Tony always said that there were no two-dimensional characters in the real world, that everyone had depth, and that if you were going to write about someplace rural not to make it into a minstrel show. Don’t dress all your backwoods characters in camo and have them chewing tobacco, he’d said. This was easy for him to say, as someone who had not come from a rural place.
But looking around, many of the people were wearing camo, and they were dipping Skoal and spitting the brown juice into Mountain Dew bottles. I’m sure they had their depths and their private sorrows, but at the moment, they were staring at us and making us uncomfortable, and I didn’t much care about their depths.
I took Alma’s hand in mine and squeezed it. She squeezed back—two quick pumps—and we entered the shade of the tents. After a few minutes of browsing and touching the little knickknacks, she seemed less nervous. There were antique Barbies and sock monkeys, broken radios, ashtrays of hobnail milk glass and mushroom casserole dishes. There were Styrofoam heads with wigs, dime-store romance novels, wicker baskets, and dreamcatchers. We came to a stall of old farming tools.
I picked up a tomahawk knife, used for cutting burley-leaf tobacco. Though rusted, the blade’s edge was still sharp against my thumb. I explained to her what it was. You could still see the ingrained tobacco gum in the scarred hickory handle. My grandfather’s got a few like it, I said.
How do you use it? she said.
I’m not sure.
It’s to cut the stalk, said the old man running the stall. He looked to be about the same age as Pop and wore bib overalls. He sat in a lawn chair with a bottle of Dr Pepper between his legs and a table fan blowing directly on his face. Lemme see, he said, standing unsteadily and motioning for the tomahawk. I gave it over and he demonstrated how it would be used, whacking the invisible base of a tobacco plant.
We hadn’t eaten supper, and when I saw a sign for a Cracker Barrel, I suggested we stop. She told me she’d never been to one.
No way, I said.
Yes way.
I can’t believe that in twenty-six years of life, you’ve never been to a Cracker Barrel.
We. Were. Muslim. Immigrants, she said, punctuating each word. Why would we go to a Cracker Barrel?
I wheeled into the lot, which was mostly vacant. I knew this would be the case, since most of Cracker Barrel’s patrons were over the age of sixty, and therefore took their supper around 5 p.m., or thereabouts—if not earlier. It was nearly 7 p.m.
As we crossed the parking lot to the entrance, past the hedges and the wilted mums and the rocking chairs looped together with bicycle chain locks, I told her I’d been to Cracker Barrel more times than I could count, that it was the only restaurant my parents went to when I was growing up. Very rarely, on birthdays or special occasions, we went to Olive Garden. Otherwise, it was Cracker Barrel.
So you liked this place when you were kid? she said, when we’d been seated.
No, I hated it, I said. I still kind of hate it, though the hatred is mixed with nostalgia. I drew over the little peg game from where it was nestled between the flickering oil lamp and the bottle of peppers in vinegar. Alma cast her eyes about curiously. The dining floor was sparsely seated. A table of boisterous bikers sat in the back in their leather chaps and flame-printed do-rags.
Three or four elderly couples were seated in our section, waiting for their food. A fire crackled in the fieldstone hearth, and the woodsmoked air was mingled with the aromas of coffee and bacon and maple syrup. All was warm and quiet. Even the hiss and clatter of the kitchen was hardly audible.
What did your parents like about it? she asked.
After mulling over the question, I explained that Cracker Barrel was cheap, and they were working-class people without a lot of money who nonetheless wanted the experience of a family outing. They loved the food and the décor not because they had bad taste, but because it was familiar to them. They’d grown up on actual farms, milking actual cows, and pulling the suckers from actual tobacco. They’d eaten stewed apples and turnip greens and ham hock, and the tools on the walls had been the tools their fathers used, in a time that was not, at least in Kentucky, some distant yesteryear. It was recent and vivid, and the ache of its passing away therefore still present, like a phantom limb. So, even though it was commodified nostalgia, used to sell gimmicky bullshit to octogenarians, I could understand why they liked it.
Apparently, some of the locations were segregating customers by race, she said, scrolling through an article on her phone.
Really?
Really. There was a big lawsuit.
It didn’t surprise me. There had always been undertones of racial animus, implied by the old-timey, those-were-the-days décor—scythes and harrows and pickaxes, fastened haphazardly to the latticework walls as if ready to be taken up by a mob. It was suddenly depressing to be there, as it had been when I was a teenager. Nostalgia was
always a lie, I decided. It always covered something up.
This place is pretty wild, Alma admitted, studying the black-and-white portrait of an unsmiling couple that hung above our table. Where do they get all this shit?
Believe it or not, they’re all real antiques, I said. There’s a big warehouse where they store and organize them all in Lebanon, Tennessee. It’s like two hours from my hometown.
Maybe we could go one day, she said. It’d be good material for an essay.
For you or for me?
Our waitress walked up before she could answer, a woman just shy of too skinny with fake eyelashes and a neck tattoo of a rose peeking from her collar. Cracker Barrel waitresses tended to be either matronly older women with their netted gray hair in a bun or youngish women like this, whose heavy makeup made it impossible to tell if they were twenty-two or thirty-six and who smelled faintly of smoke from their last cigarette break. Trailer-park pretty, as Rando would say. The kind of woman that belongs on the “before” side of a “Before and After Meth” poster. It was mean-spirited, but I knew what he meant. This waitress, whose name, lucida, was stitched on the front of her brown apron below two gold stars, fit Rando’s description to a T. She had the look of someone on the precipice of ruin.
Y’all wanna get some drinks started or are you ready to order? she said.
Ummm, Alma said, blinking dazedly at the menu. Honestly, I haven’t even had a chance to look yet. I was still taking in the ambience. Oh—okay, hon, said Lucida, a hint of worry in her voice, as if she realized we would not be easy customers. Well, take it all in, she said. I’ll be back in a few minutes with waters.
Lucida walked away and I watched Alma’s eyes scan the menu.
She looked distraught.
What should I get? she said.
What kind of country food do you like?
I don’t really like country food.
I laughed. Well, you’ve come to the wrong place.
You brought me here! she whispered, eyes popping with faux anger. I didn’t ask for this!
The stakes are low.
I don’t want to disappoint Lucida, she said, and almost immediately after, Lucida reappeared and set down our waters.
We ready? she said.
You go first, Alma said.
I ordered catfish.
