Plate First

Hugo Ferrante dropped two slices of bread in the pan the moment they saw Tibor Kaczmarek coming up from the Long Bend at the pink count.

Tibor had chalk dust on both sleeves from leaning on posts, and a voice like a gate on a cold morning. On the Way the plate comes first and the story after. Hugo has never got that the wrong way round. Fried bread, beans, green relish, set down before a word was said.

Tibor ate all of it. Then they told the night in a croak. The newcomers kept walking, post to post, all night. Twice one sat down in the dark, and Tibor shouted them up by name. Tibor was going back out at dusk.

Hugo took the plate away clean and felt the small glow they always feel at a cleared plate.

Tonight was Miss Night. The slate was already up behind the counter. On Miss Night the Way’s callers stand at the Landing and tell their miss, and Hugo feeds every one of them first, and watches. It is Hugo’s favourite night of all.

At nightfall, frying, Hugo thought about the Long Bend. The newcomers out there eat from road pots, standing, and by midnight the pots are cold. Tibor would be shouting on a plate of beans eaten at dawn.

Hugo turned the bread once more. Then they handed the pan to the second fryer, stacked a tray with hot plates under a cloth, and walked out of the Landing on Miss Night. Hugo had never missed one.

It took most of the night. Hugo went post to post along the Long Bend with the tray, in a dark that pressed on the shoulders and made the tray feel twice as heavy. At every post a newcomer took a plate and cleared it standing, and only then started talking. Hugo listened to every word.

Tibor’s voice came down the posts the whole time, ragged and enormous.

Far up the hill, the Landing broke its whisper and roared all at once, for something Hugo would hear about in the morning. Hugo minded missing it, and set the last plate on a post top with the cloth over it, for whoever came in next.