Where Are You?

by Jeff Martin

There won't be any good food served or gossip shared at the Cassoday Cafe. As explained to me by a neighboring antique salesman (who coincidentally built nearly all of the west facing buildings on the thoroughfare), the current owner's home burned down not long ago. Then a short time later, she contracted lung cancer.

"We all buried her just last week," the old man said, his whispered words lost in the maze of ancient farm tools and antique furniture, all of which he'd restored himself.

I located this man as any lost child would encounter a soothsayer. When I walked into the building, a frog's croak sounded my entrance. Eventually he emerged, never once looking up at me. His fingers were as thich as sausages, yet they remained nimble enough as he picked through a bucket of brass fastenings, as a person might pick through the bottom of popcorn bag.

"Any place to stay around here?" I asked.

"Mmm, no. There's some rooms down the street. I don't know if anyone's there. They might be. They might be home from school."

I walked down there, but there was a picnic table shoved against the front door. A neighboring door approved my entrance, but a sign informed me to call a specific number if I wanted service. Perhaps I could have used the pay phone across the street, since my cell phone had no reception. In fact, the screen read: WHERE ARE YOU?

I'm in Cassoday, Kansas, home of the prairie chicken. That's where I am. Why, dear phone, don't you ask me that question while I'm home, in Independence? I need the company, dear phone. Everyone needs a lot of things.

I walked back to the soothsayer and asked him, again, where there was a place to eat. He didn't look up at me.

"It's where I told you it was," he said.

I left. I told him to have a good day, and I meant it.

There are people you meet in life that you know you will never see again, and sometimes it's hard not knowing how to feel about that. He was one of them.