Echoing Dance

By C. Pape

Echoing Dance, set in 2004, follows Stuart Pelican, an ex-football player turned chef; his girlfriend, Beatrice Shipley, owner of a car wash; and a 'Crew' of characters they encounter as they travel about Wisconsin, Canada, and New York City. Woven into their journey are their dealings with past traumas and checkered histories that affe

• Language: English
• Publisher: South Holly Street Books
• Release date: Jul 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986496214

Book preview

... all things enter with electric swiftness softly and duly without confusion or jostling or jam.

-Walt Whitman

1

Joining

Stuart Pelican loved four things in roughly equal measure: sitting and thinking, something he’d done since before he could remember; an acquired love of books since he first learned to read, which fit hand and glove with sitting and thinking; Beatrice Shipley, from whom he had never strayed, in case anybody wondered; and his 11.83 acres overlooking its pristine Pond. In moments of repose, he’d run his thought through those loves to remind himself that he was a lucky man.

Standing at the indoor window of the Octopus car wash as slapping strips and swirling spray pummeled car after passing car on the placid first Sunday of May 2004, he did just that. He neither shifted from foot to foot nor scratched himself. But for the slightest turning of his head, he stood stock still. Customers walking behind him could see his eyes, blanks reflected in the glass, intent on the parade. Sweeping slowly side-to-side, maybe watching, but only as far as a bare turning glance would take them. His expression made everyone else take a look-see. They couldn’t help wondering what they were missing. They must quickly peek too. Through the window, then back at the man. Same-old, same-old. What was he seeing? What were they missing? Could this be a man who was barely hanging on? Or a fellow fully in charge? Which is it? They wondered. Imagine that. You could if all you could see were his eyes.

As always, appearances are a matter of convenience and wavering dispute. Looking stern was Pelican’s default pose. When whichever car was his finally went by, he turned away from the window moving gracefully for a tall, broad-shouldered man and walked to the front counter to pay his fee. Then those same customers who'd passed him in the hallway looked up, in spite of themselves, to see the whole creature. From behind tattered magazines, or a ripped sports page, or between squirmy children, they’d chin up to have a look. Oddly, his gaze grew more somber as it relaxed. As if he was filling with thoughts. Nothing in his face was particularly soft or delicate. Chin, cheeks, and jaw were flat surfaces, hard lines, etched into shape from cuts and scars. Artifacts of rough play. His forehead was stony, pleasingly unblemished; his nose might have once been straight. A shock of black hair. He impresses with his stature, the ease and strength of his gait expressed in limbs, hips, and wrists. They watch him walk through, their looks lingering, scanning his stride and posture.

To most people’s subsequent surprise Pelican was decently amiable. As he passed them, sitting in the hard, plastic chairs lining the walls, he made eye contact and nodded. Agreeably. As if he knew them. In fact, he did look familiar they thought. They would nod back and try to smile. True, he didn’t say anything. No hellos, no ‘morning.’ He never said a lot. More a listener than speaker. When he did speak, he was kindly and polite. His voice, a mild baritone, that seemingly knew laughter. If he went to church, he might’ve been recruited for the choir. The customers leaned forward when he got to the counter, straining to hear him. To catch his voice. The sound of it. What he said.

He wasn’t a joker, but he also wasn’t afraid of a squarely placed pun. Given his vocation, word play with food was his daily special. Rhyming broccoli with Sicily while attempting a new style crust Sicilian pizza with caciocavallo and toma, heavy on the anchovy. With a few close pals he enjoyed giving and receiving the raspberries. In those conversations his eyes brightened, and an equally etched, taut smile lingered. He laughed hard when something was funny taking others unexpectedly. Sometimes rising all the way to a guffaw, his eyes squinting a tear.

Pelican’s stern look came partly from a habit of mulling things over. Like the eviction notice in his pants pocket. Received in the mail. Postage due. Bowdler Patchett, his current landlord, was a man he just didn’t like. Seeing Bowdler in his mind’s eye made Pelican wish Patchett was an overweight, slow footed, outside linebacker, lumbrously blitzing, destined for a vicious cut block. Maybe take out a knee. End his season.

This particular Sunday morning he was mulling over when and how to discuss with Beatrice what looked like his rapidly changing fortunes. He felt an obligation to tell her he’d have to move. But he didn’t want to spoil the planned evening’s entertainment. Their every Sunday tryst. He did want to involve Beatrice sooner rather than later in whatever happened to him next. While watching cars pass him through the watery window, he decided to delay. Not procrastinate, mind you, but hold off in order to obtain more data. He’d be seeing Bowdler again tomorrow evening. His monthly rent was due. From there he’d begin planning. Give it more thought, a little more reflection, before talking it over with Beatrice. Time enough before he disturbed the apple cart. She would absolutely be brought in at the ground floor, right after the foundation was poured.

Beatrice owned the Octopus Car Wash. Pelican knew that though she liked to pretend otherwise. Sunday mornings, about nine, he went to the flow-through on Beech Street, taking his Oldsmobile in for its weekly bath. Monday through Saturday he didn’t care how dirty the car got. It was old and plenty rugged, built intentionally for heavy wear. In his mind, not a classic. With a stiff suspension and oversized tires, it rode high and wide. He kept good rubber on it. Its 7.0L V8 power was subtly hidden. Purring long before it roared. It took him to the places he needed to go. Pelican used the Olds for scouting and fishing. He went fishing at his Pond after his shortened work shift on Saturdays. That meant a jarring ride, the last quarter mile in dust or mud, depending, hitting the occasional rutted pothole. Low hanging tree branches smacking the windshield. To get to his boat, you see. The boat was moored at a nifty pier he’d sunk off the land he owned on the Pond he loved.

Scouting meant driving up the Door Peninsula and around the northeast counties exploring back roads, forests, and fields. Always on the lookout for springtime ramps and morels. He had his stable of fresh asparagus vendors, and later, the summer root vegetables, sweet corn from roadside stands. His regulars kept back prime items for him. He had a guy up-country who raised great lamb. He had a different guy for smoked hams and maple bacon. More mud, farm fields, barnyard aprons, and tractor paths with deep ditches and high centers. The Olds got him in and got him out. The car paid for it with dirt.

Pelican got the car washed on Sunday mornings for two reasons of equal importance. First, of course, cleaning it. The Olds earned that much respect. The dirt was superficial, which explained why he lovingly doctored the insides. A wrench head since high school he knew his way around the guts. He’d basically rebuilt the entire Vee-hic-ell twice since he bought it. The Rocket V8 was rehabbed second generation. The streamlined body stayed that way with rust removed. The interior though, that was the charmer. Pleasingly gleaming of restored leather buckets up-front, and a matching bench in the back, soft, durable, and formed. A tomb sized trunk for carrying stuff. Part of the reason he muddied her up was to deflect gazers and rubber necks. Stop greasy nose prints from dabbing the windows. Let it look like just another old junker. No need to draw unwanted attention.

The second reason he went to the Octopus every Sunday was, of course, Beatrice. She was from Kansas and made him pronounce her name, Beee-aah-tressss. Hold the e, accent the a, and stretch the s’s. Pelican chatted her up after his auto went through the line. The towelers knew to park it off to the side, out of the way, before wiping it down while their boss was having her confab. As the Olds stood sunning, Pelican loitered at the front desk. He’d lean in to speak. Whispers and murmurs between his steady baritone’s thank-you and how much for that deodorizer pinecone and Beatrice’s firm second soprano's your welcome, three dollars. Beatrice held down the register, took his money (and everybody else’s for that matter) and confirmed their Sunday evening dinner date. Also, where they’d be bunking that night. His place or hers? Depending on where he chose to concoct his chef magic. Both of their kitchens were fit to serve. To an observer, they made it look like customer and cashier. The Sunday shift knew better. Later in the afternoon he’d swing back to pick her up, car all spiffy and shining. A senior lieutenant was charged with closing up shop. Beatrice sauntered to his idling open door. The passenger side bucket seat had long since learned to fit her curves.

Pelican had been going around with Beatrice since shortly after he came to town. Fourteen years now. He’d been a post-draft signing and made it to the final cut. The GM at the time told him to stick around just in case. In case never came. By then Pelican met Beatrice, got a job, so he stuck around anyway. During the week he did his job and she did hers. Fact is, nobody knew her as the owner of the car wash. Later she let it drop with him to see if it changed anything. It didn’t. It did explain certain early mysteries. Her new car every year. Her handsomely furnished bungalow. He kind of figured it out on his own. Tell-tale signs. Saturday was her busy day, so Pelican went fishing then. A little time to himself. Sunday after three was their time together. He and Beatrice. It suited them both and neither complained.

Once though, during Sunday dinner at Pelican’s place, early on, Beatrice popped the question. Do you think we should get married Stu?

I don’t, he answered without hesitation. Another beer?

Nah. She stirred her mashed potatoes. Why the fuck not?

If I was gonna marry anyone Bea, it’d be you. Thing is, I’m waiting on that call from the team. And if I was to catch on, I’d be gone all the time. Practice, games, road trips, weight room. I’d never be home.

That’s a while ago now honey.

Still....

For her part, Beatrice Shipley spent her twenties and a third of her thirties going around with Pelican out of sublime default. Salty, fortunately gorgeous, scarred inside more than out, Bea generally acted with intent aforethought. Her proposal was not lightly made. Pelican’s prompt decline couched in a humor meant to deflect did not go unforgotten. Any leaving open of doors was beside the point. Brief as it was the conversation changed no behaviors for the life span of an Airedale. Bea did what she knew well how to do: duck, put on a smiling face and carry on. Thing is, Beatrice Shipley remained a repository of past due accounts. Her giving nature, fully delicious, nevertheless contained hidden calories. She always silently measured the weight of things.

Pelican put the down payment on the Oldsmobile with his modest signing bonus. The boat and trailer he paid for over time from his wages. The 11.83 acres on the Pond he bought when his mother died back in Weld County, Colorado. He bought the land from the famous quarterback who’d taken a hankering to him in training camp. The QB was an early riser, contrary to public opinion. He admired Pelican’s route running, good hands, and ball smarts. He also knew position depth was against him from the start. So, after Pelican was cut, he made it a point to be early at the counter mid-week mornings before the rush to share a word with Pelican over coffee, steak ‘n eggs, and Pelican’s signature hash browns. Pelican would come out from behind the grill to serve him and chat. Conversations that stayed private. The famous man off-loaded his day’s complaints before going to work. Pelican always seemed to have the right word to pass along to improve his mood. When Pelican told him of his mother’s demise a year or so in, the QB offered genuine condolences. He could see his sadness. When Pelican mentioned he’d be getting her life insurance and what estate there was, and that he wanted to look into getting a little piece of land on a lake, the star told him he had just the place for him. One thing led to another, and Pelican ended up with 11.83 undeveloped acres on the Pond.

After he was cut, Pelican caught on at Sue’s Diner downtown cooking breakfast. He needed work while waiting for the call that never came. Sue followed the team, player by player, year-round. She approved the team’s tryout of Pelican the year he showed up. He’d been a slippery tight end out of college with soft hands. He came with good size, 6-3, 220. Sue gave her regulars the thumbs up when it was reported that the team had invited Pelican in as an undrafted prospect and signed him. Problem was his speed, which cost him. He wasn’t a plodder. He could run all day. Acceleration was the issue. Off the line, especially on special teams. Mourning his fate over a dawn serving of pancakes and sausages at Sue’s a few days after the ax fell, she offered consolation. Learning his mother taught him to short order cook, she offered him a job on the spot. On a lark. Because she liked his cordial manners. His square chin, shock of black hair, and oft-broken beak didn’t hurt. She may have been nearly as old as his mother’s youngest sister would have been, but she wasn’t dead. Fourteen years on he ran the kitchen and made the menu. In all but name on the marquee, he was her silent partner.

Pelican kept his orbit small. There was Beatrice and Sue, the fellows in the kitchen, Gillespie at Gillespie’s Tavern, and that was about it. He liked fishing alone. When he went to Gillespie’s for a beer during the week it was to watch a game on TV above the bar. A few boozy sports fans, customers like him who mostly kept to themselves, with whom he’d exchange a word or two, was about it. Occasionally, he and Gillespie would banter a sentence or two beyond, another, and yep, but not often.

He also kept his apartment above the defunct Patchett’s Drugstore up on the corner of Frederick Street and Blake. Like the Olds, he got it when he came to town and saw no point in moving on. The rent was reasonable and never went up. His original lease with old Abe Patchett locked in two-way stability, for as long as it ran. He could walk to work and spare the vehicle. Behind the drugstore, below his apartment, was a low-down attached garage for his use and the Olds’ protection. In return he kept an eye on the empty store front street side for the Patchett family. Shoveled the walk. Trimmed a hedge. Abe the pharmacist told him they were patiently waiting for an urban renewal plan that would make them rich. They just had to hold on to the corner till their ship came in. The holding-on went on and on. To Pelican, untroubled by the future, the days passed seamlessly.

*

In the last week of April following the team’s most recent coming-up-just-short season, Bowdler Patchett wrote to Pelican as follows: In so far as we automatically transitioned to a month-by-month lease term following the expiration of your original ten-year lease agreement with my now deceased father, Abraham Patchett, you are hereby given notice that a termination of your lease may be made by either party with a proper 30-day notice. That was the letter in his pocket at the car wash on Sunday. He’d been carrying it around since its arrival in Wednesday’s mail. Mulling it over. Wondering when and how to discuss it with Beatrice. Bowdler gleefully went on to say he, ...further informs you a hand delivered second copy of this letter will be served on you Monday night, May 3, 2004, when I come by to collect the rent. Pelican’s doorbell rang at six p.m.

Why now? Pelican asked the dead druggist’s son and executor.

Rent day was the first Monday of the month since the lease inception. Bowdler swung by to pick it up like his father used to do. Difference was Old Abe would engage in conversation with Pelican back when. Easy spiel and a salacious joke when he had a new one. Till the cancer laid him low. Not so with Bowdler. With the son, Pelican kept it brief and at the downstairs side-street door. Bowdler was a nervous, over-fed nincompoop in Pelican’s estimation. He spoke too respectfully, too deferential by half, and there was something slippery and slight about him.

To be honest, Mr. Pelican, I was told by someone, who must remain anonymous, that the city is finally putting together that long promised urban renewal master plan. Been talked about for years, you know. Whole blocks coming down. All the old buildings. Clean slate, I was told. Total facelift. All very hush-hush. Looks like our ship is finally coming in. Like Dad used to say, you remember? We gotta stay nimble, gotta stay quick. Some goliath is gonna want to buy up this corner. Bowdler Patchett grinned complicitly.

Pelican shrugged, said, Fine, giving him his check, closing the door in his face. Trudging back upstairs he had dinner waiting on the stove.

Pelican preferred eating by himself, television off, sitting at his blond maple wood office desk in the front room. There he was surrounded by walls of books, two club chairs and a brown leather sofa. The desk had been his father’s before him. Having it gave him a sense of continuity. A fading tie to his old man who’d sat at it in his day writing letters and legal briefs. Pelican kept his business records in the hardwood drawers, neatly filed and labeled. He worked there compiling and collating recipe archives. When eating dinner, or a late lunch, he’d prop a book up in a solid wood frame holder next to his plate. If it needed a margin note he’d keep sitting at the desk where he could lay the book flat. He excelled at extensive endnotes. Capturing his own opinions. Expanding on the marginalia.

From there he looked out tall front windows down onto City Park. A stretching ribbon running along Green Bay’s bottom before turning up the mouth of the Fox River’s east bank toward downtown, the Park indented two full city blocks across from Pelican’s apartment. A gently sloping downhill thumb splaying toward the river embracing a tributary stream that widened, edged with native grasses. A final inlet to the Fox before she entered and was lost in the Bay. The swath’s bulrushes and cattails were already lushly tall by early May, a purposefully marshy wetland vibrating with life. Pelican liked that. Distantly, beyond the marsh’s framing border lay Green Bay proper, spreading out, washing north. Toward Lake Michigan. Below him the river was at its broadest. A wide, busy junction of commerce and leisure. Mammoth Lake freighters crept into port, passing his gaze on their way upriver to dock. Picking up concrete, paper, and timber. Unloading who knows what? Sealed box car crates full of contraband, perhaps? In warm weather pleasure craft, Lunds and Chris Craft, frisked by, going outbound. Laughing, sunburning boaters and their guests.

Personally, he never went out on the Bay, much less on the big Lake, in his able-bodied vessel. He swam both Bay and Lake. He loved swimming them. Didn’t boat them though. Looking at the river mouth from his living room window, or from the park benches across the street, was nice. But give me my Pond, he said to Beatrice more than once during their Sunday dinners. I like being the only ship on the water. Just me, dragonflies, and the loons.

As he ate a seasoned meatloaf like you'd find nowhere else, with mashed potatoes housing North African spice undertones, sided by crisp thick seared early asparagus, the evening light faded. He thought about Bowdler’s declaration. He had no particularly hard feelings about the matter. Not yet anyway. What he was, was irritated. By Bowdler’s timing and explanation. Bowdler’s reasoning, mere profit, was unpleasant and distasteful. He liked his neighborhood and saw no reason to change it. That Bowdler was gleeful about its destruction pissed him off.

Pelican seldom thought about Bowdler. Simply wasn’t much there to think about. Bowdler didn’t amount to much compared to his father, who’d rented the apartment to Pelican fourteen years ago when the drugstore was still operating. Old Abe Patchett tended the team’s pharma needs for god’s sake. He’d done a term on the Board. He had substance. Heft. Abe and Pelican’s rent check chats were a monthly bright spot. The druggist would swing by in the evening after closing up shop. He knew he was expected. Knocking loudly downstairs by way of giving notice of his coming Abe tramped up the stairs. Pelican left the door unlocked for him.

Pelican unfailingly invited the old man in for a beer while he wrote his rent check. He’d put out sea salt crackers and a cheese picked up from a local craftsman. A nice 8-year-old sharp cheddar or the sweet Fontina that Abe particularly liked. Abe would nibble a little cheese and sip his beer. Pelican early on got the drift that these monthly chats might be Abe’s only moments of escape from a cloying clan. The old man treated him with quiet respect, a little touch of awe, that Pelican hadn’t felt since leaving college. Abe liked that Pelican had been in the game, on the team however briefly, and Pelican appreciated being remembered. They’d discuss the year’s prospects and likelihoods. Landlord never brought up Pelican’s particular past with the team. He knew better than that. Among prudent men certain things stayed put away.

Bowdler just grinned taking the rent check in a snatch. Pelican never invited him upstairs. He’d make him stand outside in the weather. Give him his check closing the door without a word. Beyond that nothing transpired between them. Till this evening. Month-to-month, Bowdler said. Pelican knew he had to make some choices. He also knew he had options. It'd been a while since he’d shaken things up. Maybe he didn’t seek out change, but he knew how to handle it. Or, he used to know how. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little perturbed when change was thrust on him without a decent heads-up. He also knew he was rusty when it came to asking for advice.

Lying in bed, a few hours later, a book on his chest, he let his thoughts float, seeking an order. He considered his possessions, his acquaintance, and his activities. Since his mother’s death more than twelve years ago he’d hardly left town. An occasional outing with Beatrice. Going fishing at the Pond or driving up the Door peninsula didn’t count. He took his annual August vacation at Whyte’s Resort, in Ontario, and that was about it. There was Sue and the Diner. He didn’t discount his fondness for the cooking craft. Lately Sue had talked about retiring to Arizona where she had an unmarried sister. More than once they’d spoken about where that might lead.

There was his 11.83 acres. The Pond was truly more lake than Pond. He persisted in his name calling to be contrary. Some three-square miles, four-fifths of which was in the National Forest. Seventy-five feet deep in the center ravine. Westerly shallows with beaver going up stream into the forest. There be otters here, he liked to say. A handful of covelets where the bass sunned and surfaced. A bit of an island in the northwest corner. He had one landed neighbor who lived in Chicago with a grandfathered lodge. Family came up for July 4 week every year and were never seen again.

There was Beatrice to think about. Pelican very much enjoyed thinking about Beatrice. Tall and auburn topped, her shoulders square, freckled, broad, and strong. Her limbs long, limber, quick in motion, ever graceful in their power. Shapely. Quick witted and sharp tongued. She had a clear wide even face, lightly freckled, beaming emerald eyes. Opinionated and kindly, to him at least. Slightly profane. Lovely to soak in, he never took his eyes off her on their Sunday get togethers. He relished her company more than he cared to admit. He acknowledged he suffered from a classic fear of losing her. So, why not shield himself by withholding commitment? Never in, never out seemed safe. He knew it was a cliché. Yet, he was finally beginning to question his sustained reticence. After fourteen years he sensed a dimly felt necessity for uniting. He smiled as his eyelids grew heavy. Pelican knew the names of his vectors, their causes, their consequences. Till now, such knowledge hadn’t changed his behavior one whit.

Suddenly, out-of-the-blue, Bowdler Patchett and his visions of riches came along throwing monkey wrenches. Pelican knew he was kind of tight. Frugal. Not much in the way of accumulated stuff. If you don’t count books. He had many books, kept what he read, and read a lot. He maintained a stockpile for future consumption. He liked fishing. He had his boat-trailer-motors and the Oldsmobile. Fourteen years of saving what he didn’t spend. Being most of it. Plus, the remainder of his inheritance. Pelican acknowledged a wide horizon of options from which to choose. No permanent anchors either. None of the M’s. Not married, no munchkins, no mortgage, no mutt. Free as a bird at the drop of a pin. Why then was he wide awake, breathing shallowly, thoughts racing?

Early the next morning Pelican decided he’d make the required call after work. Sleeping on it for nearly a week hadn’t produced any great clarity. He admitted to himself he needed some guidance. Like a tight closely fought game, both sides starting three-and-out. Probing for weaknesses. Feeling each other out. Going forward a game plan had to be drafted with care and executed adroitly. He realized one thing was different for him in this present situation. He wasn’t just hearing the play call. Rather, he was responsible for making the call, hell, even designing the plays.

Shaved, showered, and purged, he walked the eight blocks to Sue’s Diner at the usual hour: three-forty-five am. He genuinely liked this pre-dawn stroll. Quiet avenues and third shift cops giving him the wave. Birds still asleep on the limb. Pelican alone with the wind and rustle of street debris. It was just right to get his blood tossing. He used the exercise to finalize the morning’s omelets, potatoes, and meats. The variety inside the repetition of creating an omelet gave Pelican great satisfaction. Newly found mushrooms or a cheese originally drawn, then folded into particularly loved brown hen’s eggs stirred his imagination. He found in cooking the same contemplative peace he got from reading but transacted in an active form.

Opening the Diner was to him a symbol of his share of proprietorship. Sue didn’t roll in till around seven-thirty, sometimes eight, these days. The daily egg, milk, cream, and cheese delivery came at four-thirty-five sharp. That gave him time to mull over his scramble ingredients and starch spices. He’d left his line cooks with concoctions the afternoon before. Jerry and Alex showed up together as the dairy delivery finished, put it all away and got coffee going for the five-thirty dawn patrol. Pelican started his gravies. Sue’s Diner was breakfast only, five-thirty to one-thirty, no separate lunch menu, no dinner whatsoever. Seven days a week. Closed Christmas and Easter.

Sue realized Pelican was a keeper soon after he started. He never took days off and had to be forced to let Jerry and Alex handle the slow, child laden, squalling, parsimonious Sunday crowd by themselves. She watched him effortlessly form liaisons with farmers and ranchers, herbalists and orchard keepers across a dozen northeast counties. The regional rural crowd were men and women of few words. They too were frugal, but honest. Pelican fit right in with his faint Colorado drawl. Sue thought him a laconic Westerner. Gary Cooper, from her childhood.

The farm crowd were perfect company for him. Business was done swiftly and fairly. The Sorensons, Bammels, and Hobbs didn’t need much time to figure out Pelican was all right. He’d linger after a handshake deal to gingerly pick brains. His recall of hinted at recipes trickling out of farmhouse kitchens coupled with an infallible palate brewed a curious creativity. The wives took to him. The husbands saw him as a straight arrow. Pelican thought it funny how often, unannounced, it turned out spouses cooked together. On that topic Pelican carefully got them to say more than hello. Family recipes were eased out slowly. In hand, confidentiality was respected. Ingredients were noted one at a time, parsed, analyzed. Temps and times were logged. Finally, the hidden step missing from all the church cookbooks, was lovingly revealed. On his next visit Pelican would show them a recent menu from Sue’s featuring that day’s special: Nettie and Walter’s Farmhouse potato pancakes, or Bertha’s Lemon Meringue Muffins. Seasoned Lamb sausages, ala Floyd. Word got around. A file drawer full of miracles blossomed in Pelican’s maple wood desk.

Pelican scored it all: seasonal fruits, vegetables, and dairy; fresh whitefish and Chinook negotiated from the Norwegians up-coast and out on the islands; flavor saturated meats and succulent fowl; differing local ethnic bakery breads, pastry, and rolls melded out of a century and a half of settlers from just about everywhere. Folks with long memories. More than one soul quietly, proudly, mentioned North Bay’s shallow harbor as endpoint of the underground. An ancestor’s assist before boarding skiffs bound for Sudbury. Unplaceable subtleties spicing each day’s menu put Sue’s Diner on the map. Pelican had a touch of genius he applied to standard fare. He convinced Sue that sausages and eggs and biscuits could be re-invented. A growing dedicated clientele fostered word of mouth to visitors, keeping tables full and hustling, all morning, every day. The long-shuttered side room used for storage became seating for customer overflow. Booths, tables plus counter. Sue wisely saw the robust success was owing to her oft broken-beaked chef with his shock of black hair.

Sue had always been solid and generous, paid her employees well, held no grudges. Early on, she made Pelican a partner in everything but the deed. She was a preemptive sort. Develop the rookies and re-sign valued veterans. Steven Duffy, attorney-at-law, who ate his breakfast every morning at counter stool one, next to the register so he could spread out the Gazette without people complaining, drafted the document. A Partnership Agreement with cultured annual Amendments. Going on eleven years now.

Pelican had a word with Sue Tuesday morning after Bowdler’s visit. During the ten o’clock lull. Tuesday was her office day: payroll, bills, and budget. Pelican's product requisitions for the week factored in and ordered. She settled down for a morning of paperwork, rewarding the senior waitress on duty with a day off her feet to woman the register. Rest of the week Sue sat at the cash box, making small talk, gatekeeping the