I said, “You up early selling,” because I couldn’t think of anything else.
“I ain’t no worse than you,” the blackberry man said. He scrambled up without corrupting one of the cardboard containers. “You ain’t better than me, Chief.”
I would like to say that the price of fuel caused people in my town to act all bowed-up and cocksure, but even if Rajer inside decided to sell his gasoline at pre-1979 prices and hand out wedges of free garlic naan, everyone around would still pick fights and scowl.
I said, “Just came in to fill up my tank, man. That’s it. If I come across anyone today looking for vine-ripened berries, I’ll send them your way.”
I walked into the store trying to figure out what $3.63 times twenty gallons would end up, because I didn’t want to tell Rajer I wanted seventy-five bucks’ worth and then have to go back in and get change if I filled the tank prematurely. Rajer yelled out, “Hello, Mr. Finley. How are you today, fine sir?”
I had told him not to call me Mr. Finley. Hell, he’d started off greeting me as Finley sahib, so I guess we’d made some progress over the last few years I’d known him. He’d gone from Finley sahib to Mr. Kay, to Mr. Finley Kay, to Mr. Finley. In a decade he might plain say, “Hey, Finley, what up, bro?” like any other American.
I said, “Hey, Raj, I need to fill up. Or at least I need to get about seventy dollars.”
“Do not blame me for the price of gas! I make two cents only for every gallon. Two cents! Everyone think that we are setting the high prices, but it is the oil companies. And the Arabs. Mr. Finley, please — as you go about your daily duties — tell people that I am not from Arabia.”
I can’t say for sure if Raj Patel suffered from one of the more common forms of short-term memory loss — Korsakoff syndrome, for example — but he found it necessary to explain the nuances of oil company/distributor/individual operator every time I walked in, fuel-needy or not. If I wasn’t busy and didn’t have an order to complete back home, I’d hang out with good Raj, look over his various Ganesh pictures and figurines, listen to his weird music, ask about the incense he burned. In time he’d explain what pathetic profits he received for beer, Little Debbie oatmeal pies, charcoal lighter fluid, white bread, daily newspapers, cigarettes, pickle relish, and hot sauce. He must’ve been some kind of champion oratory/ forensics/debate contestant back in his Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore school days.
I said, “I’m not blaming you on the price of gas, buddy. I know.” I didn’t tell him how I’d become aware of every goddamn gas station in America dropping prices when fewer people pulled into stations, when the “average price per gallon” people went around and concluded that things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
“You are my favorite customer, Mr. Finley,” Raj said. I’d heard him say it to people named Mr. Bubba and Mr. Larry, to Ms. Darlene and Ms. Tiffany, when I stood nearly out of earshot at the twelve-packs.
I started to say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah but I never see you giving me some lamb saag or whatever it’s called.” I started to say, “I sure could use a little of that good goat vindaloo that we can’t get around Calloustown.”
But I couldn’t, because the blackberry dude charged in and yelled out, “I can get y’all a deal on telephone poles! Who needs some beet sugar? I can get y’all sugar, beans, gourd birdhouses, snow peas, book matches, and rebuilt carburetors. Y’all need of those things? I got a line on Royal brand typewriters. I got fescue, putters, fog lights, boogie boards, aluminum siding, fire ant killer, and plas tic lifelike nativity scenes. Did I mention telephone poles? And blackberries.”
I stood there staring at him. He came across much taller inside the store. I’m talking this guy might’ve been six-four or six-six, tall enough to’ve played some basketball in his day. He should’ve been selling peaches, apples, or oranges, what with that height. I said, “I only need the gas.”
Raj Patel said, “Hello, Mr. Ruben Orr. How are you today, fine sir?”
“I got everything cheap and legal, as usual,” Ruben Orr said. “Chief.”
“You got any ukuleles?” I asked him. If he did, then I knew he’d stolen them from me. Me, I had gone from being a normal luthier to specializing in ukuleles — an instrument that had become more sought after that most people believed, probably because of ADD.
“Little guitars? Ukuleles, like tiny guitars?” Ruben said. “I had me some sitars while back but Rajer here bought all them things up.”
“My nephews back home are very good sitar players. They are professionals!” Raj said. He nodded and didn’t blink. “One of them is now the number-one steel sitar player in all of India.”
I said, “Huh,” handed Raj over three twenties and two fives, and walked out to pump my gas before it went back up in price.
I didn’t have my camper top attached. I’d only had to put the thing on one time in order to transport sixty custom-made Finley Kay ukuleles to a group of Hawaiian music enthusiasts who wanted to break some kind of world record in regards to number of people standing waist-deep over in Lake Calloustown while strumming and singing “Tiny Bubbles.” So it wasn’t difficult to see, in my rearview mirror, Mr. Ruben Orr tailing me on his moped. Six-four or six-six on a moped, is what I’m saying. I took some turns — there weren’t many options — onto Old Savannah Road, then Old Charlotte Road, then Old Myrtle Beach — and the guy stayed behind me. I thought, fuck, do I want to waste all this cheap two-pennies-off-normal-price gas trying to keep a blackberry-to-telephone-pole-selling, moped-riding lunatic from perhaps following me back home? Maybe he actually lives on the route I’m taking, I thought.
I looked down at my gas gauge and noticed how I’d already spent a good eighth of a tank trying to lose the guy. I turned left, then right, then right again until I got on the road where I lived — where my ex-wife and I lived until she said out loud how she didn’t believe in a ukulele-making husband and took off for Raleigh, North Carolina, where, evidently, men have jobs that’re more secure and less suspect.
I checked my rearview mightily, and sure enough Mr. Ruben Orr continued behind me, scrunched down as if to be more aerodynamic.
I don’t know that this has much to do with my story, but I don’t believe in the NRA. I mean, I believe the NRA exists, just like I believe that the Bible exists, for I’ve seen it, but I don’t believe in those virgin birth, parting of the Red Sea, burning bush, dead guy Lazarus returning, water to wine kinds of stories. Anyway, I don’t believe that the Second Amendment allows all of us to carry little pistols around whenever we want, for the only purpose to shoot people we fear. No, I believe in taking care of things otherwise.
I got out of my truck, reached beneath my seat, and pulled out half a Louisville Slugger. I pulled out nunchucks I didn’t know how to use. Farther back I found an old length of a telephone line, maybe eighteen inches in length, notch marks at one end for a better grip. In my pocket I knew there was a razor-sharp folding Buck knife, but that would be my last option.
Mr. Ruben Orr puttered up behind my truck. He smiled and said, “Hey, you remember me from Rajer Dodger’s?”
“What’re you doing following me, man?”
He set his kickstand and turned the ignition. “You never let me finish my sentence. I thought you’d be coming back in the station. Anyway, sure enough I do have a couple ukuleles back at the trailer. Well, back in one of the filled-up trailers I got to the side of my doublewide. I got kerosene lanterns, pup tents, crockery, model cars and airplanes in the box, alligator heads, a stuffed bobcat. All kinds of shit. And two ukuleles, but I imagine the catgut’s somewhere between compromised and useless.”