One Night at the Dockside Cafe
by CAP
Late Autumn, 2003
Anna gently stoked her daughter's hair, red like her own. Guilt and despair surged through her as she gazed upon Tommie, curled up under a blanket on the plush cushion of a bench seat, a small pillow from their sofa tucked under her head. A back booth in an all-night diner was no place for a six year old girl to sleep but her baby sitter bailed on Anna and she was forced into working a double shift. Only painful choices were given single mothers working at minimum wage. She picked the one least objectionable and bit back the nausea.
The buzzer sounded as the door opened. Anna hurried back to her station as several customers, workers just getting off the second shift at the massive warehouse next door, poured into the restaurant. Most settled into booths to the left of the door while a couple sat down on the stools facing the long, linoleum covered counter. One peeled away from the crowd turning to the right. He was young, early twenties perhaps, slender with broad shoulders and close cropped hair. He carried a laptop and three thick books tucked tightly against his hip.
"Excuse me," Anna called out when she noticed him heading for the booths. "Can you sit somewhere else, please?"
He looked at her in question. "My little girl's sleeping back there," she explained.
He nodded and sat down at the counter on the last stool. "Coffee, black," he said popping open one of the books. "Steak and eggs. Steak rare, eggs scrambled, toast buttered. Hash browns."
His order was terse but his eyes were friendly, a small open grin complimented a boyish, handsome face. Anna smiled back before moving on to take other orders.
By the time she returned with the coffee, he was engrossed in what she could see was a college textbook. She thought back wistfully to her one year at Maryland State University. The whole world was open to her when she was eighteen.
"Order up," the cook called out mercifully jerking her away from contemplating her life and all of the mistakes therein. Hungry customers did not care what her past was they only wanted their food.
"Thank you," he said when she finally placed his dinner on the counter beside him.
"What are you taking?" Anna asked.
"This semester is US History," he replied. "Intro to Biology, and Algebra."
"Math wasn't my strong suit," she said.
The young man chuckled contritely. "None of its my strong suit," he admitted. "I coasted through school learning nothing and too stupid to even think about it until it finally bit me."
"How did it bite you?" Anna asked.
"I was a football player and unfortunately a really good one even from my pee wee league days," he said cutting into his steak. "The town I grew up in was football mad and a winning team meant a lot to the principals at my middle school and high school so as long as I was hitting running receivers at forty yards I didn't have to worry about grades."
"The moment we lost in the state semis my senior year, I wasn't any use to them anymore and suddenly my 2.0 average became an 0.0. I flunked everything and couldn't graduate. I went from BMOC to a joke although I probably was a joke already."
"I can't believe you were a joke," Anna said.
"Oh, I'm sure I was," he replied. "I went around wearing my uniform everyday to school, even outside of school."
"A lot of jocks do that," Anna replied. "Most of the football players at my high school wore jeans and jerseys during the season."
"Yeah but I wore the entire uniform, pads, cleats, the whole nine yards, every day, fall winter, spring," he responded. "Plus, running around constantly squawking 'I'm the OB, I'm the QB' like a deranged parrot."
"Ouch," said Anna.
"Yeah," he replied remorsefully. "Remembering some of the things said to me, people were making fun of me even before I flunked out but I was too dense to understand what they meant."
"I recall this one time, a former player came back to get the award. He quarterbacked the team that won the state championship a few years earlier and I thought he was some sort of god. He was a total jerk ridiculing me mercilessly but it just didn't register. I cried like a baby when he was killed in a freak accident that afternoon."
Anna tensed. "Where did you go to school?" she asked.
"Lawndale High," he answered. "It's actually not too far from here but you probably never heard of it."
"I've heard of it," she replied quietly.
He noticed the change in mood. "What's it mean to you?" he asked kindly.
"My daughter's name is Tommie," she somberly replied. "I named her after her father."
"Tommy Sherman," he guessed. "Look, I'm sorry if anything I said was out of line."
Anna snorted. "He was a jerk but like you I just didn't see it at the time. All I saw was the star quarterback who actually noticed this goofy freshman girl from Delmarva. I got pregnant but he died even before I could tell him. Afterward, I built up this imagined relationship to the point I named our child for him. It was only later I learned that I was little more than a diversion, just one in a stable. So now I'm a college drop-out, single mother, and waitress."
She shook her head and gave him a weak smile. "Well, you know my life story and I don't even know your name."
"Kevin Thompson," he replied. "Just got out of the army and now a longshoreman as well as a student at Baltimore State although I hope to transfer to Maryland State one day. If you knew Tommy, I guess you went there."
"Yeah, for a year," Anna answered.
"It's a good school," Kevin said. "Baltimore State not so much but with a GED and a high school record that's poor at best, its about the only college that would take me."
"So, the army," stated Anna a cue for him to continue. She found him easy to talk to for reasons she could not pin down.
"It was good for me, really," Kevin replied. "Especially the Top I had at Fort Stewart, First Sergeant Gallatin. Basically told me to stop feeling sorry for myself, get off the dime and take some action. His boot connecting with my backside motivated me to get my GED. Pointed me in the right direction when I finally started to try and get an education. Got me some software that home schoolers use and handed me a list of some four hundred books that he said any civilized human should read. Still working on it but I got it down to under three hundred now."
"Why didn't you stay in?" Anna asked.
Kevin sobered. He took a long sip of coffee before answering. "I was with the Third Squadron, Seventh Calvary in Iraq. We took Baghdad but I found out that I don't like getting shot and I don't like killing. I swore to God that I'd never take another human life again. Not an easy oath for a soldier in the combat arms to keep so I got out."
Not knowing what to say, Anna merely nodded then moved along refilling coffees. When she got to the end of the counter, the door buzzed again. Anna was instantly on edge. Trouble walked in. The three were straggly and so obviously addicts. Two, one boy and one girl, looked to be still in their teens. The other man was older perhaps twenty-five although the ravages of his abuse made that determination difficult. Unlike the vacant stares of his comrades, he had a wild, hard glint in his eyes. They wheeled in three directions, the men pulling pistols out as they did.
"No f****** heroes, got it," the older one barked. "Everyone get your wallets out. You, cookie, out front now! Ginger, give us the money from the box."
Anna, her hands shaking violently, managed to the register opened. The girl thrust a plastic shopping bag at her. There was not much in the till. She emptied it in a heartbeat.
The older thief whipped his gun around pointing it at Kevin. "What the hell do you think you're doing, A******?" he yelled taking three long strides toward him.
"Getting my wallet like you asked," Kevin calmly replied turning to face him while slowly extracting it from his back pocket laying it on the counter.
"Momma?" a drowsy Tommie asked sitting up in her booth.
The pistol turned toward the girl. Kevin saw the trigger finger tighten. Instantly he brought his left hand up driving the gun toward the ceiling. The moment the gun fired, his right fist came down breaking the thief's forearm. Without pausing, Kevin drove his right elbow back flattening his nose. The thief dropped to the floor helped along by a left cross. Kevin grabbed the pistol from the thief's nerveless hand.
The boy made the mistake to turning around to see what was the commotion. An irate longshoreman immediately jumped him. Two others joined him, fists plummeting. Another had the sense to snare the pistol the kid dropped. He had the magazine out and the chamber emptied in the wink of an eye.
Satisfied that the thief he fought was not going anywhere, Kevin walked toward the girl, the gun pointed at the floor. Her head whipped back and forth trying to make a decision.
"Put the bag on the counter and sit down," he said not unkindly as Anna rushed to her daughter and the cook quickly dialed 9-1-1.
"Yes, sir," she said meekly.
"C'mon, Bill, let the kid up," Kevin said.
Bill got in one more punch before they roughly hauled the dazed boy to his feet and pushed him onto a stool next to the now sobbing girl. The other longshoreman held the empty pistol on the pair pinning them in place with bluff and a menacing stare.
Kevin was extracting the magazine from the pistol when Bill walked over to him.
"You took a big chance," he said.
"He was gonna shoot," Kevin replied ensuring that the chamber was empty. "That hopped-up idiot was actually gonna shoot a little girl."
Bill shook his head glancing down at the prone, moaning thief. "Yeah," he said. "Once they get messed up on that crap, there ain't much they won't do."
Kevin looked around. Tommie, he noticed, was not frightened so much as confused. It was her mother who could not stop shaking as she hugged her daughter tightly. He walked over to them stepping around the still bleeding, still moaning, semi-conscious would be thief.
"It's all over," he said draping a comforting arm across Anna's shoulders. "It's all right."
"I thought you took an oath?" a jittery Anna stated.
"Said I wasn't going to kill again," Kevin replied. " Didn't say anything about becoming a pacifist."
"Who are you?" asked Tommie.
"Kevin," he replied with a warm smile.
Summer 2014
A severely lean Anthony DeMartino walked slowly through the mammoth sporting goods store, his young son at his side. A health scare a few years earlier forced a dramatic change in his lifestyle. He gave up smoking and fried foods and took up cycling and jogging. The conditions that troubled him receded and to his pleasant surprise the stresses of his everyday life became much easier to handle. His colleagues marveled at the new, mellower DeMartino. People who earlier were betting that he would have an aneurism in class one day now believed him when he said that he would teach until he was seventy-five.
He smiled as a young woman wearing the royal blue and white Kevin's Sporting Goods Store uniform approached them.
"Hey, Mr. DeMartino," Tommie Thompson called brightly coming up to him. "Hi, Tony."
"Hi," Anthony DeMartino, Junior happily replied to his preferred babysitter.
"Hello, Tommie," the elder DeMartino said with more reserve but equal warmth. Tommie was one of his favorite students.
"Oh, I'm going to miss having you as a teacher next year," she said. "I hope you're still teaching when my brother, Peyton, gets to high school."
"How old is he?" he asked.
"Six."
"There's a good chance," Mr. DeMartino replied.
"That would be great," Tommie said. "What can I help you with today?"
"Tony needs some new sneakers and by happy coincidence your store is having a sale on them," Mr. DeMartino replied.
"That we are," she replied. "I'll take you to them."
Demartino, pere et fils, followed where the teen girl led. The store was bustling. Maneuvering about knots of customers took some patience.
"Business is good," Mr. DeMartino said.
"Yeah," Tommie agreed. "So good that we're going to have another store in Oakwood. The doors should be opened by the Christmas shopping season."
Mr. DeMartino chuckled.
"What?" Tommie asked.
"You would find all of this amazing also if you knew your father when he was your age," he replied.
Tommie frowned. "He tells me stories about his high school days but I think he makes up a lot of stuff, you know, joking around."
"Oh, child," he laughed. "You don't know the half of it."
"C'mon, sir," she replied. "I mean he makes himself sound like a total drool monkey. Hello, the man has a MBA from Maryland State."
"And you come across as a raving lunatic not to be rude or disrespectful. He even said that you tried to strangle him once and that he deserved it."
"I did," admitted Mr. DeMartino. "I completely lost it and wound up in a sanitarium for a few weeks but he didn't deserve it. Your father was more victim than anything else. We were all part of a frightfully corrupt system that kept a basically nice kid ignorant. I should have fought harder against it but I allowed his future to be traded for some fool notion of glory that Dr. Li so craved. There is no one happier than myself that he was able to rise from the shambles we made of his life."
Tommie shrugged. "Well, Dad always says that others might have led him to water but he was the one who jumped in. He says that everyone's gotta take personal responsibility for their own lives."
"He's learned a lot since he escaped our clutches," said Mr. DeMartino.
A few steps further on found the three of them in the shoe department and face-to-face with Kevin.
"Hey, Dad," Tommie said. "Tony needs some new sneakers."
"Hi, Tony. Hello, Mr. Demartino.," Kevin said. "How are you doing today? Running in this weekend's half-marathon?"
"Yes, I am," Mr. DeMartino replied easing himself onto a chair. "You?"
"Yes, sir. So, Tony, new sneakers, eh? Well, let's see if we can get this pony shod," Kevin said pulling a pair from the rack. "Forget all the advertising, these shoes are the best on the market for kids and at half the cost."