Orange Juice and Donuts 

By Emily Jenniges 

“Welcome to Bill” the sign said. He read it aloud in a sarcastic tone. She slumped in the seat beside him, her head cramped against the cold window and her mouth hanging partly open like a senior citizen’s. His words attempted to wake her from slumber and she subconsciously tried to shake them off.

He pulled off and turned into the empty gas station. The stopping finally woke her and she squirmed to reality. “Ready to drive for awhile,” he asked? With no response she heaved open the big car door and stepped into the thin night air. She stretched her arms high above her head, yawned in an attempt to pop her plugged ears, and let out an exaggerated sigh. She filled her lungs with the frozen air in hopes of gaining some alertness. The air burned her raw throat. She watched him walk through the glass door and slid into the driver’s seat. 

She reached her pale hand toward the radio and scrambled because of her 2 inch long stoplight red claws. A man’s voice came bursting through the speakers, “Lows tonight around ten degrees, but we’ll be looking for partly sunny skies tomorrow with a high of thirty-five and winds from the Northeast at ten to twenty miles an hour.” Then there was a long pause. Long enough for her to reach for the knob and turn it as far as it would go. Then BAM, the music shook her and she punched the knob shutting it off. “Where the hell am I,” she asked herself. She reached in the back seat and pulled out a box of hotel Kleenex and blew her nose.

She watched him meander down the aisles. She stared inside, racks of sunglasses, magazines, racks of postcards and junk. She took a calming breath and by the light of the tiny station found her lighter and lit a cigarette. She thought the place must be the town’s post office, grocery store, church, city hall, restaurant, and gas station. 

Three young boys rode their bikes past the car and then stopped next to the building tossing their bikes carelessly to the ground. One of them with a backwards Rockie’s cap, marched up to the box against the building with a sign above it reading “air”. He quickly turned to his friends, “Out of order, shit!” he said stomping in disgust. Another boy who was pudgy and wearing a winter coat far to small for his round body leaned against the old brick wall. The third kid read the paper sign for himself replying, “Yep, out of order.” He adjusted his red and white stocking hat, blew hard into his fist and stuffed his hands in the back pocket of his worn blue jeans. The first kid opened the glass door and hollered in to the clerk, “Hey Mister, your pumps out of order!”

She studied them curiously and squinted down at the clock’s neon green digits. 1:47 AM. “What the hell,” she thought, “some kind of moonlight death wish bike ride?” 

She watched them carefully and sat still to hear their words. She wondered where they could possibly be going, what they could be doing at this time of night, where were their mothers? But in the same second she questioned them, she questioned herself. “What the hell and I doing, where the hell is my mother,” she asked aloud. Then the image that she had created came flying into her groggy head. Her mother sprawled out in a second-hand recliner watching hard copy on a 9” T.V. in a trailer park stuck in some crazy place like Mississippi. 

The boys had been fooling with the rusty old pump and now had it working again. The same boy called back at the clerk in an annoying voice, “It’s working now Mister.” As fast as they’d come they were gone, she wondered if she might have hallucinated the whole scene.   “This is taking too  long,” she though. She peered into the window and watched him twirl a stand of postcards. He had taken his time to gather a few groceries. He walked casually to the counter, laid the items down, and reached into his pocket. The clerk put down his weathered paperback and thumped some buttons on the machine. She could imagine their conversation. The old clerk would calculate a total and then she could hear him say in his best western stick-um-up voice something like, “Go ahead and give me everything else in that register there, Bill.” Then he’d pull his derringer 22 from his pocket. 

She watched the bug-eyed clerk fill a brown paper sack. She smothered her cigarette in the ashtray and looked around taking more calming breathes. Finally he came running out of the store and jumped in the car.  She slammed it into gear and hit the gas. Without a word, he opened her a sunny delight and handed her breakfast. 

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