The Container

It’d been years, eighteen to be exact, but we all reacted with collective shock when the text message, among the few us still in contact, informed us that he had contracted Covid-19 and died within a matter of days. He was the owner of the last restaurant I worked at (yes, this phrasing is going to date this piece if I ever work at another restaurant) and was generally a decent guy.

We didn’t see eye to eye on many things; I was a wayward poet who just took this waiting job as a way to pay my bills while I threw myself headlong into what it meant to be a poet without the pedigree of an MFA, living in a major city, or a long list of publications and various other jobs like journalism that writers fall back on when their creative ambitions falter. Waiting tables was just a job and one I didn’t have to take seriously which freed up my down time to write, read, live.

So when the text came in, I called the manager (who still worked there) and got a fuller rundown on what happened and why. It wasn’t surprising that he refused to get vaccinated and actively campaigned for the state to open before the Governor felt it was prudent. On one hand, I could see it as a simple business decision; he was a small business after all. Yet after working with him for five years, I knew that he was also a devout, evangelical Christian, and I’m sure his diet of media and information led him down the road where he’d…