Jesus at the Waffle House

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I am sitting in a booth at a Waffle House near my office. Unlike the other patrons in this establishment, I am freshly shaved, showered and dressed for work. They, however, are not, having just finished the night’s work or play. We eye each other suspiciously. They wonder why anyone in his right mind would be up this early. I silently nag them about getting home at a decent hour. Perhaps they feel judged by the crisp creases in my khakis, convicted by the scent of Old Spice and sentenced by the starch of my responsible life. Though we all feel righteous in our suspicions, we are not.

I permit myself these post-midnight, pre-dawn indulgences only occasionally, a concession for having abruptly awakened and not been able to escape the flow of words and worries that carry me like a riptide away from a peaceful shore. This disquiet current flows through my family. My mother is sometimes pulled from her sleep by restless surges. Once, in the wee hours, I found my younger son thrashing about his bed like a tired little swimmer treading water.

“Why aren’t you asleep,” I asked.

“I have too many words,” he answered.

Pulling up a chair, I said, “Tell me your words.”

I spent the next hour watching him surf wave after wave of syllables until the garrulous tide ebbed and he drifted into sleep.

I order my usual: a cup of coffee lightly creamed, two eggs scrambled well, and a waffle. It is, after all, a Waffle House. Among the things I have learned in my half century is this; if an establishment is named for an item on its menu, order the eponymous dish. It is what they do best.

I wrap my hands around a substantial coffee mug to warm them while I wait. It is uncomfortably cool in the Waffle House because the cook spends most of his time in front of a hot grill and he controls the thermostat. But the atmosphere is warm. The place is bright with yellow and red and chrome, and Martha, my waitress, is friendly. She thinks she knows me because she keeps calling me Paul and I don’t have the heart to correct her. Her voice is husky, coarsened by cigarettes and coffee and stronger drinks, I’m sure, but her words are kind. I will tip her more than I should because she seems much too old to be waiting tables at this or any hour. Or maybe she just has a lot of mileage. Either way, when I see her I think of my mother, though they are nothing alike. My mother’s voice is soft and southern and innocent and she knows my name. But I’ll bet Martha is a mother to someone.

It is still too early for the news feeds on my phone to post anything I haven’t already read, so I read the people sitting around me instead. Four young Hispanic men are holding down a table across the restaurant. They are lean from work or youth or play, and hungry but not for food. They wear shiny, silver-toed boots, slick black pants, and western-style shirts unbuttoned halfway to their navels. One of them sits under the shade of a cowboy hat two sizes too big for his head. Another gets up to go to the bathroom, gliding across the shiny linoleum like a Latino Fred Astaire. They are friends but they are also rivals.

Nearer to me, a woman young enough to be my daughter sits across from a man old enough to be her father. I gather from their dialogue that they work together and have just clocked out. I think they must be lonely because they are talking, but not to each other — just toward each other.

He says, “My mother lived to 106. My father lived to 98. I come from longevity.”

She answers, “I don’t understand why he wouldn’t text me back. It’s not like he doesn’t have time. I mean, why would you deliberately ignore someone?”

He replies, “Me and my brother are thinking about opening up a shop. We’re both pretty good with engines and it beats making another man rich.”

I start to feel pity for them, but then think that maybe they are doing each other a favor, that after a long night of monotonous work, they just need to get rid of some of their words so that when they drive off to their separate homes, they will be able to sleep.

I hear the clatter of change and think that Martha must have spilled her tips. But she is outside smoking a cigarette, looking at her watch, waiting for the night to end. A man at the counter is counting his coins to see how much breakfast he can afford. I know him. His name is Bruce. Bruce is homeless and mean and loath to change. I know this because a couple of my friends once offered to drive him to his home in Mississippi, though he didn’t want to go. When they asked him why, he said, “Because my mother will put me in rehab and then, when I get out, she will put me to work.” He said he liked living on the street and getting high and there was nothing they could do to change his mind. They took him anyway, but he was right. His mother put him in rehab, then put him to work. And Bruce came back. Bless his heart.

Waffle House at 3:30 in the morning is a lot like a bar, except there is no booze. Or church on Sunday, except there is no sermon, though there is communion of a sort. I would not be surprised if Jesus walked in sometime between midnight and morning because he frequented places like this and fraternized with people like us. People who are trying to fend off loneliness or pour out their words. People who are trying to shake off the night or hasten the day. I bet he’d order the waffles.