Waiting for the sound of a passing 16 wheeler to roll out along the interstate highway, Ivan looked around and said:

“Yeah, it’s been a whole thing. No one knows what’s going on.”

Leaning over the payphone with one hand against the glass, Ivan kept taking quick glances around each side of the road. He still wasn’t entirely confident no one had been following Burroughs on his way into town. If that was the case, it wouldn’t take much for his name to show up on a list of people of interest scribbled down by some FSS witch hunter, which was the last thing he needed at that moment.

His brief incursion into daytime paranoia was cut short by Louis’ voice on the other side of the line:

“You talk to anyone yet?”

“Yeah, I called the office this morning, but…” Ivan said with a lazy drawl, trying to sound dismissive. “Long story short, they can’t tell me shit. Technically, I’m a civilian. I doubt they’d disclose anything even if I wasn’t, though.”

“Right”, Louis said quickly. “But that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“You talk to any of the boys?”

“Oh, right”, Ivan said, this time sounding uncomfortable for real. “Yeah, not yet. I mean, not really, I don’t think I will.”

He did think for a second or two about the sort of impact this whole incident was having on his estranged army buddies, especially those who had operated under J.D.’s command. He then continued:

“Would be weird, I guess. Haven’t talked to any of them in forever. Then calling out of the blue to talk about this, of all things… I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I hear you” Louis agreed, before letting out a soft chuckle and saying: “Saw your old commander on TV, though.”

“Burroughs?” he asked, doing his best to sound surprised. He wasn’t as good at this as he wished he was. “You sure it was him?”

“Oh, hundred percent. Was on yesterday’s morning news, basically apologizing on behalf of your buddy.”

Ivan laughed. Once again he sounded sincere, for a change.

“Poor Leland. This close to retirement…”

“You must think that’s pretty funny.”

“You said it, not me.”

Another truck drove by, this time an 18 wheeler roaring like a thundercloud, probably in a rush to meet a deadline. Ivan covered his other for a few seconds as the engine drew near and then away.

“What’s with all that noise, I thought you said you were at the gas station?”

“Oh, I am, just not our regular one. I’m at the one by I17.”

“Wait, what?” Louis asked, sounding almost annoyed. “I thought you were on your way, why are you on the other side of town?”

“Yeah, about that…” Ivan mumbled in an awkward tone. “Something showed up. I had to bring the rust bucket for Oscar to take a look. It was making that weird noise earlier this week, and it got louder this morning when I went to get breakfast.”

“What do you think it is?”

“It’s that godforsaken death rattle again, same as every winter. You know how that old thing is, when it’s not last month’s headache it’s last year’s.”

“Yeah, I hear you. What did Oscar say?”

“He’s busy right now, but he told me to come back on Monday. I’m taking the bus ’til then.”

“Are you gonna ask me to come pick you up anytime soon or is that gonna take longer than waiting for Monday?”

“I mean, you’re offering, so…”

“I wasn’t.”

“Well, you should be, your disabled best friend needs help carrying the booze.”

Louis let out what must’ve been the longest, most excruciating sigh anyone in town was going to let out during the course of that weekend.

“I’ll be over in twenty, you pay for the beer this week. I swear it’s such a hassle being your only friend.”

“Do it for the troops, comrade.”

“Fuck you.”

Ivan smiled as he realized Louis had hung up. Leaving the phone booth without betraying suspicious glances at either side of the road, he walked across the gravely dirt back into the small car shop where his truck was parked.

He took off his hat and his glasses before leaning over the passenger’s side window and placing both inside his glove compartment. Hearing his approach, Oscar slid off from beneath the truck and, still lying on his back, gave Ivan a frowny look of skepticism while wiping the grease from his hands.

“You’re wasting my time and yours, Mr. B”, the young man said from beneath the truck. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Don’t care”, Ivan snapped back, searching for his cigarettes on his denim jacket. “Double check. I already paid you.”

“And I already did”, Oscar said just as fast as he got up. “Clean as a whistle. Take it for a ride, go celebrate your fiftieth anniversary together or something.”

“Triple check then, change the oil, figure something out” Ivan said dismissively, pulling out two cigarettes from his half-crumpled pack. “It’s a slow day, you have nothing else to fix.”

“Why do you need this old thing here so bad? Is it the cops?”

“Say it is”, Ivan said, handing Oscar one of the cigarettes. “You don’t know that, do you?”

The young man laughed and held the filter to his mouth as Ivan lit up the tip, followed by his own.

“If I get in trouble because of you”, Oscar said, taking the first drag before continuing. “I’m calling the zoo and saying you’re hiding ECPs in your basement. I’m dead serious.”

“Then again, maybe I am”, Ivan replied as he turned around and left the shop. “Have fun in the grease jungle.”

—

The natural light coming into the convenience store through the front windows was dim, giving it a sleepy afternoon air that was very common on roadside establishments around the side of town. Gray, windy days like those always made Ivan suspicious to walk around those parts, as it did with most people living in the Triangle. Still, there was a strange peace to it, something he’d rarely, if ever, even remember existed whenever he stepped out of Weaver Parish Road. Those moments were rare, but just as worth being reminded of that they weren’t entirely gone.

On his way out of the shop, Ivan approached the counter and laid a pair of packs of Huxley over one another, picking up a carton of Ballards from the rack and putting it on top.

The clerk, a skinny kid with shoulder-length light blonde hair and droopy green eyes, looked at the stack and grunted a loud chuckle like a junior high schooler being shown a crude drawing of a dick by his best friend for the millionth time.

“It’s always Friday somewhere, eh sarge?” he said with a mopey voice, the comedic cadence of a stand-up comedian reading notes out of their pocket on-stage.

Ivan didn’t laugh, but that wasn’t even the most awkward thing happening at that moment. For a second, he wondered if he even knew the kid. That “sarge” had come out of somewhere, though.

“Except here, I guess”, the kid painfully continued. “Which is Saturday. Which is probably better, since a lot of people work on Saturdays, anyway. Like me.”

The kid let out a loud, sloppy laughter with a slight snort at the end, and Ivan couldn’t stop staring at him in absolute silence. All he could do was look straight ahead at that dumb smile with the facial expression of a health inspector in a sausage factory.

“And Sundays too, so I guess that doesn’t really make a difference.”

“Are you going to scan any of these?” Ivan immediately fired back, almost synchronized with the end of the boy’s sentence.

His chatty mood cut short as his eyes peeled open, the young man fumbled over the counter in search of the hand scanner, picking it up while looking for the barcodes on the Ballards carton.

“Yeah, sorry about that” he mumbled. “I get distracted when anyone comes around. I miss having people to chat with.”

“Can’t imagine how that is.” 

The boy scanned a single can of beer and started hammering a bunch of keys on the blocky old keyboard. Every single thing he did, every single movement, Ivan couldn’t help but observe, looked like it was being made by some sort of fledgling creature piloting a young adult male’s body, like a toddler, or a dog. He didn’t appear at all like someone who did that hundreds of times a week.

As he fumbled through his job some more, Ivan kept observing it with a strange fascination. The boy had a long-sleeved plaid shirt in mute green tones, and a cheap piece of plastic clipped to its left shirt pocket. A large, crassly hand-written “EVAN”, in capital letters, sat beneath a neatly-typed “Hi, my name is” almost invisible over it. Ivan couldn’t be more positive that he had never met this young gentleman.

“Yeah, I always tell my friends to drop by, so I’ll have someone to talk to while I’m filling in for Chad in these weekend shifts”, the boy went on. Still no idea who Chad even was, Ivan thought. “but they never show up. Friends like these, right, sarge?”

“Tell me about it.”

“I always try to strike up some conversation with people who drop by, always a lot of people coming around, everyone has their own thing going so it’s like, every conversation is a different story, y’know? It’s super dope.”

“I bet.”

The boy took extraordinarily long to finish that simple task.

“Like your friend the other day, man was he going through it or what.”

“What friend?”

“Oh, the truck guy, forgot his name. The one who was looking for you.”

“‘The truck guy’? Who the fuck are you talking about?”

“That dude with the big-ass truck, who was always with you and those other guys. You guys used to hang out by the pumps all the time when I first started here.”

“Which one of the guys are you talking about, right now?”

“The one with the beard. You know which one.”

“Hank?”

“Yeah, Hank, that was the name. Yeah man, he was here just the other day, asking for you.”

“Asking for me? When did this happen?”

“It was like earlier this week, maybe Tuesday? I know it was a Tuesday, because that’s when I listen to—”

“I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Did he drive by? Was he with someone?”

“No, y’see, that was the weird part, ‘cause like… He didn’t? Y’know, like he came by foot or something. I know it sounds crazy, but like, I swear that’s what it looked like, at least for me.”

“Explain to me what you mean by that.”

“Okay, so like, there I am, right? Here, I mean. In my late shift. Usually Tuesdays I work late shifts, ‘cause I cover for Chad whenever he needs to look after his grandma, and once a month that’s on Tuesday ‘cause that’s when Cindy babysits for their neighbour down the block, so he needs to take her spot. Cindy’s Chad’s sister by the way, she’s a bit of a bitch.”

“Okay, but what happened next.”

“Oh right, so yeah, here I am, right? Cool, so it’s like, I dunno, ten billion in the morning or something, I don’t even know how late, like middle-of-the-night late, but also kinda like almost early in the morning? That’s how late it was.”

“When?”

“Yeah dude, it was wild, I was sitting right here listening to the show, the selection was kinda dogshit that day so I was only half paying attention, I swear ever since they brought in the new guy it’s just been this entry-level shit from back to back, which is fine I guess? Better than most shit they play on the radio these days but come on, late night programming like that you know it’s only the real heads who are up listening, like come on man…”

“Kid. Please just get to the beginning of the story. This is important.”

“Right, sorry sarge, I’m kinda nervous right now… What I’m tryna say’s I was like, only half paying attention, you know? I was kinda sleepy, and it had been a long shift, I just wanted to hit the sack, so… I don’t think I quite got what was going on, as it was all so weird and outta leftfield, you feel me?”

“The kid was high”, Ivan thought.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Tell me what you do remember, though.”

“Sorry Mr. B, it’s just that it happened so fast and it was all so strange, y’know? Kinda like a fever dream or something it feels kinda hazy when I try to remember every detail, and what’s important and what’s not… Bet that happens with you a lot when you’re telling those crazy ass war stories, huh.”

Ivan took a deep breath.

“You have no idea, kid.”

Ivan’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a loud, familiar honk blaring outside. He looked over the window pane and saw Lou’s familiar pickup truck parked by the pumps. He was leaning over the panel, and the two of them made eye contact.

“Thanks for the heads up”, Ivan told the kid. “You see him again, you tell him to drop by my place.”

“Yessir, you got it.”

Ivan stepped outside holding a pack on each hand, the carton awkwardly squeezed under his right armpit. He was approached by Louis as he walked toward the truck.

“Here, let me help you”, he said, grabbing one of the packs and putting it on the trunk.

“Thanks”, Ivan said, following suit.

“Where’s your jacket?”

Ivan realized he didn’t have his usual attire on.

“Got these nasty grease stains on it before I brought it to the shop. I’ll take it to the laundry later this week.”

“Right”, Louis said, sounding almost skeptical. “Are you alright?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, I know the answer is usually no, but… You look like you just seen a ghost.”

“Right. No, it’s nothing, it’s just…”

He thought something in silence for a second before turning to Louis and saying:

“Have you seen Hank, lately?”

Louis just stared back at him, almost surprised. He grimaced and scratched the back of his head.

“Oh, boy… So I guess you heard.”