Mother decided that our restaurant should remain open at night.At ten in the evening a passenger train went north past our door followed by a local freight.The freight crew had switching to do in Pickleville and when the work was done they came to our restaurant for hot coffee and food.Sometimes one of them ordered a fried egg.In the morning at four they returned north-bound and again visited us.A little trade began to grow up.Mother slept at night and during the day tended the restaurant and fed our boarders while father slept.He slept in the same bed mother had occupied during the night and I went off to the town of Bidwell and to school.During the long nights,while mother and I slept,father cooked meats that were to go into sandwiches for the lunch baskets of our boarders.Then an idea in regard to getting up in the world came into his head.The American spirit took hold of him.He also became ambitious.
In the long nights when there was little to do,father had time to think.That was his undoing.He decided that he had in the past been an unsuccessful man because he had not been cheerful enough and that in the future he would adopt a cheerful outlook on life.In the early morning he came upstairs and got into bed with mother.She woke and the two talked.From my bed in the corner I listened.
It was father's idea that both he and mother should try to entertain the people who came to eat at our restaurant.I cannot now remember his words,but he gave the impression of one about to become in some obscure way a kind of public entertainer.When people,particularly young people from the town of Bidwell,came into our place,as on very rare occasions they did,bright entertaining conversation was to be made.From father's words I gathered that something of the jolly innkeeper effect was to be sought.Mother must have been doubtful from the first,but she said nothing discouraging.It was father's notion that a passion for the company of himself and mother would spring up in the breasts of the younger people of the town of Bidwell.In the evening bright happy groups would come singing down Turner's Pike.They would troop shouting with joy and laughter into our place.There would be song and festivity.I do not mean to give the impression that father spoke so elaborately of the matter.He was,as I have said,an uncommunicative man."They want some place to go.I tell you they want some place to go,"he said over and over.That was as far as he got.My own imagination has filled in the blanks.
For two or three weeks this notion of father's invaded our house.We did not talk much,but in our daily lives tried earnestly to make smiles take the place of glum looks.Mother smiled at the boarders and I,catching the infection,smiled at our cat.Father became a little feverish in his anxiety to please.There was,no doubt,lurking somewhere in him,a touch of the spirit of the showman.He did not waste much of his ammunition on the railroad men he served at night,but seemed to be waiting for a young man or woman from Bidwell to come in to show what he could do.On the counter in the restaurant there was a wire basket kept always filled with eggs,and it must have been before his eyes when the idea of being entertaining was born in his brain.There was something pre-natal about the way eggs kept themselves connected with the development of his idea.At any rate,an egg ruined his new impulse in life.Late one night I was awakened by a roar of anger coming from father's throat.Both mother and I sat upright in our beds.With trembling hands she lighted a lamp that stood on a table by her head.Downstairs the front door of our restaurant went shut with a bang and in a few minutes father tramped up the stairs.He held an egg in his hand and his hand trembled as though he were having a chill.There was a half-insane light in his eyes.As he stood glaring at us I was sure he intended throwing the egg at either mother or me.Then he laid it gently on the table beside the lamp and dropped on his knees beside mother's bed.He began to cry like a boy,and I,carried away by his grief,cried with him.The two of us filled the little upstairs room with our wailing voices.It is ridiculous,but of the picture we made I can remember only the fact that mother's hand continually stroked the bald path that ran across the top of his head.I have forgotten what mother said to him and how she induced him to tell her of what had happened downstairs.His explanation also has gone out of my mind.I remember only my own grief and fright and the shiny path over father's head glowing in the lamplight as he knelt by the bed.
As to what happened downstairs.For some unexplainable reason I know the story as well as though I had been a witness to my father's discomfiture.One in time gets to know many unexplainable things.On that evening young Joe Kane,son of a merchant of Bidwell,came to Pickleville to meet his father,who was expected on the ten-o'clock evening train from the South.The train was three hours late and Joe came into our place to loaf about and to wait for its arrival.The local freight train came in and the freight crew were fed.Joe was left alone in the restaurant with father.
From the moment he came into our place the Bidwell young man must have been puzzled by my father's actions.It was his notion that father was angry at him for hanging around.He noticed that the restaurant-keeper was apparently disturbed by his presence and he thought of going out.However,it began to rain and he did not fancy the long walk to town and back.He bought a five-cent cigar and ordered a cup of coffee.He had a newspaper in his pocket and took it out and began to read."I'm waiting for the evening train.It's late,"he said apologetically.
For a long time father,whom Joe Kane had never seen before,remained silently gazing at his visitor.He was no doubt suffering from an attack of stage fright.As so often happens in life he had thought so much and so often of the situation that now confronted him that he was somewhat nervous in its presence.
