After Shacket fills the tank, when he returns to the store to sign the Visa form and get his card, the old guy says, “Beautiful mornin’, isn’t it?”
“Hot as a furnace,” Shacket says.
“Well, you’re not from here. To us, it’s a mellow mornin’.”
“How do you know I’m not from here?”
“Seen your plates when you pulled in. They’re not Nevada. Looks like maybe Montana.”
As Shacket signs the form, he says nothing. He concentrates on the signature, because for a moment he forgets the name that’s on the credit card. He almost signs Lee Shacket. Something is wrong with his mind.
“Only eighty-two degrees,” the cashier says. “That’s cool for these parts, this time of year.”
Shacket gets the Nathan Palmer right. He meets the old guy’s rheumy eyes. “What parts are you talking about? Your private parts?”
“Excuse me?”
“Excuse you from what?”
The cashier frowns and slides the Visa card across the counter. “Well, you have a nice day.”
Shacket doesn’t understand the anger and contempt he feels for this stranger. It scares him a little. And is irresistible.
“Excuse you from what?” Shacket asks again. This geezer pisses him off with his phony howdy-neighbor style. “Did you fart? Excuse you from what?”
The cashier breaks eye contact. “I didn’t mean no offense.”
“Did you offend me?”
“Sir, I truly don’t believe I did.”
A buzzing arises in Shacket’s head, as if a hive of wasps has taken residence in his cerebellum. “That’s what you believe, is it?”
The cashier looks at the window, toward the pumps, maybe hoping another customer will drive in. Nothing is moving out there except a cloud shadow that slides a measure of darkness along the highway.
The old guy’s tension, his unexpressed fear, excites Shacket. “Do you have a core belief?” he asks as he takes a candy bar from a display on the counter.
Shacket himself once had core beliefs, a sense of limits. He’s sure of it. He just can’t remember what those limits were.
“What do you mean?” the old man asks.
“Well, like, do you believe in God?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“You do?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is God?” Shacket asks, stripping the wrapper off the candy bar and letting it fall to the floor.
The old guy meets his eyes again. “Where is God?”
“I’m just wondering where you think He is.”
“God is everywhere.”
“Is He over there by the cooler with the beer and soda pop?”
The cashier says nothing.
Shacket takes a bite of the candy bar, chews it twice, and then spits the sticky lump on the counter. “This thing tastes like shit. It’s a decade past the expiration date. What’s your God think of you selling shit like this? Doesn’t He notice? Where is He? Is God maybe back there by the potato chips and Doritos?”
The cashier looks down at the credit card processor. “I run your card, it’s electronic, over the phone is how it works. The number and name, they’re out there at Visa already, the purchase.”
He’s telling Shacket that if something mortal happens here, there’s proof that Nathan Palmer stopped for gas around the time that it all went down.
But of course Shacket is not Nathan Palmer.
The angry buzzing in his head grows angrier. He needs to do something to stop the buzzing. He knows what he needs to do.
He takes another bite of the candy bar and chews once and spits it on the counter. “Is God over there by the magazines? You have some dirty magazines over there, don’t you? Some skin magazines?”
A tremor has arisen at one corner of the fat old guy’s mouth, which further excites Shacket.
Yet the trembling reminds him of his grandfather, a kind man, who had a tremor. Something that might be pity for the cashier overcomes him. It passes quickly.
“You’re not much of a conversationalist, are you? You say it’s a beautiful morning, then you have nowhere to go after that.”
Shacket throws the remainder of the candy bar at the old man, and it sticks to the white T-shirt.
Shacket isn’t Nathan Palmer, but he needs to use the Palmer driver’s license and credit card for a while yet. If he’d paid cash, he could do what he needs to do to stop the buzzing.
“You’re a lucky sonofabitch, aren’t you?”
The old man does not reply.
“I said, you’re a lucky sonofabitch, aren’t you?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
“Not that you’ve noticed? Well, then, you’re as stupid as you are lucky. You’re a lucky sonofabitch. It’s your lucky day, gramps. I’m going to walk out of here and let you go on breathing. You call the sheriff about this, you