The little silver camera lit up in my hand, and the tiny screen showed a waffle shop booth in the winter light of February 2014, with a man in a canvas jacket sitting alone in the booth in front of it, counting out coins. Behind him, out of focus but unmistakable, sat two younger men in expensive coats with their heads together. I am Darlene Kimbrough, fifty nine years old, and I turned the screen toward the two men who had just come through the door, and I pressed play, and the sound of the diner of eleven years ago filled the room.
The voices were low, but clear. “Dad is out of it,” said the first voice, a smooth baritone. “He is eating at a waffle shop like a bum. He owns nine thousand acres under his boots and he counts pennies.” The second voice laughed. “Wade, we can have him declared incompetent in six months. A doctor in Dallas will sign.” The first voice said, “And the waitress?” The second said, “What about her?” “Nothing,” said the first. “She paid his eleven cents.” They both laughed, and the camera shook.
The silence in the Waffle Shop was complete. Rick stood motionless behind the counter with a coffee pot in his hand. At the corner table, three truckers in feed caps stopped eating. The tall man in the expensive coat, the one called Wade, had gone the color of the cream in my pitcher. His brother Curtis, shorter, with a carefully trimmed beard, stood beside him with his mouth open, and the cold wind from the door ruffled their hair. Thomas Garza, the lawyer, folded his arms and said nothing at all.
A silver camera with masking tape on the back gave one waitress the length of a breakfast rush to bring two grown brothers back to the truth in Amarillo.
I gave my terms standing behind the counter, with my apron on and the camera still in my hand. “Gentlemen, I never asked your father for a dime and I am not going to start fighting you now. Here is my offer. Mr. Garza will explain the will. The diner and the building are mine, and I will keep the doors open for every waitress who works here. The rest of the estate I will help you divide, with a third set aside in a trust in your father name. But you will withdraw your claim, and you will sit down and eat some eggs.”
Curtis sank onto the nearest stool and covered his face. “Darlene, I owe a poker room in Denver ninety thousand dollars,” he said, muffled. “I have not spoken to Dad in fourteen years because I was ashamed to ask him for money. When we were in that booth, I was saying anything to sound big.” Wade, behind him, was shaking his head slowly. “I lost my car lot in Plano two years ago,” he said. “I told everyone it was a sale. I wanted him gone, God forgive me, because I thought I would never be able to pay. I am so ashamed.”
But shame sometimes wears the mask of anger. Wade lunged forward, snatched the silver camera out of my hand, and spun on his heel, heading for the door with the evidence clutched to his coat, meaning to smash it in the parking lot. He got three steps. Rick, to my astonishment, dropped the coffee pot into the sink and vaulted the end of the counter. The three truckers in feed caps rose from their stools. And my waitress friend Maria, who had worked beside me for sixteen years, stood in the doorway with a tray of syrup bottles.
Wade stopped in the middle of the diner floor with the camera in both hands and the whole breakfast crowd on its feet around him, the jukebox silent in the corner and the stained ceiling tile over his head. The oldest of the truckers, a man called Big Earl, took his cap off, slowly. “Son,” he said, “that man came in here nine degrees below zero eleven years ago, and she paid his coffee. If you break that camera, you break the only thing you got left of him.” Wade looked at the little silver box. He put it in my hand.
The consequences were honest and a little teary. Wade and Curtis withdrew their claim that afternoon, and Thomas Garza drew up the agreement. The estate was divided with a third set aside in a trust for the sons, a third for the diner and its staff, and a third for the Pickett Foundation, which I would run. Wade went to work for a friend in Lubbock, and Curtis entered a program in Denver. The two of them came back to the Waffle Shop the following Tuesday and sat on the stool of their father.
In the name of Amos Pickett, who passed in the winter, I started the Amos Pickett Fund. It pays for hot breakfasts for seniors at diners and truck stops across the Panhandle and for scholarships for the children of waitresses and cooks, in Potter, Randall and Carson counties. In the first year we served nineteen thousand breakfasts and sent twenty four students to college. One was a seventeen year old from Canyon whose mother had waited tables for twenty years, and who set her acceptance letter on the counter next to the pie case.
On a cold Tuesday morning in February, I stood behind the counter of the Waffle Shop at seven sharp, with the window fogged and the coffee hot. At the stool by the register, where Mr. Pickett had sat, a young man in a feed cap was counting out coins, slowly, and he was eleven cents short. I went over with the pot. “Never you worry about it, hon,” I said. His eyes filled, and I touched his shoulder. Then I put two eggs over medium on the griddle, and a slice of wheat toast beside them, and a cup of black coffee on the house.