Service Provider

The state park was known for its sinkholes and caves (there was a waterfall in it somewhere, too), so it seemed like a good place to go on the last day of winter. I told my boss that morning that I wouldn’t be coming in. Nobody else had any idea what I was up to. 

In that regard, it was no different than any other day.

It took me two hours to drive to the park, then another two hours to wander to a spot that was entirely off the beaten path. I brought a backpack filled with snacks and water and, God willing, a few emergency supplies. I was not an outdoorsy type, not by any means. I was wearing tennis shoes and swim trunks and a thin hoodie that I had bought from the mall. Really, I was a city slicker, through and through.

The area where I unpacked seemed like it had been made just for me. There was a creek full of clear water, and on all sides were trees looking like a giant network of nerves. Most importantly, one of the rocky edges of the creek was carved in such a way that it reminded me of steps. It was on the top of these steps that I decided to sit, taking in the scenery. 

The creek’s trickle was hypnotic and the sky was a stunning blue. I could actually die here, I thought. Then, tears filled my eyes and I sat for a while, making a mess of my face and blubbering away. 

Once I got everything out of my system, I wiped myself off, drained half a bottle of water, and started to eat a medium red apple. It was right as I swallowed the first bite when I heard a voice.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

Initially, I ignored the voice, thinking that I was just hearing things. And if I wasn’t, then it was best not to react so that the person would simply go away. However, it was hard for me to believe that anyone else could have been at this very part of the park, on this particular day of the week – a Wednesday.

I sat quietly, then, taking another bite of my apple and staring at the ripples in the creek, acting, in general, like nothing was wrong. 

“Here you go, sir,” the voice added. 

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder. 

Behind me stood a man in a black dress shirt and black slacks. He was offering me a thick, black, leathery booklet – like the kind you see in upscale restaurants. The man’s movements suggested that he was younger than me, but his face and hands reminded me of my grandparents’.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name’s Curtis,” the man said, extending the booklet towards me and, when I didn’t move, retracting it.

“If you’re looking for Jeremy,” the man – Curtis – added, “he doesn’t work here anymore.”

“Work?”

“I know, I know,” Curtis said, frowning. “I’m not building houses, and I’m not pulling people out of those houses once they’re on fire. But being a server is important, too. I tell myself this every day.”

Curtis then made another attempt to hand the booklet over to me. This time I accepted it. 

“This is a joke, right?” I said, scanning the trees for any sign of a restaurant. “Are you an actor?”

“No,” Curtis scoffed. “I haven’t acted since elementary school – some twenty years ago.”

“I don’t have any money,” I said as an afterthought, nearly talking over him. 

“What?” he replied, incredulous. “How do you expect to pay for the food?”

“I mean I don’t have any cash; just credit.” 

“Oh,” Curtis said, easing up. “We do take credit – unlike our competitors – so no worries there.”

Well, I thought, either I’m hallucinating or Curtis is a madman. But, regardless, maybe he’s the one who will make my loneliness disappear.

“Curtis! Connection!” another voice yelled. It was deeper and raspier, but I couldn’t tell where it had come from, and I thought for sure that I was about to be mugged. 

Curtis, however, lifted up a finger and told me, “One sec.” He walked several feet away from the rock steps and lowered himself into the ground. To the side of where he had descended was a metal attachment that I hadn’t noticed until now; it looked like a door to a fallout shelter.

I suppose a restaurant could be down there, I thought, generously. 

I flipped open the booklet. It was indeed a menu, and it had the name of the restaurant at the top of each page. The name was “The Pit,” which was common enough that it was hard to search up online, but, eventually, I did find something. There were some reviews on TripAdvisor, and a couple features here and there on various food blogs. Based on what I saw on the menu and what people had written, the place was known for its deep-fried cuisine – ranging from chicken to ice cream. It was hard, then, to deny the possibility that there was a restaurant out here. 

But wasn’t this public land?

I raised this question to Curtis once he returned. It had been about ten minutes, and he was now carrying a carafe of water and a pint glass. 

“Sorry for the wait,” he said, setting them on the highest rock step. 

“I already have water,” I said, raising my plastic bottle. 

Curtis regarded it. “So you do  . . .” He paused, eyeing the glass and carafe. “But, the truth is, you can never have enough water. Water is life.”

“Certainly,” I replied, politely. I considered how to phrase my next question, starting with, “So –”

“– Do you know what you want to order?” Curtis interrupted. 

I let out a pitiful laugh. “Uh, no, not yet.”

“Oh . . . okay.”

“But tell me,” I added. “How can you have a restaurant in a state park?”

“Huh?”

I gestured to our surroundings. “We’re in a park. It’s public. How can you operate here legally?”

“I think you’re mistaken,” Curtis answered. He glanced at the menu. “Should I give you a few more minutes?”

“Is there actually a restaurant down there?” I blurted out, ignoring his question. I pointed behind him. 

Curtis looked over his shoulder and slowly back at me. He was quiet for a minute or so, contemplating something. 

“Do you really not know?” he asked.

“Know what?” I said in a wavering voice.

Curtis scrutinized me more. “But you went through the cave. And up the hill. And through the trees, the miles of trees . . . How could you not know? What else would you be doing here?”

“Where is here exactly?”

Curtis looked at my face for a very long time. Then he slackened. “Wow, you really have no idea,” he said, laughing slightly.

I shook my head.

“Well,” he continued, “we’re definitely not in a park, but don’t worry, you’re allowed to be here. This place is open to the public, sometimes.”

I looked around at all the trees and the creek and the rocky steps. “But it’s not a park?”

Curtis shook his head. “No, that ended at the cave.” He laughed again. This time it was looser, more friendly. Like I had told him a big, fat joke. “You really didn’t know about this place?”

“No,” I replied stiffly. In the back of my head, I wondered if this was all an act, a way to lure me into getting jumped. 

“Curtis! Connection!” the other voice yelled again.

“One sec, Tony!” Curtis yelled back. He took a seat next to me on the rock step. Suddenly, his voice began to shake:

“I – I – I’ve never met someone who – who – who doesn’t require service.” He looked like he was about to cry. “And I’ve been here for a long time. Years.” Then he grabbed my hand. “Please, let me take you down there. I need someone else to see it like I see it.” He gripped tighter. “Please, uhh, sir.” 

“I’m AJ,” I said, shaking our already-locked hands. 

“A name!” Curtis shouted, joyfully. “AJ!” He then leaped back onto his feet. “Please, AJ!” Curtis repeated, eagerly. “Please come with me!”

Nothing about this seemed right. But, then again, Curtis had a point earlier: Why did I come this far? I mean, I went past the cave, right? Why not go into this hole in the ground?

I stood up, a gesture which immediately brightened Curtis’s mood. “You’re not going to rob me, right?” I asked him. “Or kidnap me or something?”

“God, no!” Curtis replied, reassuring me with a pat on my arm. I knew he wouldn’t tell me even if it were true, but at least I signaled to him that I was wary and he had to prove himself to me further.

We stepped to the rim of the hole, which was lined with twigs and grass. It was no wider than a sewage drain. The air above it smelled like grease, and I could hear a distinct gurgling. A ladder led through the metal door to the bottom. 

“Curtis! Connection!”

“Coming, Tony!”

Curtis nodded to me, suggesting that I go down the ladder first. I obliged him, slowly.

To my surprise, it didn’t take long to get down – the restaurant must have been no more than ten feet below the surface – and when I got to the bottom, I could see almost everything.

I suppose I was on to something earlier when I wondered whether the restaurant could have been in a fallout shelter. In addition to a kitchen that was stocked with every modern appliance imaginable, there were living quarters. There also seemed to be climate control as the air was much cooler than it was outside. And while it was dim inside, I could tell that it was intentional since there was a row of lamps dangling over the kitchen’s island, as well as a dimmer on the wall. Really, the best way to describe the place was to say that it was no different than an apartment in the city.

Of course, there were some novelties. A deep fryer – the source of the gurgling – was stationed next to the oven. Instead of a balcony or a patio on the end opposite the entrance, there was a wall with a round door, like something you’d see in a bank. Additionally, there was a large, puddle-shaped man spilling out of a gigantic rolling chair in what was basically the living room. A white table stood in front of this man, and it was filled from end to end with fried chicken, fried pickles, French fries, onion rings, and other kinds of fried food. The man – Tony, I assumed – was facing a television, above which shined a circular LED light.

When Curtis reached the bottom, he immediately ran to the modem next to the television, fiddling with the cords.

“You should be all set,” he said. “Nothing else will be eating up the bandwidth.” His voice had a desperate tone, like he really wasn’t all that convinced. Regardless, Tony didn’t acknowledge him.

“Hello, friends,” Tony said to the TV in a mousy voice, as if he had inhaled helium; it was a voice completely opposite of what I had heard while above ground.

Curtis motioned for me to come to his side, at the edge of the kitchen. 

“This is what you need to see,” he whispered. “Please, AJ, whatever you do, don’t look away.”

“Uhh . . . sure,” I mumbled, glancing over my shoulder at the ladder. 

“This is the figure that I see in my dreams at night,” Curtis added, barely audible. “But if there are two of us, maybe, just maybe, the figure will have another place to dwell.”

“No problem,” I replied, automatically. 

“Shh,” Curtis said. “Watch. Please watch.”

Tony leaned forward in his chair, staring at the cratered, golden-brown shapes that lined the table. 

“Am I hunngggwwy?” he asked in a coo. Then he slapped his face several times. “Yes!”

Tony picked up a drumstick first, regarding it briefly, acting as if he had never seen one before. Then he laughed goofily, speaking, I assumed, to it: “You ready to go down the hatch? Ha, ha-ha, ha!”

He chomped into the drumstick, taking massive bites that flung greasy bits onto the table and floor, and when there was no more meat left, he sucked the bone dry. He continued to do this until a succession of cash-register ka-chings rang out from the TV. Then he hurled the bone off to the side, nearly on top of my feet, and clapped his hands like a toddler: 

“Fwwwweeennds, you’re too kind!” he squealed. 

Afterwards, he lifted a fried pickle daintily with both of his hands, nibbling on it slowly, as though he hadn’t just wolfed down the drumstick. Every few nibbles he would stop and say huskily, “Is that good for you?” He wouldn’t start again until cash-register ka-chings blared. It seemed to take Tony ten minutes to eat that fried pickle.

He ate the other fried foods on the table in a similar manner – either chowing down or gingerly biting.

Curtis and I must have watched Tony for well over an hour. When he was finished, Tony waved goodbye to the screen and began to roll in small bursts to the kitchen. It was at this point that Curtis whispered to me that we should go back up; he was insistent that neither of us be in the restaurant when Tony reached the deep fryer. 

As Curtis led the way out, he grabbed another carafe from a cupboard by the door and filled it with water, stacking a clean pint glass at the rim so that he could quickly climb up. Soon, we were both above ground, sitting on the rock steps and drinking the water from the glasses he’d brought up.

“Thank you for watching that, AJ,” Curtis said, patting my back. “It means a lot to me.”

“All good,” I gruffly said. 

Then we were quiet for a while. Once again, I could hear the flow of water in the creek, and now I could make out the whistling of the wind as it whipped around the naked trees.

“So,” Curtis started up. “What’s your story?” 

“Hmm?” I replied, shifting my focus away from the creek to him. 

“What are you all about?” was how Curtis put his question the second time. 

“Oh,” I said, barely stopping before I added, “you know, the normal stuff.”

“Do you like any sports?”

“Not really,” was my initial response, but then, based on Curtis’s reaction, I considered it more. “Well, football, I guess.” 

“I like hockey,” he admitted.

“Hockey’s good,” I replied, adding a smile. “H – E – Double-hockey-stick.” 

“What’s that?” he asked, confused. 

“Oh . . . nothing. Never mind.”

Neither of us spoke after that.

And as I sat listening to the rippling current, I watched tiny birds – cardinals and blue jays, mostly – skitter about the trees. To be honest, I had forgotten just how red and blue creatures could be out here in nature.