Piper by John E. Keegan

Maybe this was the mysticism Seamus had spoken of. When he was done, Dad pushed the chair back to restore noise to the room and seemed almost embarrassed by the respect they’d paid him with their gaping silence.
    As I stared out the back window, I also thought of running away. It was probably the honorable thing to do in the circumstances. But then I remembered how people had bad-mouthed my mother and I felt like a traitor for even entertaining the notion.
    I was needed here in Stampede to make sure no one trampled on her grave.

4
    While I was waiting for Dad to show up for dinner, Marge brought me a piece of chocolate pie with whipping cream around the perimeter that had been squeezed through a pastry nozzle in a star pattern. The mustard stain on her uniform was at eye level.
    â€œIt’s the first wedge of the pie,” she said, “the one your dad always gets.” For Marge, food was love. She was pleasantly plump and invited others to join in her quest. Love thy neighbor as thyself . I knew what was going on though: Marge was trying to restore normalcy.
    â€œNo thanks, maybe later,” I said, shoving the plate with my thumb to the center of the table. I used to love to come into Marge’s and sit on my legs on one of the stools and joke with her until she gave me someone’s leftover french fries or the part of the milkshake in the steel mixing canister that didn’t fit into the customer’s soda glass, but that was then. Now I wanted change.
    â€œShame on you, honey. I can practically see your ribs. Your father must be starving you.” What she really wanted to know was how things were going at home without Mom. She clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth. She must have been a knockout when she was young: high cheekbones, good eyes, full figure. She seemed oblivious to the transformation that time had accomplished on her and she always flirted playfully with my dad.
    â€œReally, Marge, I’m eating fine,” I said.
    â€œGot to be well-rounded, honey,” and she put her hands under her breasts and clucked out the side of her mouth, all the time looking straight at my chest. Why did everyone have to have milk jugs for tits?
    â€œDid my dad leave a message?”
    â€œYou know better than that. Why do you Scanlons always have to be so busy anyway?” She picked up the pie plate and carried it with both hands back to the counter like it was a religious offering and put it into the refrigerated rack next to the coffee makers. I knew it wasn’t the last time I’d see that piece of pie.
    Marge’s was Stampede’s meeting place. It was where the police took their coffee and donut breaks, where salesmen met clients to sell life insurance policies or recruit Amway dealers. It was also where you met your dad to talk about your report card or explain how things were going with a grandpa at home instead of a mother. At least I figured that’s why he’d asked me to meet him. There was nothing fancy about Marge’s. The pictures on the walls were prints of cattle drives and whiskered cowboys sitting on their haunches around a campfire that probably reminded Marge of Mussellshell, Montana where she’d grown up. The cafe was designed in an L-shape with padded red booths along the windows and matching swivel chairs mounted on pedestals at the counter. No matter the time of day, Marge served breakfast, her two eggs any way you wanted them, little pig sausages, hash browns fried in the sausage juice, and a choice of white and dark toast or homemade biscuits. The smell of grease that had seeped into the foam rubber cushions pretty well dominated the cafe, except for those times when she was baking biscuits. Tonight it was biscuits and there was a sweetness in the air thick enough to chew.
    As I sat in the booth, tracing the lines in my palm the astrologist had read, the bells on the back of the door jingled and John Carlisle walked in. I slid