Something For Stevie – Dan Anderson
From Stories for a Faithful Heart by Alice Gray
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. Stevie was short, a little dumpy,
with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Down syndrome.
I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers. Truckers don't generally
care who buses tables as long as the food is good and the pies are homemade.
The ones who concerned me were the mouthy college kids traveling to school;
the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for
fear of catching some dreaded "truckstop germ;" and the pairs of
white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truckstop
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. Within a month my truck regulars had adopted
him as their official truckstop mascot. After that I really didn't care what
the rest of the customers thought. He was 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 pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread
crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table.
Our only problem was convincing 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 the dishes
and glasses onto the cart and meticulously wipe the table 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 truckstop. Their social worker,
who 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 Down syndrome often have heart problems
at an early age, so this wasn't unexpected. 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, my head
waitress, let out a war whoop and did a little dance the aisle when she heard
the good news.
Belle Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers, grinned. "Okay,
Frannie, what was that all about?" he asked. "We just got word that
Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay," she responded. "I was
wondering where he was," said Belle. Frannie quickly told him and the
other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed.
"Yeah, I m glad he is going to be okay," 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.
After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of
paper napkins in her hand a funny look on her face. "What's up?" I
asked. "That table where Belle Ringer and his friends were
sitting," 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 also asked me what that dance 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 worker 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. We 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 two is 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 covered with a mess of
coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting crooked on dozens of
folded paper napkins. "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up
this mess," I said, trying 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 dozens of napkins peeking
from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it.
I turned to his mother. "There's over $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, too. 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... best worker I ever hired.
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