“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.
TRAFFIC BEGAN SLOWING on U.S. 1. Soon it was backed up to Little Torch, Big Pine and all the way to Bahia Honda. Rubberneckers inched past the Chevron station on Ramrod Key. Others pulled off the road altogether and got out with cameras, snapping pictures of the armadillo on its back, holding a can of Budweiser to its mouth with rigid front claws.
The gas station clerk was too busy to notice. He’d hit the big red emergency shutoff button and placed fluorescent cones around the fuel slick, according to corporate training. He ran back inside and looked up the phone number for environmental recovery.
More vehicles pulled over. Business at the gas station picked up despite the closed pumps. College students jumped out of a Jeep Grand Cherokee and headed for the beverage cooler. A woman in a Hog’s Breath T-shirt stuck her head through the door. “Disposable cameras?”
The clerk was on the phone. He pointed at a Fuji display.
The students set cases of beer on the counter. “Bags of ice?”
The clerk pointed at the freezer next to them.
Then, the first of the wrecks, a nasty rear-ender next to a SLOW DOWN — ENDANGERED KEY DEER sign. Traffic was at a standstill by the time the students came out the door. So they walked the edge of the highway, took off their shirts and plopped down on the discarded sofa. The volume went up on a boom box. Van Halen’s “Beautiful Girls.” Sunscreen squirted onto chests.
COLEMAN WAS FAT and happy, sunk deep into his living room couch with bad springs that he had considered swapping for the one on the side of the road. He ate and drank and worked the remote control. Outside: sirens and helicopters. Coleman surfed past something on TV. He backed up a channel. Local newscast. Live feed from one of the overhead choppers.
“Hey, that’s my gas station.”
The airborne camera swept to the horizon, showing U.S. 1 at a standstill over endless islands and bridges. The picture panned back down to the filling station, where tiny college students drank and smoked on a little sofa. One of the youths tossed a cigarette over his shoulder.
Coleman’s head jerked back as a fireball exploded on TV, engulfing the Chevron pumps.
“Cool!”
THE GANG FROM the No Name Pub was down at the Bogie Channel bridge when the fireball cleared the trees in the distance.
“Wonder what that was,” said Sop Choppy, hair blowing as another helicopter took off from the bridge.
“Let’s get a drink,” said Bob.
They started walking back to the pub. A pink taxi came up the road from the opposite direction. The gang reached the bar as the cab pulled into the gravel parking lot. Serge got out of the backseat with his guitar case. He pulled cash from a pocket and leaned through the open passenger window. “Sure you won’t reconsider my offer? Ground-floor opportunity. I’m going to be the next Buffett.”
“Hey buddy, I got another fare….”
“Last chance,” said Serge, handing over money. “You wanna be a fuckin’ cabbie your whole life?…”
Serge and his guitar spun to the ground as the taxi took off.
COLEMAN SPENT THE rest of the morning taking on the shape of his couch. He had never watched one channel so long. People running all over the place at the gas station. A lone fire truck had somehow gotten through and foamed down the pumps. Coleman raised a can to his lips. Empty. He went to the fridge. Out. He pulled cushions off the sofa and collected coins.
Coleman walked three blocks to the charred gas pumps. Firemen folded hoses. Excited witnesses filled the parking lot, repeating stories for latecomers. Coleman went inside and grabbed another six from the cooler. He set it on the counter next to a windproof-lighter display showing a woman with a cigarette in a monsoon. Coleman fiddled with one of the lighters, broke the lid and set it back. He eventually realized nobody was coming. Out the front window, the clerk was giving a statement to a fire official with a clipboard. Coleman reached in his pocket and dumped coins on the glass counter. Pennies rolled off. He counted exact change for the sixer, including tax, which he knew from genetic memory.