He’d been working day shift for just over a week at this point. We weren’t exactly friends, but that was probably for his own good. After all, I had recently received an annoying and unsolicited prophecy about how I was cursed to watch all of my friends die. So far, it looked like Calvin was going to dodge that bullet by a mile.
He was about forty years old. Tall and thin, with a pasty complexion and flat, blonde hair always neatly combed to the side. He had a pointy chin and pointier nose, with a voice suggestive of a perpetual head cold. The only hair on his face was growing from the matching pair of twin moles at the top of his cheek bone. Moles that looked like creepy dead eyes when you stared at them for too long. Like shark eyes... Or doll eyes...
He drove a flashy silver Mercedes sedan that seemed wrong and out of place parked at the gas station, like a Starbucks inside a cemetery. He always dressed sharp, and this day was no exception. He was wearing khakis and a green sweater vest over a baby-blue button up. I, on the other hand, felt more than adequate in my usual attire of jeans, long sleeve t-shirt, and hoodie.
As I prepared to clock in, I noticed the letter he had printed out and taped next to the time clock. A short list of “reminders for all employees.” While he hadn’t called anyone out by name, he didn’t have to. Most of the rules may as well have had “ahem, Jerry” spelled out next to them in red ink.
“Smoke breaks must be taken out back. Please no smoking inside the building!”
“No shirts, no shoes, no service applies to employees as well.”
“Absolutely no alcohol consumption on the premises.”
“Please do not feed the raccoons.”
“All transactions must be made in legal U.S. currency - NO BARTERING!”
“Do not speak to the homeless man outside of the building.”
That last sentence caught me off guard. I hadn’t noticed any homeless people hanging out near the gas station in months. Normally, when the weather turns cold, the hobos in our town leave and take an exodus further south until spring, and this was shaping up to be one of the coldest winters in decades.
I clocked in and turned around to see Calvin standing there with his countdown sheet, a little too close for my comfort.
“You ready to get out of here?” I asked, gesturing at the paper in his hand.
“Actually,” he responded. Oh Jeez, come on dude. It was a rhetorical question, just let me count down your till and go home. “I was wondering if you had a moment to talk.”
I looked around the store for any kind of out, but he knew better than anyone that I had absolutely nothing to do and no reason not to indulge him.
“Sure, why not?” I made my way behind the counter and took a seat by the register, propping my crutches against the wall nearby and sliding my backpack under the cigarette case. “What’s on your mind?”
“I just wanted to pick your brain. You’ve been here longer than me. Long enough to get a feel for this place. The atmosphere, the culture, the nuances.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve been in management for over two decades, and I’ve picked up a thing or two in that time. Especially when it comes to the importance of rules. I know that seems obvious to guys like you and me, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t care about the rules.”
He shifted his eyes towards the time clock, and for a brief moment, I could read his thoughts.
“Look, if this is about Jerry—”
He snapped his attention back to me and nearly caught me staring at the hairy moles on his cheek. “No, I’m not going to ask you to discipline him. I heard how he saved your life. As far as I’m concerned, that makes him a hero, and I’m not interested in unsubstantiated rumors. If he is willing to shape up and get with the program, there won’t be any problems moving forward.”
“Well, that’s a pretty big ‘if.’ I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”
For some reason, that made Calvin laugh. I knew he despised Jerry from the moment they met. People like Jerry were kryptonite to people like Calvin, and “unsubstantiated rumors” was a very gracious way of referring to the two times in the past week that somebody spray painted the word “KILLER” across the front of the gas station.
“I just want to make sure you and I are on the same page.”
“Well, yeah, I think—”
“The thing is,” he interrupted, “I know all of the rules—the written rules. But every place has a long list of unwritten rules, too. You know? In my experience, those are just as important.” He bounced his eyebrows and added, “Or more important.”
“I don’t understand.”
He leaned in close enough that I could smell his hair gel.
“I’m asking for you to help me figure this place out. What makes it tick? What’s under the surface? What are the unwritten rules of the gas station, Jack?”
He gave me an expectant stare, one that I couldn’t comfortably return. I looked away from his eyes to his cheek, where those twin moles were staring at me just as expectantly, forcing me to look away completely. “I really don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Take your time,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Think about it. I bet you’ll come up with an answer for me by tomorrow. Sound good?”
It most certainly did not sound “good.” I could tell he was implying something, but I’ve never been good with implications.
“Yeah, sure.”
I thought that would be the end of it, but then—
“Shake on it?”
I didn’t want to touch the guy, but I was willing to do whatever it took to move this constipated interaction along so I could settle in for the night and get to reading my newest book. (It was a sci-fi novella from the eighties about the far-off year of 2018, and I couldn’t wait to see how much the author got right.)
His hand felt cold and clammy, like a raw turkey leg with fingers. After, he smiled and thanked me, then stood in silence while I counted the money in his cash drawer. As expected, Calvin was accurate to the penny. I bade him farewell, but before he left for the day, he remembered one last thing.
“By the way, you had a personal call on the store phone a couple hours ago. I told the man I’d pass his message along to you.”
I don’t get many “personal calls.” If it were the owners, Calvin would have said so. If it was Benjamin looking for another status report, he would have hung up the moment he realized I wasn’t the one who answered. There was only one other person who regularly called the gas station looking for me.
“Let me guess, Farmer Junior?”
Calvin raised an eyebrow. “Is that a real person’s name?”
“Yeah, he’s Farmer Brown’s oldest son.”
He seemed delightedly surprised. “There’s a person in this town named Farmer Brown?! How quaint!”
“Well, there was.”
“Ha! I never know when you’re being serious, Jack, and when you’re just goofing.” He gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. I did not appreciate it. What is it with this guy touching me? “No, it was an old friend of yours named Spencer something-or-other.”
My blood ran cold. I looked up to see if Deputy O’Brien was still there with us, but she had already left without saying goodbye.
“What did he want?”
Calvin fished a piece of paper out of his pocket, read the note to himself, and said, “Ah. Middleton. I knew it started with a letter. He wanted me to let you know that he is back in town, and that he’ll be stopping by to visit you soon.”
***
For the record, it’s not that I was afraid of Spencer Middleton. I mean, sure, he beat me within a half-inch of death, broke my leg and a couple other minor bones, then left me in a hole until I nearly bled out, but that didn’t mean I was afraid of him. Sure, he found a way to sneak into the gas station while all the doors were locked so he could subdue a man twice his size using nothing but a shovel. And he then overpowered me and two other coworkers without ever breaking a sweat. And he h
ad extensive military training and probably belonged to some kind of black-op group dedicated to torturing puppies or something. And he once worked for a literal god. And I watched him get his throat sliced open and turn into a human Pez-dispenser and bleed to death and then resurrect from the dead like an evil Jesus.
But was I “afraid” of him? No, not exactly.
All the same, I felt like it would be a good idea to not be alone at the gas station that night. Shortly after Calvin went home, I spun the egg-timer, dropped a dollar in the till, picked up the store phone, and dialed Jerry’s number. It rang ten times before he answered.
“Yo!”
“Hey, Jerry. It’s me.”
“Sup?”
“Not much. What are you doing?”
“Punchin’ darts and breakin’ hearts.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I’m making some din-din and planning my takedown of the patriarchy.”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Never mind.”
“Never mind what?”
“I was just going to see if you wanted to—” It was only at this point that I realized I didn’t know exactly why I was calling. Still, I powered through the sentence, “—come hang out at the gas station?”
There was a short pause. I half expected him to laugh and hang up, but instead he answered with, “How do you take your steaks?”
“Pardon?”
He said it again, a little slower. “How do you take your steaks?”
I had no idea what he was getting at, figuring that this must have been some kind of expression I was unfamiliar with. “I don’t know. However.”
“Medium rare it is! Give me fifteen. I gotta put on some pants and pack up my sixty-four and junk. You play Risk, right?”
“You mean the board game?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve played it before.”
“Great, get ready ‘cause I’m gonna take Australia.”
“What do you mean by ‘sixty-four’?”
He didn’t answer. He had already hung up the phone.
Half an hour later, he was crouched behind the counter, plugging a flat screen television and Nintendo 64 into the overloaded surge protector below the register. He had brought a couple of steaks with him, wrapped in tin foil, and gave me the bigger of the two.
While he was setting up, I pulled a box of plastic cutlery and paper plates off the shelf, but Jerry didn’t even give them a second glance. He simply rolled up his ribeye like a burrito and ate it one-handed.
I grabbed a couple six-packs from the cooler. Considering he’d supplied the food (as well as a 32-inch television, a gaming console, and a backpack full of video games), I figured it was the least I could do to provide the drinks. Under normal circumstances, I might have worried about introducing booze into the equation. But this late at night, he wasn’t likely to make a scene in front of any customers. Plus, there was no risk of him driving under the influence. As far as I could tell, he didn’t even own a car. The crazy thing was that Jerry had walked all the way out to the gas station.
We played “Danger!” (a Chinese video game knockoff of Risk) for a couple of hours before calling it a tie. After racking up the maximum number of armies allowable and settling into separate hemispheres, we saw no real reason for continued warfare and declared an end to arms and a new era of world peace, thereby effectively beating the game.
He also brought a copy of “Star Dog 64”, “Super Hit Siblings,” "Marco’s Cart," and (surprisingly) “GoldenEye 007.” He took that last one and loaded it into the console next. As he returned to take his seat on the overturned milk crate next to my chair, I noticed that someone had written a message on the game cartridge in blue magic marker. It read: “Property of Van!” There was only one person that could have been—our old coworker, Vanessa Riggin.
Vanessa was a good employee. And a good person, for that matter—one of those rare individuals everyone liked from the moment they met her. She was always friendly towards me, and she had a knack for defusing my awkwardness. She was smart and capable, and if she had stuck around for much longer, the owners probably would have offered her Calvin’s position.
She was the one to train Jerry while I was out recovering from Spencer’s first attack (to be fair, I don’t think that should reflect poorly on her; Vanessa did the best she could with the job she was given), and the two of them hit it off right away.
I’ve always tried to keep to myself. I enjoy other people's business the same way a cat enjoys a cold bath. But a blind man could see that they were close. Sometimes they would hang out together outside of work. Occasionally they’d leave town to go see a movie or do any of those other things that normal people do with their normal friends.
On a few occasions, they even extended the hang out invitation to me. But I always turned them down. I knew they were just trying to be nice, and I didn’t want to ruin their fun.
The day she didn’t come back to work, I assumed she had followed the lead of so many other employees and simply quit without calling. But when Deputy O’Brien delivered the solemn news a few days later—that Vanessa was the town’s latest missing person and nobody had any clue where she had gone—I expected Jerry to be devastated.
Around here, the worst-case scenarios are the ones that usually end up being true, and Jerry knew that better than anyone. Yet when I broke the news about Vanessa, he barely reacted at all. Instead, he shrugged and made a quip about how we’re all disappearing, only at different speeds, then he clocked in and went to work like it was no big deal. Of course, that was before the small town rumor mill started doing what it does worst.
They showed up the first time a few days after her disappearance. When they arrived at the gas station, they wore masks and carried guns. I stayed inside while they spray painted their message across the front of the building.
They didn’t come in, and it was all over in less than thirty seconds. When they had gone, I called Deputy O’Brien before going outside to read what they’d written.
It was one word:
“KILLER.”
Soon, the rumors and accusations had made their way into every corner of town, and for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t the biggest social pariah in our community.
They came out again a few days later with the same message, blaring country music at maximum volume while the designated artist defaced our store. And again, a few days after that. Each visit, they were in less of a hurry to leave, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were working their way up to something that couldn’t be fixed with paint remover.
It was with this in mind that I looked over at my coworker. He was sitting on his crate with a controller in one hand, throwing back his seventh or eighth beer. I knew he must have seen Vanessa’s name on the cartridge before he plugged it in, but he made no effort to hide it.
Considering how it had started, this night had been surprisingly lowkey so far, and I didn’t want to make things uncomfortable, but I couldn’t help but feel like I should address the elephant in the room.
“You know, for the record, I don’t think it’s weird that you have Vanessa’s game.”
He gave me a puzzled stare. “What?”
“I noticed that we’re playing a game that belonged to Vanessa. I think there are plenty of valid reasons why you would end up in possession of her stuff shortly after she went missing. And I don’t think it’s suspicious at all.”
I could tell that was a swing and miss. But Jerry just chuckled and said, “Nah, it is a little weird when you word it like that.”
“Right. Of course.”
We sat in silence while he went through the main menu to set up a new two-player game in versus mode. I kept my mouth shut until after we finished the first match. I didn’t want to say anything then, but I couldn’t shake the urge to attempt some damage control.
“Hey, I want you to know that I don’t think you’re a killer.”
“Thanks,
” he responded immediately. “I don’t think you’re a killer, either. The PP7 is garbage; you need to switch to a better weapon because I just beat you with the broken controller.”
“No, I meant in real life. I don’t think you killed Vanessa.”
Okay, upon immediate review, I definitely should not have said that.
I could feel his eyes on me now.
“Thanks?”
Instead of shutting up, I kept digging. “I mean, I know you were one of the last ones to see her, and everybody in town thinks it was you who killed her, but I’m not even sure she’s dead, you know?”
“Uh huh.”
For some reason, I just couldn’t turn it off. It was like an alien force had taken over my body while I was forced to sit there and watch. I was fascinated and horrified by the words coming out of my mouth.
“Because, seriously, I don’t see you killing anybody. Even though you were a member of that murder cult. I don’t think you would. Not that you couldn't. I mean, I think you were more than capable of doing it. I bet you probably have all the requisite tools and technical know-how to be an awesome serial killer if that’s what you wanted to do. But I don’t think it’s your style to befriend someone and play video games with them and then murder them and steal their game. Or at least, if you did, you probably wouldn’t keep it a secret. You’d be much more likely to brag about it.”
I took a breath, quickly reviewed everything I’d just said, and decided that now would be a great time to shut up.
Tales From the Gas Station 2 Page 2
