by Billy Coffey
I wiped the counter and without looking up said, “I love both those boys. Guess the time’s passed for me to have kids. Don’t get me wrong, that’s okay. Not blamin’ you or anyone else. That’s just the way it is.”
“I think so, Andy,” he told me. “I think you’re exactly right.”
“So anyway,” I said, still wiping, “I reckon they’re like the kids I never had.”
The Old Man fumbled with his bracelet and said nothing. Which was disappointing, actually. I expected him to be happy that I would say such a thing.
“Are you in a mood again?” I asked him. “Is there some kind of angel shrink you need to go see?”
“Remember last night when I said you could always tell an angel by his tears?”
“Yep.”
“You asked me what an angel has to cry about. I never answered.”
“Nope.”
The Old Man let go of his bracelet and looked at me. “Angels feel the weight of the world, Andy. They see all the pain and all the suffering, just like everyone else. But they feel it, too. That’s the worst part. God mourns this world. He loves it—all of it—and He loves every person who calls it home. But He mourns what’s become of it, even though He knew from the beginning what would happen. There’s a weariness to this world that touches everyone who walks upon it. Not just people, either. It’s a fight as old as time itself. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t keep the world away. Do you understand?”
I could. Even in Mattingly, the place where time slowed and then dragged and then stopped altogether, the weight of the world found us all. I could see it on the faces of the people who came and went from my gas station every day. I could see it on my own.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I understand that.”
“There is more to this life, Andy. Beyond it, yes. But within it, too. You’re going to have to look beyond what you normally see. You won’t understand it, so you’ll have to trust.”
“Trust what?” I said.
“God and me.”
“Sure,” I said. “I can do that.”
He looked at me and said “Remember that” in a way that made me feel as though he knew I wouldn’t.
“Would you please stop acting so weird?” I told him. “You’re not only depressing me, you’re messing with my mojo. I gotta be on my game for when Eric comes.” I looked at the clock—twenty minutes until closing time. “If he comes. Almost time for us to head home.”
I grabbed the push broom from behind the counter and began sweeping the store, which was for the most part the only tidying that ever needed to be done before closing.
“I have to go, Andy,” the Old Man said.
“Just like you to skip out as soon as there’s work to be done,” I said, as I corralled a dust bunny by the trash cans. “You’re not gonna hang around to see if Eric comes?”
“He’s coming. But I need to go.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. I didn’t look at him. Didn’t feel like I needed to. Our good-byes were always temporary. “I’ll see ya later.”
I put the broom aside and turned my back to empty the trash. My hand grabbed the front of the can as I pulled it out from under the coffee counter and sank into a thick layer of tobacco spit. I decided for the thousandth time I needed to tell customers to stop using it as their own personal spittoon. I was going to ask the Old Man to remind me of that Monday morning, but then I heard the door open and close.
“You’re using doors now?” I said, still bent over the can. “What’s up with that?”
“What am I gonna use, you old codger? The window?”
I looked up to see Eric leaning against the counter. The booth was empty.
29
Settling Up
Well lookie here,” I said to Eric. “I’d just about written your sorry self off. Do you realize what you’d have been in for when I locked the door in another five minutes?”
“Do you realize that between gas and time, I figure that pack of smokes from yesterday is gonna set me back about thirty bucks?” he asked.
“The gas I can see,” I said. “But I find it hard to believe your time is that valuable.”
I grabbed the trash from the coffee station and the can by the door and brought both them and the broom to the counter.
“Here.” Eric took a twenty from his pocket and waved it in my face. “Happy now?”
“No,” I said. “Where’s my interest?”
“Interest?” He pushed the mop of hair on his head back with a hand. “Are you kidding me?”
“What do you think I am, a charity? Ten percent interest, so you owe me twenty cents.”
“I ain’t got twenty cents,” Eric said.
“Well then, we have a little problem, don’t we?”
Eric offered a grin that was more dread than happiness.
“Here,” I said. “You grab one bag and I’ll grab the other. I’ll call it even.”
“Deal.”
Eric took the bag from the can at the front door and followed me outside toward the garbage barrels on the edge of the parking lot. The sweet April air pushed into our clothes like a hug. Crickets chirped in the fields beyond the station. Stretching out in the distance were the polka-dotted lights of the town proper. My home. It was the hand of God that had brought me to Mattingly. I couldn’t see that when my grandparents first brought me there, but I could see it right then. I could see it as clearly as Eric walking beside me, as clearly as the moon hanging over me. I looked from the lights down below to those up above for proof. The three-quarter moon smiled through a haze that dulled all but the brightest stars, yet the Big Dipper and my star held fast. There if I needed it. And for the first time I thought maybe I didn’t and wouldn’t, not any longer. The Old Man was right when he said there was much in this world to mourn. It was broken and sullied by the misplaced passions of history. But even so, if you tasted life long enough you would find it had a certain sweetness as well. I had my town and my life. I had my quietness. That’s all any person needed. All anyone could want, really.
“So that’s why Jabber didn’t come,” Eric said.
“Huh?” I asked. “Sorry, drifted off there. Why didn’t he come?”
Eric shook his head and sighed, heaving his trash bag into an open barrel.
“I said Mom took off for the weekend and left us at home. She said she’d call tonight. Fat chance that’ll happen, especially since she’s probably drunk already. But Jabber said someone should be there just in case she did, and that’s why he didn’t come.”
“Gotcha,” I said. “You get those new plates for the Jeep yet?”
“She’s gotta sign,” he said. “She said she would, but she won’t. You know her.”
I did. Eric was right; his mother wouldn’t sign.
I was trying to figure out a way for me to take care of it myself when the headlights swept over us. I turned to see an old Ford truck pull into the lot and up to the door. Two men were inside the single cab. I’d say they got out of the truck, but fell out would probably say it better. The driver wore ripped jeans and a black T-shirt. He bumped his leg against the front bumper and tripped, almost hitting the pavement. The passenger, smaller than his friend and dressed in shorts and a tank top, laughed and pointed. He managed to hang onto the open door with his free hand to prevent the same fate.
Saturday nights always brought out the more entertaining customers, those who were on their way either to or from some back road party. Most were passersby who didn’t call Mattingly home. The truck, I noticed, wasn’t familiar to me. And if I knew anything, it was what everyone in town drove.
“Jabber wanted to, though,” Eric told me. “He knew you’d have something smart to say to me, and he was dying to hear it. He likes you, Andy. I know that’s tough to see, but he does.”
“And what about you?” I asked.
He smiled. “I could take you or leave you, but I guess you’re okay for a bumpkin.”
“Well I’ll just have to remember this moment
,” I said. “That’s the highest praise you’ve given me yet. Got a couple customers. Let’s head back.”
That’s what I said—Let’s head back. Why I used the plural is beyond me. Like I said, I’d had my fair share of drunks in the gas station, both men and children who thought they were men. If I had known what would happen, I would have told Eric to just go. I would have called his debt paid and told him I’d see him Monday morning. Would have said good-bye right there at the trash barrels and watched him drive away.
But I didn’t. I said Let’s head back. The both of us.
Because I didn’t know. The Old Man wasn’t there to tell me otherwise.
*
Eric and I walked through the door.
The man in the shorts was next to a display of bug repellent I’d set out for the hikers and fishermen. He was turning a can end over end, mesmerized by the sight. A thin stream of drool oozed from the corner of his open mouth and jiggled each time he exhaled a chuckle.
His friend was roaming the aisles, up one and down the other, shouting “Yo” over and over.
“You work here?” the man in front of me asked.
“Sure do. How ya doing?”
“Here he is, Taylor,” the man called to his friend. “I found ’im.”
“Yo,” Taylor called from the drink coolers. “Where’s your beer, old-timer?”
“Don’t sell any,” I said.
I walked past the man in shorts and grabbed the broom to put it away. Eric followed me, serious and quiet. I supposed those two men were a reminder of his other life, the one away from the comfort of my gas station. I could understand that. In all my years I’d seldom taken a drink. Not because I never got the urge, but because every time I’d thought of it I thought of my mother being crushed by a beer truck.
“You don’t sell no beer?” Taylor asked. “You hear that, Charlie? This guy here don’t got no beer to sell.”
“Man don’t sell no beer’s a stupid man,” Charlie answered, and then bent himself over laughing. He dropped his can of bug spray to the floor and chased after it like a drunk puppy.
“There’s a Texaco right down the road a ways,” I said. “Timmy’ll sell you some beer.”
Taylor looked at me. “You tryin’ to get rid of us?”
“Nope, just trying to help you out and close up.”
“You got a bathroom in here?”
“Back in the corner.”
The big man lumbered toward the back and flung open the door, cussing both me and my store. Charlie remained where he was, clutching the can. I half expected him to open it and try to take a drink. I hoped he did.
“Man don’t sell no beer’s a stupid man,” he said again.
“Got ya the first time, buddy.” I turned to Eric, who was standing on the other side of me. “Why don’t you get on out of here?”
“You sure, Andy?”
I waved him off. “Oh yeah. These guys will get outta here in a few minutes, and I’m heading home after that. I’ll see you Monday.”
Eric nodded but didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on Charlie, who was now going through the display of lighters on the counter. He’d pick one up, light it, toss it aside. Then another, and another, until they were all a pile by the register.
“You’re gonna buy those lighters or you’re gonna clean them up,” I told him.
Charlie ignored my threat and asked, “You sell smokes, or is that like the beer? You one o’ them Armish or somethin’?”
“I sell smokes,” I said. “But I’m closing up. Texaco’s open for another hour. You can get your smokes there with your beer.”
“Don’t you get smart with me, Grandpa. You hear me?”
Charlie tripped and lunged his way around the corner to where Eric and I were standing. Eric shrank and then reached out for my shoulder, but by then I had moved. I met Charlie before Charlie met me and shoved my face in his.
“You’re drunk,” I said. “You’re drunk and you’re an idiot, and if you and your buddy don’t get out of here, I’m gonna teach you the manners your mama never did. You hear me?”
Charlie’s eyes blinked. He raised his hands in mock surrender and backpedaled to his pile of lighters on the counter. He began clumsily snapping them back into place on the display, growling at me.
I turned back to Eric. “I’ll see you Monday, okay?”
Eric was still. “You shouldn’t drink,” he told Charlie.
“What’d you say to me?” Charlie asked him.
“You…shouldn’t…drink.”
“Eric,” I said.
Charlie slurred, “You best mind your own business, sissy boy.” The last part sounded like issy hoy. He pointed two fingers in Eric’s direction. The last lighter for him to put back was stuck between them.
The bathroom door jerked open and Taylor stumbled out. One leg of his jeans had been tucked into his boots, the other out. The front of his shirt poked out of his open fly. He saw Charlie pointing at Eric and quickened his pace.
“What’s goin’ on here?” he said.
“Sissy boy over there’s tryin’ to preach to me,” Charlie said. “Says I shouldn’t have no beer.”
“That right, sissy boy?” Taylor said to Eric.
I gripped the push broom in my hand. I’d seen my share of Charlies in my life, cowards whose only courage was a fleeting one found in the bottom of a liquor bottle. Taylor, though, was different. He had the eyes of one beholden to neither judgment nor decency, pale and deep and empty.
Eric moved closer to me.
“You ain’t got age enough to be shootin’ off your mouth like that to us,” Taylor said to him.
“But I do,” I said. “Now I’m telling you boys for the last time. You get out of here. Now. Closing time.”
I met Taylor’s stare and refused to look away.
Charlie watched us, fingering the lighter in his hand.
“Eric,” I said, “you get along. Like I said, closing time. You two fellas get outta here, too.”
“Hey, Pops,” Taylor smiled and said. “We ain’t got no problems here. Me ’n’ Charlie just out having a good time. We’ll get along, won’t we, Charlie?”
Charlie snorted. “Sure. Like ’at fella said, ‘we should all just get along.’”
Eric made his way past me and said, “I’ll see you soon, Andy.”
“See ya,” I said.
He walked past Taylor, who extended his left arm toward him.
“Come on, buddy,” he told Eric. “We ain’t got no beef, right?”
“Right,” Eric said. But his head was down and his pace was quick, and those things said no.
Taylor pulled him in for a sloppy hug and wrapped his left arm around Eric’s back. Eric gave way in an act of surrender, looking at me with a grin. I began to return it but then saw Taylor’s hand slip behind his own back. He drew the hunting knife out and back, giving it space for momentum.
Then he pulled Eric into the blade.
There was a pop and then a sucking sound. Eric’s eyes were still on me and suddenly grew wide. His mouth fell open as Taylor drew the knife out and back and into Eric again.
And then again.
I screamed, raising the push broom and then bringing it down onto Taylor’s head. The broom shattered in half, the bristles flying off into the corner of the wall and handle still in my hands. Taylor yelped and fell to his knees, dropping Eric onto the floor. The knife was still in the boy’s stomach up to the handle.
Charlie leapt at me. I saw his advance and caught him with the sharp end of the broken broom, cutting his face from his right eye to his jaw. He shrunk backward, arms raised and pleading for mercy. I turned toward Eric, who lay with his back to the floor. His eyes were open, pleading. A pool of blood formed around him like a grotesque fountain.
“Eric?” I gasped.
His mouth moved, but the air escaped as hisses through the holes in his torso.
Taylor had managed to pick himself up and was now trying to bend over Eric to r
etrieve the knife. I swung the broom handle like a bat and connected with the side of his head, sending him sprawling.
“Eric,” I said. Tears streamed down my neck. I was trembling from the fear and rage. “Sweet Jesus, Eric.”
“Hey, Grandpa,” Charlie said.
I drew the handle back with my left hand, but it was too late. Charlie had sobered enough to realize that even if he didn’t have a weapon, he could still make one. He had the can of bug spray in one hand and the lighter in the other. I looked up just in time to see the streak of fire headed toward me, as yellow as the sun and as hot as hell itself. I made a useless attempt to throw up my free hand. Flames surrounded my head, robbing me of air and all sense, and knocked me backward onto the floor. Charlie’s boot stomped down hard on Eric’s chest. The other one smashed against the wound in his stomach.
One of them, I’m not sure which, picked up the broomstick and smashed it into my head. The handle snapped along with my skull.
I heard the ring of the cash register opening and things being thrown and knocked over. In the fog around me there was the sound of a door and the engine of their truck revving.
I lay near Eric on the floor. My head throbbed and burned, and my singed throat screamed for air. The ceiling stared down at me and began to swim in ripples as my body surrendered to spasms. I raised a hand to still myself. The blood that covered it was not my own. I dropped it back to the floor.
Eric wheezed. I turned my head toward him. The fountain of blood coming from his chest and stomach had turned into a torrent. He was moving his legs and arms. My first thought was of him making a blood angel in the floor because there was no snow.
“Andy?” he whispered. “You good, Andy?”
I could say nothing. My body had pushed the Pause button on my lungs, and I was stuck on exhale.
Eric reached out with his hand and took mine. “You good, Andy?”
His face had lost all color and his lips were blue and trembling. His grip was loose, almost lifeless, yet even so it dug into my exposed flesh and sent shock waves of searing pain through me. I held on. Held on to him and me.
Eric opened his mouth to speak again, but the words he whispered were garbled with the blood that spurted from his mouth. His hand went slack.
