Joe didn"t return to the Truck Stop Café for three days and, for this, Doris was thankful. She understood he needed time to heal. Plus, she was unsure he would have been able to handle the onslaught of people that Harlan had assembled in those first couple of mornings. By the third day, though, talk had died down and was, for the most part, turning away from Casey Morton"s memorial and to discussions of hunting lease rates for the fall and which road the aldermen would resurface first when the Legislature finally signed off on the state highway bill.
Life was slowly getting back to normal and Doris moved from table to table, topping off coffee cups and chatting with the truckers and, when they weren"t alone, their companions. So busy was she that Doris could almost forget the war, Casey"s
