Humility and How I Obtained It
Another breakfast with Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy
Billy Wayne hangs his sweat-stained Stetson on the chair’s post, swipes his fingers through his disheveled hair, and takes his usual seat across from Joe Eddy, who is already nursing his second cup of what he likes to call “second-rate coffee in a third-rate diner” just to annoy Lucille the Waitress.
“Thought you’d never show. I was just about to call in a missing persons,” quips Joe Eddy.
“I like to get here five minutes early,” says Billy Wayne. “Not the night before. I expect if I get your age, I will wake up the rooster.”
“You ain’t fooling anyone,” says Lucille the Waitress, pouring the black sin into the mug she keeps for Billy Wayne alone. She has a special mug for Joe Eddy, too. “Everyone who knows anything knows you have done more work before you shower and head for breakfast than any human should do in a day.”
Billy Wayne grins because that is pretty close to a compliment, and he is always glad for a compliment from such a faithful friend.
“Speakin’ of missing persons,” says Billy Wayne, nodding his head in the direction of the thick, mustachioed man wearing a silver Stetson and a star-shaped badge. “There’s a new sheriff in town.”
“Who? McGriff over there? I know. I helped elect him, remember?” says Joe Eddy.
“I remember. He ain’t from around here, so I don’t reckon I know him.”
Lucille the Waitress promptly calls to Sheriff Tug McGriff.
“Sheriff!”
His intense beady eyes, button nose, rosy cheeks, and bushy mustache turn in their direction.
“This here is Billy Wayne. He’s a farmer and a rancher and a general pain, and anytime you are short on arrest quotas, his place is due West of here about ten miles. You can’t miss it. There’s a big iron wagon wheel up in the sky over the gate.”
“Pleased to meet ya,” grumbles the sheriff dismissively, and returns to his conversation with the mayor, who shares his table, and whose Adam’s apple bobs like a cork on troubled water when he talks.
“So, what’s your take on him then?” asks Billy Wayne, choosing to ignore the curt dismissal of himself by the new law.
“Well, he is a good ‘un and uncorrupt, unlike the jackleg that ran opposite him. But he is a little too well aware of it to suit me,” answers Joe Eddy.
“I gathered as much,” says Billy Wayne with a nod.
“Now, there is a tough subject.”
“Which?”
“Humility.”
“I usually never hear about it,” admits Billy Wayne, “‘cept on Sunday, and even then, the preacher handles the topic like it is a Fabergé egg. It’s like he wants to touch it, but it is too delicate a matter.”
Back with their breakfast plates, Lucille the Waitress offers, “Wonders never cease. I had no idea you knew the term ‘Fabergé egg’. No idea.”
“I’m smarter’n I look.”
“You’d have to be. Look at ya,” laughs Joe Eddy.
Lucille the Waitress sighs.
“I don’t know if you two are Laurel and Hardy or Bogey and McCall.”
She sashays away. That is always how they see her. Sashaying. Nobody sashays better in their minds.
“An old preacher I useta know would say he was working on a book, ‘Humility and How I Obtained It,’” winks Joe Eddy.
Billy Wayne laughs because that is funny.
“Way I see it, you know it when you see it, and especially understand it better when you don’t. I don’t see it behind that badge or those eyes.”
“Well, that’s enough gossip. Maybe he’s just bein’ misunderstood by us.”
“Maybe pigs will fly.”
“With AI, anything is possible.”
“You and your damned Internet.”
Lucille: “Whose turn is it to pay?”
Them: “His.”
☕️ From the “Diner Talk” series – tales brewed strong, served hot, and best enjoyed with a side of Lucille’s sass. This one’s for anyone who’s ever tried to fake humility... and been caught in the act. The original post is here.