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Dead Ringer

Clay Coppedge

    We were cruising home on the interstate when we stopped at a Stuckey’s convenience store on the interstate and saw Adolph Hitler browsing the candy aisles. “Hey, look,” I said to Sally. “Even Hitler shops here.”
    “My God. It looks just like him! The moustache...”
    Yes, the moustache was the thing. It gave him a certain look, the same way an old overweight guy in a red suit and long white beard might make you think of Santa Claus.
    Sally and I went to our respective restrooms and when I came out and saw Hitler still haunting the candy aisle I moseyed over for a better look. The guy looked a lot more like Hitler up close than he did from a distance. The hair was shoe polish black, buzzed on the sides, longish on top, and parted on the left. His long-sleeved brown shirt and matching pants evoked a certain bygone era. And, of course, there was the moustache.
    He caught me staring and opened the conversation. “Do I know you?” The trace of a local accent surprised me.
    “Uh, sorry. You reminded me of someone. Or I thought you did. But you’re not him.”
    “Oh yeah?” The accent became a little more pronounced. “Who do I remind you of?”
    I wish I had been honest and said I thought he looked like Adolph Hitler. To be completely honest, I should have said he looked like someone who wanted to look like Adolph Hitler. But I elected to not have that conversation.
    “Oh, you look like a guy I went to college with,” I said. “But, you know, his hair is probably white now. Or he doesn’t have any hair. Or he has just a little bit left. I actually don’t know what happened to that guy or his hair, but I’m sure it’s nothing like your moustache. I mean, hair.”
    From the checkout counter Sally motioned hard for me to join her. I tried to think of a closing line. It wasn’t nice to meet him and I really wasn’t sorry I bothered him. I finally settled on “Have a nice day” but I didn’t care whether he had a nice day or not because my gut feeling was that anybody who went out of his way to look like Hitler didn’t deserve glad tidings. I picked up a chocolate bar and headed to the checkout counter. We paid for the chocolate bar and some water and speed-walked to the car.
    Hitler was hot on our trail.
    “What did you say to him?” Sally asked.
    We were almost to our car when he stopped a few parking spaces away, in front of a Volkswagen Jetta, and shouted, “I know who I remind you of!” He clicked his heels together, raised his right arm at an angle, and shouted, “Heil, me!” He then goose-stepped, skipped, and pranced to his car, pausing for another pronouncement: “Someday they will respect us again!” and then he got in his car and sped away, laughing with maniacal glee as he whipped onto the access road without looking. Squealing tires and blaring car horns ensued. Hitler stuck his arm out the window, gave his fellow motorists the finger, and drove away at a high rate of speed. He was on the Interstate and gone before Sally and I were out of the parking lot.
    Well, we agreed, you sure do meet some weird people on the road. Sally chose to believe the guy was an actor dressed up for a role, or maybe he was just into pranking people. Like, what would you do if you ran into Hitler at a Stuckey’s? Or maybe he was a psychology major studying human behavior. Maybe we would appear in a new version of Candid Camera. Maybe we’d all be famous for fifteen minutes.
    We rounded a bend in the highway and saw, to my utter bewilderment, a billboard featuring a larger-than-life picture of the very guy we’d just encountered at the Stuckey’s, moustache and all. The caption below the photo urged motorists to vote for him in an upcoming election for state representative.
    “Oh my God! The Hitler doppelganger is running for office!”
    That was me freaking out. Sally tried to calm me down and said the guy on the billboard looked nothing like the weirdo we saw at Stuckey’s but she wasn’t very convincing. I think she just wanted us to continue our drive and our lives without the possibility that Adolph Hitler was alive and well and on the ballot. Maybe it wasn’t possible, but even Sally had to admit one thing— the guy was a dead ringer.

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