Old Doc Stroud was telling me about the gopher problem he had while I poured his coffee. Seems the gopher was not only tearing up his yard but also his neighbors. See, the neighbor was a pretentious professor who moved here from the city and Doc Stroud wished he’d turn right around and move back.
What annoyed Doc Stroud even more was the fact that the professor caught the gopher with some new-fangled trap that shouldn’t have worked. When the professor showed him the trap, Old Doc Stroud laughed and told him he’d never be able to catch a gopher with that. Well, turns out that gopher must have been from the city too, because somehow the furry little guy got himself caught in that ridiculous excuse for a trap. Now every time the Doc sees his neighbor, the professor reminds him who caught the gopher.
I took the coffee pot behind the counter and set it on the warming pad on top of the brewer. I checked the tickets to see how Moe was fairing in the kitchen. It wasn’t too busy for a Thursday. Just the normal late-night mix of regulars and pilots refueling their Cessna’s and Beechcraft’s. That’s mostly what they did here. This wasn’t the kind of regional airport people flew to. Just the kind they stopped at on their way somewhere else.
Weekends do get a little busy, especially Sunday afternoons. We have a pretty strong after-church lunch crowd. That combined with the regular early morning coffee drinkers, airport employees, and pilots waiting for fuel, it can be a lot for me and Moe to handle, so that’s when we started looking for help.
Julie ended up being the perfect candidate. She was the daughter of Moe’s cousin and recently went online for her senior year of high school after informing her parents that she was pregnant.
If she knew who the father was, she wasn’t telling.
It seemed like we had a good working relationship and as the weeks passed, she began to confide in me. While she still didn’t reveal the name of the father, she did share glimpses into how she felt about the prospect of being a young mother and how late at night she contemplated an abortion.
She even asked me once if I’d go with her to the clinic if she decided to end the pregnancy. I didn’t know what to say so I changed the subject, and she hadn’t brought it up since. The times she’d share things with me was whenever Moe wasn’t working. She didn’t want him telling her father anything he might overhear us talking about.
When Moe was working, she’d talk about how she missed high school and seeing her friends, but then she’d joke that being here in the diner with all of us old-timers was just as exciting. As winter turned to spring, I did notice that the upcoming prom weighed heavily on her mind. Julie would get out her phone and show me dresses she loved and then pat her stomach and wonder how much longer it would be until she started to show. I can’t remember how many dresses she ended up showing me, but it must have been dozens.
I’d ask her how online school was going and she’d usually just give me a shrug. I didn’t exactly know how far along her pregnancy was, but I figured it had to be around four months when February rolled around.
Old Doc Stroud liked Julie so much that he started only coming in on the days she worked. I got a feeling the more Doc came in the more she confided in him and the less she shared with me. Which at first felt like a bit of a relief because I was never good at dealing with teenage problems. You can ask my two grown daughters if you don’t believe me. But after a while, I got to miss her sharing that kind of stuff, and eventually, our chit-chat became just that, chit-chat, and nothing more.
A boy eventually began to drop by to see her. He would sit in the booth in the back corner and only order coffee, no cream, no sugar, just black. I couldn’t get a real sense if he was the mystery father or not, but I leaned toward probably not. He had this gentle way about him when he spoke to her. I couldn’t imagine him walking out on her and not wanting to be the father of her baby.
If anything, after he stopped by a few times, my impression was the opposite. I started to wonder if this was a boy who saw an opportunity. I hate to sound heartless, and call love an opportunity but if Julie was his dream girl, and he didn’t have a chance with her when she was popular, now he had a chance to be her knight in shining armor now that her friends vanished since her pregnancy.
Maybe I shouldn’t think like that. But he’s been the only kid Julie’s age that ever came by to see her. For a girl that Moe called the belle of the ball and the most popular girl in school, she seemed to be lacking in the friendship department.
After the boy left, Julie sat by herself at the counter scrolling on her phone as I went around wiping off tables. We’d hit a lull, which tended to happen after the dinner crowd left and before the bar crowd arrived.
The first time Julie sighed; I ignored her. The second time, I asked her what was wrong. She muttered that all the Instagram posts of girls trying on their prom dresses and posing with their dates was getting to her. She didn’t realize it would bother her so much, but it did.
I tossed the rag and spray bottle on the counter and sat beside her. She laid her phone face down on the Formica and rubbed her stomach. In my best fatherly tone, I let her know it was okay to feel that way. She didn’t have to pretend not to be jealous of her friends who were going to prom.
I suggested she go anyway, so what if she’d be showing by the time prom rolled around? I was sure that boy who’d been stopping by would have loved to take her regardless of how far along she was by then. But Julie didn’t answer and wouldn’t even look at me.
The moment was interrupted by the clanging bell that hung over the door. It was Old Doc Stroud, shaking the newly fallen snow from his coat and scarf. Julie came to life and quickly snatched the phone off the counter and slid it in the back pocket of her jeans. She sat beside Doc in his usual booth and pulled the order pad from her apron.
I nodded at Doc Stroud and wondered what he was doing out so late. As Julie scribbled down his order, I headed into the kitchen and pulled a carton of eggs from the refrigerator which I ended up putting back because Doc didn’t order his usual. When Julie hung up the ticket I had to look at it twice to make sure I wasn’t reading it wrong.
I rang the bell when his order was up and watched Julie sit next to him as he ate. I remember that was a Friday night because I only saw Julie twice after that. She had the weekend off and when she came in on Monday it was to tell me she wouldn’t be working anymore because she was going back to school. The final time I saw her was when she stopped by on prom night to show me and Moe her dress.
It was a different boy with her on prom night than the one who came by and ordered coffee. This one had a loud way about him with his white teeth and curly black hair. Moe took pictures of the happy couple standing by the windows in front of the beautiful May foliage as the boy in his tuxedo put his arm around her tiny waist.