Stumblin' IN
“Little bit-a-lucks all you need,” she’d say, words falling out around a cigarette dangling from the corner of her overly glossed mouth.
Every Sunday, she used that exact penny, rusted and thinned from her thumb and pointer finger, left resting in the ashtray on its off days. Small strips of foiled silver flaked away, fluttered and settled.
“You’re my good luck charm, baby,” she’d drawl before lifting the card slowly, just below his chin, “now blow.”
It was an eager feeling, a little sickening. As if the way he’d decide to breathe would change the outcome. If he wanted it badly enough, perhaps the numbers could rearrange themselves.
So, he’d close his eyes and blow.
Then he’d blink himself back to reality. She’d stare, just for a moment, at the suddenly cheap-looking scratch ticket in her hand and then back to him with a small smile.
The outcome never changed, only wasted money.
His mom was the same person she always feared she might be—a loser.
And he was what he suspected he was all along—unlucky.
Twenty years later and she’s died with nothing, and he’s still trying to prove his worth with a penny and a scratch ticket against the steering wheel.
The dash blinks a pale green “10:14 PM.”
He picks this gas station for its calm. It sits sturdily, five miles out of town, with the same leather-faced attendant whose taken up residence on the creaking stool behind the register for 40-some years.
Headlights occasionally pass behind, always into town, never out. Otherwise, it’s just the buzz of the outdoor ice cooler and the occasional tune drifting from, presumably, leather-faced man’s trailer out behind the station.
On this night, there’s one other vehicle taking up space in the parking lot. It’s not all that odd, doesn’t make him feel any particular sort of way. It’s a small red truck with a woman in it. She lights up a cigarette as he stashes the disappointment of a scratched card into the endless pile in the console. It reminds him of the cigarette pack in his glove compartment.
So, he picks one out, lights it, and breathes through the open window.
He’s not sure how many weeks it’s been when he finds the red truck back in that spot. The last spot on the right.
A book is settled against the steering wheel. A cigarette rests between the fingers of the hand she uses to turn the pages. She doesn’t spare him a glance as he shoves his hand in his pocket and scrunches himself back into the low car. The ticket is halfway scratched when he notices a melody settling around him.
Eyes closed, she murmurs along to a song he can almost hear through their open windows.
“Our love is a flame, burning within
Now and then firelight will catch us
Stumblin’ in
You were so young, ah, and I was so free
I may have been young, but, baby, that’s not what I wanted to be
Well, you were-”
She cuts it short, stashes the book in the backseat, shifts into gear and pulls away.
He notes the time, 9:57 PM, Thursday.
It’s 9:42 when he’s plucking a water bottle from the coolers the following Thursday. According to a book in the dustiest corner of the library, the last time they saw a heat wave like this was June 23rd, 1968. The entire town sticks and groans with it.
He lets the coolness rest against his palm before pressing it against his forehead.
“If you’re going to stand there all night, and I wouldn’t blame ya if you did, at least pass me one.”
His shoe squeaks against the cracked tile floor. Outside, the empty red truck idles. Inside, a brunette challenges him with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow over lightly wrinkled green eyes. He passes her the bottle that’s collected most of the sweat from his skin, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Just flashes a grin, genuine and white, and starts toward the counter.
“Howard,” she throws out casually as she slides the bottle to Leather-Face. Then the door chimes, and he’s left counting change against the counter—just enough for water and a scratch.
Two Thursdays from that one, they’ve both got their windows rolled. It’s not the same oppressive heat, but it’s warm nonetheless, even with the sun mostly set.
This time, she’s parked only one space away. He thinks she’s listening to the same song from before or something that sounds similar. The silver foil falls away and presents nothing. He lights up a cigarette to match the one she has hanging from her window.
“Hiding?”
It’s not startling exactly, but the way she’s looking at him, pointed, interested, open, it’s something different.
“Hmm?”
She uses her cigarette to point to his—“Filthy habit,” she laughs.
It’s hearty and rich. A voice below sea level.
“Yeah, I guess. You?”
“Hiding?”
“Sure.”
She shrugs, “Maybe.”
Her eyes go back to her book, and silence falls between them again for a time that could be minutes but may have been an hour.
She shifts into gear, “Same time next week?” she calls, and he nods only because he’s not sure what else to do.
For weeks, they leave the designated space between them, sometimes they talk, and sometimes they don’t.
He can’t decide on anything that passes through his mind about her. She dresses like a rancher, all buttoned-up shirts tucked into jeans, but she’s always clean. She wears earrings and rings and bracelets, and makeup, he’s sure. She’s not too young, maybe 50, maybe 60 but her hair, dark and fairly wild in its unkempt curl, makes her hard to place.
She looks like she could be anyone’s mom but none of the moms he’s known. Maybe not a mom at all, or a wife.
He doesn’t know. He’s not sure he cares.
He’s less sure he doesn’t care.
“What’s your name?” He asks one day while he exhales through the window. She laughs so sincerely, so freely, her entire throat exposed to the night, that he can’t help but laugh right along with her.
She shrugs as she often seems to, “Isabelle,” exhale, “from Toledo.”
“You’re lying.”
“Course I’m fucking lying!” Her eyes smile with every passing word, “What’s your name?”
“Brian.”
“You’re not a Brian.”
“No, I’m not.”
A beat passes, “Best just to do it this way,” she says nowhere toward him.
At some point, they take up smoking against the outdoor cooler. The temperatures have eased, and her books have lost her interest these days.
“When’s the last time you didn’t have to be exactly who you are?” When he looks at her there, under the lights, he puts her over 60 and waits for her to continue—she always does. “You know? Whatever you are, whoever you are. You could be an accountant, a janitor, a dad, or just—I don’t know, some fucking asshole, and none of it matters to me. When’s the last time you felt that way?”
He notices that when she curses, it doesn’t sound much like a curse at all.
“The last time someone suggested I look like a fucking accountant.”
“Oh, shut up.”
He shoulders her lightly and considers they may have never touched before.
Her lips twitch once, twice, before she starts again, “I’m being serious.”
“I don’t think I think too much about who I am or who I’m not. Or pretending to be either one.”
She hums a slight sound that makes him feel small.
“Lucky you don’t have to.”
Lucky.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s time,” she takes a drag, “I don’t have that. I just have to keep being the person I’ve made myself to be. I have to keep doing exactly what I’m doing. This is it,” she gestures largely, at herself, at nothing, “There’s no other place to go. This is what I’ve got. It’s all that it is. I’m all that I’ll be.”
“Well, that’s not true? You have a truck and some sort of money, you can go, you ca-”
She looks at him fully, completely, “I can’t.”
For two months, she doesn’t show up.
“Your hair’s getting too long,” it’s a disapproving grimace, staring him down between the too-sweet vitamin waters and the energy drinks.
“My wife wanted me to grow it out.”
“You have a wife?”
“No.”
She sighs, “Sometimes this game is fun. Sometimes it’s not.”
The weather turns in the next few weeks, so they go in on a carton together, sometimes he brings two beers, no more, and they begin smoking in her truck.
He works the extinguished butt between his fingers, “How old are you?”
A smile and a laboured sigh, “Not part of the rules.”
“Oh, come on. What difference does it make if I know how old you are?”
She thinks, “62.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she laughs mirthlessly, “really.”
“I’m 32.”
“My son is 32.”
He thinks for a second because it doesn’t feel like much of a lie, “You fucking with me?”
“Not about that.”
“What’s he like?”
She shakes her head and turns on the radio.
He starts to suspect he’ll see her someplace. Begins placing her as the woman turning out of the aisle at the grocery store or the one he’s just passed in line at the bank. Every second glance confirms what he already knows to be true. It’s not her.
The local bulletin board, grey and worn inside the diner, always has a new paper here, a flyer there, people looking for ranch hands, labourers.
Jim & Annetta Clark - J&A Holdings
Anthony & Sarah Bouvier - White Swan Farms
Clark & Brigitte Williams - Cedar River Ranch
Kirk & Diane Simmons - Bracken Hill
He tries to place her in all of them, but they slip over his idea of her like an ill-fitting sweater.
“You know this is weird, right?”
She’s just finished explaining the way she feels about a song that used to play in a bar she liked to dance in, and he relishes in a moment of knowing her before realizing he doesn’t.
She shakes her head and narrows her eyes, “What is?”
“This.” He points the lit end of his cigarette toward her and then himself, “You and me.”
“Why? We’re not doing anything wrong.”
“I didn’t say we’re doing anything wrong. I’m just saying it’s weird. We show up at a gas station every week to see each other, and I don’t know your name.”
She sighs with the annoyance of someone who doesn’t want to have this conversation, and he resents her for it. Because he’s never asked her to have this conversation despite how totally fucking reasonable that would be.
“I don’t think it’s that weird.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not. I don’t.”
“You don’t leave here and wonde-”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“No, I don’t leave here and wonder about you.”
She isn’t there next Thursday.
Or the next.
Or the next.
Leather-faced Howard hands him his scratch ticket, and he turns back toward the emptied parking lot.
He’s not really sure he wants to do this for the fourth week in a row—take the scratch ticket back to his car, take a spare quarter to it, light a cigarette, pretend he’s not glancing sidelong at the space she should be.
“Howard?” The man looks up through worn, tired eyes and seems completely unphased by his name being uttered by a man who should be a stranger, “Have you seen her?”
“Who?”
“The woman I meet here sometimes. Red truck.”
“Oh, Maggie.” He swallows so hard he almost doesn’t hear the next sentence, “Nah, has to be busy with everything’n’ll.”
“Mmm,” he nods, “Something happen?” He shrugs. Town chatter, just two people discussing their neighbours down the way.
“Holt’s heart attack. Didn’t ya hear? With the boy gone, really no one else to take on all the work.”
“Right.” He nods because he doesn’t think he can say anymore, but there it is anyway, “How long’s it been now?”
“Memory ain’t too good, but, accident must’ve been two years ago now? Funeral was late, last spring.”
He nods again. Howard settles himself back onto the stool.
The door chimes as he lets himself out, back into the emptiness of the parking lot.
He settles himself against the cooler and places the ticket on the top. Silver flakes up against the ridges of his coin and reveals a 13 underneath.
Unlucky.
He folds himself back into his car and thinks of a man named Holt. He thinks of a woman named Maggie whose son is dead and whose husband maybe could’ve been—who closes her eyes during the ballads of love songs written and sung in the 70s, and smiles to a stranger who doesn’t know just how unlucky it feels to be her.
He shifts the car into gear, pulls out from the parking lot and onto the highway, and back toward his empty apartment 5 miles away.