He ran his fingers through his hair against his scalp and yawned. His tongue felt like a dead sea lion on a bed of sun parched cobblestones. Where was that honey tea, double sugar, no cream? Maybe he'd get a trim and a shape up at one of the "mom and pops" he passed on his way down to Olhawka. Withdrawing his hand he glanced at his roughened fingertips, now coated in grease with a healthy helping of soot. Maybe he'd go for a dip in the stream behind the diner first.

"Honey teas, double sugars, no creams." The waiter set that lunch bag brown tray down on the red and white checkered bar top beneath his elbows. "You can't smoke in here." He noticed the unlit Maverick 100 behind Havermaye's right ear.

"Have you got a light?" Haver reached out and drew the right most cup across the rattling faux thatch plastic weave of the tray. Right up to the tray's lip.

"You can't smoke in here." The waiter began to wring his hands in the front of his baggy, stained, white t-shirt. His eyes narrowing a bit. His jaw began to work. The tip of his tongue running over his chapped lips. There was an easy solution to morals and loyalty to established policy.

"Have you got a light?" Havermaye sighed, in a single motion bringing a crushed twenty dollar bill from the pocket inside his nylon jacket and the Maverick menthol light both within easy reach of the waiter. "Light it." The waiter, too short in Haver's eyes, to be much of a fighter jammed his balled fist into his courdoroy pocket and pulled out a matchbook. It took a few tries but he managed after a few coughing attempts to light it between his lips. Placing it in a milk saucer he slid it back over to Haver's elbow and withdrew the crumpled cash.

"Anything else for you?"

"That's all." Haver didn't bother to see if the waiter scowled or not before leaving him in peace. It didn't matter. 5.30 a.m. was no time for a fight. That's what Joe would have said. Scraping his tongue across the roof of his mouth, he brought the uncomfortably dainty cup to his lips and took a lengthy swill. Some pans rattled in the kitchen, snapping him out of his daze. "I did it again, didn't I," he mumbled glancing down at the two cups of tea. "Joe would have been drinking that one. Talking about how no one makes tea like his grandmother," he took a long drag, "glad I don't have to hear that shit anymore." He glanced over his shoulder through the glass front of the tired diner. The sun would be coming up soon. He had an instinct for time that was spot on. Saved his life more than a few times, but there was no rush now. There wasn't a police car for miles in Olhawka. No one comes to the middle of Appalachia to committ crimes. Only to start over. There's something in the air that makes a man feel new. Maybe not so new as much as forgiven. Forgotten.

"You can't leave with that," the waiter barked, his drawling roots scratching through his previous facade of refinement. Haver paused at the front door he'd come in fifteen minutes earlier, tea cup in one hand cigarette in the other. It felt strange not to have Joe's hand flying up, flat against his chest, trapping Haver's fist inside the breast of his leather jacket as it gripped the silver .45's butt with toxic purpose and raw nerve. It felt strange not having a .45 holstered there at all.
The waiter's white skin, impossibly, grew paler. Another dumpy stump of a man peeked out from behind the kitchen doorjamb with eyes like a squirrel. Probably the owner. Haver slowly turned his wrist and tipped the last dregs of tea onto the scuffed black and white tile floor, before gently placing the cup on the backrest of one of the lime green booth seats.

"All finished." He zipped up his flimsy plastic collar, clamped the Maverick between his teeth, and headed out into the crisp but foggy air. "Never thought I would find myself wearing a pair of running shoes," he thought as he walked, the fog beginning to take on the harshness of an autumn overcast sunrise. "But I did see myself behind your shades," he chuckled, pulling Joe's powder blue sun glasses out of the jacket pocket. He blew the light dusting of ash off the lens, rubbed some of the soot from bridge, and eased them into place. They were fairly comfortable, but he did still miss his old boots. The old girls could take a pounding like nothing else and keep on trucking.

He walked past the tail end of the '97 every man sedan he stole and drove to hell all the way from Colorado. One out of the original three hubcabs somehow managed to hang on all the way to Olhawka, but at this point there was more life in Haver's missing left canine tooth than in that entire heap combined. At the edge of the dirt road he glanced left and then right, either end stretching on into the early morning mist with equal promise. Jamming his hands into his shallow jacket pockets he turned right.

A smile began to crease his lips for the first time in days. It was too bad Joe wasn't around to see it. Just plain tragic. Against all reason a tune began to escape his lips as he kicked a couple of pebbles along the way. Havermaye couldn't admit it out loud, but for the first time in a long time things were starting to look up in a big way. Bigger than his mom and pop could have dreamed out in Wyoming. Bigger than he himself had ever hoped for.