Lawrence was like a post-secondary education graveyard. I'd seen several people proclaim their intent to move there to take up their studies at Kansas University, only to fall into a trap of constant partying. Sometimes, they'd take a class or two one semester but rarely more. Roy called it the "next cultural Mecca." Obviously, he was interested in something other than "finishing school" there.
Roy's departure ushered in a new age at the station. Josh started college at UMKC and filled in from time to time, while Dustin covered most of the night shifts with me. Toad also started hiring a new crop of teenagers, all of whom were Deadheads, from the high school to cover some weekend shifts and fill in when somebody was sick or hungover or driving to some random state on a pixie binge.
By my estimation, there were over a hundred Deadheads. Tracy was friends with a few of them and we joined them for a movie one night. Half the theater was filled with Deadheads. They would usually cluster together inside a Winstead's hamburger joint and overflow the inside of the building so there was always a large crowd hanging around outside in the parking lot playing hacky sack or whatever it was they did. But the core group - the lead Deadhead, Trent, and his closest friends - were always inside.
It was the end of the Summer and Tracy started her last year of high school with the Deadheads while I started my freshman year of college. I never really officially declared a major. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to study mathematics or philosophy. Math seemed to be at the core of everything in which I was interested, but philosophy really intrigued me. I ended up taking a mish-mash of classes that added up to eighteen credit hours. All of the math classes were first thing in the morning, at hours I hadn't experienced since working the day shift with Toad.
The first week of school was somewhat of a shock. The first day consisted mostly of standing around in lines. Long lines. I ended up taking out several charges at the station to buy books, since I was out of money after making the "down payment" on my student loans. I found it somewhat annoying that a large chunk of the student body seemed to be coming from outside the United States and seemed to be getting more in the way of grants than I was. As the day wore on, though, I snuck outside several times to get high and began to find the foreign students more and more fascinating as I would overhear random pieces of babble while standing in line.
"In Namibia, we are a nuclear-free country!"
"I heard an amusing story about a genus in a bottle."
"A genus?"
"Yes. A genus. A magical person."
"Oh, you mean a genie."
"Yes. A genus in a bottle."
After spending the day waiting in lines, getting high and performing miserably on various tests, I was informed that the freshmen and seniors would be given a new test called the "ACT-COMP." The college had decided to begin giving those tests that year so they could find the difference in a student's score at the start and end of their college career and measure how much they learned in school. I made a mental note to be sober that day - whatever day it was.
I was happy when that first day came to a merciful end. I headed to the station, where Dustin had already taken over for Toad. I could immediately see he was completely pixied up.
"Darren!"
"Dustin!"
"Come here! Hurry!"
I followed Dustin outside, knowing better, but deciding "what the hell." He pointed across the street, to the Texaco.
"What?"
"Look! That fat-ass motherfucker was in here a minute ago!"
The "fat-ass motherfucker" he was speaking of was Fat-Time Charlie. Fat-Time was a gas pumper at the Texaco across the street. Recently, he had decided to come to Phillips and make us pump his gas for him. He would always get small amounts, usually never exceeding five dollars worth, and make us check everything under his hood. His final insult was to leave us with a tip that was usually a quarter but sometimes as much as fifty cents. He also had a nasty habit of spitting his tobacco-browned saliva at our feet. Dustin hated him with a passion, even more than I did. Probably because he had to handle him more often, for some reason.
Indeed, there was Fat-Time waddling across the lot to start a customer, "Yeah, what about him?"
"Look!"
Finally, I noticed what Dustin was excited about. There was a small humanoid figure hopping in and out of a Jeep.
"What the fuck is that?"
Dustin's eyes widened, "It has to be a midget, Darren. It has to be!"
I'm not sure what the significance was, but I did have a feeling it was significant. I'd never actually seen a live midget before. Maybe that had something to do with it. I guess they were rare around this part of the world, so it was like spotting a duck-billed platypus or something. I rushed into the back room to grab the pair of binoculars Toad kept on the shelf - I guess for hunting down unidentified flying objects.
I could hear Dustin calling after me, "Hurry, Darren! Before he goes away!"
I returned with the binoculars and focused in on the small figure in the distance. Texaco wasn't that far away - just across a two-lane road. But it was far enough that the midget could have been a pudgy child or something - which would still be somewhat amusing.
"Yep. It's a midget." The skin on my back crawled as I handed the binoculars to Dustin.
He marveled at the figure for several minutes before turning the binoculars to Fat-Time, "I'm gonna get that fat son-of-a-bitch."
I would have thought that with everyone in school, the station would be a little less hectic than it was during the vacation months. I was wrong. The first to visit us was Josh, who made it a habit of coming by the station to get high in the back room whenever he didn't have someplace better to do it.
"Josh, you should have seen that midget across the street!"
Josh came out of the back room, glassy-eyed and almost as confused as Dustin, "What?"
"A midget! Across the street! Right after that fat-ass motherfucker came in here spitting all over!"
Josh's laugh quickly decayed into a deep, hacking cough and his face reddened, "Dude, you're ate up!"
Josh hung around a few minutes, squirting Visine in his eyes and collecting himself as best he could before going off to some sort of family function. He was followed by a pack of Deadheads who filled the parking lot with their old, junky cars.
"Oh Goddamnit," Dustin rolled his eyes. "Not them."
I wasn't especially fond of the Deadheads myself, but I knew their arrival meant Tracy probably wasn't far behind.
Trent came in, followed by a cluster of the Core Group, "Hey Darren! Hey cuz," he exclaimed brightly.
"Hey Trent," I tried to hide my disdain, unlike Dustin who merely scowled in response as he went outside to start a customer.
"What's wrong with your cousin?"
"Oh nothing. He just saw a midget earlier."
"And he's all grumpy because of that? That ain't cool. Midgets are people too."
I analyzed Trent's posture, tone of voice and facial expression, concluding he was serious. I began to feel some of the visceral hatred Dustin had for the Deadheads. I decided to ignore them and Dustin until Tracy arrived and browsed through my textbooks.
One of the classes I had taken was a writing class that was centered around war. The professor had been in Vietnam and put together a textbook that was a collection of essays about war. I found a nice picture of a mushroom cloud. It was in mid-explosion and the cloud was emitting a light that was tinted green. It was a spectacularly gorgeous photograph.
I held the page up to Trent, "Isn't that beautiful?!"
Trent looked away, "Man, that isn't cool. That's a nuclear bomb."
My visceral hatred deepened, swimming and bubbling in my chest until Tracy's arrival calmed me.
Work turned out to be a bust. Dustin was spun out of his mind on pixie dust all night and the Deadheads stuck around to "give you and Tracy some good company instead of just all the meth heads."
At least the pixies weren't a bunch self-righteous jerk-offs who could afford to buy jeans with the holes already in the knees. Tracy and I went to my room to "watch a movie" while the pixies buzzed around in the living room. We were in bed talking when she giggled.
I smiled, "What's so funny?"
"Trent."
"What about him?"
"He told me I should be careful of you. He said you're a war monger. You showed him some picture of a bomb or something and said it was cool. I thought it was funny."
I just rolled my eyes. Fucking Deadheads.
"�
I said goodnight to Tracy early in the evening and headed straight for bed, determined to be on time for my first class at eight. As it turned out, getting to class on time was easier than I had thought it would be. I woke up with enough time to get myself ready and smoke a joint with Dustin, who hadn't slept all night. He was only too happy to give me a ride to the campus.
As it turned out, I rather liked my weekly schedule. I ended up with a few large gaps in the day when I didn't have any classes. I could hang out at the station and savor Toad's torment of Aaron or I could go home and sleep a bit or I could hang around campus with a friend I had made there - a bisexual guy named Tate who had come down from Minnesota to go to school. He had a Mohawk and wore skirts once in a while. He had no trouble identifying me as a pothead and came to me looking for a bag. We ended up smoking a joint together in some secluded spot on campus before a class one morning. When we got into the room, we were told to go to the underground building to take the "ACT-COMP" test. I cringed.
I don't remember how many hours that test took. It was excruciating. We had to watch stupid videos and then answer questions based on what we saw... or thought we saw... or whatever. Some of the tests were more traditional. There were language tests, spelling tests, math tests and tests the nature of which I couldn't identify.
When it was all over I went to the soda machine, got myself a Dr. Pepper and headed out of the building to have a much-needed cigarette.
I overheard a couple of Eastern Europeans and an American girl talking behind me.
"Doug too skinny. No good eat," one Eastern European observed.
The others grunted in agreement. Evidently, this Doug character wasn't their type.
"No good eat, no good fuck," the Eastern European continued, "No good fuck, no good work."
I slowed my pace a bit, wanting to be sure to get all of this.
"No good work, no good money. No good money, no good eat."
I smiled as I fished a cigarette out of the hard pack I was carrying in my shirt pocket. So that was the circle of life.
Posted by DevilMonkey at 12:19 AM