Dan Garner
The Cape
There’s a server at Gringo George’s Pie House in Sioux City who sprinkles broken glass on a plate of scrambled eggs and eats it to amuse the truck drivers who stop by the diner. Her name is Luanne Smithers. No one knows how or why she does it in terms of science or rationale. The truckers get a good laugh and tip her well. She gives them something to think about for the miles ahead on the open road. She’s tried the trick with other foods, a bowl of oatmeal, a wedge of pie, but she’s ended up in the hospital with a torn throat and tongue and an improbable story the doctors insist on rewarding with a psychiatric evaluation. Eggs are the only platform for her trick.
She discovered her ability years ago, by accident, when her coked-up father buried shards from a beer bottle in her supposedly adulterous mother’s breakfast to teach her not to put things in her mouth that didn’t belong there. Luanne grabbed the wrong plate and to her father’s almost simultaneous horror and relief scarfed the weaponized eggs down to no ill effect. She’ll never forget the cold feeling that came over her as her father stumbled all over himself in his confession as to why he’d reacted the way he did. Nothing takes the pep out of a room like a father with no excuse for himself. But it didn’t take long before he recovered enough to try to get her to replicate the trick. He had an eagle’s eye for anything that might turn a profit without requiring an ounce of work. It was Luanne’s dad who put her in the hospital for the first time when he ground up an old windowpane into her platter of spaghetti…
Gringo George’s has been around since the spring of 1953 and Luanne Smithers has worked there for half that time. She wears big hoop earrings and smokes Marlboro Reds and doesn’t date men who served in the Armed Forces. She says she’s as patriotic as any other, but most of the fellas her age in the area served and she likes a challenge. On her breaks she likes to read mystery novels and gossip about British royals. She doesn’t believe any of it but likes to be reminded there are places that aren’t Iowa. It doesn’t matter white egg, brown egg, or quail egg—if it’s an egg and its scrambled, she can douse it in glass and swallow it.
A trucker whose son was the first in his family to go to college decided to make a documentary with some of his friends about the strange cast of characters his dad always told stories about when he returned from the road. Luanne, the glass-eating server, featured heavily. The documentary achieved some traction online, receiving accolades from indie film blogs and press on Twitter as a refreshingly unsentimental if sometimes juvenile exploration of oddball Americana. The film secured a rash of first feature-length and student director awards.
Luanne’s own son, a recidivist criminal who received brief mention in the documentary in connection with his latest crime and sentence (smuggling unlicensed poultry, ninety days), sued the filmmakers for libel citing his negative portrayal and attributing his personal circumstances and his mother’s curious habit to her unmentioned (in the film) lifelong use of narcotics, a trait the son claims she inherited from her father. The filmmakers played up the absurdist comedic angle linking the son’s poultry-related crimes to the mother’s poultry-themed talents. The misappropriation of barnyard fowl runs deep with these two, was one soundbite extracted from an interview with a longtime family friend. The son’s lawsuit named the son’s serious umbrage with the film’s depiction of Luanne as a benevolent, self-sacrificing mother, saying, What kind of altruist engages routinely in highly dangerous behavior for money’s sake? He later dropped the suit when he won a Powerball ticket worth $65 million. Questioned by the Sioux City Journal as to the accuracy of her son’s accusations and his subsequent eyebrow-raising legal flip-flop, Luanne said simply, Charlie’s just doing what he does best: trying to make a quick buck. I taught him that, just like my daddy taught me. Can’t say I’m proud, but I’m not torn up about it either. She declined to comment on the drug allegations but followed up on her apropos turn-of-phrase by elaborating that nothing’s certain, chaos is the only guarantee.
A later version of the documentary, now called The Cape after the Guy Clarke song about the healthy lifelong effects of a fertile imagination, quoted this line as an epigraph just after the opening credits. This was the version that was purchased by a big studio and re-released for mass audiences. Luanne, despite her newfound notoriety and material comfort—Charlie bought her a house on Storm Lake with two jet skis as her share of his windfall—still eats glass and eggs, though only at set times as Gringo George’s has become something of a tourist trap. Thanks to The Cape, there’s a schedule and autograph signings and mingling without even schlepping around a pot of coffee, Luanne says somewhat sadly. They even make me wear jeans with rhinestones on the pockets.
Truckers avoid the diner now as it’s no longer in and out. There are crowds and lines and merchandise including rock salt shaped to resemble glass for consumers’ own glass-eating experiences. I miss those big lugs, Luanne says of the truckers, They knew I was just one of the gang.
Dan Garner
Dan Garner works as a bike messenger and an ESL instructor in Chicago. His fiction has appeared in Cagibi, Hunger Mountain, and Lunch Ticket.