How Best to Avoid Dying

by Owen Egerton

  The All-Star Special includes two eggs, one waffle, four strips of bacon, grits, and toast. It should arrive at the table in six to nine minutes. Stumpy prepares a plate in seven minutes and thirty-four seconds. Well done, Stumpy. Hillary brings it to the table—not careless, but clumsy. As she walks the eggs slide into the grits, but she’s trying and she’s smiling. I’ll give her that, she smiles.

  Runny eggs, soft waffle, shiny bacon. I’m happy. I like Waffle Houses to work. I like to write STELLAR at the top of my report. I like the basics to be covered so a store can go deeper. Moving beyond “Was the water glass refilled?” to “What was the true motivation of the waiter pouring the water?”

  I enjoy every bite, saving the waffle for last. I’m ready to add the perfect amount of Whipped Spread and syrup and gobble it up while it’s still hot, but when I open up my tub of Whipped Spread I find an unpleasant surprise.

  NOTE: MELTED SPREAD.

  It’s a tub of yellow liquid, little white globs floating like scum in an over-used hotel hot tub. I motion for Hillary, who is staring at the air. She sees me and waddles over.

  “More coffee?” she asks.

  “Can I have another tub of butter? This one is melted.” Notice I call it butter. All part of the disguise. Anyone who knows Waffle House knows the Whipped Spread is about as close to butter as Alabama is to Asia. Personally, I prefer the spread. Perfect for waffles.

  Hillary is on her way back to my table with a fresh tub when the phone rings. She squeals and hops to the phone. It’s the fastest I’ve seen her move since I arrived.

  “Hello, Waffle House,” she says. She nods, then covers the mouthpiece. “Stumpy, it’s the radio people again.”

  “Oh, my,” says Stumpy, turning from his half-grilled hash browns. The drunk at the counter gives a loud whoop.

  “They want to know the phrase that pays.”

  My waffle is cooling.

  “I don’t know any phrases,” Stumpy shrugs.

  “We don’t know any phrases,” Hillary says into the phone. I touch my waffle. Definitely cooling. Hillary nods some more, uttering “a-huh” with each drop of her chin. My last waffle before San Diego is getting cold. I am about to stand and retrieve my own spread when she hangs up and skips over to my table. She hands me my tub and gives the sweetest little curtsy. My anger vanishes and I smile.

  “Radio people?” I ask.

  “They’ve been calling us for the past hour. It’s their morning show.”

  “It’s four AM.”

  “They start real early.”

  “Is it the station we’re listening to?”

  “Yep, yep, yep.”

  “Why didn’t we hear you?”

  She looks at me with what I can only presume is some kind of pity. “They pre-record it,” she says.

  I nod and return to my waffle. I open my new spread and find it too is liquid.

  “Excuse me,” I grab Hillary by the sleeve. “This is also melted.”

  “Yeah,” she frowns. “We keep them by the grill.” She walks away.

  Funny. When Hillary frowned she had the slightest resemblance to my wife. Very slight. My wife wasn’t as big, my wife had nearly perfect teeth, my wife was always carefully groomed, but she was a redhead. Hair like a sunset. Rich red when we met, mellowing as the years passed, yellows sneaking in and finally a light shade of blue over orange. I was out of town when she died. The cable man found her in the garden. I miss her.

  Hillary comes by and takes my half-eaten waffle. I don’t stop her.

  How did my skin get so spotted? So loose? It’s dying on my bones.

  “Anything else?”

  I look up. Hillary is waiting, doodling on her pad. I take a deep breath. “Yes, please,” I say. My last meal at a Waffle House. It needs the perfect ending. “A hot slice of apple pie and a cold scoop of vanilla ice cream.”

  “No apple pie,” she says without looking from her doodles. “I think we’re out.”

  “Can you check?”

  “I did a minute ago,” she says. “We’re out.”

  “Then why did you say you think?”

  She looks up from her pad. “It’s a figure of speech. Like a metaphor.”

  “Like a metaphor?”

  “Would you like pecan?”

  “I want apple.”

  “No apple. Just pecan.”

  I order pecan. She brings it, smiling again, but I no longer find it pleasant. The pecan pie tastes like sticky chalk. Hard to swallow. I chew slowly. I try to calm myself. My doctor says no losing my temper. I’m too old to afford anger.

  “More coffee?” she asks. I could kill her. “Or another slice of pie?” I could pour syrup down her throat until she drowns.

  The phone rings and Hillary squeals, drops my check and scampers off.

  I try another bite. Paper and sugar.

  “They say I should stand on a table,” Hillary says to Stumpy, the phone again pressed to her ear. “They say they’re watching somewhere outside. They want me to lift my shirt, Stumpy.”

  “You can’t see titties on the radio.”

  “Stumpy, it’s five thousand dollars.”

  “I don’t know. You could lose—”

  But it’s too late. Hillary climbs up on the table of the booth next to mine, unbuttons her shirt and out flop her breasts. Dear God. Pink, strained flesh popping from the sides of a tan mesh bra. It’s as if two shaved possums are hammocked and hibernating on her chest. The teenagers gasp, the drunk claps, Stumpy hides his eyes with his one good hand.

  Hillary giggles, rebuttons her shirt, and bounces back to the phone.

  “What are they saying?” Stumpy asks.

  “I don’t know. They’re laughing,” Hillary says. “They hung up. I don’t understand.” She puts down the phone. “I think they said something mean.” Her face is a flustered red. “I wonder how I get my money?”

  My anger is gone. It’s just too sad. I abandon my pecan pie, walk up to the register, and hand Hillary a twenty dollar bill and my check. I avoid looking at her. I avoid thinking about her. I just want to be outside, driving away.

  “Here’s your change,” she says, no embarrassment, no shame in her tone. It makes everything worse. I’m looking up to tell her to keep the change when I notice that, right next to the register, on a plate, under a glass lid sits an untouched, genuine, Waffle House apple pie. And there’s Hillary’s chubby fist handing me crumpled bills.

  “I take it back,” I say. “I do not like the Waffle House.” My voice is loud. The couple looks up. “I do not enjoy your smells, your grimy menus. I despise your unclean lavatories, your tumorous steaks, your powdered hot cocoa.” The drunk is leaning away. Stumpy is forgetting to flip an egg. “And you,” I yell, pointing a shaking finger at Hillary. “You are not going to win any money, you stupid thing. Thing! So mop the entrance floor, turn down the music, and keep the goddamned spread in the fridge.”

  The door dings open.

  “Good morning,” Stumpy says weakly, keeping his eyes on me. I turn to the door. Two men walk in carrying a life sized pink cow with the words KLOL CASH COW painted on the side.

  “We’re here to give away some mooooney!” shouts one of the men into a wireless microphone.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” Hillary leaps up and down, her body jiggling in copious waves. The other man runs through the store high-fiving the customers and staff, stopping just short of Stumpy. It takes both men to hoist Hillary up on the back of the Cash Cow. They hand her a wad of cash and snap some photos.

  “Mooooney,” says the Cash Cow.

  Stumpy turns up the radio and pumps his arms in the air.

  “The Waffle House is a rockin’,” yells one DJ into his microphone. “What’s the station that pays, Hillary?”

  “I don’t even know!” she yelps.

  Hillary is happy. A goofy, doughy ball of joy. Why can’t I feel happy for her? Why do I find myself wishing the plastic cow would collapse under her weight or that the
DJs would snap the money back and laugh at her naïveté?

  Stumpy is weeping behind the counter. People are cheering and laughing and toasting Hillary with coffee cups and juice glasses. Hillary is chanting, “Thank you, radio people! Thank you, radio people!”

  I squeeze past the Cash Cow and leave.

  It is still more night than morning. But the sky is growing paler. I notice the Waffle House sign is glowing above me.

  NOTE: A AND SECOND F NEED NEW BULBS.

  I climb into my car and start the engine. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I can’t see the Cash Cow, it’s below the window, but I see Hillary. She’s galloping. Waving an arm above her head like a rodeo star.

  As I pull out of the parking lot and head west, I imagine Hillary chasing after me, galloping her Cash Cow out of the Waffle House, through the parking lot and into the traffic of Interstate 10, pursuing me all the way to California, hollering like a Valkyrie, with a pot of coffee in one hand and a slice of apple pie in the other, daring me every moment of every mile not to feel ecstatic about being alive in this world.

  COLD NIGHT ALLIGATOR

  You want me to turn the electric fence off? Really? You want in? You redneck fucktards. There’re alligators in here, royally pissed, cold alligators, you know that? They’d eat your dogs easy.

  You cut off our heat, our water. You pump spotlights and techno music at us so no one sleeps for three weeks and the alligators go weird and bite the mud. Your dogs barking blood. Of course we turned on the fence.

  And why? Because we’re some crazy cult? You want crazy people? You made crazy people. You made Eve 9 crazy and she was as sane as it gets. You put something in her eyes I’ve never seen.

  And we loved you. We prayed for your turd-dimple town, prayed for your lame lives. But you hated us the moment we arrived, right when we drove down Main. You stared at our bus, pinching your noses at the smell of veggie oil. We waved and you didn’t. We smiled and you didn’t. I told Troy right then, “They hate us.”

  “All the more reason to love them,” Troy said.

  What an asshole.

  I know in here they think he’s a god and out there you think he’s a demon. But he’s my brother, I know him. He’s just an asshole. You freaks called in the Feds for some harmless asshole with good people skills and a soft heart and some weird ideas about reptiles. He used to say he loved the world and everyone in it. I said look at history, Socrates to MLK, love the world and it comes to kill you. Thanks a hell of a lot for proving me right, you maggot dicks.

  You know what our philosophy is? Do you know the ideology you’re trying wipe out? Answer suffering with love. Open your self to beauty. That’s it. That’s what we say together at the end of each day, what we say to each other each morning. That’s what we believe, love and beauty. And fucking. We fuck a lot. We do. That’s why I joined. That’s why most of us joined. At least the guys. You think that’s shallow? Do you? Fuck you.

  My brother started a cult in our shitty Jacksonville apartment. You think I stuck around because I thought he was prophet? He was chemistry grad student, for chrissakes. I was playing Wii on the couch and he said it for the first time, said our creed: Answering suffering with love. Open your self to beauty.

  “Hmm,” I said and went back to Wii.

  Troy made his Facebook status Answer suffering with love. Open your self to beauty. Some people liked the shit out of it. Not many, but some. He invited folks over for spaghetti and talk. I listened, mocked my brother when he needed reality, reminded him that most people would crap on his love.

  “Because they’re suffering. So love them!”

  More and more came every week. Pasta, teachings, and, after a while, sex. Not crazy orgies, just one-on-one, old fashioned fucking, okay. When we make love we believe we’re literally making love. And the world needs love. So were fucking for a better world. Are you fucking for a better world? No? So shut the fuck up.

  Hell, I bet Eve 9 and I alone have made enough love to save the world three times over. Fay, that was her name before. Fay Blakes. She walked into Troy’s apartment with some ass-faced boyfriend during one of the early dinners. She had this pageboy haircut and tiny, happy breasts like those oversized Hersheys Kisses they sell around Valentines, only not as pointy. The boyfriend left. She stayed.

  She has this floating way about her. She wears the collar of her gray jumpsuit just a little bent. So fucking cute. And when the Family stands facing east, waking the dawn with our collective sigh, I sneak near her just to smell her morning breath.

  Troy saw the alligator farm for sale online. Cheap, run down, sick gators, in shit-shape like everything else in this town. “The northernmost alligator farm in America!”? Who the fuck thought that up? Missouri is like the arctic to alligators. Without care, they’ll die.

  We thought we could make it paradise. I remember that first day here, Troy standing on the porch of the big house where we built all the bunks, gazing at us, beaming.

  “Answer suffering with love.”

  “Yes!” we cheered.

  “Open yourself to beauty.”

  “Yes!”

  “Eat an alligator egg every day.”

  “Yee…sure!”

  Okay, Troy feels alligator eggs have special spiritual properties. Like Omega 3 for the soul. Ah, shut up. Half of you eat the flesh of Jesus once a week. So if you think the gator stuff is weird, fuck you.

  We abandoned the old world, the old names. I became Adam 2. Troy named himself Proto-Adam the Holy.

  Holy my ass. Little secret. As a kid he used to almost constantly spray the toilet seat with piss. It got so bad mom made a rule that he had to sit down every time he went. It stuck. He’d never admit it, but to this day Proto-Adam the Holy pees sitting down.

  We spent our days caring for the alligators and showing tourists around. In the evenings we talked about love, suffering, beauty. Dinner was pasta and alligator eggs and when the sun went down we fucked until our calves hurt. Best years of my life. Maybe anyone’s life.

  We had babies. Jesus, I must have fathered half a dozen. Eve 9 had the first, the first baby born to the Family. Fay yelling, the women gathering near, the pain, the growls, then a child. Troy said this is our creed, suffering and beauty together. Little Eve 43. I like to think she’s mine. There’s no way to know. That’s the point. You know, one belongs to all and all belong to one.

  Tiny baby. The love we had been making was crying on Eve 9’s chest. And Eve 9, Fay, exhausted and so happy, hot sweat beading on her forehead.

  Take my word, the worst thing you could do in a sex cult is fall in love with one person. The aim is to share each other, give yourself to all, belong to no one individual. But I wanted to belong to her. And her to me. We have a rule that you can’t sleep with the same person more than twice in a row. I’d spend two nights with Eve 9, hurry off and get handjob from Eve 12 or something, and scurry back to Eve 9. And in the sack, which is anywhere but the sack since we all sleep in a bunkroom, so in the shed, or laundry room or hatchery, when Eve 9 gets really excited she makes this high pitched squeal like an injured rabbit. I love that.

  You know where Eve 9 is now? She’s curled up in a corner shaking in the cold, half starved. I told you, just him, take him and leave the Family alone. You sped up with sirens on a dozen cop cars, waving a warrant like a battle flag. Of course we closed the gates, of course we electrified the fences. How do you expect people to react when you come to take their babies away?

  We never should have sent our kids to your schools. Never. Troy said to love a society, you have to be present in that society. So we sent them. You hated our children as much as you hated us. It wasn’t just that they were all Adams and Eves, not just the smaller gray jumpsuits, it was that they didn’t know Iron Man, didn’t recognize Sponge Bob on the lunch boxes. It irked you. You hated them so much you called it concern. Prayed they could be delivered and transformed into less freaky, less hateable creatures. But you could do nothing, and you cursed your own
laws that allowed for freedom of wrong religions.

  Troy taught our children that the smirks, the bullies, the unspoken disgust had no power over them.

  “Those who hate are suffering. Answer suffering with love. How can someone you love ever really hurt you?” he said. “Now have another egg.”

  I could have told him he was wrong. I was his grounded counselor. I saw you for the puss sacks you are. But I was too busy sticking with Eve 9. I lied to her about other women. I swore I was fucking everyone. But it was just her.

  Troy knew. He came to me. I was feeding antibiotics to a sedated alligator.

  “Brother,” he said, which didn’t mean much. He calls everyone brother or sister. “Let’s talk about Eve 9.”

  I smirked and asked him if he’d squat a piss recently.

  “I’m taking her tonight. I’m doing this for you.”

  I stared.

  “Open yourself to beauty, brother. In time you can be with her again,” he said.

  “Troy,” I said. “Please don’t do this.”

  “That’s not my name,” he said. The gator started to wake.

  He was good to his word, he always is. That night he took her into his room, the only private room on the Farm. I lay in my bed, eyes on the bunk above me, twenty feet from his door. Everything in me bubbled. Every alligator egg I’d ever swallowed trying to squeeze back up my throat. I closed my eyes and counted breaths. Then I heard the cries of a dying rabbit. I walked away. I walked off the farm.

  That’s why I hate him. Even more than you shit worms. If you had taken him it would have been fine. But you made it hell in here. No food, no water. Bull horning through the fence that if we loved our children we’d send them out, get them to safety, said they’d be with their brothers and sisters, the ones who left for school and never came back. You made our world so unsafe and so hellish that we listened. We lined up the little Eves and Adams and sent them walking out to you, knowing you’d keep them, knowing you’d stuff them with Lucky Charms and church hymns and wash all their life away. We kissed them. We touched their matted hair. Told them we’d see them soon, knowing we wouldn’t. They promised us with hot tears that they would walk in love, saying how can someone they love ever really hurt them? Troy ripped hair from his face.