“Pass the mashed potatoes,” he added quietly.
“Pass the peas,” he finished.
“Also, Mrs. Grandma …” he said. Grandma, in the doorway, smiled. It seemed a nice touch: “Mrs.” He said, “… please bring me my blue-plate special.”
Grandma placed what was indeed a Chinese garden done in blue ceramics but containing what looked to be a dog’s dinner. Mr. Mysterious ladled the gravy, the mashed potatoes, and the peas on and mashed and crushed it shapeless as we watched, trying not to bug our eyes.
There was a moment of silence as the voice under the dark Hood said, “Anyone mind if I say grace?”
Nobody would mind.
“O Lord,” said the hidden voice, “let us receive those gifts of love that shape and change and move our lives to perfection. May others see in us only what we see in them, perfection and beauty beyond telling. Amen.”
“Amen,” said all as Mr. M. snuck from his coat a thing to astonish the boarders and amaze the rest.
“That,” someone said (me), “is the biggest darn soda fountain straw I ever seen!”
“Quint!” said Grandma.
“Well, it is!”
And it was. A soda fountain straw two or three times larger than ordinary which vanished up under the Hood and probed down through the mashed potatoes, peas, and gravy dog’s dinner which silently ascended the straw to vanish in an unseen mouth, silent and soundless as cats at mealtime.
Which made the rest of us fall to, self-consciously cutting, chewing, and swallowing so loud we all blushed.
While Mr. Mysterious sucked his liquid victuals up out of sight with not even so much as a purr. From the corners of our eyes we watched the victuals slide silently and invisibly under the Hood until the plate was hound’s-tooth clean. And all this done with Mr. M.’s fingers and hands fixed to his knees.
“I—” said Grandma, her gaze on that straw, “hope you liked your dinner, sir.”
“Sockdolager,” said Mr. Mysterious.
“Ice cream’s for dessert,” said Grandma. “Mostly melted.”
“Melted!” Mr. M. laughed.
It was a fine summer night with three cigars, one cigarette, and assorted knitting on the front porch and enough rocking chairs going somewhere-in-place to make dogs nervous and cats leave.
In the clouds of cigar smoke and a pause in the knitting, Grandpa, who always came out after dark, said:
“If you don’t mind my infernal nerve, now that you’re settled in, what’s next?”
Mr. Mysterious, leaning on the front porch rail, looking, we supposed, out at his shiny Studebaker, put a cigarette to his Hood and drew some smoke in, then out without coughing. I stood watching, proudly.
“Well,” said Mr. M., “I got several roads to take. See that car out there?”
“It’s large and obvious,” said Grandpa.
“That is a brand-new class-A Studebaker Eight, got thirty miles on it, which is as far from Gurney to here and a few runaround blocks. My car salesroom is just about big enough to hold three Studebakers and four customers at once. Mostly dairy farmers pass my windows but don’t come in. I figured it was time to come to a live-wire place, where if I shouted ‘Leap’ you might at least hop.”
“We’re waiting,” said Grandpa.
; “Would you like a small demonstration of what I pray for and will realize?” said the cigarette smoke wafting out through the fabric in syllables. “Someone say ‘Go.’ ”
Lots of cigar smoke came out in an explosion.
“Go!”