Saturday's Storyteller: "Waffle House used to be Jeremiah's favorite restaurant, until Sheila had to burn it down in 1987."

by Belinda Roddie

Waffle House used to be Jeremiah's favorite restaurant, until Sheila had to burn it down in 1987. By then, it wasn't serving waffles - at least, not the waffles that one would douse in boysenberry syrup and top with butter squeezed out of a tube.

In the small town of Knovacoke, Waffle House became rather notorious for its characters. Namely, behind the dilapidated kitchens and seating booths with puncture holes in the shiny green cushions, there was a teeming cesspool of dirtier activity. Everyone and his grandmother knew that the place secretly became a giant brothel in 1984, even Jeremiah, who was sixteen and had grown out of his love for the Belgian dough delight and gotten into underage drinking, smoking, and motorcycle riding. Still, the restaurant held a sense of nostalgia for him as he ripped by, his heavy bike practically making ripples in the asphalt as he cast a glance at the neon "Waf-le Ho s" sign and the whitened windows. It was a token piece of the town to him, right after the taquería where the police department always broke up a drug ring or a brawl over a bowl of guacamole.

It was very telling, in fact, that the KPD was keen on sending their officers to the closest supermarkets and parks to flag down customers eating raw meat out of the freezer section or young couples engaging in borderline sex by the metal playground that was too hot to play on during the summer - yet never once was even a patrol person sent to investigate Waffle House. This was because of two major factors: One, the place was deathly quiet. It was almost alarming how not a single noise reverberated from the plaster walls, as if everything had been padded so that each scandal on old mattresses and shag carpets could be muffled and undetected by anyone, whether an FBI agent or a neighborhood watchman. Two, and this was not something anyone knew at the time, the chief of police himself - a self-proclaimed herald of the law - cavorted with several of the more ragged and desperate citizens, male and female, within the brothel. After the recession of the early 1980s, it took considerable time for Knovacoke to recover, so by 1985, while neoliberalism was sweeping the nation, its piss-poor economic status had remained unchanged. Therefore, many young people, whether or not they were fortunate enough to attend college, came back home and could find no work, and therefore hid themselves in shame in the Waffle House, scrounging for money from the highest bidder. Jeremiah, upon hearing about the chief's eventual arrest after Sheila's arson, did not even want to guess how many greens he had pulled out of his uniform for the prostitutes.

But perhaps most startling of all, after the ashes were swept away and the charred walls torn down and ground into splinters, was the fact that the owner of Waffle House was a clean, well-kept woman who had once been the sweetheart of the mayor back in the 1950s. After his death, she had opened the establishment in memorial of her husband's love for breakfast during any time of the day - and his voracious appetite for all things fried, powdered, or greasy. It was, in fact, the "Mayor's Deep-Fried Surprise" that Jeremiah loved the most, gobbling it down and never caring about how it made his belly bulge more and more outward. Of course, that was before he was known as the fat kid in seventh grade and decided to tone down at the gym up to three hours a day.

The owner's name was Francisca Paula Steiner, and after business had diminished and her arthritis no longer allowed her to adequately work a waffle iron or a frying pan, she began to convince the down and out twenty-somethings in the town to come to her place for business. The breakfast spot became a whore house, and unbeknownst to Francisca, Sheila, the latest addition to the ring, was not willing to let the operation go on any further.

***

"Jeremy."

"Jeremiah, babe," Jeremiah reminded Tracey, as he reached for his beer that threatened to disappear under the couch cushions. He hated being called Jeremy. On the television set, the theme from "The Simpsons" could be heard rattling from a VHS tape.

"Yes, hon. You gotta go pick Sheila up in a half hour."

He whipped his head up then and saw his wife traipse into the room, the oozing tattoo of a raven leaking across her sunburned arm. Of course. Sheila's five-year sentence had been served, after being cut down from seven years. If Francisca Paula Steiner hadn't asphyxiated during the fire, it would have been even less.

Jeremiah's sister, despite being lauded as somewhat of a hero in Knovacoke, had been found guilty by a jury of her peers back in 1988. It had taken quite a while to get her case to court, given that Francisca's family was desperately trying to pin her with first-degree murder. The verdict was negligence and arson, and when Sheila had been escorted away in handcuffs, the bulbs of cameras had flashed, and her picture, juxtaposed with the burned down Waffle House, was glorified by the townsfolk.

Not that Jeremiah had spoken to any of them as of late. Being the brother of a well-known, incarcerated former prostitute who had taken vengeance on her "boss" wasn't exactly what he had in mind during his life, and to escape the thriller story (as well as the countless calls for interviews and even a suggestion that he write a book or a screenplay or both about the event), he had married his high school sweetheart, dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen, and moved to the nearest city. There, he worked in an auto shop, where he was paid adequately. And he was happy, given how far away he was from everything.

Now Sheila was back in his life, and he knew very well what kind of story tropes he'd be put through.

Ignoring his motorcycle for the sake of the family Camaro, Jeremiah forced the engine to screech awake and roared his way out of his apartment complex parking lot and into the mosaic of roads. He had not crossed the bridge to Knovacoke for some time, not even for Thanksgiving or Christmas - he spent those holidays with Tracey's family, not his own. And besides, after Sheila had been put away, it wasn't like his parents were keen on paying more attention to him. With all of his weight problems as a youth, "rebellion" as a teenager, and independence as an adult without a college education, he knew that his mom and dad just didn't know how to communicate with him. And Jeremiah didn't mind.

The bridge melted away into ragged gravel pavement, and Jeremiah drove his way toward the state prison, where his sister would be released. His Camaro was stopped by two guards on bikes, and he was told to wait until the gates opened. When they did, he could see Sheila hobbling over, hands cuffed, two other security men clenching her elbows.

"You Mister Jeremiah Hassleback?" one of them asked him.

"Yeah." Jeremiah spit out the window and scratched the fuzzy nape of his neck, where a crucifix bled into his skin.

"It's all done with. Your sister meets with a parole officer every week, but other than that, she's good."

He was handed a piece of paper with an address on it, and Sheila, quiet and uncuffed, slipped into his car and didn't buckle her seatbelt until Jeremiah had driven about a mile away from the prison. She certainly didn't look too bad for spending time in prison. She had filled out immensely, having looked somewhat emaciated back in 1987, with her natural blonde hair springing in soft curls and free of heavy red henna. The Sheila of 1993 was more toned, more sharp-chinned, and more wet-eyed that Jeremiah had ever seen her.

"What time is it?" was the first thing she asked. Not, "How are you?" or, "Did you miss me?" Just the time.

The clock in Jeremiah's car was way off, so he looked at his watch. "Nine o'clock. Why?"

"I'm hungry." She snorted. "The prison food was shit, obviously. They don't give a fuck about the concept of undercooked versus overcooked. You hungry?"

"A bit."

"I would suggest waffles, but..." She craned her head to see if Jeremiah would react. "...too soon?"

Jeremiah wrinkled his nose. An image of the Mayor's Deep-Fried Surprise popped into his head, all laden and sticky with maple syrup and margarine. He shrugged.

"Pancakes instead, maybe," he said. "There's a place - "

"You choose, buddy. I promise I don't have matches."

***

The car listlessly rolled into the parking lot of a franchise pancake house, and Jeremiah asked for a booth. He sat awkwardly across from his sister, looking starkly different than her at twenty-two years old, with black sideburns, tattoos, and a tight shirt with "Mötley Crüe" full blazen across the chest. He ordered an omelet quickly, while Sheila asked for pitch black coffee and then requested more time. She asked for hash browns later.

"That's it?" Jeremiah mumbled without exactly thinking. "I thought you were hungry."

"I am hungry," Sheila argued before she sighed. "I just don't want you paying for too much."

"Have the fucking combo, for all I care. I make a good amount of money."

The food came out, and they ate in silence. Jeremiah had never seen so much tabasco sauce disappear from a bottle and reappear on hash browns. Sheila definitely made good use of the pepper shaker, too.

"So you gonna ask me any questions?"

Jeremiah shrugged. "Not much to ask. You burned down a secret brothel. You killed a sixty-year-old lady while you were at it. I saw you in court and learned way too much about how many men you had to fuck - "

"Women, too," Sheila pointed out. "They just didn't tell their husbands."

He crinkled his nose. "You catch anything in prison?"

"Nope," she replied. "Just dealt with the big fucking virus I already had. Prison guards were scared as hell that I'd spread it, so they gave me my own cell and even got the doctors to bring in the best drugs."

"Like AZT."

"Yep."

Jeremiah sighed. Sheila had confessed that she was HIV-positive while on the stand, and that was a huge deal. Part of why the chief of police had lost his job and fled to Hawaii on a strangled pension was that she had accused him of transmitting the disease to her while they had sex. Given the chief's newly discovered reputation, Jeremiah wouldn't have been surprised, even though it twisted his stomach up in knots even now and made the cheese-smothered eggs on his place appear less appetizing.

"It's why you did it, wasn't it?" he found himself asking, watching as the shredded spuds on Sheila's plate slowly disappeared into her mouth. "Burned the place down, I mean."

"What, because I had been sentenced to die young? Because I got desperate and decided to fuck for a living? Because that bitch Francisca didn't bother to give me a cent for medicine and treated me like I was a contagious vermin?"

"You don't look so bad for your 'death sentence,' though. You look fine."

"I know I look fine." Sheila puffed out her chest. "Matter of fact, I've been told I look great. And I feel great, too. I feel better than I did when I went to prom."

That had been eleven years ago. Jeremiah had never gone to prom. Sheila had been destined for the normal life, according to her family and friends. Now that comment seemed entirely asinine.

"You've got an idea of where you're gonna live?"

"That's where you're taking me after breakfast," gurgled Sheila, as she swallowed a partially coagulated glob of coffee. "My friend Dorothy's house. She's letting me work at her flower shop."

"That's nice."

"It'll be weird, you know," she continued. "It'll be in Knovacoke. People will be lining up for my autograph."

She laughed at her own joke, while Jeremiah silently signed the check. Outside, it had begun to drizzle, and the paint on his Camaro looked sticky as the rain hit it. At the table across from them, a little boy had dumped approximately half a bottle of syrup onto his beautiful Belgian waffles. And he couldn't stop giggling about it.

This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.