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I nod as you lean forward and hit the latch, releasing the cover to the gas tank. “He’s cute,” one of your passengers might say as soon as I am out of earshot.
“He’s creepy,” another one says, shuddering. “This is so going to be one of those horror movies in the direct-to-DVD bin. He’ll ask us if you want him to look under the hood and he’ll break something and we’ll be stuck in this town. Ninety minutes later, all of us will be dead except for one, and that person will be chased into an abandoned meat-packing plant while the gas jockey chases you with a chainsaw and a hook hand.”
The people in your car try to muffle their laughter. You don’t say anything. But if you did, there are only a few words you think of when you look at me. There’s only a few things that you could possibly think. So, while your friends laugh, you think sad. You think depressed. You think blue.
But, most of all, you think lonely.
And you’d be right.
The tank fills. “That’ll be $32.11,” I tell you when I come back to the window. You hand me your card and I take it inside to run it. It’s almost full-on dark now. Bugs are buzzing near the neon sign. You hear birds off in the trees. A breeze ruffles your hair. Somewhere, a dog barks. Another joins in, and another. Suddenly, they stop.
And then….
Do you feel it?
There’s something else. Something, just out of reach.
Gooseflesh tickles its way up your arms. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Lightning flashes down your spine in low arcs. There’s something else, isn’t there? Something else in the air. Something else carried on the wind. Something… unexpected. Something… different. Something is coming, you know, though how you know is a question you cannot answer.
I don’t feel it. Not really. Not yet enough to name it. I’m still buried in grief. Lost in myself.
But soon.
I walk back to you and hand you your card. Our fingers touch for a moment, and you feel like you should say something, anything. I smile quietly at you as I tell you to have a good night, and I’m about to turn and walk away when you stop me.
“What’s your name?” you ask, your voice coming out in a rush.
I appear startled at this. Hesitant. Something flashes behind my eyes and again you think lonely. You think blue, but it’s the color, not the emotion, and you don’t know why. Everything is blue.
I tell you my name. Slowly.
“Big Eddie?” you ask faintly, wondering why you are saying anything at all. Your passengers listen raptly, as they feel it too now, though later none of you will admit it to each other.
I glance up at the neon sign circling above us. And I smile. You see much in that smile, illuminated by the light. There seems to be a measure of peace there, if only for a moment. There is strength, you think. Hiding somewhere under all that sadness.
And expectation. Like I’m waiting for something. Something to finally happen. Something to come along and say you are still alive, you are still whole. There is no reason for you to be alone because I am here with you.
Then the moment passes. “That was my father,” I say. “Have a good night.”
You nod.
“Let’s get out of here,” one of your passengers whispers. “I found a way back with the GPS on my phone.”
You nod again and watch as I go back inside and sit down behind the counter on a stool. I’m watching my hands when you finally pull away.
Years from now on a very ordinary day, something you see triggers a memory
of a time you stopped in Roseland, Oregon. You’ll think of me for the first time in years. You remember my name, but only just. You’ll wonder, as your heart starts to thud in your chest, if something finally happened. If things changed for me. If that look of longing, of waiting, led to something more. You’ll think on this fiercely, a slight ringing in your ears that you won’t be able to ignore. But then you’ll be distracted by something mundane and I will slip from your mind. An hour later, you’ll have forgotten that racing of your heart, the sweat under your arms. You’ll have forgotten the little things you saw, that feeling of knowing, knowing something was about to occur.
But I have not forgotten.
My name is Benjamin Edward Green, after my father, our first and middle names transposed. People call me Benji. Big Eddie wanted me to carry his name, but felt I should have my own identity, hence the switch. I never minded, knowing it bound us further. It was a gift from him. Because of him, and everything that is about to follow, my time of waiting is almost over. Events have been set in motion, and once started, they will not stop until it is finished.
This is at once a beginning and an end.
This is the story of my love for two men.
One is my father.
