Shannon by Joseph M Gant

It's illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey. Since 1949, there's not been one self-service station in the Garden State. I work at the Big Oil truck-stop on the turnpike where I sling diesel and gas. We're a full service station, something of a throwback to stupider times. Tips are big. I earn from good scratch hustling the window-squeegee, enough cover rent and a small pharmaceutical habit.. Being the only girl on second shift, my perky tits and “fuck-me” smiles bring in the cash; the guys resent me just a bit for that. 

I'm kicked back in my little booth, looking over yesterday's paper. Watching night descend on a truck-stop is a special thing. The travel center, populated with slack-jawed commuters and asphalt desperadoes, becomes a beacon of scum when the sun goes down. Pill-pushers and dopers are always just within shout’s reach, and the state cops are chasing hookers back out of the lots. Lot-lizards are the saddest breed of human suffering. I watch them crawl in and out of sleeper-cabs, clutching their panties and wiping their frowns. They come inside the store to buy mouthwash and Rolaids-- the calcium tablets rectify the nausea that a belly full of cum will manifest. I scribble. As the recluse sun counts the hours to dawn, they float from cab to velvet airbrushed cab on winds of numbed amphetamine and shot-bottle nostalgia, remembering the days when sex was not the slow and soporific murder of the soul. 

I'm cleaning the windshield of a green Subaru when Reggie shouts from across the lanes, “Work it white girl!” He's drunk, but works better that way. The people I work with are basically degenerates. Even the lowest, most humanly-incompatible specimens of the race deserve to work. It seems the place for ex-cons, addicts, sex fiends, and social dropouts to get a job is this gas station. To say our shift is a 'motley crew' would be polishing a turd— no, we're basically just dirt-bags. Reggie is thirty-two. He is a stout three-hundred pounds of tattooed muscle and fat, transporting a bald, black head and toothy grin. Reggie has spent nearly all of his adult years in prison, though he insists he was set up by a dirty cop and wrongfully convicted. I don't believe him; he's my juggernaut protector-- the last customer to offer me fifty bucks for a blow job got his eye-socket caved in, earned a week in the hospital.  I don't need a finger on the rape-whistle when Reggie’s with me. He's extra gay. Though, no one alive in this backwater county is privy to that fact. 

Three weeks ago a girl was kidnapped from our parking-lot. Snatched up and taken three states away, all inside of two hours. The cops only found her by mistake-- they stopped the truck for a dragging tail-pipe, and the kid called out for help. The driver had a rap    for killing two girls in Memphis-- I'll leave it at that. So, I don't mind if Reggie is a bit overzealous in his de facto bodyguard role. It's a fucked up world, and South Jersey is the arrant armpit of the beast.

This time of the year toward October's end, the deer get crazy. The turnpike becomes littered with carcasses and each year bad accidents are caused by deer strikes. My ass is dragging this Friday night, and I pop three addies before my shift just to put some life in my eyes. Cars are lined up six at each pump with more turnpike-slurry feeding the chute. It looks to be a busy night. Gotta make some money.

I’m pumping six-hundred dollars worth of diesel into a Chinese bus headed for Atlantic City when I notice a customer with Texas tags at my other pump. The woman is trying, and failing, to operate the pump herself. I hurry over, less to help and more to reprimand her flagrant illiteracy and general disregard for the laws of our retarded state. “Ma’am, that’s not a self service pump,” I point to the red sign that reads-- It’s unlawful to serve yourself. Please wait for an attendant. “Sit tight, and I’ll get you in a minute.”

“I just want some fucking gas. Why the hell should I hafta wait for someone to help me?”

“Because there is nothing at all special about you.” 

“Screw you." 

“I hope your kids get ebola.”

“Yo, fuck New Jersey.” She drives off.

An otherwise typical shift moves on. At dusk, the sky above the distant swap turns a seamless coil of purple and orange like dichroic glass in a soft-blue reduction flame, and the season's last shitty crows unfurl their cacophonous banter in the post-rush-hour stillness of the evening. I scribbling, but the Adderall is wearing off and I duck around back to light a joint. Reggie stands beside me drinking warm white zinfandel from a paper coffee cup and gazing longingly into a selfie. “Why do you stay in Salem County?” I break through his buzz with the question.

“What do you mean?”

“Every week you take two buses and a train to Philly to see a guy you'll never be able to introduce to your friends here, a guy who probably loves you more than dirt. Why do you live where you are hated?”

“I don't feel hated. What's with the drill?”

“Of course you do. Salem County hates fags, and you're biggest fag I know.” I  karate-chop his big chest and blow smoke into his eyes.

“Stop, you know I get tested for that shit.”

“But seriously, what the hell keeps you here year after shitty fucking year?”

“I don't know. Maybe it's this charming company I keep. Besides, I’ve got a career here.”

“Your shirt and hat match the trim of the building-- that’s not a career. You cling to those who’ve robbed you.”

“Robbed me?”

“It’s Faulkner.”

“ You got any new poems in that book?”

I forgive the blatant deflection of my inquisition and read:

Buckets of jizzum,

A long-handled soup ladle;

Trick-or-treat smiles.

I take a bow to his mealy-pawed applause, but our attention is diverted by the sight of a Jeep Cherokee near the garage doors. It’s hunter green with slate tinted windows and sits high on a suspension lift with thirty-three inch tires. A serious mud Jeep. Custom chrome dual exhaust-pipes jut from the rear. A bumper-sticker reads-- Zombies Eat Pussy. The passenger window lowers and the driver leans across the seat towards us. “I don't need gas, but do you have any water? Like a garden hose I can use?” A tall, thin man of roughly thirty with high cheekbones and longish, dark hair is at the helm. Hot. I'm still holding a roach between my fingers, and I flick it in a puddle while blushing at the man like a fatuous schoolgirl. I shake off the itch in my loins and compose myself; I smell the opportunity for a tip and frankly, I need the cash more than I need a date.

“Is this for your radiator?”

 He lights a cigarette with a silver Zippo, and I can see his hands tremble slightly.

“No, I hit a deer about a mile back. I just want to flush out the undercarriage-- I could smell something like burning hair and fat on the exhaust.” 

We round the front of the car when together we see the extent of the mess. “Shit,” he says, “I' need some soapy rags if you got them.”

When I return with a bucket, I tell the guy to walk off the anxiety, but he paces the same annoying steps. Dude seems pretty fucking bent over fresh venison in his grill. There is thick, dark blood across the front bumper. I turn on the pressure-washer and give a cursory blast of steaming water. I do the same underneath the vehicle, but knowing there's elbow-work to be done here, quickly move on to the bucket. With rags cut from Big Oil uniform shirts, I crawl under the high carriage of the car and spread soap as widely as I can. Furry bits of skin hang from the wheel-well and non-specific organ tissue runs the whole length of the exhaust like the deer was dragged for some time. I am picking this shit off with my fingers where needed. Diluted deer's blood runs from every corner of the chassis with each shot from the hose. Chunks of bloody bone have lodged themselves in the deep treads of the off-road tires, and I'm wedging them out with a putty knife. By the time I give a final rinsing blast, my hands are stained, my shirt is wet, and I've picked more than one piece of bone from my hair.

Reggie, who has never served a day in the military, has poured the man a cup of wine and is trying to impress him with war stories when I approach, too tired to flirt. “I got it as best as I could,” I tell him. “But I'd take it to a car-wash tomorrow to be thorough.”

“Hey thanks. You didn't have to do all that.” He hands me a ten dollar bill that I pretend not to see.

“No problem. There's just the report and we'll be done.”

“Report?”

“The Wildlife Commission requires us to report animal related accidents. You aren't in any trouble; it's for statistics only. I just need your registration number and you can go.”

“Hey listen,” he pulls me to the side. “My registration is expired. Can we forget the report? Please” He hands me two fifty dollar bills, still trembling slightly and with one eye pinned to the road on the horizon.

He drives away and I set my sights on getting clean. “Hey,” Reggie says, “you're smooth, but how did you know he'd pay you to dodge some fake ticket?”

“The inspection sticker on his front tag was expired.”

“And they call me a criminal.”

I rent a skeevy shower stall in the travel center. This one's got a spackled-over glory hole. Nice. I clean myself up and cut out early. It's quarter past ten when I pull into the driveway at home. Inside my shitty apartment, I pack a piece of hash into a the silver-fumed, skull-shaped bowl protrusion, and I light it as I turn on the ass end of the news.

… witnesses say the pedestrian, who fell from a New Jersey Turnpike overpass near the Big Oil Truck-stop today, was still alive when he hit the ground. He was dragged twenty-five yards by the off-road vehicle that struck him. A med-evac chopper from Cooper Hospital was flown out, but the man had perished from his wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police are looking for the driver of that Jeep.

Joseph M Gant is a semi-professional poet, fiction writer, and cyber activist from New Jersey. His creative work has appeared in small press and academic projects as well as books with Rebel Satori Press. His technical writing has appeared in various cybersecurity blogs. When he's not messing with Open Source and Small Press projects, he is adding to his collection of Pink Floyd bootlegs.