The Amber Calm

This is the first thing I ever got published. It is pretty much non-fiction, but I put a few fictional nuances in it to make it so.

The wind poured in through the open window of the car. The late night air was heavy, a product of the humid weather. It made it difficult to breath and it didn’t help that I had been suffering from a cold the past week. My eyes were heavy with sleep and I really wanted to lie down for the night, but I was also very hungry. Thomas, my roommate, suggested Waffle House, so I agreed. We were in his Intrepid, driving to Waffle House. There are two in town, one near the campus and the other on the north side of town. We were going to the one further away because they have better service and food. We left out of the dorm parking lot, heading out the back side of the campus towards the highway.

The amber of the streetlights cast shadows across the road that shone in ways I had never seen before. The way the light-not just from the streetlights, moonlight, too-came down over the buildings and through the tree limbs, then down onto the street as we passed over, struck me as odd, like an amber-gray cloud stretching over the land. The air smelled of the rain that had just passed from the last hurricane. The smell of fresh-cut grass and rainwater mixed with the smoky smell of Thomas’ Newports. The yellow lines split the road until we turned onto the highway. The radio blasted “Minerva” by the Deftones. Once we turned, the road was cut intermittently by the whole lines in the middle. My mind focused on the music, because I liked the song and because it was 2:15 in the morning. I gazed out the window and watched the interplay of the light on the different surfaces around us. It shaped itself around the car as we passed under each new light, and projected itself, not only onto the ground below it but on the whole area around it. The light sent streaks across Thomas’ dirty windshield.

When we finally got there, the place was almost a ghost town, except for the waitress, cook, and the drunk guy who was sitting on a stool at the bar. We sat in a booth in the corner. The waitress, a small Asian girl named Lin, walked over after we sat down and placed our silverware on the table. We both ordered the All-Star Special: a waffle with bacon, hash browns, and scrambled eggs. After Lin had taken our order, Thomas went to the jukebox.

While he was picking songs, I gazed out the window towards the road. It was dark and hardly a car was on the road. Serenity. I am awake, yet the city sleeps. There was a small hill that rose up in front of the Waffle House, giving it some cushion from the highway. Further down the road toward the city limits, a large hill carries the road down and back up again. I stared down the road at this small valley. I thought, What did this place look like before we were here? Back when no one lived here, when it was just trees and nature? At the moment my thoughts were fully formed, the opening bars of “Folsom Prison Blues” took me from my Walden.

A few minutes later, our food was brought to us; first, the main plate (eggs, and hash browns, with toast), then the waffle and bacon. The food was the most delicious meal I had eaten in days; whether it was from hunger or my sleep-deprived thoughts, I had no idea. As we ate, the music played on.

After we were both through, we paid our bills and walked outside. Thomas lit up another cigarette and sat down beside me on the curb. We sat in silence-he enjoying his nicotine fix and I, enjoying the peace of a truly silent night. A light fog was settling over the air, making orbs around every bulb of light outside. When we got back to the dorm, I lay down on my bed. I looked out one of the windows over my bed and stared up at the sky. It was charcoal all over, except where the amber of the streetlights shown. Where the amber and charcoal met, the sky created the darkest shade of amethyst. I closed my eyes, almost as the shutter of a camera in my mind, trying to forever save that moment. When I opened them again, it was morning. The sky was blue, and the moment had ceased.