Walking 275

Walking 275

           

            “Do you see that,” Mary asks me, pointing through the cloudy plexi-glass window behind the cash register.  It’s Tuesday morning and our truck delivery has just arrived.  It’s my least favorite day to work, but as the assistant manager of the Shell station, I have to be here to make sure that everything we ordered arrives as it should.  The items we stock on our shelves – motor oil, bags of potato chips, candy bars and chewing tobacco, among others, come in green plastic totes that always remind me of the old school recycling bins from my old neighborhood. 

            This gas station is in the suburbs, which means I don’t know anyone, which means I’ve taken the liberty of reinventing myself once again.  I’ve been working here part time for the last eighteen months, evenings mostly, and every Sunday except that one I called off when we had the Christmas house party.  It’s a reasonable gig, and helps pad my wallet.  My other job is peddling second hand designer clothes at a resale shop up the road.  It’s tedious, but I get a good discount, which helps to fund my obsession with fashion.  It’s hard living hood rich.

            I look out the window as well as I can between the rows of cigarettes and advertisements for beer prices.  There’s a man with a pack walking up the exit ramp from interstate 275.  I can barely make out his face, but from what I can tell, he looks tired.

            “What, you mean that dude right there,” I ask nodding my chin toward the man’s frame.

            “No I mean the giant snake coming out of the gas pump.”  Mary has a way of being a bitch without intending.  It used to get to me, but now, I take it in stride.

            “Maybe his car broke down or something,” I respond and return to checking in the order.  A good Polish Catholic girl, Mary has six kids, all under the age of ten.  She’s tired and worn and it shows when she smiles.  Her upper front teeth are decayed and rotting, so when she does smile, she always puts her hand over her mouth.  She’s ashamed of the life she lives, but she shouldn’t be.

            Mary continues to stare as I continue to work.  This is the sort of relationship we have. 

            “Shawna, look, he’s crossing the street to come over here.” 

            I don’t know why Mary is so excited.  This is a gas station, not a fancy spa.  We see all types of people coming in here, though most are the yuppies that live in the area.  There are the Russians of course, who work for Sasha doing roofing work.  Most of them are illegal and we pretend we don’t know.

            “So?”  I know I sound terse.  I’m tired. 

            “Well, what do you think his story is?”  Mary usually isn’t so concerned with anyone who comes in; she’s usually cut and dry, earning her a reputation with our customers of being no-nonsense.

            “Mary, why do I care?  And can you stop looking out that window to help me unload this order?  This shit isn’t going to magically go on the shelves.”  I’m her superior, and I rarely pull rank, but I’m annoyed.

            Sighing, Mary leaves her stool from behind the counter and comes to help me.  Two aisles over, she starts stocking big name chips and humming an old Gram Parson’s song.  I know the melody but don’t join in because I want to remain pissed off.

            The door chimes and we both look up, assuming we know who is going to walk in.

            Instead of the man with the pack, it’s Miss Dee, the retired alcoholic who lives in the condos behind the store. 

            “Hi girls,” she calls from the doorway.  “Just here for my apple juice.”  Miss Dee told me once that her husband Glen has no idea that she drinks.  I resisted laughing in her face because I knew it would hurt her.  When she comes for her Foster’s in the oil cans, she always buys a bottle of apple juice.  She shoves the beer deep in her satchel of a purse and walks out with the juice.  If Glen doesn’t know she drinks after forty years of marriage, then I have no faith in humanity.

            Miss Dee walks to the beer cooler and pulls out two cans.  “How you doin, Mary,” she asks as Mary screams and runs out into the parking lot.  I look up from the candy aisle to see the man with the pack lying on the broken asphalt near pump number four.  I drop the box of Twix bars I was holding and run outside.

            “Shawna, I watched it, I saw the whole thing.  He was crossing the street and looked like he was out of breath, and then he got here, and just fell on the ground.” 

            I look at the man as he slowly turns ashen.  His skin is grey.

            “Miss Dee, call 911,” I yell over my shoulder, leaning down to the man.  It’s not summer, and the air is cool, but beads of sweat crest his dark hairline.  He reeks like he hasn’t had a shower in weeks.  Mary stands, towering over his body, unsure what to do.

            I smack his face a few times on the right cheek.  “Hey man, wake up,” I loudly say to him.  He doesn’t respond.

            “Look, he moved a finger,” Mary proclaims, as if it means he’s going to live.

            I look more closely at his face and find something familiar in the shape of his brow, the crest of the vermillion border of his lips.  His eyelids begin to flutter, and I realize Mary might be more perceptive than I am.  She has six kids after all and is probably used to crisis moments.  All I have is a fish who doesn’t create many high tension moments.

            Miss Dee comes out to stand next to Mary.  Glen gets out of the car and together, the four of us form a circle around the man lying supine on the ground. 

            “Take his pack off,” Glen commands.  I’ve never heard him speak and am surprised at the authority in his voice.

            Mary and I begin to remove his pack and a gnawing feeling of something I can’t place begins chewing at the base of my neck.  The guy looks like someone I know, or at least, I think he does.  I can’t tell because I can’t see his eyes.  And everyone knows that the eyes show the true nature of a person.  We struggle with the stained canvas pack, but finally remove it from him.  He looks more comfortable once it’s off of his back. 

            I hear the ambulance in the distance.  I haven’t looked up to see if there’s anyone in the store, so it could have easily been robbed blind by those snotty suburb kids who always try to use fake id’s to buy beer.  I don’t care.  As the ambulance pulls into the gas station lot, the man begins to murmur.  When I hear his voice, I realize who he is.

            The EMS team approaches cautiously but with authority.

            “Anyone know who he is, or how he got here,” a pudgy balding forty-something man asks us.  Miss Dee and Glen look at one another, then to me and Mary.  They shrug their shoulders and Mary shakes her head.  I nod.

            “I do.  I know who he is.  His name is Willy and he’s my cousin.”