Quicksilver(42)

“Now and then,” Bridget revealed, “I think my ability to see through the Screamers’ masquerades also isn’t one hundred percent reliable. I have the disturbing feeling some of them are better shielded, better disguised, and I’m unaware of them.”

“Good to know,” I said. “I’ve been concerned that I’m not half as paranoid as I ought to be, but you just solved that problem.”

Among the numerous products and services advertised on the extravagant signage mounted on the roof of Ching Station was the promise of CLEAN RESTROOMS.

Only one other vehicle stood in front of the enterprise, a faded-blue pickup truck with a rifle in a rack and a bumper sticker that announced I SHOOT TAILGATERS. The station was open eighteen hours a day, and the lifestyle in this hot territory was laid-back; there was no such thing as a rush hour with lines for anything.

While Sparky stretched his legs and Bridget poured bottled water into a bowl for Winston, I went inside to request lavatory keys and to learn how to obtain gasoline from the antique pumps.

A fifty-seven-year-old man, five feet nine, with brown hair and brown eyes, born on Christmas Day, was replenishing a depleted rack of candy bars near the first of two checkout stations. He had one of those friendly faces into which was also built evidence of a keen sense of humor and irony, the kind of face that would be a treasure to any standup comic who was graced with one. I recognized him from the photograph in the official state files of retailers who had been granted licenses to sell alcoholic beverages, which I’d perused in my aforementioned researches.

“John Kennedy Ching,” I said. Although I’d had no intention of speaking his name out loud, seeing him in the flesh after learning about him and his family was, for me at least, a little like coming face-to-face with a celebrity.

Holding a PayDay bar in each hand, he smiled. “I have been known to answer to that name. And you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m nobody. Bart. Bart Simpson.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Your name must be even harder to live up to than my John Kennedy.”

I don’t know why I’d chosen that name or why I was surprised that he had watched The Simpsons on TV. I wasn’t yet accomplished at the level of deceit necessary for my new cloak-and-dagger life.

Now I felt obliged to explain how I, a stranger to him, knew his name and recognized him on sight. “My friends and I have been looking for property over in Winkelville.”

He nodded. “A very competitive real estate market. Everyone in the world wants to live in Winkelville.”

“Anyway,” I said, digging myself in deeper, “since they don’t have anything like this place, like a general store, I wondered where they, you know, go to shop. Everyone spoke very highly of Ching Station, John Kennedy Ching, and in fact the whole Ching family from your grandparents to your children.”

His voice and expression were deadpan. “They lay it on thick over in Winkelville.”

My difficulty in negotiating this encounter arose because, as a result of my research, I knew his family’s history and admired what they achieved. His grandparents and their two sons—one five years old, the other seven; the latter John’s father—escaped from China in 1948, after the Communists opened reeducation camps and mass murders began. They made their way to Taiwan, which was then called Formosa, and soon immigrated to the United States. For a while, they settled in San Francisco with its flourishing Chinese American community. However, having fled a large city that was besieged by a violent ideology, they no longer felt safe in a metropolitan area, not even in America. I didn’t know—couldn’t begin to imagine—how John’s grandparents found Peptoe or how they were able to envision building Ching Station and making it into the mercantile center of the county. For seven decades, four generations of Chings had been serving the people of Peptoe and Winkelville (population 802) and Sunnyslope (population 746) and Sulphur Flats (population 635) and several much smaller sunbaked settlements. The industrious Chings occupied five houses in the vicinity of the crossroads where their enterprise was located, and all five flew the Stars and Stripes from flagpoles.

Deciding that I had best stick strictly to business, I said, “Your gas pumps are older than I am. How do they work? I mean, how do I pay and everything? I want to pay cash.”

“It’s a mystery,” he said, “but we can solve it together. I’ll switch on pump number one from behind the counter. You go out there and turn the crank until the meter shows only zeros. Then fill up with however much you need and come back here to pay me what the meter says you owe.”

“It’s just that in Phoenix, you put your credit card or debit card right in the pump.”

“Phoenix,” he said, “is a place of great wonders.”

“Don’t some people pump the gas and then drive away without coming back in here to pay?”

“One such scofflaw did exactly that in 1996,” John Kennedy Ching said, “but we tracked him down to Cleveland, Ohio, and burned his house to the ground.”

I laughed and nodded. “All right, you’re pulling my leg.”

Stepping behind the counter to activate pump number one, he said, “You pulled mine first, Bart Simpson. But unless you have excellent insurance on your residence, you better return to pay me.”

“I know it sounds unlikely, but my name really is Bart Simpson. My cross to bear. Oh, and could I have the keys to the men’s and women’s lavatories?”