Return to Eagle Cove

Chapter 1-2

It had been another long morning of assisting the Judge—always with a capital J. Monday through Friday, six a.m. to ten, Greg Slater helped his father. At first it had been something that Greg did to help out, but he’d come to like the simple routines and structure to his mornings.

“Ready?” he called back to the kitchen as he did every day. There was no real need to ask. The big old clock hung high on the wall said it was exactly six a.m. and the Judge was a very punctual man.

But Greg looked for the solemn nod before moving out into the diner and flicking on the fluorescents, “The Puffin Diner” sign, and the porch lights. There wasn’t much need for the last, sunrise was twenty minutes ago, but the sun itself wouldn’t clear the Coast Range ridge until at least six-thirty. For now, Beach Way, the town’s main street, was mostly cool shadows and darkened buildings.

The bell mounted on the back of the door rang almost right away as Cal Mason Jr. came in. Greg had already set a mug of coffee on the counter for him. Cal ran the Blackbird Bakery and was hours into his day. Five days a week he was as punctual as the Judge. Cal Sr. wouldn’t be in for a few hours yet.

“Your standard, Cal?”

“Double,” though Greg knew that was a joke. Cal was one of the few men in town big enough that he could have eaten two of the Judge’s generous portions. Six-two and as powerful as a bulldozer; his hands dwarfed the coffee mug.

Because Cal sat at the six-stool wooden counter, the Judge was less than five feet away through the broad service window that connected the dining room with the kitchen, but he waited for Greg to fill out the order slip and clip it to the spinner.

It was Greg’s own damn fault. The diner’s service had been a bone of contention, or rather “lengthy negotiation” just as most things were with the Judge.

“They can pick up their own damn plates at the window. Coffee pot is right there behind the counter where anyone who wants a refill can get their own.”

Greg had won that round by subterfuge. He’d numbered the tables and then only put the numbers on the order slips, making it impossible for the Judge to boom out with “Veronica, your order is up.” Customers had slowly adapted to not having to leave their tables for every little thing.

At least Greg thought he’d won, until a full three weeks later his father had winked at him while sliding across a short stack with bacon and hash browns for Karen Thompson, “Like I don’t know who orders what on a Thursday.”

Now the Judge wouldn’t cook a thing without a proper ticket. Well, he’d cook it, but he wouldn’t serve it no matter how busy or harried Greg was.

Cal’s plate came up less than thirty seconds after Greg hung the ticket just as it did every morning: western omelet, hash browns, farm sausage, and English muffin. The last was about the only kind of bread that Cal didn’t bake.

“Gotta have something that I can order out for and enjoy without baking it myself.”

Greg moved the plate across to the counter and refilled Cal’s half-drained mug of coffee.

There wasn’t much call for a judge in a town the size of Eagle Cove. Semi-retired for the last five years, he no longer spent three days a week in Newport to sit on the bench as he had throughout Greg’s childhood. Instead he’d set up a small courtroom in town. He mainly handled family matters like marriages and estates, and fines for drunk and disorderly tourists who soon learned that Judge Slater was a fierce protector of the town. There was only the occasional speeding ticket—no matter how hard Martin the cop tried to catch someone. The town was perched against the Pacific Ocean at the dead end of a winding two-lane that had left the coastal highway a dozen miles back; it had enough “Sharp Curves Ahead” signs to quell even the most lead-footed of souls.

So, “for something to keep me busy,” the Judge held office hours only in the afternoons because his weekday mornings were all spent working as a short-order cook. And ever since Greg’s return to Eagle Cove three years ago, he’d been his father’s front-of-house man: waiter, cashier, and busboy.

The Puffin Diner had been a near derelict before his dad had bought and reopened it. It was a classic small town place built to serve the early morning fishermen, especially those returning from a long night’s work on the offshore shoals; it was little changed over the last ninety years.

The clapboard building stood high enough on a heavy stone foundation that even the Christmas storm flood of 1964 had crested two steps below the front entry. It was one of the only structures on the town’s main street that didn’t have a street-level entry. All of the other businesses that had existed then had high-water lines drawn halfway or more up their walls. The Grouse Hardware store, the lowest spot in town close beside the docks, had a small wooden plaque of a fish screwed in just above the main door lintel. It was bright yellow with “Dec 22, 1964” painted on it in tropical blue—it was generally considered to be a little boastful, but old man Jaspar refused to tone down the color scheme that he’d painted on that fish in his youth.

The interior of the diner was so retro that it would have been ironic-modern if it wasn’t quite so authentic. The steel-edged tables of blue Formica were scuffed nearly colorless by the thousands of plates and silverware settings that had been slid across their surfaces over the years. The chairs’ red leather was sun-faded and the old chrome had pitted with rust from the salt air, making them uncomfortable to the touch without quite being painful. The linoleum floor had been replaced…back in the 1980s when mauve and hunter green had been trendy colors. The six round stools bolted to the floor at the counter squealed every time someone spun on or off them. The kitchen was authentic right down to the large service window, the steel spinner rack for order slips dangling in one corner, and the big grill and burners in the back. The scents of eggs, hash browns, and frying bacon filled the main street each morning enticing all passersby to come and find comfort food.

Ralph Baxter and Manny McCall came in and took their usual spot by the corner window. They’d have tourists out fishing off their boats within the hour and were both after black coffee and tall stacks.

At first Greg had resented serving the Judge’s fare—it was as invariable as his father. Scrambles, omelets, pancakes—no waffles because the iron had broken the same day Mom had died and he couldn’t seem to fix it and wouldn’t let Greg try. The pancakes were big and fluffy. The very crispy hash browns were not an option; they were on every single plate, even with the pancakes. Farm fresh sausage or bacon was the other staple on every plate—not that it was a choice. Everyone received whichever Carl Parker had delivered the day before along with the eggs.

All of Greg’s efforts to vary the oatmeal recipe, served with bacon or sausage and hash browns of course, had been in vain. The Judge served only rolled oats—not steel cut—with sliced, not diced, dried apricots and diced, not sliced, fresh apple. Whether brown sugar or maple syrup was used to sweeten it was wholly up to the customer; local honey was also available.

Omelets were the Judge’s real specialty and by six-thirty there were already a dozen slips up for them. Omelets were the only dish where variations were allowed. He offered them with cheese, mushrooms, or smoked salmon fillings. Never all three of course, because there were limits to what was proper.

The Puffin Diner mostly served coffee. Greg’s sole triumph at adjusting the menu had been when he managed to switch from Dad’s “fresh ground” granules purchased in large plastic tubs to fresh-ground French roast. Tea or hot chocolate were the only other options, but asking for marshmallows with the latter was frowned upon unless you were a kid—the whipped cream came out of a spray can.

They’d fought royally over the Judge’s inflexibility, but of course fighting over things was a tradition in the Slater household. Not that voices were ever raised, because that would never do. The few times Greg had tried that tactic he’d been ruled “Out of Order” and banished from the dinner table: the sole forum for Slater “discussions.” With Ma gone to cancer three years before—Greg’s original reason for returning to Eagle Cove—he didn’t have the heart to “force” the Judge into driving him from the table after that first time. When he’d been remanded to the kitchen two weeks after Mom’s funeral, he’d made the mistake of glancing back as he’d moved off to finish his meal. His father had looked old, sad, and impossibly alone.

Greg hadn’t been able to face living in the big old house out on the beach, so he’d moved into the guest house. Once he finally understood that no number of cogent debates were going to sway the Judge, Greg had let the menu go. It had been unchanged in either content or price in the last decade—other than the wavy black line of magic marker through the “Waffles (with blueberries when in season).”

Greg had been on the verge of leaving town when the Judge sat him down at the big house’s dining room table. Ma Slater had been in the ground for a month. Greg knew he didn’t really have anywhere to go, he’d learned all he was going to from the banquet chef at the Sorrento Hotel in Seattle and there weren’t any top positions open for an untested executive chef wanting to make his mark. He didn’t have the capital to make his own splash, not in the insanely competitive restaurant markets in the big cities. But he’d find something.

“Been watching you, son. Been tasting your food,” the Judge had tapped a fork on his dinner plate. Greg had roasted a pair of fresh-caught trout in hazelnut butter with a dressing of spring greens and homemade basil vinegar. Though Greg had cooked half the meals since Ma’s funeral—“fair is fair” the Judge had declared—it was the first time his father had spoken of it.

“Uh-huh,” Greg had gone for a neutral acknowledgement. He knew the Judge hated such prevarications, but Greg didn’t know where this was heading and went for caution.

“This is good. Damn good.”

Greg hadn’t been able to offer even a neutral grunt over his surprise at the Judge’s remark.

“Still needs some work, though.”

Before Greg could snap at him about what did a man who scrambled eggs and ruled on law know about fine cuisine, the Judge continued.

“You need more seasoning,” and he aimed a fork at Greg’s chest, “and I’m not talking about salt. Your technique is the best I’ve ever seen, but I don’t taste anything special. There’s nothing here that isn’t in any other fine restaurant. You need time to find your own voice, not some other chef’s.”

“My own voice?” But he didn’t need to ask, he’d heard it a thousand times growing up.

The Judge looked down at the trout, one of the only times he’d ever said anything without looking at whoever he was addressing straight in the eye, “Your mother taught me that.”

Ma had been a painter, a good one. Her seascapes had sold in galleries up and down the coast. Tillamook, Newport, Gold Beach, they all snapped up as much as she could produce and was willing to let go of—Grosbeak Gallery in town had always gotten first pick though. She’d often talked about finding your voice in your art so that it didn’t look like everyone else’s.

“So, here is the deal I’m offering you.”

Greg knew that it wouldn’t be open to negotiation; no one negotiated one of Judge Slater’s “deals.”

“The diner is mine on weekdays from six to ten every morning. I’d like you to stay as my assistant because you’re good at it. That pays rent here at the house, a small salary, and we split the tips. What you do with the diner for the rest of the time, that’s up to you.”

And for three years, Greg had stayed in Eagle Cove and searched for his own voice. In the first year, he’d never cooked for anyone but himself and his father—who never again spoke about the food itself. Then one night Greg had invited a couple of buddies from high school who were still in town to the diner, as a test audience. Word got out about how good it was and folks had started asking when he’d do it again.

He’d eventually started “Irregular Friday Dinners at The Puffin.” He only opened when he had a new meal to test. It was all prix fixe, fixed price—a twenty in the jar—and a set menu. After two years of those he felt almost ready to take his cooking out into the world; maybe spend a while as a pop-up restaurant—there and gone—rather than a full launch. He’d been saving his half of every morning tip and every goddamned cent for when he went back to the cities. At first he’d simply been trying to be better by the time he left Eagle Cove, but he’d become obsessed with finding and perfecting his “chef’s voice.” He wanted it to be so clear that it was undeniable. When he went back to Seattle, no one would label him the protégé of Charlene at Maximilien’s or Angelo at The Tuscan Hearth. He’d be his own—

The old brass bell screwed into the top of the diner’s front door rang like a small ship was coming into port. Morning service peaked as usual around eight and had now tapered off to just a few lingering diners.

Greg glanced at the big-face clock above the cash register—9:57—and suppressed a groan. Judge’s rule was that if you were in the door by ten, you could take as long as you wanted. If it was ten sharp plus a second, you were turned away—“Fair is fair.” Maybe they’d be quick; he’d had an idea for a savory roulade that he wanted to try out.

Greg turned back and had to blink, then blink again. The morning sunlight shone through the front window and silhouetted two dazzling blondes, their hair practically set afire by the sunlight streaming in from behind them.

Then his eyes adapted as they moved farther into the room.

Mrs. Baxter who was soon to be Mrs. Baxter once again.

And a woman he hadn’t seen since the day she’d left for college, but he’d know anywhere.

Jessica matched his own five-ten and her hair, instead of being the waist-long waterfall he’d remembered, now floated about her shoulders in choppy wisps that framed a face of high cheekbones, full lips, and eyes that sparkled with mischief.

Halfway across the old linoleum floor, she stopped and looked at him.

“Greggie’s gaping, Mom.”

And he couldn’t do a thing about it.