The Waitress Application at Dot’s Cafe

Signed and Dated

I flipped it back over. I signed it at the bottom, Tammy Kroll, and dated it, March 3.

Greg was still in the booth with his arms folded. He had not touched his coffee. His jaw was working the way it used to when we were kids and Mom told him to go apologize to somebody.

I slid the application down the counter toward him. I did not throw it. I gave it a gentle push, the way you send a plate down to somebody at the end.

It slid about eight feet and stopped against Lyle Bauer’s saucer.

Lyle

Lyle Bauer is eighty-one years old. He has sat on the third stool from the end since the week my mother opened. Mom poured his first cup of coffee in 1979.

He did not pick the application up. He tipped his head and read it upside down, the way you read the paper over somebody’s shoulder at the barbershop. He read it slowly. It took him a long time.

I watched his eyes go down the back of the page. I saw him get to his own order. I saw him get to Dale’s, and Dale, two stools down, looked at his syrup pitcher and went red.

I saw him get to Patty’s grilled cheese, and then the last line, the corner piece of pie.

Then Lyle set the brown mug down on the saucer without a sound. He wiped his mouth with his paper napkin and folded it in half. He turned on his stool to face my brother.

What Lyle Said

“Greg,” he said, and he said it loud, loud enough for the back booth. “I’ve known you since you were in diapers. So I’m going to ask you a plain question.”

Greg unfolded his arms.

“You going to cook the pancakes yourself?”

Nobody laughed. That was the thing. If they had laughed, I think Greg would have gotten mad and it would have been easier for him.

Instead it was quiet, and every man at that counter was looking at my brother, waiting.

Greg stood up out of the booth. He had gone red from the collar up. He picked up his coffee cup, I suppose for something to hold.

“As a matter of fact, Lyle,” he said, “I am. Until I hire someone.”

The Answer He Gave

Lyle nodded slowly, like a man hearing what he paid for a used truck. “All right,” he said. “All right, then.”

He turned back around on his stool. He picked up his brown mug. He did not say one more word.

Greg came over and picked the application up off the counter. He looked at the back. I saw him get to the bottom.

I saw him read the last line, and something moved in his face, and then it was gone.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said. He folded it in thirds and put it in the inside pocket of his sport coat, and he walked out with the bell jangling behind him.

Going Home

I finished the shift. I don’t know how, but I did. I made the gravy for the lunch crowd and Patty made me half a grilled cheese at 10:30 instead of the other way around, and neither one of us said anything about it.

At 2:00 I scraped the grill, hung my apron on the hook by the back door, and drove home.

Jim got in from the line call at six, wet to the knees and smelling like diesel. I told him the whole thing at the kitchen table while he ate his supper.

He listened all the way through. Jim is a quiet man. He has climbed poles for the co-op for thirty-one years, and he does not waste words on things he cannot fix.