The Devil Drives a Thunderbird

A pad of paper on the dashboard. Three tally-lines through the middle. Stopwatch counting down from twenty-seven minutes.

           The man gets out of his car and shuts the door behind him. He mutters a quick goodbye to the passenger and walks head down towards the white light of the gas station. The bell chimes. Lemon freshener and the smell of sweet breads. Clerk in the back aisle lost in his music. A remix of Counting Stars. Something to get the limbs moving and brain-wires firing. Something to get through the graveyard shift.

Another clerk stands behind the counter stiff and tall. His name is on display: Hi, I’m Alan. Alan looks like he’s just smoked a pack and he’s trying to hide it. His gaze juvenile and directed out of the storefront window to the man’s wagon. It’s a fresh-set of wheels: a Ford Thunderbird with a white band through the black middle-exterior, a ride-or-die sticker plastered on the hood, and a two-spoke steering wheel with iron horns poking out the ends. Alan’s gawking at the ride. That, or the goth chick in the passenger seat. She’s re-applying her gun-bore black lipstick in the rear-view mirror, tugging on the sleepy strap of her red bra. She crosses her legs.

Artisan: the man’s teeth.

Product: torn fishnets.

She’s looking. The man winks at his passenger.

Back to Alan. He manually closes his gaped mouth and musses back his curly thick hair.

“Sweet ride, boss,” he says.

“Sure is.” The man smiles. His hand runs to the back of his jeans where his pocket watch lies. A silver-plated antique crested with a leering skull. It’s minutes count by twenty-three and the man knows the number without even looking. He knows by instinct, how a junkie knows what hit will get them snoring or screaming. “Let me get a pack of these.” He picks up two boxes of PleasureMax from the counter and slides them to Alan. “And a packet of Marlboros. Give me the mint ones. I’m feeling alive tonight.”

“Yes, boss.”

The man looks to the other worker who still hasn’t looked up. He’s mouthing words down the stick-end of the mop, probably onstage in the Royal Albert with his crush in the front row.

“Here you are,” says Alan. He slides the cigarettes to the man and inputs the price into the machine. “That’ll be thirty-six fifty, boss.”

The man pulls out a Bad Mofo wallet – the same one Jules Winnfield stakes his life on in Pulp Fiction – and hands over a fifty.

Alan takes the bill, opens up the register and begins picking change. The man is surveying the space how a robber might square up a storefront before the big hit. Three aisles in the middle of the room, each to their own with cheap confectionary and cheaper food. The backwall is where Ryan Tedder mouths his heart out, right in front of the chillers and their cooled drinks and frozen lollies.

“Here you are,” says Alan, reaching over with the change.

The man loads the money into his wallet but falters. He smiles, slowly shaking his head. “Be a good kid,” he says. “Toss in a stick of gum, would you.”

“Sure, boss.” He begins tapping in the numbers on his screen.

“No no. On the house,” the man says with a wink.

           Alan catches his hand before confirming the sale. It’s the third time he’s been asked to give something away for free. The first was a drunk with a rat-tail moustache. He’d been sniffing around for another drink. Alan said no. He’s a good worker. He follows the ten commandments of working in a gas station. Number one: thou shalt not give freebies to those intoxicated. No matter how intoxicated.

           The second time was a woman with a face you’d find in Vogue and a body for the catwalk. She was itching for an unfair cashback. Alan said no. Commandment two clearly states: thou shalt not give freebies to those extremely good looking. No matter how good looking.

           But this man just asked for a stick of gum. It’s no alcohol or an unethical amount of money. Just a stick of gum. And no commandment mentioned anything about people like this. People with sick rides. Or maybe it was just how the man looked at Alan. There was something about his eyes. They were wild, searching. But they’ve settled now. They’re staring. Alan catches his breath.

           He hands the stick of gum over the counter.

           The man smiles and points up to the sky.

           “Thanks. I feel something lucky coming your way, kid. You’ve got someone looking out for you.” He snatches the gum and his hand searches for the pocket watch.

           Twenty-one minutes and counting.

           He walks away and leaves the store with a dismissive goodbye wave. The bell rings and Alan watches the man lope back to his car. He finally breathes out.

           The man gets into his car and pops a stick of Ice into his mouth.

           “Are we leaving yet?” asks the girl.

           “Not yet. We’ve still got twenty minutes to kill.”

           He looks at her smiling. She smiles back.

A 1988 Grand Jeep Wagoneer shoots down the US-89 North. Behind the wheel is the man with a bottle, slugging back shots with one arm out of the window. Next to him is another fella with a notebook. Its spine is splayed and the left page is tomorrows shopping list: ground beef, tinned corn, anti-bacterial wipes… the usual. On the right page are quotes from late stoics.

           The drinker wipes his mouth and cranks up the radio. Tears blur his vision. He falls into Fleetwood Mac’s comforting words about how there will be no more crying and how the sun will always be shining. But right now, there is no sun, only the iron moon as it watches from six hours high. He offers his drink to Hollis who refuses with a passive hand gesture.

           “Lookee here, Doug,” says Hollis, pointing at his notebook. “Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been. Marcus Aurelius said it first – king of stoicism.” He taps his head. “It’s all up here. It’s what your mind makes of it. If you choose not to feel heartbroken, it takes the weight off you.”

           Doug sails back a mouthful and wipes his face with the heel of his hand. “But I was heartbroken. I didn’t choose to feel this way. You think I chose to be binned off outside of an Arby’s? Hell, Hollis, there were families watching. Kids were there. I lost my composure in front of everyone. And the songbirds are singing… I love you, I love you…”

           Hollis watches the speedometer needle climb into the one-thirties.

           “Oh, Doug, I wish you’d give me that bottle.”

           Hollis values his friends more than he does his own life. Even when said friend smells like the ass-end of a wine house and happens to be manning a four-wheeled motorised vehicle of death. But Hollis didn’t know what he had gotten himself into when he stepped inside of the car.

Doug swung around his apartment a little past twelve in the AM and blared down on the horn until the whole complex was awake. Hollis, sensing the fraying lifeline of his friend, brought with him his book of knowledge and got into the car without spotting the half-emptied bottle of bug’s juice. The next moment they were hopping states in search of new love and new life. At least Doug was. Hollis was to be up at six the next morning for the paper mill. But the time just hit 2:52 a.m. and getting up in three hours was looking less and less likely.

           “What the hell does this Marcus Orealis know about love anyway,” says Doug, looking Hollis straight in the face.

           “Eyes on the road!”

           The car shakes and swerves back on track.

           “I mean, he never met Amy. He never saw how beautiful she was. He never saw her in that pink little cardigan… that pretty pink little cardigan she wears and her two little rabbity teeth. Those cute little teeth…” he wipes his tears. Hollis sinks back into his seat, clutching the cord of his seatbelt.

           “Think about it, Doug. If you don’t slow down, you won’t see any pink cardigan again for the rest of your life. You’ll be dead, Doug. And I will be, too. Please tell me you can hear me.”

           “I’m dead inside, Hollis. I’m rotting. I’ve been eaten goddamn alive. Just let me be and let me drive.” He turns up the radio and floods the car with wavering vocals and gentle guitar.

           Hollis searches through the long line of quotes. “Those things that hurt, instruct. Benjy Franklin. It’s a lesson, Doug. All a lesson.” He shouts over the radio, unknowing whether these words are being received. “She was just a… a bad teacher, is all. Or maybe the best one you ever had.”

           “I’m not ready to learn again. I’m too old for learning. I should know every damn thing by now.”

           He squeezes the wheel and wishes he could pull it from its hinges, wishes that he could fly into the sky and that the unending weight he feels inside his body would lift.

           What he doesn’t know is that a gas station lies two minutes ahead of them. And that stood in the middle of the road beneath the luminescent glow of the, Buy One Get One Free Slim Jim sign, is a figure coated in black with a sun-chalk light falling over his face.

The man pulls his lips away from the girl. She still holds his face in her hands.

           “Is it time already?” she asks.

           He pulls the stopwatch out from his pocket and looks into the glass. “Just under two minutes,” he says. Both of them look to the piece of paper on the dashboard. Three straight lines waiting to be crossed out.

           “Fine,” she says. “I’ll wait here.”

           “I won’t be long. You can come in if you want.”

           “You know I don’t like what you do.”

           “That’s ok, honey. You just wait here.”

           He steps outside and shrugs his arms, balling his hands and pressing them into his spine until his back cracks. A pair of headlights gleam in the distant. They’re boiling through the black faster than expected. He turns back to the girl. She’s watching him. He winks at her before walking out onto the road.

“Pull over there,” says Hollis, pointing to the gas station in the near distance. “I need to take a leak. Please, Doug, I’m gonna piss myself.”

           “And I need a woman who won’t leave me.” His tone has shifted from despair to hopelessness. “I need… something. A sign, you know. Maybe someone to tell me, hey Doug, it’s gonna be alright.”

           “Hey, Doug. It’s gonna be real fine and dandy until I piss all over your leather.”

           A glancing figure moves through the darkness. Hollis catches it, tracing the shape with his finger. “You see that, Doug? Something went into the road.”

           Doug hasn’t seen anything for the past three kilometres. The straight road is providence to his blindness. Blind with tears and all the other hard-hewn feelings. His eyes glisten like two coins at the bottom of a well.

           “Uh, Doug, slow it down now. I ain’t kiddin’ around. I think someone’s in the road. Slow it – SLOW IT DOWN!”

           The headlights rear over the body of a man. He’s stood centred in the road with his arms stretched in front of him.

           The bug’s juice is gnawing at Doug’s brain and has taken his limbic nervous system for a hike. It won’t be returning for several working days. In the split-second Hollis has, he drops his book of knowledge and throws himself into the driver’s seat, knocking Doug to the door and sending the wheel into a left spin.

           And before the eternal darkness, Hollis sees the man’s face. The headlight brings shadows under his eyes, brings shadows to his grin. Not just a grin, but a leer. Staring, finding.

           The car spins and sails headlong into the storefront window.

The man ducks under a sloping lintel and brushes debris from the collar of his jacket. Dust-stacks choke the air and motes of grit soon part before the walking figure. The three shelves fold into one broken mass where the face of the car has been compressed. One body slopes out from the broken windshield. Miraculously, somehow rested on the remains of their lap, is a whole notebook. The man steps over this body and picks up the book. He looks through it, smirks, and stuff it into his back pocket. He pokes the body with his foot.

           They died on impact.

           The man pulls the tallied paper from his jacket and strikes out two lines. He walks further through the shop and finds the singing clerk flattened, leaking red into the spiderwebbed glass of the shattered chillers. The man strikes out the final line.  

           “You,” says a voice.

           The man turns and sees Alan cramped behind the counter among fallen cartons of cigarettes and spilled alcohol. His face is splashed with dust, hair matted to his face. Eyes shimmering, unwavering. The boy is in shock.

           The man smiles. “So you’re the lucky one. Seems you do have someone looking down on you, after all.” Someone coughs behind him. Both turn to the drunk. He’s wrestling his seatbelt, his face a cut and bloodied mess. The man looks at his paper. “It seems I made a mistake. There’s two survivors, not just one. But it’s been fated that there can only be one now.” He looks to Alan who clings nervously to the countertop, slowly swaying, twitching. Then to the drunk who still wrangles his seatbelt and spies the dead mess of his friend. Here comes the whimpering, the regret.

           “Alan,” says the man. He pulls out a silver coin from his jacket. One side has the tail of a serpent, the other is the skull of a goat. “I want you to call it. This is for your life.”

           Alan doesn’t move. He doesn’t register the words.

           “Alan.”

           “Huh?”

           “Heads or tails.”

           “Heads?”

           The man nods and tosses the coin. Alan watches it glide through the air and land into the man’s palm. He spins it, flattening it onto the back of his hand. The man peaks at the coin and nods again. He struts over the debris and pulls out his wallet, untangles a five-dollar bill and slaps it onto the counter. “For the gum earlier.”

           Alan doesn’t speak. He avoids the man’s finding eyes. His mind switches between heads and tails, tails and heads. It still hasn’t processed entirely: the car that scathed by his body, the dead co-worker flat-pressed against the wall, and the fleeting cry of Marcus Aurelius before the final collision. He watches the man leave the shop and walk through the unlit lot. There’s choking. Alan finds the sound. The drunk in the driver’s seat is choking. He’s still fighting the seatbelt, the black snake shape that tugs against his throat. He’s been choking for a while, face bruising like the paint palette of The Starry Night.

           Alan hops the counter and he scampers to the drunk and tugs on the seatbelt creating a gap to breathe and the man fights and scratches but soon acquiesces and inhales breath and breath after –

           He hasn’t moved an inch. Alan watches from the counter. Muscles corded. His bones spun from steel, an immovable weight. He watches the man fight and worm and choke out his last breath. A trinity of lives crossed out.

           An engine growls outside. He finds the two taillights that beam carmine and light the darkness in a molten eb. The car jerks forward and starts down the road.

The girl holds the stopwatch as the man finds his keys.

           “It’s done,” she says. “Zero.”

           “Then our work is done. Where next?”

           “A residence, 42 Oak Street. Someone forgot to turn off the gas.”

The man looks one last time into the store. “Look what I found.” He opens the notebook and turns to the page of quotes.

           “What is it?”

           “I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it.”

           They look at each other and giggle. He holds out his hand and she grabs on.

“Let’s go,” he says. The car starts and peels onto the road before the engine rips and they streamline through the dark, kicking a storm of dust into the air and lighting the bumper sticker above the exhaust.

           When Death knocks, you answer.