We were at the World of Waffles, which was located in a small, orange building right off the highway. I'd driven by it a million times, but it had never occurred to me to actually stop there. Maybe it was the rows of eighteen-wheelers that were always parked in the lot, or the old, faded sign with its black letters spelling out Y'ALL COME ON. But now I found myself here, just before eleven on a Saturday night, holding my peace offering, a pencil decorated with waffles, scented with maple, that Wes had purchased for me at the gift shop for $1.79.
The waitress came up as I lifted my menu off the sticky table, pulling a pen out of her apron. "Hey there, sugar," she said to Wes. She looked to be about my mother's age, and was wearing thick support hose and nurses' shoes with squeaky soles. "The usual?"
"Sure," he said, sliding his menu to the edge of the table. "Thanks."
"And you?" she asked me.
"A waffle and a side of hash browns," I told her, and put my menu on top of his. The only people in there other than us were an old man reading a newspaper and drinking endless cups of coffee and a group of drunken college students who kept laughing loudly and playing Tammy Wynette over and over on the jukebox.
I picked up my pencil, sniffing it. "Admit it," Wes said, "you can't believe you've gotten this far in life without one of those."
"What I can't believe," I said, putting it back down on the table, "is that you're known at this place. When did you start coming here?"
He sat back in the booth, running his finger along the edge of the napkin under his knife and fork. "After my mom died. I wasn't sleeping much, and this is open all night. It was better than just driving around. Now I'm sort of used to it. When I need inspiration, I always come here."
"Inspiration," I repeated, glancing around.
"Yeah," Wes said, emphatically, as if it was obvious I wasn't convinced. "When I'm working on a piece, and I'm kind of stuck, I'll come here and sit for awhile. Usually by the time I finish my waffle I've figured it out. Or at least started to."
"What about that piece in the garden?" I said. "What did that come from?"
He thought for a second. "That one's different," he said. "I mean, I made it specifically for someone."
"Stella."
"Yeah." He smiled. "She made the biggest fuss over it. It was to thank her, because she was really good to Bert and me when my mom was sick. Especially Bert. It was the least I could do."
"It's really something," I told him, and he shrugged, that way I already recognized, the way he always did when you tried to compliment him. "All of your pieces have the whirligig thing going on. What's that about?"
"Look at you, getting all meaning driven on me," he said. "Next you'll be telling me that piece is representative of the complex relationship between agriculture and women."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I am not my sister," I said. "I just wondered, that's all."
He shrugged. "I don't know. The first stuff I did at Myers was just basic, you know, static. But then, once I did the heart-in-hand stuff, I got interested in how things moving made a piece look different, and how that changes the subject. How it makes it seem, you know, alive."
I thought back to how I'd felt as I started into Stella's garden earlier that night, that tangible, ripe feeling of everything around you somehow breathing as you did. "I can see that," I said.
"What were you doing out there, anyway?" he asked. Across the restaurant, the jukebox finally fell silent.
"I don't know," I said. "Ever since the first day Kristy brought me there, it's sort of fascinated me."
"It's pretty incredible," he said, sipping his water. The heart in hand on his upper arm slid into view, then disappeared again.
"It is," I said, running my finger down the edge of the table. "Plus, it's so different from anything at my house, where everything is just so organized and new. I like the chaos in it."
"When Bert was a kid," Wes said, sitting back in his seat and smiling, "he got lost in that garden, trying to take the shortcut back from the road. We could all hear him screaming like he was stranded in the jungle, but really he was about two feet from the edge of the yard. He just lost his bearings."
"Poor Bert," I said.
"He survived." He slid his glass in a circle on the table. "He's tougher than he seems. When my mom died, we were all most worried about him, since he was only thirteen. They were really close. He was the one who was there when she found out about the cancer. I was off at Myers. But Bert was a real trooper. He stuck by her, even during the bad parts."
"That must have been hard for you," I said. "Being away and all."
"I was back home by the time things really got bad. But still, I hated being locked up when they needed me, all because of some stupid thing I'd done. By the time I got out, all I knew was that I never wanted to feel like that again. Whatever else happened, to Bert or anyone, I was going to be there."
The waitress was approaching the table now, a plate in each hand. On cue my stomach grumbled, even though I hadn't thought I was hungry. She deposited the plates with a clank, gave us each a quick second to ask for something else, and then shuffled off again.
"Now, see," Wes said, nodding at my plate, "this is going to blow your mind."
I looked at him. "It's a waffle, not the second coming."