Catch Up!
By the time I was walking through the old western “batwing” doors of the Gold Coin Saloon, the afternoon was starting to age like swiss cheese, left out on the countertop too long.
Dry.
Stale.
A little musky.
Maybe it was the heat of the day warming up Central City’s Main Street, mixing together with all the fortune that had been won and lost in the casinos the night before. Or, maybe it was the fact I was still wrestling with my adrenaline after encountering the red-bearded wildman up at the Big Mammoth mine.
Whatever it was, I felt like I didn’t have much time.
John Gregory had been clear – Bring back a chicken fillet roll, or don’t come back at all. Something in the way he’d said it sounded urgent.
Yet, as I stood there, slowly scanning the antique barroom, with its vintage stools, dark wood wainscotting, and green patterned wallpaper, I realized that I didn’t even know what a chicken fillet roll was. If I did, I would have known that I was clearly in the wrong place.
You see, the Gold Coin was the sort of place you’d go if you were a miner who’d lost it all on a bad claim… Or a “rounder” down on his luck, wishing he could return to yesterday, if only so he could bet everything on black, instead of red.
It wasn’t the place to get food.
Either way, I was there, willing to roll the dice on the bartender knowing more than me. So, I shuffled towards him with the look of a nervous kid who was about to try his luck with a fake-ID. He hardly even glanced up… Just continued polishing the inside of a whiskey glass that was already as clean as it was ever going to be.
“Excuse me?” I tentatively asked.
Without so much as a pause, the bony-faced man let out a sigh. “Yeah, what can I do you for, Chief? You need a Sprite or something?”
“Oh, uh… No. I just… I was wondering if you know where I can get a chicken fillet roll?”
At that, the lanky man finally looked at me. He appeared confused and somewhat impatient, but he made eye contact nonetheless. Something in his dark, sunken eyes reminded me of an undertaker.
“Millie’s is upstairs,” he said matter of factly. Then, he went back to polishing his glass, muttering something about needing to be twenty-one years-old to go up there.
“You need to be twenty-one to eat?” I asked, perplexed.
“No.
“You need to be twenty-one to be on the floor, and you have to walk across the floor to get to the stairs…”
Then, he stopped polishing just long enough to glare at me. He knocked his middle knuckle twice on the bartop for added punctuation, and said, “…and Millie’s… is upstairs.”
The obvious annoyance in his voice was getting thicker with every word, a sure sign that it was time for me to leave. At the same time, I felt a familiar urge welling up from inside my gut… One that had gotten me both into and out of trouble in the past.
I’ve never liked when people call me “Chief.”
So, I let the urge take the reins, and said with a snarky bite, “Alright, calm down boss. I’ll come back when I’m twenty-one, then.”
With that, I rolled my eyes, turned, and walked back out through the same swinging doors I’d come in through. As they squeaked to a close, I found myself standing on the sidewalk once again, wondering what to do next.
The urge in my gut was still there, like a smoldering ember that refused to die. I couldn’t ignore it. It was pulling me back inside the building, toward the stairs, to Millie’s Restaurant, like a magnet.
Fortunately, there was another set of doors to my left, where the Easy Street Casino’s main entrance would allow me to bypass the crusty bartender. So, I fixed my resolve, pulled the door open, and walked right in like I owned the place.
The pit boss didn’t say a word when I gave him a confident nod, and blew right past the cashier’s station. Yet, as I rounded the corner onto the casino floor, my heart skipped a beat…
I felt like a fugitive on the run.
It didn’t take long for me to spot the stairs, which were just past a row of slot machines on my left. I made a beeline toward them, with the sounds of fruit machines, Double Diamonds and Triple Red Hot Sevens chasing me like a squad car hot on my tail. They chased me up the stairs two-at-a-time.
The moment I set foot on the top floor, someone on the casino level hit the jackpot. I heard the sound of coins falling from the dispenser, mixing together with jubilant shrieks of the lucky winner. It was enough to remind me of why everyone was there in the first place-
Not to catch an underaged kid, but to flirt with lady luck in the hopes that she would bat her eyes back at them.
That’s when I saw Millie’s Restaurant.
An old, vintage slot machine was on display near the entrance. The chrome-plated contraption resembled a stalwart veteran, whose job it was to remind everyone that while fortune comes and goes, the thrill of chasing it always stands the test of time.
Next to it, there was a sandwich board with a lonely-looking menu hanging from it… Not that it mattered what was written on it.
Millie’s didn’t seem like the sort of place people went to intentionally. Instead, it was there out of necessity – to provide gamblers with a quick bite to eat before returning to their games.
While I was reading the menu, hoping to see “chicken fillet roll” listed as one of the options, the hostess approached. She looked to be about the same age as the slot machine, if not a bit older. According to her nametag, her name was “Maude.”
Her thin, white hair was puffed out like a wind-tattered cotton ball, and her thick glasses worked to magnify her eyes like a lemur.
She took one look at my t-shirt, and said, “Oh… Tommyknockers! You know, that’s not what they really look like…”
I glanced down at my shirt. “Oh?” I asked. “What do they look like?”
The old woman proceeded to tell me everything she knew about the tommyknockers. Her voice was both as fragile as an autumn leaf, and as joyful as a spring flower. I could tell that she relished the opportunity to talk to someone about more than just how many were in their party.
So, I indulged her with open ears as she went on to say, “Well for starters, they look more human than leprechaun. Of course, nobody will tell you that because nobody has ever seen them!”
“Nobody’s ever seen them?” I repeated with exaggerated interest. “Then how do you know what they look like?”
She smiled brightly, revealing the source of her many wrinkles in the process. “Because I have a few of them living in my house,” she answered bluntly. “They’ve been there ever since my Everett died, almost sixty years ago…”
A sad expression swept over her face.
At that point, I knew I had to get out of that conversation, otherwise I was going to be stuck there all day. But, something in my gut wouldn’t let me go… It kept me frozen in place, hanging onto Maude’s every word like a student waiting for class dismissal.
“Everett was my husband,” Maude said with a shaky voice. “He was one of the last gold miners to ever swing a pick in Central City…We were young, and in love. Until one day, the timbers cracked inside the mine… Nobody escaped.
“Ever since then, tommyknockers have lived in my house, keeping me safe.”
“Keeping you safe? What do you mean?”
“Oh,” Maude said, the smile slowly creeping back onto her face.
“Well, tommyknockers are little men that live inside the mines, you know… They’re like gnomes or dwarves. If they like you, then they’ll warn you when something bad is about to happen, like a gas leak or cave-in… But if they don’t like you…”
She started giggling in a rather disturbing way.
“…Well, let’s just say they can be mischievous little buggers!”
As she was talking, I kept hearing clanks and bangs coming from the kitchen, which reminded me why I was there in the first place. “So basically, if you’re a miner, you want to have the tommyknockers on your side.”
“Oh yes,” Maude said happily. “That’s why you’re supposed to leave a little bit of your lunch for them! If you don’t, then they’ll just steal it anyway, but if you leave it for them intentionally, then they’ll be more likely to help you… At least, if they’re hungry for whatever you have.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Hey, speaking of lunch, do you guys happen to serve chicken fillet rolls?”
A bewildered expression appeared on her face. “Why would we serve that? That’s an Irish dish. If you want to make the tommyknockers happy, you won’t want to give them that…”
“Oh,” I laughed nervously. “Well, it’s not for the tommyknockers. It’s for someone else… and he really wants a chicken fillet roll.”
“What a pity,” Maude replied. “I don’t know of any place you can get that… But, if you want the best fish ‘n chips in Central City, you’ve come to the right place! A good Cornish dish like that is something the tommyknockers will love!”
I pursed my lips reluctantly while one of the cooks in the background called out, “Order up!”
“I mean, it’s not for the tommyknockers, though,” I insisted. “It’s for–”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Maude said reassuringly. “Whoever it’s for will like it just the same.”
Then, she leaned in closer, and brought her hand up to her mouth as though she were sharing a secret. “It’s on the house, anyway.”
“On the house?” I asked, surprised.
She smiled. It was the kind of smile that reminded me of my grandmother; warm and pleasant. “I can tell you have somewhere else you need to be,” she said.
“Maude, I can’t do that–”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ve got a good heart,” she said. “I know you’re doing the right thing.”
So, with the old hostess leaving no room for argument, I accepted a free order of fish ‘n chips from Millie’s Restaurant. I only hoped it would be enough to appease the grumpy caretaker, John Gregory.
If only I knew what was going to happen next…
Be sure to subscribe to be alerted when the next installment of Mineshaft Marauders comes out! What happens in the mine still haunts me to this day…
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