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The Diner

It's one hell of a place, this diner. Interstate 10W, El Paso Airport exit. Chevron. Stop in when you go through. A real trucker's diner. Plenty of 18-wheelers outside. The portions are huge and they are fast with the coffee. People know it. Not the PHX-DFW or MRE-LAX minivan crowd. Oh, there are vans alright. Go ahead and tell me you don't look just a little bit differently at someone who's driving a full van nowadays. What the hell? This diner is toilet bowl. People come in, roll around and leave. What kind of people. Early this morning, 5:15 am, can't sleep, I am there. Coffee, French toast, bacon. Awesome. I am facing Austin. The sun is coming up. I am eating. Ahead of me is some guy with a head-wrap/bandana with a green scorpion going over his head. His eyes are un-caffeinated. You know. So—coffee and cigarettes for breakfast. He has ordered nothing else. And, past him, in the smoking section, there are a couple of old timers wearing their mesh-in-back/foam-in-front baseball caps perched on the tops of their heads. Their strength is gone, only the belly remains. So they come to the truck stop, a place of preparedness, in order to gear up in some way, recapture the feeling of capability, urgency, sense of purpose. They sit together, in front of each other, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Today not. And the table behind them is six white children ages 5-12 or so, a colored woman mid-30s and overweight, and a white woman late-30s/early-40s with a hair cut spiked short on the top and long on the sides and in the back. No father. They are talking amongst themselves. The mother is sitting there with her kids and her arm around one of her kids. That's nice, I think. I keep digging into the French toast. When I look up again, the mother is standing with what looks like a thin, cheap cigar and mouthpiece (what do you call those things?), smoking a few feet away from the table. She looks tired, stands tired. I guess you take whatever breaks you ca. Then she is standing near a table with two black guys sitting there. One of them is smoking the same kind as hers. Oh, OK. Then I notice she is talking to these guys and more ignoring the kids. The colored woman, who has a face like a do-nothing nurse, and the kids stand up, ready to go. They all stand around the mother who just ignores the whole pack, continuing her conversation with the two black guys. This woman looks tired. And she is ugly. Even without the cheap cigar. She is not heavy or anything but her whole body just sages. Face drawn, no breasts left. I see one of her kids snag a couple packets of crackers from the salad bar. He just sort of strolled over and did it. And he didn't make any eye contact with anybody either. Smart. The colored woman eventually starts to herd the kids out. One of the black guys reaches out a casted hand for hers as she goes by. He gets her, but not in a serious way. She turns loose with a grin and continues walking away. The next thing I know, the woman walks out too, heading past me. Her face looks even more tired and ugly up close. Rivers of cigarette smoke had run lines into her face. Sometimes you look at a smoker's face, wrinkled and tired, and ask, 'Who's sucking on who?' Not more than twenty seconds later, those guys are leaving, too. What happened back there? The waitresses are huddled together, all getting something, scooping, pouring something in the same area, just as this crew is leaving. They sensed it. One thing I have seen is, women don't stick together. That is a heap of bullshit. A stranger is a stranger to a stranger. And waitresses are in the people business. Volume. Don't get attached. I had seen one of the black guys flash some bills, but a fat waitress was nearby at the time. But still, it's an opening. 'Oh, you got money. We could use some extra money, we're going through to Fort Stockton. I have an aunt there.' 'Oh yeah, well I don't mind spending it.' 'Where?' And so forth. Jesus Christ, I think, even though I am not sure exactly. But what happens next is, most of the family loads into a truck, a pick-up with a canopy over the bed, one of the black guys driving, mother in the passenger's seat, colored woman and most of the kids in the back. Must be pretty cramped back there. I see the other, the one with the cast, walking through the parking lot with his casted hand by his side and the other over the shoulders of one of the children, a little boy. The first truck, loaded up, leaves. The passenger side faces the parking lot as they pull onto the U turn for 10E, but the mother does not bother to look in the direction of the parking lot, just straight ahead.

And driving away later myself, I thought of that colored woman sitting her fat ass on the bed of the motel room, minding the kids with some patience as she tries to watch Sally Jesse, fending off the other black guy while the mother sucks off his buddy in the bathroom. I've seen another family in El Paso, along the on-ramps, other, father, handful of young-uns, panhandling with signs. I've seen them there with a number of signs over the course of about a year. Something about being stranded and California. The mother was pregnant when I first saw her. Now she is not. Stranded. A year. At least. I swear. And the other one? Who is on her knees in front of a toilet right now? Now way, they're not leaving either. Not together, anyway.

What did you expect, something like Oliver Twist? The whole family sings for their meal. In the diner still, in unison:
Oh, we're the country's poor white trash
We've got brown teeth and we've got no cash
You look at us, say, 'What's the deal?'
It's the eight of us on four bald wheels
In a car held together by glue and hope
As we perpetually swing at the end of the rope.
You can see our clothes are soilt 'n' frayed
And we sure wish that dog was spayed
'Cuz now our dog is pregnant too
But we can sell the pups for
A week's wortha food

Then there is the briefest moment of quiet and one small girl steps forward, and, in sing-song monlogue:
The road is all I've even known.
See that truck? It's where I was born.
Momma's got a bun in the oven,
One more makes lucky seven,
Only thing is, money's never been tighter
I'm ten years old, but I'm getting lighter!
(She walks up to an old-timer in a cowboy hat)
So I'd like to make you a proposition
In tune with your intuition.
As sure as my nose has snot,
Mom's gonna pop
Right here in the parking lot!
Would you like to make a bet mister?
Will I have a brother or a sister?

Followed by various family cast members singing about and talking about things like 'not a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of.' And then, arm in arm, singing the last roaring chorus, 'poor white traaaasshh!,' as they lead each other out in single file, right past the cashier who, smiling and shaking her head, holds the bill up to her chin and tears it up. The two black guys doff their caps and hold them up in a grand wave goodbye. And one large jowl-faced trucker in greasy blue suspenders stands up and in a loud bass voice ends it all with,
Poor
…..Whiiite
……….Traaaaaash!

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