A machinist and a farmer and a son.

He sat there at the diner with that old stale sun resting it's face behind tired mountain tops. He wondered if he and this man would have anything to speak on.

Those simple questions began to run through his mind. The type of questions that can plague a man until he is placed in the ground.

Finally an old, weathered man walked in through the door seeming as though he were looking for a pair of lost keys.

"Over here old man."

Now was the time.

A time of reconciliation and peace.
A time for men to sit and be men.

And at the same time, there as no room for thoughts like this.

The old leather bag of a man sat down at the counter next to him and just looked straight at the tiled wall.

"Thanks for coming dad."

"Least I coulda' done I'd supposed."

"Thanks."

The two of them sat there on those worn out stools as if they were two distant strangers who were meeting for the first time.

He was the son of a farmer and machinist.

His father worked his fingers to the bone and then some. In 54' he had to pull the machinist job at the parts factory when the drought hit. For about two years those rains failed us and that's about when mama left us.

"You want some coffee pop?"

"Nah, don't touch the stuff no more."

His father was a man who believed that the fewer the words used the better. He had been that way ever since his children could remember.

"I ain't got much time, I gotta get back to the mill."

"OK dad."

"But son, I do have one thing I been needing to say to ya."

His father was a man of the land, a man or dirt and soil and earth. Not of words.

And now that his dad had something worth while to speak about he was unsure how to prepare himself.
He moved uncomfortably on his stool until he just stopped and tried hard to listen.

"I know I'm not a man of words, but I'ma try."

"I've been hard to live with I know, your mother could have told ya that. But I need you to know that I love ya."

The two men sat there for a while longer not saying much.

Then they simply just got up together and walked out to there old trucks and went on to their farms that stretched from county to county.

And that was that.

And he knew that now he and his father had nothing else to think over.
Nothing more to say.
There were no more secret words that needed to be unearthed.

And the son sat on his porch with his beautiful wife and two young boys and watched the southern stars climb in the night sky.

While his father sat perfectly still, without breathe, perfectly quiet.