Jack on the Tracks (2 page)

Dad pulled up to the restaurant side of the station where a red neon sign announced that it was open all night
EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR
.

“See,” Dad said, nodding toward the sign. “Even Santa has to have someplace to eat on Christmas.”

“Dad,” I whined. “I’m going to be in fifth grade. I know Santa
is fictional”
Sometimes I thought he got me mixed up with my little brother, Pete, who still believed in Santa and Elves and the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy and bridge trolls. He even believed that when you flushed the toilet in the United States it poured out a hole in China.

“Well, here’s one thing that isn’t made up,” Dad said. “People in the know, know that truckers eat the best food at the best price. You won’t get any of that overpriced fancy stuff here that leaves you broke and hungry.” He opened his door and came around to my side as I climbed down. “Make sure you lock up,” he said. “Otherwise you’ll be sitting in the restaurant worrying that you didn’t.”

“Okay,” I said, and felt my face redden. “Okay.” He was making me more nervous but I didn’t want to show it, because then he would give me a lecture about how nervous people are scatterbrained and a danger to society. I had to watch my step. Every mistake was an opportunity for Dad to launch a lecture.

The windows inside the restaurant were fogged over and the air smelled like boiled cabbage. The walls were covered with old license plates and road signs from all over the country. Dad took a deep breath and rubbed his hands back and forth as he scanned the large room for a seat. When he spotted an open booth, he lurched forward and I followed as we scooted between tables and the backs of chairs filled with big men eating huge, shiny mounds of steaming food.

When we slid into the booth Dad smiled and nodded toward a shot glass full of toothpicks. “That,” he said knowingly, “is the mark of a good restaurant.”

I took note, and secretly said to myself, I’ll write that down too. I loved being alone with Dad. Especially when things were going well, because that’s when he taught me all the good stuff he had learned from a lifetime of experience. And even when his lectures got him hot under the collar, it just meant that he cared enough to keep me from being a moron all my life.

“You know, Dad,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about
thinking.
Sometimes thinking is like making stuff up. Like playing the piano or painting. I don’t believe thinking is only for spelling and science and math problems.”

Dad nodded but he wasn’t really interested in the subject of thinking anymore. He was after food. He read over the entire steak section, then he stared out at the other tables to see what the truckers were shoveling down. Then he spotted exactly what he wanted. “Look at that sign,” he said, pointing toward the far wall. “That’s for me.” The sign was in the shape of Texas and read,
TAKE A BITE OUT OF TEXAS. EAT A
72 oz.
STEAK IN AN HOUR AND IT’S FREE!

“But if you don’t finish it in one hour you have to pay,” I said, pointing toward the small print that said the steak was fifty dollars.

Dad was confident. “I’m hungry enough to eat Texas and most of Mexico. So half a cow means nothing to me. Besides, I can kill two birds with one stone. I can get a man-size meal and not pay a cent for it.”

“Dad,” I pleaded, “the picture of the steak is bigger than you are.”

“Bunk and malarkey,” he said, waving off my fear with one hand. “They exaggerate the size to scare people. A side of red meat is just what I need.”

When the waitress arrived I looked over at Dad. His eyes were bugged out from all the driving, so bugged out, I thought, they were bigger than his stomach. He pointed up at the giant steak sign. “Ill take the challenge,” he said. Then he asked, “Is that 72 ounces cooked or uncooked?”

“Uncooked,” she replied. “But first you have to put up the fifty bucks. Then, if you finish the meal you get the fifty back. If not, we keep the fifty and you keep the leftovers.”

Dad pulled out his wallet, plucked out a fifty-dollar bill that was our gas money, and handed it to the waitress. “Mr. Grant is just visiting,” he said. “Mark my words.”

The waitress snapped her gum and then with a weary expression across her face replied, “All the big eaters start off talking tall in the saddle, but the steak knocks ‘em down to size.”

“I’ll have it rare,” Dad ordered. “Bloody inside.”

She gave him a surly look. “That much rare meat looks like roadkill,” she remarked. “I can hardly stand to serve it, much less eat it, which I wouldn’t because I’m a vegetarian.”

Before I knew what I was saying, I blurted out, “I’m a vegetarian too.” I’d been thinking about giving up meat ever since I did a book report on Gandhi. Now that I was moving to a new place I thought it would be a good time to make a change.

“Then don’t order the
tuna melt,”
she said with a sneer, “because a
real
vegetarian doesn’t eat fish either.”

‘Just French fries for me,” I said, proud of my new vegetarian status. “With ketchup.”

“Only french fries?” Dad asked. “Get the burger plate. It comes with fries.”

The waitress gave me a suspicious look. “Are you sure you’re a vegetarian? You can’t help him eat that steak,” she said to me.

“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I’m a vegetarian. I don’t hurt animals.”

“Well, I’ll be keeping an eye on you anyway,” she said. “House rules.”

As soon as she turned away she hollered out to the kitchen, “One slab of bloody contest beef on table ten!”

Every trucker in the restaurant turned to stare at us. Dad waved to the crowd as if he was getting ready to be shot out of a cannon. Then he slid out of the booth and began to do deep knee bends. He twisted his head back and forth, cracked his knuckles, and stretched his mouth and lips and teeth way out and around like a horse nibbling sugar cubes.

Then he turned to me and made a face as if he smelled something bad. “Since when have you become a vegetarian?” he asked.

“I started today,” I replied. “We’re moving to a new place so I thought it was a good time to change my eating habits.”

“Well, you can’t stop eating meat. You’re a growing boy.”

“Most of the world is vegetarian,” I said.

“Most of the world is starving,” he replied. “Think about that.”

“You are what you eat,” I said to him, repeating what I had read on a bumper sticker.

“No,” Dad countered. “You are what you
think.
It’s how
smart
you are that counts in this world. And believe me, quoting bumper stickers does not make you look too smart.”

I didn’t want to argue with him, so I tried to change the subject. “What new things are you looking forward to doing in Miami?” I asked.

“Steady work,” he said.

“Is that all?”

“Son, I’m a meat-and-potatoes guy. Nothing fancy for me. You can change all you want. You can be a vegetarian today and a cannibal tomorrow. You can turn colors, speak Swahili, and join a circus. You’re young. But for me, the future is all about work.”

He spoke so harshly I didn’t know how to respond. I thought everyone was like me and believed that moving was a time to make new changes. But I was wrong. The only change Dad was making was to work even harder.

When the steak arrived it was larger than the one on the sign. The waitress pushed it up to the booth on a special cart. She looked like a nurse wheeling in a mutilated patient. The steak came served on a cutting board the size of a piano top. The busboy helped her pick it up and plop it down on our table. “If you finish it,” she said, handing Dad a sharp steak knife, “you are allowed to carve your initials into the wood.”

I’ll be carving his initials on a tombstone, I thought. There was no way he was going to finish eating that meat. And there was no way we were going to get all the way to Miami without that fifty dollars for gas. And there was no way I was going to tell him what was on my mind because he would just tell me to settle down and “stop worrying.”

“Watch my tables,” the waitress hollered to the bus-boy as she delivered my fries. Then she pulled up a tall bar stool and sat down. She had a stopwatch around her neck like a track coach. “You ready?” she asked Dad.

“Almost,” he replied. “I have to get set up.” Quickly he carved the steak into fifty pieces and when he was finished he unfastened his watch and handed it to me. “I’m going to eat a piece per minute,” he said. “Keep me on schedule, but if I fall behind I’ll have ten minutes to get caught up.”

“You bet,” I replied, trying to sound positive.

“Okay,” he announced, and gave the waitress a nod. Instantly she clicked the button on her stopwatch as Dad stabbed a piece of meat and chucked it into his mouth. He chewed savagely, as if killing it, then swallowed.

“Thirty seconds,” I called out, flashing him the thumbs-up.

“What happens if I eat this in half the time?” Dad asked, and drove another piece into his mouth.

“You die,” she said bluntly, staring down at him like a vulture. I was glad she was a vegetarian, otherwise I imagined she would eat him if he keeled over.

I began to think of the fifty pieces as a map of the states. I figured he had just devoured Maine and was now chewing up New Hampshire. He swallowed and began to chomp down on Massachusetts. He was ahead of schedule by the time he ate his way down the east coast and started at the top of the steak again with Vermont. I kept calling out the minutes and Dad kept chewing. By the time he reached Louisiana he was slowing down, and when he swallowed, he began to gag.

“Coffee,” he rasped.

“Bring a pot of coffee, and a plunger,” the waitress called out to another waitress. Then she turned to Dad. “I forgot to tell you that if you barf, the deal is off. Some guys who come in here are professional barfers and they think they can just eat and barf, eat and barf.”

“I get the picture,” Dad said, recovering. He set down his fork as he waited for the coffee.

“Take a breather,” I said. “You’re ahead of schedule by ninety seconds.”

After he drank a cup of coffee he picked up the pace again. He was somewhere around Colorado when he began to cough. His face got bright red and he was choking and pounding himself on the chest and when that didn’t work he started slapping himself on the back.

Oh my God, I thought. He’s dying. I looked up at the waitress. She was using a butter knife to push her cuticles back into place. I looked around the restaurant for the poster of what to do if a person chokes, but the poster wasn’t in sight and Dad was turning blue and the veins were popping out across his forehead. Any minute I thought he would pass out and fall from the booth and I’d be begging truckers to help, pleading with them and the mean waitress as he died right in front of me from a hunk of the Rocky Mountains plugging up his throat. I would have to call Mom on the phone and tell her Dad died while eating a monster steak, and we’d all cry because Dad was gone and our new beginning was more like the beginning of the end for us. And all because of a free steak.

“Hey,” Dad said, tapping the end of his fork on the table. “No daydreaming. What time is it?”

“Sorry,” I yelped. I must not have noticed that he’d gotten the piece swallowed. “Sorry, I was just worried that you’d choke to death.” I looked at the watch but couldn’t tell the time because both my eyes had teared up.

Dad put New Mexico in his mouth and chewed for a few seconds before he could say, “See what worrying will do to a person—you were paralyzed with fear. Think
positive
for a change. If you expect the worst, the worst happens.”

He was right. I always thought negative thoughts. Well, I’d add thinking positive thoughts to my new beginning.

“You can do it!” I said, cheering him on. “You’re the boss. After all, how smart can that meat be? It’s dead and you’re alive.”

“Okay,” he said, waving his fork at me. “Don’t get carried away and start sounding like a fluff ball again.”

“Twenty minutes left,” the waitress announced. “It’s right about this time that most of the big talkers hit the wall. Once a man got so full his belly crushed his kidney and he nearly bled to death.”

She is so
negative,
I thought as I cheered Dad on.

He swallowed Idaho and raced through Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, then back up to Washington State. It was as if he’d gotten a second wind, and soon he had polished off Oregon, California, Alaska, and Hawaii.

He swallowed the last bite, wiped his mouth, and looked up at the waitress with a big grin on his face. “I’ll have a slice of Key lime pie,” he said smoothly. “And a coffee refill.”

“I’ll be darned,” she said, and handed his fifty back. “I never had a little man figured to eat this much steak.”

“Never underestimate the power of positive thinking,” Dad said to her, then turned and winked at me. He took the steak knife and with a flourish carved
J.H.
&
SON
into the cutting board.

On the way out to the car Dad stopped. He took a deep, deep breath and announced to everyone in the parking lot, ‘Jack Henry Senior is ready to take on the world!” Then he pounded his chest like Tarzan.

‘Jack Henry Junior is too!” I yelled, and pounded my chest as a few puzzled truckers looked our way. I was ready. Just watching him eat that steak filled me with faith that he could do anything. And if he could, I could too. We climbed back into the truck and slowly took off for Miami.

“I’ll tell you a little something,” Dad said after a minute. “Getting a fresh start in life has more to do with the way you
think
than with where you live, or what you eat. If you have an orderly mind, you’ll be a winner no matter where you end up. If your mind is a jumble of junk, you’ll be a loser. It’s as simple as that. You got it?”

“Got it,” I replied. And I kept it in my mind all the way to Miami. When we got there, his words were still in me, right where I left them on a back shelf of my brain. And when I unpacked my diary I wrote them all down.