The elms look even sicker in the daylight. More like willows than elms. The restaurant has the look of being open now, though I haven’t seen anyone unlock the doors, and, sure enough, cars start turning in. I start mine and drive across the street carefully as the traffic is picking up. I park and go in. I like the place. The walls have stained, knotty pine paneling. The tables have red checkered tablecloths and each, no matter how large, is set for two. There are wagon wheels on the walls; half-wheels are buried in the backs of booths; the chimney lamps on the tables rest on little wagon wheels. The coffee is streaming into pots.
In the restroom, I wash my face and shave quickly. I have very little beard. The room is well lit and clean. Before going back to my booth, I knock on the women’s restroom door. When there is no answer, I peek in. It’s the same story, clean and bright, a couch for nursing.
It is a breakfast menu. Combinations of eggs, ham, potatoes. They have steak, hash, all the juices, and a specialty — a doughnut with its hole teed up in the center, glaze dripping from one to the other. But I order lunch — a hamburger, fries, and a Coke.
“No problem, hon, but the deep fryer’s not on till eleven. Hash browns okay?”
Everything is fine.
There’s a regular clientele. Coffee is poured before anyone asks. Conversations are picked up where they left off the day before, morning papers left behind to be picked up. So are large tips. There are men in uniforms. They use their fingers and dip their toast. They stack their own dishes. This feels like home.
“Here, let me heat that up for you,” the waitress says, pouring coffee with a smile.
Even though it is crowded, it is comfortable. There are dining rooms closed off. I can just sit, drink the coffee, and read your local news.
After the morning rush has left for work, what remains are the old men talking about the weather, a feeble-minded boy sweeping up, and my waitress with the bright glass coffeepot still steaming in her hand. I ask to see the owner. I know his name. At first she looks at me as if I’ve betrayed her hospitality. Then she reads me as a salesman, smiling as she says, “All right, I’ll get him, wait right here.”
The owner comes through the swinging doors, out from his office. He is followed by my waitress, who brings him coffee as he sits. I get right to the people we know, talk about the National Restaurant Association, mention the new highways. He’s at a disadvantage when I make my pitch. I could be his father. I ask him to let me make some chicken for him. What’s he out but some shortening and flour? That’s right. I stayed on to cook for him and then for his customers. Then we shook on it, and I taught his people in the kitchen how to do it. Next thing was to make arrangements for getting the ingredients mailed and him sending all the money back home.
It wasn’t until I was back on the road again that I saw her hitchhiking. At first, I thought she might be a boy. She wore pants and had her hair up short. She had a small roll at her feet, a silver frying pan tied up on it. She stood, thumb out, too far from the road. But I saw her. She grabbed her things and ran to the car and opened the door without looking in first.
“Where you going?” I asked her.
“Wherever you are.”
Fair enough. I put it in gear and got back on the highway. It didn’t take her long to notice.
She said, “Jesus, what’s that smell?”
I told her what the smell was and what I was doing on the road. I didn’t ask anything because I felt she didn’t want me to, nor could I tell from her looks whether she had been on the road for a while or if I was her first ride. She didn’t say a word when I pointed the car toward Michigan. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t care.
It seems to me there aren’t any real crossroads anymore for most people. Most of us are going against the grain. She had nothing to decide, only tendencies. I had taken her up. Your part of the country is a funnel of flat land with a bias. I worked as a ferryboat captain on the Ohio. A small boat. Ferried autos and walkers from Jeffersonville to Louisville. I made the trip once an hour, seven hours a day. I heard about Mark Twain and read some of his books. I wanted to be a river pilot like him. I took to wearing white suits like his. Piloting that boat, you could feel what I mean. The Ohio wants to sweep you west.
She said, “You’re from the South, aren’t you?”
I said that all depends on what you mean. Some people will say the South starts at 38th Street in Indianapolis.
The accent, the funny suit. I knew she was thinking of it all. The greasy diet, the in-breeding. I don’t mind. On these trips, I let people think what they think. It’s good for business. My age helps too. But I try not to go on about what I’ve done or seen. Let them imagine what they want.
I’d say she was a city girl. Movie stars on her mind. She probably thought the road led somewhere, that it was not just for the nation’s business, the national defense. The “big road,” you call it in Kentucky. The road to town. The road that leads to something different. As I think of it now, I didn’t understand her half the time. She was restless on the seat, read the road signs to me, wanted to play games with license plates. I said she should follow along on the maps I keep in the glove box. She didn’t want to.
There were things I didn’t want to be with her but couldn’t help being because they are what I am. An old man, a salesman, a gentleman, her father. But she needed to be talked to. The country whizzing past needed to be filled up with fun. I have advice, though I try to hide what I mean. I’ve done my share on posses walking through field stubble and dragging rivers while dogs bawled. Maybe I wanted to scare her, but I say I didn’t.
She put on her sunglasses so I couldn’t see her eyes and slouched in the scat against the door. It wasn’t locked, but I held off from doing anything about it. We went on miles that way, me lecturing. She leaning into the unsafe door. Finally, I reached across the seat behind her. Pushed the button down. She didn’t say a word except “Thank you.”
We were traveling through the lake country near the Michigan line. The trees along the road would open up to water. I talked about me then. I couldn’t help myself. I had made a sale. Like that waitress, I just wanted everybody served. I left home when I was twelve. I told her that I had worked on farms, been a streetcar conductor, was in the Army in Cuba, worked jobs that disappear. I studied law by mail waiting on the ready track of freight yards. Boiler was my light. I was a justice of the peace in Little Rock. Sold insurance and tires. Headed the Chamber in Columbus, Indiana. You can check that out if you want. I’m not really from the South, you see. Not from anywhere.
“Yes,” I said. I pulled it all together, a piece here, a piece there. Yes, I have seen things. I rode the reefers and the blinds, saw a man frozen to the metal of the baggage car when the tender threw water picking it up on the fly. I was on a train with ballast in my pockets. Then I said something I thought she could use. Never get off where there is no shade.
I meant that.
She asked me when I left school, and I told her when they started in with algebra. If X was what you didn’t know, then I didn’t want it.
She lost interest after that. She turned to look out the window at the orchards being sprayed.
We were heading, though she didn’t know it, to Mackinac Island in the straits. It’s at the top of Michigan. The road is like a life line through the state s palm. It was there we got mixed up in a troop convoy. On maneuvers, I guess. Reserve Guard. I had seen convoys in the southbound lane with their lights on, antennas bowed over on the jeeps. The trucks have a round-shouldered look, like they’re hunching down the hot highway. We came up on their replacements heading north. The last vehicle was a jeep with MPs in white helmets in it. I scooted around, and then around the next deuce and a half. I blew my horn. I could see the cops shaking their heads, yelling and pointing. They weren’t happy to have their string broken up. I tucked the Pontiac in between two trucks, waited for the lane to clear, then leapfrogged another truck.