by Jim Steinberg
A massive spreading oak at the edge of the gas station’s asphalt shaded my car. Across the steaming blacktop, not thirty feet away, a low-built one-story cross between a home and a gas station crouched just beyond the edge of the oak’s cooling canopy. Its tarpaper roof pulsed waves of heat. To the left of a well-holed screen door, a bald-headed old man sat statue-still in a plastic deck chair. Rivers of creases lined his forehead, and a thin white beard scragged from his cheeks and chin. With bony fingers laced around the wooden end of an inverted golf club, he seemed stuck in a forward lean that could outlast the narrow, crumbling veranda. His eyes were as motionless as the rest of him.
A heavyset young man emerged from the door and crossed the veranda at a pace to fit the oven heat. With exceptional caution, he came down the three steps and began a labored walk toward my car. Dragging his right foot along the asphalt before urging it off the ground, he could not match the length of his stride on his left side. His hands hung away from his hips as if he were waiting for something significant to happen, like an athlete anxious for the play to begin. When he reached the side of my car, he supported himself by stiffening one arm against the frame of the back side window. I had to twist around to see him. From below, his round, unblemished face seemed as innocent as a shy teenager’s. In spite of its puffiness, it was a handsome face.
“Wha’ for ya?” he asked in a toneless voice, his words spoken to the roof of the car.
“A full tank,” I said. “It should take more than fourteen. You can top it off.”
“Yessir,” he said without looking down, his voice only a whisper.
“Coming down this road was an act of desperation. Can’t tell you how relieved I am to find you way out here in this forest.”
Even in the deep shade, the heat came on like a switch had been flipped. As I got out, the young man rotated toward the pump as if he were tethered to a post by a short brace.
“This heat’s like being in the bottom of a fish tank,” I said. “I bet it’s ninety-five in the shade, and the humidity’s got to be near a hundred. Might as well be India.”
“Is…only…reglar…we got.” His words lacked the musical rise and fall I had learned to love about Southern speech.
“Gotta take what you have,” I said. “Thought I was running out for sure. The needle was an eighth of an inch below empty, and the fuel light’s been on for half an hour. I bet I missed a dozen stations, and then there was nothing. Carolina’s funny that way. Lots of everything that’s anywhere else and in a blink it looks like you’ll never see a sign of life again.”
He pulled the nozzle back, drawing a slow circle wide around him. His tee shirt said “Schlitz, The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous” above a brown bottle of cold beer, its icy contents pouring onto County Stadium’s bright green turf. It got me wishing for relief.
“Where’d you get that shirt? Schlitz hasn’t been around since the Braves moved to Atlanta. I’m surprised it got all the way down here.”
The youn man pointed the nozzle toward the closed door to the gas tank. “I…need ya…t’open that.”
Embarrasessed, I yanked the latch in front of the bottom next to the door. “Sorry. I’m still thinking about getting stuck out here in all these trees. So many trees.”
He looked out over the top of the pump.
“I went to Milwaukee once,” I said. “Had a Schlitz in that ballpark.”
“Wherezat?”
“Wisconsin.”
“Wherezat?”
“Oh, up North.”
He turned toward me. A big grin filled his face. “Y’all…ferget…to fill up up there?”
“No more than anywhere else, I hope,” I answered with a chuckle. “It’s just me. I forget things when I’m in a hurry. Almost paid for it, but you’re here, so I got off lucky.”
“Always…been here.”
He looked over his shoulder. A second gas pump stood in a sideways tilt at the back end of the asphalt. It was more rust than paint and had no hose. Most of the glass was gone, and a tight pattern of bullet holes filled its chest.
“Once…Uncle Eno…dint take nuff time, an’ he paid a lot for it.” He did a quarter turn back and gazed again over the top of the car, at the stiff old man I figured must be Eno. “There he set…twenty year.”
“Really?”
He nodded in long, thoughtful ups and downs, full of effort.
“Can I get to Durham by three o’clock?” I asked. “I have a meeting I can’t be late for.”
“Take…40.”
“That’s what I figured. So, maybe an hour?”
With effort the young man twisted away from me, keeping his hand on the nozzle grip, one of those ancient ones lacking a trigger latch. He propped his free arm against the pump and squinted, seeming to measure the distance to Durham, and scratched an armpit. His shirt there was more hole than material.
“Might could,” he said, turning back toward the pump, watching the tenths of gallons creep upward as if studying them might speed it up. After nearly half a minute, his gaze turned down toward the nozzle, and he concentrated on it in the same way. I knew then for sure that he could only do one thing at a time.
“Uncle Eno’s backhoe,” he said, pointing toward the old man, “took a month a minute for fillin’…over there at the diesel.” With his arm, thick and round as link sausage, he swung it as rigidly as a rusty mechanical gate toward the abandoned pump. “Momma say…he never hurry…always paid attention…till the bad day. After that…went back to not hurryin’…right quick, they say. Now he still as a cat that’s full. Go in for breakfast…supper…nightfall. That’s all. Nothin’ but.”
I stared at the side of his face. He was working his lips. I waited.
“Only thirteen nine,” he said when the numbers stopped rolling. The cadence of his speech had increased as he got into a story he must have known too well. “After he gas up, Uncle Eno always went reverse first, to clear the store on turnin’. Backhoe too big. Seat can turn clear round if you want it to, but he dint. Nary look back. Dint go slow like suppose, and poorly for not lookin’. He still payin’. Settin’ an’ leanin’, eyes on the spot where he done it. Cain’t run anyone down while sittin’ agin a wall. Twenty year, my momma say. I don’t rember. Was a tyke.”
The young man returned the nozzle to its slot in the pump. He turned his back to me, faced the spot he was talking about, and stayed that way as if he were watching whatever had happened twenty years before. I tried to believe that it was mostly the heat that made him move and speak like a lugging engine, and tried not to worry about my meeting. Turning to look at the old man, I noticed that he, too, was staring toward the dead pump, or off to the right of it. Couldn’t tell for sure. Something was out there for him.
I drew a twenty and a ten from my wallet and extended them toward the young man.
He began rubbing his index fingers with his thumbs. “Keep the change,” I said.
“Willa Jane behind. Pullin’ at her skirt stuck in the bike chain. Only five. Singin’, Momma say. Nursey rhyme. Uncle dint see. Might should, but should ain’t seein’. Big wheel squashed Willa Jane top to bottom. His only granchile. Momma say she still looked sweet, but that’s what she wants ta hold.”
The young man turned and took the bills. It seemed like he was reading its numbers. “Thanks, there,” he said.
“Quite a story,” I said. “Do you tell it to everyone?”
He stuffed the bills in a pocket of his baggy trousers. Through pursed lips that struggled to hide a wiser smile than the innocent grin that had brightened his face before, he stared at me, eye to eye, as if he understood something he thought still escaped me.
“Not…everyone,” he said. Then he turned and hobbled off. “Get your change now.”
I looked toward the sagging veranda for a last glimpse at Uncle Eno holding himself up on his inverted golf club, and at the young man walking with an effort that matched his speech. I followed the old man’s frozen gaze to the spot that had demanded his attention for twenty years and tried to imagine him hurrying, for the first time, at backing up to make the turn in the too-small space. That’s all I tried to see.
In the car the digital clock on my dashboard flashed 2:02, fifty-eight minutes to get to the north side of Durham. Cranking up the engine and lingering there, I saw in the two-lane’s mirage of heat the faceless gas stations I had passed, any one of which would have gotten me to my meeting with time to spare, and the tunnel of trees on the turn I had chosen in desperation, never expecting it to save me. Now it looked like it did.
The frozen-still old man loomed over the road. Then the young one replaced him. I decided to believe that the younger had been staying at that gas station with the elder for quite some time, that he had the patience it would take to remain there a long time more, and that he would tell the story of Uncle Eno’s bad day to more wrong-turn people like me, the kind that jabber on without paying attention.
Without looking back, I crept out from under the shade of the oak and turned onto the two-lane into the uncompromising sun. The clock gave me only forty-nine. But I didn’t care.
For thirty years Jim has written stories about family, love and work. Twelve of his stories have been published in literary journals. He has self-published Boundaries, a novel, and two collections of short stories, Filling Up in Cumby, Stories and Last Night at the Vista Café and Other Stories. His two-novel series, Third Floor, and Redemption, is looking for a home.
Photo by Sébastien Vincon: https://www.pexels.com/photo/retro-gas-pumps-at-hackberry-in-arizona-30730553/
