Golden Heart Café

When the Messenger from out of state makes his monthly round, he has to pull hard on his mare’s mane to get him to stop. Dust swirls up around my porch as he takes a minute to breathe. “They…” He wipes at his face, turns his eyes towards the sky as if praying for strength. “Digging. They started digging. Got desperate.”

Since I’m the only one out on the street, there’s no one else to ask the obvious question.

“Digging… what?”

The Messenger shakes his head. He’s usually brief, riding past with an all clear, but now worry pinches his sweat-beaded brow into knots. “Dogs started digging straight down into the earth. Finally went to Hell like we all asked, but there’s no telling how many or where they’ll go. When they’ll be back.”

“No, I guess not.” At this point, what’s left to say? The situation doesn’t leave much room for an okay, see you next time! or even just okay. Nothing about it is okay. But Messenger doesn’t stick around to chat about it. After a refresher, he’s on his way towards Ohio to tell whatever unlucky souls he finds there before looping back. As I watch him ride off, a fluttering piece of paper stuck in the groove between two bannister posts catches my eye.

“ CHARLIE’S DOUR COMEDY HOUR :)

@ GOLD HEART CAFÉ! FOLLOW

STREET SIGN WITH 3 RED BALLOONS

THIS TUESDAY @ WHENEVER ”

I never knew him well enough before the MUTT’s reign of terror, but this hastily scribbled note card is definitely a Charlie move. Whenever things start going downhill, he’s the first one to throw himself down the chute with no helmet and no pads -- just the clothes off his back and all the plucky optimism of a failed theater major. I guess I was hoping he’d be able to leave our town for good after graduation, what with his lucky underdog demeanor and determined charm.

But we’re all underdogs now.

Rubbing the edges of the card with my thumb, I figure why not? I’m not looking forward to being the bearer of bad news just yet. Anyone who’s seen The Messenger by now will have started talking, no doubt.

The only hassle is the three mile trek into town, though it’s worth it to find that all the 2o minute markers painted along the roads have been Charlie-fied; vibrant red paint underscores each line with silly bits like “End of the World but the Start of your Journey!” and “No Stop Signs were Sacrificed in the Making of this Marker,” then finally “Keep to the Left if you want to Laugh.” Just on the corner in place of the old street sign stands a solitary wooden post with three balloons bobbing lifelessly above it. Beyond that, an empty street with empty sidewalks and empty storefronts. Empty, except for a variety of crumpled cardboard pieces containing the same two-word warning in all capital letters: NO. METAL.

No. Duh.

I must catch the tail-end of a joke as I step inside, because everyone turns to look as I set the door back in place instead of laughing at the guy up front. By everyone, I mean six people. Terry, a burly man who used to run the deli, his wife Jane, and their five-year-old daughter named Sabrina share the table closest to the door. Conner from senior year who always shared his gum in first period has tucked himself into the corner by the bar, hood covering his face, and sitting across from him on a wooden crate instead of a stool is an out-of-towner who goes by Matthew. My closest neighbor, Sheila, waves timidly from where she leans against the wall, ready to make a run for it at a moment’s notice. There are holes where the light switch and the ceiling fan used to be, as per the standard for every building in town still standing.

Charlie himself, holding a coffee stirrer with an empty creamer cup on top in lieu of a microphone, keeps rattling on from where he sits cross-legged on the counter like nothing even happened. Almost like nothing could happen as long as he’s talking, and for a second I think I might be convinced. Silently, I claim a seat amongst his disciples.

“And isn’t it just lonely? It gets so quiet sometimes, you could hear a ghost fart.”

That joke gets Sabrina’s vote, who chortles loudly from Jane’s lap. It’s hard to tell because of his unkempt beard (no razors) but Charlie grins.

“I mean really! I was expecting my first apocalypse to be all car crashes and street fires and planks of wood nailed up on every window, but nope. Not a peep. Not so much as one crazy bum by the fountain, nary a preacher at my door. Our very first End of Days and we couldn’t take just a single cue from Hollywood? I feel cheated.” Charlie twirls the creamer cup, scratches his chin, and sighs.

“I will tell you one thing I don’t miss, though. I don’t miss the news. ‘Unprecedented times’ this and ‘MUTT safety tips’ that… Mechanical Utilities and Technology Team… Can we just call them Mecha Morons and move on with it? No one actually thought that whatever they did was going to work, right? Right?”

Disgruntled noises of agreement echo his sentiment. He’s right. In hindsight, we should have known that a ‘biologically enhanced’ metal… nightmare wouldn’t stop eating when the dumpsters ran out of old computer parts and broken phones. Not with half the world left at its feet and its civilians recording them, waiting in affectionate awe for a cutesy Roomba-esque breakdown from the government’s newest experiment. That was over a year ago. Only a year.

“Oh, I know. Trust me, I know. What I wouldn’t give to have my car back. To have air conditioning? Music? Uhg. Bee Gees, take the wheel! But now it’s all gone to the dogs. Literally. Did you know…?” Here, Charlie leans in, teetering on the edge, eyes turned to slits behind his glasses as he surveys the room. “Did. You. Know? Those things get bigger the more that they eat? My one cousin in Atlanta -- this was back before the phone ban -- she caught a picture of one eating a plane from the inside out! Huge!” He spreads out his arms in a sudden burst of energy, startling Conner.

“Big as a whale, hand to God. I would have printed it if they hadn’t claimed all the Staples by then, but man… I’m tellin’ ya, the more you know. The more you know. For example, I only knew three different kinds of metals off the top of my head before last year: iron, copper, and gold." He ticks them off on his fingers.

"For those of you that aren’t science savvy, that’s three out of ninety-four. Ninety. Four. All those fancy names they made us memorize just in case… All that studying. Buddy of mine from college went out one day, few months ago, forgot to take off his belt with this giant honking titanium buckle and whoosh --” He snaps. “Just like that, detector dog gott’im! Pity the poor soul with braces or a bad memory.” A few nervous titters flutter around, mostly out of surprise.

“It’s okay! You can laugh, he wasn’t my roommate or anything. And he wasn't the only one. Keep in mind, this was back when the trash heaps were just reaching kaput. I couldn’t tell you how many people thought it would be safe to go out if you put a thick enough case on your phone. You know, those little machines with, like, sixty-four different types of metal in ‘em? Yeah! Like candy to those things. But I don’t know, we tend to like covering our issues. Take closed-casket funerals. It’s so funny if you think about it! We’re just like ‘why don’t we…?’” Charlie puts his hands together gently. “Yep, just close Grandma up so we don’t gotta look at her annnd there! Problem solved! That fixes everything, mhm!”

I stifle a snort and try not to feel bad for it, but even Sheila laughs. I’ve never seen her laugh before. I’ve never seen Matt-the-tourist so much as half-smile and now he’s hiding his face in his sleeve.

With nothing but some plastic trash and smelling like the creek where everyone washes their clothes, Charlie is able to craft the impossible: a normal evening. Even while the sun sets and brings with it the very real possibility that we will all have to spend the night cuddling up to each other for warmth, the cafe is too full to make room for somber.

“Yeah, that was bad,” the man of the hour demures, hands held up in faux surrender. “But don’t worry, I’ve got more family friendly content lined up for the little ones. It’s not all doom and gloom.”

“Says you.” Terry interjects, not unkind. It gets an obligatory laugh from the room.

“No, but really! Do you guys know how Golden Heart got its name? There’s a couple versions. No? No one? Oh, then you’ll love this.”

The ground seems to shake as we all subconsciously scrape our seats in and shuffle closer, children around a campfire. Charlie drops his faux microphone in exchange for two new props -- sugar packets. “So, about fifty years ago when this plot of land went on the market, there was this young couple, right? Man with a plan decides he wants to start a business but he’s just in agony this whole time trying to come up with a name because he wants it to be perfect. Every mom and pop coffee shop needs a little flair and he wants his to be the brightest!”

Everyone’s eyes are trained on the two packets as Charlie’s fingers tip-tap them in a circle. Real puppets could not have been more captivating.

“In the meantime, the happy couple became engaged to be married on said land to symbolize fresh beginnings. No surprise there, their connection is kismet,” he smushes the packets together. “And Mr. Fiancé buys his gal a fancy heart-shaped locket instead of a ring -- pure gold. Super dainty. Problem is, wifey has a little bit of a memory issue and keeps misplacing it. Over and over, so bad it starts to get a bit too much even for him. She wants their love to be forever, though, right?

Well, Husband-to-Be decides he’s gonna make sure she never loses it again; he goes out and buys her a new locket with a mile long chain, five inches thick, the heart nearly the size of his own head. Still entirely pure gold, might I add!”

A slight tremble out of the corner of my eyes distracts me just for a moment. The plastic sugar packet container looks like it’s… vibrating. Just enough to start skidding across the counter. Is it? Yes, it definitely is. The whole counter is starting to shake and no one sees it through the veil of Charlie’s story.

They started digging.

“The owner has it carted over with him and the missus on their wedding day and when she sees it? She’s so overcome with joy, you couldn’t pay her to stop kissing that man. And the best part, how they decide to name the place and keep her from forgetting where she keeps the locket? It’s only a theory, but...”

Got desperate.

He sits up so proudly that the tinkering of glass bottles rattling in their frame behind him is secondary -- that no one looks away until a crack in the tiles jettisons from the floor all the way up the opposite wall.

“You’ll never guess where they buried it.”