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POP’s Gas

Justin W. Price

For Elizabeth Bishop

    BARSTOW 2 MILES, the green sign informed Royce as he sped east on the 405 to his ultimate destination: Las Vegas. His brand new, blood red Mercedes XLR, with white racing stripes, purred as he fantasized about the coming week. A fat bank roll, a chic suite at the Wynn, and an escort or two, guaranteed a week he would likely forget but wish he wouldn’t.
    He watched the valley through Gucci shades as the wind sped through his hair and headed east to debauchery with the wind in his hair, tunes booming, and a cigarette craving. Royce glanced at his fuel gauge, which crept towards the “E” and he exited the freeway to Barstow, California where signs indicated self-serve gas stations to the left and one, POP’S Gas, full service to the right. He pressed the button, closing the top to the convertible and turned right.
    Even though it was just a little over two hours from his home in Venice Beach, he’d never been to Barstow. Ramshackle buildings crumbled on either side of him. Saggy roofed houses enclosed by rotten wooden porches lined the streets. Worn out dogs, shirtless children and homely men and women swatted at flies as they gathered on dead lawns. It contrasted with Royce’s Venice Beach mini-mansion, which he’d inherited following his estranged father’s suicide. His backyard was the Pacific Ocean beachfront, which he jogged on daily with his burly black lab Brutus in tow.
    All that’s missing are tumbleweeds and a street duel, Royce mused as he drove through Barstow. He felt a gust of hot wind and white knuckled the steering wheel.
    After nearly two miles of decayed stores, unattractive people and pathetic excuses for parks and houses, he reached the full service station which, like the rest of the town, was old and crumbling. The sign rising above the station read “PO S”, and Royce snickered. The sagging roof over the two rotary pumps was off white. The rust colored station store had bars over the dirty windows and missing boards on the outside walls. Neon signs that were turned off, but may not have worked anyway, promised ICE and Budweiser.
    To the left of the store, a silver trailer, like a colossal tube of rusted aluminum foil, stood on cinderblocks. The screens on the windows were broken but Royce could see lacy white curtains showing behind them and flower pots on either side of the trailer door. One pot held a single daffodil, the other, a juvenile Joshua tree.
    On a folding chair in front of the trailer sat a man with a mangy brown hound dog curled at his feet. Royce would sooner put Brutus down than let him look like that mangy mutt. The man was quite dirty and wore a long, curly grey beard, dark blue overalls covered in grease stains and a name patch that Royce couldn’t read from where he was. He wore scuffed dark brown boots, and long, chaotic curly black hair protruded from beneath a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. He was chomping on a cigarette and whittling a stick with a large hunting knife. He smiled a mostly toothless smile and waved as Royce pulled in.
    “Be right over, friend,” he shouted.
    Royce couldn’t tell if the man was white or Mexican and wasn’t sure which he hoped for. As he pulled to a stop next to one of the pumps, he wondered if he might have been better off doubling back and finding one of the self-service stations closer to town. When he remembered how much he detested the smell of gasoline and the act of pumping his own gas, he decided to stay.
    “Smokin ain’t allowed by the pumps. I hope you don’t mind if’n I finish this smoke here before I help you. You ain’t in no hurry, I reckon, if’n you pulled this far off the freeway.”
    Royce rolled up his windows, exited the car, made an exaggerated motion as he locked the doors, a honk confirming his success, and looked at the man. He cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted. “Actually, I kind of am. I came here for the convenience.” The wind blew heat all over Royce and dirt careened across the highway like a brown lather. A couple of buzzards circled overhead. He reached into his front pocket for his soft pack of Marlboro Reds. “Nice dog you got there.”
    The man looked at the dog, huffed, took a deep drag off his cigarette and exhaled slowly, the smoke curling away like an ashy snake before disintegrating. He stood up, shoved the knife into the holster at his waist, tossed the cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot. “Ain’t nothin’ convenient about this place, friend,” he said as he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a can of Skoal and put a large plug of it into his mouth. Pat, his name patch read in thick, red thread. “Just a passin’ through place two miles off the freeway. The more convenient places just off the freeway, I reckon. So, friend, you didn’t come here for the convenience,” he began to lumber towards Royce, each boot scuffling across the cracked concrete.
    The sound reminded Royce of all those nights hiding in the cellar when his dad came home drunk. The scuffling stumbling of a man trying to keep balance and trying to find an outlet for his frustrations. It was usually Royce.
    His dad had seemed so tall and strong but one day—Royce was thirteen—Royce realized he was big enough to take on his dad. When his dad shuffled through the house, Jack Daniels sloshing with each step, he swung at Royce. Royce swung back, his dad staggered and fell. They never spoke again. Royce was shocked to find out that in spite of his father’s drunken outrages, the collection agency thrived and had been left to the Next of Kin: Royce.
    Pat advanced with deliberateness, a lump of tobacco wedged between his lips and his gums. Royce himself was six feet tall and used to looking down at people, but Pat towered over him. “Look, I’m in a hurry. Can you just give me some gas? I’ve got cash,” Royce said, craning his neck. He tapped a cigarette out of the soft pack and tucked it behind his ear. In the distance, he could hear cicadas and a strange squeaking sound that he couldn’t identify.
    “I reckon you do. Don’t take nothin’ but,” he said. He was right up on Royce now and Royce could smell his garbage breath, his pungent body odor, his sunburnt skin. His eyes were hollowed out red caverns, his lips were dry and cratered and his voice was like sandpaper. “This place ‘longs to my pop, sweet baby Jesus rest his soul. I ain’t changed a thing. He’d be li’ble to come out the ground and slap me good across my face if’n I took credit cards,” he laughed and patted Royce on the shoulder. His laugh turned into a cough.
    As Pat coughed, Royce stepped back and shook his shoulder. What an inheritance, Royce thought. Royce smirked at the man and wiped the dirt from his white collared blue silk shirt.
    “Sorry ‘bout that, son. Sometimes I forget not all folks is touchy feely. Fill ‘er up?”
    Royce needed to fill up—he wasn’t sure where the next gas would be—but he didn’t want to stay longer than he had to. Long enough to smoke. That’s it. “Twenty,” He barked. “And make it snappy.”
    Pat spit a large wad of sticky tobacco just millimeters from Royce’s alligator skin shoes. He smiled, revealing wide gaps in his mouth and diseased gums. Royce noticed a clean white band of skin on the man’s left ring finger. “Let’s see that cash, son.” Pat said.
    Royce’s mind began to wander. He looked around and cursed himself for having driven so far off the freeway. The sun was beginning to descend and on either side of the station was nothing but desert. The wind wailed, gusting away from town, and he felt his hair pulling on his scalp. He once again considered getting back in the car and driving into town but figured the man could just grab him and pull him away faster than Royce could maneuver. Besides, his cigarette craving was beginning to overwhelm him and he wasn’t about to light up in his Mercedes. Without lowering his eyes from Pat, he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a gold money clip and snapped out a crisp twenty dollar bill.
    Pat grabbed the bill, held it up to his nose and then crumpled it into his pocket. “Looks like twenty it is, son,” but he stood there and made no move for the gas pump.
    The two men looked at each other, Pat with curiosity, Royce with distress. He felt again like that little boy hiding in the cellar. He heard Pat’s feet scuffling against the cracked concrete.
    “Say, where ya headin’?” Pat grinned.
    Royce scoffed and stepped back, just out of range of Pat’s necrotic halitosis. “Just pump the gas, please. I’m in a hurry. I’ll just go smoke a cigarette and say hello to your mangy dog.”
    Pat smacked his lips and pointed a greasy finger at Royce. “Son, no one calls my dog mangy. That’s Rufus. You be real kind to Rufus, un’erstand?”
    “Okay.”
    “I ‘spect you one of them Vegas boys, lookin’ to go strike it rich. No other reason a fella like you be down this way,” he paused and ran his hand along the hood of the Mercedes. “Course, looks like you already got the rich part down good, so maybe you’re just goin’ to find some women with loose morals and have yourself a time you won’t tell no one about. What happens there stays there, no what’uh’mean?”
    Royce looked at the hood of his car, which now had a large black handprint on it. “Don’t touch my car. You’re getting it dirty. Don’t talk to me. Just pump gas.”
    Pat smiled again. “You’re in the desert, son. What chu ‘spect? Now, do Rufus a kindly thing and smoke over by the store. He don’t like strangers and, ‘sides, Rufus’ lungs are real wonky. He’s older than God hisself, I think. He ‘longs to my pop, sweet baby Jesus rest his soul. Rufus done quit smokin’, oh, five six, seven months ago.” He smiled again as he walked around to the pump. “Now, son, you need to open the tank for me, or can I do it myself?”
    Royce popped the cigarette in his mouth, unlocked the car, reached inside, and pulled the lever beneath the driver’s seat. He then slammed the door and quickly pressed the lock button the key ring. “I’ll just be over here having a smoke. But I’ll be watchin’ the whole time.”
    Pat spit another wad, this one right next to Royce’s tires. “Yes. I reckon you might. Don’t you worry none. Just go over and have a nice smoke.”
    Royce walked askance towards the store. Glancing over at the trailer, he was able to glimpse the blurred outline of family photos and a couch. Beside the trailer, he saw a grill with some kind of pungent gray meat cooking on it. My God, Royce thought, I think he lives there. Pathetic. “Hey there Rufus,” Royce shouted as he approached the store. Rufus said nothing. He was lying in the sun gathering flies and Royce thought at first that he was dead until he saw his legs kick and heard him whimper. The faint squeaking sound was louder now. He reached the store, and, with his eyes on Pat, lit his cigarette.
    “You want me to wash your windows, son?” Pat hollered through cupped hands. “I’d be much obliged.”
    Royce exhaled smoke rings. “Why not. You already dirtied the car anyway.”
    “Wasn’t me son,” Pat said as he grabbed a dusty mop bucket and squeegee. “Mother nature did that. Ain’t nothing clean around here.”
    Royce took another drag off the cigarette and looked again at the store. The door was padlocked and had an imposing chain wrapped around the handles. The windows had a thick layer of dirt on them. He strolled to the other side and glimpsed cactus and Joshua trees in the near distance, starving for water and affection. The squeak was louder now. He took a refreshing drag from his cigarette.
    Royce saw movement and squinted. Between a pair of cacti, a small derrick was pumping, up, down, up down, slowly yet insistently. Royce stared and walked closer to it, forgetting about his Mercedes for a moment. As he walked closer, the squeak grew louder still.
    Yes. Sure enough. It was a derrick. It was pumping. Up and down. Up and down. Royce took another drag off his cigarette and then tossed it away and just stared. He looked around him, at the barren landscape, and the collapsing buildings in the distance. He looked at the crumbling gas station and the aluminum foil trailer. He looked again at the derrick. He turned around and realized he’d walked far enough that he could no longer see his car and he began to run, but slowed when he caught a ray of sun reflecting off the hood.
    As he rounded the front of the store, he heard the chain clatter and looked to see Pat swinging the door open and walking inside. The chain rocked wildly, clanking against the door frame. Royce dug his keys out of his pocket and made his way to the Mercedes but, before he could reach it, Pat exited the store and looked right at Royce. The rustle of locusts crumpled into Royce’s ears. Royce was frozen.
    “Come here, son.”
    Royce looked at the Mercedes, he looked at Pat and his holstered knife. He looked at Rufus, back at the Mercedes, back at Pat.
    “I just want to shake your hand. Thank you kindly for your business,” Pat grinned.
    “No. That’s okay. Not a problem.” Out of the corner of his eye, Royce saw something fly out of door of the store. A cicada? It was small, green and ... crumpled. It was floating in the air, ascending away from town. Out of the door, another something and another something. No. Not cicadas. Royce soon realized it was cash. Cash money. He walked with trepidation to the door of the store and froze again. Piled taller than Royce and as far back as he could see were piles and piles of money, all crumpled bills. Top to bottom, the store was filled with them. Even as some of the bills flew off, Pat didn’t close the door or make any movement to grab them. He just stood and watched Royce watch the money float away.

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