The Backpack

Chapter 3

Royce Jefferson Smith sat a small corner table, enjoying his third cup of coffee and half‐reading The Wall Street Journal. His waitress was a kindhearted, single mother of two who called everybody, Hon. She filled his coffee cup while simultaneously asking, “Would you like a refill?” and she continuously offered a smile in spite of the fact that it was before 7:00 a.m. The name on her ID badge was Hope.

Royce knew these things about her because over the last 45 minutes he had simply asked. He thought, “It's easy to go through life so wrapped up in our own worlds that we forget to be friendly.”

That was not something he ever wanted to forget.

Royce smiled at being called, “Hon.” It reminded him of nicknames used by the waitresses for customers at his granddaddy's cafe when he was a kid: Hon, Sugar, Junior, and Lucky. They had given him all sorts of nicknames, too. Now, deep into adulthood, there were still not too many people who called him Royce.

For as long as he could remember, which, frankly, was a very long time, the majority of folks called him Buddy.

Like most kids from the south with that name, it stemmed from a slightly older sibling who couldn't quite say the word brother. Buddy didn't mind. He liked it better than his given name, which he liked to say had been passed down for “longer than an elephant could remember.” It went back generations ago, to a time when his family fled Germany under royal oppression. Their family's trouble had started when his grandfather ...