An impatient fly tapped against the glass of the door and the old fan spun, struggling against the heat, like a swimmer against a current. I sat behind the counter of the family minute market waiting for closing time and watching a cortege of ants traffic across the counter and into a candyjar where a few pieces of licorice lay like red soldiers left wounded on some foreign battlefield. Boy oh boy, was I pissed. Momma out shopping with Bo and Dad playing cards down at Jim's while I was stuck in that godforsaken market as the heat settled in like a squatter and the stench of heated, spoiling food giving me a headache that was pushing terrifically at my eyes. I was missing a date with Missy Turner, for God's sake! Very same Missy Turner who'd shown every guy in town a real good time and I'm seventeen and boy oh boy, it's high time someone gave me a good time cause I don't wanna die a virgin now that they're talking about a draft to go into Hanoi up on Capitol Hill.
The radio was going. It drawled and fuzzed, growing cultures of static like mold on a peach.
Dimpled sunlight mulled through the store and I spun around in the swivel chair behind the counter and played with the cash register. There were racks of bubblegum and cigarettes and cases of fruit – apples mushy as bad romances and oranges with sad, wrinkled faces that stared outside and contemplated the sunset – and I tried my luck at the old, venerated pinball machine we have in the corner which slumped and gaped and complained, spitting out its reluctant ball that whorled and tented around the face of the machine like a great, orbitless planet.
Eight o'clock closing time.
Pretty much everything in Hanson closed at eight o'clock. It was a righteous, upstanding town, with only one bar (which closed later, around ten) and no library. Landlocked by gulfs of wheat and corn – the wheatheads nodding and excited by the sunlight, bright-headed as altarchildren, and the corn with their tassels and their secretive, discrete bundles. A big, old farmtown. I was pretty sure as hell that no one would be coming by the minute market at seven thirty and I had half a mind to abandon my post and see if I couldn't scrounge up the truck and Missy and hit the road for a bigger town and good time.
Raffles of leaves were coming down from the two smooth-bodied oaks we had out front and the evening was still and uncontested. Ragged sunlight peered in like a voyeur. Up the road I could hear the cough and throttle of a diesel engine. Overheated, clearing its throat like an orator. A truck with peeling red paint and a sad, broken headlight stuttered to halt outside the market, popbanging, with rubbed, potbellied djinnis of exhaust pouring from the tailpipe. A tall man stepped out of the car and slammed the door and popped the hood of the truck, exposing the oily intelligence of the vehicle. I spat into the trashcan and shook my head and checked the clock.
No deserting my post tonight.
I walked outside. I could smell the overheated engine and the oncoming night. The sleepless, unbroken headlight on the truck stared nervously down the road and I could see two big trash bags of garbage riding in the back. The man was digging around in the engine, scooping wires and tubes out of the way like the guts of a jackolantern.
Flotillas of clouds amassed on the horizon, a northbound navy.
“Sounds like you're out of coolant, mister,” I said.
He grunted. “Got a place I could fill up then?”
“Sure. Got a hose right here. Where're you headed?”
“Out of this godawful town is for sure.”
I walked over to the hose with my hands in my pockets. “Mister,” I said. “You and me both.”
The hose was all curled up and sunning like heavy-necked serpent and I dragged it along the gravel to the truck, which was ticktickticking with heat. I took a good look at the man as I handed him the hose. Sun-preached face, hair matted and unwashed, and, like his truck, he only had one good eye, the other one whitewashed and pitiless, like an unclothed moon. His hands were black with oil. He smelled of cigarettes and breathmints.
I had seen him before, it felt like.
He seemed like a regular face.
“Thanks, kid.”
“No problem.”
He opened the coolant lid and stuck the hose in and nodded at me. I turned the water on and the man settled against the car. “You running that store?”
“Sure.”
“You got oranges?”
“They were at one point...”
“I might just have to buy a pound or two.”
“Sure thing. When you're done, just come on in.”
“Maybe some liquor, too. I'm so godawfully thirsty.”
Where had I seen him before?
He screwed the radiator cap back on and tossed me the hose and slammed down the hood. We walked into the store. The butler-faced oranges watched us come in, grumpy with spotted chins. I got the man a paper bag and he but shoveled in six oranges. Some warbling singer blistered through the radio and the man went to the back for a bottle of Jack Daniels, white-bodied flourescent lights in the refrigerator humming like tattletales.
He walked up to the counter, the blind-eye still and crossways. I couldn't help staring at it. It gave me these empty chills in my stomach and made me squirm in my seat.
“That'll be it?”
He nodded and plunked the bottle and the bag of oranges on the counter. “What's a smooth lookin kid like yourself doin playing bag boy on a saturday night?”
“There sure as hell ain't anyone else gonna do it,” I said. He gave me three dollar bills, limp and green, like sick tongues offered for a doctor's inspection.
He smirked.
“I bet there aint much of a night life in Hanson, is there?”
I laughed. “Buddy, there aint much life here, period. My folks' idea of a real helluva time is to go down to barbershop on a friday night and get their hair cut together. Boy oh boy, if I'd half a mind I'd hop in that truck with you and hitch a ride all the way to Mexico if that's what it took to get some fresh air.”
“Nah, I got some business tonight,” said the man. He paused and looked off. “But any other night, though.”
I gave him his change.
“You should probably stop next twenty miles in White City and fill up with some more water.”
He nodded. “Thanks, kid.”
“No problem.”
The man walked out and started his car. The headlight's gnomish face scowling down the road. The dark swallowing in and spoil-bellied fireflies appeared, low and meek as footnotes. He drove off and I looked at the clock. Five minutes until eight. I turned to lock the cashbox and I took off my apron to hang it on the peg behind the counter. As I did, I caught a glance of the wrinkled FBI wanted posters pinned up and saw the face of the man with the bad eye and overheated truck, scowling down at me.
Frank Dent is wanted on nineteen counts of murder in Hanson County, Nebraska. Considered armed and extremely dangerous.
I just stared at it.
I stared at it and held my breath and listened to the sound of Frank Dent's truck fade into the belly of the night and wondered what was really in those garbage bags.
