Most early mornings the diner had a steamy rush of customers – mainly fruit pickers and farmhands - from around 7:05 a.m. until 8:40 a.m., after which things usually died down until around noon. But for some reason, today was different.
Just as Dennis had been using a grey cloth, peppered with coffee grounds, to wipe down the counter after the last of the breakfast customers had departed, the gruff rumble of the coach engine had caught his attention. He glanced up through the sheet glass windows to see the trembling silver vehicle sitting out on the parking lot, dominating the space like a big metal cuckoo. At first, he thought it was a Greyhound, lost off the highway, but on closer inspection he realised it was an older model than that.
The group of people who had emerged from the silver bus appeared to Dennis to be part of some tour, or maybe a business. The latter seemed less likely, given their mismatched appearance and lack of interaction with each other. Forming a steady stream of bodies, the visitors had come through the door, and spread around the place.
The travellers were all males, and had mostly asked for coffee – which was great, because this meant they could simply help themselves from the three Sunbeam coffee pots located on a hotplate to the side of the serving counter. However, two or three of the visitors had also requested hot food – bacon, sausage, and grits, mostly.
Dennis used a single, practised hand to break six eggs into a plastic jug, then stirred in half a quart of cream, and added a couple of handfuls of Longhorn cheese. He poured this into a cast iron frying pan, walked to the counter, and glanced at the cheques pegged on the wire. If it had been a normal morning, he wouldn’t have used paper orders – relying instead on his rusty old brain - but today, it was a necessary evil, with two dozen strangers descending on the place like a plague.
Dennis turned off the grill and plated up the food, placing each dish under the hot lights. He came around front and carefully carried the meals to the customers. Once he was finished, he returned to the service bar, took down each of the paper orders, and - with a sense of accomplishment - impaled them on the brass bill spike at the far side of the counter.
Waddling back into the tiled kitchen area, Dennis poured himself a half cup of thick, black coffee, and grimaced as he swallowed the bitter liquid. He could remember a time when he could drink a litre pot dry in one morning, but three decades of fried food washed down with coffee and Jim Beam bourbon had eroded his guts.
He picked up a cloth and erratically wiped grease stains from the various surfaces, as he glanced curiously across at the group seated by the window. He was most fascinated by the role of the younger man, who sat with the coach party.
He had arrived on a green motorcycle about ten minutes after the bus. When he walked into the diner, all of the other customers nodded to him in acknowledgement, but he didn’t appear to recognise any of them. He walked confidently to the counter, and asked Dennis for a coffee, then, while he was waiting for it, an elderly man came over to him and led him to a red leather booth seat where another two men were already seated.
The elderly man had instructed the newcomer to join them in taking a seat. For a moment, he glanced cautiously around, before he finally sat down on the opposite side of the table from the three men, whereas all of the others from the bus were scattered around the diner.
The elderly man, a larger one in a Hawaiian shirt, and a scrawny figure in a Mickey Mouse hat sat opposite the young guy. It almost looked like the young buck was being interviewed for a job. As opposed to the rest of the customers, who looked on quietly, the three amigos - as Dennis called them - seemed much more animated.
At one point, the young guy brought some type of flat computer from inside his jacket and laid in on the table. He worked his fingers across the screen, as the three amigos looked on with wide eyes. There was a great deal of explanation going on, with the young guy frowning and nodding.
Suddenly, the elderly man said something, and the youngster laughed loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the building. The kid shook his head and stood up for a moment. Dennis figured the young guy was just about to leave, but the elderly man leaned towards him and quietly said something. Then, it was the turn of the large man in the Hawaiian shirt to laugh, and the young guy’s expression changed as he sat back down again.
They got talking again, only this time Dennis figured the young guy looked much less comfortable than before. He said little, but nodded enthusiastically in response to everything the other three said to him.
At one point, mid-conversation, the Mickey Mouse guy glanced up, and spotted Dennis looking in their direction. He turned back to the group, and scribbled something down on a paper napkin, folding it in two and handing it to the large man. After skimming the napkin, he turned his head to look at the Dennis, and tapped his head in small salute. Dennis acknowledged the gesture with a small, self-conscious nod and focussed his attention on gathering up grease smeared plates and empty coffee cups.
Although Dennis stopped watching the group in the booth, the last thing he noticed was the elderly man slide a manila envelope across the table to the younger man. After that the youngster left, without touching his coffee, climbed back on his bike, and left in a cloud of dust and fumes. In his absence, the three amigos invited a few others from around the diner to join them at the table. When several new members had taken their seats in the booth, they all spoke quietly and intently. As Dennis busied himself with a mop – disinfecting the tiled floor behind the serving counter - he could only hear the general murmur of voices.
Eventually, the conversation in the window booth seemed to draw to a close. Without any specific announcement, the smattering of customers stood up and drifted out of the door towards the silent bus.
‘Hey,’ Dennis called to the departing travellers. ‘What about the bill?’
‘It’s okay,’ said a deep voice from over his shoulder.
Dennis turned around to find the large man in the Hawaiian shirt, standing a bit too closely behind him.
‘I’ll settle up for all of us,’ he said, with a broad smile, and pulled out a brown leather wallet from his back pocket.
‘Ah, that’s good.’ Dennis smiled, his face creasing into a labyrinth of wrinkles. ‘For a moment, I thought I was about to get hustled.’
‘Not at all,’ the large man said. ‘I just wanted to query one thing?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Who ordered that?’ the large man asked, and pointed to the last bill on the spike.
As Dennis leaned over the metal sliver, narrowing his eyes, the large man moved with the speed and agility of experience. He grabbed Dennis’s head in both hands and slammed it face-first on to the vertical spike. The large man twisted the head slightly, and held it there for a moment, the chef’s legs twitching. Then, when the legs gave way completely, the large man allowed the body to fall backwards. He leaned across the hot plate and picked up a piece of fried meat.
Tearing at the meat with his teeth, the large man stood over Dennis McLean’s body, until the spasms had dwindled to nothing. He bent down, taking the body by the feet, and dragged it through the kitchen to the walk-in refrigerator.
Before the large man in the Hawaiian shirt left the diner, he dropped the lock on the door and tilted the hanging sign to “CLOSED.”
3
At the dusty bus stop, on the edge of the cluster of lifeless homes known as Burke’s End, Laurie-Ann Taylor sighed with relief, and blew her damp fringe away from her face. Her feet were hot and she badly needed to pee. But, now, relief was within sight - she could finally see the approaching bus in the distance.