Torpedo Juice полностью

The driver of the brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates was distracted by Serge, leaning way too far into traffic with exaggerated hitchhiking gestures. Never saw the armadillo.

Bang.

The Duster’s driver looked in the rearview and watched the unfortunate animal tumble down the highway, coming to rest on the centerline with four legs in the air.

4

THE INSIDE OF the ’71 Buick Riviera smelled like grease-smoke. Coleman had stopped at an independent convenience store with Citgo gas pumps out front and a glass case inside heated with red light bulbs. A Styrofoam box of yesterday’s food now sat in Coleman’s lap: chicken wings, chicken gizzards, potato logs, egg rolls, mozzarella sticks, crab cakes. He sipped a plastic soda cup of beer.

“Look, a drawbridge! I love drawbridges. And there’s a waterspout! I love waterspouts.”

Coleman was watching the waterspout and didn’t see the lowering arm of the drawbridge that the Buick had just sailed under. The bridge tender quickly hit a button raising the second arm on the other side.

The gas gauge was on E when Coleman hit the Torch Keys. The needle had been pushing hard against the right post ever since the Seven-Mile Bridge, where an approach sign told motorists to check their fuel. Coleman checked it. Yep, on E.

He barely made it to the top of the Ramrod Key bridge before the engine cut out. Coleman had been here before. He threw the car in neutral and switched over to gravity power, coasting down the back side and saving money.

He saw a gas station sign in the palms a couple blocks up. Thirty miles an hour. Twenty-five. Twenty. Cars honking again, whipping around, giving him the finger. Coleman smiled and waved. Fifteen miles an hour, ten. Traffic stacking up. The gas sign getting bigger. He rocked forward in his seat, giving her body English. Allllllllmost there…

Coleman noticed a discarded couch on the side of the road next to the gas station, then something in the middle of the street, a dead armadillo. He hit his blinker and made an ultraslow-motion left turn around the carcass. The Buick reached the edge of the parking lot and Coleman jumped out with the car still rolling, grabbing the door and lip of the roof, jogging alongside the Buick the rest of the way to the pumps.

He started gassing. When the pump reached five dollars, Coleman’s eyes darted back and forth. He clicked the pump handle, resetting the price back to zero, and resumed pumping again until the tank was full.

Coleman went inside and began loading up. Red-hot pork rinds, red-hot pub fries, red-hot beef sticks, sixer of Natural Lite Ice. He spilled it all on the counter. The clerk stared at him.

“What?” said Coleman.

“I saw you. You reset the gas pump.”

“I did?”

“Coleman!”

“Must have hit it by accident.”

“You do it every time, and I just add it to your bill.”

Coleman got out a credit card.

“I can’t take your credit card anymore.”

“Just try it.”

The clerk swiped it through the machine. “Says to confiscate card.”

Coleman snatched it back. “I’ll pay cash.” He opened an empty wallet. “Where’d my money go?”

“Coleman!”

“You know I’m good for it. I live just around the corner. I’m always in here.”

The clerk glared.

“Thanks.” Coleman grabbed a souvenir coolie with the gas station’s name and threw it on the pile. “Can I get a bag?”

Coleman tossed his nonpurchases in the Buick. There were a number of beer empties on the floorboard. He wouldn’t have minded except he remembered the time one got stuck under the brake pedal. He gathered the cans and headed for the trash. He happened to look up at U.S. 1. He got an idea. He had seen it in a poster.

Coleman walked to the edge of the highway. Traffic zipped by at a steady clip. He waited for a break, then wobbled into the street and went to work.

He giggled his way back to the Buick and climbed in behind the wheel. The car pulled away from the pumps with a loud ker-chunk. Coleman drove down a side street and turned up the dirt driveway of his single-wide rental. The trailer was dark orange. Had been white, before the rust. He could afford it because the landlord didn’t want to lift a finger, and Coleman was one of the few people unbothered by rain buckets in the living room and kitchen.

It was a dump. But in the Keys, even dumps are magnificent. Coleman’s crib was tucked in a thick grove of coconut palms, sea grapes, jacaranda and a tree with brilliant yellow blooms. Vines crawled up the sides of the mobile home, and wildflowers sprouted along the front, blocking more empties in the crawl space.

Coleman got out of the Buick. He saw a gas pump handle and a short length of torn rubber hose sticking out the side of the car.

“How’d that get there?”

Coleman threw it in the trash and went inside.