Lunch Special on the Menu at Mollie'sShe had green hair and purple fingernails and the build of an R. Crumb earth mother: big feet, big thighs and a generous twin curse to give a country boy fits. All of 19, she was stuck in Mollie's off the interstate in northern Utah. On the table she put two menus, once white, now mellowed with a patina of blue-plate specials. She took our order and made a discrete retreat, joining a wiry cook behind a linoleum counter lined with barstools on chrome pedestals bolted to the floor. Nobody sat at the café counter, but cowboys occupied two tables, sanctuaries from the chill of an October afternoon. Mud caked their jeans and boots. Working men, either they rode a horse or a horse rode them. Forbus and I were passing through in boat shoes and T-shirts. Nobody bothered to look our way. I went to the restroom to wash up after a half-day ride in the classic 30-year-old BMW Forbus was driving back to Florida. Reluctantly, I two-fingered the knob and entered a large room with a doorless stall, a sink anchored to the wall and a cloth-roll towel machine of a type I did not know still existed. The towel had that permanent stain down the middle that would never come clean. In the acute sense of smell that accompanies hunger, I detected that everything that had entered the room had not entirely left, perhaps for some decades. Back at the table lunch had arrived: meat with a side of potatoes, peas and a roll slick with margarine. Forbus dug in. I summoned an appetite. Our phones and a digital camera Forbus had borrowed in a hurry were on the table. He knew how to turn the camera on and take a picture, we thought, but had not got further instruction.
One of the cowboys held court at a table behind us, regaling his gang with lies, largely involving cases of beer, the massive consumption of it and the relentless pursuit of more. We were in Mormon Utah, after all, but we took this as a good sign that we might later locate a cold one, as we would not escape the state till sometime next day. The waitress checked on us, and I said, "Do you know how to work a digital camera?" She said, "Is it fancy?" Not for an American teenager, my dear, no matter how remote the outpost. She fiddled with it and then showed us all the pictures we had taken. There was Forbus leaning on the BMW at the Thousand Falls and, in the next shot, me, too. There was Forbus propped up on the BMW at the store that sold Idaho's Best Bodacious Buffalo Jerky. Me, too. There was Forbus cross-armed on the BMW right outside in the lot at Mollie's. Me, too. If we had left ourselves out of the pictures, we might have got a clean shot of the car. The cowboys behind us went to the counter to pay. The girl met them: three lean men in soiled jeans and crusty boots and one fat boy who was office-clean, duded up in Wranglers, Dan Posts and a fancy belt buckle. He drifted away from the counter when it came time to pay, working a toothpick in his mouth, studying the girl. She did not bother to look his way. One of the working cowboys picked up the tab. She smiled for that one, the one who paid, the one telling lies loud enough for her to hear. Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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