Saturday Night at the Dairy Queen
by Chris Drew
June 2, 1990. Petersburg, Indiana. The ninth inning dwindled at the little league park as hardshell bugs swarmed around the outfield lights, immolating themselves as it suited them. Parents packed their dusty youngsters into their cars, heading home for baths and grilled cheese, not knowing that the metal light poles would be bent like candy canes before morning. On Main Street, an assistant prosecutor let himself out of the locked front doors of the limestone courthouse while the janitor mopped in rhythm to a Richard Marx song on her Walkman. Once outside, the prosecutor noted the color of the sky—greenish, like one of the Crayolas in his son’s big box of 64. Further down Main, at the Chevy car lot, the dusk-to-dawn light kicked on around seven, casting a pumpkin-colored wash over used and new alike. The rain began at eight, first in peppering spurts and then in billowy sheets.
Cathy Deffendol was in the last hour of her shift at Dairy Queen when the lights flickered for the first time. They only stayed off for a breath or two, and then returned to their fluorescent buzz. She glanced around the room. Two pimply high schoolers worked with her tonight and three customers sat at the tables. An elderly couple from out of town near the counter, eating hot fudge sundaes and talking about the weather. (When she’d taken out the trash earlier, she’d seen that the plates on their Buick read 53C, not the familiar 63A of Pike County.) Against the far wall sat the preacher that came in every Saturday night to read his Bible and eat Peanut-Buster Parfaits. He wore dark glasses and his shaggy hair dangled behind him in a ponytail. A gold crucifix hung around his neck, though Cathy had never seen him in a priest’s collar. Religion had never been a big draw for her, and the last time she’d been in a church was to baptize her son, mostly because Jim’s parents had wanted it. Now she didn’t give much of a shit what Jim or his parents wanted.
The Weather Service in Paducah had been forecasting storms since early afternoon, so the rest of the customers had taken off when the rain began.
The Weather Service in Paducah had been forecasting storms since early afternoon, so the rest of the customers had taken off when the rain began. Cathy wasn’t opposed to closing early, despite her boss’s lecture on responsibility during the shift manager training session. Until Ma, Pa, and the Bible-Jockey left, though, she’d be wiping down the countertops and listening to Ashley and Jason talk about band camp. They both had terrible sunburns. Flakes of skin dropped from their faces like feathers from a molting duck, and Jason looked like a raccoon from wearing sunglasses. Both seemed preoccupied tonight, giggling to themselves, and then clamming up when Cathy came around. She didn’t really care, as long as they stayed useful.
She was elbow-deep in a sink of dirty dishes when the lights went off for good at about nine-thirty. No flickering, just dead. The emergency lights hadn’t worked since her boss had tried to rewire them, and almost nothing came through the windows. The Marathon station across the street, the house across the parking lot—as far as Cathy could tell, Petersburg had gone black.
“Everyone stay put,” she shouted toward the front of the store, because she thought she had to. “No reason to run around and hurt yourself.” She pulled her hands from the sink water, trying to reach for a towel she couldn’t find in the dark. Water drops smacked the roughly textured floor, and she tried not to slip on them as she stumbled toward the front counter. Barely enough light seeped through the windows to see a few silhouettes moving against the rainy glass.
“I haven’t been able to run since 1975,” the elderly man said over the pounding rain. Preacher Man laughed somewhere to her left.
She couldn’t see any of them clearly, except when lightning flashed. She knew she’d stashed a flashlight somewhere behind the counter, but she couldn’t remember where, so she told Ashley and Jason to feel their way out to one of the tables and sit down. After taking her keys off her wrist and setting them on the counter, she began to dig around underneath. While she felt her way through the straws and napkins in search of a light source, the door opened, filling the restaurant with hissing rain. Cathy heard loose napkins flap across the counter. A few seconds later, headlights kicked on and filled the room. Preacher Man ran back in with a soggy Dispatch over his head.
“That should make life a little easier,” he said, then sat back down to finish his ice cream. Thunder began rumbling steadily.
“Miss?” said the old man.
Cathy moved from around the counter and walked toward them.
“Is it alright if we stay in here? I don’t drive anymore, and I don’t think Edie would be much good behind the wheel in this downpour.”
“That’s fine,” Cathy said as she sat at the table next to them and glanced around the room. “It’s not like it’s closing time.” And even if it was, she didn’t get in much of a hurry to go home anymore.
Jason broke out a worn pack of cards and shuffled out two-handed euchre hands with Ashley as the rain skittered on the windows. Cathy could see a few tendrils of water snaking under the door on the west side of the building, but that was nothing new in a rainstorm. Preacher Man scraped the last of the fudgy peanuts from his plastic cup, grabbed his leathery Bible, and came over to Cathy’s table.
“Looks like ark weather out there,” he said, then motioned toward the card-players. “But at least we’ve got one of each.” He laughed at the joke, but no one else did. “Do you have a radio? We could see if WFPC’s saying anything.”
“Looks like ark weather out there,” he said, then motioned toward the card-players. “But at least we’ve got one of each.”
Cathy didn’t like that this man with his ponytail and “Lord’s Gym” T-shirt thought of the radio before she did. It was just a nothing Dairy Queen in a nothing town, but she was still the manager. Shift manager, anyway. She left them sitting and went to get the radio from the drive-thru window counter. As she moved behind the counter, she began to feel vibrations through the floor, like someone was jackhammering the tile. Faint at first, but then the Riley Hospital change box began to rattle. She grabbed the radio at the window and looked out through the rain, steadying herself with a hand on the greasy countertop. The lightning had picked up, and she stole a glance down Highway 57. As another bolt jagged across the sky, it captured a column of black, slightly larger at the top than the bottom. She didn’t really see it so much as remember it a half-second later. It curved in the center, like bathroom plumbing, and wisps of black smoke seemed to roll off it on both sides. Almost alive, like a swarm of bees. The whole building began to shake, and the sound of the rain disappeared behind a roar like one of Norfolk Southern trains that passed on the nearby tracks twice a day.
“Everyone in the cooler! Now!” she shouted as she dropped the radio. Some of them might’ve spoken in reply, but her mind had frozen on what she’d seen. Stacks of cups fell from beside the drink machine as the ketchup dispensers rattled in their metal enclosures. The others began to move toward her. Ashley and Jason tore through the “employees only” door, but Preacher Man stayed behind to help the other two. Cathy felt her organs sloshing inside of her, and her eardrums tightened painfully. As the last three stumbled behind the counter, one of the windows in the main room shattered inward, spraying glass across the tables that sparkled in the gleam of the headlights, mixing with raindrops that now carpeted everything. Cathy saw their mouths moving, but the din consumed any words they tried to speak. She’d never heard anything so loud—not at Jim’s sawmill, not at the Aerosmith concert last year, not even the time her high school boyfriend had driven her out to watch the strip mines blasting. The cooler entrance was dark, away from the fading headlights, but she felt for the cold aluminum of the handle and pulled it open with a snap. The frozen air mingled with the warm humidity pouring through the window.
Her keys still sat on the counter. She would need them to unlock the cooler from the inside, but she was afraid to go back toward the open window and the fury moving toward them. Grabbing a mop, she wedged it between the doorframe and the bottom edge of the door, then stepped in with the others.
“Move toward the back!” she screamed, waving her arms toward the opposite wall to be sure they understood, even though they likely couldn’t see her. They huddled tightly in the back corner, looking toward the open door, framed by only the dimmest light.
The heavy metal door slammed shut, closing them in complete blackness. The roar died down, leaving silence.
When it hit, it sounded to Cathy like a hundred cars crashing into a brick wall. Sharp whistles bounced between the stainless steel walls as debris began flying, some of it clattering its way to the back of the cooler. Metal began to rend. The shelves of ice cream and Dilly Bars scattered onto the frozen ground. Rain began pouring in around the entryway. Then the broom handle snapped. The heavy metal door slammed shut, closing them in complete blackness. The roar died down, leaving silence.
Cathy loosened her grip on the old man and leaned against the wall. She could feel a burn above her left eyebrow where something had hit her.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked.
“I’m good,” Preacher Man said.
“Are you okay, Ashley?” Jason asked.
“Pretty much,” Ashley said.
“Then we’re good,” Jason said.
Their bodies began to separate.
“How about the two of you?” Cathy asked the old couple, though she couldn’t see them.
“I think we’re alright,” the man said. “Are you alright, Edie?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said weakly.
“Try not to move around too much,” Cathy said. “A lot of stuff fell over in here. It’s bound to be treacherous.”
Preacher man made his way to the door and tugged on it, grunting dramatically.
“Have you got the keys?” he asked.
Cathy thought about how to respond. She knew she didn’t, but wasn’t quite prepared for how they might react to the truth.
“They were on my wrist,” she said. “They must have slipped off when it hit.”
“So they’re on the floor somewhere,” Preacher Man said.
“Maybe,” she replied. Her first lie since she last spoke to Jim.
Cathy thought about how to respond. She knew she didn’t, but wasn’t quite prepared for how they might react to the truth.
A small red light shone on one of the deep-freeze thermometer boxes, and it cast just enough of a glow for Cathy to see outlines as her eyes adjusted. Faces began to emerge like developing photos in a dark room. Preacher Man, with his long beard and boonie hat. Jason and Ashley still huddled together. The elderly couple sitting with their backs against the frosty wall.
“So let’s start looking,” Preacher Man said, moving back toward them. “It’s too cold in here for summer clothes, don’t you think?”
“Probably,” she replied.
“Would it offend you if we sat out?” The old man asked. “My knees aren’t what they used to be.”
Cathy began to reply, but Preacher Man spoke first.
“Sure thing,” he said, patting Edie on the knee.
They ran their hands across the icy floor, looking for something Cathy knew wasn’t there. After a while, she let him look on his own. The chill had numbed her palms and her knees. After a while longer, he stopped looking too. Cathy was glad the electricity had gone out. The icy air would slowly bleed off into the night. She thought of how many times Jim had forgotten to pay the electric bill, and she and Jimmy had huddled in blankets together in her bed.
They sat for a few minutes, working through their own thoughts, before the old man spoke.
“I haven’t been in Petersburg for almost a year. What are the odds we picked this night?” He snorted a half-hearted laugh.
“I don’t know,” Cathy said, “but they probably favor the house.” She’d worked in the casino in Evansville for six months before moving back to Petersburg with Jimmy and knew that’s how it usually worked.
“Odds don’t make much difference, really,” Preacher Man said. “But we like them anyway. Makes us feel like we at least understand what we can’t control. Slap some numbers on it and we can pretend we know what to expect.”
“True enough,” said the old man. Something on the shelf across from him shifted with a crinkle of plastic wrappers. Several boxes sat askew across the freezer compartment, and several others had already dumped their contents across the floor.
“So how long have you two been married?” Preacher Man asked him.
Edie began to laugh. “Oh, we’re not married, young man. John’s my brother.”
Cathy had assumed they were married from the moment they walked in. The way they doted on each other.
“I live in Amber Manor,” Edie continued. “My husband died a few years ago, and I can’t get around like I used to, so I cashed in his mine pension and checked myself in. It’s not so bad, really, since I can leave when I want. John comes down once a month and visits. Takes me out for ice cream.”
“I figured you were both from out of town,” Cathy said.
“Nope,” Edie replied. “This is our home, though John seems to like Bloomington just fine these days. I keep telling him if he stays gone too long, he’ll end up like what’s-his-name in those Greek stories he used to teach to his students. He’ll show up one day and nobody’ll recognize him.”
“I’m not too worried about that,” John said. “If I’m like anybody these days, it’s Lear, not Ulysses.” Cathy didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Or maybe Methuselah,” said Preacher Man.
John ignored him and turned his head in the dim red light toward the teenagers. “How are you two lovebirds doing over there?”
“What?” Jason asked, straightening up.
“You’re holding hands, aren’t you? I assume you’re seeing each other.”
“John, leave them alone,” Edie chided.
“I was just saying–”
“Do you really think it’s any of your business?” Edie said more firmly.
Cathy thought he might be on to something, though she hadn’t seen it herself. It explained why they’d been so inseparable since coming back from camp, even taking smoke breaks together. Could she just not see those signals for what they were anymore?
“Hell, if you’re gonna be trapped in a Dairy Queen freezer, you might as well have someone to share it with,” said Preacher Man. “How about you, lady?” he said to Cathy. “You got anybody wondering where you are?”
“I’ve got a name,” Cathy said.
“I figured as much,” he said, “but my eyes are a little weak to be reading your name tag in here.”
Everyone held their breath, hoping for more sounds, maybe someone already looking for them, but only the faint buzz of the battery-powered thermometers hung in the silence.
Something banged hard against the outside of the cooler. Everyone held their breath, hoping for more sounds, maybe someone already looking for them, but only the faint buzz of the battery-powered thermometers hung in the silence.
“Cathy Deffendol.”
“What?” Preacher Man said.
“That’s my name.”
“You don’t say?” he said, a twinge of surprise in his voice.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just…Deffendol. An unusual name. You know how it is.”
“Okay,” Cathy said. “Well, don’t worry; it won’t be mine for much longer.”
“Oh?”
Jason cleared his throat. “If you guys are done with introductions, you think maybe we could figure out a way to get out of here? It’s getting kind of cold.”
Cathy could hear their shivering more than she could see it. Her own teeth knocked together like castanets.
“I’ll see if I can find something to work that door over,” Preacher Man said.
He stumbled over the chocolate and vanilla debris and began searching through one of the piles. Cathy moved between John and Ashley and sat on the icy floor.
“How are you doing, Ash?” she asked. “You haven’t said much.”
Ashley was petite enough that Cathy had occasionally wished childbirth on her during hectic shifts. There probably weren’t more than a few pounds of fat on her body, and Cathy suspected she was colder than any of them.
“My fingers are getting numb,” Ashley replied.
Jason took them in his own hands, now that their secret was out, and began rubbing them vigorously. It reminded Cathy of Jim massaging her feet when they’d first been married.
“And you two?” she asked, turning to John and Edie. They both had jackets on, despite the day’s warm weather. Sometimes being old had its advantages.
“I’ve been in worse spots,” John said. “I was at Guadalcanal. Warmer there, though.”
“Really?” Jason asked. “Were you a Marine?”
Cathy thought of Jimmy and wondered if all teenage boys worshipped war and girls equally.
“I was,” John replied. “First Division, Second Regiment. Stayed until January of forty-three.” He sat silent a moment, then added, “You must have a pretty good history teacher.”
“He’s alright. I think he smokes in the broom closet between classes.”
They laughed as Preacher Man pried at the door with a piece of shelving.
“Did you have a wife at home while you were over there?” Cathy asked, trying to sound casual.
“Oh, no,” he said. “The bachelor life for me. Though I guess I had some offers when I got back. Always felt kind of sorry for those Southeast Asia boys coming home later. Nobody seemed to care much about them.”
Cathy thought of Jim, living in his little apartment in Winslow, coming home from his nightshift at the furniture factory, living off boxed macaroni and tuna and whatever his mom sometimes made for him. She’d only been inside the apartment once, when Jimmy had wanted to gather up some toys before leaving, and the walls had squeezed in on her with their chipped paint and cobwebs.
“That’s the truth,” Preacher Man said as he plopped back beside them. “Knew a man in Evansville at my first church. Name of Barrett Weinzapfel. Catholic fella, missing a leg. I think it screwed him up more to come home than to go over there in the first place. Liked to drop in on us Baptists from time to time, just to see how the other half lived.”
“You preached at a Baptist Church in Evansville?” Cathy asked. “When was that?”
“When I first got out of the seminary. Around eighty-three, I guess.”
“What was the name of the Church? I was married in Evansville.”
“I know. I did the marrying.” He stretched his legs out and propped them on a box. “I wondered if you’d remember.”
This grungy man had been coming into the Dairy Queen for the better part of a year on Saturday evenings, and she’d never recognized him.
Cathy looked hard at Preacher Man for the first time, thinking of the clean-cut minister that Jim had pissed off with a flask of whiskey in his tuxedo pocket. This grungy man had been coming into the Dairy Queen for the better part of a year on Saturday evenings, and she’d never recognized him.
“Well, I’ll be,” Edie said. She sounded entertained.
“Have you known who I was this whole time?” Cathy asked.
“Nah. Thought you looked familiar a few times when I’d come in, but you didn’t seem too interested in talking, so I left it alone. Didn’t make the connection until you told me your last name. I remember that your husband was taking nips while he was practicing the vows.”
“And you didn’t approve too much. People wonder why I don’t go to church.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But I’ll apologize seven or eight years late, if it helps. I was full of dumbass ideas back then. Never met a shepherd that kept much of a flock by expecting the sheep to come to him.”
“That’s for sure,” John said as he put his hands to his mouth and blew on them.
“So where are you at now?” Cathy asked, her curiosity overriding her annoyance.
“Freelancing, I guess you’d say. But doing the Lord’s work in my own way.” He felt around on the floor, and only when he picked it up did Cathy realize that he had carried his Bible into the freezer with him. “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened with you and your husband? Was it Jim?”
“It was,” she said. “And there’s nothing to tell. It happens sometimes.”
No one said anything. The hairs in Cathy’s nose had grown stiff from the chill, and she considered pulling her arms inside her uniform shirt. Ashley and Jason had practically piled on top of each other in their attempt to stay warm, while Edie and John sat motionless.
“You know, John,” Preacher Man said. “You’re not the first man with that name to be trapped like this. The Disciple wrote Revelations in a cave, on the island of Patmos.”
“Bully for him,” John said.
They sat into the quiet hours of the morning, shivering together, as the warm night crept slowly in.
They sat into the quiet hours of the morning, shivering together, as the warm night crept slowly in. Cathy thought they would probably be there until sunrise at least, when the volunteer firemen could see what had happened and start digging around. Jim had been in the fire department for a while. She thought of him in his tiny apartment, barely bigger than this freezer. Trapped in his own way, she guessed. The cold had grown less intense. She looked around the freezer at the people the storm had enmeshed her with. Edie hummed quietly to herself while John held her wrinkled hand in his. Jason and Ashley both slept, their heads leaned softly against each other. Preacher Man flipped through his Bible occasionally, holding the pages close to his face, though Cathy doubted he could read a word. Certainly not the words of Jesus in the dim red light of the cooler. He glanced at her at one point and smiled, his beard half covering his top teeth.
Cathy wondered what Petersburg looked like outside of this box. Whether any of the Dairy Queen still stood beyond this cooler, or any of Main Street for that matter. She worried about Jimmy, of course, but their little apartment was in Otwell. Fifteen miles away from this mess at least. Surely the storm hadn’t been that big. She suspected he was fine, but wished she could talk to him. Suspecting and knowing were two different things, after all.
Chris Drew is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana State University, where he teaches creative writing and English teaching methods courses. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Bellevue Literary Review, Quarterly West, Concho River Review, Mad River Review, The Sycamore Review, Red Wheelbarrow, and Big Muddy. When he’s not teaching or writing, Chris likes to watch random streaming documentaries with his wife, play music at the local farmers market, let his daughter fill him in on the latest Taylor Swift news, and play Dungeons & Dragons online with his high school pals.
