Our voices came from waffle irons and chipped coffee cups.
The yellow sign was visible from the highway. The green grass fought the red clay dirt in the field next door. No one ever won.
We could relate.
Rob Senior chain smoked generic cigarettes. He stopped wiping the stray fiberglass from his coat after shifts at some point. Rob Junior prefers Newports with a side of sweet tea. He stocks shelves at the Kroger, a few aisles from the meat department where my father spent forty years. They go to the other Waffle House in town now.
I saw someone opened a new church a mile or so down the road.
A gas station across the street sold us cigarettes before we had the proper identification. It sold minimum wage jobs to barely legal elders too poor to get out of town. There were sandwiches made there, the kind you only eat when you’re running late for work. There were caffeine pills and cheap six packs, the only kind of help available.
Our town didn’t have a coffee shop back then.
Waffle House was close enough.
Your name was Darlene, but no one called you that. You sat there for hours, black journal washed in spilled coffee, fingers in and out of your mouth, cigarettes just to pass the time. Your poetry grew out of coffee grinds, or at least that’s what you said.
Last I heard you moved to Birmingham.
New Orleans didn’t fit right anymore.
Nothing ever does for long.
I was known by a few names back then, but Sarah Jane was my favorite. The cook with the scarred, black forearms came up with it. He said it reminded him of a song that wouldn’t ever be on the Waffle House jukebox.
Remember when Tyler stole that other jukebox?
It wasn’t at our Waffle House.
It was at the rich one. The one across state lines. The one that already outlawed smoking.
You can’t smoke in any of them now.
I wrote short stories. They were drawn from a pool of scrambled eggs. Almost all of them had sentences ending in prepositions. Shannon thought I had talent. You were not impressed. Dana was always drunk, and that old man had nothing better to do with his disability check. I’m almost sure he was once a fireman.
Wyoming said she was only waiting tables until something better came along.
She was still working there when I visited last month.
Twenty-five years.
I guess nothing better came along.
I don’t feel bad for leaving her behind.
Do you?
I can still taste the waffle batter. I remember how the edges were either burnt or not quite done. I always thought there was a metaphor in that. You always said I thought too much. We would sit with the old folks when we were supposed to be in class. The high school was only a mile and half down the road. That was way too far. We had books to read. We had joints to smoke. You had poetry. I had short stories. You had Roland and a Dark Tower. I had Virginia and dreams about Orlando. It felt like “Macarena” played at the same time every day.
That damn jukebox.
Nobody chose to work the second shift.
Those chipped coffee cups.
Your brown hair pressed against the window, cigarette smoke chasing the corner, finding the ceiling. My auburn hair dyed just enough to upset truckers, most of my Marlboro going to waste in the tray.
I slept next door to a Waffle House in 2012.
It was in a different state. I was staying with the poet you met in New Orleans that one time. Remember, the two of you thought it was funny to pull my pants down on Decatur Street. I would sit out on the poet’s porch, eating egg and cheese biscuits, reading over the latest short story. I had published two of them by then. That Waffle House was near a different interstate. You couldn’t see the yellow sign from the passing lane on either side. It wasn’t the same.
It might have been better.
I remember when you left. It was a Sunday night that felt like a Tuesday. It was fifteen years ago, but not a moment too soon. You said you needed to shout. You said the rest of your voice was on the highway. I didn’t see you again until New Orleans in 2015. You were working in a bar that specialized in frozen drinks and plastic cups.
It didn’t feel like ten years had passed.
I thought about that old apartment next door to that other Waffle House yesterday. I was in Mississippi with the poet you met in New Orleans. We got married in Tallahassee. We put our words in print in Tampa. That’s what brought us to Mississippi.
We were giving speeches in Jackson. We walked out of downtown late at night. There was a Waffle House near a mural, yellow sign splashing light upon painted concrete. We sat in a middle booth between two different groups of teenagers that felt like memories. I had grits. The poet had hash browns.
I picked up a copy of your book the next morning.
It was dedicated to Sarah Jane.
I wonder if you’ve seen my book.
Maybe I should have dedicated it to you.
