Gas Station Americana
fiction by Mary Kuper
It was official: pigs had started to fall from the sky at the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas. No one paid any particular attention to this, of course, not after the Vietnamese potbelly blimp made its appearance at the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting in New York the year before. The gigantic cloud of teacup pigs that emerged a few weeks later seemed to be the least threatening to the general populous, as all the cloud seemed to do was hover quietly over two-thirds of North Dakota.
This is weird, though, right? people would murmur to one another. A kid can’t just bring a gun to school; a man can’t just police a woman’s body; an officer can’t just murder a person of color; a billionaire can’t just become president; pigs can’t just fall from skies. Indeed, the entire weather phenomenon had come as a shock, especially to those passing through the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas that day. After all, the pigs had never fallen there before.
I.
Before Henry entered the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, he adjusted his ball cap and reflected on his father’s death. Then he decided he could really use some Doritos. He combed through the aisles of the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas gingerly, delicately, as if the choice with which he was faced was more akin to the surgical repair of a major organ than the decision to steal Cool Ranch or Nacho Cheese flavored chip. He plucked one bag of Cool Ranch off the shelf and stuffed them into the pocket of his jacket, then slid the nearest tube of Pringles down the waistband of his jeans for good measure. He was confident that with his cap and neck beard he was fairly unrecognizable, and his usual choice of low-profile items seemed to be his ticket safely out the door. The cashier was distracted while taking money from a woman for one of the gas pumps out front. Henry’s snack snatch was almost complete; soon, he would be able to return to his trailer on the outskirts of town, feed his iguana Prince, get a little high, and watch The Voice just like he had planned. He was just a few yards from the sliding glass doors when he heard her. “Hank? Hank!” Henry stopped in his tracks, clutching the Doritos in his pocket tightly. He hadn’t heard that voice in thirty years.
II.
Thirty years ago, Sandra Sherman lived next door to a group of rowdy boys called the Gilmans. Their names were Bobby, Leroy, Talbot, and Hank. She babysat them when their mother worked the night shift at the hospital, because they were all under ten years old and were having a hard time since their father had hanged himself in the garage. Sandra was paid five dollars an hour, which was damn good for the seventies and helped her buy her first car. Now, Sandra was forty-six, newly single, and terribly low on gas. She pulled into the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, parked in front of the pump, and headed straight inside to the cashier. She had recently come into a hefty amount of dough and, boy, was she planning on using it—first to fill up her tank, and then to order a hit on her lying, cheating, sonofabitch ex-husband. “Hi there,” she said to the young man at the front. He had thin lips and beady eyes and might have been an iguana in his previous life. “Pump number five.” She placed a crisp one hundred dollar bill on the counter, which was promptly and thoroughly examined by the cashier.
III.
The cashier hated his job, almost as much as he hated his mother. She had always nagged him to do things like clean his room and pay his car insurance and register to vote; he had never voted in elections, and wasn’t planning on doing so, ever, because nothing really mattered, anyway. He lived in a studio apartment a two minute bike ride from the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, and he kept a gun under his bed. The cashier also wore Crocs to work. He loved putting the tiny plastic charms inside his Croc holes. These charms were called Jibbitz, and this cashier liked them a lot. Every time he would finish with a customer transaction, he would look down at his feet at the Jibbitz in his shoes and breathe, taking in Mickey Mouse, a tiny violin, a pink star, a pineapple, and the turtle from Finding Nemo all resting atop his foot clad in orange, foamy plastic. Looking down at his feet is perhaps what the cashier liked most about his day job. His night job was just a little different, although he could still admire his Jibbitz during those shifts, too, when he got paid to be roughed around by men who liked to be called “Daddy.”
IV.
“Daddy, will Lily’s uterus fall out if she plays a sport?” the little boy asked his father. The father raised his eyebrows, which imperceptibly raised his heavy, tired eyelids. “Hm?” he murmured, leaning back in the driver’s seat. “Her uterus,” the little boy repeated, shifting his weight impatiently in his carseat. “Her uter-us. Lily’s. Will it fall out if she moves around, like in tennis or a pool?” The father sighed and opened his eyes to look at his son in the rearview mirror. He had so been looking forward to this five-minute gas station nap after what was certainly becoming the longest road trip of his life. “What? No, your sister’s uterus—buddy, when did you hear about a uterus?” The little boy said something vague in response--Mommy has one, right, she was talking on the phone about it to her doctor—but he was already looking out the window at the raccoon who lived at the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, who was, at that moment, rummaging for his lunch in the dumpster.
V.
The dumpster’s contents were primarily comprised of candy wrappers, half-eaten sandwiches, toilet paper, a torn-up divorce settlement, some unloved Jibbitz, fecal matter, upsetting amounts of glass bottles that weren’t properly recycled, some peculiar fish bones, and other unmentionably disgusting items. The raccoon, who was at present sifting through the dumpster, was a transient, a vagabond, a creature with no true, known home. He was from Texas originally, but had hitched rides in truck beds up north until he found himself at this Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas. His past places of residence included the kitchen of a nursing home, train tracks, the guest house of the CEO of a particular Fortune 500 company, the gigantic running shoe of a famous athlete, a treehouse, a dorm room, an antique mall, a van, a fraternity kitchen, and various gas station dumpsters. This one, though, was by and large his favorite. It saw plenty of people coming and going with plenty of trash.
VI.
“Trash, absolute trash,” Officer Wiley moaned as he flipped through the stations. He had been driving on Route 66 for some time on his regular shift, scanning for people speeding, people driving too fast, or people speeding, that sort of thing. His preferred stations included an easy listening mix of Christian Rock and Motown, but out here it seemed to be Top 40 or nothing.
“Trash!” he exclaimed again, backhanding his steering wheel in frustration and promptly bruising his knuckles. The dull ache made him even madder. He felt like he had heard quite enough of the screeching Dubstep remixes of the 80s hits that his niece Katie played at her thirteenth birthday last Sunday, and why, for the love of God, was simple acoustic guitar not enough for some pe—
The first pig fell square on top of Officer Wiley’s police car with a metallic kerthunk. He screamed, drowning out Britney Spears’ sweet, nasally falsetto, and pulled off on the nearest exit, which happened to be exactly the site of the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas.
VII.
The Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas had suddenly become the most exciting stop on Route 66, due to all the pigs falling. Henry, Sandra, the cashier, the little boy, his father, and Officer Wiley all looked straight up into the sky. The raccoon stayed in his favorite dumpster, but also turned his head towards space.
The pigs were every size, from teacup to pot bellied, wild boar to Berkshire, and all colors, too: every pink and brown and beige and black and gray imaginable. They grunted, squealed, and guffawed. They whooshed down, and plopped onto the pavement, and cooed and oinked and crowed and snuffled and sang. They fell slowly at first, and then gained speed; first there were just a handful, and then dozens, and then more. Some tried their best to flap their hooves to generate some sort of agency on their way down, while others fell more despondently, nudging one another with their snouts to embody what little comfort they could. One prize-winning Duroc wept for his mother’s teat. Miraculously, each pig survived the fall as they were hurled from above by some omnipotent, impetuous force.
All the people at the Shell station looked up. The sun was almost completely obscured by swines.
Henry gasped and clutched Sandra to his chest, crushing his Doritos in the process. Sandra swooned, and vowed to marry him in Las Vegas later that night. The raccoon sobbed through mouthfuls of dirty diapers. The little boy had a premonition of his sister’s uterus falling out during a tennis match, which would end up coming to fruition the weekend after next; he would soon be hailed as a prophet. A pig collided head-on with the ski rack of the father’s Ford Explorer. The cashier stood, stone-faced, while his Jibbitz hopped off his Crocs and began waddling around on the pavement. One particularly egregious sow approached Officer Wiley, flipped him off, and stole his car; in response, Officer Wiley screamed and clutched his gigantic, donut-filled belly, afraid that the sudden change in air pressure might make him pop.
Henry pulled the tube of Pringles out of his jeans and began eating them rapidly one by one, passing some to Sandra now and then as they watched the sky together.
“Hank?” Sandra sounded annoyed that he wasn’t handing her enough chips. Or, no; maybe she was annoyed that the pigs weren’t stopping. They really were coming down. “Hank, what does this mean?”Kerthunk. Another pig slammed Officer Wiley’s police car, this time on the hood. “Where will they go?” Thwick-thwack. Two miniature pigs plopped onto the asphalt over by pump number four, squealing. “What sort of pig refugee infrastructure could be made available to them?” A Vietnamese pot bellied pig had made his way to the dumpster and began to fight the tear-stricken raccoon for dirty diapers and sandwiches. “What if I’m a vegetarian and don’t eat pork?” Three medium-sized gray pigs plummeted downward and fell stacked directly on top of each another—a pig pile.
Well, isn’t this interesting, Henry thought. The sky wasn’t falling, and pigs weren’t flying, but look here: pigs were falling from the sky. Sandra was screaming now. “Do you think pump number five is still topped up with my cash? Who will win The Voice this season? How come I haven’t seen you in thirty years? Why did your dad hang himself in the garage? Where will the pigs go? Where will they go, Hank? Hank? Hank!”
Henry watched the pigs roll off their backs and stagger to their feet as still more, and more, and more tumbled from the heavens.
VIII.
From the heavens the pigs fell, and would continue to fall for some time. There would be potbelly hail, and boar freezing rain; there would even be Javan warty pig fog, which was originally endemic to the Indonesian islands but had begun to spread north of the equator just as soon as people started taking global warming seriously. The Vietnamese potbelly blimp that made its debut at the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting the previous year would, as the young boy prophet predicted, hurtle towards the earth and crush Sandra’s lying, cheating, sonofabitch ex-husband to death a few states away. Indeed, the boy prophet and his father suddenly had a lot more to discuss than just the female reproductive system.
The Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas made international news due to the sheer volume of swine falling. By the time prominent stations began showing up with their broadcasting teams, the pigs had already begun creating groups that resembled a new social order.
“You saw it here first, folks—the formation of a pig parliament is indeed strange, but not altogether unwelcome,” one newscaster announced. “Unfortunately, the surly cashier, as well as a resident dumpster raccoon, have declined to comment on the situation here at the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas.”
This is weird, though, right? people still murmured to one another. A kid can’t just bring a gun to school; a man can’t just police a woman’s body; an officer can’t just murder a person of color; a billionaire can’t just become president; pigs can’t just fall from skies.
On their way down, a few warthogs cracked self-deprecating jokes to cope with what was surely the most traumatic event of their lives. Hey, it’s better than being bacon, am I right, boys? See you on the other side.
This is weird, though, right? people would murmur to one another. A kid can’t just bring a gun to school; a man can’t just police a woman’s body; an officer can’t just murder a person of color; a billionaire can’t just become president; pigs can’t just fall from skies. Indeed, the entire weather phenomenon had come as a shock, especially to those passing through the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas that day. After all, the pigs had never fallen there before.
I.
Before Henry entered the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, he adjusted his ball cap and reflected on his father’s death. Then he decided he could really use some Doritos. He combed through the aisles of the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas gingerly, delicately, as if the choice with which he was faced was more akin to the surgical repair of a major organ than the decision to steal Cool Ranch or Nacho Cheese flavored chip. He plucked one bag of Cool Ranch off the shelf and stuffed them into the pocket of his jacket, then slid the nearest tube of Pringles down the waistband of his jeans for good measure. He was confident that with his cap and neck beard he was fairly unrecognizable, and his usual choice of low-profile items seemed to be his ticket safely out the door. The cashier was distracted while taking money from a woman for one of the gas pumps out front. Henry’s snack snatch was almost complete; soon, he would be able to return to his trailer on the outskirts of town, feed his iguana Prince, get a little high, and watch The Voice just like he had planned. He was just a few yards from the sliding glass doors when he heard her. “Hank? Hank!” Henry stopped in his tracks, clutching the Doritos in his pocket tightly. He hadn’t heard that voice in thirty years.
II.
Thirty years ago, Sandra Sherman lived next door to a group of rowdy boys called the Gilmans. Their names were Bobby, Leroy, Talbot, and Hank. She babysat them when their mother worked the night shift at the hospital, because they were all under ten years old and were having a hard time since their father had hanged himself in the garage. Sandra was paid five dollars an hour, which was damn good for the seventies and helped her buy her first car. Now, Sandra was forty-six, newly single, and terribly low on gas. She pulled into the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, parked in front of the pump, and headed straight inside to the cashier. She had recently come into a hefty amount of dough and, boy, was she planning on using it—first to fill up her tank, and then to order a hit on her lying, cheating, sonofabitch ex-husband. “Hi there,” she said to the young man at the front. He had thin lips and beady eyes and might have been an iguana in his previous life. “Pump number five.” She placed a crisp one hundred dollar bill on the counter, which was promptly and thoroughly examined by the cashier.
III.
The cashier hated his job, almost as much as he hated his mother. She had always nagged him to do things like clean his room and pay his car insurance and register to vote; he had never voted in elections, and wasn’t planning on doing so, ever, because nothing really mattered, anyway. He lived in a studio apartment a two minute bike ride from the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, and he kept a gun under his bed. The cashier also wore Crocs to work. He loved putting the tiny plastic charms inside his Croc holes. These charms were called Jibbitz, and this cashier liked them a lot. Every time he would finish with a customer transaction, he would look down at his feet at the Jibbitz in his shoes and breathe, taking in Mickey Mouse, a tiny violin, a pink star, a pineapple, and the turtle from Finding Nemo all resting atop his foot clad in orange, foamy plastic. Looking down at his feet is perhaps what the cashier liked most about his day job. His night job was just a little different, although he could still admire his Jibbitz during those shifts, too, when he got paid to be roughed around by men who liked to be called “Daddy.”
IV.
“Daddy, will Lily’s uterus fall out if she plays a sport?” the little boy asked his father. The father raised his eyebrows, which imperceptibly raised his heavy, tired eyelids. “Hm?” he murmured, leaning back in the driver’s seat. “Her uterus,” the little boy repeated, shifting his weight impatiently in his carseat. “Her uter-us. Lily’s. Will it fall out if she moves around, like in tennis or a pool?” The father sighed and opened his eyes to look at his son in the rearview mirror. He had so been looking forward to this five-minute gas station nap after what was certainly becoming the longest road trip of his life. “What? No, your sister’s uterus—buddy, when did you hear about a uterus?” The little boy said something vague in response--Mommy has one, right, she was talking on the phone about it to her doctor—but he was already looking out the window at the raccoon who lived at the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, who was, at that moment, rummaging for his lunch in the dumpster.
V.
The dumpster’s contents were primarily comprised of candy wrappers, half-eaten sandwiches, toilet paper, a torn-up divorce settlement, some unloved Jibbitz, fecal matter, upsetting amounts of glass bottles that weren’t properly recycled, some peculiar fish bones, and other unmentionably disgusting items. The raccoon, who was at present sifting through the dumpster, was a transient, a vagabond, a creature with no true, known home. He was from Texas originally, but had hitched rides in truck beds up north until he found himself at this Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas. His past places of residence included the kitchen of a nursing home, train tracks, the guest house of the CEO of a particular Fortune 500 company, the gigantic running shoe of a famous athlete, a treehouse, a dorm room, an antique mall, a van, a fraternity kitchen, and various gas station dumpsters. This one, though, was by and large his favorite. It saw plenty of people coming and going with plenty of trash.
VI.
“Trash, absolute trash,” Officer Wiley moaned as he flipped through the stations. He had been driving on Route 66 for some time on his regular shift, scanning for people speeding, people driving too fast, or people speeding, that sort of thing. His preferred stations included an easy listening mix of Christian Rock and Motown, but out here it seemed to be Top 40 or nothing.
“Trash!” he exclaimed again, backhanding his steering wheel in frustration and promptly bruising his knuckles. The dull ache made him even madder. He felt like he had heard quite enough of the screeching Dubstep remixes of the 80s hits that his niece Katie played at her thirteenth birthday last Sunday, and why, for the love of God, was simple acoustic guitar not enough for some pe—
The first pig fell square on top of Officer Wiley’s police car with a metallic kerthunk. He screamed, drowning out Britney Spears’ sweet, nasally falsetto, and pulled off on the nearest exit, which happened to be exactly the site of the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas.
VII.
The Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas had suddenly become the most exciting stop on Route 66, due to all the pigs falling. Henry, Sandra, the cashier, the little boy, his father, and Officer Wiley all looked straight up into the sky. The raccoon stayed in his favorite dumpster, but also turned his head towards space.
The pigs were every size, from teacup to pot bellied, wild boar to Berkshire, and all colors, too: every pink and brown and beige and black and gray imaginable. They grunted, squealed, and guffawed. They whooshed down, and plopped onto the pavement, and cooed and oinked and crowed and snuffled and sang. They fell slowly at first, and then gained speed; first there were just a handful, and then dozens, and then more. Some tried their best to flap their hooves to generate some sort of agency on their way down, while others fell more despondently, nudging one another with their snouts to embody what little comfort they could. One prize-winning Duroc wept for his mother’s teat. Miraculously, each pig survived the fall as they were hurled from above by some omnipotent, impetuous force.
All the people at the Shell station looked up. The sun was almost completely obscured by swines.
Henry gasped and clutched Sandra to his chest, crushing his Doritos in the process. Sandra swooned, and vowed to marry him in Las Vegas later that night. The raccoon sobbed through mouthfuls of dirty diapers. The little boy had a premonition of his sister’s uterus falling out during a tennis match, which would end up coming to fruition the weekend after next; he would soon be hailed as a prophet. A pig collided head-on with the ski rack of the father’s Ford Explorer. The cashier stood, stone-faced, while his Jibbitz hopped off his Crocs and began waddling around on the pavement. One particularly egregious sow approached Officer Wiley, flipped him off, and stole his car; in response, Officer Wiley screamed and clutched his gigantic, donut-filled belly, afraid that the sudden change in air pressure might make him pop.
Henry pulled the tube of Pringles out of his jeans and began eating them rapidly one by one, passing some to Sandra now and then as they watched the sky together.
“Hank?” Sandra sounded annoyed that he wasn’t handing her enough chips. Or, no; maybe she was annoyed that the pigs weren’t stopping. They really were coming down. “Hank, what does this mean?”Kerthunk. Another pig slammed Officer Wiley’s police car, this time on the hood. “Where will they go?” Thwick-thwack. Two miniature pigs plopped onto the asphalt over by pump number four, squealing. “What sort of pig refugee infrastructure could be made available to them?” A Vietnamese pot bellied pig had made his way to the dumpster and began to fight the tear-stricken raccoon for dirty diapers and sandwiches. “What if I’m a vegetarian and don’t eat pork?” Three medium-sized gray pigs plummeted downward and fell stacked directly on top of each another—a pig pile.
Well, isn’t this interesting, Henry thought. The sky wasn’t falling, and pigs weren’t flying, but look here: pigs were falling from the sky. Sandra was screaming now. “Do you think pump number five is still topped up with my cash? Who will win The Voice this season? How come I haven’t seen you in thirty years? Why did your dad hang himself in the garage? Where will the pigs go? Where will they go, Hank? Hank? Hank!”
Henry watched the pigs roll off their backs and stagger to their feet as still more, and more, and more tumbled from the heavens.
VIII.
From the heavens the pigs fell, and would continue to fall for some time. There would be potbelly hail, and boar freezing rain; there would even be Javan warty pig fog, which was originally endemic to the Indonesian islands but had begun to spread north of the equator just as soon as people started taking global warming seriously. The Vietnamese potbelly blimp that made its debut at the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting the previous year would, as the young boy prophet predicted, hurtle towards the earth and crush Sandra’s lying, cheating, sonofabitch ex-husband to death a few states away. Indeed, the boy prophet and his father suddenly had a lot more to discuss than just the female reproductive system.
The Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas made international news due to the sheer volume of swine falling. By the time prominent stations began showing up with their broadcasting teams, the pigs had already begun creating groups that resembled a new social order.
“You saw it here first, folks—the formation of a pig parliament is indeed strange, but not altogether unwelcome,” one newscaster announced. “Unfortunately, the surly cashier, as well as a resident dumpster raccoon, have declined to comment on the situation here at the Shell station halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas.”
This is weird, though, right? people still murmured to one another. A kid can’t just bring a gun to school; a man can’t just police a woman’s body; an officer can’t just murder a person of color; a billionaire can’t just become president; pigs can’t just fall from skies.
On their way down, a few warthogs cracked self-deprecating jokes to cope with what was surely the most traumatic event of their lives. Hey, it’s better than being bacon, am I right, boys? See you on the other side.
About the writer
Mary Kuper is a recent graduate of Whitman College who majored in Film and Media Studies and Creative Writing. She is an emerging writer and cinephile from Seattle, Washington, and thoroughly enjoys the process of crafting stories that shed light on the absurdist nature of our world and maybe even make people laugh.
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