My car runs out of gas in Carefree, Arizona, of all places, and I am forced to walk a sweltering half-mile to find a gas station. It is not the mom-and-pop operation I am expecting, but rather a respectable steel and chrome Texaco. Only one attendant is there.
“Hey,” he says as I walk up. He doesn’t really look at me, so I have the opportunity to survey him first. He has long brown hair and terrible acne; I place him at seventeen. “You’re not from around here.”
“Oh,” I say, more sarcastic than I have to be. “How can you tell?”
The boy laughs through his nose and shrugs. He seems to actually be thinking up an answer to my rhetorical statement. “I know everyone in this town, I guess.”
“That’s astute of you.” I smile.
“Astute,” he repeats, trying the word on for size. As if he remembers his occupation, he jumps off the ten-gallon drum he has been resting on and asks if I’d like some help.
“Some unleaded,” I tell him. “My car is down the road.”
He focuses his attention on my gas can, a gift from the bank where Jane and I have a savings account. Marine Midland Bank, it is called, and its logo is a streamlined cartoon whale-we chose the institution for obvious emotional reasons.
“Hey,” the boy says. “I seen one of these.”
“A gas can? I’d imagine so.”
“No, a whale can. You know, this picture thing here. There was one in here yesterday being filled up. Some lady who filled her tank and then found out we took credit cards and asked if we could fill up the spare can too.”
Jane, I recall, has a can like it. The second year we were banking-with Midland, we chose another gas can. We already had a nice toaster.
“What did this woman look like?” I can feel my neck getting flushed and the hair on the back of my neck standing. “Was there anyone with her?”
“Shit, I don’t know. We get a million people in here a day.” He looks up at me, and to my complete embarrassment I recognize this as a look of pity. “They weren’t from this town though, I can tell you that.”
I grab him by the shirt collar and hold him pinned to the diesel fuel tank. “Listen to me,” I say, enunciating clearly. “I am looking for my wife and that may be her. Now you think about it and try to remember what she looks like. You try to remember if she had a little girl with her. If you talked to her about where she was going.”
“Okay, okay,” the boy says, pushing me away. He gives me a sideways look and makes a slow circle around the self-service island. “I think she had dark hair,” he says, looking at my face to see if he is getting the answer right. He smacks his hands on his thighs, then. “The girl was pretty. A real fox, you know? Blond and a tight little ass. She asked for the key to the bathroom,” he laughs, “and I told her I’d give her the key to my house too, if she met me there after work.”
This is the best news I have heard in hours. Nothing is certain with such a vague description, but in a situation such as this some hint of evidence is better than nothing. “Where were they headed?” I ask, as calm as I can be given the circumstances.
“Route Seventeen,” he says. “They asked how you get back to Route Seventeen. Maybe they’re headed to the Canyon.”
Of course they were going to the Grand Canyon. Jane was with Rebecca, and Rebecca would want to see as much as possible, each tourist trap en route. An angle I hadn’t considered.
“Thank you,” I say to the boy. “You have made my day.”
The boy grins. He needs braces. “That’s a buck twenty-five,” he says. “Hell. It’s on the house.”
I run from the gas station without thanking the boy. I do not notice the heat or the distance on the journey back. The Grand Canyon. I feed in the gas and turn the ignition, imagining this union of Jane, Rebecca and the majestic red walls that were cut by the Colorado River.