| THE FOLDED NAPKIN
I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about
hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me
that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had
never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't
sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers
would react to Stevie. He was short, a little dumpy
with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued
speech of Downs Syndrome.
I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers
because truckers don't generally care who buses tables
as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies
are homemade. The four-wheel drivers were the ones
who concerned me; the mouthy college kids traveling
to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their
silverware with their napkins for fear of catching
some dreaded "truck stop germ"; the pairs
of white shirted business men on expense accounts
who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted
with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around
Stevie, so I closely watched him for the first few
weeks.
I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie
had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger,
and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him
as their official truck stop mascot.
After that, I really didn't care what the rest of
the customers’ thought of him. He was like a
21-year-old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh
and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to
his duties. Every salt and peppershaker was exactly
in its place. Not a breadcrumb or coffee spill was
visible when Stevie got done with the table.
Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean
a table until after the customers were finished. He
would hover in the background, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room
until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the
empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto
cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced
flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was
watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration.
He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and
you had to love how hard he tried to please each and
every person he met.
Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother,
a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries
for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits
in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their
social worker, which stopped to check on him every
so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks.
Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably
the difference between them being able to live together
and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why
the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last
August, the first morning in three years that Stevie
missed work.
He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a
new valve or something put in his heart. His social
worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often
had heart problems at an early age so this wasn't
unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come
through the surgery in good shape and be back at work
in a few months.
A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later
that morning when word came that he was out of surgery,
in recovery, and doing fine.
Frannie, headwaiters, let out a war hoop and did
a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good
news. Belle Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers,
stared at the sight of the 50-year-old grandmother
of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie
blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Belle Ringer
a withering look.
He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what was that all
about?" he asked. "We just got word that
Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."
"I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke
to tell him. What was the surgery about?" Frannie
quickly told Belle Ringer and the other two drivers
sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery, then
sighed: "Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK"
she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom
are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear,
they're barely getting by as it is."
Belle Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried
off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't
had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and
really didn't want to replace him, the girls were
busing their own tables that day until we decided
what to do.
After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office.
She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and
a funny look on her face.
"What's up?" I asked.
"I didn't get that table where Belle Ringer
and his friends were sitting cleared off after they
left, and Pony Pete and Tony Tipper were sitting there
when I got back to clean it off," she said. "This
was folded and tucked under a coffee cup." She
handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell
onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in
big, bold letters, was printed "Something For
Stevie."
"Pony Pete asked me what that was all about,"
she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his
Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony
looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this."
She handed me another paper napkin that had "Something
For Stevie" scrawled on its outside. Two $50
bills were tucked within its folds.
Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook
her head and said simply: "truckers."
That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving,
the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.
His placement counselor said he's been counting the
days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't
matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10
times in the past week, making sure we knew he was
coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that
his job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother
bring him to work, met them in the parking lot and
invited them both to celebrate his day back.
Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning
as he pushed through the doors and headed for the
back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting.
"Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I
said. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work
can wait for a minute. To celebrate you coming back,
breakfast for you and your mother are on me!"
I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear
of the room. I could feel and hear the rest of the
staff following behind as we marched through the dining
room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after
booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession.
We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface
was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates,
all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper
napkins.
"First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean
up this mess," I said. I tried to sound stern.
Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then
pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something
for Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked
it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.
Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins
peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his
name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother.
"There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks
on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies
that heard about your problems. "Happy Thanksgiving."
Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody
hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears,
as well. But you know what's funny? While everybody
else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other,
Stevie, with a big, big smile on his face, was busy
clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.
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