Lana

Working service stations are not always occupied. It is the dim-glow, shut-eye streetlight that stands guard through the night, highlighting the panicked nuances of roadside life: the curled lip, the clenched fist, the cocked gun. People come here on their own, sometimes. Lone occupants heed CAUTION at yellow sunrise, frost-breath and coffee breath fog-breathing the windows, dial switching with frost-fingers to melt the ice. They stop here to piss and to watch the heat rise. They are labeled cow-less and childless, and by most—wayfaring American blights. Others move in hoards, spirited and herd-like. They marvel at curdled clouds in stormy skies, and the river that runs red to their sides is an encouraging sight, a brave, American sight. These star-seeing tourists demand Lana’s time, speaking in tongues tinged with o’s and a’s and I’s. They remind her of her waning mind, of all of the dusty dollars she stored away in hopes of leaving to thrive. She reminds herself that these folks are the real dangerous kind—that these occupants carry no gun but awe, awe in what she hardly considers the sublime: the stagnant sagebrush, the desert dirt, the white icicles of lime. They huddle in circles, nagging and sneezing, warming themselves up in her space heater’s shine. But working service stations are not always occupied. She takes a break from the cash register and trudges outside, to mull at vehicle-streaks of red, yellow and light.