Free Ancient of Days by Michael Bishop

Hazel were on duty in the kitchen, and two college kids from Tocqueville were waiting tables. I roamed from corner to corner giving assistance wherever needed, functioning not only as greeter, maître d’, and wine steward, but also as busboy, cashier, and commander in chef (ha ha).
    My regular patrons demand personal attention—from me, not staff members: a squib of gossip, a silly joke, occasionally a free appetizer or dessert. I try to oblige most of these demands. But this Saturday I was having trouble balancing hospitality and hustle. Although grateful for the crowd, by nine o’clock I was growling at my college kids and nodding perfunctorily at even my most stalwart customers. The muggy summer dusk and the heat from my kitchen had pretty much neutralized the efforts of my ceiling fan and my one laboring air conditioner. In my Haggar slacks and lemon-colored Izod shirt, I was sweating just like Ben Sadler in the Greyhound Depot Laundry.
    The door opened. Two teenage boys in jeans, T-shirts, and perforated baseball caps strolled in. Even in the evening, the West Bank did not require coats and ties of its male clientele (shoot, I often worked in the kitchen in shorts and sneakers), but something about these two—Craig Puddicombe and E. L. Teavers—made my teeth grind. I could have seen them in their string-tie Sunday best (as I sometimes did) without feeling any more kindly toward them, and tonight their flat blue eyes and sweat-curled sideburns incited only my annoyance. For one thing, they had left the door open. For another, I had no table for them. What were they doing here? They usually ate at the Deep South Truck Stop on the road to Tocqueville.
    “Shut the door,” I told Craig Puddicombe, tonging ice into somebody’s water glass. “You’re letting in insects.”
    Craig shut the door as if it were a pane of wraparound glass on an antique china cabinet. E. L. took off his hat. They stood on my interior threshold staring at the art on the walls and the open umbrellas suspended from the ceiling as atmosphere-evoking ornament. They either could not or would not look at the people eating. I approached them because Molly Kingsbury clearly did not want to.
    “You don’t have reservations,” I told Puddicombe. “It’s going to be another fifteen or twenty minutes before we can seat you.”
    Craig looked at me without quite looking. “That’s okay. You got a minute?”
    “Only if it lasts about twelve seconds.”
    “We just want to talk to you a bit,” E. L. Teavers said, almost ingratiatingly. “We think your rights are being violated.”
    Craig Puddicombe added, “More than your rights, maybe.”
    “Fellas,” I said, indicating the crowd, “don’t choose a battle zone for a friendly little chat about human rights.”
    “It was now, Mr. Loyd, because we happened to be ridin’ by,” Craig said. “For something this important, hey, you can spare a minute.”
    Before I could dispute this point, E. L. Teavers, surveying the interior, said, “My mother remembers when this was Dr. Kearby’s office. This was the waitin’ room, out here. Whites sat over here, the others over that way. People came out of the examination room painted with a purple medicine Dr. Kearby liked to daub around.”
    “Gentian violet,” I told him, exasperated. “It’s a bactericide. Quick, now, as quickly as you can, tell me how my rights are being violated.”
    “Your wife—” Craig Puddicombe began.
    “My ex-wife,” I said.
    “Okay, your ex-wife. She’s got a hibber livin’ with her on premises that used to belong to you, Mr. Loyd. How do you feel about that?”
    “A what living with her?”
    “Hibber,” E. L. Teavers enunciated, lowering his voice. “It’s a word I invented. Anyone can say it, but I invented it. It means habiline nigger, see?”
    “Clever. You must be the one who was graduated from high school. Craig just went for gym class and shop.”
    “I’ve got a diploma too, Mr. Loyd. Our