A truck stop. A little cafe, somewhere off the Great American highway.

The waitress is bustling between tables. She’s an older woman. Maybe mid-seventies. Salt-and-pepper hair. More salt than pepper.

She puts food on my table. Two eggs, sunny. Hashbrowns. Black coffee.

“Anything else, sweetie?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Ketchup for your hashbrowns?”

“How’d you know?”

She smiles. “Just a hunch.”

She produces the bottle like a magician pulling hankies from his sleeve.

Then, I see the woman walk outside. The bell on the front door signals her exit. I see her through the large window. She sits on a bench. Removes a carton. She’s smoking a cigarette now. And something tells me she’s earned it.

A car pulls up. Old car. A Honda. Rusted fenders. The car used to be blue, now it’s beige There’s duct-tape on the windshield.

The driver hops out. He hugs the waitress. Together they remove a fold-up wheelchair. Together, waitress and man lift a little boy from the backseat.

They place the child into the chair. The woman hugs the kid. The boy is rail thin. She bathes him in her kisses and the kid returns the favor.

They share a long embrace. The Honda leaves, then the woman wheels the kid inside the cafe.

She parks the kid’s chair in the corner and deals with her workload. She checks on her other customers. They all need something. More napkins. Refills on tea. Plates need to be cleared.

She’s warming up my coffee when I ask who the kid is.

“That’s my neighbor’s boy,” the woman says. “And that was his uncle who dropped him off.”

“You two must be close.”

“We are. Sort of. I’m raising him. He’s about to be legally mine in a few weeks. Once I sign the papers.”

I’m looking at this woman, and I’m thinking that she is a little long in the tooth to be raising a child.

“His mom’s in prison,” the woman goes on. “It’s been a hard year on him. It’s been hard on all of us. I’m trying to teach him how to be strong. I’ve raised six kids already, so I know how to raise a young’un.”

She tells me the boy has cerebral palsy. She tells me the child is a product of fetal alcohol syndrome. She says he’s had a long road ahead, but she believes she was created for this moment.

At this particular moment, I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. It’s better for me to be silent and let people think I’m a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt.

She leaves my table and tends to other customers.

I go to pay at the register. The cashier is a middle-aged guy who is inspecting my bill and asking how everything was.

“It was wonderful,” I say. “I particularly enjoyed the service.”

The guy looks at the waitress.

He smiles at her. “Yeah,” he says, “when my mom gets to heaven, there’s going to be a mile-long autograph line waiting for her.”

Yes, I believe there will be.

And I’ll be in it.