“Tanks empty, we’ve got to stop here,” my brother Jonas says and pulls into a gas station.
“Looks sketchy,” I say, eying the old man working the cash register. His hair is white and oily, exploding from the leathery, tanned skin of his head. He takes breaks from staring at me by emptying the brown sludge of his chewing tobacco into a spittoon.
“Looks sketchy,” I say, eying the old man working the cash register. His hair is white and oily, exploding from the leathery, tanned skin of his head. He takes breaks from staring at me by emptying the brown sludge of his chewing tobacco into a spittoon.
“Crazy old bastard,” Jonas whispers. The old man, with a faded blue shirt, thin muscle shirt underneath, wiry chest hair, and perma-stained greasy fingernails sits atop his chair, staring at us as subjects in his next anthropological essay, Cross Country Yuppies.
I hear a dusty red pickup scream off the interstate, swerving into a parking spot beside the shop. The trucks door swings open and two pointy cowboy boots grind their soles in the gritty dirt. I see a man hop out, tall and slender, with slicked back hair underneath his ten gallon hat. “He’s holding a gun,” I whisper to Jonas. Twenty feet away from me the man fingers his wild-west style revolver, loading the chambers with ammunition. I hear him click the hammer and start towards the old man. “Give me the cash!” he says pointing his gun at the old man. “Hell no!” the old man replies, staring straight into the distance, poised, ready to reach for his gun.
“Is he going to-”
“Hey,” Jonas says, “be cool, or,” he stops and runs his pointer finger across his neck.
“Last time,” the man yells.
“I already told you,” the old man says. The robber fires and I hear the shot echo over the flat, shrubby plains. I see it hit the old man in the head. His body, skin sagging off his bones, falls off his chair, and hits the ground with a thump. I look into his dead eyes, staring off to infinity, now forever.
Jonas still has the gas pump in the car, “Leave! Now!” the man says, firing two shots in the air. Jonas pulls the pump out, nozzle locked open, spreading gas everywhere. “I said, get out!” the man shouts, firing another shot, now running towards us.
“Quick,” Jonas screeches, and we manage to scramble into the car, the man’s cowboy boots clicking ever closer to us. I slam the door shut, “Go, go, go!”
He fires again, blowing out our back window and we peel out onto the interstate. I look in the rear-view mirror. The station is up in flames. “Look,” I say to Jonas and the engines wine turns into a sultry purr.
“The gunshots provided the spark,” he says, staring into the rearview, “he’s burning alive.” I turn my head around to see the inferno with my own eyes.
“I’ve never seen a dead man before.”
“Or a robbery.”
“Should we report it?” I ask.
“You think that place had cameras?”
“No, I don’t,”
“Let it be,” Jonas reassures me, “Let it be.”
