Even at this hour of the morning, Waffle House is buzzing, the bright light from the huge hanging globes bouncing off a murky cloud of cigarette smoke. The grill sizzles on without respite, the smell of the place a potpourri of stale coffee, smoke, and recycled grease.
A waitress moseys over to Luther’s booth.
“Know what you want, sweetie-pie?”
Though still perusing the illustrated menu he knows exactly what he wants.
“Vanilla Coca-Cola. Sausage. Bacon. Grits. Scrambled Eggs. A stack of pancakes. And more maple syrup. I’m going to use a lot more than what’s in that dispenser.”
The waitress chuckles. “We don’t serve pancakes.”
Luther glances up from the menu.
“Is that a joke?”
“Umm, this is the Waffle House. We serve waffles.”
She’s being friendly, flirtatious even, but Luther doesn’t catch this. He feels only humiliation. The waitress is a young thing. Very pregnant. He thinks that she might be pretty if her teeth weren’t crooked. Her nametag reads Brianna.
“I hate waffles, Brianna.”
“Well, there’s other stuff than that, darlin’. Fr-instance, my favorite thing is the hashbrowns. If you get em’ triple scattered all the way you never had anything so good.”
“All right.”
“So you want to try it?”
“All right.”
“And you still want all that other stuff, too?”
“Yes.”
When Brianna the waitress is gone, Luther leans back against the orange-cushioned booth. He tries not to dwell on how severely disappointed he is that the Waffle House doesn’t serve pancakes. How did he miss that? The waitress probably thinks he’s stupid now. Perhaps she should join the others in the trunk.
Numerous signs adorn the walls. While he waits for his Coke he reads them:
Cheese ‘N Eggs: A Waffle House Specialty
You Had a Choice and You Chose Us. Thank you.
Bert’s Chili: Our Exclusive Recipe
America’s Best Coffee
By the time his food arrives the first inkling of dawn is diffusing through the starfilled sky.
“You tell me how you like them hashbrowns,” Brianna says. “Pancakes, that’s a good one.”
The triple scattered all the way hashbrowns taste like nothing Luther has ever eaten. The bed of shredded fried potatoes is covered in melted cheese, onions, chunks of hickory-smoked ham, Bert’s chili, diced tomatoes, and slices of jalapeno peppers. He likes it better than pancakes and when Brianna brings him a refill of vanilla Coke he thanks her for the recommendation. No longer is he ashamed for ordering pancakes in a restaurant specifically called Waffle House.
Luther sips the vanilla Coke, briefly at peace, watching the sky revive through the fingerprinted glass.
Things are progressing famously.
How could the kidnapping of both Karen Prescott and Elizabeth Lancing not grab Andrew’s attention, wherever he is hiding?
As he starts to leave Luther notices a man of sixty-five or seventy facing him two booths down, his sallow face frosted with white stubble, eyes bloodshot and sinking, staring absently out the window, a cigarette burning in his hand.
There is a transfer truck parked outside and based on the man’s J.R. Trucking hat and hygienic disrepair Luther assumes he’s the truck driver.
He senses the man’s loneliness.
“Good morning,” Luther says.
The trucker turns from the window.
“Morning.”
“That your rig out there?”
“Sure is.”
“Where you headed?”
“Memphis.”
“What are you hauling?”
“Sugar.”
The old man drags on his cigarette, then squashes it into an untouched egg yolk.
“Gets lonely on the road, doesn’t it?” Luther says.
“Well, it certainly can.”
He doesn’t begrudge the man’s curt replies. They don’t spring from discourtesy but rather a desolate existence. Had he more to say he would.
Luther slides out of the booth, zips his sweatshirt, and nods goodbye to the trucker.
The man raises his coffee mug to Luther, takes a sip.
At the cash register Luther pays for his breakfast and then gives Brianna the waitress an additional ten dollar bill.
“See that old man sitting alone in the booth? I’m buying his breakfast.”
And Luther strolls out the front door to watch the sunrise.
15
PULLING out of the Waffle House parking lot, Luther can hardly hold his eyes open. It’s Monday, 6:00 a.m., and since Friday evening he’s managed only four hours of sleep at a welcome center outside Mount Airy, North Carolina.
He takes the first left onto Pondside Drive, a residential street so infested with trees that when he glances up through the windshield he sees only fragments of the magenta sky.
He follows Pondside onto Cattail, a street that dead-ends after a quarter mile in a shaded sequestered cul-de-sac, its broken pavement hidden beneath a stratum of scarlet leaves.
Luther kills the ignition and climbs into the backseat.
Lying down on the cold sticky vinyl, he takes out the tape recorder, presses play, and drifts off to the recording of Mr. Worthington begging for the lives of his family.
When he wakes it’s 11:15 a.m. and the crystal sunlight of the October morning floods the Impala, the vinyl warm now like a hot water bottle against his cheek.
In downtown Statesville he picks up Highway 64 and speeds east through the piedmont of North Carolina and the catatonic towns of Mocksville, Lexington, Asheboro, and Siler City.
The sky stretches into infinite blinding blue.
Near Pittsboro, 64 crosses the enormous Lake Jordan, its banks bright with burning foliage. Luther cannot remember ever being so joyful.
By midafternoon he’s hungry again.
At a Waffle House in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he orders his new favorite dish: hashbrowns, triple scattered all the way, and a cold vanilla Coke. Through the window his view is of a tawny field turned gold by the leaves of soybean plants.
Halfway through lunch it dawns on him.
He was careless at the Worthingtons.
He left something behind.
16
WHEN Beth awoke she thought she was dead and gone to hell but it wasn’t the inferno she expected. The image of hell she entertained derived from a painting she’d seen recently at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
The 1959 painting was called Apocalyptic Scene with Philosophers and Historical Figures, an oil on Masonite board by the Reverend McKendree Robbins Long.
The painting depicts a cavernous chamber and a legion of hopeless souls being herded by demons toward the obligatory lake of fire. Among the philosophers and historical figures are the faces of Einstein, Freud, Hitler, Stalin, and Marx. Others cling horrified to the rocky bank, still in their eveningwear, as if seized from a lavish ball. A horde of men and women fall naked from the ceiling toward the burning lake and in the unreachable distance, visible to all, two luminous angels hover around a white cross—a constant torturous reminder of the love the damned have spurned.