through the window. “It probably only needs half a tank.”
“Sure thing.” Four letterS-CHET-were stitched across the man’s shirt
pocket. Chet bent down and looked past Alex at the boy. “How are you,
Chief?”
Colin looked at him, incredulous. “F-f-fine,” he stammered.
Chet showed a mouthful of stained teeth. “Glad to hear it.” Then he
went to the back of the car to put in the gasoline.
“Why did he call me Chief?” Colin asked. He was over his incredulity
now, and he was embarrassed instead.
“Maybe he thinks you’re an Indian,” Alex said.
“Oh, sure.”
“Or in charge of a fire company.”
Colin scrunched down in the seat and looked at him sourly. “I should
have gone on the plane with Courtney. I can’t take your bad jokes for
five days.”
Alex laughed. “You’re too much.” He knew that Colin’s perceptions and
vocabulary were far in advance of his real age, and he had long ago
grown accustomed to the boy’s sometimes startling sarcasm and occasional
good turn of phrase. But there was a forced quality to this precocious
banter. Colin was trying hard to be grown up. He was straining out of
childhood ‘ trying to grit his teeth and will his way through
adolescence and into adulthood.
Doyle was familiar with that temperament, for it had been his own when
he was Colin’s age.
Chet came back and gave Doyle the credit card and sales form on a hard
plastic holder. While Alex took the pen and scrawled his name, the
attendant peered at Colin again. “Have a long trip ahead of you,
Chief?”
Colin was as shaken this time as he had been when Chet had first
addressed him. “California,” he said, looking at his knees.
“Well,” Chet said, “ain’t that something?
You’re the second in an hour on his way to California. I always ask
where people’s going. Gives me a sense of helping them along, you know?
An hour ago this guy’s going to California, and now you.
Everyone’s going to California except me.” He sighed.
Alex gave back the clipboard and tucked his credit card into his wallet.
He glanced at Colin and saw that the boy was intently cleaning one
fingernail with the other in order to have something to occupy his eyes
if Chet should want to resume their one-sided conversation.
“here you go.” Chet handed Alex the receipt. “Way out to the coast?”
He shifted his wad of tobacco from the left to the right side of his
mouth.
“That’s right.”
“Brothers?” Chet asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You two brothers?”
“Oh, no,” Alex said. He knew there was no time or reason for a full
explanation of his and Colin’s relationship. “He’s my son.”
“Son?” Chet seemed not to have heard the word before.
“Yes.” Even if he was not Colin’s father, he was old enough to be.
Chet looked at Doyle’s coarse hair, at the way it spilled over his
collar. He looked critically at Doyle’s brightly patterned shirt with
its large wooden buttons. Alex almost thanked the man for implying that
he was not old enough to have a son Colin’s age and then he realized
that the attendant’s mood had changed. The man was not saying Doyle was
too young to be father to an eleven-year-old, but that a father ought to
set a better example. Doyle could look and dress strangely if he were
Colin’s brother, but if he were Colin’s father, it was inappropriate-at
least, it was to Chet’s way of thinking.
“Thought you was twenty, twenty-one,” Chet said, tonguing his
tobacco.
“Thirty,” Alex said, wondering why he bothered to answer.
The attendant looked at the sleek black car. A subtle hardness came
into his eyes. Clearly, he thought that while it was fine for Doyle to
be driving a Thunderbird that belonged to his father ‘ it was a
different thing if Doyle owned the car himself. If a man who looked
like Doyle could have a fancy car and trips to California, while a
workingman half again his age could not-there was no justice. “Well,”
Alex said, “have a good day.”
Chet stepped back onto the pump island without wishing them a good trip.
He frowned at the car. When the power window hummed up in one smooth