The line inched closer to the main office. A man wearing a suit carried a clipboard and spoke to the men in the line. He scribbled things on his pad of paper after talking to each man.

Before the man got to Pete, he stepped out of line.

“Where’re you going?” the man with the burns said.

“I’m going home,” said Pete.

Eighty-Nine
Miracles over Easy

The small café was filled with people. Young men wearing military uniforms accompanied by young women were sitting side by side in booths, leaning close. Old men sat on stools reading newspapers. A single waitress wearing a white apron bobbed and weaved through the narrow walkways between tables.

The quiet chatter of the morning bustle was coupled with the sound of crackling bacon on a flat stove. Dim lights hung over the bar where Ruth sat. She was positioned between men who wore denim, smoked morning cigarettes, and wore the lined faces of those who were poor.

They spoke among themselves in voices that were low-pitched and dry.

She ate her eggs and toast, and listened to them talk about their children and their wives using three and four words at a time. Men like them were not the kind to lay their feelings out in the open, but they did not hide them either.

“You going to the revival?” said one man.

“Hell no. You?”

“Don’t know.”

“Me neither,” said another.

“Well, I sure as shoeshine don’t wanna go, but my wife’s threatening to divorce me if I don’t.”

“She’s only trying to save your soul, Ben. Don’t you need saving, Ben?”

All the men laughed.

“I don’t need saving,” Ben said. “I’m Catholic.” He made the sign of the cross.

This drew more laughter from those nearby. Even those who were eavesdropping, like Ruth, laughed to themselves.

“Catholics don’t all go to heaven,” said one man. “My mother-in-law’s Catholic and she’s a flat-out Devil worshipper.”

“Well, this Catholic’s going,” said Ben. “My daddy paid good money to get us in.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Ben.”

“Maybe not for Baptists, but it does when you’re Catholic.”

Another man added, “I don’t know about that, but I can say that after six years of Catholic school, if you’re late to chapel, those nuns will slit your throat with a pencil sharpener.”

“Yeah, well,” said another man, “my wife’s going to the J. Wilbur thing too. She’s dragging all our young’uns. Tried to tell her it was a bunch’a hokum, but she’s got her own ideas.”

A young man leaned into the conversation. “J. Wilbur ain’t all that bad. Actually, I think he’s a good man.”

The men slapped their knees when they heard this.

“That man’s a phony if ever there was one,” said Ben. “Mercy, I’m so glad to be Catholic.”