“You are tired, aren’t you?” said Jerry.

“I’m just resting my feet,” Doc said.

“Get up, Headwaiter,” Jerry said. “You’ll have plenty of time to do that. I’m writing you up.”

But Doc did not move and just continued to sit there.

And all Danny and I could do was watch him from the back of the car. For the first time I saw that his hair was almost gone and his legs were skinny in the baggy white uniform. I don’t think Jerry expected Doc to move. I don’t think he really cared. But then Uncle T. moved around the table and stood next to Doc, trying to apologize for him to Jerry with his eyes and bowed head. Doc looked at Uncle T. and then got up and went back to the crew car. He left his tray on the table. It stayed there all that evening because none of us, not even Crouse or Jerry or Uncle T., would touch it. And Jerry didn’t try to make any of us take it back to the Pantry. He understood at least that much. The steward closed down Doc’s tables during dinner service, all three settings of it. And Jerry got off the train someplace along the way, quiet, like he had got on.

After closing down the car we went back to the crew quarters and Doc was lying on his bunk with his hands behind his head and his eyes open. He looked old. No one knew what to say until Boone went over to his bunk and said: “I feel bad for you, Doc, but all of us are gonna get it in the end. The railroad waiter is doomed.”

Doc did not even notice Boone.

“I could of told you about the lemon but he would of got you on something else. It wasn’t no use. Any of it.”

“Shut the fuck up, Boone!” Danny said. “The one thing that really hurts is that a crawling son-of-a-bitch like you will be riding when all the good men are gone. Dummies like you and these two hardheads will be working your asses off reading that damn bible and never know a goddamn thing about being a waiter. That hurts like a motherfucker!”

“It ain’t my fault if the colored waiter is doomed,” said Boone. “It’s your fault for letting go your humility and letting the whites take over the good jobs.”

Danny grabbed the skullcap off Boone’s head and took it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. In a minute it was half a mile away and soaked in old piss on the tracks. Boone did not try to fight, he just sat on his bunk and mumbled. He had other skullcaps. No one said anything to Doc, because that’s the way real men show that they care. You don’t talk. Talking makes it worse.

IV