Driftwood

Sarah drove by this mom and pop service station every day on the way to work, but she went somewhere else for gas.

Almost everyone did, since the corporate convenience marts always charged a penny or two less a gallon. Sarah wondered how Jimmy Plummer even made a living off that archaic little station.

Even the numbers on his pumps were the old-fashioned kind that rolled to the correct number, not digital. “How old are those pumps anyway?” she asked herself, as she drove past one Tuesday morning. She thought they were the same as twenty years ago but couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t looking at the pumps back then.

She flipped the radio on as she crossed the bridge, heading to her job a few miles over, in another small town on the other side of the river. With any luck, she’d hear two or three good songs on the way.

The radio announcer came on instead of music. A plane had crashed into a building – she caught that part, but not where it happened. The announcer said he didn’t have any more information yet.

Sarah flipped the radio back off. She didn’t want to hear the details. She’d been the one who answered the phone a few years ago when her brother called to tell their parents that the plane he’d flown on that morning had almost gone down.

She still remembered how cold and flat his voice sounded. “People on the plane were screaming and crying,” he said.

“Were you crying?” she’d asked.

“I was crying on the inside,” he said, “and praying.”

Now, she made a point not to discuss his business trips with him until they were over, imagining him safely at his desk the rest of the time. She definitely didn’t listen to news stories about plane crashes.

At work, no one had turned on the radio yet. Usually, Sarah’s coworker, Dee, came in early and turned it on first thing. But today, Dee walked in late, and her face was white.

“A plane crashed into the World Trade Center,” she said. “I think we’re at war.”

Dee’s son was in the navy, in active duty on the East Coast. The heart of every mother in the room sank for her. As they realized the horror of what was happening hundreds of miles away, their hearts turned to those who had already lost loved ones.

But it didn’t take half an hour before survivor instincts kicked in, and they were all asking, “How will this affect me?” Mothers were doing the math on when their sons would turn eighteen; their boss was letting them take turns to leave the office and fill up their gas tanks before prices skyrocketed. He drove their office supply delivery vans to fill up himself.

Sarah’s tank was close to full since she’d filled it up Sunday night, but she was worried about the impact on supply chains. She called her father. He had lived through the Great Depression and served in the Navy in World War II, and his memory was perfect. He’d know what to do.

“What do I need to stock up on?” she asked.

“They always managed to get supplies to me on the ship,” he replied.

She felt reassured and ashamed. “Faith. Courage. You’d think I would have picked up a bit of that from him by now,” she thought.

Still, it felt good to pick up her boys after work and rush to her dad’s, to lean on his strength instead of her own. Her brother Jack, thankfully, was already there. She didn’t have to worry about whether he was on the ground or in the air.

He and his wife Diane had traveled that day, though, by car, to have lunch at his favorite Irish restaurant in Terre Haute and to catch clearance sales at the mall.

“It’s crazy all over,” Jack said. “It was five dollars a gallon at the last station we passed.”

“What’s going to happen if people can’t get gas to go to work?” Diane asked.

“What’s going to happen if we’re at war?” Jack asked.

Sarah’s father sipped patiently on his beer. “Are the bars still open?” he asked.

“Cutter’s is packed,” Jack answered.

“And so is Sacred Heart,” Diane added, referring to the big Catholic church just down the street from Cutter’s.

“Well, everything’s all right then,” Sarah’s dad said, slipping her four-year-old a candy bar.

At moments like this, Sarah understood why her mother had chosen her father. When her mother was still alive, he loved telling the story of how better looking, richer, smarter men had courted her, “but I was the smoothest talker.”

When she lay dying, Sarah’s mother confessed. One day, when she was fourteen, two years before she they were even introduced, she saw Sarah’s father walking down Main Street and knew. “That’s the boy I’m going to marry,” she had blurted out to her friends, not knowing before it came out what she was going to say or why.

“But I knew it was true like I knew my name,” she told Sarah. “Those other boys were just a game. Your father was a player, had a lot of girlfriends, I had to make him think that he had to chase me to catch him. For every date he had, I had two – and I made sure I was seen.”

“What’s wrong with you,” Sarah’s father had lectured her after each of her divorces, “is that you’ve never really loved a man, just looked at him and knew you had to love him with all you had for the rest of your life.”

The day after the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon, Sarah gathered again with the rest of the family on her father’s front porch, talking again about what had happened. The tragedy and pending war were far away, but the five dollar gas hike was right here.

Customers were outraged at the gauging. Corporate lawyers were assuming their positions. Gas station managers were angry at how savage their customers had been, complaining about customer fistfights.

Who would get what from whom now was uncertain, but one thing was clear: Jimmy Plummer had not raised his prices.

“If people have any sense, nobody will ever buy from those other stations again,” Jack said, “I’m not going anywhere but Jimmy’s.”

“He refuses to sell cigarettes or beer to stay in business, too,” Diane threw in, confusing him with another station owner across town. Jimmy didn’t sell anything but mechanic work and gas.

Sarah’s father flicked his cigarette, took another sip of his beer, and laughed, “Hell, I never have gone anywhere but Jimmy’s.”

Trying to imagine her father leaning on his cane, pumping his own gas, trying to figure out the new digital pumps made Sarah laugh, too. No way. Besides, he’d always loved Jimmy.

It’d been twenty years since she’d been to Jimmy’s herself. She was running out of excuses now, though. She couldn’t say the price was always cheaper somewhere else anymore.

Since Jimmy wasn’t open on Sundays, she went to the convenience mart that weekend, keeping her routine, making sure her four-year-old get his usual Sunday night treat of picking out a candy or a slushie, not having to explain to her ten-year-old why she wasn’t getting gas, making sure she had enough gas to get to work in the morning if she lost her nerve.

But she left room in the tank.

1981

“Five dollars again? Is that all the money your daddy gives you at a time or is that as high as you can count?” Mark Plummer asked, grinning.

You cocky son of a bitch, Sarah thought to herself, you know darn good and well I only get a little bit at a time so I can come in here more often and see you.

Out loud, she said, “I have my own job and money, and I’m just trying to make it easy on you,” grinning back at him.

“Oh, I know where you work,” he said, “and you don’t ever have to worry about taking it easy for my sake.” He was still grinning some, but his eyes were serious, as he leaned on her car window and looked right at her.

That was about as far as she could take it before she blushed and turned away, riding off in her car until another day. Even when they had dates, she was only ready to let it go so far.

Sometimes, she would see Mark with another girl and worry that he would marry someone else before she was ready to face the way he made her feel. But, as young as they were, it didn’t seem like much of a risk, and besides, she was headed to college. That’s what her family had expected of her all her life, not an early marriage.

Then one day in early November, she woke up from dreaming of Mark’s smile on a Wednesday morning and knew. She was tired of other boys, tired of games, grown up and ready to admit, to herself and him, how much she loved him, how badly she wanted him.

But after all the times she’d teased him, she couldn’t just call him up and say, “Hey, you’re the one. Wanna be my euchre partner for life? ”

He might not even want her now. She would know when she saw him at the gas station, if he flirted with her and looked at her that way again. This time, she wouldn’t blush or turn away. She would look right at him, and he would know, too.

Thanksgiving break was coming up soon. That would be perfect. She’d be home for a few days. She’d have plenty of chances to see him then.

On Sunday, her dorm phone rang a few minutes before noon. She’d been up until 2:00 am playing poker in the rec room – the ringing woke her up.

“Sarah? This is Jake, Mark’s friend.” Sarah remembered Jake from the gas station and a couple of double dates. “Your parents gave me your number. I didn’t know if anyone else had called you … I thought you would want to know … Mark’s gone …”

“Gone?” Sarah asked, still groggy and innocent of what could happen in a moment. “Where did he go?”

Jake started sobbing. Something about a curvy road, thick fog, Mark driving his truck a little too fast.

Sarah started blocking out and forgetting details as soon as Jake shared them. It didn’t matter. Mark was gone.

She repeated it back to Jake in a cold voice. Then she was on the floor, screaming. The next thing she remembered, it was Monday afternoon, and her mother was there, helping her get dressed, trying to get her to eat something, and taking her home.

2001

Sarah pumped her own gas at Jimmy’s self-service pump on Monday morning, then went in to pay. She had thought she would cry when she handed Jimmy five dollars. But something about the way he moved reminded her of Mark, and she couldn’t help but smile. That’s when he recognized her.

“Sarah, I didn’t know who you were at first. You were just a kid last time I saw you.”

“It’s a been a few years,” Sarah said.

Jimmy had to know if she was married, if she had kids, where she worked, had to tell her to say hello to her dad for him.

She was glad when the next customer came in, and she could leave. By the time she reached her car, grief was choking her. She called in to work on her new flip phone and turned her car toward the south edge of town.

She knew she was the most self-centered Midwesterner of all, much more than the people fighting over gas. When she thought about those people on the planes and in the towers, she was jealous of anyone who’d had a few minutes notice and a cell phone to say goodbye.

She was the only one in the cemetery when she got out of her car, and that was a good thing. She was on her knees sobbing. Then standing, screaming, kicking the stone. Angry at herself for hesitating that summer, angry at Mark for being gone.

“I loved you Mark Plummer, you son of a bitch.”