Breakfast Served All Day

Breakfast Served All Day

“I don’t belong here,” Russell muttered before blowing into his nearly frozen hands.

It was a freezing day in the city’s lower downtown area. A sharp wind wound its way through the abandoned buildings and nearly deserted streets, scattering the accumulated debris of modern civilization in its path.

Russell pulled his tattered overcoat tighter around his shoulders and flipped the collar up to cut the cold that seeped in. He felt in his bones this would be a hard winter. He wished he could be somewhere else—anywhere else.

Years of habit and the desire not to get run over forced him to stop at the intersection. The continuous blink of the red Don’t Walk signal was hypnotic. He stepped into the street the moment the green Walk light appeared. He needn’t have waited. There wasn’t a car, truck, or another person in sight.

What’s that? You want to know about Russell?

He is of average height and weight, unremarkable in appearance, with moderately long but very dirty hair. His jaws and cheeks are covered with a persistent, week-long growth of coarse, brown hair. It's hard to determine the tone of his skin. It appears dark like a weathered board, with deep creases around his mouth and eyes.

Most would say his eyes are his best feature. It's hard to tell what color they are. Maybe dark brown, or perhaps they have no color, being the same black as the pupil. Still, they have that piercing quality that seems to look directly into the soul of anyone they meet.

Russell is unemployed and, as the polite saying goes, unhoused.

***

He moved down a block where the wind whistled between boarded-up factories and abandoned apartments. Here and there, the facades of old brick buildings leaned tiredly, their windows boarded or broken. The only movement was the debris of civilization blowing along the sidewalk, as if trying to escape.

Russell’s eyes fixed on a diner, its neon sign long dead but still legible: Breakfast Served All Day. He paused before the door, staring at the rusted chain and padlock across the handles.

Memory rose unbidden. He saw himself as younger and cleaner, with his hair trimmed and a tie that was crooked but still usable. He’d sat inside that diner with his crew from the plant. Coffee flowed like water, eggs piled high, and everyone laughed about the boss’s insufferable ways. It was loud, greasy, and alive. He remembered thinking it would never end.

It had come to an end. The plant was shut down, initially temporarily and then permanently. There was some hope for a while, fueled by rumors of investors and politicians promising assistance. However, help never arrived, and when the last machines were taken away, so were Russell’s paycheck, his pride, and eventually, his home.

He pressed his palm against the cold glass. “I don’t belong here either,” he whispered.

***

A gust blew across the street, scattering bits of paper and a plastic bag that twined around his boots. He cursed and stomped to free himself, the noise loud in the quiet. Then he heard something else—a cough.

Russell froze. He wasn’t used to other voices out here. Slowly, he scanned the shadows. From the doorway of a boarded-up pharmacy, a boy stepped forward.

He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Skinny as a fence post, jacket two sizes too small, knit cap pulled low. His hands were red and cracked from the cold, clutching a backpack as though it were the last thing keeping him alive.

Russell narrowed his eyes. “You lost, kid?”

The boy shook his head. “No more lost than you.” His voice cracked with cold—or maybe fear.

Russell let out a dry laugh. “That’s saying something.” He turned to walk on. Kids came and went on these streets. Some lasted, some didn’t, and none of it was his concern.

But the boy followed, his footsteps soft against the ice.

“Where are you headed?” the boy asked.

Russell snorted. “Headed? Ain’t that fancy. I just put one foot down, then the other. End up wherever the wind dumps me.”

“That’s not going anywhere,” the boy said.

“Exactly.” Russell’s tone was flat, final.

But the boy wasn’t discouraged. He examined Russell with an unsettling intensity, his gaze flickering up and down as if trying to read him the way you’d analyze a map. Finally, he said, “You don’t belong here.”

Russell barked a laugh, harsher than he intended. “Kid, you got that right. Been telling myself that all morning.”

***

They walked together in silence for several blocks. The boy’s shoes squeaked against the frozen pavement. Russell’s cough broke the quiet now and then, a deep rattle that made his chest ache.

As they passed a mural, Russell slowed down. The paint was faded and peeling, but he remembered when it was new, with bright blues and yellows, a city-funded project meant to “revitalize” the neighborhood. He had stood with his daughter then, holding her small hand. She’d been five, maybe six, her mitten tugging on his palm.

“Look, Daddy! It’s the sun!” she’d squealed.

He had lifted her onto his shoulders to see better. For a moment, he’d felt like the kind of father he wanted to be.

Now the mural was cracked and grimy. His daughter was grown, gone, and now unreachable. He swallowed hard and turned away.

The boy saw and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Russell shook his head. “Ghosts. That’s all this place is now. Ghosts.”

***

At the end of the street, a glow flickered through stained-glass windows. A line of people shuffled toward a side entrance where steam billowed into the night. A hand-painted sign leaned against the wall: Soup Kitchen – Open Tonight.

Russell stopped, his hands deep in his pockets. The sight pulled at him and pushed him away at the same time. He’d been in places like that before, filled with the lost and broken, people who smelled like him and hadn’t seen better days. Inside, there was warmth and food, but also shame; a mirror of everything he’d become.

The boy shifted beside him. “We could go in.”

Russell’s pride flared like a dying fire. “Not for me.”

“You hungry?” the boy asked.

Russell’s stomach answered with a growl that seemed to echo off the brick walls.

The boy didn’t smile or gloat. He quietly said, “Then it is for you.”

***

Russell stood frozen, torn between the warmth pulling him in and the weight of his own stubbornness. He’d always believed he didn’t belong anywhere and certainly not in a place where pity was served with the soup.

But the boy’s face was pale, lips trembling, eyes dull with hunger. Russell felt a memory stirring—his daughter again, her mittened hand tugging at his own.

He sighed, long and heavy. “Alright, kid. But only so you don’t keel over on the sidewalk.”

Together they walked toward the door.

***

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of stew and coffee. The warmth stung Russell’s skin, and his fingers burned as blood returned. He hovered by the doorway, unsure, while the boy hurried forward, clutching a tray as if afraid someone might take it away.

A woman in a knit sweater approached Russell, her face lined but kind. Without a word, she pressed a steaming cup of coffee into his hands.

He stared at it, at the steam curling upward. His instinct screamed to turn and leave, to vanish back into the night where nobody expected anything from him.

But then the boy glanced back and motioned Russell over. For a long moment, Russell hesitated.

Then he lifted the coffee to his lips. The heat slid down his throat, bitter and alive.

Slowly, he took a step forward.

He still didn’t know where he belonged. But for the first time in years, he thought maybe belonging wasn’t a place. Perhaps it was a choice, and tonight, he had chosen not to walk away.

***

And what of the boy, you ask? Was he a boy or maybe, just possibly, more? Guiding Russell to a place he needed to be.

That story might be for another time.