Come Before the Fall
Another Breakfast with Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy
Dateline: October 26, 2024, that East Texas Diner.
Joe Eddy: “It’s a miserable morning out there.”
Billy Wayne: “Yeah, it’s rainin’ like a blind cow pissin' on a flat rock - a real turd-floater. I prefer a slow, steady rain to soak the earth. My crops and cows and horses and pigs and chickens do, too.”
Lucille the Waitress delivers steaming cups of coffee: “Either of you feeling adventurous today, or is it the usual?”
Billy Wayne and Joe Eddie in unison: “The usual.”
Lucille the Waitress: “I’d like to say I am surprised you knuckleheads braved the weather to look across breakfast at one another but I won’t because I am not.”
Billy Wayne: “This blasted driving rain has me in a funk. It was a morning exactly this miserable when Madeleine left for good. Sometimes, I still miss her.”
Joe Eddy: “She was a good woman.”
Billy Wayne: “You always say that but good women don’t up and leave after 25 years of marital bliss.”
Joe Eddy: “No woman leaves marital bliss.”
Billy Wayne: “I expect you’re right.”
Joe Eddy: “You two met in high school, didn’t you?”
Billy Wayne: “We met in grade school. She used to chase me around the playground trying to get a kiss. She said she wanted to be the first to kiss a future giant.”
Joe Eddy: “What are you? Six foot eight?”
Billy Wayne: “Six, nine.”
Joe Eddy: “How many times have people asked you how the weather is up there?”
Billy Wayne: “One more than I could tolerate. Last one who did was a sawed-off loudmouth who was all of five foot six, or seven. So, I picked his ass up over my head and said, ‘Now, you’re up here. You tell me.’ Scared the liver out of him.”
Joe Eddy: “Well, anyway. You met in grade school and started going steady in high school along the time my family moved to town. I never saw two people carry on like you two did the first eight or ten years of your marriage.”
Billy Wayne: “We did carry on. We were like peanut butter and syrup.”
Joe Eddy: “You eat funny.”
Lucille the Waitress delivers their plates: “Anything you two need besides a coffee warm-up to make you feel special?”
Billy Wayne: “A salt shaker that works.”
Lucille the Waitress: “I overheard the direction of the morning drivel. I’d like to know what happened, too, Billy Wayne. How did you manage to torch a beautiful marriage?”
Billy Wayne: “Let me answer by saying I am finally reading another Charles Frazier novel.”
Stunned silence.
Lucille the Waitress, slowly: “I had no idea you could read, and if you could, I would never have imagined that you did.”
Thunder claps and the sky is black.
Billy Wayne: “Well, you might be surprised about a lot of things if you allow yourself.”
Joe Eddy: “You said you’ve gotten around to reading another Frazier novel. What was the first one?”
Billy Wayne: “Cold Mountain.”
Lucille the Waitress: “Oh my God! I love that movie.”
Billy Wayne: “Book’s better.”
Joe Eddy: “What has Charles Frazier got to do with your marriage ending?”
Billy Wayne: “Ain’t got beans to do with it. Stop jumping to conclusions. You ain’t no bullfrog. Sit still a minute.”
Joe Eddy and Lucille the Waitress sigh together while another clap of thunder rattles the windows and lightning lights up Main Street for a half-second.
Joe Eddy: “We’re waiting here with bated breath.”
Billy Wayne: “Chapter two of the book has an opening line, which I jotted down.”
Billy Wayne pulls a piece of crumpled paper from his shirt pocket.
“Here’s the line: ‘Things fell apart slowly before they fell apart fast.’”
Lucille the Waitress, misty-eyed: “That’s a powerful line.”
Billy Wayne: “He was talking about the years and then the final days leading up to the Civil War, which is what a failing marriage amounts to - a civil war. Or, some of them are more like The Cold War, like the US and Russia had for a couple of decades. The threat of nuclear war hangs like napalm in the air.”
Joe Eddy: “That’s interesting. I never knew you to be interesting like that. So, you are saying your marriage didn’t just blow up all at once. It was a…how would I say it?”
Billy Wayne: “It was decay and deterioration, which is always caused by neglect. We just stopped thinking we had to try. We took each other for granite.”
Eddy Joe laughs. “Not for granite! That’s what’s between your ears. For granted.”
Billy Wayne: “Exactly. For granite.”
Lucille the waitress touches Billy Wayne’s shoulder: “I never thought I would say this about a man who fills up a doorway the way you do, you big lug, but there is more to you than meets the eye. Thank you for sharing your soul. Maybe someday Mr. Businessman over here will find his and share it.”
Lucille the Waitress: “Whose turn is it to pay?”
Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy each point to the other.
Author’s Note
Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy are characters inspired by two men I saw one morning while having coffee with my grandfather. Billy Wayne is a tall, rugged Texas farmer (I assume), and Joe Eddie is a stout, meaty businessman. Lucille the Waitress could easily fit into any roadside diner. Since they are fictional, I reserve the right to put them into any era but always in the morning over coffee with Lucille attending to them. Here is the first in the series, if you want context.