The Waitress Application at Dot’s Cafe

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“Tammy does not need a building to come home to. She is the cafe. She will keep it alive whether her name is on the paper or not, because that is who she is.

“She has always been the strong one, and I have leaned on her too hard.

“I am trusting her with the hardest part, which is her brother. I am sorry, honey, if this hurts you. I think you will understand it someday.

“Lord, let my two kids find each other at the same counter. That is all I want. Save Greg the corner piece.”

At the Grill

I read it standing there at the grill, with the sausage spitting on the cool side and the radio playing the farm report. I read it twice.

Then I set the notebook on the steel shelf above the pass-through, where the grease couldn’t get to it, and I put my arms around my brother.

We had not hugged since the funeral, and that one was the kind of hug you give in a receiving line. This one was not.

He cried on my shoulder in my mother’s kitchen at 5:20 in the morning. I cried too. I don’t know how long we stood there.

Long enough that the sausage needed turning, and I reached around him with the spatula and turned it without letting go.

Opening the Door

“She did it on purpose,” Greg said, when he could talk. “She knew I’d mess it up.”

“She knew you’d come,” I said. “That’s not the same thing.”

At 5:55 I sent him out front to flip the sign and unlock the door. I heard the bell jangle.

I heard him say, “Morning, Patty.” I heard Patty say, “Well, look who it is,” in a voice that told me she already knew.

Then at 6:00, through the pass-through window, I watched the headlights of a Silverado swing into the angled parking out front.

Lyle Comes In

Lyle Bauer sat in his truck for a minute. I saw him look in through the front glass. I saw him see me at the grill in my apron. Then he turned off the engine, got out, and came in.

He walked to his stool, third from the end. He hung his cap on the hook under the counter. Greg was standing behind the counter with the coffee pot, and his hand was shaking a little.

“Morning, Lyle,” Greg said.

Lyle looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked over at me through the window.

“The cook’s back,” Lyle said.

“The cook’s my partner,” Greg said. “As of last night.”

The Brown Mug

Lyle nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “All right, then.”

Greg reached for a mug. He reached for a white one first, and then he stopped, and looked at the shelf, and took down the brown one instead.

He filled it and set it in front of Lyle on the saucer.

Lyle looked at the brown mug. Then he looked up at my brother, and for the first time all week, he smiled.

“Two over medium,” he said. “Wheat toast. Dry.”

“I know,” Greg said. “I read it on the back of an application.”

The Trucks Come Back

By 6:30 the counter was full. Dale Meyer came in and Greg brought him his syrup in the little pitcher without being asked, and Dale looked at him and then at me and shook his head and grinned.

The three tables got their cinnamon rolls that Friday. The trucker from the elevator got his to-go box at 6:10.

At 10:30 Greg made Patty half a grilled cheese. He burned one side. She ate it anyway, every bite.