Paul knelt before us upon pristine marble tile, weeping apologies, awaiting that swift, two-worded execution. The Mayor kept those murderous words forever handy in the folds of his extra large black apron, dusted powder-white. We knew they were there, in a holster, but he had a way of hiding them so that his victim felt dumb, stunned—like when an uncle pulls a coin from his nephew’s ear and the kid pokes a finger into his innocent mouth, confused, embarrassed. Paul cried, as might such a child, begging Mayor Mound for mercy.
The air was still, saturated with vanilla and chocolate and—because of Tuesday’s special—blueberry. The morning’s early risers stood respectfully, with wide grins unbefitting such a spectacle, grateful to witness firsthand the rumored wrath of the Mayor. Doughnuts could wait.
“I didn’t mean it,” Paul said. “You—you know that, Mr. Mayor.”
“Didn’t mean it? How could”— the Mayor stopped and his head moved on its billowy-necked swivel, searching his audience until he found me. “Skip, tell me exactly what Paul said, please, since he evidently cannot remember.”
“Oh,” I said and cleared my throat twice. My heart turned into a fast-ticking time bomb. “Mr. Mayor, I really don’t—you know, Paul’s my best friend—I don’t… oh, you know, I don’t really remember what he said. Don’t remember! Maybe how, I kind of remember how”—
“I don’t care if Paul is your first-born son! Do you want to be on the chopping block with him?”
“No, Mr. Mayor.”
“Then do me and our loyal, patient customers a favor and tell me what he said so we can all have our doughnuts and get on with our days, damn it!”
“He said, ‘Maybe if you ditched that God-awful wig you wouldn’t have to wear that ridiculous shower cap.’” The words gushed forth as though one. “Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing, really”—
But I wasn’t paraphrasing. That was exactly what Paul said. I know that because I’m the one who told him to say it; or at least, I put the idea in his head. Paul’s wet, puppy-dog eyes reached for me from the electric chair like I had my hand on the switch.
“Sorry, man.” The weak-sauce apology dribbled from my mouth. It was all I could do.
The customers turned their eyes to the floor and fidgeted with their briefcases or purses or canes, as though these items required immediate mending. One elderly man whispered to his wife how gorgeous a shine the tile had. Mayor Mound’s paunchy cheeks went red, and the two squiggly veins in his left temple emerged. He rubbed his swollen paws together, preparing to strangle his once loyal subject.
“Paul,” the Mayor said, and his voice rose to a crescendo, so that his two most beloved words might soar from Central Illinois to the mountains. “You’re fired!”
Paul collapsed to the floor—it’s difficult to find a summer job in Sandwich, Illinois—and the loyal customers of Mound’s Rounds mourned for him for thirteen seconds. Then a man’s order rustled at the register like autumn leaves: “One buttermilk old fashioned and one chocolate sprinkle.”
“Yes,” shouted the Mayor. “Get your doughnuts and have a happy day! In fact, Beth, give that man his chocolate sprinkle for free. For the next hour: buy one, get one. This is my town, and if the people aren’t happy, I’m not happy. That’s why I say, Mound’s Rounds makes the freshest, bestest, most yum-yummy doughnuts in the world, bar none.”
The way he always shouted his slogan—wild-eyed and flinging saliva from his little, red mouth—turned its magic into a threat. But the people believed it and loved it. Then rose the murmur of Tuesday morning euphoria. How sugar and butter made our little world go round! The elderly danced with their canes. The lawyers tipped with big bills. And Mayor Mound took me by the arm and led me away from my best friend, prone upon marble and dead to the world, and into the kitchen.
“Now,” the Mayor said as he fitted his ugly toupee with that stupid hair net. “Paul’s gone, so you will learn how to make my morning doughnuts. You’re very lucky—this is an honor. And if you do well, maybe I’ll let you have one each morning. Maybe. We’ll see. It’s my most special recipe. As I say: six by six. Six doughnuts by six o’clock. You’ll get here at five, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. My toes curled in my shoes. I unwittingly got my best friend fired. Now I was Mound’s bitch. Summers in Sandwich, as a rule, suck, but this one would suck beyond Sandwich.
#
Beyond the doors to Mound’s Rounds that sparkled like heaven’s pearly gates, our town was flat and dull. If tumbleweed was still a thing, I could let one go from the town’s center and it would blow unencumbered to my house three miles away. The railroad tracks that split the town in two breathed life into Sandwich; it gave us the sense there was a coming and going, that we were plugged into something bigger. A train brought with it newness: faces, voices, and ideas. But waiting for the railway’s injection of something unfamiliar grew tiring. I craved adventure.
Early in the morning, when the air was dark and cool and the overnight Amtrak Zephyr sounded its horn from the sliver of dawn on the horizon, I’d pause a moment at the dingy backdoor to Mound’s Rounds, keys in hand, and wish I was on that train. I imagined falling asleep, head against the window, watching the desolation disappear into a starry night sky, and waking to rolling hills or soaring skyscrapers or, hell, even a river. Give me anything to discover!
Tourism in Sandwich consisted only of enjoying Rounds—we had nothing else. Regardless, the Mayor hated the train. He called it “noise pollution.”
The night after Paul was fired, I sat at the dinner table moving peas on the plate and taking tiny, thoughtful bites of mashed potatoes.
“That Paul is something else, Skip,” Mom said. She didn’t need to declare what “else” he might be. When she placed a “that” before a name, I knew what she meant. The anti-depressants have tamed her though. She isn’t happy, but she’s complacent, maybe compliant. She’s productive again, and has found a peaceful co-existence with this town she was once loath to call home.
“I don’t know,” Dad said with a mouthful of peas. He wasn’t ready to speak—he had to finish chewing—but he wanted us ready. “Mound has got one hand in the town and one hand in his Rounds.” He smiled at himself. “He fired your mother from her modest clerkship for no reason. None whatsoever! I don’t trust him and I don’t like him.”
Dad’s an accountant and wears those white, short-sleeve button-down accountant shirts with the accountant’s calculator pocket. He’s bald and proud. Mound’s toupee irks him to no end. It’s a matter of principle, he often says.
“But you eat his doughnuts everyday, Dad,” I said.
“Oh, well, sure…”
Then that toxic silence, filled with contradiction and passive aggression, snickered at me. I let go the fork and it rattled on the ceramic plate.
“Well Paul won’t respond to my texts,” I said. “He needs this money to help his mom. He’s not even going to college in the fall, you know. He’s got nothing.”
“He should have thought about that before saying”—
“He was joking around, Mom,” I said. “Mound should act like a grown man and shrug it off. Come on, clearly the toupee sucks. How can he not see that?”
“Skip’s exactly right,” Dad said, precisely as I had baited him to say. “Mound should ditch the birds nest and give up the mayoral post and stick to his Rounds.”
Yeah, I thought, whatever.
I left my parents to wallow in their strangeness. A dying sun painted my room in blood citrus and I threw myself to the bed, checking my phone for the thousandth time. Sitting in your yard, Paul had replied to my numerous text messages. I nearly tumbled down the stairs, spilling into the front lawn. There I found Paul, sitting in the grass, knees to his chin, arms wrapped around his legs, watching the sun bury itself in an empty plain.
“Paul,” I said. “Please know how badly I want to take it back, man. Like I said in the text: you were the bigger man. You fell on the sword and saved me, saved my job—you know I need this money…”
I sat next to him. A tear fell from his blank eyes and the sun set it afire.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t belong here anyway, man. Everyone is in love with something I don’t see. This town, it’s killing me.”
“Us,” I said sharply. “It’s killing me, too. I hate it here. You’re not alone.”
He looked at me, thank God, and smiled. “You’re leaving in August. I’m stuck. That job was my only ticket out. Mom needs just a little more money, and then I can save some cash for myself. Figure I need a thousand bucks to live for a couple months on the road with my bike and tent. I can make it. I can make it out. But Mound is a crotchety old man. He takes his grudges to the grave. I’m screwed, man.”
The sun was gone then. Cattails waved happily amid a purple weedy patch across the road. Lighter fluid swirled in the wavy air and bestowed me with a dizzying idea. I grabbed Paul’s shoulder and grinned.
“I got it. I’m gonna make Mound a little less crotchety.”
#
I didn’t listen for the train the next morning. Goosebumps washed over my body inside the chill of morning fog, and I hurried into Mound’s kitchen and flipped on the lights to prepare the old man’s “six by six.” I didn’t see much difference in his personal recipe from our Signature Round: an old fashioned doughnut through and through. A bit more butter, yes, and an extra pinch of nutmeg. The orange essence, he said, made it his own. I don’t care for essences.
But that day, I decided, he would indeed have his own special recipe. From my pocket I lifted a small sandwich bag with a bit of powder packed in the corner: a ground-up dose of Mom’s anti-depressant. From the depths of the fryer emerged six of the happiest Rounds in town. In a week or so, when the sugary smile had been smeared across his face, I’d drop a delicate reminder that Paul was with him from the beginning. Loyal. Hardworking. A simple guy with a big dream that only Mound could make true, like the Wizard of Oz. I needed only a few days for this wizardry to take root.
Actually, I needed only two.
“Skip!” Mound shouted and I launched a cup of flour in the air. I turned on my heels and found the Mayor, bald as can be, gleaming. “You have the magic touch, my boy! My morning six have never been so delectable, so flavorful, so—so damn yum-yummy! Yesterday was the best day of my life, maybe. The world was my oyster. Skip, you damn genius, you must share your secret. More butter? Cinnamon? I’m sure you’ve added cinnamon. You must confess it!”
“Oh,” I said. “You—yes! Cinnamon! You guessed it. You certainly know your doughnuts, Mr. Mayor.”
“Indeed,” Mound said. “Now, I want to replace our Signature with your recipe and your namesake: Skip’s Round! Ah, how it rolls off the tongue?”
“But, Mr. Mayor,” I protested. He’d have none of it.
I began instructing the other bakers the very next day on the secrets of Skip’s Rounds—without the drugs, of course. They were unenthused. This is nothing special, they said. Shut up and make them, I said.
Adamant I was to continue making Mound’s six by six… with the drugs, of course. This the old man did not understand.
“Give me the first six off the top of the first batch out of the fryer,” he said. “It’s the same recipe after all.”
“I’m going to experiment yet again. Give you something even better.”
He salivated at this.
A gloom-filled sky awaited me the following morning. I paused at the old metal door that led to Mound’s kitchen, craving the comforting sound of the train. Eyes closed, I breathed in the chatter of morning birds, and waited for a distant promise that did not come.
I opened my eyes and saw three garbage bags awaiting pick-up, baring the scars of a raccoon’s curiosity. Rounds of another sort, little and white, had oozed from one bag and now lay, innocuous, upon a crumbly, gravel drive. I took one into the kitchen with me and set it beside one of mom’s. The two white rounds stared back at me, beady little eyes, judging me, judging Mound.
The Mayor had craved cheerful subjects, and we had craved his doughnuts: a vicious Round.
When six o’clock came, I had no Rounds for the Mayor. He was not too upset; he simply sprung into action, goading the bakers to prepare the day’s doughnuts. I stood at the counter without apron—without batter or powder upon my hands—and waited for dawn, for the first bewitched customers craving contentment. Cheerlessly they came. The elderly tapped impatiently with their canes. The lawyer minded his watch.
Mayor Mound ran about with his handkerchief, dabbing the sweat from his hairless head, weeping apologies.
“Mound,” a solemn looking woman said from the entrance, and then took him by the arm and ushered him into a corner, speaking in soft, blistering beats.
“That Mound just ain’t what he used to be,” an old man whispered to his wife.
I stepped outside, into the gray-filled day, and where I had once found a line of doughnut-fueled loyalty, I found only a denim-clad halfwit affixing the hook-and-chain of his tow truck to the axis of Mound’s Cadillac, thereby freeing, for the first time in years, the only handicap spot on the block.
My reckless recipe had lifted the covers from the town and revealed it for what it was: tired and sad. I closed my eyes and heard the piercing, quiet hum of disheartened country folk, the collective soft sigh of melancholy that comes every morning but once before the day takes us by the hand and steers us true. I felt then what Mom had felt before the cure. I smelled the sugary carnage of Mound’s great malice.
And then on the horizon, as the sun broke free from the illusory mountain range of clouds, I heard at last the triumphant sound of the train’s horn.
##
Submission for NYC Midnight’s Short Story Contest with a 2,500-word max word count.
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