

Map

Chapter 1 The Sign

At school, I've heard them call me Greasy Head Hannah because I hang out at the Red Hen Diner in the afternoons, but my real name is Hannah Cassidy, and I live in a small brick house with my mother. From my house, which is just where the mountains begin to rise in South Carolina, you can see the Red Hen, especially at night when the sign is lit up.

When we first moved there, right after my father left, the Red Hen wasn't called by that name, but was called Diner. The big sign out front just said DINER, and then one night the R began blinking and sputtering and then went out altogether, and the name of the place appeared to be DINE, which was still okay until about a week later when the N blinked and went black, making the name DI E. Miss Rachel and Miss Poppie, the owners, quickly realized that people don't like to eat at a place called Die no matter how good the fried chicken and chocolate milkshakes are. So they set about trying to come up with a new sign, and they decided to go with something made of all wood and to give the place a proper name and they came up with the Red Hen Diner.

This is when I threw what Miss Poppie referred to as a conniption fit. I had heard that phrase my whole life and had never known what it meant, except that the person throwing the fit has, in some way, gone completely mad. So I looked it up and found out that conniption means a fit of violence or anger. My dictionary didn't seem to know where the word had come from, which was a lot like my own situation because Miss Rachel's exact words to me were Where has this conniption fit come from?

Looking back, I can see why no one at the diner understood how I could freak out over a sign, and my reasons weren't exactly easy to explain except that in the first place, I like to look into other worlds that are lit up in a special way, like fish aquariums, for instance. I have a fish aquarium in my room and can, for hours, watch the lid of the pirate chest going up and down. Sometimes the fish hide out behind the chest, between the seaweed and a rock that glows blue and green, and I like to wonder what they're up to back there.

I guess I like bright things that glow in the dark. I often look up at the stars and planets and wonder if someone else is living up there, in some cool place where all the school rooms are swimming pools and everyone sits on floating desks and drinks from coconut cups with twisty straws and tiny umbrellas. I just think it would make things like long division and finding gerunds and participles more fun. And in this world, the students drive themselves to school in dune buggies with sparkles in the paint, like the rides in fairs and amusement parks. But this other world doesn't have to be as big as another planet, or even as big as an aquarium for that matter. I have an old watch of my grandfather's, the one he gave my mother before he died. If you press a button on the side, the face of the watch lights up, and you can see a small village inside it. I love that watch. I like to think about what it would be like to live in that village, what the people are like. I know it sounds crazy, but it's kind of fun to think about sometimes.

But the other reason I freaked out over the sign was that I had very little company in my house. My father had walked out a year and a half earlier, and we hadn't seen him since, though after he first left, I did receive a birthday card about a week after my birthday, but nothing came last year. We do get a check from him once a month. No note or anything. Just the check with an address somewhere in Montana. After my dad left, my mother pretty much stayed in bed. Sometimes she'd watch television and, of course, she'd take showers and stuff, but she didn't like to talk much. I felt lonely at the house. And so I'd like to look over to the diner from my bed at night. I felt like I wasn't alone with Miss Rachel and Miss Poppie over there.

You can see why, then, when they decided to put up a wooden sign with no lights, I couldn't bear the thought of being alone all night. I heard Miss Rachel and Miss Poppie talking about it at the counter after the lunch rush one Friday afternoon. The sign man was supposed to be coming to discuss it with them around 3:00. It sounded to me like a done deal. Normally, I'm a pretty calm person, but something became unglued in me, and I burst into tears and otherwise had that conniption fit you heard me speak of earlier. How could you do this to me? I yelled. What were you thinking? Did no one even think for one second about consulting me?

Of course, they didn't have to think of me. It's not like I owned the place. I just came in from about 3:00-6:00 on the days after school and from about 10:00-5:00 in the summer and on the weekends. And they hardly ever let me pay for anything. They said it was on the house since I helped them keep the place running, but about all I ever did was wrap silverware in paper napkins and occasionally fill the empty ketchup bottles on the tables, which actually wasn't all that easy since the big bottle was heavy and easy to spill.

Miss Rachel and Miss Poppie sat me down at one of those tables and asked me over and over what was going on with me and the sign, but I couldn't figure out how to say it. How could I? How could I tell them that it was all about looking at lit up worlds or even worse, about not wanting to be alone at night? I couldn't say anything, and they just sat there looking at me in a confused way.

The sign man did come, and he did put up a nice, tasteful wooden sign that read The Red Hen Diner written in a pretty red cursive. But that's not the end of the sign story. About a week later, I was crawling into my bed at night when I noticed a big neon sign on top of the diner. I could have seen it from Atlanta. The sign wasn't made of letters, like DINER, but of a huge red hen about the size of a car if you were to stand the car on its bumper. In truth, and I've never mentioned this point to anyone, the hen is not so much a hen as it is a rooster, but I don't care at all about that. And no one else seems to care, either.

Chapter 2 The Staff

Whenever you walk into the diner, you are immediately aware of a sweetness, like the accumulated smell of years of apple pies baking in the big ovens, like no matter how many times you wash the curtains, you are never going to get that last little bit of cinnamon and sugar out of them. It makes you feel like you've returned home to some place from long ago, some really happy place that you wonder why you ever left to begin with. And I can tell I'm not the only person who feels like this because I watch people coming in, and the mere act of stepping through the doorway will change their whole attitude. Maybe it's a married couple, and you can see them arguing in the car and then snapping at each other all the way across the parking lot, and then one of them opens the door and they both hesitate, maybe they tilt their heads a little as if something good is trying to get their attention. By the time they've found a seat in a booth or at one of the tables, they have the tiniest hints of smiles on their faces. Then Miss Poppie bounds over to them in her loud way, wearing one of her bright shirts and her stretchy pink pants and her purple high top tennis shoes that she has painted butterflies all over and she asks, What's your pleasure, my dears? and they are willing to give life a chance again.

And by the time she tells them a story or two, compliments their haircuts or the way they are wearing their scarves, and puts down a hot plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese in front of them, they are smiling big and winking at each other and giving each other little love pats on the hands. It's just that sort of place. For myself, I come in feeling like the dead plant in our living room window and leave feeling like a summer daisy in the morning sun.

Miss Poppie is the color of a pale peach. She says her ancestors were from Scotland, from the banks of Loch Lomond. Loch is another word for lake. You know that old song? she asked me one day. It goes, 'Me and my true love will never meet again on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.' Those were my people who made up that song, you know, years and years ago.

Well, you know that song 'Kumbaya'? Miss Rachel said. 'Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya.' My people wrote that song. Miss Rachel was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Kumbaya is a Gullah word that means 'come by here.'" The Gullah people are African-Americans living on the sea islands off of South Carolina and Georgia, even up into parts of North Carolina and down into Florida.

Miss Rachel is . . . how can I explain this? If you look into Miss Poppie's eyes, you feel like you're looking into a warm morning in May. If you look into Miss Rachel's eyes, it's like you're looking over the entire history of the world. It's like she knows things, lots and lots of things. And it's like she was told these things because she could be trusted with them. I don't know how else to explain it.

Another cool thing about Miss Rachel is that she drives a really fun car. Well, Miss Poppie's is fun, too. But Miss Rachel's is a red sports car, a two-seater, about fifty-years-old with spoke hubcaps and a wooden dashboard. And another thing is that she likes to go hang gliding when she visits Charleston. She says she might take me one day, when I'm a little older. Miss Rachel is tall and thin and looks like a movie star. She has a small limp left over from a boating accident when she was teenager.

Besides Miss Poppie and Miss Rachel, three other people work at the diner. I'll start with the oldest first: Lim Sanders, who helps with the cooking. Lim is short for Limber, a nickname he picked up when he was a baseball player in the minor leagues. He played second base. People said he could turn in his tracks so quickly that his body looked like it was swirling in circles around his feet, but then people say a lot of things about baseball. When I first met him, he looked sort of stiff and about the age of a grandfather. Not so limber these days, he said, but a little smarter, I hope. He wears a Baltimore Orioles baseball hat (always tilted), brown work pants and a pair of old brown tennis shoes, the kind that they've been selling in the window of the hardware store for about a hundred years. And he always carries around a worn pack of playing cards in his shirt pocket. On his breaks, he sits in one of the booths, drinks a cup of black coffee, and plays Solitaire. Once in a blue moon, he plays a game of Rummy with Russ, but it's hard to get Russ off his cell phone long enough to play cards.

In fact, Miss Poppie told Russ that if he didn't break his texting addiction while he was washing the dishes—that's his job, dishwasher—that she was going to send him to some sort of cell phone detox place. Russ, who goes to the community college, just gives her a little smile and says, Come on now, Miss Poppie, can I help it if I'm a popular guy? I got lots of friends, you know.

"Well, I hope your friends can afford to keep you