Free The Cauldron by Jean Rabe, Gene DeWeese

One of the others was boarded up. The third was a video store, boasting “XXX-Rated!” “Discount to members!” And the “adult” bookstore, which had been an almost invisible hole in the wall while he had been growing up, was still a hole in the wall. But it was far from invisible with a four-foot flickering neon sign having been installed over the narrow, painted-over door.
    Grimy scraps of paper hunched along the gutters in a light breeze. Every second storefront seemed to sell pizza, except the pizza parlor he remembered, which was now a Japanese restaurant with the somewhat uninviting name of So Iuki. Where they found their customers, he couldn’t imagine.
    The streets looked deserted. The only place with any visible customers was a McDonald’s two or three blocks south of the courthouse.
    Disappointed to find the one downtown hotel converted into a shelter for the homeless, Carl headed back out of town. A flickering neon sign caught his eye as he neared the city limits: the Adler Motel. He sighed, almost in relief. Finally, a name he remembered. Even a building. More run-down than he recalled, maybe, but at least recognizable.
    Ignoring the manager’s raised eyebrows as he filled out a registration form, signed his name, and offered his Visa card—at his height, Carl was used to being stared at, but he’d never learned not to notice—he carried his one small bag into the room he’d been assigned. Adequate, if dingy and stale-smelling.
    He locked up and climbed back into the Mazda: he and it needed filling. Naturally, the Shell station a block away was boarded up, grass growing through the broken pavement of its drive and the sign gone, leaving unconnected wires sticking out. Funny looking, more square-cornered than he remembered. He found an off-brand discount station, gassed up, and turned toward town again, drawn by the need to find something else familiar.
    The county courthouse still squatted in the middle of a grassy square in the center of town. At least that hadn’t been uprooted and plopped on the bypass. Less grass than dandelions. The elms he remembered were gone. Not much of a surprise: elms had been dying all over this part of the country as long as Carl could remember.
    What was a surprise was the size of the sycamores replacing them, forty feet tall and thicker than he was. The size of the flocks of pigeons, at least, hadn’t changed. Carl drove on, aimlessly hunting something more to ease an ache he hadn’t expected to feel.
    He found it at the intersection of Main and Decker: The Tip-Top Cafe.
    Waiting for the light to change, he folded his arms over the top of the steering wheel. The sign looked almost exactly as he recalled it, though the red paint behind the thickly-clustered light bulbs was faded and peeling.
    Still a parking lot to the east of the building. The building itself had had a facelift of sorts. Three stringy rows of glass block had replaced the big windows that had once looked out on Main Street.
    Looks like a bar, he thought, disquieted. He’d eaten lunch here, how many times, in high school? Hundreds, at least.
    Carl pulled into the lot and parked. Memory sparkled, with the warm glow of home: here the waitresses had known who he was. He never had to look at a menu. His bowl of chili, side of cornbread, would be waiting the minute he found a vacant stool at the big U-shaped counter. “Skinny kid like you doesn’t have the strength to wait to order,” had been the standard joke. He smiled, almost laughed, at the pleasant recollection.
    The counter was gone, he found. Shabby booths lined one wall and marched in a double line through what was left of the area. Two other customers, neither too prosperous-looking, sat complacently in the booths. Carl slid into the nearest empty one. The menu, creased and tomato-stained, was shoved to the wall behind the napkin dispenser.
    Chili was still listed. He ordered it, almost by reflex.
    Jeez, he thought, looking at the bowl that