Adventuring

When a book finds its way to the right person at the right time in the form of a gift, it can be a beautiful thing. I've been fortunate enough to be the beneficiary of such beauty a number of times in the past several years. The one I'm thinking of now is a book called Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, which my church gave to me for my high school graduation.

It's not a perfect book, but there's one idea I got from it which has stuck with me, that all men have a deep longing for some sort of adventure or epic struggle that is simply not to be tangibly found in the vast majority of lives. (I don't think it addresses whether women have the same desire. The book is written by a man for men, and sticks to what it knows. For me, it's enough to know that I feel it.) I'm tempted to say that it's rarer now than in the past, but I think adventure as we usually think of it has always been the domain of a very small minority. Soldiers find it, I suspect, and rich people can now buy their adventures in a neat package. But for the rest of us, reality is very far from any swashbuckling ideal we may have once held.

As Eldredge writes, the good news is that all of us (men and women) are called to an adventure far more noble and exciting than any mere globetrekking, for we are called to do the will of God. For each one of us He has created a perfect plan, and it's up to us to discover and follow it faithfully. It is one of the keenest pleasures of my youth that I know nothing of what challenges He has prepared for me. It's also, of course, one of the keenest anxieties.

So what's all this about then? Every life then, in its intended course, is a perfect struggle in which the only certainty of the future is that it will eventually bring the sweetest fulfillment. Jacob's life was a pilgrimage, and God was his faithful shepherd. I intend to have such a life.

Tomorrow I'm catching a bus at 6:00 am to London. The next day I'll take another bus to Cardiff, Wales. From there I will travel north through to the northern islands of Scotland, where I will turn around and begin the journey south, arriving home a month after I left. It's a much shorter and wordly pilgrimage than the one I've been speaking of, but the two are inextricably linked in my mind.

For anyone who's interested this is the rough order of my destinations:

London
Cardiff
St. David's
Llanberis
Shrewsbury
Chester
Carlisle
Pitlochry
Stromness
Edinburgh
Durham
York
Edale
Norwich

What this means of course is that whereas my updating thus far has been nothing but persistent neglect, for the next month this blog will be silent. If I'm lucky I'll return with a good story or two, a more sound mind and a more safe heart.

I'll leave you and Brighton with these words from one of my loves, Great Expectations:

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

Aquafina

I've decided that I have some small talent as a writer, but very little-- if any-- skill. To prove these points (the latter more than the former, as you'll soon discover), I present to you the following very short story: "Aquafina." Disclaimer: I actually wrote this last year (over a ludicrously long period of time), so I hope that I've developed a bit since then-- a hope that is strengthened when I reread this story. Think of it as a very early work; everyone has to start somewhere.

Aquafina:
a gas station romance

Every weekday night, around nine-thirty (sometimes earlier, but never later), behind the plastic jars of jerky, the lewd magazines and the orderly grid of cigs, Dusty D. Barnes was just where he wanted to be. At all other times his thoughts his thoughts were of elsewhere, anywhere but the ______ ARCO on mile ______ of highway __. An old castle in England; a busy Calcutta café, making change for wealthy jetsetters; his grandmother’s house, now a faded (and warm and aromatic) memory; back at his apartment playing video games; in an airplane; in the pungent grass of Mary Wilton’s backyard. These were his continual thoughts throughout his evening shifts, and they rushed him away from behind that greasy counter, from the station smells of beer and gas, and the constant parade of long-haul truck drivers, in and out, all day long.

He came back though, every weekday evening, around 9:30. Sometimes earlier, but never later, she glided in and he left those places, and for once during his nine-hour shifts his mind and his body shared a home in that lonesome gas station on Highway __.

Here is how it happened. At that momentous evening time, she would ease her white sedan into a space in front of the station, aimed right at him. She drove a Dodge Neon, mid-90s model. Barnes could spy it around the giant ad for ninety-nine cent hot dogs. Then it really happened. She really stepped out, stood up and stepped in, the bell on the door her fanfare. Barnes straightened up, loathe to appear as humble as he felt before such a procession.

To Barnes’ knowledge, she never actually bought gas at the gas station. As she was a regular (ah, but how irregular a regular!), nor did she stand in the door dumbly scanning for the bathroom, the beer, the Doritos. And as she never varied in her sole purchase, her movements showed no hesitation. Indeed, she was quick and economical with every motion, and it seemed almost as if she didn’t want to be there, in that gas station on Highway __. Barnes always dismissed the thought with celerity, though. It simply couldn’t be. After all, she came in every weekday, right on time.

It was on account of this regularity that Dusty D. Barnes was quite careful to keep the one-liter Aquafina water bottles fully stocked at all times, for those bottles were the object of her visits, the treasure of her hunts. She always bought but one, which cost her one dollar and thirty-nine cents. The glass door, which gave her access to her water, was the kind that swung, not slid, open. With her bare left hand she pulled the door to her smoothly, a loose grip on the handle. Barnes sometimes mused that hers was probably the only reasonably well-washed hand to touch that handle each day. These beautifully sanitized fingers remained there holding the door open while the others glided up and away, always to the same spot, farthest bottle on the right.

Oh that he were the bottle in that hand, that he might kiss those lips! Every weekday around nine-thirty a single one-liter bottle of Aquafina Purified Water slid up and out of its spot and came to her, comfortable in her probably warm clasp, and Dusty D. Barnes came to know quite well the absurdity of feeling envy towards a water bottle. She held it in front of her like a wine glass, hand curled around the middle, not loosely by the mouth and hanging at her side as most would. This arrangement did not look as awkward as it sounds. Indeed, as she held that bottle and walked straight towards Barnes’ counter, nothing could have appeared more natural. The bottle made a home in her hand like it had never known the chilly stillness of the cooler, like it was a natural extension of her hallowed body.

It was always around this time that Barnes had to make the conscious decision to lay his palms flat on the counter to hide their nervous shaking. Each day she placed her bottle there too, and each day he said, “Dollar-fifty, please.” He tried to sound confident. He tried to sound kind and understanding, to sound like someone who would listen to anything you had to say, no matter what, like someone who would give you space when you need it. With those five syllables each night, he tried to sound like he was good with kids.

She always paid with a five. The three one-dollar bills and two quarters he returned comprised his tribute to her, the tax he paid for the service her lovely face brought to his weathered heart. He scooped them out quickly, deciding early on that efficient service would be preferable in the long run to prolonging the moment as long as possible. Here, at least, was a customer worth keeping. “And three-fifty is your change,” he said, with all the aspirations of his earlier request.

He placed the cash on the counter and slid it to her. Usually he just handed change back to the customer, but in this case the possibility of a dropped coin was too much of a risk. Who could say what further disasters could come of a loose quarter, falling out of his hands to the counter and into the depths of the floor below? As she picked up the change she never really looked at him, but sometimes she would give him a mumbled “thanks” that rang in his mind like church bells for the rest of the night. Somewhere in her monosyllabic response he heard the harmonious chime of a constant companion and it lit up his nights like wildfire.

Her sudden departure always left him with a question, a feather quill poking out of the soft, clean pillow of his slowly fading rapture. He could think of no reason why such a one as she would stop at his gas station each and every weekday evening for the singular purpose of procuring a one-liter bottle of Aquafina Purified Water. The marvel of modern plumbing, supplying every residence with fresh water from the tap, and the convenience and financial practicality of buying in bulk, both of these made him wonder at her visits. As this question materialized and defined itself more sharply, it occupied more of his thoughts. He picked it up and turned it over in his mind, looking at it closely, scavenging for clues. Eventually this wondering led him to the faint hope that perhaps her visits had something to do with Dusty D. Barnes. Perhaps, he cautiously dared himself to think, she came not for water, but for him.

Had he not been so predisposed to wondering thus, he may have encountered other more likely answers. He may have considered that after a hard day of waitressing, one of the best things is a generous amount of ice-cold water. He may have considered that home can be far away, and for some things it is better not to wait.

In the midst of his loneliness, though, optimism was a necessity, and the dangerous idea that she would come to that gas station just to see him pushed aside all others. It became a secret between them. She never talked about it, so neither did he. He stopped thinking of her as a customer as her visits began to seem less like stops to buy water and more like covert nighttime rendezvous. On some nights it seemed to him that she must be inspired by a concern for his happiness that was almost maternal in its steadfast compassion. It all depended on his mood—her behavior never budged, and her every movement retained its Aquafina-oriented economy from night to night.

Eventually, though, Dusty D. Barnes grew unhappy with this relationship. The desire to say more to her than the price of a bottle of water—and to hear more from her than her automatic thanks—grew every night until he had no other choice but to do something about it. The decision to take action felt good, as if a corner had been turned and a weight lifted, all at once. But when it came down to deciding just what he should do, he became terrified. Around the corner was a steep cliff, and the lifted weight had been the rope keeping him on solid ground. He thought about a gift of flowers, but immediately stopped. He thought about engaging her in small talk but cowered at the idea, fully aware of his inexperience in that field.

Several nights of sifting through various ideas soon brought him one with which he could feel relatively comfortable. He would write her a letter. No, he would write her a note. A note would definitely be better, he decided. He would take his time with it, taking care to guard it from any fraction of a hint of weirdness. It would be entirely natural in every way and after reading it she would not for a moment think it odd to receive a note from a gas station attendant.

He spent a long chain of days perfecting this note, first carving out the basic shape of it in his mind, then putting pen to paper, every word in its right place. On the final link in this chain Dusty D. Barnes came into work with a note, written on a half-sheet of notebook paper, folded in half, sheathed in his breast pocket. It was flawless. It didn’t say too much, nor did it say too little, and above all it was perfectly natural. On this night he had all the nervous butterflies and scattershot thoughts of a new actor on the night of his debut, dreading a dropped line or cue. Dusty’s lines, however, were all in his pocket.

With that note ready for delivery, there would be no idle daydreaming of far-away places on this night. His shift was a frenzied crescendo of anticipation until that reliable moment when her Dodge carriage pulled up to his ARCO castle. He touched his pocket; the note had not lost itself. She came in right on time, just as she did every weekday, and floated to her water bottle like so many times before. He pretended to count the cash in his register, anxious to hide his trembling. By the time she arrived at his counter he could barely tell a dime from a nickel.

The miniature thud of a water bottle being set on a counter snapped him to attention. The skipped heartbeat when their eyes met was the moment when landing gear leaves the tarmac, when a running jump sustains itself and becomes a tumbling flight.

His plea: “Dollar-fifty, please.”

A five-dollar bill was her oblivious reply.

He counted out three one-dollar bills, two quarters, and one painstakingly crafted note, handwritten in black ball-point on a folded half-sheet of wide-ruled yellow notebook paper. He slid these messages to her side of the counter. “And three-fifty is your change.”

But she saw the paper under the bills and showed it to him. “What’s this?” For the second time that night, their eyes met.

Dusty D. Barnes put his hands in his pockets and looked at his cigarette display. “Nothing.” Marlboro, Camel, Winston…If only she could know just what it was!

When he looked up, her back was turned and out the door. The bell on the door chimed to him with a smile, “I will see you tomorrow.”

Soon, a dull monochrome settled over the station, and Dusty retreated into his hopes for the future. A life of deferred dreams was about to become one of fulfillment. He became restless and thought about leaving early and driving north, taking a walk in the woods, building a fire, to be completely alone with his expectations. When no customers were present he paced up and down his aisles in a futile attempt to manage his restlessness.

He was eventually able to go home, and eventually even able to fall asleep. His dreams had never been sweeter.

***

It was a living gas station, practically pulsing with the memory of he presence, to which Dusty D. Barnes returned the next day. The day was cloudy, but the sun must have shone in that ARCO, for everything was brighter, shinier, more full and alive than he had seen before. The anticipation of what would happen that evening was hardly bearable, but somehow the time passed, the light faded, and eventually all that was visible in his windows was the reflection of himself among the candy and magazines which he was barely able to sell, such was the extent of his distraction. He really had no clear expectations of what her visit would bring. Perhaps she would bring a note of her own, or perhaps she would strike up a conversation and they would arrange to meet for a nightcap after the end of his shift. Perhaps, he thought with dismay, she hadn’t even read his note, and things would just go on as they had before, with interaction limited to only that which was required for their monetary exchange. All possibilities crowded and jumbled in his mind until he was left with just the capacity to make change.

Nine-thirty came and went.

The ten-o’clock hour brought with it an ache in his gut that was accompanied by a blurry grayness that settled in his surroundings; her time had come, but she had not. The thoughts of elsewhere, of scattered locales, which had rescued him from the monotony of his work, brought no solace now. For she was not in those places any more than she was there with him.

He went home.

***

The next day was the same: she did not come as she had so reliably every weekday evening, around nine-thirty. Sometimes earlier, never later. Nor did she come the next day; nor, of course, the next. After several weeks it became clear that she had stopped coming altogether, and Dusty D. Barnes soon stopped too.