He sat in a corner booth, feeding nickels to the juke box and blowing smoke rings into air already saturated with a blue haze. The sweet strains of Patsy Kline's "Crazy" played over and over again and he leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed, one hand keeping steady time to the melancholy music. A bottle of whiskey sat within easy reach and other customers kept their distance. He kept his silence and no one tried to speak to him. It was just shy of three am on a cold Sunday morning in a small Texas town and we had found the all night diner by accident, it's neon lights a welcome change from the endless flatlands and empty roads between us and home. The waitress with the dark eyebrows and platinum hair brought lukewarm coffee and lackluster apple pie and made no attempt at conversation. The place smelled of fried eggs and grease, hard luck and heartbreak, desolation and despair. It was stale, defeated and defiantly mediocre.
He looked a little like a cowboy - faded jeans with a silver belt buckle, denim jacket frayed at the collar and cuffs, well worn muddy boots. His hair was wavy and dark with just the beginnings of silver in his sideburns, a leather banded watch adorned with turquoise was on one wrist and his hands and face were well tanned and deeply lined.
There were dark circles under his eyes and a phrase my grandmother had used came to mind - he looked as if he'd been rode hard and put up wet. The waitress glanced his way regularly but approached only to empty the ashtray or bring a clean glass. She didn't speak and he didn't seem to notice but I sensed she knew him well enough to not violate his space or interrupt his mood and I also somehow suspected that she would have protected him from anyone else doing so.
We ate the indifferent food, smoked, paid and left, heading for the next forty miles of bad road, hoping to be home before sunrise. Patsy Kline was still singing about the price of lost love and the highbeams cut cleanly through the Texas darkness like jackrabbits on the move through the cactus. I fell asleep to the rhythm of the road and by the time I woke the lights of Dallas were behind us and I wasn't sure whether I'd dreamed the diner and the cowboy or if it had actually happened.
He looked a little like a cowboy - faded jeans with a silver belt buckle, denim jacket frayed at the collar and cuffs, well worn muddy boots. His hair was wavy and dark with just the beginnings of silver in his sideburns, a leather banded watch adorned with turquoise was on one wrist and his hands and face were well tanned and deeply lined.
There were dark circles under his eyes and a phrase my grandmother had used came to mind - he looked as if he'd been rode hard and put up wet. The waitress glanced his way regularly but approached only to empty the ashtray or bring a clean glass. She didn't speak and he didn't seem to notice but I sensed she knew him well enough to not violate his space or interrupt his mood and I also somehow suspected that she would have protected him from anyone else doing so.
We ate the indifferent food, smoked, paid and left, heading for the next forty miles of bad road, hoping to be home before sunrise. Patsy Kline was still singing about the price of lost love and the highbeams cut cleanly through the Texas darkness like jackrabbits on the move through the cactus. I fell asleep to the rhythm of the road and by the time I woke the lights of Dallas were behind us and I wasn't sure whether I'd dreamed the diner and the cowboy or if it had actually happened.
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