It was barely noticeable when it began, no more than a zephyr, sighing, stirring the dusty ochre earth to eddy around the soles of her boots.  She paid it no mind, the restless air.  Not in this country.  Not in this season.  The sun?  That was different, and she raised a weathered hand against its onslaught as she stepped from what little shade was offered by a torn scrap of faded canvas canopy that hung askew above the entryway.

A red car, a two-door import by the look of it, had rolled to a stop beside the only working pump.  The radio, blaring rock music, went silent when the engine was cut and the driver’s door swung open.  Out stepped a young man, on the shy side of twenty-five, she guessed.  He was dressed in faded bell-bottoms, a tie-dyed tee, and worn sandals.  He arched backwards at the waist, stretching, and canted his face to the cloudless sky.  He wore wraparounds, yet still squinted against the glare.

“Fill ‘er up?” she asked, her voice redolent of whiskey, cigarettes, and the land ‘round.

He turned and watched her approach, a slender woman in a faded checked shirt tucked into a pair of oil-stained Levi’s.  She was old enough to be his mother, he thought, the years etched in her tanned face, her auburn hair shot through with grey.  Yet he could also see what time had not touched — the kind of plain beauty in the way of some country women.

“You mean I don’t have to do it myself?”  He smiled, surprised.

“No, sir, not here,” she said, narrowing her eyes at his dark, shaggy hair as it was caught by a freshening spell of wind and blown back off his forehead.  “This here’s a fillin’ station.  I do the fillin’.” 

“Man, I didn’t think there were any places left where you didn’t have to pump your own.”  She unhitched the pump nozzle and moved toward the car.

“Well, guess I’m old-fashioned, keeping it the way my daddy always wanted it.  Don’t see a need to change now.  Regular?”

“Yeah, regular,” he said, pulling a pack of Camels from the pocket of his jeans.  He stepped a few paces from the car as she began filling the tank, turning his back to a burst of west wind long enough to get a flame from his lighter and start a cigarette.

“You need me to check your oil?  Radiator?”

“Nah.  Not necessary.  Am I getting close to the New Mexico line?”

“About five miles is all.  You headed to Albuquerque?”  He shook his head and took a long pull at his smoke.

“L.A.  That’s where the music scene is happening,” he replied.   Again, her eyes narrowed as she watched the wind play fitfully with the smoke from his cigarette and the tendrils of his hair. In that moment, a memory arose within her.

“You a musician, then?”

“Trying to be.”

“A band or what?”

“Not yet.  Gotta make it to the coast first, get hooked up with some other guys.”  She finished filling the car, replacing the nozzle on the side of the pump.  She stood for a moment watching him walk a few paces, limbering his legs as he took the last drags off his cigarette.  Flipping the butt toward the dusty lip of the two-lane, he turned, surveying the desolate countryside.   “Not much out this way, is there?”

“Not anymore.  Not since the interstate.”

“How many customers you get in a day.”  She turned her head toward the road, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

“Well . . . you’re the first today.  Maybe the only one.”  He shook his head.

“Don’t see how you do it.”

“I manage.”  The wind was picking up, sweeping a scrim of dust past them and away to the east.

“Looks like I better hit the road,” the young man said.    “How much for the gas?”

She shielded her eyes again, casting a glance at the pump.

“Ten-fifty should do it.”  He jammed a hand into the pocket of his jeans and fished out a few crumpled bills.

“Don’t have it exact.  Sorry.  But here’s eleven bucks.  You can keep the change.”  She took the ten and the singleton, holding them for a moment before peeling away the dollar bill and handing it toward him.

“Tell you what . . . you hang onto this and we’ll call it even.  Make it a good luck charm.  When you hit it big, maybe you’ll remember.”  He laughed, nodding his head.

“First gold record, I’ll bring an autographed copy right back here to . . . “ he broke off, eyes searching until they lit on the faded and peeling sign painted above the single garage bay. “ . . . to ‘Pap’s Full Service.’  A deal?”  She smiled ruefully, memory deepening.

“Sure.  A deal.”

He flashed a grin, climbed back into his car, and cranked it noisily to life.  She watched as he spun the tires in the sandy loam before they bit on the hot cement roadway and he sped away into the wind.

*          *          *

The moon was up full, arcing slow across the northeastern sky.  Its milky light shawled to the desiccated earth unhindered by the onrush of the relentless wind, swinging west by southwest.  Dinner dishes stacked beside the sink, she took a bottle of bourbon from the cupboard and poured what remained into a glass.  Nearly half full.  Good enough, she said to herself. Sweeping a pack of cigarettes from the kitchen table and tucking them into the pocket of her Levi’s, she eased open the back door of the tiny house and, curling the whiskey close to her chest, leaned into the stiff breeze as she headed the short distance to the gas station entryway.  As she worked open the door, what remained of the exhausted awning above her head snapped fitfully.    Inside, she used her boot heel to shut the door and squeezed into the narrow space behind the counter.  There was just enough room for a small wooden desk and chair.  Pushing aside a welter of old invoices, pencil stubs, and scraps of paper covered in scribbled phone numbers, she set the glass down, took the pack of cigarettes from her pocket, and eased onto the chair.  It pitched and yawed, creaking from the abuse of time.  She wanted a smoke, but first things first.  She lifted the glass, took a deep drink, licking her lips as the whiskey’s heat coursed through her. She shook a cigarette free, found a matchbook among the detritus in front of her, and lit up. 

On the wall to her left hung a calendar, a promotional given to her every year by the same worn-down salesman who supplied her with spark plugs,  fan belts, and tired jokes.  She nudged it to one side, revealing a small black-and-white photo thumbtacked underneath.  Prying it free, she lifted the picture so that it caught the moonlight filtering in through a grimy side window.  She looked at it for a long moment, the image of a striking young man leaning against a gas pump, grinning broadly beneath a gray homburg cocked with insouciance atop thick black hair.  The photo, taken with a cheap Brownie, was crisscrossed with small cracks and creases, its deckled edges curled and frayed.  She ran her thumb lightly over it, allowing the shadow of the years to lift.  She had not intended it, this journey, but the kid with the guitars in the backseat and grand hopes had changed that.  Raising the glass, she drank and then drew deeply on her cigarette, exhaling, watching the smoke mingle with the moon-haze.  She closed her eyes and reclined,  the back of her head up against the cool plaster wall.

She let her mind drift, back to August 1951, the year she turned eighteen.  Mother had been dead five years and Dad was ailing.  That was a time when the long ribbon of highway brought a steady stream of travelers.  That meant gas tanks to fill and work in the garage, more than her father could manage, so it fell to her.  She could handle the pumps and had learned enough at daddy’s elbow to know her way around under the hood.  So her dreams of secretarial school in El Paso had slipped away,  across the hard pan and scrub, beyond the far-distant cordillera.  The demarcation of her life was set, and the days unspooled as regular as the rising of the wind.

And then he drove up, the handsome young man with the Errol Flynn mustache and Hollywood dreams on his easy smile. 

It took no effort at all to let herself be mesmerized by the  New Orleans lilt in his voice and the relaxed way he laughed with her while she had his car up on the lift repairing a damaged brake line.  And when the job was done, with evening coming on, she pushed caution behind her yearning, closed the station early, and encouraged him to stay and have a meal.

“Daddy’s up at his sister’s in Twin Forks — took him yesterday — so I sure wouldn’t mind the company.”

And he was fine with that, appreciated the invitation.  So he sat at the kitchen table nursing a bottle of cold beer and smoking while she prepared country-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and cornbread.  As she worked, they talked, and it exhilarated her.

Over supper, the beer flowed and the conversation grew more personal, more intimate.  By the time the dishes had been cleared and a half-moon hung in the southern sky, she knew where the night was taking them.  She had known all along.  She had wanted it, fearing that those few brief hours might be her only chance to fly above the dry dust of her young life.  And so she went with abandon, withholding nothing.  It had never happened before, nor would it again.

In the morning before the sun was up, she made him a big breakfast, “fuel for the road,” she had said.  They dodged around their self-consciousness as best they could.  He joked; she feigned breeziness.

After, when his car was out of the garage, its tank filled and he was keen for the road, she asked if she might take a picture.  She said that when he became a big movie star, she wanted to be able to prove to people he’d actually been there.  He laughed loudly, promising that when that day came, he would return with a specially autographed studio publicity photo just for her.

So she fetched her camera, and he posed by the pump as the wind was rising in the west and the sun in the east.  There was just enough light, so she snapped the picture, the last one on the roll.

“Do me a favor and say ‘hi’ to Montgomery Clift,” she said, fighting against his going and the hollowness that had already taken root inside her.

“Maybe I’ll bring him along when I come back,” he said, grinning, climbing in behind the wheel. 

And then, gunning the engine to life, with a wave of his hand out the window, he was gone.  She watched as long as she was able, before the wind whipped up and the speck of his car disappeared in the dust.

The heat from the cigarette was beginning to burn her fingers.  She looked down as the long ash fell to the desktop, and she stubbed out the butt, shook out a fresh smoke, and lit it, using her thumb to fold the match and force it along the scratch strip until it caught fire.  It was a trick that, like so many things, her daddy had shown her.  She inhaled deeply, and it felt good.  So did the last of the whiskey that she drained from her glass.

It was late now.   She looked again at the picture and raised a finger to smooth over the creases and gently caress the face of the handsome young man in the homburg.  Outside, moonlight shimmered.  The harsh wind had died to a murmur. 

It would be back in the morning.

– Nick Young

Note: This story was previously published in Vol. II of the Writer Shed Stories anthology series (Writer Shed Press, 2020)