Flash! Fiction by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

11

A Place Called Hope

Today is January 4, 1960. It is 5:30 Monday morning in a small south Georgia farming town, and the only lights on in the town square are from the diner, squeezed in between the drug store and the barber shop. The college bowl games are over. Syracuse beat Texas in the Cotton Bowl and won the national championship. It’s drizzling now, and it’s expected to last all day.

In the diner are the regulars—the earliest of the early risers.

Sal, the proprietor—short and stocky, a friendly, round grandfa-therly-face, and recovering alcoholic and chain-smoker whose two previous diners burned to the ground—turns out the same orders of grits, eggs, bacon, and toast day after day.

Elaine, the waitress—beautiful and engaging but a tramp to the Ladies’ Auxiliary—looks tired since husband number four disappeared, leaving her alone to kiss the young ones goodbye every morning at 4:30 before scribbling a note for her mother to read once she stumbles out of bed.

Ben, the farmer—a nervous young father, whose weather-beaten face adds 20 years—spends most afternoons teaching his sons about farming, occasionally taking the smarter one aside to en-courage him to become a doctor or lawyer or banker, even though the farm escaped the hailstorm last summer.

Frankie, the mechanic—a stranger with a badly disfigured face from some overseas conflict—keeps to himself, though no one really minds, because his looks don’t affect his knack for fixing any kind of engine, though Fords and Chevys are all he ever sees.