HOWLERS by Kent Harrington Page B

back from the windows and saw a waitress standing in front of him in her ill-fitting Denny’s uniform. He debated warning her of the things he’d seen. He wanted to grab her by the arm and explain that everyone sitting in the restaurant was in danger of losing their life, but he didn’t. He’d done it before, at a Denny’s in Fresno, and people there had just laughed at him.
    “Warm that up for you?” the waitress said politely, not really looking at him.
    Dillon looked up at the woman, at her makeup and her double chin, and behind her at the short-order cook who was diligently scraping burnt meat from the grill, getting ready for the lunch crowds that would soon fill the place. He put his hand over the top of the cup. Not seeing his hand cover the cup, the waitress started to pour coffee. The hot coffee spilled over Dillon’s hand. He didn’t feel a thing.
       “ Oh my God ! I’m so sorry,” the waitress said, shocked. She pulled back the glass coffee pot immediately, the coffee spilling onto the greasy brown Formica table.
    “Yeah, fine. Don’t worry. It’s okay.”  He pulled his hand away and wiped it with a napkin, the burn finally registering.
    “That was hot . . .  coffee,” the waitress said, looking at him as if he weren’t real.
    Dillon looked at his hand. The skin around his knuckles was turning red, but he didn’t feel much pain yet. He had trained himself not to feel pain. That was what prison did for you. You trained yourself to be a gladiator. If he was anything, after seven very long years spent in San Quentin, James Dillon was a bona fide gladiator, with the scars, hard countenance—rarely able to find a smile—and crude blue-ink prison tattoos that marked him to civilians as a scary outlaw.
    “Check, please,” he said.
    “Sure. I’m really sorry, honey. I’ve been here since 5:00 a.m. You put it on automatic,” the waitress said, horrified by what she’d done.
    “Don’t worry. It’s okay. If you could just please bring me the check,” Dillon said. He’d pocketed his lighter. “And don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault. It was mine.” He couldn’t look at the blousy older woman and not think of his own mother, who’d died while he was in prison. His mother had been a waitress in roadhouses all over West Texas and Southern California when he’d been a boy. It had just been she and he while he’d been growing up, and he missed her. She was the only person in his life who’d ever really, truly loved him. He had no one in his life, since his wife had left him.
    His intense loneliness was starting to make him feel somewhat ghostly. He’d picked up girls—and some whores—along the way, but didn’t like it. It was just sex, and that wasn’t what he wanted.
    The pain from his scalded hand began to register, but he cut it off like a yogi who could walk on fire.
    “How far is the ranger station at Emigrant Gap?” he asked the waitress. He took out his wallet with his burnt hand.
    The waitress was still staring at him, still in shock that he hadn’t even flinched when the coffee had hit his hand. “Over there,” she said, pointing with the coffee pot. “On the other side of the highway, there, where the flagpole is. You can’t miss it.” 
    He left a twenty-dollar tip and thanked the woman, then walked to the cash register. A thin, pretty hostess was ringing up an older couple, the man in his seventies.
    “Damnedest thing,” the old man said, counting out bills on the glass counter. “Damnedest thing. I know I hit that woman full on with my trailer. She didn’t even blink. She just got up and kept right on running . . .  damnedest thing I ever seen in my life.” The old man turned to Dillon.
    The cashier winked at Dillon. She didn’t believe it. Dillon knew it was true. He stepped up to the cashier. She was fresh-faced, with blue country-girl eyes and short brown hair. He knew how long the girl would last once the Howlers got here. Dillon slid a five-dollar