Long Way Home
By Erica Ruppert
Posted on
It’s late, and cold with the first hard edge of autumn, and the car is not going to make it all the way back to town on what’s left in the tank.
The gas station is isolated, a lighted concrete patch along a rural highway, fallow fields and scant woods all around it. I rarely stop here. It is too exposed. Tonight I pull in. The sign in the office window says “open”. The office itself is bright with blue fluorescent glare. There is no one in it.
I wait for the attendant to work the pump. This is New Jersey, where I must pretend to helplessness. A single car passes, then another. The station lights hum like summer insects. Another minute slips by on the dashboard clock.…
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