Bob Dano ate at Mama’s everyday, it being on his way to work and, while never too busy, usually very good. The ham and eggs were about as good as he’d found. He’d tried the others: International House of Pancakes, Denny’s, Carrows. He’d eaten at those places his whole life, but Mama’s seemed his own, old yet sanitary with big green booths and semi-scuffed, black and white linoleum flooring. You could see the faces of the cooks behind the ticket wheel cooking the orders, not really seeming to care whether or not they threw a little more egg onto the griddle or slathered extra butter onto the toast. Mama’s was loose and that’s why he liked it.
The ham slab was thick and grilled right, filling half the plate. It was always charred on both sides. The scrambled eggs were always firm. The sourdough toast was rarely over-toasted, and the butter was soaked in with only a little bit of the actual pat still remaining by the time it got to the table. This was fine as long as the toast remained warm as it usually did. If not, Bob Dano didn’t bother with it. It was still pretty good. He would always get a glass of juice and, of course, coffee with lots of cream and sugar.
He would get to Mama’s around 7 a.m. and easily make it to work by nine at State Farm, where he worked as an insurance agent. He always made sure to give himself plenty of time. He read the paper ritually, starting with the front page and working his way inside. Sometimes he’d skip over the sports page and go directly to the Arts and Entertainment section because he still had a bit left of a childhood dream of becoming an actor and liked to keep up with the business. He dressed quite well as his job dictated he should. Because of it, he was aware that the girls at Mama’s thought him attractive. He never let on that he was pleased with this, however, and went about his business among them as a solitary man, a secure man, an important and busy man.
Upon entering, he would always take off his jacket, showing off one of numerous high quality ties he owned. He took care to make sure his shoes were always shined. His shoes were very good, alligator, the brown ones, or fine leather, the black ones. His one push into what could be misconstrued as ostentation or gaudiness consisted of a Texas A&M belt buckle, his alma mater. He parted his hair in the middle the same way he did in high school back in 1978. He was 37 but looked 33 and knew it, attributing his very good complexion to a hard aerobic regimen out of doors. His breakfasts were his little treat to himself. His dinners were always nutritionally sound, consisting of a small dab of meat, a potato of some kind, a vegetable, and always a dinner salad. Dessert was usually skipped. It was through this routine that he justified his ham and eggs.
Bob Dano knew he wouldn’t always be just an agent. In fact, he was working on his MBA at night at Cal State Northridge. He would have it before his 39th birthday. He would then spend a few more years at the agency and then, finally, branch off with his own office or maybe even break away from the insurance racket completely, perhaps by becoming a consultant specializing in investments. This is what he really loved. He already dabbled a little bit in the stock market and had even made a little money at it, so his confidence in that area was high. He sometimes daydreamed that he would be a broker by the age of 40 and have to move his family into a brownstone in New York City, perhaps Greenwich Village. Yet that was all a long way off, and he hated thinking too far ahead, for it made him a little sad.
He watched the girls bustle around with their food orders, their tired feet moving as quickly as they were able, their slowly widening ankles satelliting to the world the message: old or soon to be. None of the girls were aware of any of Dano’s plans since he never really spoke to any of them beyond the normal meaningless chit chat that accompanied placing his order. A few of the girls were young enough to betray an interest in him, but none had ever dared approach him in that manner, fearing him out of their league. Dano was not unaware of this interest. He knew he was a good looking man, and handled it simply by doing absolutely nothing whatever whenever such moments flared. Looks that lasted too long were left laying flat and ignored by Dano until the young waitress had to skitter away, usually embarrassedly avoiding eye contact with a smile at first and then by force of will the rest of the time. Dano justified leaving these girls spread out in the open like this, left without even a joke to temper the awkwardness, by remembering that he was a married man and he owed no allegiance to the hyperactive hormones of serving girls. There was only one waitress who had ever pricked his interest in the slightest degree, but she was very young, too young, twenty or so, skinny and white with stringy hair that seemed to belong to a heroin addict or just someone who didn’t take care of herself. But she was tall and he liked that, and sometimes he looked up at her when she walked by, watched her small, tight ass, the apron string tied tight around her slight waist, her legs slender. She too would never fit into his scheme of things, and he would look away from her very easily with a sense of relief.
It had been two years since Dano had discovered Mama’s. He had never really had a complaint. It was a cold, gray Tuesday when he went in for the last time. He was dressed well as always, arrived 10 minutes before seven so he could warm himself over his coffee a little longer, and received a booth as both he and the waitresses had come to expect him to. He ordered ham and eggs, juice and coffee, from Ann, a heavy-set waitress of about 50. She had graying hair and visible purple veins on her cheeks, and Dano didn’t particularly enjoy having her serve him. Ann brought his juice and coffee as he unfolded the paper before him on the table. He kept his coffee safely to the right side of his paper just above the silverware and his juice to the right of that, since he always placed the paper to the left of and above his breakfast plate. Ann was very busy and flustered, and was talking to the customers at the table beside Dano. It seemed there had been a disturbance in the kitchen when the busboy, Fidel, an illegal alien from San Salvador, got very angry with Barbara, a forty-ish woman who had been a waitress at Mama’s for eight years. This sort of rudeness was unheard of, of course, and Ann found herself in the middle of what she considered to be a ridiculous ruckus. She had little patience with uppity busboys. She told the customers that although Barbara scolded Fidel, that was still no excuse for him to slander her as he had, in Spanish no less, which made it much worse because Barbara couldn’t even decipher what the slander was. She just knew she’d been insulted.
Ann left the booth beside Dano and walked hurriedly over to the counter and talked to Dennis Wilcox, manager of eight months, about the incident. Dano couldn’t hear what was being said and went back to his paper. Ann then walked around the counter and got the coffee pot and started down the row of booths, filling each cup as needed, including Dano’s. He noted her appearance this time. She looked exasperated and weary. She had little beads of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip and was breathing hard, her mighty chest heaving long, deep sighs as she looked towards the kitchen. She didn’t say anything to Dano, but when she began to fill the cups of the booth next to him she revealed, under her breath, the rest of her complaint, giving the customers, an older couple, the inside scoop. She slyly looked back and forth over her shoulder for fear that Fidel was staring at her.
“The manager is going to have a word with him,” she told them. “He said the B word. I don’t care who you are; you don’t call a woman the B word, especially when she can’t even fight back. I think he’s talking to him now. Yeah…I’ll tell you, folks…”
Dano thought her voice sounded ugly and the whole scene was much ado about nothing. He hunched his shoulders inward and tried to forget the unimportant little scene wanting to simply re-dip himself into his paper. Just a little social glitch, he reasoned. Happens all the time. But he knew he could expect this kind of thing to go to his stomach and such nervousness always made him quiet, but not good quiet, rather, distant quiet, far away quiet.
It took a few moments, but he believed after a short time, that he’d completely forgotten the incident. Those little tails of bad blood that linger in rooms where discord have been can be cut off, nipped in the bud, he reasoned. He went in search of the comics, and upon reading them from top to bottom felt he’d accomplished just this. He had begun reading a story about the merger between two major insurance companies when Ann returned, first placing his sourdough toast on to the table. There were two plastic containers of strawberry jam to each side of the bread. Dano moved his coffee cup and saucer to help her out. She placed his ham and eggs before him without saying a word and walked quickly back to the kitchen.
Dano did not move. The eggs looked fine, but there was something wrong with the ham. It was not quite its usual size, only about two-thirds its normal diameter. After lifting it with a fork, he also saw that it was a much thinner slice than usual. He felt an odd emotion, one akin to perplexity but which finally rested at a place inside him that felt, and yet he couldn’t name it then, like helplessness. He felt this void deeply for a moment and tried telling himself it was just a little piece of ham. He tried to push aside the feeling and took a bite of egg, but wasn’t altogether successful. It was plain as day to him that this piece of ham was making him feel, not only angry, but slightly furious.
He looked up at Ann, too fat for her own good, rushing to other tables, so worried about some busboy from Mexico, her large behind stagnant and heavy, yet steadily moving like the road-sway of a semi-truck. She had a large swath of yellow on her thigh where she apparently had wiped her hand, probably butter. He laughed inwardly at the sight of her, his eyes squinting as he shook his head, but he turned away from it, for it was bitter. He pushed the plate away and, leaning back while placing his hands folded upon the top of his head, waited. He felt a kind of pain in his chest and it made him think about, of all things, school. He looked at his watch. He had class at five. He knew he’d been neglecting his readings. He looked back down at his plate and looked at the ham, and then, for some reason, thought of his wife. He didn’t know why he could no longer make love to her, he just knew he couldn’t. His children, Amy and Clarissa, were bright eyed and yet they were sassy. He didn’t know where they got that from. Would they resent him when they got older? Do drugs and have sex? The little one looked wild enough to break his heart from here.
He looked outside the window at the dirty street. Across the street at the 76 Station there was a little man, old and probably poor as dirt, rushing around a Cadillac as though it really mattered that its windows were clean. Thirty thousand dollars for schooling with no real promise of reward afterward, he thought. He noticed Mama’s little lawn, lined with flowers, beside five different newspaper racks. Grass. Underneath was earth, brown delicious earth, life breeding and nutrient-holding earth. Inert. Funny how that was.
He’d had enough. He jerked his way over to the side of the booth and almost stood up, but instead raised his hand to Ann who was pouring coffee at a table just down his row. She didn’t see him and then quickly walked off, banging her way through the plastic door leading to the kitchen. Looking through the cook’s window, he watched her walk towards the back of the restaurant. He gave her a whole minute, yet she didn’t return. He almost stood, but kept himself down. His leg jerked up and down nervously. He gave her another minute, but then stood up. He couldn’t wait. He marched down the aisle and behind the breakfast bar itself where old, single men ate their breakfasts. He was aware of a mess of dirty dishes and old rags underneath the counter where nobody could see. It made him feel like an invader, but he pressed on just a little bit more and shoved the plate into the face of the little cook behind the wheel. The cook had a nametag reading “Caesar.” He stared at Dano with unconceiving eyes.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t eat this ham. It’s much too small. I usually get a very nice piece of ham with my order. This looks like a half-portion. I’m sorry, but I come here everyday.”
Then Fidel walked up to Dano and spoke to Caesar.
“Que quiere?” he said, gesturing to Dano.
They spoke quickly in Spanish for a moment, and then Caesar reached for the plate after rolling his eyes in disgust at Dano. Fidel began talking loudly in Spanish about Dano, flailing his arms, his fingers flapping almost in Dano’s very face. Dano didn’t care. He walked away very erect, resolute in his determination not to accept anything less than what he had come to believe was his due as a steady, paying customer.
Ann was still off somewhere. The toast and coffee were the only things on the table now. He nibbled a little of the toast without any jam and hoped that the ugly memory of the small ham and disrespectful employees would subside quickly. He was happy that the plate was no longer in front of him. He ignored the approaching coolness of his coffee simply because Ann was still nowhere to be seen. He looked back at the cook’s window. Caesar was talking to a different cook, one Dano had not seen. The other cook looked out at the roomful of customers but did not make eye contact with Dano. He then shook his head in contempt and walked to the back of the kitchen. When Ann finally returned she immediately noticed that Dano’s plate was gone.
“Didn’t I get your…?”
“There was something wrong with the ham so I took it back.”
“Oh, there was?”
“Yes. It wasn’t….fresh.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll make sure that you get a fresh slice this time.”
Ann hurried back to the kitchen and Dano watched her as she spoke with Caesar. She then looked briefly back at Dano. Ann quickly looked away when she realized he was watching her. Two minutes later she returned with the plate.
“I hope this is better. He put this one down fresh. I’m sorry about that,” she said.
Dano said nothing. The new slice was exactly like the first only hotter. Not only that, but Caesar had not taken into consideration the fact that by the time the ham had cooked the eggs would be cold. The malaise produced by this new ham and old eggs settled in on him now like a fog. He realized he didn’t want to eat any of it and yet there was nothing more he could do without making more of a scene. He grabbed the sides of the table and looked out the window again. His heart beat fast with that helpless feeling again and, again, he tried to figure it out, but couldn’t. He shook his head fast only once and then grabbed his napkin and wiped his mouth hard, recognizing that to do so in the way he had that he would be wise to push aside his toast in case somebody wondered what he was doing. He had, in fact, nibbled on the toast.
There passed a moment that he recognized he’d known before. He let it pass him and watched it as it filled the room with it’s fury. The world would call it “being a little bit nuts.” It energized him, while sending his normal state of caution howling and whipped to the pit of his stomach. His hands would not obey, could not obey at that moment, the lessons that he had learned up to that point in his life which had kept him in good stead with society. He seized the sharp knife that Ann had brought him and quickly cut the ham into little pieces, cutting so hard he almost scratched the plate. He then poured a huge pool, almost half a bottle, of ketchup over everything. He dipped his fork into the eggs and took a bite. The eggs might as well have frozen his tongue. He put down his fork and leaned back so hard in the booth that the old woman sitting behind him turned around and looked at him. His heart thumped. He turned his head and looked outside at the perfectly manicured grass and noticed a hole in the center of the thin swath of lawn. It looked as though a dog had dug into the earth. Nobody had even tried to fix it. He stared at it for about a minute and then found his hand jerk back to his plate, the fingers picking up a glob of the scrambled eggs and swabbing it in the sea of ketchup before proceeding to place it in his mouth. He finished his eggs in this manner.
The ham and potatoes were the only things left on his plate. The ham was very hot and steamed there in front of him. He usually ate the ham with the eggs and now, for the first time, he would have to eat the ham alone. He grabbed four or five pieces, ketchup all over his palm, and shoved it into his mouth. He did it again and then all of the ham was gone. Ann walked by and began to fill his cup and almost spilled her pot when she saw the last of the ham go into his mouth, his fingers then being licked clean, then the chewing, fast and open like a dog chewing too great a mouthful.
After he’d finished, he stared out of the window again. He thought hard this time about the grass. It’s blades were clean and short and washed and probably sweet smelling, its roots going down into a place of mystery where he didn’t know why it would choose to give forth life, but did. Every day it did.
How old his wife had become. How ugly she was now, bending a little more each day towards the sweet, good grass that could never help her or him for that matter. Underneath was the secret truth about grass that everybody ignored every day. It covered graves of the young from every age who too had grown old and died. This perennial grass. Could the mystery consist of the fact, he thought, that he was going to leave them all? That it had been simmering and now he knew it would be true? He had failed at all duties binding him and he would release himself and watch her from afar bend closer and closer down to the grass and perhaps pick a blade and with it curse him, curse him through it, curse him forever. But it would never bring him back. Never.
He loosened his tie and scooped some of the potatoes into his mouth with his fingers. He then dipped his fingers into the ketchup as an afterthought and sucked it off. She would hate him for leaving the girls. He scooped the rest of the potatoes into his mouth and picked the plate up and licked it, the red ketchup streaked his tongue like blood before Dano slammed the plate back down to the table with a porcelain-high, unbreaking thump. Maybe he wouldn’t do it. Maybe he wouldn’t do it. Maybe he wouldn’t do it.
He was unclear. He contacted his options, touched them viscerally as if they were choosable daydreams. They consisted of rivers and mud and sleep only. Lots of sleep. Tons of it. He picked up his coffee cup and swallowed the hot brew that Ann had just poured. Most of it he spilled on his shirt. He then picked up his napkin and hopelessly dabbed the spot before emptying the napkin dispenser, pulling every one, a bunch about two inches thick, and wiping his shirt again before throwing them down in a bunch, a white missile, an angel cast down forever.
“Fuck you!” he screamed at the table.
Ann was right there.
“I’m sorry, mister, you’re going to have to leave.”
But Bob Dano didn’t care. He threw a ten-dollar bill on the table and walked out of the restaurant, beelining to his Saturn parked in the back. Caesar, Fidel and the other cook had rushed to the rear door to watch him. They stood there as he rounded the corner of the building. They each had lit up their cigarettes. Fidel threw Dano a gang sign while Caesar and the other cook laughed. Dano fumbled with his key as he stared at them, but then stopped, his wrist and fingers going limp and his lower back aching suddenly. He felt weak as though he might fall. Standing there he inspected their mouths, the whiteness of their teeth, their moustaches and their dirty hats. He listened to his own breath leave his mouth in short, sharp shoves. Nothing, including the time he fell off a ferris wheel, had ever frightened him more than this. The parking lot spinned as his tires finally rolled. He quaked as he felt Mama’s disappearing behind him slowly. His far away nightmares had come too quickly, and he felt naked and ashamed at their arrival, but even more, at his easy acceptance of them. As he drove faster and faster up the avenue, he pondered the images, those of grass and dirt and rotten ham and little men who laugh at you and burrow down from the top towards you like little dogs, burrow slowly but always surely, never not surely, looking for something whose nature they had no way of guessing before actually exposing it for a grave.
The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite 