I work at the Sunset Cafe, a fancy name for a rundown little restaurant situated along a desolate stretch of route 66. It’s a place people often visit but rarely linger, we serve greasy burgers that leave a sheen on your fingers, as well as pie that only looks good after a long day on the road. A classic American diner with a checkered floor, faded vinyl booths and a jukebox that was broken long before I was hired. The customers are mostly truckers, some drifters and a couple locals, as well as the odd tourist a long way from home and only part way through their journey.
Hank was a trucker, an older man who had been a regular since well before I got hired. He wore a vest and a baseball cap and would stop whenever we happened to be in between his departure and destination. He was rough around the edges but friendly. Like an old jacket that’s a little ragged, but still warm even if the sleeves are starting to fray. At first he didn’t talk much aside from the usual pleasantries, but I’d see him every week or so and as I became a familiar face he began to open up, eating his cheeseburger and fries with extra salt he started to tell me stories. At first it was mundane if not interesting tales about hitchhikers and engine troubles but occasionally he’d tell me things he couldn’t explain.
Things that happened in the early hours of the morning when the miles blurred into each other and the dark made surreal what would have otherwise been normal. Sometimes it was more than an uneasy feeling though. He told me about lights on the horizon, lights that flickered in the distance blinking in and out of the night. Sometimes as he approached they would linger closer and closer before disappearing as the headlights swallowed them with their own illumination.
Once Hank told me about seeing the silhouette of a person walking along the cracked asphalt of the road. After traveling a couple miles further without seeing an abandoned vehicle or other signs of life he turned around worried about the traveler wandering the night alone. He drove more alertly, watching the border between what the headlights illuminated and the darkness concealed, he backtracked for a half hour or so before chalking it up to a tired mind, his imagination, too much coffee. Upon turning back around to continue his route he saw the silhouette again this time only this time it was standing still watching him. Despite the building sense of unease Hank pulled off the road onto the shoulder and got out gravel crunching under his boots only to find himself alone in the muggy and strangely quiet night. He laughed it off as he told me but there was a tremor to his voice, an uncertainty that made me think Hank was more shaken than he let on.
As the months passed Hank started staying for longer when he visited. He would sit in his booth and stare out the window, his reflection with tired circles under the eyes balefully looking back at him. Once he told me how grateful he was whenever he saw the cafe’s neon sign. It was a constant in his transient life of roads and cargo, I remember he called it an anchor and said it kept him centered. It was the one thing that didn’t change and that he could always count on.
One morning just before sunrise I saw his truck pull up, I’d come to recognize it with its faded red cab attached to the dirty white trailer, the only distinctive thing about it was the number 47 stenciled on the door. As I looked I saw that door open and Hank stumbled out. When he entered and sat down at a table I asked if he wanted his usual burger and fries with extra salt, he just nodded and stared at the laminate tabletop , it was only when I brought him his food that he began to talk. In a shaky voice he said he’d been driving since early yesterday morning, he told me that the road had kept going, that he hadn’t seen an exit or any discernible landmarks, he didn’t remember leaving either. Just the sun rising over the horizon, and the unease and confusion that grew as it hung high in the sky before descending, giving way to darkness and exhaustion that prickled at his eyes. Only then did he see the cafe with its neon sign buzzing over the parking lot.
Hank stayed for hours, far longer than he ever had before. He ate his meal then ordered coffee and then pie, slowly eating, scraping his plate clean with his fork, as the morning turned to afternoon he sipped his now cold coffee and picked at his napkin, tearing it into smaller and smaller pieces. As it got darker Hank finally got up and walked towards the door. He stood outside smoking a cigarette and looking off into the distance. When he finally left he didn’t say goodbye or acknowledge me, he just got back into his truck and disappeared into the night.
I never saw Hank again, but his stories, the lights, the figure, the road with no exits, they stick with me. Sometimes I wonder what happened to him, where he went, and what he could have encountered out on those roads. Sometimes, late at night, I look out into the darkness and wonder if I’ll see his truck again, the dirty white trailer and red cab with the number 47 stenciled on it. There’s a part of me that thinks Hank tapped into something out there, something beyond our logical world. But whatever it was, it took him away, leaving only questions and a sense of unease —unresolved, a story without an ending that haunts the quiet nights and lonely highways.