For Reasons Wretched and Divine

Hold onto him

Big Jim's Diner was opened in the summer of 1976 by Jim Byrne and his wife, Winnie. It had been a promise from husband to wife that the war hadn't ruined him, that he could make something from the scraps of himself he had come home with from Khe Sanh.

The two ran the diner for almost forty years together; two daughters and a son came and went and made families of their own, loyal patrons coming back for generations.

The faded yellow building nestled under towering lodgepole pines in southern California was a beacon for many lost souls and tired travelers. Every walk of life had stepped over the threshold, ringing the bell that had never lost its cheerful song under the test of time. There was one thing that every patron had in common, no matter what. They were always better for having been in the diner.

In its half-century run in being a cornerstone for the weary, few had the honor of being an employee. Jim and Winnie ran it with their children until Winnie fell ill, and she somehow convinced her agoraphobic neighbor to come work in the kitchen, a feat that could be chalked up to Winnie's magical charm.

The next employee to be hired was a shy fourteen-year-old girl who volunteered at the local Lutheran church to read the bible to hospice patients. Her life had been turbulent up until that point, and a cancer-laden Winnie had fallen in love with the girl's spark, knowing she was exactly the kind of light that Jim would need in his life after she was gone.

The third employee was the feisty spitfire of a broken child split between two worlds, one of hate and one of love. And every day, she edged closer to a life of love.

The fourth employee was a man trying his damndest to start over, and the diner was the best place to do so.

And as Jim surveyed his small hodgepodge, mismatched little family he had accumulated over the years, he figured that he had kept the promise he had made Winnie all those years ago. He did make something great.

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Dominic hummed to Diana Ross that filled the empty diner as he swept the floor.

Melody was a good employee, but she was still just a kid, and Sunshine was shocked at how quickly she had forgotten what it was like to be able to sit down during one of her shifts, even if it was just as she filled out the bank slips by the register.

Dominic had been the obvious choice, even if he hadn't been the easiest. He was in his forties and had been in San Quentin for the past seventeen years on a drug possession charge. All the candidates were exceptional people, mostly teenage girls looking for afterschool money, all polite and kind when they had handed in their applications. Dominic had been the outlier, a middle-aged black man that was close to six and a half feet tall and a voice like rumbling thunder.

The interview had been three hours long and had ended in the kitchen, both of them covered in flour from baking an absurd amount of banana bread and arguing about barbequing.

Melody didn't mind the somber giant, and having survived almost two decades in a state penitentiary, he was less than swayed by the bullying of a sixteen-year-old girl, and Melody had grown bored of picking fun at an impassive man.

But the thing that delighted Sunshine the most was how smitten he was with Ruby. Polite and respectful as the day was long, he never once pushed or asked for more than she was willing to give, and considering it was Ruby, there wasn't much to go off of, but the man persevered. Sunshine knew how much it meant to Ruby, who hadn't been flirted with in fifteen years, let alone been actively pursued. So, Sunshine being the best wing woman since Venus, dropped hints to Dominic that Ruby's less than enthusiastic responses were nothing to be dissuaded by, that she was just a little rusty. He had smiled at that and said he was too.