Mallard, Missouri, had always been a two-restaurant town. They stared each other down day after day, permanently situated on opposite corners of Main and Clemons. It was the only intersection with a stoplight for miles; anxious roadtrippers usually blew through it, mistaking Mallard’s poverty for crime.

Clark’s Pub was a mammoth of a brick building with boarded-up windows and faded paint ads from the town’s “heyday.” Neon signs enticed potential patrons with promises of Budweiser and a slot machine. Jim Clark and his wife Patricia had tended the bar for five wars; they had watched solemnly as their former high school classmates slowly replaced the barflies of their parents’ generation.

Every morning, the Clarks parked their rust-damaged Cutlass in front of their bar. The streets were always empty, save for the parking lot of the restaurant catty-corner from them. Without fail, the couple would scowl and curse at the other slice of Americana that was stealing their market share.

The other restaurant was a McDonald’s. Anywhere else, “restaurant” would be a generous term for a fast-food joint with a drive-through. But in Mallard, “restaurant” was hardly sufficient. The dining room bustled with people. Truckers parted ways with their families over coffee and McMuffins. Over Big Macs, tenured farmers and their wives reminisced about the good ol’ days, when Mallard had its own movie theater. And Mrs. Dawson, who had lost her husband in Afghanistan, sat in the far booth with her two children every Friday night for a family dinner of Happy Meals and a Filet-O-Fish.

Kimberly Hayes had been working the opening shift ever since she discovered that she could not afford community college. Her parents couldn’t pay for it either, but it’s not like they would have anyway. The Hayeses only really had three things to their name: an ATV, Mr. Hayes’s semi-truck, and their dog Weasel. Their home, an 800-square-foot bungalow with broken vinyl siding and mold, was mortgaged. From peanut butter to the slow Wi-Fi that fueled Kimberly’s brother’s video game “career,” the Hayeses were drowning in a murky, above-ground pool of credit card debt.

“Welcome in, Mr. Mason. What can I get you today?” she asked. The old man in front of her scratched his jaw.

“Gimme a regular Mountain Dew and a couple a’ hash browns.”

“How many?”

Mr. Mason furrowed his brow and scrutinized the LED screen that illuminated Kimberly’s brown hair with its artificial light. His aging face was speckled with liver spots, and his mouth was missing several teeth. Just as he had done fifty years ago, Mr. Mason still mowed his three acres every Sunday while his wife watched disapprovingly from the porch. He proudly flew a POW-MIA flag in their front yard for his brother-in-law, and painted the side of their double-wide home with “FIREWOOD-$5.”

“Gimme three.”

She pressed a couple of buttons. “That’ll be $7.47.”

A five, a one, five quarters, two dimes, and two pennies made their way onto the counter, one at a time. Kimberly printed the receipt and put it in a large paper cup in the grandpa’s calloused hands. He took his usual spot at the small table near the emergency exit. His presence there each morning was guaranteed—if he or any of the old regulars did not appear by seven, Kimberly called them from the landline to make sure they were all right.

Kimberly squinted out the window. 5 a.m. was too early for minimum wage. The sun barely peeked out below the gas station canopy next door. Abandoned lots and dilapidated Victorians rose from the ground beyond that, remnants of an era Mallardians loved to remember.

It was hard to imagine that Mallard ever had a “boom.” It wasn’t a natural occurrence; there was nothing within a hundred miles besides farmland and cave tours from which to profit. No, the railroad expanded in the 1800s, and Mallard was in the way. Nearly a thousand immigrants “flocked” to the town over five years and, for whatever reason, decided to stay. Most of them farmed, but some opened businesses—their former storefronts still bore their founders’ names in faded paint on tile.

“Hey, Kimberly.”
“Jake! I didn’t know you were here—in town, I mean,” she stammered.

Kimberly looked at the man in front of her and could see nothing but the 12-year-old boy who had once been her best friend. From the tire swing on their shared property line, Kimberly could not help but notice the young woman Jake’s father would come home with while his mother was working the late shift. Kimberly had forgotten what she had uttered to Jake’s mom, but within months, a divorce was finalized, and Jake was somebody else’s neighbor in Branson.

“Just for the weekend. Dad wanted help cleaning out the garage and, you know, he doesn’t have mom anymore.”

Kimberly nodded slowly. Her fingers began tapping against the laminate countertop.

“How’s Mizzou?” She asked, motioning at his faded Tigers sweatshirt.

“Fine.”

“Still studying Agriculture?”

“Yeah.”

Kimberly chuckled to herself. “I never thought corn could be that interesting.”

Jake didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. Kimberly returned her gaze to the cash register.

“What can I get you?”

“Coffee and a sausage biscuit.”

She rang him up. He stared at the unchanging screen, debit card at the ready.

“It won’t let me pay,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What?”

“I got you,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

She handed him the receipt. He didn’t say goodbye.

Kimberly itched her nose. She used to have a nose ring until last week. She had wanted something to set herself apart from her dreary surroundings but was too sickened by tattoos and too afraid of her parents to dye her hair purple. She settled on a little silver stud from Claire’s. That lasted about five months—a girl can only take so many nasty glares from her parents’ friends.

As the sun rose above the Shell Station, the regulars flowed in. Their military surplus jackets and her cash register created a cacophony of rote conversation and metallic clanging.

“Mornin’,” Mr. Lansing mumbled as he pulled his black uniform cap over his balding head. Mr. Lansing was Kimberly’s sophomore English teacher and the summer fry cook.

“Good morning.” She leaned backwards against the counter to face the shorter man. “How’s summer school going?”

Mr. Lansing groaned. “I have it after this. You know the Hauser twins?”

Everyone knew the two boys, who had been in and out of juvenile detention centers since they had learned to talk. “Yeah.”

“They’re in both of my classes.”

“Maybe they won’t be that bad,” Kimberly said. She snapped her fingers and pointed at the metal door behind them. “Oh, Mike said the fridge needs to be cleaned out.”

The teacher cursed under his breath. He shook his head as he turned toward the grill, but his gaze lingered on the dining room.

 “Is Ms. Ann here?”

Kimberly scanned the seating area, examining each plastic booth and metal chair. The empty tables gleamed in the early morning light, though a few still had remnants of last night’s meals scattered across them. The ninety-five-year-old woman who ate her breakfast with Kimberly every morning was nowhere to be seen; her booth was taken over by two burly mechanics with a mound of steaming hotcakes between them.

Ms. Ann was the only person that Kimberly knew who thought of Mallard as a Paris or New York. She had worked at the pharmacy next to the Clark’s the summer after the Second World War and ended up married to the owner’s son. She was born and raised in a home without electricity or heat or floors, but now one of her sons was a representative in the Missouri House, the highest a Mallardian had ever climbed. Since rearing her children and burying her husband, she had patronized both the McDonald’s and the Clark’s once a day.

Kimberly’s breathing quickened as she reached for the phone and the Yellow Pages. She combed through the book for Ms. Ann’s number, which was crossed out and rewritten in the margins. She punched the numbers on the keypad and waited.

Nobody responded. She tried again: nothing.

“What’s Ms. Ann’s last name?” Kimberly shouted across the room. A handful of diners looked up at her with empty expressions. “Her maiden name. Please, anyone?”

The two mechanics looked at each other.

“Moore? Moore.”

She dug through the book, ignoring the customers who had lined up at the register, until she found William Moore. He was Ms. Ann’s representative son, who split his time between the state capital and, less frequently now, Mallard.

It took two calls for him to pick up.

“Hello?” he asked. His voice was low and groggy—nothing like in his campaign commercials.

“Hi Mr. Moore, this is Kimberly from the McDonald’s on Main and Clemons—is your mom okay?”

There was a moment of silence as the man on the other end tried to comprehend her hurried words.

“Is your mom okay? She comes in every morning and has orange juice with a McMuffin and hash browns, and she’s not here right now. Is she okay?”

Mr. Moore groaned. A woman’s voice asked him what was going on, and he muttered something in response.

“She’s fine. Slipped and broke her ankle. She’s with us.”

Kimberly flashed a thumbs-up. She turned back to the phone, “Will she be coming in today?”

“Will she be coming in today?” Kimberly repeated. “To McDonald’s. The McDonald’s on Main and Clemons.”

“No, no, no,” he said. She heard his bedsheets rustle. “She’s with us in Jefferson City.”

“When will she be back?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. A week? A month? Never? Unless you can convince my brother to take her, she’ll be here for a while.”

No one spoke as Kimberly processed this information. She watched the men in Ms. Ann’s booth chew the last of their over-salted fries.

“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Moore.”

Two more hours of the morning shift passed without trouble, but Kimberly could not shake the image of Ms. Ann, cooped up in a Jefferson City mansion with her son and daughter-in-law. Kimberly had met William once at a campaign rally in the elementary school’s gym—his wife had worn a fitted pantsuit and diamond earrings.

Kimberly smiled a little wider at her customers than she usually would have. She watched them file by and trudge to their seats, not with trepidation, but a sense of comfort.

At noon, her manager took Kimberly’s place and told her it was time to clock out. She brought the tip jar to the back room and counted the crinkled bills and aquamarine pennies. It was an unspoken pact among the patrons and staff that the morning tips went to Kimberly.

Eleven dollars and eighty-five cents. She took what was hers, then placed what she owed for Jake’s meal in the cash register.

Kimberly removed her apron and cap. She waved to her fellow Mallardians as she left the building and crossed the barren street. Her shift at Clark’s Pub started in an hour, and if she hurried, she might have enough time to scarf down a basket of Mrs. Clark’s buffalo wings first.

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Lucy Zschoche is a two-restaurant girl.