Yakityak

Pubbed at joecsmolen.com 7/25/22)

I’ll try to explain why I didn’t just alert her mother at some point. I was standing outside in line at Green Salmon coffee, waiting for my turn to order my “cup of joe”, waiting for the owner to ask me his usual, “Gonna cannibalize yourself again, Joe?”

Directly ahead of me, her mother, with long, gorgeous auburn hair, was smiling and animatedly telling a woman beyond her, “Oh! I know! Six weeks in Montenegro made me so cranky. Couldn’t find good coffee. It was annoying. I won’t travel internationally again without carrying good coffee.”

Waiting, queued-up outside Green Salmon for coffee, signs in the windows sell you things like “Hojicha Latte”s, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Chocolate Smoothie”s and “Tamolitch Blue Tea”.  In Green Salmon, I knew I’d get another chance to come out of there with a deck of “Surrealist Tarot” cards. Green Salmon. Tip top hip coffee stop.

But she was stuck in her mother’s shadow, right in front of me and I couldn’t stop watching her - sympathizing. The little girl. Maybe nine, pony-tail, she wore pink pants and a little blue jacket with furry pink ear muffs. It wasn’t cold out. Her little ear muffs just shut out her mother’s world.

Our coffee queue paralleled a very old, tall concrete retaining wall directly to our left. Resignedly, the little girl faced it, her nose possibly far as two inches from the crumbling aggregate. Closely studying something above her on the wall, with the index finger of her left hand, she reached and picked at a mote. Our coffee queue snailed.

Yakityak. In seven, eight minutes, I never saw the kid’s mother turn and look at her once. I began to think I was listening to the inane chatter of someone who wasn’t her mother at all. I mean, the woman in front of little-pink-legs was gesticulating animatedly, punctuating her travelogue dialogue exactly like the acknowledgments at the front of Steve Martin’s old Cruel Shoes – “Yakityakyak…”

Instead of fidgeting like the little girl, I pulled out my phone. I powered it up. I checked my messages. Without listening, I deleted two more long telemarketer messages. I was standing under a blue sky, but I checked the weather anyhow. I checked Facebook. No activity on my flagging website. Seemed like only a coupla minutes. But when I looked back,

The kid was gone!

Quick time check. Maybe the rattling woman with auburn hair wasn’t pink-leg’s mother at all. Maybe the kid was a tiny, grown woman a la that old Günter Grass novel The Tin Drum, a woman who’d never grown beyond her nine-year-old size and today given up hope of an “Hojicha Latte” and walked away. Couldn’t be, though. What about the pink, furry earmuffs? What about the childish fascination with the cement wall?

I checked the time again. Since I’d discovered the kid missing, five more minutes of yakityakyak.

What if? I looked behind me. Without losing my place in in line, I checked the street I could see. Two more minutes ticked away. The line inched forward. Five more minutes and I’d be inside and I’d be struggling with the contents of the pastry case and I could quit worrying about other people’s damn kids and I’d finally get my heavenly, hot-as-fire, black-as-night pour-over with my name drawn on the cup – if not also one of those incredible oatmeal scones I had absolutely no business eating.

After four minutes, I couldn’t stand it. Why did I bolt for the street? She wasn’t my kid. But I did. I sacrificed my place in line for somebody else’s kid. I ran. Out on the side walk, I quick-checked south and then north along Highway 101. Right away, I spotted a speck blue jacket – most of a block north. She hadn’t crossed.

Short of the blue jacket, a mountain of a machine, a loaded, north-bound log truck was stopped behind a crusty white car with a green, moss-opaqued rear window. I saw the little blue jacket turn toward the moss-on-white car. From it, I saw a booted foot reach and touch the pavement. I was close enough to see the little pink, furry earmuffs shake in the negative. This was it. The worst that happens. I went adrenal. Best I could, I hurried.

But just when I did, the log truck point-blank fired a long horn-blast that made the highway pavement and the farmer’s market happening on the other side of the highway and the little pink legs jump. The booted foot pulled back. The car moved off.

I was catching up, but the decrepit car eased into a parallel parking spot. The little pink legs caught up to the car. I saw the passenger-side rear door crack again. I saw the boot again. I clutched my phone. I sprinted. I was getting winded, but I was nearly there. I saw a bald head and shoulders and a reaching arm emerge from the car.

Right then, right there though, I tripped. Hard, right between the bald head and the little pink legs, I went down on my face. I knocked little-pink-legs down and she goggled at me and very shrilly, screamed in fear and started bawling. The white car took off.  Somewhere behind me, a woman shrieked hysterically. Feet pounded the sidewalk.  More than once, something hit the right side of my face. Somebody stomped on my back.

I looked up. Another shriek. Out of the sun, I saw a foot zoom at my face. Auburn hair flew everywhere; it was Yakityak.

*            *            *

But hey. No big deal. My phone came out of it fine. And double-plus, I had destroyed booth knees of a pair of pants I hated. It was all good, except by the time the Sheriff’s Deputy sorted us all out and she un-cuffed me, Green Salmon was closed.

I never got any coffee.