On the Road: a City of the Mind

(2 of 3)

They have just started drinking their coffee, and the driver with the Roadway cap calls over the waitress, telling her there is salt in the sugar he put in his coffee. She is pale, thin, young, has dark circles under her eyes. The truckers have been teasing her, and she doesn't trust them. She dabs a bit of sugar from the canister on a finger and tastes it. Salt. She samples sugar from the other canisters. They have salt too, and she gathers them up to replace them. Someone is hazing her, breaking her into her new job. Her eyes shine with tears.

She brings the food and comes back when the truckers are nearly done. She carries a water jug and coffeepot on her tray. The men are ragging her again, and her hands tremble. The tray falls with a crash. The jug breaks. Glass, water and coffee spread across the floor. She sits down in the booth, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm so tired. My old man . . . he left me," she says, the tears coming faster now. "The judge says he's going to take my kid away if I can't take care of him, so I stay up all day and just sleep when he takes a nap and the boss yells at me and . . . and . . . the truckers all talk dirty . . . I'm so tired."

She puts her head down on her arms and sobs luxuriantly. The truckers are gone, and I touch her arm and tell her to look at what they have left. There is a $20 bill beside each plate. She looks up, nods, wipes her eyes on her apron, pockets the tips and goes to get a broom and a mop.

It is 3:30 a.m. in Illinois at a glossy truck stop that offers all mechanical services, motel rooms, showers, Laundromat, game room, TV lounge, truckers' bulletin board and a stack of newspapers published by the Association of Christian Truckers. Piped-in music fills the air.

The waitress in the professional drivers' section is a big motherly-looking woman with red hair piled in careful curls on top of her head. She correctly sizes up the proper meal for the new customer at the counter. "Don't know what you want, honey? Try the chicken-noodle soup with a hot roll. It will stick to you like you've got something, and you don't have to worry about grease."

She has been waitressing 40 years, 20 of them in this truck stop. As she talks she polishes the stainless steel, fills mustard jars, adds the menu inserts for today's special (hot turkey sandwich, mashed potatoes and gravy, pot of coffee -- $2.50).

"The big boss, well, he's a love, but some of the others aren't so hot. But it's a job. Gotta work somewhere. I need a day off though. Been working six, seven days straight lately. Got shopping to do. My lawn needs mowing."

Two truckers are sitting at a booth. Their faces are lined and leathery. One cap says Harley-Davidson, the other Coors.

Harley-Davidson calls out, "If you wasn't so mean, Flossie, you'd have a good man to take care of you and you wouldn't have to mow the damn lawn."

She puts down the mustard jar, walks over to Harley-Davidson and Coors, stands in front of them, hands on wide hips. "Now you listen here, Charlie, I'm good enough woman for any man but all you guys want are chippies."