The fluorescent hum of the Waffle House at three in the morning didn’t soothe; it just exposed the grime of the asphalt in sharper detail.
Hank sat across from me in the vinyl booth, his frame so thin it looked like a stiff breeze could snap him like kindling. The white Stetson on his head was shadowed with grease, casting a darkness over eyes that had seen too many midnight highways and too few quiet Sundays.
Between us sat a thick, chipped ceramic plate. Two eggs, fried easy, swam in a puddle of grease that reflected the neon “OPEN” sign pulsing in the window like a dying heart.
Hank took his fork, the tines dull and bent, and pierced the center of the left yolk. It didn’t run yellow. It tore open to reveal a dark, rust-colored drop of blood, blooming like a black rose in the middle of the gold.
It stayed thick, refusing to mix with the albumen, heavy as an old sin. Hank didn’t blink. He just stared at that red eye staring back at him from the plate. A slow, bitter smile creased his weathered face, deep lines carving into his cheeks like dry creek beds
Outside, the Georgia rain began to slap against the glass, steady and relentless, keeping time with the jukebox:
Have you paid your dues, can you moan the blues?
Can you bend them guitar strings?”
He said, “Boy, can you make folks feel what you feel inside?
” Cause if you’re big star bound let me warn ya, it’s a long, hard ride”
“Signs and wonders,” Hank muttered, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounded like boots dragging over gravel. He didn’t eat. He just watched the red bead settle into the grease, a quiet testament to the rot that waits inside even the things meant to give us life.
