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Fiction- 1st Place

The stragglers from the morning crowd sat contentedly in their booths, leaning across the aisles to speak to one another, waffles and omelets testing the last loop on their belts. The group of four old women seated in the corner booth were in the midst of an intent discussion about their missing fifth, whose new shade of rogue was either a sign of an affair or onset Alzheimer’s. A few blue-collar workers sat slumped over the counter, nursing mugs of black coffee with solemn resignation, sharing yawns instead of small talk. The hostess, a wide-hipped woman named Margaret, flitted between tables with menus and free therapy, depending on the early afternoon state of the customer. A father and son were passing the local paper back and forth, filling out the crossword puzzle, the little boy buying a vowel each time he faltered on one of the longer words.

“Four down is Waxahatchee,” the passing waitress whispered to the boy, tapping the paper as she passed to clear the syrup stained plates. The kid grinned, swiping the pen from his father’s hand and writing the name of the creek in shaky letters.

She refilled the mugs of the men at the counter, offering them smiles that they could tuck into the pockets of their overalls. Mary had worked at the diner for nearly five years; she knew everyone, all of the worn down, rounded out country folk whose chief joy in life was pancake Sundays. Once the diner had given out a special deal on milkshakes, and someone passing through would have thought it was the Fourth of July. The mayor ate breakfast with his wife and three daughters most mornings, before hustling to the office with the air of importance reserved especially for big men in very small towns.

Nothing important had happened in Shelby for three years, and before that, not since the Civil War. It was highly unlikely that anything important would ever happen again.

The patron who occupied the booth nearest the door was a stooped, slack-jawed man with grisly stubble speckling his cheek. She brought him his coffee with a warmed stack of toast and marmalade. He was one of only two men she had ever met who liked marmalade on rye.

“Morning, Turner,” she beamed at him, setting the plate down and squeezing his shoulder, “How’re ya feeling?”

The man raised his eyes to her, expression sullen as he always wore it. His mood had never varied, not in the past few years, though there was no one around those parts that would question it. Least of all Mary.

“Doin’ fine,” he muttered as he always did, his voice a rasp, charred with age and bourbon, “You? You look well.”

Turner’s manners were never better than when he came to visit Mary. That was what everyone in town always said to her.

“You make that man’s life brighter, honey,” Margaret had once told her amidst a mountain of unwashed dishes. Mary had never been able to tell if it was with concern or pity that people talked about the old man. It usually seemed like a mixture of both, like most folks had not made up their mind on the matter, and they were happy to remain ambivalent.

“I’m doing alright,” Mary shrugged, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, “Plenty of work to be gettin’ on with. Willie’s talkin’ about gettin’ a new generator. Ma wants to talk him out of it, but once an idea gets in his head, well, there ain’t no gettin’ it out.”

She had seen Turner last week. Since then, nothing had happened. The new generator was a recycled conversation, Willie had been talking about getting the damn thing for months. Turner either never noticed or didn’t mind. Maybe he knew that things just didn’t happen in that town anymore.

The old man nodded slowly, “Your ma has a good head.”

A long pause. Forks clattered against plates, the pleasant din of conversation and cutlery partitioning them from the rest of the diner.

“You got time to sit?”

He always asked the question, even though her answer had never changed.

“Sure, I got time,” she shrugged, sliding into the booth, across from him, “You been taking care of yourself?”

She knew he had, because she asked the neighbors to check in on him.

Turner made a noncommittal sound, picking up the knife and smearing marmalade over the toast. Mary watched as it melted over the crusts, bits of orange dripping from the knife onto the blue patterned plate.

“You’re gettin’ skinny again,” Mary pointed out, leaning her chin on her hands, “Are you eatin’ enough? You really oughta come over for dinner, ma’s always sayin’ you should.”

Her mother had been saying as much for the past three years, but it had changed nothing in Turner. Nothing anyone said had much of an effect on him, only some words made him flinch.

Mary sighed, sliding her hand across the table and laying it over his. Her brown sugar and honey skin against his leathery palm, with veins like lines on a map. She could almost see where the Waxahatchee climbed up from his wrist towards his knuckles, the creek webbing at his palm, a stream riveting along the side of his index finger.

“Turner, you have to take care of yourself,” she chided him gently, watching as his thick brows drew together, “I can’t have you wasting away on me.”

She paused to take a steadying breath, glancing at the jar of marmalade to find the words.

“John wouldn’t want that.”

Turner flinched at the name, but did not draw his hand away from hers.

Even after three years, Turner couldn’t stand to talk about him.

Mary had shared her part in grief. It had torn her apart, but she had stitched herself back together. She had not let herself fall to pieces, not when she still had love to give. Not when she could make customers laugh so hard that they inhaled half their milkshake. Or when she could sit with one of the kids at the table and draw with crayons on napkins.

It was only Turner that she worried about now.

“I’m gettin’ on fine,” he said in a low voice, turning back to her. His gaze dropped to the hollow of her throat, where she wore the familiar silver band as a necklace. Instinctively, she reached for it, twisting the delicate chain in her fingers, dropping her gaze for a moment.

“You know, we’re in this together,” she reminded him quietly, “And yeah, some days I just want to sort of crumble too, but I can’t. Because it would piss him off, and I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to live the rest of my days afraid of death, because then I’d miss all the goodness in life. And there’s a lot of it, Turner.”

He took a sip of his coffee, gone lukewarm with conversation. When he set the mug down, he offered her a weary smile. It didn’t meet his eyes, not exactly, but there was a fondness there. A threadbare kindness that had been worn away by the past three years, when he had very little to be kind about.

“I brought you something,” Turner said eventually, as he always did. It was his polite excuse, the sign that the conversation was over and if he could have his bill, please.

Mary was always careful not to press him. She might have, before. Before everything happened she had been so rash, teeming with energy and life. Her laugh used to put thunder to shame and she used to be funny, God, she used to be so funny. She couldn’t count the number of times she had made John choke from laughing. He had once tried to enforce a “no talking during dinner policy” and had snorted milk from his nose when she started making faces.

They had been good, and she had been brilliant. Now he was gone and she was okay.

Mary grinned at the old man who had almost been her father-in-law.

“Catfish day,” she beamed, taking his half-filled mug and leaving it on the tray of dirty dishes, “Good thing, too. I was starting to miss them.”

She had only just finished the one from last week, but she always acted thrilled on Turner’s behalf, because it was all he had to give.

The catfish had always been difficult to take. They reeked of memories, of muggy August afternoons, ankle deep in the creek, pants rolled up past skinned knees. Her and John, passing stolen whiskey between licorice-stained fingertips, a war of stolen kisses and bugs caught in jars playing across the long summer months.

Now every Thursday, Turner would show up at the diner with just a few bills for a cup of coffee, and he would have another catfish rolled up in newspaper sitting in the cab of his truck. She brought home the fish every week, tucking the package into her family’s small fridge and spending hours digging through recipe books for one that would make a catfish taste like anything other than catfish.

When Turner handed her the wrapped fish, she held it like something precious.

“I ain’t seen you at church,” he mentioned, resting his bad knee against the truck bed. He wasn’t moving as well as he used to.

Mary frowned, scratching at a patch of rust on the side of the door, “I don’t go anymore.”

The old man furrowed his brow, “No?”

Turner had never been particularly religious before. He had been the sort to kill a six-pack out on his back porch before two in the afternoon. He had sobered up just soon enough to see his son killed. He hadn’t gone back to the bottle, but he had not been able to do much of anything else, either. Just go to mass every Sunday and down to the lake a few times a week to catch himself some fish, and bring one to the girl who had almost been his daughter.

She shook her head, “I don’t believe anymore. It’s hard to, when you realize no matter how much you pray, things just happen.”

A heavy silence stretched between them, before Mary glanced up, squinting against the sun, the corners of her mouth twisting into a careful smile.

“But who knows?” she shrugged, “If God’s got a plan, he wouldn’t go and tell me about it anyways.”

Turner nodded slowly, rubbing his hand along his lopsided jaw and staring at the ground.

“‘Spose you’re right. He’s got His ways, we got ours,” he said gruffly, looking back up at Mary, “I’ll see you next week.”

“I’ll see you around, Turner,” she said warmly, squeezing his arm before stepping back, “You take care of yourself. You really ought to come to dinner.”

He tipped his head towards her, before opening the driver’s door and hoisting himself into the seat. He leaned out the window, leaning on his wrinkled elbow to speak to her.

“Don’t know ‘bout them catfish. Not so many ‘a them this late. Season’s running out.”

She waved as the truck pulled out of the parking lot and kicked up dust along the road back to the lake.

Half a mile to the lake, a third of a mile to the post office, three miles to the movie theater. Nothing too far that couldn’t be walked to. Just one bend in the road for twenty miles, and John had missed it.

Mary sighed, tucking her hands in the pockets of her apron and turning back to the diner. She would still be there next Thursday, when Turner came for coffee. And there would still be a fish wrapped in newspaper on the front seat of the truck. It didn’t matter what the season was like, this year, or three years, or seven years ago.

There were always gonna be catfish.

Judge’s Comments:

“A layered character study of two people dealing with grief in different ways. The bustling diner setting was perfect to portray the woman’s attempts to step back into life after the death of her fiancée, while her almost father-in-law retreated to the solitude of the lake to cope after the loss of his son. The catfish – his weekly offering to the woman who shares his loss – a poignant coming together.”

I am a rising senior high school student from Darien, Connecticut. My fiction has yet to appear in any other work.