Craters of the Moon
By D.W. Davis
Collin drove home slowly through a blue-tinted world of rust and bronze, smoking his next-to-last cigarette. Around him, the town continued its slow demise beneath the disinterested gaze of a quarter moon. The autumn air wafted with decay and neglect, the weight of a world that only existed in memory.
He wrestled with many emotions. Guilt was among the least of them, and he knew how wrong that was, but he’d left any shame in Sheila’s apartment, as he’d taught himself to do. He found himself more preoccupied with his crumbling surroundings: the failed businesses, the vacant houses, the disinterest. Small towns die slowly and obviously, and the people who inhabit them suffer the same entropy, even as they deny the inevitable. Collin did not deny it. Neither did he embrace it, but he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there, not when it stared him directly in the eye as it did, wove itself into his psyche, his own sense of self. He was a dying man in a dying town. He could not escape this thought. He had tried.
A light drizzle started to fall as he turned into the Phillips 66. He tugged up the collar of his jacket, pulled his ballcap down over his head, and got out of the truck. He winced at the gas prices, then again at the “Thanks, Joe!” decal someone had plastered on the pump. He glanced at the next pump, saw one there as well, next to a Spongebob sticker. He puzzled over that for a second, then ran his card, put the nozzle in the tank, and walked inside.
Spence was behind the counter. Bearded and shaggy, a high school dropout, and he would tell you if you didn’t already know. He’d won a minor lottery jackpot several years ago, blew it on smokes and booze, and didn’t mind telling you that, either. He still held a grudge against Mrs. Easter, his eleventh grade calculus teacher. Collin had once asked him why he’d even taken calculus, an elective. Spence hadn’t answered.
“Wondered if you’d show up.”
Collin nodded and ran his eyes over the bagged and processed goods in the immediate vicinity. “Slow night?”
“It’s Wednesday. Goin’ home?”
Collin grabbed a Milky Way bar. “I am.”
“How’s Daphne?”
“Same ol’.”
Spence rang the candy bar. “Lotto?”
“I don’t play. You know that.”
“You may one day.”
“I won’t.”
“You may, though. You’re the type.”
“We all can’t be lucky as you.”
Spence nodded to the stacks of chips and candy, a twelve-foot square he inhabited six nights a week. “I’m blessed.”
“You had your chance. How much?”
“A million dollars. It’s a fuckin’ candy bar and the price is right there. And you had yours as well.”
“A chance?”
“You said she’s fine.”
Collin smiled. “I said she’s the same.”
“I didn’t stutter. Hey, remember Cliff Foreman?”
“Vaguely. He beat you up once.”
“Three times, thanks. He popped off last week. Released from the mortal coil. Good riddance and all that.”
“You’re thirty-three.”
“Grudges are timeless and he’s the reason my nose is crooked.” Spence scratched said nose. “It’s fucking Wednesday, you know. You’re playing with fire.”
“I had to work late.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“If you call that working.”
“I do.”
A semi drove by. Collin turned to watch it. The street was otherwise dead. The stoplight blinked green, then momentarily yellow, then red. The window blew the wires, and the light swayed in the breeze. Through the window, above the bags of jerky and corn chips, he could see the sliver of moon rising above an abandoned brick building. He tried to remember what had been there but couldn’t. Even his own past was deceiving him.
“Figure I’ll hit The Place on Friday,” Spence said. “You in?”
Collin nodded. “Sure.”
“Wife won’t get in the way? What’s her name won’t?”
“No.”
Spence also turned to look out the window. He said, “They were gonna put a Walmart there.”
“I heard.”
“Is it weird if I’m glad they didn’t? I feel like it’s weird.”
“It’s kind of weird.”
Spence sighed. “Kari, the girl at The Place, you know? She asked me the other night why I’m still here. Why I stick around. I mean, she didn’t phrase it exactly like that, but that’s the gist. And I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have a fucking answer.” He looked again at the shelves, focused on a bag of parmesan-flavored pretzels, then shook his head. “Like, what the hell is this. What’re we doing here? What’s the point?”
Collin shrugged.
Spence said, “No I mean it. What’s the point?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shocking. Man, you’re in some kind of denial.”
“What’s that mean?”
Spence spun the candy bar with his fingers. Another vehicle drove by, a jacked-up pickup sporting a MAGA flag. They both watched it pass. Collin wondered how much the flag had cost. Those things couldn’t be cheap, could they? Did people just give out giant flags? He didn’t know, and he found this absence of knowledge particularly aggravating. He felt he should know this, now more than ever, when every penny and every opinion mattered most. He was on a death bed after all, a bed of death and cement and brick and wood and glass. Everything mattered.
The truck passed. Spence turned back to him. Collin noted the gray in his beard, which he hadn’t registered before.
Spence said, “You ever been walking in the woods when it starts to rain?”
Collin glanced at the beer cooler. Only three types of beer, all domestic, all cheap. All looked like they’d go down good.
“What?”
“You ever been walking in the woods and it starts to rain?”
“No.”
Spence nodded. “I have. You hear the rain before you feel it. You’re just walking along, minding your own, whatever, and you start to hear the patter. Kind of like machine gun fire, I mean not really, but kind of. You just hear it. It’s everywhere. It’s all around you. And then, after a minute or two, you feel it. You’re in the woods, right? And you’re just one of a million things there. Just one of millions. You’d think the rain would hit you first, because that’s just how we think, right, but when you’re out there, you know you don’t matter. The rain hits everything else first, ‘least that’s how it seems. By the time it hits you, you’ve been hearing it for a while, and then suddenly you’re like, shit, it’s raining, and of course then it’s too late, you’re soaked.”
Collin laid a five on the counter. “You have a point.”
“I can hear the fuckin’ rain, man. Can you?”
Collin tapped the bill. “Keep the change for a rainy day. That’s a pun.”
“No it ain’t. But thanks. Friday night if I don’t skip town by then.”
“You’ll still be here.”
“How you know that?”
“’Cause I’ll be here.”
Collin unwrapped the candy bar as he walked back outside. The door dinged as he left; the bell had not gone off when he’d entered. He thought of the point of the bell. The store was just one room, and the small office in the back didn’t have a door, and the restroom was a Port-a-Potty out back, where you couldn’t hear the bell. He took a bite of the candy, realized he wasn’t hungry, and tossed it in the trash as he walked to his truck.
As he put the nozzle back in the pump, a cop car drove by, sheriff’s deputy on patrol. Collin offered a half-hearted wave, figuring there was a fifty-fifty chance he knew whoever was behind the wheel. He looked at his watch and shook his head at the hour. It was no longer Wednesday. He knew he should come up with some excuse for Daphne, but he couldn’t think of one and didn’t really want to.
He lit his last cigarette after he started the engine. Cranked the heater up. Glanced at the moon, though it looked like it was trying to hide from the world. Like it was shy. Or afraid. Collin took a drag of the Marlboro filtered and decided he couldn’t blame the moon much either way. He felt the same, but he still had a five-minute drive ahead, with the night waning and a slowly dying future fast approaching. But he had Friday night to look forward to. That was something. That was worth at least as much as a boarded-up window or a parking lot overrun with weeds. Might even be worth the rest of it, this economy. Collin turned the radio on and drove. The town passed by as though it wasn’t even there. He found he didn’t miss it much. Nothing to miss anymore. Nothing at all.
D.W. Davis (he/him) is a native of rural Illinois. His work has appeared in various online and print journals. You can find him at Facebook.com/DanielDavis05 or @dan_davis86 on Twitter.