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IHOP

Grant Vecera | Fiction, Fall 2025

When I told Buford I’d never met anyone named Buford before, he said that’s because it’s a black name and I didn’t know any black people.  This was during the post-breakfast lull, our chance to make sure Ed wouldn’t threaten to can us again for being too slow and lazy.

“Are there a lot of black dudes named Buford?” I asked.

Buford ignored this and disappeared into the dining area for another tub, then another. Then we were both moving quickly, unloading the tubs, scrubbing, spraying, and rolling them through the Hobart.

About half an hour later Buford said “Shitloads.”  

I hung up the nozzle and went for more tubs, but there was only one, and it wasn’t even half full, so I left it out there.

When I came back, Buford was sitting on the counter with an unlit menthol in his mouth. “I didn’t mean tubs,” he said. “I meant Bufords.” Then he shined his gold tooth at me and said, “Lots of us named Buford.”  

Out back, where we had milk crates stacked so we could lean against the dumpster fence and hoist our feet onto other milk crates, I lit Buford’s smoke because that was our ritual.  It started after about the fifth time he’d asked me for a light even though I didn’t smoke.  

“Why don’t you just gimme that lighter?” he said. This too was part of the ritual.

“No,” I said, “I use it to light my stove,” which was true. 

It was late July in Arkansas, dangerously hot. We were in a sliver of shade looking at what we referred to as the weed lot that stretched across a cratered lane no one used except the garbage crew and Buford on his Huffy. We called it the weed lot because of all the weeds and because we routinely smoked one doobie in my car every night after punchout on the other side of it where it was dark and no one would fuck with us.  Normally there was nothing to look at in the weed lot except for waist high wheatgrass, litter, part of a chain link fence, the slumped remains of a brick chimney, and some squirrels and birds. 

But on this day, we saw a ginger and white spotted kitten. It appeared at the far end of a fallen tree that we had been watching roast under the sun all summer. One night, after smoking our doobie, Buford said the upturned roots looked like a big monster’s hand, which was true, but not until after he said it.

Then there was another kitten, also ginger but less white. And then a third, mostly white but with some grey spots. They seemed okay. One attacked a bug or something in a clump of weeds. Another rolled in the dirt, then all three ambled back behind the fallen tree again.    

“Gimme your lighter.”

“Break’s over.  You see those kittens?”

“I don’t mean to light up, I mean because you're rich and you don’t smoke.”

“I use it to light my stove. Did you see those kittens?”

“You can buy another one.” 

“If I were rich would I be sitting here fighting with you about my fucking lighter? Besides, there’s a million packs of matches in there.”

“I don’t want matches. I want your lighter.”

“Dude. No.”

“You go to the college and you got a car.”

Buford’s bike was leaning against a mangled guard rail that had gotten twisted around a barely alive tree just a few feet into the lot where the kittens had been. Because his bike was a rusty piece of shit Huffy, he never even bothered to lock it.  

“My car is almost as big a piece of shit as your bike,” I said. “Not a rich man’s car.”

“I don’t want your car.”  He flashed his tooth. 

I held out the lighter. Buford took it, held it up to the hot sky like it was a shiny chunk of gold, then gave it back to me.

As I got to my feet, one of the ginger kittens reappeared in the distance.

Buford made his thumb like it was the hammer of a revolver and his forefinger was the barrel and he aimed his pretend gun at the kitten.  “Pshew pshew pshew,” he whispered, then flashed his gold tooth at me again, squinting with his red eyes glossy and like he was looking at something in the back of my brain.

Back in the kitchen Ed told us we were canned as Kyle trotted in with a full tub. “More coming,” he said, “where do you want this?” Buford took the tub while I got quick with my nozzle and my scrubby. 

While we’d been out watching the kittens, we got slammed by an early lunch crowd. Full tubs were everywhere, and Cheryl hissed that in the kitchen they were low on side bowls. “Everyone wants a side of fucking coleslaw all of a sudden,” she said.      

It took us at least two hours, close to punchout time, to get things back to normal.  That’s when Buford came out of the walk-in with a five-pound bag of ham chunks and a gallon of whole milk. I didn’t think anything of it until he went out the back door instead of taking it in to the cooks.  

A minute later, Ed appeared, asking where Buford was. I shrugged and stayed busy with my scrubby and my sprayer.  

After punchout Buford brought a folded up cardboard box out to my car and slid into the backseat. He also had another 5-pound bag of ham chunks, but this one was frozen. When I asked what’s up he said, “You get to see my crib tonight.”

“Your what?”

“Just go, before Ed comes out.”

At our doobie smoking spot, Buford explained. “My crib,” he said. “My humble abode, or, as so many fine ladies in this town know it, Buford’s Love Palace.”

Although it was still so hot, we were no longer under the sun but instead looking at it as though it were a bald man’s head sinking beneath a jagged line of orange and rose-washed concrete and trees.  “Here,” Buford said, “and held out a twenty-dollar bill.”  

I blew smoke and looked at the twenty-dollar bill.

“Take me to Safeway. I need to buy some shit.”

____________

At the Safeway Buford dropped into a shopping cart a bag of Valu-Rite Kitten Kibble, a bag of non-clumping Valu-Rite cat litter and a twelve pack of beer. Back at our weed lot, I waited in the car while he unfolded the box then disappeared into the trees.  A few minutes later he was in the backseat stabbing the box with a box cutter. The kittens mewed. 

“When high,” he said, “one doesn’t always do things in the right order.”   

The cats scratched at the cardboard and mewed. 

“Hey man,” Buford said, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“You got a high-as-hell black man in the back of your car stabbing a box of scared shitless kittens with a stolen box cutter.”

All around us, crickets were roaring. In the box, the kittens ripped at the cardboard.  

“Play some music, man. You got any Parliament? Let’s go”

____________

Buford’s Love Palace was on the second floor of a small apartment building with lots of open windows.  But inside, even though it was tight and bare, it was pleasant and tidy. He’d made his bed. He had better books and music than a lot of college guys I knew.  As soon as he opened the box, the kittens darted under the bed. I sat down in a rickety rocking chair and swigged beer while he opened windows, fixed a bent screen, clicked on a metal electric fan like my gramma had when I was a kid, and then he got the food bowls set up.

He had a Bible on the table next to his bed. While he was taking a wiz, I opened it. There was a bookmark in Ecclesiastes, and someone had penciled a circle around a part that said something about there being no one to comfort the oppressed.   

We each swigged two more beers while listening to some scratchy jazz on the radio.  Buford lit a menthol by the window and then he poured the cat litter into the cardboard box and put it in a corner under a different window.  Someone was making piano rhythms into God. 

“I had no idea,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “Sometimes it bugs me, like something so beautiful can be sad because it makes you know there’s more out there and you might not ever even know it’s there.”

“The cats are going to want to go outside,” I said.

“I can put an ad in the Gazette for free kittens and they won’t charge me for it,” he said. “My aunt did it when I was little.  That was in Memphis, but I figure if they did it in Memphis then they’ll do it here too, and if they don’t, I can pay for it. My aunt. She was basically my mom too.” He blew smoke. “Kittens go quick. You want one?”  

I did want one, but no way. I was barely surviving myself. 

Ten years later, Buford was best man at my wedding. He’s a veterinarian now. No, that’s bullshit. In September I quit washing dishes and went back to college. Buford was my best friend until then, but it never occurred to me to tell him, and after classes started up, I never went back to that IHOP, or any IHOP, ever, and I never saw Buford or any of those kittens again. And I regret it, and I miss them all.

______________________________________

Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?

“My work in question is my trace fossil because it makes me feel like my existence has meaning, especially if others find it meaningful, or even just delightful.”

Grant Vecera teaches writing, literature, and thinking at Butler University and at Indiana University Indianapolis, near where he lives with his lovely wife, daughter, bicycle, and two cats. His work has been appearing in illustrious literary periodicals on and off again for about 30 years.