Mrs. Pettaway unfolded the church program slowly, and the dining room went silent. It was cream paper, folded in thirds, soft with handling. On the front was a line drawing of a dove, and the words Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Sunday Service of Thanksgiving. She laid it on the white tablecloth next to the sweet potato pie, beside the cut crystal. “On the Sunday after the ice storm,” she said, in a rich, warm contralto, “our pastor wrote a special line into the program. Read it, Derrick. Read the line at the bottom.”
Derrick took the paper and held it away from his face, and read aloud in a voice I had not heard from him before. “We give thanks this day to Almighty God, who sent an angel to the exit ramp, and to Brother Andre Washington of the Waffle House, who walked into the ice and brought twenty two of us inside.” He stopped. The chandelier hummed overhead. “I was on that bus,” said Mrs. Pettaway. “I sing alto. We were driving home from a concert in Chattanooga, and the road froze, and the driver lost the wheel on the ramp. We slid down an embankment and stopped against a guardrail, in the dark, in the sleet, twenty two of us, and the youngest was seventy.”
“Nobody could reach us,” she said. “The phones had no service. We sat there for an hour. Then a figure in a white paper hat appeared in the sleet with a flashlight, in his apron, no coat. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I am the cook at the Waffle House up the hill, and there is hot coffee and a warm floor, and I am not leaving until every one of you is inside.” She turned her head toward Andre, who sat at the far end with his napkin in his lap, gazing at his plate. “He carried Sister Odessa on his back. She weighs two hundred pounds. He went up that hill four times.”
A church program from the Sunday after the ice storm showed a financial advisor who the cook at the Waffle House had saved.
Derrick had gone the color of ash. He is a trim man in a navy sweater with a monogram, a man who irons his jeans, and I will say that for once in his life he had nothing to say. His wife, Simone, sat with her fork frozen over her yams. “Mrs. Pettaway,” he said at last, “I did not know. Andre never said a word.” “He would not,” said Mr. Pettaway. He had sat through the entire meal in his three piece suit with folded hands. “My wife told me the whole story a week after it happened. I have been waiting two years to see how you treated him. We have been your clients for eleven years, Derrick. You have a good head for money.” He turned his glass a quarter turn. “We came to find out about your heart.”
“I did not make a joke about a cook,” Derrick began. “I made a joke about a restaurant.” “You made it about the man,” said Mrs. Pettaway. “You said you did not let him make the yams. You said he only knows scattered, smothered, and covered. I thought about that all afternoon. I thought, that is what Andre knows. He knows how to take care of people who come in cold.” She folded the program. “My husband and I have every dollar we own with your firm. We are going to move it on Monday.” My own sister, who had laughed hardest at the toast, closed her eyes.
What happened then I have thought about every day since. Derrick set down his wine. He walked the length of the table past the chandelier that cost more than my car, and he stood in front of my son, and then he did what nobody in our family has ever seen a Washington man do on Thanksgiving. He got down on one knee on the hardwood. “Andre,” he said. “Cousin. I am ashamed. I laughed at the best thing about this family. I have been trying all my life to be impressive, and you have simply been good.” His voice shook. “I am sorry. I will say it in front of everybody as many times as you want.”
Andre put down his fork. He is a big, soft spoken man, who has been called slow by people who have never watched him work a grill in a crowd. He pulled his cousin to his feet. “Derrick,” he said. “Get up. Your good pants.” Everyone laughed, even Derrick, wetly. “I forgive you. Family is family.” Then he added, with a small crooked smile, “And I will make the yams next year. You will stay out of my kitchen.” My sister was crying openly now, and she reached for his hand, and for a while nobody touched the pie.
Mrs. Pettaway tapped the table with one finger. “We are not moving the money, Derrick,” she said, “on one condition. You will keep it where it is, and you will sit on a committee that Mount Zion is forming, to raise a scholarship for our young people in the food service trades. Andre is going to chair it. You will take his instructions.” She smiled for the first time all evening. “And Brother Pettaway has something else to say.” Mr. Pettaway cleared his throat. “Andre,” he said, “I own the building on Cotton Avenue in Macon that used to be a diner. It has been empty six years. I would like to see it open again.”
He slid a key across the tablecloth, an old key on a loop of red yarn. “Rent is one dollar a year for the first five. We will put in the kitchen. You will put in the cooking.” Andre looked at the key as if it were a live thing. “I have been making grits for other people for twenty two years,” he said slowly. “I never thought…” “We know,” said Mrs. Pettaway. “That is why.” And she reached over and took his hand, the hand that had gone up that hill four times, and held it in both of hers while the gravy went cold.
The restaurant opened in April, with a hand painted sign over the door. SMOTHERED AND COVERED. On the first Sunday the choir came in after service, twenty two of them in robes, and took over the back room, and Derrick was seated in the middle of them, in an apron, carrying sweet tea. The following November, Andre cooked the yams at the house of Derrick, three pans, and the table fell silent at the first bite. Derrick wiped his eyes with the corner of a napkin and said they were better than the chandelier.
