The Mirror in the Dining Room

Jason hardly ever set foot in the dining room. Clarence wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him eat there, not in the two years and change since they’d realized their wartime dream and moved up here. That had always been just fine by Clarence, and never more so than today. 

Second shift had started well over an hour ago by the time Clarence arrived in the dining room with his soup and bread, and spotted those two out behind the shed. Had Jason called in sick again? Or had the fool just not noticed the time?

Clarence worked the first shift at the warehouse down in the valley, because it gave him the afternoon off to read and play with his electric trains and hike the mountain trails in the summer and ski in the winter. It meant getting up at the crack of dawn, but sleep didn’t come easy to Clarence anyway, not since Iraq. He wondered if it didn’t come easy for Jason either, but they didn’t talk about that. Just like they didn’t talk about Clarence’s electric trains and how they were his only surefire remedy for the flashbacks. Jason wouldn’t understand what a train ride back to one’s innocence would be like anyway; Clarence knew enough about his childhood to know that. 

 He wouldn’t have minded telling Jason about that. He wouldn’t have minded telling his best buddy about anything, for that matter. Jason was a moron, but he’d saved Clarence’s life twice and that had a way of opening up his heart if only the fool wanted to see it. But Jason wanted to talk about women and sports and what was for dinner and that was about it. 

Jason had worked the first shift as well when they’d first come up here, and Clarence recalled him usually eating his breakfast standing over the kitchen sink, if he had breakfast at all. 

 “It’s a few more minutes to sleep, and breakfast is a useless meal anyway,” Jason had told him once when he’d asked about it. “My ma always used to say so, just empty calories and you’re better off burning off your sleep fat until lunch.” Clarence had opted to pass over in silence the fact that Jason had been on his second Coke of the day on their mid-morning break.

As for dinner, Jason mostly bought take-out in town and ate it up in his room, which was also fine by Clarence. He didn’t care to watch his best friend eat his way to an early grave with burgers and pizza and fish and chips almost every night, not after they’d come home safe from Iraq when so many of their buddies hadn’t. 

Jason had transferred to the second shift months ago, when he’d finally figured out that getting off at eleven meant he could still hit the bar for a couple of hours and then sleep as late as he wanted in the morning. Clarence had wondered occasionally if his friend had taken to eating breakfast in the dining room now that he didn’t have to rush it anymore. 

Obviously not, Clarence reflected now, as he blew on his first spoonful of soup to cool it, and glared in the mirror. There they were, Jason and Katie, out behind the toolshed in the spot that could only be seen from the mirror in the dining room. Clarence knew, he’d tested every other possibility before he’d dared take a woman back there himself.

Katie wasn’t the first one Clarence had brought, but she’d been the most fascinated with it and they’d made the most use of it. “It almost looks like someone made the clearing here just so you’d have a place to go at it outside,” she’d said the first time he’d brought her over after work. “Woods on two sides, the shed on one, then the view of the valley behind. Maybe old man Bronson did clear it out just for that. He had two sons, you know.” 

“You knew Bronson?” Clarence had asked, lying down beside her on the gentle rise of the grass and patting her hip, which she’d seemed to welcome. “And they had two kids in that little cabin?”

“He had two kids,” Katie had corrected him. “His wife was long gone. Something about that place seems to attract men without women, I guess. You know what the girls in the ticket office used to think about you and Jason when you first bought the cabin.”

“I can guess.”

“Used to. Until Jason got too friendly with Sarah in the parking lot at Buzzy’s. Then it was just you we were wondering about.” That was when she’d slinked one arm around his neck and leaned in for a kiss. Once she’d come up for air, she continued. “So what it is with the both of you, Clarence? Wounded souls back from the war?”

“Pretty much. We always said if we got back home in one piece, we’d get a place somewhere way out where Uncle Sam would leave us alone.”

“And you both got back unharmed.”

“Physically, anyhow.”

“The girls do wonder about Jason, you know, the way he drinks.”

“Enough of that!” Clarence had scrambled to his feet.

“Hey, you talk about him like he’s dumb as a bag of rocks!” Katie had followed his lead and stood up, but kept a respectful distance as if she were afraid he’d blow a gasket.

“He is dumb as a bag of rocks,” Clarence had said. “’Hey Clarence, let’s go to the beach and drown,’” he’d mimicked. “He really said that! In the mess hall, too, so a whole bunch of the others heard it. I said, Jason, don’t you know what drown means? And he says yeah, drown means swim! He’s a moron, and yeah, he does drink too much. But he had my back, all the way from basic training, all right? Saved my life twice. So stupid or not, you got a problem with him, you tell somebody else, not me.” 

“Sorry!” Katie had sat back down and patted the spot next to her invitingly. “I won’t bring him up again, if that’s what you want. Clarence, it’s just that all the girls in the office, we worry about you both, you know?”

“There’s nothing to worry about. We’re home, we’re mostly all

right, and we never have to see a big city and all that noise again if we want.” Looking down to see Katie unbuttoning her blouse, he’d added, “Look, Jason’s at work until eleven and then we both know he’ll be at the bar until God knows when. Why don’t we just go to my room?”

“Because we can do that anytime, Clarence. Besides, I love doing it outside.”

“You’ve done it before, have you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He hadn’t told her about the mirror. Maybe she’d noticed on her own that the dining room window was only just visible around the corner of the shed, but she’d never mentioned it. He could have told her how you’d have to lean out at a pretty funny angle to see anything directly, that only the mirror offered a clear view. But it hadn’t come up. Neither had the fact that Jason never ate in the dining room anyway, because neither one of them had wanted to talk about him. 

Or so Clarence had thought. 

He wasn’t the jealous type, although he sometimes had to remind himself of that. Now was one of those times, but he kept his cool well enough as he ate his soup and drank his tea and brandy. The katydids and cicadas ensured he wouldn’t have to overhear anything, at least, but what he could see was more than enough. 

Jason moved slower than Clarence would have guessed. That gave Clarence time to finish off the soup and wipe out the bowl with his bread for one last bite. He cleared the table and carried the dishes out to the sink like any other day, and then went to his bedroom to retrieve his shotgun, which he pumped on the way back downstairs. 

It was a bright afternoon and the trees were alive with birds and squirrels and more, so the harmless shot he fired over the treetops got a frantic response that echoed in every direction well before the screen door swung shut. 

There wasn’t time to stash his gun back upstairs before Jason burst in, that he knew. But Jason wouldn’t look for it in the dining room. That gave Clarence an excuse to walk past the mirror and see Katie hurriedly pulling her dress back on while Jason was already well on his way to the house.

“Bastard couldn’t even help her,” he muttered under his breath as he slid the gun behind the china hutch. 

“Clarence?!” Jason called frantically from the back steps. 

“Hi, Jay. What’s up?” Clarence leaned against the dining room doorjamb and watched his old friend nearly tear the screen door off its hinges. 

“Oh, thank God!” Jason exclaimed. “Thought you’d been shot.”

“You thought that was from here? It was probably some jerk on an illegal hunt over there. But don’t you always say the government ought to butt out of that anyway?”

“Maybe not in our front yard,” Jason said. “Whoever it was, they scared me half to death out there!”

“Out where? Thought you were going to a movie in town with –what’s her name? – Sandy?”

“She canceled on me,” Jason said. “She said something about needing a girls-only day with Katie.”

“Katie my ex?”

“Yeah!” Jason said. “I guess her new boyfriend dumped her and she needed her gal pals, or something. So Sandy canceled on me. That Katie’s a loser, huh?”

“I guess so.” And without another word, Clarence turned and headed for the back room to work on his electric trains.