Mae and the Judge (Second Place - Fiction)

by Richard Balzer

The dusk covered Caddy pulled up to the roadside dinner. Exiting the hold-over from the good old days of good old cars was a man of considerable heft. The Judge himself was a hold-over from the days of the good old boy network; he needed the “land yacht” to get around to survey his “domain.”

He pushed into the dinner in with his typical air of arrogance and self importance. Mae, the waitress, every ready with warm words and a warmer smile picked up a menu and sauntered over towards the Judge. He waived her off with an arrogant flip of his hand and said, “The usual, toast and coffee” and sourly added “and heavy on everything. The last time I was in here the only thing heavy was the burn on the toast and the grounds in the coffee.” Mae simply smiled and went about her task. Mae had just sold the diner last week and was on her way to sweet retirement. She had been verbally abused by the judge for more years than she would want to admit. Since today was the last day she would ever have to put up with this she went about her task without the resentment that had been there during other visits by the self important man.

Her mind worked like it was whipping up butter in the churn on a hot Saturday afternoon. She spread the butter on the toast as thick as lard on a stuck water pump, hoping to speed on the coronary the judge was likely to have at any moment. Next, she piled on the orange marmalade thick enough to keep a bottle fly busy for ten years. Coffee, hot enough to boil a crawdad and sweet enough to encourage an onset of type 2 diabetes completed the judge’s usual. She delivered the order with a smile on her lips as sweet as the coffee, knowing the judge wouldn’t complain as she had followed his instructions like she was an innocent Yankee, caught in the county’s speed trap and fined in his midnight kangaroo court. Mae swayed to the country and blues number that was playing on the broken down radio sitting on the counter by the day old donuts and sat on a stool behind the counter to wait. She wanted to have a good place to watch from and enjoy what was surely to follow.

The thick layer of marmalade slid off the toast and onto the Colonel Sanders' goatee that the judge was so proud of. It dripped off his face and piled onto both his white, three piece, summer only sear sucker suit and the table; the pile growing to resemble cumulous cloud floating by on a lazy summer morning.

Trying to wash down what he had been able to get into his mouth, the judge gulped the hot, sickening sweet coffee, burning his lips and tongue in the process. His pudgy face grew to a beet red that complemented the orange of the marmalade and the white of his goatee nicely. He searched in vain for the napkins that had been intentionally left off the table, looking more like he needed a dip in the public swimming pool.

Mae now stood over him with a wet table rag in one hand, a child’s bib in the other and a satisfied impish grin on her faced and asked, “Melpya.”