Page 122 of Wayfarers
“Yeah, I gotta pee super bad.”
She exits the freeway and starts to pull into a Conoco.
Something about it . . . my heart seizes, like an engine run dry of oil.
Knox Pirates
All gas stations, clinging to the hull
of the interstate like barnacles, flow together
in your head after you’ve seen
ten thousand of them. It’s as though
they’re made to be forgotten—disposable
memories like all the other disposable things
they sell, but somehow, this Conoco
triggers a memory:
an Indian man, graying at the temples, standing
behind the counter; a young man who closely resembled
him, barely older than me, at the register;
one of the other boys and I inside to provide
distraction while the others filled
an RV with gas and dashed.
An anatomy book beside the register, maybe
for the young man to study when he’s not
helping people sent to avert
his attention so that they can
steal from his family.
How many peanuts come in this bag?
Do you sell Vanilla Coke Zero?
Can you show us where we are on this map?
What do you think would happen if someone vaped Red Bull?
Then the realization of what we were doing.
Us sprinting for the door.
The older man yelling
