An Order of Coffee and Tears

5





Most weeks, the days at Angela’s Diner tend to run together. While the faces of those coming and going may change, the looks in their eyes stay the same. And, if I’m not paying attention, then Mondays and Tuesdays just melt into Wednesdays and Thursdays. Maybe that is why some days stand out more than others. Maybe that is why some of the stories we hear at the diner stay with us for days, and sometimes longer. Friday is the exception. And, with money in their pockets, folks tend to shake off the last four days.

I work every day of the week, and sometimes on Saturdays. But I do have Sunday to call my own. After all, I have a room to tend to, and an agreement with Ms. Potts that I’d keep it respectable; somewhat, anyway. She is an easy enough landlord, and, I suppose, I am an easy enough tenant. Now, you’d think, with the two of us living under the same roof so to speak, that we’d see quite a lot of each other. But the truth is that I don’t think I’ve ever crossed paths with Ms. Potts outside of the diner, except for when she handed me the keys to my new place. My heart skips a little each time I think about the sound of the keys as she placed them in my hand. I’d never had a place to call my own before – not one that was just mine.

Like I said, most days tend to run together. And then there are the days that stay with us when we go home. Some of them stay with us long after that. And others… they can stay with us forever. I can count on one hand the number of forever days. Don’t even need all five fingers, just a few. Yes, a lasting impression.

The memorable days are the ones that seem to randomly play back in your head. No reminders or reasoning – it could be as simple as watering a house plant, like my Felix. Today was one of those days. I saw the faces and heard the conversations in my mind, and my poor Felix ended up with a little more water than he needed. I filled and spilled over the lip of the planter with some of his water and dirt running down onto the window sill. I’m sure Felix will survive.

I met an older woman today. Sandra – she said her name was – had stopped into the diner for some coffee to help pick her up during a particularly long drive. The drive was a fair distance, considering where she came from, and where she was going. A heavy smell of perfume carried with her as she took a seat across from me at the counter. As she settled, she thumped her purse onto the counter, and fished out a cell phone. There was a classiness in the way she dressed and carried herself, the kind you admire from afar. Maybe she ran the PTA, or had a seat on a council for her local community. Or maybe she dabbled in town politics, giving the up-and-coming politicians a run on their candidacy budgets.

A mature woman, I watched as she typed out a text message. Her painted nails sounded off a rattle of clicks and clacks as she pressed each of the tiny keys. She kept just a few rings on. There was her wedding band, and an engagement ring, and what looked to be an anniversary ring. And then I saw an odd silver ring that seemed out of place next to all the gold. If chance would have it, I thought I might ask her about the ring.

Sandra wore a shorter hair style than most women her age, for convenience perhaps, or maybe it worked better for her small, round face. Brown hair with sandy highlights, she cradled one side with her palm, and then the other, pushing back any strays that fell out of place. Grays were hidden away, but had grown out some. Maybe she’d missed a hair appointment, although she didn’t strike me as the type that would miss one.

Diner instinct had my hands putting a coffee mug in front of her. Holding the pot of coffee up, I asked if she’d like a cup. I told her it was fresh, brewed just a few minutes ago. She returned a polite enough smile, and nodded yes. It didn’t take long before I could see she was distracted. Her mind was someplace else.

“Thank you, dear. This is exactly what I came in for,” she said in a voice that was soft, but clear.

Having noticed the wedding ring, I grabbed another cup for her husband. But, as I placed it down in front of the seat next to her, Sandra raised her hand and waved it away.

“My husband won’t be joining me,” she started to say, and then looked toward the front of the diner. “We parked up the street, and he made it half a block on our walk here. When he saw the bar across the way… well, I’ll have the coffee, but he’s decided to have something a little more spirited,” she continued.

She turned back to me, her eyes empty, and with hushed words, she said the most curious thing. “He won’t finish till he drowns it.” I don’t think she intended for me to hear what she said, and so she tried to smile past the comment with a short apology,

“Excuse me,” she began, “just babbling.”

“Not at all. So, are you and your husband passing through?”

“We’re on our way to Delaware – started out earlier today from Connecticut a few hours back. We live up there half the year.”

“Family? You have family in Delaware?”

Sandra stopped and considered the question. A smile bloomed on her face, and she answered, “We’re going to pick up our boy. He’s been overseas in Afghanistan the last eighteen months. Tom, that’s my son – he’s a hero.”

I hated to admit it, but my knowledge of war and politics were vague at best. On occasion, Clark liked to fill me in on the details. But most of the time when I’d try to listen, I would lose interest in what he was telling me. Over the last year, I did get to know where I was, and who I was living with. Angela’s Diner is in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia had a lot of its own going off to war. From what Ms. Potts had told me, quite a few of the young men were from our small neighborhood. Some came back. Some didn’t. And a lot of them wished they hadn’t gone over at all. This was the first mention of a hero, though.

The bell above the door rang, and a chill washed in far enough to reach me. Goose flesh danced over my arms as I tried to hug it away. The diner was nearly empty so I made use of the unfilled cup, and poured myself some of the hot coffee.

“A hero?” I asked.

“A hero,” she boasted proudly.

“That really is something – you and your husband must be so proud.”

Raising her eyes past me, Sandra’s smile grew. She closed her eyes, put her hands over her heart, and mouthed his name. She finished her coffee and motioned for more before continuing.

“Oh, we are. Odd thing is, growing up, Tom really wasn’t into the army thing, or cops and robbers, or any of that. I mean, he played the same video games, and maybe some play wars with the neighborhood boys. Other than that, he never showed an interest in the military.” Sandra’s eyes moved to her hands, and her eyebrows lifted slightly. “My son sided more with the creative – like this ring he made for me,” she said, lifting her hand to show the silver band I’d wondered about.

“That is pretty – I was admiring it earlier,” I commented. Sandra held the ring a second longer, but then her eyes narrowed, “It was his father. He watched the news all the time, and especially watched what was going on over there. You know, after 9/11. He was obsessed with it. I guess we all were, a little.”

“I was just a kid back then. I remember seeing it at our school when it happened, and I remember our school letting us go home just before the second tower fell.”

Sandra nodded her head yes, and said, “Tom’s about your age. His school let out early, too. I suppose they all did when the towers were hit.”

“So, is your husband in the military?”

Sandra hinted a smile and waved a dismissive hand, “No, bad plumbing, is all. He wanted to enlist, and even tried once. A year before we started dating, he’d lost a kidney to cancer. Easiest cancer to beat, he likes to say. Things might be different now, but back then, you had to have both beans to enlist. Just having one wasn’t good enough. I think they’d consider you a liability. Never really understood the reasoning. I mean, you only have one heart and one brain, right? So, his heart was always in it, and he wanted to, but he couldn’t enlist.”

“I can imagine how thrilled your husband must be for your son. I mean, being a hero, and all.” At once, Sandra’s expression went cold and hard. She gave her cell phone a quick lift to study the small screen.

“Yes. He is proud and thrilled – or he was,” she answered, her voice sounded sterile and rehearsed. She dropped her cell phone back to the counter and looked up at me. “Sometimes I think maybe my son wouldn’t have joined the army if his father hadn’t talked about what was going on over there so damn much,” she answered, her voice sounding callous. But then she shook her head and pushed a grin.

Sandra picked her purse up and raced through the contents. I thought she might be hunting down a photo of her son: the really nice military kind that people like to show off. Instead, she pulled out a letter. It was made up of formal stationery, and had an embossed emblem on the face of the envelope. Definitely military. Her eyes widened, and her face lit up as she asked,

“Can I tell you a story? Can I tell you how my son became a hero?”

At once, I was excited. The diner was slow, and getting a story was a real treat. “I’d love to hear it. Thank you,” I told her, as she embraced the letter.

“This is just one of a dozen letters I’ve received from the men and women in his unit,” she started, and then, for the next few minutes, Sandra told me how her son became a hero.





He was on patrol with his unit a few miles from their post, when they came upon a family standing in the middle of the road. A young woman was crying, and her husband frantically waved his arms at Tom’s unit, begging for them to stop. They stopped, and one of the men stepped out to ask what had happened. The woman was beside herself; anguish took her words – all she could do was flail her arms and cry. The woman’s husband was grateful Tom and his unit had stopped. He pointed out to the field next to the road where, they saw two kids playing. The soldiers quickly learned that the man and woman in the road were the parents of the two children. The mother cried out the same words over and over, and, finally, one of the men in the unit understood what she was saying. “Minefield,” he barked loud enough for everyone to hear. By now, Tom’s unit had filed out of their vehicles and lined up along the edge of the road. All of the soldiers stepped back from the minefield. One soldier had already trekked a handful of steps toward the children. The soldiers in the unit yelled for him to stop, and then talked him through repeating his steps, only backwards, until he was safely on the road.

Minefields are scattered across the Afghanistan provinces, Sandra told me. Most of them are blocked off with signs and makeshift fencing. Just about all of them are on a schedule to be demined. The minefield the kids wandered into was on the list, and was supposed to have been blocked off with fencing, but that never happened. Everyone in the area knew about it: the families, their kids. Everyone, except a set of curious twins. A boy and a girl, maybe five years old; old enough to walk and run, and young enough to not know any better.

Tom and his unit had no demining tools. A special group was usually called in to handle the clearing of a few mines, let alone an entire field. Personnel from the unit tried to explain this to the family – instead, the family continued their begging and pleading for help. They assumed that Tom and the others, given their military gear, could navigate the mines and save their babies.

The mother’s crying slowed. The reports from the unit stated that she began to yell at her husband, hollering that he should be brave, that he should go get their babies. The father scolded her – his wife’s words were considered disrespectful. Or maybe the father of the twins was ashamed, because he was afraid. The mother and father started to argue and yell. And maybe it was this disconcerting activity between the parents that caused what happened next.

The little boy stood up in the field and pointed to his mother and father. He stood up and began to say something in Afghani. His words were young, and new, and far too soft for anyone to hear from that distance. The little boy then pulled his sister up, and the two of them stood in the middle of the minefield, their attentions drawn in by their parents. They raised their voices and yelled to their parents, as children often do. They yelled to their mother and father, who continued to argue with each other. Tom was the first to see the twins lean into a step. It was a baby step, but it was a step, and there was no way to know where the land mines were buried. Tom ran to the mother and father, and instructed them to tell the twins to sit down and not move. But Tom’s Afghani was new, too, and the parents were confused by his instructions.

By the time the twins took a second step, the other men and women in the unit saw the kids on the move, as well. They waved their arms up and down, motioning for the children to sit down. The twins must have thought it was a funny sight, all the helmeted soldiers in tan and brown fatigues, waving to them from the road. The children didn’t sit down, they waved back. Laughing, they took another step.

“Sit down, sit down!” everyone began screaming. They continued waving their arms in the air. Tom raced through his Afghani/English translation book, trying to find the words. The twins weren’t looking at their parents anymore. They were laughing at the site of the figures hopping up and down along the edge of the road. One of the reports stated that the little boy and girl started to jump up and down in a mimic, playing along with what they saw. When they grew tired of jumping, they stopped, and then took another step.

“Ksséte, ksséte, ksséte,” Tom yelled in Afghani to the children. He’d found the translation for down, and yelled it to the twins. The other men and women with Tom’s unit did the same. The mother and father stopped their arguing. Their color had paled, and their faces grew sullen and scared. The little girl called out to her mother, her fingers stretched outward, gripping handfuls of air. And then they took another step.

The chanting stopped. Everyone sucked in a breath and waited. Nothing happened, and then the parents started yelling alongside the soldiers. They called out “Ksséte, ksséte, ksséte,” in a corrected pronunciation. And this time, the children heard them. The little boy argued that he didn’t want to sit down, and that he wanted to come over to see the soldiers in their helmets and uniforms. He wanted to see if they had treats for them. His father directed him to stay. But the little boy shook his head, and, with his sister’s hand in his, they took another step. A gust of wind pushed sand and dirt into the air. The winds stirred up a heavy cloud, hiding the twins from Tom’s unit like a secret.

The men and women in Tom’s unit waited: some raised their hands in front of their eyes, expecting the worst to happen. When the winds and dirt settled, and when nothing happened, they joined in with the father’s demands. They stopped waving their arms and told the twins “down”. A few in the unit radioed back to the base, seeking instructions. Any demining help would be hours past their need, which was immediate. The little girl jumped up and down, calling out to her mother. She pulled on her brother’s arm, and they took another step. And then a second. And a third.

The unit’s report stated that Sandra’s son never hesitated. Tom didn’t request permission, or wait to see if a mine exploded under the feet of the children. He just ran. He was half way to the little boy and girl before anyone realized what he was doing. Tom didn’t try to jump to different points in the field – he didn’t watch the ground where his feet landed. He just ran.

His entire unit began screaming at him to get off the minefield. Orders were shouted, calling out for him to discontinue and rejoin the unit on the road. But Tom heard none of it. He’d reached the twins, scooped up the boy like a football, and grabbed the little girl by her arm. When he stopped and turned back to face the road, he stood and searched the field of dirt for footprints.

“What are you doing?” Someone screamed out to him. They all knew what he was doing. If he hadn’t run out to them, if he hadn’t done something, then the twins almost certainly would have been killed. Tom’s unit continued to yell and scream. They instructed him to find his steps and use them. Find his boot tracks, and follow them back out to the road.

The only sounds coming from the mother and father were prayers in whispered monotone words strung together in long breaths. They were kneeling on the ground, their hands brought together in front of them, pleading that Tom’s tracks would be shown to him as clear as he could see their children. Tom paced his steps, and worked his way back to the road. At some point, the little girl began to slip from his hand. Tom tried to hoist her into his arms as he hurried himself, but her body fell from his fingers, and she tumbled hard to the ground. She cried and yelled something in Afghani at him. He tried to stop, but he couldn’t. Momentum had his feet moving to the next boot track, and then another boot track, and then he was back on the road, dropping the boy and turning around. And the winds came again. The winds shouted louder this time, raising the dust and blinding everyone. More clouds of dirt and sand circled around the vehicles, the soldiers, and everything else, hiding the little girl whose cries were muffled by the sounds beating sands.

Tom was back to the girl a minute later – guided by her voice yelling to her mother, he ran and scooped her up in a tight embrace. The boot tracks he’d followed were gone, stolen by the wind. Reports state that Tom pulled the girl up in a hug, and simply raced for the road. He’d saved the twins.





Sandra’s words were mesmerizing. I felt my heart racing, and it wasn’t just the excitement of it, it was the pride. I could hear it in her voice. Amazing.

“You’ll have to stop back in during your drive home – I’d love to meet your hero,” I exclaimed, almost demanded, and beamed with a smile.

When the bell over the door rang, another chilly breeze fell inside the diner, as a balding man entered. His face was tired, his cheeks sunken. Dark gray pouches carried his eyes, which were blood shot and wet. He lifted his face just enough to see me and Sandra. Sandra turned, their eyes connected, and he gave a nod and walked toward us. When he reached the counter, he sat down. Tossing his keys to drop on the counter in front of him, he again lifted his chin just long enough to look at me.

“Coffee,” he said in a voice that was gruff and broken. The smell of whiskey carried with him. I wrinkled my nose to the smell of it when he spoke.

“Sure thing,” I answered, and poured the coffee. After a taste, he stood and told Sandra he was going to the restroom, and that he’d be back in a few minutes. He told her that they should get back on the road, that they had some hours left in their drive to Delaware. When he walked toward the restroom, I wanted to ask Sandra if he was okay. He didn’t look as though he’d had one too many at the Irish pub down the street, but he didn’t seem right. There was something more.

“That’s my husband,” she started to say. Picking up her purse, she fumbled through the contents and pulled out a tube of lip-balm. I thought she was going to cry as she squeezed some on her finger and rubbed it across her lips. Her expression changed for a moment, and she cupped her mouth and closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t mean to intrude… but is everything okay?”

Sandra opened her eyes, put a hand on mine, and blinked away a tear.

“My son is a hero. We’re going to Delaware to pick him up today,” she proclaimed. When she sat up, she cleared her throat and pulled back her hand.

“My son is a hero. He saved that little boy and that little girl. He ran out of that minefield, and missed all the land mines. Except that last one. The girl survived, but my son died two days later.”

The local news stations in the Philadelphia area often cover what is going on in Delaware. It is there that you’ll find the Dover Air Force Base, and a mortuary for the fallen soldiers returning home from overseas. I’d missed the connection. This wasn’t a visiting trip to Delaware. They were going to Dover to receive their son.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” was all I could think to say.

“Just wish I had another chance. Just one,” she replied.

“Chance?”

“Tom enlisted to please his father. I know it. He wanted the approval,” she started to say, her voice echoing in angry sarcasm. Shifting in her seat, she gave the restroom a hard look, as though she could see clear through the walls. “I blame him, you know,” she continued.

“Ma’am, what your son did was an amazing and heroic thing.” It was my turn to receive the hard look, and I thought I’d overstepped with my words. Her face softened and relaxed, and she nodded in silent agreement.

“If I could do it all over again, I’d stand up and scream at Tom. I’d scream at them both, and say, listen, Mr. Thomas Grudin, you are not enlisting. I don’t care what your father says,” she huffed loud enough to turn the eyes of Ms. Potts. Sandra raised a hand to indicate she was okay. My heart fell deep inside as a sudden rush of sadness filled me.

“Thomas Grudin?” I asked, and Sandra nodded.

“Tommy?” I asked, and wondered if this was Tommy Grudin, a boy I’d grown up with. The boy who’d been my first kiss?

Sandra raised her brow and said, “My stars, we haven’t called him that in years. Up through ninth grade, he was fine with Tommy, but by tenth grade, he insisted we call him Tom. But how did you know?”

Memory bubbles surfaced, including the one I’d pushed down years before. This was Mrs. Grudin sitting across from me, my neighbor from my home town of Fairview, Texas. Was it possible? Could this be the same Mrs. Grudin, who, from time to time, bandaged my skinned knee and treated me to pop-tarts and milk?

“Ma’am, I grew up in Fairview, Texas. I grew up with a Tommy Grudin. My name is Gabby Santiago,” I told her. Sandra’s eyes opened wide as she reached and touched my face. A large smile blossomed as her cheeks turned red, and she chuckled with a sound of surprise and disbelief.

“Gabby? Gabby Santiago?”

“Yeah. It’s me,” I answered. My heart warmed, and I could feel a little glow of my own beginning to surface around my neck and on my cheeks. Mrs. Grudin pawed at my face, her smile stretching as she repeated my name a few more times. Memories rifled through my head, and a reservation doused my heart. This was the first person from home I’d had contact with since leaving Fairview. I’d lost my way, and there was a reason for it. I saw Tommy’s face in my mind, and the heaviness in my heart took all my thoughts.

“Tommy is dead,” I heard myself say, and wished I could have rephrased it.

“He was always so fond of you, Gabby. He really was. And look at you, now. Oh, my girl, such a beautiful young woman you’ve grown up to become. Oh, and your parents, they must be so happy and so proud,” she said, but then stopped, and I could see the questions forming. I knew what was coming. Mr. Grudin came back to the counter to collect his keys and drink down more of his coffee. Mrs. Grudin’s manner changed almost immediately. The questions she had were gone. Her face went without expression as she gathered her things. I considered what she’d said earlier: “He won’t finish, till he drowns it.” I’d wondered what she meant by that, but by now, I think I understood.

As I waved a hand to Mrs. Grudin, she broke her empty expression, and said, “We split our time between here and Fairview, and I see your parents a few times a month. I’ll make sure to mention seeing you,” she told me, and before I could tell her not to, she was already headed out the door.