The trucker screamed and broke for the side door.
‘Don’t!’ the counterman cried. ‘Don’t do that -‘
But he was out and sprinting for the drainage ditch and the open field beyond.
The truck must have been standing sentry just out of sight of that side door – a small panel job with
‘Wong’s Cash-and-Carry Laundry’ written on the side. It ran him down almost before you could see it
happen. Then it was gone and only the trucker was left, twisted into the gravel. He had been knocked
out of his shoes.
The car-carrier rolled slowly over the concrete verge, on to the grass, over the kid’s remains, and
stopped with its huge snout poking into the diner.
Its air horn let out a sudden, shattering honk, followed by another, and another.
‘Stop!’ the girl whimpered. ‘Stop; oh stop, please -But the honks went on a long time. It took only a
minute to pick up the pattern. It was the same as before. It wanted someone to feed it and the others.
‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘Are the pumps unlocked?’
The counterman nodded. He had aged fifty years.
‘No!’ the girl screamed. She threw herself at me. ‘You’ve got to stop them! Beat them, burn them, break
them -‘ Her voice wavered and broke into a harsh bray of grief and loss.
The counterman held her. I went around the corner of the counter, picking my way through the rubble,
and out through the supply room. My heart was thudding heavily when I stepped out into the warm sun.
I wanted another cigarette, but you don’t smoke around fuel islands.
The trucks were still lined up. The laundry truck was crouched across the gravel from me like a hound
dog, growling and rasping. A funny move and it would cream me. The sun glittered on its blank
windshield and I shuddered. It was like looking into the face of an idiot.
I switched the pump to ‘on’ and pulled out the nozzle; unscrewed the first gas cap and began to pump
fuel.
It took me half an hour to pump the first tank dry and then I moved on to the second island. I was
alternating between gas and diesel. Trucks marched by endlessly. I was beginning to understand now. I
was beginning to see. People were doing this all over the country or they were lying dead like the
trucker, knocked out of their boots with heavy treadmarks mashed across their guts.
The second tank was dry then and I went to the third. The sun was like a hammer and my head was
starting to ache with the fumes. There were blisters in the soft webbing between thumb and index
finger. But they wouldn’t know about that. They would know about leaky manifolds and bad gaskets and frozen universal joints, but not about blisters or sunstroke or the need to scream. They needed to
know only one thing about their late masters, and they knew it. We bleed.
The last tank was sucked dry and I threw the nozzle on the ground. Still there were more trucks, lined
up around the corner. I twisted my head to relieve a crick in my neck and stared. The line went out of
the front parking lot and up the road and out of sight, two and three lanes deep. It was like a nightmare
of the Los Angeles Freeway at rush hour. The horizon shimmered and danced with their exhaust; the
air stank of carburization.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Out of gas. All gone, fellas.’
And there was a heavier rumble, a bass note that shook the teeth. A huge silvery truck was pulling up, a
tanker. Written on the side was: ‘Fill Up with Phillips 66 – The Jetport Fuel’!
A heavy hose dropped out of the rear.
I went over, took it, flipped up the feeder plate on the first tank, and attached the hose. The truck began
to pump. The stench of petroleum sank into me – the same stink that the dinosaurs must have died
smelling as they went down into the tar pits. I filled the other two tanks and then went back to work.