Aside
from the young man we call Sonny, sitting in the small hut on the far side of
the paved plaza, where he takes money and sells
cigarettes … and I’ve often wondered what else … a forty-ish woman in a halter and muddy
shorts stands on the other side of the pump I'm using. A smoking cigarette hangs from her lips as
she pumps enough high test gasoline to blow us all to Kingdom Come if a hot ash
drops down and ignites the vapors. I
find myself hoping she’ll finish up and leave.
A
small dog appears beyond the garbage cans where a dirt road comes down the
mountain to the gas station. Licking its
paws, it lies down in the dust, as if waiting for someone. Maybe for Sonny,
since his motor bike is parked over there behind the cans, just off the
pavement.
Out
on the highway, a pearl grey Chrysler New Yorker slows down and turns in to
join us, bobbing up and down on enormous springs, and swiftly bringing its
passenger to the pumps in comfort and style. From the velvet padded depths steps a man of
my height, dressed in cream colored pants, a blue striped shirt, shoes that
cost more than my riding mower, and a cream colored teardrop fedora, circled by
a black band. He is a vision, complete
with Caribbean tanned skin. Here among the bird poop and fly specked
overhead lights, turned on in the daytime for no apparent reason, I am struck by the sight of him, appearing in our midst as we go about the dirty chores of our ordinary lives. Mary the Mother of God would not have been
more impressed when the Archangel Gabriel showed up in her pantry. I almost cringe as I think of Mr. Fedora
getting any of the messiness here on his garments.
The
man looks around, as a Martian might upon landing, and then walks over to the
little hut. He might be seeking directions
and I completely understand his reasons for consulting neither myself nor Gravel
Gertie at the next pump. We may appear to him as no more than the
local fauna. He may think us incapable
of intelligent human speech.
Leaving
the man to the mercy of Sonny, I pump gas into my pickup truck and get to
thinking. Although his impeccably clean New
Yorker is certainly more impressive than
my four wheel drive pickup, he and I are really not much different. If you stood the two of us side by side in
our boxer shorts and took a snapshot, we’d look like two overweight brothers, one
better tanned perhaps. But dressed … he,
dapper in his clothes and fedora, and I, rumpled in my jeans and polo shirt …
we appear as different as night and day.
Either could have chosen the
other’s style, however. How did
the two of us come to have such different tastes? I choose LL Bean over Gucci. Even my best suits are a bit on the informal
side, Glenn Plaid instead of Banker’s
Stripes. What determines our choice of a
presentation style in life? For that’s
what it is, a show we choose to make to other people. And with very little thought about it afterward,
it becomes our habit. I suppose we could
call it misleading. But that would make how we dress more deceptive than we
mean it to be. Most of us. Most of the time.
Through
the window of the hut I see Sonny gesticulating as he speaks with the stranger. He may be providing directions. If so, I’ll bet the first leg will take the traveler
to the hamburger stand owned by Sonny’s cousin, Morris.
I
turn to my companion at the pumps, and sensing she’ll see the humor in my
question, I ask, “What’s he got that I ain’t
got?”
I
find out later she could have answered, “a gun.”
Instead,
a smile forms on her lips.
“RazMaTaz,”
she says.
I think she may mean ‘Pizzazz.’ ‘Raz Ma Taz’ means something else, I believe, but I can’t
bring it to mind. I will remember soon
enough.
Mr.
Fedora comes out from Sonny’s shack and walks to his car. He glances first up at the mountain and next
at the garbage cans overflowing onto the edge of the pavement. He looks at Gertie for what seems a long
moment. She is faced away from him and
probably doesn’t see his glance, but there appears to be a stiffness to her
bare shoulders as his gaze lies upon her.
Without even looking my way, he gets in his Chrysler and drives off, bumping
along the narrow access road out to the highway.
As
I remove my gas receipt from the pump, Gertie slams the gas nozzle into the hanger on
her pump. She flicks her cigarette over
among the garbage cans. Opening the door
of her car, about to climb in, she swats her behind with both hands and a cloud
of mud dust billows out from her butt. She
looks over at me and winks while rubbing her bottom salaciously.
“Raz
Ma Taz,” she says, and hops in behind the wheel.
She
neither takes a receipt from her pump or visits Sonny to pay in cash. She is running off without paying for her
gas. Her rusty blue car has no muffler
and the engine explodes into life sounding like an 18 wheeler. With a roar that sends the birds scattering
in every direction, her old car pulls out of the gas station and on to the
highway. It looks like she is struggling
into a jacket, which is rather odd on such a warm day. Watching all of this, I fail to notice Sonny come
running out of the hut until he is standing next to me.
“You know her?” he says.
“No,”
I say. “Who is she?”
Saying
nothing, he turns to walk back to the hut.
The
birds are now coming back down to roost on various outcroppings of the
encrusted canopy. I suddenly remember
the meaning of Raz Ma Taz: a deceptive
move to disguise the real play. Something
more than a “drive-off” is going on here.
“Sonny,”
I shout. “Everything OK?”
With
his back toward me he sticks his arm up and waves good bye as he continues
toward the entrance to the little shack.
But about ten feet from the door, he abruptly turns right and runs to the
motor bike, parked behind the garbage cans.
To my surprise he jumps on, starts it up and screeches through the gears
as he heads away from the gas station on the dirt road. He flies up the incline, the dog chasing after
him.
When
I get out on the highway I see the banged up rusty blue car and the pearl grey New Yorker off on the side
of the road together. The Chrysler’s
front fender is torn up. Gravel Gertie
is wearing a blue jacket with “DEA” written across the back. Gun drawn, she has the man in the blue
striped shirt bent over the hood of his car.
A dark blue van is just pulling off the road to join them. The cream white fedora lies over in the
grass, away from the road. She took him down where it would be safer for
citizens like me.
It’s
time for me to get home and start mowing my yard. Boring work, but I won’t be complaining about
my ordinary life for the rest of the day.
Tonight we’re invited to a rather formal house party. I’ll have to dress up. So that no one recognizes me, I guess.
Copyright 2009/2016 by David Griffin
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
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